Author: shlomi ben-oz

Project Developed By Students from Technion’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Will Save Police Thousands of Shekels

An exercise system for the elderly, a mechanical piercing system for detonating explosive devices, and a press for attaching industrial gaskets are the winning projects in the annual Product Design Exhibition

An electromechanical piercing system for detonating explosive devices won first place last week at the Product Design Exhibition held by Technion’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The system was developed for the Israel Police Bomb Squad by students Karin Ram, Oren Cohen, and Nimrod Keiddar, under the guidance of Avraham Greenblatt.

The lance system currently used by police to detonate explosive devices and suspicious objects uses expensive electronic bullets. The winning development, a piercing system for a lance, will allow system operators to use mechanical bullets, which are about 80% less expensive and more widely available. The improved system allows operators to choose between mechanical and remote operation.

“Using mechanical bullets will save the police a lot of money,” said Ram, “and we also managed to save a lot on the cost of the system.” Keiddar added, “We developed a cocking knob that activates a mechanical system and included many safety mechanisms.” Following a series of successful experiments, the new system is expected to be put to use in the near future. “The emphasis in the new system is on safety, and the students have saved the police thousands of shekels,” said Aviram Karovi, the police sapper who advised the students. “This is a development unlike any other in the world,” added sapper Noel Naor.

From Idea to Product

The Product Design Exhibition is held annually at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering as part of the New Product Design course led by Dr. Hagay Bamberger under the guidance of Prof. Reuven Katz, who is the head of the Design, Manufacturing, and CAD track at the Faculty. Technion’s Senior Executive Vice President, Prof. Adam Shwartz, said, “Technion is working to promote the development of new ideas. Some of them remain in the form of theories, equations, and lines of code, but some are translated into real products. We are proud of both, but there is no doubt that when something that has been theoretical for years matures to the point of a product that benefits industry and society, it is especially exciting. Here, at the Product Design Exhibition, we see developments that are all beneficial, and we can say with certainty that each one is the best of its kind in the world.”

Students Dor Lavi, Dror Raff, and Denis Bakutin won second place in the design competition for the development of a tool gasket press for Iscar Ltd, under the guidance of Dubi Zuk. The press is designed to help insert a gasket into the designated borehole, which is a part of the manufacturing process of head adapters for milling machines. The advantage of the pneumatic press developed by the team lies in its easy operation and suitability for a variety of different adapters, which differ in size and shape.

Third place went to Tal Weisinger, Shahaf Meidler, and Noa Kohler, who developed an exercise system for wheelchair-bound seniors: a device that attaches to the wheelchair, enabling the user to strengthen his hands and upper body and improve his fine motor skills. According to the student developers, “Elderly people in wheelchairs often suffer from inactivity, among other things, which is sometimes characterized by muscular dystrophy. Exercise systems for the elderly exist but they are expensive, and therefore therapeutic institutions own one such system at most. We have developed an inexpensive, lightweight, and modifiable platform that provides various types of exercise. The idea is to use simple, lightweight, and completely mechanical devices – that is, not dependent on electricity.”

In the course, the team developed two exercise devices – a manual crank for strengthening the upper body and a fine motor skills table – but the idea is to develop a wide range of devices suitable for a wide range of needs and levels of activity. The project supervisor was Kfir Cohen and advice on geriatrics was provided by Prof. Zvi Dwaletsky, Head of the Geriatric Unit at the Rambam Health Care Campus.

Another unique development presented at the fair was a field stretcher developed by students Michael Ada and Roy Atinesh, under the guidance of Dr. Zvi Fruchter, for United Rescue of Israel (Ichud Hatzalah) and with the assistance of Segal Bikes Ltd. “The organization uses volunteers to provide first aid for medical emergencies until an ambulance arrives,” explained Ada. “On many terrains, such as bicycle paths, it is impossible to reach the injured person by car, or else the time required for evacuation is too great. Therefore, we were asked to develop a lightweight stretcher with a carrying mechanism that would make the task easier for medics and would also include a rigid surface to protect the injured person’s spine, for easy and quick evacuation to the means of transportation.”

“We developed a folding stretcher comprised of a surface with carrying beams with a roller attached to it,” added Atinesh. “We manufactured it from aluminum and it now weighs 14 kg. In a future development it will be manufactured from magnesium and its total weight will be about 11 kg, so two medics can carry it on their backs.”

Other developments in the competition were a system for injecting powder into a 3D printer, an underwater microscope illumination system, an electrode sharpening device, an aircraft bolt security diagnostics system, an automation system for assembling plastic parts, and rotational welding machine piping parts. All of these projects were requested by various industrial companies.

Photos: Sharon Tzur, Office of the Spokesperson, the Technion

Scientists from the Technion and Germany have demonstrated the “shape memory” effect in gold particles for the first time

HAIFA, ISRAEL and NEW YORK (July 9, 2017)

Researchers from the Technion and Germany have demonstrated for the first time the phenomena of shape memory and self-healing in gold microparticles. This is achieved through defects-mediated diffusion in the particle.  The discovery may one day lead to development of  micro- and nano-robots capable of self-repair; mechanically stable and damage-tolerant components and devices; and targeted drug delivery.

