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Married couple researchers from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and University of Haifa build a crowd-based developmental diary

A new free website developed by the married couple Ayelet and Eli Ben-Sasson, faculty members at University of Haifa and Technion, respectively, lets parents monitor their child’s development using crowd wisdom

“My daughter said her first word!”, “My son isn’t walking yet”, “She started crawling today”, these are sentences every parent is familiar with, ones that mix anticipation, pride, and anxiety. The Internet is full of blogs and websites devoted to early childhood development, but these sources do not provide a scientific real-time comparison of one child’s developmental status with that of other children.

Working as a team, Ayelet and Eli Ben-Sasson have developed a free website based on crowd wisdom, offering an electronic developmental diary for parents who want to learn about their child’s developmental milestones. The innovative website – baby.croinc.org (CROINC stands for CROwd-based INteractive Clustering) – meets parents’ needs in a supportive community where they can instantly obtain relevant and specific information in accordance with the individual developmental profile of their children from birth to age six. Eli, a professor in the Computer Science Department at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, brings his expertise in algorithms to the project. Ayelet, a professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy at the University of Haifa and an expert on early childhood development, contributes her knowledge in this area.

“The website enables parents to create a personal developmental diary for their baby, including milestones about their motor, communication, and social skills” explains Professor Ayelet Ben-Sasson. “The system gives parents information about future milestones, so that they can help their child advance towards these goals and understand their baby’s behavior from a developmental standpoint. Research shows that early diagnosis and treatment of developmental problems leads to significantly better outcomes, because of the increased brain plasticity of young children.”

“The advantage of crowd wisdom is especially great when you’re dealing with complex phenomena” explains Prof. Eli Ben-Sasson, “and early childhood development is as complex, mysterious and important as it gets. Our website is a collaborative platform where parents play the dual role of ‘clients’ and ‘service providers’. We do not presume to replace pediatricians or well-baby clinics but rather create a dynamic database containing essential information which will be available to all parents who need it. Those parents who want to learn more should simply register and try it out. After all, it’s freely available online and takes less than 5 minutes to enroll.”

The website enables parents to build a personal developmental diary for their baby. Once the diary is created, it provides parents with processed statistical information about their child’s rate of development compared with the “typical” rate of development, based on information entered by other parents. The website was programmed by Eden Sayag and Matan Yechieli, who are currently completing their undergraduate degrees in Computer Science at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and users are supported by Yael Schwartz-Klein, an early childhood therapist at Haifa University. Currently, baby.croinc.org has over 300 members world-wide, and is looking to increase its user base (free) because, as both professors Ben-Sasson explain, a larger user base means improved data accuracy which benefits every user of the system.

Help is on the way: Technion students developed “Enoshi” – a social volunteering platform connecting volunteers to those in need

Students from the Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion developed an innovative social volunteering platform that aids volunteers, volunteer organizations and those in need. The “Enoshi” (‘humane’ in Hebrew) platform is based on the ‘wisdom of crowds’ and on information exchange, and facilitates effective volunteer management including the linkage between volunteers and people in need of assistance. Today, the platform serves as a volunteer management network for Holocaust survivors, and its developers are hoping to expand into other areas of volunteer services.

This unique platform was developed by Technion students Nir Ben-Haroe, Michal Burstein and Omer Arad during the Android Application Development Course they took, led by Prof. Eran Yahav, Teaching Assistants Omer Katz and Zvi Listopad, and course lecturer Lior Bruder.

“A person who chooses to volunteer discovers that searching for volunteer opportunities becomes a very cumbersome and often discouraging process,” explains Michal Burstein. “They must approach a voluntary association, announce their willingness to volunteer, and wait to be matched up with an appropriate assignment that can accommodate their volunteering schedule. Since each organization has its own pool of volunteers, the volunteer must turn to each of these organizations separately.”

“The system we developed lets you find a volunteering assignment quickly and with relative ease near your home,” adds Omer Arad. “Each person that signs up for the application indicates their home address and selects the area of volunteer work that interests them through predefined categories such as: emotional support, assistance to clinical staff, repair work, driving assignments, etc.”

“Once the user signs up for the application, they receive information about people who need assistance within the proximity of their place of residence, thus letting the volunteer choose their volunteering opportunity, as opposed to the conventional way, which is more time consuming (it involves the field coordinator of an organization putting volunteers in contact with the person in need of assistance). The “Enoshi” application forms this connection on its own, and according to Arad, “Takes into consideration the location of residence of the potential volunteer and the person in need, thereby cutting through the formalities set by the voluntary association, and effectively manages the matching up of volunteers to open assignments. This also allows volunteers to put in their volunteering hours when it suits their schedule without obligation. It should also be noted that the application protects the privacy of people in need of assistance.”

The idea for the application was conceived by Karin Komkov and Moran Shribman, visual communications students from the NB Haifa School of Design. It was based on a meeting that the group members had with representatives of the volunteer organizations ‘Ruach Tova‘ and ‘Latet’ and with people from the Holocaust Survivors’ Welfare Fund. At this meeting, the students learned about the needs and processes by which these associations operate and designed the application accordingly.

“This is an innovative idea carrying great potential,” stated Dima Malkin, who serves as a field coordinator for the ‘Latet’ organization (in the Haifa area), “because it allows us to call up volunteers that are not regularly active and who are not interested in committing to long-term assignments. This application locates potential volunteers (in terms of time available and distance to an assignment), and gives non-active volunteers more volunteering opportunities.”

