Four world-leading architects participated in the Waterfront Conference that took place at Technion last week. They were Daniel Libeskind, who is developing the master plan for the World Trade Center, landscape architect Professor Martha Schwartz from Harvard University, Vanessa Kassabian from the Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta that designed the Opera House in Oslo, and Gregg Pasquarelli from SHoP architects, responsible for planning the Barclays Center at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, a two-mile esplanade and park along the East River Waterfront of Manhattan.

“The Haifa International Waterfront Conference: Revitalizing a Coastal Metropolis” dealt on subjects relating to Haifa’s waterfront program, and was organized by the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning and the Haifa Municipality. Hundreds of students from the Faculty attended the conference. The Dean of the Faculty, Professor Yehuda Kalay, welcomed all of the participating architects and students and told students that it is a rare opportunity for them to meet internationally renowned architects, and to exchange views at eye level. “We are happy for this conference,” he said, “Firstly because most of us here today are Haifa residents, and secondly, because we are studying in Haifa, and the city is like our laboratory.”

Architect Daniel Libeskind spoke at a special panel emceed by Els Verbakel, Lecturer at the Faculty, with his wife Nina and architects Professor Martha Schwartz and Gregg Pasquarelli. He compared his architectural work to the magical acts of the Great Hudini. “You get a project in a challenging environment: there is never enough funding, and often it’s very frustrating and hopeless, but these are the kinds of projects that interest me, challenging and involving creativity. When I planned the area of Ground Zero in Manhattan, it took me a long time to convince the Municipality to leave the area where the Twin Towers stood as an open space. Land in Manhattan is very expensive, but in this place, people lost their lives, and leaving it unbuilt emphasizes the void left.”

To the students Libeskind said that, “Your study years are the best time to be creative and grow professionally. You don’t have any obligations, so go on and do what it is you always wanted. I like to encourage my students not stick to the rules all the time, to always ask questions and do research. An architect can’t plan buildings as a blank slate (‘tabula rasa’ in Latin), and therefore he needs to get a better understanding for the area he is planning in, its history, and the mood and state of mind of the people living in the area. An architect that doesn’t properly research and ask is a bureaucrat. In my opinion, the profession of architecture may become obsolete in the future because with technological progress, everyone will be able to influence and plan their own living environment.”

Landscape architect Professor Martha Schwartz from Harvard University, who designed many landscaping projects around the world, among artificial archipelago islands in Dubai, the Grand Canal in Dublin and others, said: “Landscaping architecture is an art form that completes the construction and architecture. The development of landscapes makes areas more attractive and has an effect on the entire city. Until 20 years ago, landscaping architecture was a dormant field, and today, almost every architectural project includes landscape planning and takes into account environmental considerations.”

Vanessa Kassabian from the Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta with offices in Oslo and New York, designed the Opera House in Oslo. Today she is working on the design of a new environmental and spatial plan for Times Square in Manhattan. “We focus on the accessibility of public space for all people. I want to thank the Technion for the opportunity to lecture at this conference. The architects in attendance are all connected to New York and we are very excited about the cooperation between the University of Cornell and Technion, and the establishment of the join Innovation Institute to be built in New York.”

Gregg Pasquarelli is visiting in Israel for the first time. He summed it all up when he said, “This is a great time to be a young architect. Technology advancement is reflected at every aspect of architecture – from the planning stage, construction phase, funding and theory. Take chances and challenge the rules. You are studying at an amazing university. Go out and speak with students from other faculties, engineers and scientists. Together you’ll develop new technologies and reinvent architecture anew.”

Above: Architect Daniel Libeskind at the Waterfront Conference. Photographed by Doron Golan, Spokesperson’s Office

 Technion scientists developed and constructed a molecular transducer, which is an advanced computing machine. This molecular computer was built entirely of biomolecules, such as DNA and enzymes that can manipulate genetic codes. This unprecedented device can compute iteratively, namely, it uses the output as a new input for subsequent computations. Furthermore, it produces outputs in the form of biologically meaningful phenomena, such as resistance of bacteria to various antibiotics. The researchers demonstrated that their transducer can perform a long division of binary numbers by 3 and preformed an iterative computation. This study by Prof. Ehud Keinan, postdoctoral fellows Dr. Tamar Ratner and Dr. Ron Piran of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, and Dr. Natasha Jonoska of the department of Mathematics at the University of South Florida, is published today in the prestigious journal Chemistry & biology of the Cell publishing house.