The study, published in Advanced Science, was conducted by doctoral student Oleg Kovalenko and Dr. Leonid Klinger, led by Prof. Eugen Rabkin of the Technion Department of  Materials Science and Engineering, together with Dr. Christian Brandl of KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany).

Shape-memory materials are characterized by the ability to repair the damage caused to them (such as plastic deformation) and to recover their original shape. These materials can exist in two stable crystalline forms, or phases: austenite, which is the more symmetrical primary form stable at elevated temperatures; and martensite, which is a phase characterized by lower symmetry, but also by greater strength. A well-known example of transition between the two phases is the quenching of steel.

The transformation of the austenite phase to the martensite can be activated by applying mechanical load to the material, or by cooling it down. The low-symmetry structure of the martensite allows the material to absorb considerable plastic strain by re-orienting the distorted crystals of martensite according to the direction of the stress applied to it. Even after plastic deformation, the martensite crystals “remember” their parent austenite phase and are capable of restoring it in its original configuration. This will happen if the material is heated up, causing the reverse martensite-austenite phase transformation and transforming the thermal energy into mechanical energy that will restore the material to its original shape.

Until now, this shape memory effect has only been observed in very few metal alloys such as Nitinol (Ni-Ti). These alloys are characterized by polymorphism – multiplicity of possible stable crystalline phases. This is the first time the phenomenon of shape memory has been demonstrated in sub-micrometer particles of gold. The researchers indented the gold particles with a sharp diamond tip controlled by an atomic force microscope (AFM). Annealing of the indented particles at a temperature of 600°C (about 65% of the absolute melting temperature of gold) resulted in full healing of the damage and recovery of the particles’ original shape prior to deformation.

According to Prof. Rabkin, the discovery of the shape memory effect in these particles is surprising for two reasons: “First, the particles’ original shape was not perfect in terms of energy and thermodynamic equilibrium. Second, gold in its solid state is not characterized by polymorphism.”

To understand the process in depth, the researchers investigated the atomic motion during indentation and heating, using atomistic molecular dynamic computer simulations. They demonstrated that the plastic deformation during the indentation process is mediated by nucleation and glide of dislocation half-loops (the dislocations are linear, one-dimensional defects in the crystal through which it undergoes plastic deformation). The loops which egress at the free surfaces form terraces and ledges on the flat facets of the particle, and these serve as “guide rails” directing the diffusion of gold atoms back to the indented site during high-temperature anneal. Thus the particle recovers its original shape.

Like coffee that returns to the cup all by itself

Both plastic deformation and capillary-driven diffusion are classical examples of thermodynamically irreversible processes. It is remarkable that a combination of two irreversible processes can lead to damage recovery and reversible restoration of a particle shape. To understand how surprising this process is, think of spilled coffee jumping back from the floor into the cup, or a car that recovers its original shape after being totaled in an accident.

Prof. Rabkin says that the discovered self-healing and shape memory effect in metallic nano- and microparticles could be utilized for the design of mechanically stable and damage-tolerant components and devices at the sub-micrometer length scale.

For example, one of the main reasons for the failure of mobile electronic devices (such as tablets and smartphones) is the mechanical wear of electrical contacts. Designing a contact geometry based on the discovered shape memory effect can solve this problem once and for all: electric current flowing through the damaged electrical contact will heat up the contact area, and heat will be utilized to repair the mechanical damage of the contact. Another possible use is the controlled drug delivery to the specific areas of the patient’s body. For this application, the particles capable of recovering their shape at lower temperatures should be designed. A drug can be injected into the cavity on the particle surface produced by indentation, and released after heating.

Technion’s Prof. Jacob Ziv – Recipient of the 2017 EMET Prize

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Jacob Ziv of Technion’s Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering is the recipient of the 2017 EMET Prize in the category of Computer and Electronics Engineering. The prize is awarded annually under the auspices of the Prime Minister of Israel. The total amount, $1 million, is divided into five categories of excellence in influential academic or professional achievements that make a significant contribution to society.

Ziv, born in 1931, completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at Technion, followed by a doctorate at MIT (1962). After eight years of research and development – Rafael in Israel and Bell Labs in the US – he joined the Technion faculty. Over the years, he has won prestigious awards including the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award, Israel Prize in the Exact Sciences, Israel Defense Prize (twice), Marconi International Award, IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, and Claude E. Shannon Award. He has held senior positions including Technion Vice President for Academic Affairs, Chairman of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Israeli Council for Higher Education, President of the Israel Academy of Sciences, and was a member of leading American and European societies.

He is being awarded the EMET Prize for his groundbreaking contributions to information and communication theory. The Ziv-Lempel algorithm, which he developed together with Prof. Abraham Lempel of Technion’s Faculty of Computer Science, is an algorithm for compressing information that enables lossless compression regardless of the structure of the data and without prior knowledge of its statistical properties. Many of the compression technologies currently used in memory devices, computers, and smartphones were developed based on this algorithm.