The platform is currently being used to manage volunteers assisting Holocaust survivors. Its developers are confident that it will gradually expand into other areas of volunteer services.

Israeli delegation brings home three bronze medals from the International Chemistry Olympiad.

Students prepared at the Technion.

A great source of Israeli pride – three of the four members of the Israeli team won bronze medals at the 47th International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) which took place in Baku, Azerbaijan. The four-student team, which studied and trained during the past few months at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, included: Itai Zvieli, a twelfth grade student from Ironi Hey High School in Haifa; Nadav Genossar, an eleventh grade student from the Rabin High School (Ironi Beth) in Modiin; Ron Solan, a tenth grade student from the Harishonim High School in Herzliya; and Roni Arenzon, a twelfth grade student from Ort Alon High School in Nazareth Eylit.

The International Chemistry Olympiad is the oldest international science competition for high-school students, now in its forty-seventh year. Three-hundred students from 75 countries competed in this year’s competition, which was held in the city of Baku, the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan. The academic challenge included a theoretical test and laboratory experiment, during which students were asked to synthesize material, conduct kinetic follow-up after a chemical reaction and identify unknown substances based on chemical reactions. The Israeli delegation was accompanied by Prof. Zeev Gross from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion, who is in charge of all youth outreach activities in Chemistry, Dr. Izana Nigel-Etinger, who serves as the head coach, and PhD student Jenya Vestfrid, who gained experience by training the 2014 delegation. During their studies leading up to the competition, members of the team were also assisted by faculty members, doctoral students and laboratory engineers from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion, and Mrs. Mira Katz who was responsible for all the administrative tasks.

“The material they were tested on was at a very high level, much higher than what is being taught in Israeli high schools,” remarked Prof. Gross. “The four members of the Israeli team are the most outstanding of the thousands of students that participated in the screening process. To bring them to the desired level, they underwent very intensive training and study. We are extremely proud of the team’s accomplishments and are so pleased that three of its members attained bronze medals – Itai, Nadav and Ron.”

“This was a very special experience for me,” said Nadav Genossar on his way back to Israel. “We met students from all over the world. We studied and trained a lot for this competition, to reach the high level of knowledge required.  I participated in the IChO competition last year as well, and this year I won a bronze medal!”

 

The Design Expo at the Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering:

A walker for children with disabilities, a robot that helps the elderly, a device to reduce forearm tremors in patients with Parkinson’s disease, a dedicated load release device for submarines, an auxiliary device for lifting and inserting rebars in buildings

The Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering presented 18 new projects at its annual Design Expo. The exhibition featured projects developed by (fourth year) students at the faculty, in cooperation with the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management. The three outstanding teams won prizes awarded by Technion Vice President Prof. Moshe Sidi.

First prize went to students Ziv Sela, Dror Avitan and Oron Shinar, who built a dedicated load release device for a tiny submarine, under the guidance of Giora Gorali. The device is designed for the discharging a load from an autonomous submarine developed at the Technion. The load, which is placed in a defined location on the seabed, can be used for various purposes. The student project included a stabilization system for the load on the ground and an emission chamber including doors, buoyancy tanks and more. “The main problem was the balance of the submarine after launching the load,” explains student Ziv Sela, “and this required a lot of investment and complicated calculations.”

Second prize was won by students Guy Dahan, Dor Haddad and Rafael Tebeka, for the development of a device for lifting rebars and inserting them into a mold of hoops before pouring concrete, under the guidance of Dr. Zvi Fruchter. The device is designed to replace the construction workers who lift and insert the long heavy rebars used for reinforcing concrete. “Today, it takes two or three laborers to do the job,” said Dor Haddad, “and the goal of the project was to relieve them of the load. The planning was carried out in accordance with requirements defined by Hod Assaf Industries Ltd, and I believe that the device will be used by the company.”

Third prize was awarded for a device for practicing walking, intended for children with motor disabilities and developed by students Tom Beatty, Eli Filashtinski and Alex Shishko, under the guidance of Kfir Cohen and in cooperation with Ofakim School in Haifa. The device, intended for children with motor disabilities at a various functional levels, enables them to practice walking movements while bearing maximum weight on their lower limbs. The device moves the child from a lying-down position to a standing position and, for children with low motor functioning, it can simulate actual walking, thereby teaching the body what walking is and which muscles it should use. The device will be used at Ofakim School.

Another interesting project revealed at the exhibition was the TELE-CARE robot, a robot for assisting independent senior citizens who live at home. (The project is a joint project of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Computer Science). “The robot enables the operator to communicate with the elder, with the tablet mounted on the robot serving as his eyes and ears.” Student Sergei Botner related, “in the future, the robot will enable the doctor to maintain daily contact with the elder at home, to make sure everything is all right with him, take his blood pressure remotely and remind him to take his pills.”

The Design expo at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering was held as part of a “new product design project” led by Dr. Hagay Bamberger under the guidance of Prof. Reuven Katz, Head of the Design, Manufacturing and CAD track at the Faculty. The companies that took part in the course include Rafael, Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit, Iscar, Hod Assaf Industries, Unilever, Vargus, Taro and Phoenicia. The course instructors who supervised the students during the development process were: Dr. Yehuda Rosenberg, Dr. Zvi Fruchter, Dubi Zuk, Giora Gorali, Dr. Yoram Kirzon, Kfir Cohen, Avraham Grinblat, Shlomo Nezer, Nimrod Meller, Dr. Avner Ronen Dr. Essam Totry, Professor Steven (Haim) Frankel and Yair Cizling.