 “The ever-increasing interest in biomolecular computing devices has not arisen from the hope that such machines could ever compete with their electronic counterparts by offering greater computation speed, fidelity and power or performance in traditional computing tasks”, explains Prof. Keinan. “The main advantages of biomolecular computing devices over the electronic computers arise from other properties. As shown in this work and other projects carried out in our lab, these systems can interact directly with biological systems and even with living organisms. No interface is required since all components of molecular computers, including hardware, software, input and output, are molecules that interact in solution along a cascade of programmable chemical events.”

 “All biological systems, and even entire living organisms, are natural molecular computers. Every one of us is a biomolecular computer, that is, a machine in which all components are molecules “talking” to one another in a logical manner. The hardware and software are complex biological molecules that activate one another to carry out some predetermined chemical tasks. The input is a molecule that undergoes specific, programmed changes, following a specific set of rules (software) and the output of this chemical computation process is another well defined molecule.”

 “Our results are significant because they demonstrate for the first time a synthetic designed computing machine that not only computes iteratively, but also produces biologically relevant results. Although this transducer was employed to solve a specific problem, the general methodology shows that similar devices could be applied for other computational problems. In addition to its enhanced computation power, this DNA-based transducer offers multiple benefits, such as the ability to read and transform genetic information, miniaturization to the molecular scale, and the aptitude to produce computational results, which interact directly with living organisms. Therefore, its implementation on a genetic material may not just evaluate and detect specific sequences, but it can also alter and algorithmically process the genetic code. This possibility opens up interesting oppotunities in biotechnology, including individual gene therapy and cloning.”

Dr. Irwin Jacobs was given the Institute’s greatest recognition at an anniversary ceremony marking 20 years of Qualcomm activities in Israel

Technion President, Professor Peretz Lavie, spoke about the long-standing friendship and generous philanthropic activities of Dr. Jacobs and his wife Joan with the Technion. Technion’s Graduate School is named for them, as is the Center for Communications and Information Technologies. They have recently donated $133 million to the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute in New York.

The Technion President thanked Dr. Jacobs, “Thank you so very much for all you have done for Technion, engineering, the field of telecom, academia, Israel, and future scientists – you are truly a great leader, model citizen, and a real ‘mench.’”

Dr. Jacobs responded to the words of gratitude, saying that it is not Technion that need thank him but he who needs to thank the Technion, “Many of Qualcomm’s employees are Technion graduates,” he said. “The company would not have attained many of its achievements if it hadn’t been for its brilliant employees.”

In the picture: Holding the Technion Medal (from right to left) Dr. Irwin Jacobs, Joan Jacobs, and Professor Peretz Lavie. Photographer: Shlomo Shoham, Technion Spokesperson’s Office

Technion scientists developed a new class of photonic materials, named Spin-Optical Metamaterial, which is based on nano-antennas controlling radiative modes assisted through the spin of light. The discovery will enable the realization of new optical surface components on the nano-scale (metasurfaces), which are based on the fundamental elements of the optical antenna’s material (optical meta-atoms), and symmetry properties – the breaking of symmetry of the photonic structure. By designing the metasurface symmetry properties with space-variant oriented anisotropic nano-antennas, it is possible to control the light-matter interaction and to design the radiative and surface optical modes.

The scientists have recently published their findings on the experimental “Optical Rashba Effect,” which enables addition or removal of light momentum by controlling the spin of light (the intrinsic spin degree of photon – circular polarization) and the symmetry properties (breaking of symmetry) of the structure. This breakthrough research was done by scientists from Professor Erez Hasman’s research group – comprising of Dr. Vladimir Kleiner, and his research students Nir Shitrit, Igor Yulevich, Elhanan Maguid, Dror Ozeri and Dekel Veksler. According to Professor Hasman from Technion’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering: “In the experiment we created a structure in the shape of a “kagome” (similar to the structure of the Star of David) and we demonstrated an ability to control the behavior of thermal radiation emission with the support of an optical spin-orbit interaction as a result of the breaking of symmetry of the system.” The researchers named this scientific phenomenon the “Optical Rashba Effect” as an analogy for the Rashba effect of electrons in condensed matter. The electronic Rashba effect allows to control electrons with the help of the spin under broken inversion symmetry of the structure. This effect is used today in the new field of “Spintronics” that allows to control nanoelectronic components by the spin of electrons.