According to Ziv, “Computer and electronics engineering is a new category of the EMET Prize. I am very pleased that it has been added and I hope that in the future I will be joined by other winners from Technion.” He continues, “The training that we received at Technion in the exact sciences was excellent. Thanks to that training, I was able to lead the application of transistors at Rafael, a field that was unknown in Israel at the time. In computer and communication engineering research, it is customary to define the mathematical limits of future system performance. The next step is to get as close to these limits as possible by means of software and hardware. In the case of the Ziv-Lempel algorithm, we proved our hypothesis, and the algorithm has become a basic building block in many applications.”

 

Technion – 8th Place in the World in Aerospace Engineering

Shanghai Ranking : Technion ranked among world’s top 50 academic institutions in three areas

Technion has been ranked eighth in the world in aeronautical engineering and among the 50 leading institutions in the world in three areas, according to preliminary data published by the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). ARWU publishes the Shanghai Ranking, the leading gauge of the world’s academic institutions.

The complete Shanghai Index is published annually in August, but this year preliminary data was published regarding specific research areas. In this publication, Technion is included in the Top 50 in three areas: 50th place in automation and control, 37th place in electrical engineering and, as 8th place in aerospace engineering – ahead of renowned universities including Stanford, Tokyo, Cambridge, Seoul, Beijing, and Columbia.

In addition, in physics, Technion is the only Israeli institution to have made the list of the top 500 universities, being ranked between 151st and 200th place.

Prof. Jacob Cohen, Dean of Technion’s Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, responded, “We are very excited and proud of our ranking in eighth place in the Shanghai Ranking, at the top of the world’s leading departments of aeronautical and aerospace engineering. We are part of a long-standing Technion tradition in which the pursuit of excellence is assimilated, examined, assessed, and implemented on an ongoing basis. On this momentous occasion, I would like to thank the founding fathers of the Faculty who outlined the path and the vision, our wonderful faculty, and the students who are our family.”

The Shanghai Ranking, published since 2003, examines academic institutions worldwide according to objective criteria including the number of winners of the Nobel Prize and other prestigious awards; the number of scientific articles published in the leading research journals, Nature and Science; and other performance criteria, weighted in relation to the size of the university.

The last complete Shanghai Ranking was published on August 15, 2016, ranking the Technion in 69th place worldwide and first in Israel.

To the Shanghai Ranking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2017

Algorithm That Changed the Face of Digital Communication Marks 50th Anniversary
Technion marked the jubilee of the Viterbi algorithm at a festive ceremony. The event was held during the TCE Conference, which focused on coding for storage and information systems

Technion marked the 50th anniversary of the Viterbi algorithm, which has changed the face of the digital information world in many different contexts, including voice transmission over phone calls, image and voice transmission in video calls, and Internet and cellular transmission. The algorithm was published by Prof. Andrew Viterbi in 1967, revolutionizing data decoding and optimal noise and interference filtering, and leading to the development of key communications technologies including Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA).

“I never set out to produce an algorithm which would receive the attention which it has,” wrote Prof. Viterbi to Prof. Ariel Orda, Dean of the Technion’s Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering. “In fact, I was merely trying to prove properties of convolutional codes…I’d stumbled over a golden nugget which others might have ignored because it didn’t look shiny.” Upon publication of the algorithm, Viterbi announced that he was donating it to the benefit of the public and waiving royalties. The algorithm has been adopted and deployed in a variety of applications. Prof. Viterbi later made his fortune with Qualcomm, which he co-founded with Irwin Jacobs.

Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said at the ceremony in honor of Viterbi, “Andrew is an outstanding engineer and entrepreneur who has contributed generously to Technion. He has always believed that scientific research is a long path in a dark forest where people find things they were not looking for. I recently read his autobiography and discovered details that I did not know despite our acquaintance of many years. When Andrew was four years old, the Viterbi family was forced to leave Italy because the government had stripped its Jews of civil rights. The family emigrated to the United States, where Andrew completed his elementary and high school studies. In his memoir, he writes about his youth in the United States, ‘We fell through the cracks because Americans considered us to be Italians and Italians considered us Jews.’ His academic career led him to UCLA.”

Prof. Viterbi visited Israel for the first time in 1967, the year the article was published. Here, at Technion’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering, he established close friendships with Profs. Jacob Ziv and Abraham Lempel (who later became the developers of the Lempel-Ziv algorithm, which also revolutionized the field of communications) and with Profs. Israel Bar-David and Moshe Zakai. Over the years, his close ties with Technion have found expression in his activities at the American Technion Society (ATS), which awarded him the Albert Einstein Prize; and the establishment of the Andrew and Erna Finci Viterbi Center for Advanced Studies in Computer Technology, Andrew J. and Erna F. Viterbi Chair in Information Systems/Computer Science, Andrew and Erna Finci Viterbi Fellowship Program, and Viterbi Family Foundation Faculty Recruitment Program. His greatest contribution to Technion’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering, $50 million, was announced in June 2015 and followed by the naming of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering after him and his wife, Erna.