Other projects on display included a device for relief of forearm tremors in patients with Parkinson’s disease by means of a unique stainless steel bracelet; a glass temperature-measuring device; a wing spreading device and, of course, the third Formula One car manufactured at the Technion for the FSAE Championship in Italy. The car is designed and manufactured by a team of 57 students, led by student Evgeny Guy. This year many innovations have been introduced in the car, including a helmet that displays the data right before the driver’s eyes (like the display on fighter planes), a 15% reduction in the vehicle’s weight, improved aerodynamics and an acceleration sensor combined with a gyroscope.

“The students went through a process of product development from the initial concept stage to its realization and presentation at the exhibition,” said Dr. Hagay Bamberger, who teaches the course. “There is nothing more exciting than exhibiting something that you made yourself, and the students learned a lot during the process. After much deliberation, we decided to award the first prize to the members of the team that developed the dedicated load release device for a tiny submarine, because they dealt with complex technical challenges and with requirements that changed during the course of the project, and they eventually developed a product that included original solutions.”

The event was also attended by Senior Vice President Prof. Moshe Sidi and Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Prof. Yoram Halevy.  Prof. Sidi said at the event that “this multidisciplinary cooperation is also excellent preparation for the real world, where multidisciplinary cooperation is essential in almost every sector. One day, when you supervise the management of a major project of national importance, or when work hard on the development of a product that will totally change the lives of millions, remember where it all began.”

Technion students have developed an innovative method for the accurate release of colon imaging pills

Ilya Glants and Tsafrir Ozer are the first prize winners in the Project Competition held by the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. The prize was awarded for their final project conducted in collaboration with Check-Cap Ltd – an innovative method for accurately pinpointing the entrance to the colon.

“Such pinpointing is necessary in the use of ultra low dose x-ray imaging capsule that is designed to create reconstructed 2D and 3D images of the colon, used for cancer detection purpose,” Ozer explains. “The capsule has limited energy, and therefore there is a need to trigger the imaging mechanism in it only when it passes from the small intestine to the colon, thus consuming energy.”

The students studied the environmental properties of the colon and detected criteria to distinguish the colon from the rest of the digestive system. They isolated two criteria that are sufficient for such pinpointing: (1) the release of specific enzymes from the flora, and (2) the emission of hydrogen and methane. The use of specific sensors to detect these indices enables the accurate delivery of the capsule, which is activated at the right time and location inside the digestive system.

The competition was held as part of the Faculty’s annual Projects Conference, with prizes were awarded by Cbyond Ltd.

Second prize went to the students Ilia Gelfat and Adi Sandelson. They developed a device for Hanita Lenses Ltd that measures flow velocity through the Company’s implant. This implant is used for the treatment of open-angle glaucoma, a disease characterized by the accumulation of aqueous fluid in the eye`s anterior chamber, causing damage to the optic nerve.

The third prize went to three teams: Vered Azar and Adi Raz, who carried out their project at the laboratory of Prof. Dan Adam in the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, developed a dictionary learning-based software for the purpose of automatic classification of various echocardiogram views. Gilan Grimberg and Uri Merdler, who carried out their project at the laboratory of Prof. Shulamit Levenberg in the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, developed a software that investigates and characterizes the morphology of various neural-vascular 3D constructs. Shahar Rawski, who carried out his project at IDOS Ltd, studied and analyzed the various mechanical properties of the shoulder’s humeral shell component, as part of an implant designed by the company.

Faculty Dean Prof. Amir Landesberg said, “The Project Conference is held in order to encourage initiative and creativity among students and strengthen the relationship between the faculty and relevant companies in the industry and medical institutions. These entities take part in many of the projects and thus come in contact with students who are the scientists and engineers of the future in the field of biomedical engineering.”

Dr. Alex Vilensky, who is in charge of the project course, said: “The projects, which express the knowledge and tools acquired by students in the fields of engineering, science and medicine, are the highlight of the degree program. In many cases the project is taken forward to its first stage of patent registration and eventually to the establishment of a start-up.”

Other projects presented at the Conference are: a system for measuring body temperature during plastic surgery (in partnership with Lumenis Ltd), semi-automatic image processing for mapping anatomical structures during MR imaging of malignant tumors in the breast (in partnership with InSightec Ltd), a polymeric adhesive patch for measuring the oxygen in the skin, and imaging of opto-genetic excitation of the cortical neurons.

In light of the limitations of existing drugs for AIDS:

Researchers at the Technion Faculty of Biology offer a new strategy to combat the HIV-1 virus

The AIDS epidemic continues to take the lives of millions around the world. Despite the resistance of the body cells that are attacked, and despite the use of dedicated drugs, HIV-1 virus manages to survive and reproduce in the living cell and is displaying increasing resistance.

In light of the partial failure of existing drugs, the strategy of medical research in this field is changing: instead of focusing on the proteins of the virus (and the development of drugs that target them), the new strategy focuses on the interactions of the virus proteins with the host cell.

This strategy is far more effective, since the virus cannot survive and reproduce without relying on the cellular mechanisms of the host cell. However, the new strategy also has its weaknesses.