The inspiration for the study was derived from solid-state research: many studies have been done on natural anti-ferromagnetic crystalline structures in the form of kagome. In these materials, there is a physical effect termed “Frustration”: the magnetic moments can be arranged in different orientations (different phases) but the energy continues to be degenerated. Technion scientists noticed that there are significant differences in the symmetry of the phases: the reorder of the local magnetic moments transforms the lattice from an inversion symmetric to an asymmetric structure. Hence, Hasman’s group selected the kagome as a platform for investigating the symmetry influence on spin-based manipulation of photonic materials. It is well known that the physical laws of conservation are determined by the symmetry of the system. Noether’s theorem states that for every symmetry there is a corresponding conservation law; particularly, invariance with respect to spatial translation or rotation correspond to conservation of linear and angular momenta, respectively. Moreover, when the spatial inversion symmetry is violated, one can expect to observe spin-split dispersion (dispersion is the dependent of mode’s frequency on the momentum). Instead of different spatial arrangements of magnetic moments, Hasman’s group used anisotropic antennas geometrically arranged in such a way that their orientations are aligned with the original spin direction in the magnetic kagome phases. Optical nano-antennas can create local electromagnetic modes dependant on the geometry of the antenna. The researchers used meta-material based on the alignment of antennas upon SiC, and measured the thermal emission from the different structures. The scientists showed that polarization-controlled optical modes of metamaterials arise where the spatial inversion symmetry is violated. They observed spin-split dispersion of the thermal emission originates from the spin-orbit interaction of light, generating a selection rule based on symmetry restrictions in the spin-optical metamaterials. The design of metamaterial symmetries via geometric gradient of the antennas’ configuration provides the route for spin-controlled nanophotonic applications.

Technion scientists believe that their discovery will facilitate the development of new type of optical components and nanophotonic devices that will make possible to implement optical logic gates controlled by photon-spin, novel optical computing components, new light sources dependant on spin, ultra thin surface lenses, laser beam shaping using nanoscale surface-optics, and control over thermal radiation. Using the novel photonic materials, it will be possible to design the properties of the emission, absorption, transmission and scattering of light, as well as manipulating the surface waves for photonic chips. As an outcome of the study, Professor Hasman intends to expand his research group and has plans to recruit additional excellent research students from different areas, in order continue to develop the field of Spinoptics studied by his group over the last thirteen years. For additional information visit: www.technion.ac.il/optics

Above: Professor Erez Hasman

Students Eitai Vander, Yehonatan Hochman and Yogev Bitan, studying landscape architecture at Technion, won first place in a planning competition for renovating the Nesher Quarry. The prize: NIS 10,000

The Quarry Rehabilitation Fund for and Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, in cooperation with the city of Nesher, approached students at the Faculty for ideas on how to rehabilitate the abandoned quarry. Undergraduate and graduate students studying in different study tracks, worked on the project during the first semester this year under the direction of architect Asif Berman, Professor Shamai Asif and Professor Tal Alon Mozes.

“This was an extraordinary project,” said architecture student Yehonatan Hochman. “We were given an opportunity to handle a real situation, with all the limitations and constraints that come along with it. Just as work on a real site, we had to uncover information on our own. We met with land consultants, we travelled to Hiriya (a former was dump outside Tel-Aviv) to study the site, and were required to provide extensive and in-depth research work.”

“All of the proposals reflected an impressive scale sensitivity and urban landscape context, and offer a variety of practical programs,” said Professor Shamai Asif. “All of the students were happy to turn a hazardous site into an opportunity, and add a layer of sustainability to the city, the Carmel, and the future understanding of quarries in general. The competition was part of a tradition of cooperation with the surrounding communities and our gift/donation to them, on the strategic planning level. In the past few years, we ‘discovered’ the City of Nesher, which has jurisdiction over sections of the Technion, and have enjoyed successful cooperation with the municipality, who has played its hand in assisting all of the involved parties.”

The winning project is “The Quarry Park” – a program to transform the Nesher Quarry to a recycling site catering to extreme sports activities: rappelling, wall climbing, slides, bungee jumping, omega, and more. The team of judges determined that the students submitted detailed high quality planning, and an appropriate use of groundwork under time constrains. The design flexibility of their plan allows for integration of additional future programs.

The project named “Nesher Quarry Rehabilitation” by students Arie Fine, Eran Daromi and Uri Noiman was awarded second place – to renovate the quarry into a family recreation park. Among the different projects that took part in the competition included: “E21” – transforming the Quarry into an industry research center for renewable energy; “The Quarry” – converting the site to a recreation, leisure and retail complex with a focus on recycled shipping containers; and “Steps of the City View” – the transformation of the quarry to a center for research and environmental study.