Prof. Viterbi holds an honorary doctorate degree from Technion. He is a distinguished visiting professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, a member of Technion’s International Board of Governors, and a Guardian, a title reserved for those who have donated particularly large sums to Technion.

The special session marking the anniversary of the development of the algorithm was chaired by Prof. Paul Siegel, a longtime colleague and friend of Prof. Viterbi. Prof. Siegel noted that 1967 was a dramatic year in the world not only because of the Viterbi algorithm, but also because of the Six-Day War, which removed the threat to the State of Israel’s existence, and the release of the Beatles’ album Sergeant Pepper, which revolutionized the music world. He added, “Viterbi is an academic pioneer who became a visionary businessman and ultimately also a philanthropist. We must learn from him.”

The festive event took place at the Technion’s 7th annual TCE Conference. This year, the conference focused on coding for storage and information systems, and included lectures on diverse topics including: coding that enables the reliability of flash memory, reliable storage systems of high speeds and massive volumes, and the challenges of cloud storage and DNA storage.

The conference organizers, Asst. Profs. Eitan Yaakobi (Faculty of Computer Science) and Yuval Cassuto (Faculty of Electrical Engineering) are third-generation experts in coding and information theory. Today, Technion is recognized as a center of excellence in these fields.

In 2014, infections with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) claimed the lives of more than 700,000 people worldwide, in addition to a cumulative expenditure of $35 billion a year in the US alone. Using nanotechnology, image processing tools and statistical analysis, Technion researchers have developed a system that enables rapid and accurate customization of the antibiotic to the patient. The result? Faster diagnostics, earlier and more effective treatment of infectious bacteria, and improved patient recovery times.

A diagnostic system developed at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology enables rapid and accurate customization of the antibiotic to the patient. The system makes for faster diagnostics, earlier and more effective treatment of infectious bacteria, and improved patient recovery times. The findings were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Antibiotics are one of the most effective ways to treat bacterial infections. However, the widespread use of antibiotics accelerates the development of bacterial strains that are resistant to specific antibiotics. In 2014, infections with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) claimed the lives of more than 700,000 people worldwide, in addition to a cumulative expenditure of $35 billion a year in the US alone.

For patients with threatening infections, urgent treatment is required for their health. According to established estimates, for every hour that effective antibiotic treatment is delayed, survival rates drop by ~7.6% for patients with septic shock. Therefore, in order not to leave the patient without adequate protection while awaiting the results, many doctors will prescribe an antibiotic with a broad spectrum of activity in large doses. This phenomenon facilitates the emergence of AMR and also affects the microbiota – the population of “good bacteria” found in the human body that protects it.

In this context, the importance of technologies that can predetermine the resistance of a specific bacteria to specific antibiotics is obvious. The innovative system developed at the Technion, called the SNDA-AST, quickly analyzes bacteria isolated from patients with infections and assesses their level of resistance to specific antibiotics. This enables the healthcare team to choose the most effective antibiotic a day earlier compared to when using traditional methods. In addition, the researchers demonstrated the ability to test bacteria directly from raw patient urine samples, thereby skipping the isolation step, and potentially saving two days for patients with urinary tract infections.

The study was led by Prof. Shulamit Levenberg, Dean of the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, and was carried out by three researchers in her lab: doctoral student Jonathan Avesar, postdoctoral student Dekel Rosenfeld and doctoral student Tom Ben-Arye. The study was carried out in cooperation with Assistant Professor Moran Bercovici of the Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and doctoral student Marianna Truman-Rosentsvit, in cooperation with Dr. Yuval Geffen, head of the Microbiology Laboratory at Rambam Health Care Campus. It was funded by a KAMIN grant from the Innovation Authority and the Israeli Centers of Research Excellence (I-CORE).

According to Avesar, who hails from the United States,  “Every day, tens to hundreds of tests are carried out at every hospital in Israel to map the resistance levels of infectious bacteria from samples taken from patients. The problem is that this is a very long test, since it is based on sending the sample to the lab, growing a bacterial culture in a petri dish and analyzing the culture. This process requires relatively large sampling and usually takes a few days, in part because the workday at labs is limited to around eight hours. Our method, on the other hand, provides accurate results in a short time based on a much smaller sample. It is obvious that a faster response allows us to start treatment earlier and improve the speed of recovery.”

The device developed by the Technion researchers is a chip with hundreds of nanoliter wells* inside it, each containing a few bacteria and a specific antibiotic. Detection of the bacterial response is done using a fluorescent marker, image processing tools and statistical analysis of the colors obtained from the bacteria in all the nanoliter wells. (*a nanoliter is 1000 times smaller than a milliliter.)

In a study in which 12 bacteria-antibiotic combinations were tested in the system, the results, which were obtained in a short time, as stated, were accurate and allow for early and effective treatment of the infectious bacteria. Avesar said, “The use of the technology that we developed reduces the size of the required sample by several orders of magnitude, reduces the scanning time by around 50%, significantly reduces the lab space required for testing and reduces the cost per test.”

WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU MEAN WHEN YOU SAY “BEST”?

Technion student develops system that interprets sarcasm on Twitter, and translates it into sarcasm-free language.