Assistant Prof. Akram Alian of the Technion Faculty of Biology explains that when the virus encounters a barrier on its way into a cell, it looks for ‘detours’ that will enable it to take advantage of the cell nevertheless. Since there is redundancy in the host cell – various mechanisms leading to the same operation – the virus may exploit a self-mutation that could enable it to make use of that detour. “Our hypothesis is that the redundancy in the cellular pathways may represent a survival mechanism that allows the virus to take advantage of a wide variety of similar processes,” says Assistant Prof. Alian. “The virus can use these detours when the favored route is blocked by natural cellular mechanisms or artificial drugs and under other circumstances in which it is better for the virus to circumvent the obstacles of the cellular environment and the various stages of replication.”

Assistant Prof. Alian and research assistant Dr. Ailie Marx present an abstract of the innovative concept in a paper that was published in the May issue of the Journal of Virology. Janine McCaughey, a visiting student in the lab, illustrates this idea with a drawing of HIV-1 as an octopus whose arms represent takeover paths. The illustration appears on the cover of the issue (http://jvi.asm.org/content/89/12.cover-expansion).

An earlier article, published in the journal Cell Structure in October 2014, reviewed a new approach to AIDS research developed by scientists at Assistant Prof. Alian’s laboratory. The researchers conducted a comparison of an important viral protein (integrase) that exists in both HIV-1 and FIV, the AIDS pathogen in cats, and discovered new differences

that could aid in the understanding and prediction of the development of resistance. With both viruses, the integrase inserts the viral DNA into the DNA of the infected cell, and then replicates itself in a manner that enables it to spread throughout the body.

“The virus is a kind of Trojan horse, which uses the host’s genome in order to replicate,” explains Assistant Prof. Alian. “Now we are studying this issue in depth and trying to develop this idea of ‘multiple route reproduction of the HIV virus,’ as a new strategy in the treatment of AIDS.”

An impressive achievement for the Technion in the International Quarter-Scale Tractor Student Design Competition in Illinois

The TracTech vehicle, built by Agricultural Engineering students, won first place in two categories in the competition. The judges’ quote: “never has a team in its first appearance in the competition shown such professionalism and originality”

The TracTech vehicle, built by Technion Agricultural Engineering students, won prizes in the International IQS Competition. The students designed and built the vehicle as part of their final project in the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

The IQS Competition (International Quarter-Scale Tractor) was held in Illinois for the 18th consecutive year by ASABE – the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. The competition is for multifunctional vehicles (platforms) designed and built by student teams from around the world. The Technion team – the first Israeli team to participate in the competition since its inception – won first place in the “Platform testing and development” category and in the “Quiet platform for environmental conditions” category.

The IQS Competition was established by the ASABE in light of the shortage of skilled professionals at major companies such as Caterpillar and John Deere, and out of the desire of these companies to attract talented students. Over the years, participation in the competition has become a “ticket of admission” to these companies. The organizers of the competition provide competitors with a pair of rear tires manufactured by Titan and a 31 HP engine manufactured by Briggs & Stratton. The uniqueness of the competition is that it simulates a completely realistic work environment. Each participating team is required to operate as a company (management, marketing, sales, etc.) that manufactures vehicles in accordance with market requirements and on the assumption that 3,000 units of the product will be sold per-year. In addition to demonstrating the platform’s motor abilities of pulling force and durability (on a tough obstacle course), students are required to cope with a large number of constraints in the areas of design, safety, production process efficiency and vehicle maintenance; and must demonstrate professionalism and originality to convince the experienced judges that their product is successful and economically viable.

Within the framework of competition, the Technion team designed and built a new platform for small agricultural farms which combines the advantages of an All-Terrain Vehicle (speed up to 35 km/h and comfort) with the features of a tractor – high pulling force and also a slow driving (0.5 km/h) for agricultural purposes such as feedstock distribution in a dairy farming. The TracTech  platform is cheap self-assembled and easy to maintain.

“For me, this is an extraordinary success,” says Professor Shmulevich, who conceived the idea of training and sending the delegation to the US. “This is the first Israeli delegation in the history of the competition, and it is important to understand that we competed there with about 30 highly experienced teams, with far more significant support and budgeting.”

Work on the project began in November 2014, and involved many individuals and entities in the industry. “On the night of May 25, we flew to Illinois, where we had three days to complete the construction of the platform. Those were days of frenzied teamwork. All the project participants will undoubtedly remember it as a special, professional experience. I hope that the successful outcome will lead to the formation of a new Technion team to build a new platform in preparation of next year’s competition.”

Professor Shmulevich, served as the Technion team’s professional and academic advisor. Ms. Nahum Orlev and Dr. Amos Mizrach served as the students’ professional instructors. The TracTech platform was built with the assistance of Eliasaf Becker (an auto mechanics instructor) and the lab technician of the Machine and Soil-Interaction Lab. at the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Additional assistance was provided by the following entities: the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Center for Research in Agricultural Engineering at the Technion, the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP), the Institute of Agricultural Engineering – ARO at the Volcanic Center, Scania Israeli Ltd and Zoko Enterprises – Caterpillar Israel Ltd.

 

The Technion’s Department of Education in Science and Technology is now a Faculty

Faculty Dean Prof. Orit Hazan: “This is not just a symbolic change”

The Faculty’s “Views” program brings hundreds of Technion alumni back to the Technion to complete another degree: mathematics, science and technology education. Many of them are already teaching in the Israeli school system.