Researchers in the Technion Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management have developed a system for interpreting sarcastic statements in social media. The system, developed by graduate student Lotam Peled, under the guidance of Assistant Professor Roi Reichart, is called Sarcasm SIGN (sarcasm Sentimental Interpretation GeNerator).

“There are a lot of systems designed to identify sarcasm, but this is the first that is able to interpret sarcasm in written text,” said Peled. “We hope in the future, it will help people with autism and Asperger’s, who have difficulty interpreting sarcasm, irony and humor.”

Based on machine translation, the new system turns sarcastic sentences into honest (non-sarcastic) ones. It will, for example, turn a sarcastic sentence such as, “The new ‘Fast and Furious’ movie is awesome. #sarcasm” into the honest sentence, “The new Fast and Furious movie is terrible.”

Despite the vast development in this field, and the successes of sentiment analysis applications on “social media intelligence,” existing applications do not know how to interpret sarcasm, where the writer writes the opposite of what (s)he actually means.

In order to teach the system to produce accurate interpretations, the researchers compiled a database of 3,000 sarcastic tweets that were tagged with #sarcasm, where each tweet was interpreted into a non-sarcastic expression by five human experts. In addition, the system was trained to identify words with strong sarcastic sentiments – for example, the word “best” in the tweet, “best day ever” – and to replace them with strong words that reveal the true meaning of the text. The system was examined by a number of (human) judges, who gave its interpretations high scores of fluency and adequacy, agreeing that in most cases it produced a semantically and linguistically correct sentence.

Automatic identification and analysis of sentiment in text is a very complex challenge being explored by many researchers around the world because of its commercial potential and scientific importance. Sentiment identification could be used in social, commercial, and other applications to improve communication between people and computers, and between social media users.

Public Engagement with Science Online – Science on Social Media

An Israel Science Foundation research workshop will take place at Technion

How do we decide whether a post in our feed on the medicinal properties of turmeric is trustworthy or should be ignored? How is social media changing the way scientists interact with the general public?

Public engagement with science on social media will be the key topic at the Israel Science Foundation’s research workshop to be held at Technion on June 25-28, 2017.

In recent years, social media has expanded as a source of information and space for discussion and decision-making on various issues. This platform changes how we evaluate sources, process information, and interact with each other. Given the impact of science and technology on our lives, it is important to understand how scientific knowledge is disseminated, discussed, and interpreted on social media. The workshop will be held at Technion at the initiative of Prof. Ayelet Baram-Tsabari of the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology. Funding for the workshop was provided by the Israel Science Foundation, Technion’s Moshe Yanai Foundation, Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Ministry of Science, and a grant from the Haifa Municipality in cooperation with the Technion.

Leading researchers in the field of science communication will participate in the workshop, including:

1. Prof. Lloyd Spencer Davis is a scientist, media figure, and science communication researcher who founded and heads the Center for Science Communication at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is a world-renowned scientist and researcher on penguin behavior, as well as an award-winning filmmaker and author.  Prof. Davis has won awards for both academic achievements and for his work as a writer, photographer, and filmmaker.
2. Prof. Dominique Brossard is a leading science communication researcher, known for both her provocative views and heavy motorcycle. Prof. Brossard is the head of the Department of Life Sciences Communication at one of the world’s leading universities in this field, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on the interaction between science, media, and policy, with an emphasis on science in public controversy and technologies in the making (genome editing and genetic engineering, nanotechnology, climate change, etc.). Her research group has been focusing on scientific discourse on Twitter.
3. Prof. Noah Weeth Feinstein of the Departments of Curriculum and Instruction, and Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison explores how people understand and use science when coping with health or environmental challenges in their private, social, and political lives. Feinstein also deals with questions of scientific literacy and the role of education and teaching in coping with climate change.
4. Prof. Rainer Bromme of the Department of Psychology at the University of Münster, Germany, laid the psychological infrastructure for understanding public engagement in science. He is the world’s leading expert on how people evaluate the credibility and reliability of scientific content. For example, when a person sees a publication claiming that turmeric cures cancer, what are the considerations that will make him believe or dismiss the text? How should he make the decision?
5. Prof. Bruce Lewenstein heads the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University and is a faculty member at the Department of Communication. He is one of the world’s founders of the field and devotes all of his time to research, teaching, and applications aimed at making science accessible to the public. He explores the democratic aspects of science communication (for example, citizen science and public participation in research) and changes in science coverage in the media. He is an experienced speaker who is familiar with Israel and is able to compare the accessibility of science and science communication in Israel to other countries.
6. Prof. Massimiano Bucchi of the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento, Italy, explores cultural-historical changes in relations between science, technology, and society and the challenges and dilemmas that affect science and technology in contemporary democracies (for example, how do readers understand infographics? What is the role of visualization in science communication?). Since 2016, Prof. Bucchi has been editor-in-chief of Public Understanding of Science, the leading journal in the field of science communication.

***

For the full conference program: http://peso2017.net.technion.ac.il/program/

For the opening night program, which includes discussions on issues specific to Israel: http://peso2017.net.technion.ac.il/science-cafe-opening-night/   

Two donations and a new prize were announced at the Technion at the annual session of the Board of Governors

Good news for the Technion: Two donations and a new prize were announced today at the annual session of the Board of Governors. Japanese entrepreneur Dr. Hiroshi Fujiwara has announced a donation of $4 million to the Technion’s Cyber Security Research Center, and Technion graduates Dr. Andrew and Aviva Goldenberg will donate $5 million to the Technion for the establishment of a Pavilion Studio at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning.

In addition, the Mauerberger Foundation Fund Prize for Significant Technologies for Africa was announced In a special plenary session of the Board of Governors called “Technion, Israel & the World in the 21st Century – Fulfilling the Technion Vision,” the Technion recognizes the donors.  Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said at the ceremony that “there are friends and donors here from South Africa, Japan, Canada, the United States and Israel, all of whom have one common denominator: the aspiration to Tikkun Olam. To you, those who practice Tikkun Olam, we express our thanks today. By giving of yourselves, you make the world a better place.”

“The drive towards a better society, a better habitat for mankind, is not a new one. In fact, one could argue that it is as old as humanity itself. Starting with the bible – it doesn’t take long for the reader to reach the point in which Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise – and from there onwards everything is pretty much an uphill battle” said Prof. Boaz Golani, Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development.

“This notion has been the driving force behind religions, political parties and even a failed startup or two. It has also been the driving force behind some of the most revolutionary scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs thus far. it all originated at the same place: identifying a problem and trying to address it and improve life using science and technology. The establishment of Technion itself is well rooted in similar circumstances

Technion was to become unique worldwide, as a university that would precede, create, shape, and secure the future of a modern state.

This journey is far from over. Currently, both Israel and the world at large face new & somewhat daunting challenges – some new, some old – all demanding our fullest attention. It is the vision of the Technion and the foresight of its founders that will guide us in our attempt to face and overcome these challenges to the benefit of humanity, but it is the support of our friends and partners that is imperative to turn our quest into a successful one. ”

Technion graduate Sami Sagol, who turned Keter Plastic from a small factory in Jaffa into a huge international conglomerate, said at the ceremony: “I entered the Technion as a young student in 1960. After graduating I often worked with the Technion and its graduates.  The Technion is a leading institution thanks to the inter-disciplinary connection between the faculties, between engineering, medicine, science, psychology, etc.”

“My parents, Henry and Marilyn Taub, began their support of the Technion 50 years ago, with the understanding that a leading science and engineering institution was a vital need for the State of Israel,” said Steven Taub. “My brother Ira, my sister Judy and I are proud to be a second generation of Technion supporters,” he added.

First Japanese donation

Japanese entrepreneur Dr. Hiroshi Fujiwara has announced a donation of $4 million to the Technion’s Cyber Security Research Center.  “Today’s announcement marks the beginning of a new stage in our relationship with Japan,” said Professor Boaz Golany, Vice President for External Relations & Resource Development at Technion. “Japan and Israel share many similarities, as both are highly developed countries that rely heavily on technology as an economic booster. We strongly believe that today’s new pledge will enable us to better prepare ourselves to some of the cyber challenges both countries face at the present time and even more so in the future.”

Dr. Fujiwara, an entrepreneur and a successful businessman, acquired professional experience in global companies, including IBM and Hitachi, and is the founder and president of Tokyo-based firms BroadBand Tower (BBTower) and Internet Research Institute (IRI). Dr. Fujiwara first visited Israel and Technion in 2016 at the initiative of Mr. Kanji Ishizumi, President of Technion Japan (the Technion’s friends association in the country). During his visit, he met with Technion President, Professor Peretz Lavie as well as researchers and faculty. He said: “My involvement is intended to create the infrastructure for such cooperation with the hope that it will lead to commercialization of technologies that will benefit our two countries.”

The Cyber Security Research Center was opened at the Technion in April 2016 in cooperation with the Israeli National Cyber Bureau. “Israel and Technion in particular, are leaders in maintaining the country’s ability to withstand cyber threats. Yet to continue to do this we must promote interdisciplinary research that relies on the capabilities of the Technion. This new gift will enable us to do exactly that, as it will allow faculty members from various disciplines to continue and investigate the protection of cyberspace,” said Prof. Eli Biham, head of the Center.

For Africa

“The Mauerberger Foundation Fund Prize for Significant Technologies for Africa is intended to strengthen the academic ties and exchange of information between the Technion and Africa and to harness new technologies for the benefit of humanity. The new prize is a natural continuation of the Fund’s support the Technion and in Israel in general, as well as in South Africa.

The Mauerberger Foundation Fund (MFF) has always worked for the benefit of human beings regardless of religion, race and color, and adhered to this principle even during the period of apartheid in South Africa. In many ways, the Founder’s vision for the Foundation Fund anticipated South Africa’s unique journey to democracy with a constitution that acknowledges the injustices of its past.