The Technion’s Department of Education in Science and Technology is now a Faculty. Since its establishment 50 years ago, the unit has steadily grown and expanded its activity, and currently employs 12 faculty members, offers undergraduate and advanced degree programs, diverse high quality research and the Views program.

The “Views” program, born out of the Technion’s commitment to promoting quality science, technology and engineering education in Israel, provides an opportunity for Technion alumni to earn an additional undergraduate degree as teachers of mathematics, science or technology.  The Technion funds tuition of students in the program fully, without requiring a commitment by the students to work in the formal education system.

The department officially became a faculty on June 28, 2015. “This change,” said Faculty Dean Prof. Orit Hazan, “expresses the Technion’s recognition of the unit as a faculty with a status equal to that of the other Technion’s faculties, whose contribution to the State of Israel is known worldwide. The Faculty’s activities reflect the Technion’s social commitment, and the declaration that it is now a Faculty has operative significance that goes far beyond the symbolic change. Our current goal is to position our area of specialization – quality education in science and technology – as a profession that is in demand. The people who choose to work in this area affect the State of Israel and contribute to its economy just as much as Technion graduates in science and engineering do. We consider science and technology education as a means of enabling all schoolchildren to realize their diverse skills.

The official change in the status of the unit was preceded by a recommendation of an international quality assessment commission (on behalf of the CHE – The Israeli Council for Higher Education). After a thorough review of the department, the commission recommended that it be declared a faculty. The recommendation states that the unit is “focused on science and technology education and dedicated to a wide range of topics related to education in the State of Israel…  We praise the focus on engineering, science and mathematics education, which reflects a broad view of the needs of the Israeli economy in general and the hi-tech sector in particular. We were particularly impressed by the Views program, which has succeeded in bringing teachers with excellent knowledge in science and mathematics to the school system.”

Technion Alumni Association Chair Eyal Kaplan said that “The declaration of the change in the status of the unit constitutes recognition of the Technion’s important contribution to the primary and post-primary school system – through academic research, with the goal of improving teaching methods and increasing schoolchildren’s openness to science and technology, and also through the practical training of educators in the field. While the Technion is known as a university that has made a decisive contribution to the image, quality and status of Israel’s hi-tech industry, few people know that a select group of Technion alumni are filling the ranks in science and technology education in Israel – from classroom teachers to senior officials in the school system.”

About the Faculty

The Faculty of Education Science and Technology, as it is now called, is engaged in research in STEM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education), mainly in the context of high school and college studies. The Faculty trains teachers and principals in these areas and designs and evaluates innovative teaching methods and programs. Faculty members are engaged in many diverse fields, including science communication (accessibility of science to the public), neuroeducation (identification of the brain mechanisms that are active in learning), teaching in industry and encouraging schoolchildren to choose science and engineering. Research in these areas is carried out in cooperation with other faculties at the Technion, with the world’s leading universities (Stanford, Cornell, MIT and others) and with leading companies including Intel, Microsoft and Google.

In its four years of existence, some 330 Technion alumni, engineers and scientists with vast experience, have taken part in the Views program. The program, which provides Technion alumni with an additional degree (science and technology education), is bringing about a substantial change in the teaching of STEM subjects at many schools. According to Shlomi Dahan, the principal of Haifa’s Municipal High School No. 5, “Teachers who came from ‘Views’ have made a great contribution to the change at Municipal High School No. 5, where the number of students taking advanced level mathematics and physics has doubled in four years. Today, 32% of the students at the school take the advanced level matriculation exams in these subjects.” The knowledge of mathematics, science and engineering of the Technion alumni makes it possible to train them to teach at the most advanced levels.

The Faculty played a central role also in the development of the of the Technion’s first MOOC course (through the Coursera platform), initiated and manages the “My Teacher – a Teacher for Life” project, in which students at the Technion choose the teachers that guided their way and led them to the Technion, and is involved in many significant processes at the Technion and in Israel’s education system.

 

“In my exams students are allowed to turn on their computers and surf the internet”

Prof. Eric Mazur of Harvard University, special guest speaker at the Assessment For Learning seminar held at the Technion, explains why “the current grading method neutralizes curiosity”

“The Technion values excellence and strives for excellence, and when you want to be in the front row you have to excel in everything – not only in research but also in teaching. This is the mission of the Technion Center for the Promotion of Learning and Teaching, and it is the subject of this seminar, which focuses on assessment.”

With these words, Prof. Gadi Schuster, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, opened the one-day seminar on Assessment For Learning, held at the Technion Center for the Promotion of Learning and Teaching on June 24, 2015. Prof. Eric Mazur, Dean of Applied Physics at Harvard University and Minerva Prize winner, delivered the two keynote lectures. “I’ve already been to Israel,” said Prof. Mazur, “but I have not yet visited the Technion and I am very happy to be here, at an institution which – so I read in the New York Times – champions the pursuit of innovation.”

Prof. Mazur spoke about the personal and professional process he underwent over the years as a lecturer in physics. “In 1984, I began teaching a course at Harvard that nobody wanted to teach – Physics for premed students. I did it the traditional way: lectures. The success of my students in tests, and the outstanding evaluations that I received in surveys, concealed the truth from my eyes: this was, and still is, the worst possible way to teach students. Have you ever seen a workplace based on such a situation, in which one person talks and transmits information, and everyone else merely receives it? They do not create, they do not innovate, they do not think and they do not work as a team? A workplace like this does not exist. Nevertheless, that’s what today’s classroom looks like.