Mauerberger believed strongly in practicing “Tikkun Olam” (Repairing the World) and the Technion, which he first visited in 1955, was an opportunity for him to advance humanity. He assisted in the establishment of the soil engineering labs and in 1979, 3 years after his death, the Mauerberger Building was completed. Today, the Helen and Morris Mauerberger Soil Engineering Building is home to Engineers without Borders (EWB), a pioneering program that the MFF continues to support.

Foundation Chair Dianna Yach said that the prize would promote technological breakthroughs in areas related to the advancement of humanity. The competition will be open to researchers from the Technion, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Gurion University.

“At the Technion we received tools for a career”

Technion graduates Dr. Andrew and Aviva Goldenberg will donate $5 million to the Technion. The donation, said Dr. Goldenberg, expresses their thanks and appreciation to the Technion for providing the two of them with tools for successful and rewarding careers. Moreover, the Technion is the place where the couple met for the first time 50 years ago, in December 1967.

Dr. Andrew Goldenberg is a graduate of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Aviva is a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. Dr. Andrew Goldenberg, who completed a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering at the Technion, continued his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto, where he has been a professor since 1982.

The Goldenberg’s donation will serve two purposes: the establishment of the Pavilion of the Andrew and Aviva Goldenberg Architecture Studio and a scholarship in robotics engineering.

DNA as a “Natural Server Farm”: The TCE Conference at Technion

The conference will mark the 50th anniversary of the formulation of the Viterbi Algorithm, which changed the world of electronics

The use of DNA to store digital information will be one of the main topics of Technion’s 7th TCE (Technion Computer Engineering) Conference, to be held on Wednesday and Thursday, June 21-22, 2017. The conference, named after Henry Taub, will focus on the coding of information and storage systems, and will include lectures on diverse topics such as coding that enables flash memory reliability, storage systems of high speeds in massive volumes, and the challenges of cloud storage and DNA storage.

The digital information stored by humanity is now measured in the tens of trillions of bytes. The rapidly growing quantities of information pose a highly complex challenge, because most of the information is stored on vast server farms that take up large areas and enormous energy, which causes considerable environmental damage.

In recent years, it has become clear that DNA, known to us from the world of biology, could serve as a “natural server farm” whose advantages surpass those of today’s conventional servers. DNA in live creatures is responsible for preserving vast quantities of information in a minimal physical volume for prolonged periods and without harmful errors. It is estimated that a single gram of DNA can store hundreds of millions of gigabytes (GB), and this information will be preserved for thousands of years (compared with the life span of a disk, which is only a few years).

The idea, which was first introduced and implemented back in the 1960s by geneticists at Harvard, has developed since then. In order to continue this progress, close cooperation is required between scientists, engineers, and coding experts. “The hard disk has been dramatically minimized over the years,” explains Asst. Prof. Eitan Yaakobi of Technion’s Faculty of Computer Science. “From the first gigantic hard disk, which was built in 1956 and contained 5 MB, through portable hard drives (flash memories) of 8 MB, to portable storage devices of 256 GB and disks that contain far more, this is tremendous progress. The problem is that further progress today is very limited because any additional miniaturization introduces a lot of noise to the system.”

The conference will mark the 50th anniversary of the Viterbi Algorithm, which has led to the development of communications and storage devices capable of removing noise and interference from relevant signals. Dr. Andrew Viterbi, who published his historic paper on this subject in 1967, received an honorary doctorate degree from Technion in 2000. Since then he has been a distinguished visiting professor at the Technion Faculty of Electrical Engineering, which recently changed its name to the Andrew and Erma Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering. In 2015, Dr. Viterbi donated $50 million to the Faculty. A special session to mark the 50th anniversary of the formulation of the Viterbi Algorithm will be held on the second day of the conference, and will be chaired by his colleague and friend, Prof. Paul Siegel.

The conference organizers, Yaakobi (Computer Science) and Asst. Prof. Yuval Cassuto (Electrical Engineering), are already third-generation experts in coding and information theory. They were preceded by Profs. Tuvi Etzion and Ronny Roth (Computer Science) and Neri Merhav and Shlomo Shamai (Electrical Engineering), who were students of Profs. Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv, who developed the important algorithm on which most data-compression (Zip, etc.) technologies are based.

The conference will take place in the Technion Faculty of Computer Science auditorium. For the conference program click here.

For further details: Technion Spokesperson Doron Shaham – 050-3109088

June 19, 2017

Technion Students Developed an Autonomous Aerial Reconnaissance System and Won 3rd Place in an International Competition

A team of students from the Technion has won 3rd place out of 54 in an international competition for the development of an unmanned aircraft for search and rescue of missing travelers. The team flew to the competition with the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology, as part of the Ministry’s program for delegations of students to science competitions abroad.

Science Minister Ofir Akunis congratulated the team, “Our brilliant students have done it again. Israeli teams are doing exceptionally well in many international competitions and reach top placements. In doing so, we are strengthening Israel’s position as a world leader in innovation. The Ministry of Science will continue to support the next generation of Israeli scientists, our outstanding researchers, and students.”

Fifty-four teams of college and high school students from eight countries, including the United States, Germany, India, Turkey, Poland, Canada, and Romania, took part in the AUVSI SUAS competition, which is held annually in Maryland, USA. For the competition, which aims to encourage the development of unmanned aerial vehicles, each team must build an unmanned aerial vehicle that fulfills defined tasks. This year the competition focused on the search and rescue of a missing traveler, and aircraft that were built had to carry an autonomous aerial reconnaissance system capable of identifying objects, avoiding obstacles, and more.

The TAS (Technion Air Systems) team was comprised of 18 students from the Technion Faculty of Aerospace Engineering and Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering. The team developed and manufactured two aircrafts with a wingspan of 2.9 meters, 2.1 meters in length, and weighing 12.5 kg. The students had performed analyses, simulations, tests, and ground and air experiments in order to achieve the best possible performance, and finally built the aircraft by hand.

The aircraft is capable of taking off, flying, landing automatically, manually and automatically identifying ground targets located in the search area and outside the boundaries of the sector, evading static and dynamic obstacles, dropping cargo to specific coordinates, and transmitting data in real time to the control center (the competition’s judges, in this case). The aircraft has many civilian applications, such as identifying accidents and road congestion, identifying fires, patrolling oil pipelines and electricity lines, and site photography for mapping purposes.

Team advisor Dror Artzi said after the competition, “Technion is highly esteemed by all the organizers and participants in this prestigious competition.”

Adi Topork, the team captain, added, “We have been receiving positive comments from the aerospace industry regarding our students’ ability to develop such an aircraft in just two semesters. This is the fourth time we have participated in the competition, and every year we develop a different platform and improved systems.”

The team members are Adi Topork, Imri Tsror, Jason Ben Shitrit, Sigalit Grinberg, Daniel Joseph, Ohad Marcus, Ophir Milul, Roi Yehudai, Alexander Shendar, Shani Bijio, Jenna Brunner, Emanuel Ben Shushan, Maxim Solovay, Haim Ilya Brod, Eyal Ganis, Dan Ben David, Aviv Hasson, Netanel Even Danan, and Dolev Simon. The project moderator is Dror Artzi and the project TA is Yevgeni Gutnick.

Underwater poisoned arrows: Researchers at Technion and the University of Haifa are deciphering the stinging mechanism of the jellyfish

The quantity of jellyfish worldwide and in the Mediterranean Sea is growing steadily, and as a result, we encounter large swarms on Israel’s coastline every year. The most common jellyfish in Israel is the nomad jellyfish (Rhopilema nomadica), which reached the Mediterranean Sea in the 1970s.

The jellyfish belongs to the phylum Cnidaria – animals that attack their prey (plankton) and defend themselves with stinging cells containing syringes that are actually poison arrows. Although they don’t have eyes, ears, or even brains, they have survived for 600 million years, with virtually no developmental changes, and are thus among the most ancient complex creatures that have not died out.

A study conducted at Technion is first to explain the unique stinging mechanism of the nomad jellyfish. According to Prof. Uri Shavit of the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, “The jellyfish attacks its prey or its enemy by injecting a toxic substance by means of thousands of microscopic syringes located on each of its tentacles. The syringe is located inside the stinging cell (nematocyte) and is packaged inside a spherical capsule about 10 microns in diameter. In response to chemical changes in the environment or physical contact, pressure increases inside the capsule and the needle is ejected at a tremendous acceleration of more than 50,000,000  meters per second square – one hundred times the acceleration of a rifle bullet.”

The needle’s firing mechanism, from a folded position in the capsule to its full length, is being studied by many researchers around the world. The conventional explanation is that the needle is pulled out and shoots the poisonous substance following the creation of a force mechanism called osmotic potential. This force pushes the needle and liquid like a pump pushing water upwards inside a building. The pressure exerted in this process is tremendous: 150 atmospheres. For purposes of illustration, this is the pressure needed to pump water to the top of a building a kilometer and a half high.

However, the study, recently published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, found that the driving force is not limited to the capsule alone. In fact, it is a powerful osmotic mechanism that develops at the needle’s moving front. This mechanism releases the needle and pulls it like a locomotive pulling railroad cars.

The study is based on measurements taken using lab-on-chip technology and the development of a mathematical model that tracks the movement of the substance within the system. The elongation mechanism of the stinging needles was deciphered by Profs. Shavit and Gilad Yossifon of Technion’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, and Dr. Tamar Lotan of the University of Haifa’s Charney School of Marine Sciences.

The solution was provided by an experimental system developed based on a microfluidics platform in Prof. Yossifon’s lab. This system enabled researchers to route the needle and its direction. Prof. Shavit explains, “Each capsule was placed at the opening of a micro-channel that bridged between a central water channel and another channel that contained oil. We found that when the needle penetrated through oil, its elongation rate decreased by three orders of magnitude, from 50 milliseconds in water to about 25 seconds in oil.”

The researchers conclude that, unlike the conventional model, the osmotic phenomenon is not limited to the capsule but rather occurs throughout its needle elongation. According to Prof. Shavit, “This means that the osmotic potential can be influenced along the pathway of the needle, thus reducing its ability to penetrate the skin and preventing the stinging.”