“The traditional classroom is based on the amphitheater model – it is basically a show, that’s the message that this situation conveys: the teacher demonstrates and talks, the student listens and doesn’t interrupt. Obviously, not a context that encourages interaction. Imagine if a student raises his hand and says: ‘Mr. Lecturer, could you be quiet for five minutes, so that I can think?’ In other words, we make do with the lowest possible level of educational activity: the transfer of information. What about practice, creativity and thinking? With the traditional approach we are giving up all that and are left with the transmission and reception of information, and for that we teachers aren’t necessary – Google is sufficient.”

In the wake of these insights, Prof. Mazur developed a new approach to peer teaching and assessment in a way that fosters involvement, thinking and interactive learning. “The current grading system harms educational activity, because it punishes the student for his mistakes and neutralizes his curiosity. The road to innovation and creativity is paved with failures, and with the grading system, students are not allowed to fail.”

The teaching method developed by Prof. Mazur mimics real life – teamwork, discussions, intriguing questions and much room for error. “In my exams, students are allowed to turn on their computers and surf the internet – anything but text messages and e-mail. After all, it’s hard to find answers on Google to questions requiring understanding, application, analysis, evaluation and creativity”.

The seminar ended with a panel discussion on grade assessment and management at the Technion, led by Prof. Moshe Baruch, Senior Assistant Vice President for the Advancement of Teaching, with the participation of Dean of Undergraduate Studies Prof. Yachin Cohen, Prof. Daniel Levin of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, and Prof. Miles Rubin of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The seminar was held by the Technion Center for the Promotion of Learning and Teaching, headed by Dr. Abigail Barzilai, with the assistance of Dr. Irit Wertheim, as part of a program to promote professional standards in the area of assessment and examination in certification courses at the Technion.

Peer Instruction: Continuous Formative Assessment to Promote Learning, Prof Eric Mazur Harvard University, Area Dean of Applied Physics.

Prof Eric Mazur Assessment: The silent killer of learning Harvard University, Area Dean of Applied Physics

Fifty years to the day after the visit to Mars: the first visit to the dwarf planet Pluto

This afternoon, the spacecraft New Horizons will pass over Pluto and will send valuable information to the planet Earth. Members of the research team of Prof. Hagai Perets from the Technion, who are studying Pluto and its moons, believe that this information will greatly contribute to our knowledge about that distant region of the solar system. The spacecraft, which contains scientific equipment and the ashes of the man who discovered Pluto, will continue to head toward Pluto’s moon, and from there to the edge of the solar system.

Within a few hours – just before 15:00, to be more precise – the New Horizons spacecraft will fly by the closest point to the dwarf planet Pluto. Shortly thereafter, it will pass over Charon – Pluto’s main moon – and then it will proceed to the edge of the solar system.

Today’s anticipated historic “visit” will occur exactly 50 years after the first pictures from the surface of Mars reached the Earth. On July 14, 1965, humanity discovered for the first time what the surface of a planet that is not Earth looks like. Since then, all the other planets, except Pluto, have been studied.

60,000 km/h.

Therefore – in order to explore Pluto – New Horizons was launched around nine years ago. The spacecraft, weighing about 500 kilograms, soared into space at a record speed of nearly 60,000 km/h. To save energy, it was then “put to sleep” for a few years and only last December did it “wake up” in order to be able to transmit the information from the vicinity of Pluto. These transmissions began a few months ago, and provided Earth with considerable information and wonderful pictures.

From Mars to Pluto.

For decades, Pluto, discovered in 1930, was considered one of the major planets in the solar system. Since then, all the other planets have been “visited” by spacecraft, which photographed them, and therefore today’s closure is a historic moment. Many people around the world will hold their breath today – even those born long after the “visit” to Mars on July 14, 1965. Two of them are Prof. Hagi Perets and doctoral student Erez Michaeli, from the Technion Faculty of Physics, who are studying the “potential moons” that may be discovered around Pluto.

“Pluto was discovered in 1930,” Michaeli explains, “and only in 1978 was its main moon, Charon, discovered. In the past decade, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, four other moons orbiting Pluto on the same plane have been discovered. This gave rise to the question: Does Pluto have more moons?”

Potential moons.

In the joint article, Michaeli and Prof. Perets predict the possible locations of other potential moons. “We do not presume to say whether there are such moons, but only ‘map’ the areas where they might be located,” explains Michaeli. “Our mapping is based on the information provided and a set of equations, and we predict that if such moons are found, they will be within the area that we ‘permit’.”

And if you were wrong?

“As an astrophysicist, I really want new things to be discovered, so I would be very happy if moons are found in those places as well. Of course, it would mean that we failed to take something into consideration, but to some extent that would be even more interesting. After all, that’s the one of the beauties of science – surprises tell us more than the success of our predictions.”

A Star is born.

“The discovery of other moons may help us better understand how Pluto was formed,” says Michaeli. “The currently accepted theory in the astrophysics community is that Pluto is the result of an accidental collision of two celestial objects, and some of the debris became its moons, but simulations show that the impact speed was abnormally slow.”

“The collision of a celestial body with its moon occurs at a relatively slow speed,” says Prof. Perets, “and now we’re working on a new model in which Pluto was hit by one of its remote moons. Such a collision could explain what we see today. According to this model, the current moons were formed by a collision between Pluto and one of its ancient moons.”

The internal structure.

Dr. Uri Malamud, one of Prof. Perets’s post-doctoral students, is focusing in his research on the development of the bodies in solar system and their internal structure.  “Since we have no direct data from inside these planetary bodies, we have to infer the internal structure from various observations and the measurement of density, gravitational field, magnetic field, surface composition and various geological formations that may be an indication of the processes taking place inside. In the case of Pluto and Charon, the density was known previously, which gives a pretty good initial indication regarding the possible internal composition, but now we can improve the existing measurements and obtain detailed information about the surface composition and geological formations. In our study, we rely on assumptions pertaining to the conditions that prevailed when these bodies were formed, and run advanced computer simulations that simulate Pluto’s evolution during 4.5 billion years.”

A glimpse into the past.

“Of course one can ask why anyone should even bother studying a lump rock located at the edge of the solar system,” says Prof. Perets, “but from a scientific perspective, there is tremendous motivation here. Pluto and similar objects give us a unique opportunity to explore the first building blocks of the solar system, some of which have been preserved almost unchanged. Pluto gives us a look at the birth pangs of the solar system and the origin of the planet Earth, and now we are seeing it live.”

In an article published together with Prof. Dina Prialnik from Tel Aviv University in the journal Icarus, Dr. Malamud assumes that Charon and other bodies in the Kuiper Belt were “born” from a homogeneous composition of rock and ice, and later developed as a result of warming that led to the flow of water and gas through a porous medium characteristic of small bodies in the solar system. “These dwarf planets have fairly regular structures – an ice shell covering a rocky core – but their level of porosity varies. In our article, we showed that this difference stems from their different masses.” In a follow-on study conducted by Dr. Malamud and Prof. Perets, they are trying to expand their previous study, so that it will be possible to perform simulations of larger bodies like Pluto, partly in light of the new information obtained from New Horizons.

Pluto and the New Horizons mission

New Horizons was launched from Earth on January 19, 2006 – at that time Pluto was still considered one of the nine planets of the solar system – and since then it has covered nearly 5 billion kilometers. During its journey, the spacecraft moved so far from the sun that it cannot generate electricity from sunlight. Therefore, a small plutonium-based nuclear reactor was installed onboard.

New Horizons was designed, built and launched in order to “understand the worlds at the edge of the solar system by making the first reconnaissance of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, a relic of the formation of the solar system.” In addition to scientific equipment, the spacecraft carries several objects, including a coin of the State of Florida; an urn containing the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930; a Pluto postage stamp from 1991; and, of course, an American flag.

Pluto was considered one of the nine planets in the solar system until 2006 – the year when it was deposed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and defined as “only” a dwarf planet. Several reasons were given for the decision, which was made despite protests by many astronomers: Pluto’s size (it is smaller than many bodies in the solar system that were discovered in recent years and are defined as planets); the unusual fact that Pluto and its principal moon, Charon, are not very different from each other in size; Pluto, unlike “real” planets, doesn’t remove particles and larger objects from its environment; and, finally – Pluto’s orbit is unusual compared to that of our known planets, all of which move around the sun on an ecliptic plane. The plane of Pluto’s movement around the sun is at a deviation of around 17 degrees from the ecliptic plane, and it self-rotates at a 119 degree angle from that plane, which means that it self-rotates in one direction and orbits around the sun in the opposite direction.

Pluto was discovered by Tombaugh in 1930, and received its name in a public competition – the winning name was proposed by an 11-year-old girl. Because of its distance from the sun – around 6 billion kilometers on average – its surface has a very low temperature: around -220⁰C. Because of its very long orbit, a “Pluto year” is equal to 248 of our years. Pluto’s orbit is very elliptical, unlike most of the planets, and this causes strange phenomena: when it’s far from the sun it’s completely frozen and has no atmosphere, and when it draws near it heats up and substances evaporate from its surface, thereby creating the atmosphere, and so on and so forth.

Dental implants are a viable tooth replacement solution for most people, and the question one may ask is not whether you have one of those, but when will you have a dental implant. The use of dental implants is constantly growing, and Israel has become superpower in terms of implant production.

However, like everything else in life, things can go wrong and implants happen to break after sometime, although this is fortunately not too frequent. Extracting and replacing a broken dental implant is a complex surgical procedure for both the dentist and the patient.

Dr. (DDS) Keren Shemtov-Yona started to study the fracture of dental implants in 2010, for her masters of Medical Sciences, in both the School of Dentistry (Rambam Hospital) and in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Technion. Her results showed the influence of time on the degradation of the implants’ strength until a crack forms that causes final fracture by a mechanism known as metal fatigue.

Upon completion of her degree, Dr. Shemtov-Yona was so passionate about her research that she decided to enroll in a PhD program in 2013, under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Rittel (Mechanical Engineering).

A mother of two, living in Tel Aviv, she would not hesitate to travel twice a week to Haifa to carry out her research with utmost dedication.

Back to early 2014, she managed to collect one hundred dental implants from four Israeli dental clinics. Those implants were particularly precious because they had been extracted for biological reasons, but none of them was broken and otherwise appeared to be in pristine condition. Every implant was thoroughly and patiently examined using the scanning electron microscope of the Materials Mechanics Center, and the picture that emerged rather soon was rather awkward: many of the implants contained cracks and flaws at various stages of development. More precisely, 62% of the intact implants were actually flawed, as reported recently in the highly regarded Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials.

Reporting such troubling results did not go smoothly for obvious reasons. Dentistry journals, with a lesser engineering inclination, reacted negatively and perhaps not always objectively to the bad news. By contrast, the Bioengineering community welcomed the results and accepted the publication quite enthusiastically.

Are those such bad news for those of us who have implants for a few years already? According to Dr. Shemtov-Yona “it is too early to reach such a conclusion, since every individual has different mastication habits and oral environment, mastication causing a repeated loading leading to fatigue”. Which means that what will take several years in individual A may take less or not happen in individual. However, as she emphasizes, “time has come for both the dental community and the manufacturers to come to grips with the problem, learn to identify it and look for ways to improve the fatigue life of dental implants”.

And indeed, her research is now focusing on the causes leading to the development of cracks, some of which related to implant manufacturing procedures, in an attempt to devise a viable solution that will prolong the service life of the implants.

Technion has long emphasized interdisciplinary research, including the interface between Engineering and Life Sciences.

Dr. Shemtov-Yona’s research is precisely at this interface, since, as Prof. Rittel puts it, “dental implants without Dentistry make no sense on the one hand, but we have learned that dental implants without Engineering are very incomplete”.

 

Technion ranked 31st in the world in the U.S. Academy of Inventors index

The Technion received approval for 65 patents in the U.S. in 2014, the most of any Israeli university.

The rankings list of the National Academy of Inventors, founded in the U.S. in 2010, ranks the Technion in 31st place in the list of universities around the world, based on the number of patents approved in the U.S. in 2014. The Technion, with 65 approved patents last year, ranks above well-known universities such as Yale, Duke, Rutgers, USC (University of Southern California) and Tokyo University, as well as all the other Israeli institutions that placed in the rankings: Tel Aviv University (43rd place), the Weizmann Institute (52nd place) and Hebrew University (73rd place). The top-ranked university is MIT, which advanced from second place in 2013, with 453 approved patents in 2014.

A few of the patents registered by the Technion and approved in 2014 are: medical scaffolding; a system for monitoring air passage in the lungs; a system for the rapid imaging of the macula; non-friction molecular engines; an innovative device for separating oxygen from air; silicon-air batteries; and assessment for the early diagnosis of growths in the large intestine.

Prof. Wayne D. Kaplan, Technion’s Executive Vice President for Research, congratulated the researchers, senior staff and students on this impressive achievement.

“The commercialization of inventions and the registering of patents are strategic goals for us, connected with strengthening the ties between academia and industry. The Technion invests significant resources in these matters, and the Technion’s patent registration department, headed by Ofir Alon, is doing wonderful work. We will continue to strive to translate research into finished technology and to bring inventions from the lab to the market.”

Benjamin Soffer, director of T3―Technion Technology Transfer Office, which houses the patent registration department, said that this impressive accomplishment is “an expression of the Technion’s tremendous openness to innovation and to the balance between the entrepreneurial spirit and excellence in academia and research. In the past few decades the Technion has been constantly increasing the entrepreneurial component in training students, with the intention that at the end of their studies the students will be equipped not only with scientific and engineering tools, but also with the managerial and entrepreneurial skills that will enable them to ‘invent their own workplace’ and not only to find jobs as salaried employees in existing companies.”

In many instances, the approval of a patent is the preliminary stage to the commercialization of technology or an invention. In the commercialization field, too, the Technion has made impressive strides: Within less than a decade, revenues from commercialization have jumped from $10.7 million annually (in 2008-2009) to over $30 million (2014-2015).

“It’s important to take into account that the Technion’s research budget, $135 million a year, is very low compared to the other universities and is only 8% of the MIT’s research budget. If the universities were ranked based on their revenues from commercialization relative to their research expenditures, the Technion would be in third place, behind Princeton and New York University,” said Soffer.

The Technion Technology Transfer (T³) office operated in the framework of the Technion Research & Development Foundation, and is responsible for the commercialization and protection of intellectual property developed by the Technion. One of the outstanding successes in this field is the commercialization of Azilect, a drug developed in cooperation with Teva Pharmaceuticals, based on research by professors Moussa Youdim and John Finberg. Sales of this drug top $400 million annually.

T3 manages holdings in some 50 active companies and over the past three years, the Technion’s portfolio companies have raised over $250 million in investment capital. These companies include Argo Medical Technologies (which develops exoskeletons to help the disabled to walk); Applied Immune Technologies (a drug development company specializing in T-Cell Receptor-Like, TCRL, antibodies); Accellta (media and cell cultures for the stem cell industry), Sealantis (tissue adhesive); Avraham Pharmaceuticals (drugs to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive disorders), Corindus (robotics technology that enables cardiologists to perform remote catheterization), VibeSec (information security on web-based telephony), NanoSpun Technologies (smart fibers), ElMindA (imaging system for neuron network activity in the brain and treatment based on network stimulation) DigiFlex (products for the printing industry and industrial processes) and Regentis (gel for regenerating tissue).

The department is responsible, among other things, for the management of the Technion’s patent portfolio, which has over 780 applications for patent registration.

For the full list of the rankings: http://www.academyofinventors.com/pdf/NAI-IPO-Top-100-Universities-2014.pdf