The members of the judges’ panel were Yossi Wurzburger, the Chairman of the Fund for Quarry Renovation and the Director of Natural Resources Administration in the Ministry of Energy & Water Resources, Yuval Peled, representative of the Nature and Parks Authority in the management of the Fund for Quarry Renovation, Leon Grodski, City Engineer of Nesher, landscaping architect Dafna Greenstein, and architect Uri Cohen from Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Above: The winners (from right to left) Eitai Vander, Yogev Bitan and Yehonatan Hochman, and behind them the plan for “The Quarry Park”. Photographed by: Technion’s Spokesperson’s Office (Shicho Photography Services)

Top Chinese students will receive scholarships up to $35,000 per year to study at the Technion, Weizmann Institute and the Hebrew University

According to the agreement, the Foundation will select outstanding Chinese students that fulfill Technion’s stringent admissions standards. Initially, graduate students pursuing advanced degrees (Masters and PhDs) will be chosen. Each student will receive scholarships and other assistance of up to $35,000 each year, to cover all of their expenses. The Foundation will begin with five students per year, increasing gradually to up to 25 students within five years. A six-person executive board will be appointed to oversee operations of this program, with three representatives each from Technion and the Hanqing Foundation.

The agreement is valid for 20 years and values over 8 million US Dollars.

Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie welcomed the agreement, adding that presently there are a number of Chinese students studying at the Technion. “The relationship between Technion and China grows ever stronger and we view the signing of this agreement with the Hanqing Foundation as another step towards our increasingly close collaboration with Chinese academia,” he said.

Following his visit to the Technion, Mr Zhao Hanqing said it is not surprising that such an excellent institution is considered among the best technology universities in the world, and that he is confident that the outstanding Chinese students chosen to study at the Technion will absorb all that Technion has to offer, acquiring knowledge that will contribute to his country’s burgeoning economy.

Above: Zhao Hanqing with Technion President, Professor Peretz Lavie

A research paper recently published in the prestigious Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (JAFC) by Professor Michael Aviram and his research group from the Rambam Medical Center and the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion, conducted jointly with Dr. Hamutal Borochov-Neori and her research team from Southern Arava Research and Development (Hevel Eilot, Israel), describes the properties of nine date fruit varieties growing in Israel. This is a continuing study by these researchers, who were the first to show the health properties of dates (Phoenix dactylifera L., Medjool or Hallawi varieties) that protect against cardiovascular diseases in humans.

In their previous study, which was published in 2009, also by JAFC, Professor Aviram and his colleagues discovered that eating three dates a day does not cause an increase in blood sugar levels, lowers blood triglycerides, and improves the quality of blood cholesterol (lowering its degree of oxidation).

Aviram’s research group concentrated on identifying fruits and vegetables containing highly active antioxidants that may improve the quality of blood cholesterol, by inhibiting its oxidation rate. Furthermore, they discovered the date phenolics inhibition mechanisms in the development of atherosclerosis and its consequences – heart  attack or stroke.

Professor Aviram was the first to demonstrate and to characterize unique polyphenolic antioxidants found in pomegranates, red wine (derived from the skin of the grape), and olive oil , which are most effective in slowing down the atherosclerotic process.

In the present study, undertaken by Professor Michael (Mickey) Aviram’s research group at the Technion Faculty of Medicione and Rambam Medical Center,  in collaboration with Dr. Hamutal Borochov-Neori and her research team from Southern Arava Research and Development, the scientists found that all of the nine date varieties studied showed a remarkable ability to delay oxidation of cholesterol, which is a key  factor in inducing atherosclerosis and its consequent cardiovascular diseases.

Furthermore, in this study, Aviram also found that dates have a proven ability to accelerate the removal of excess cholesterol from arterial wall cells (cholesterol efflux) – a process that could lead to slowdown, containment and even regression of atherosclerosis development.

In the current joint study of Professor Aviram and Dr. Borochov-Neori, the researchers found that the date varieties with the best abilities to delay processes related to the development of atherosclerosis are Barhi (yellow), Deri, Medjool and Halawi.

Cultivating dates is an important form of agriculture on the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East and North Africa, dating back more than 5,000 years. Dietary and therapeutic benefits of this fruit have been described in religious works, and medicinal folklore. Dates are thought to have strengthening properties in traditional Indian medicine and are used for treating different diseases in traditional (folk) Middle Eastern medicine, owing to its immunological properties, including natural antibacterial and antifungal agents. Moreover, extracts from dates contain potent  antioxidants and rids the body from free radicals.

Dates provides a high source of nutritional energy, due to its high sugar content, and are also rich in unique fibers (that bind to serum blood lipids- cholesterol and triglycerides,  and keep them away from the body). Dates are also rich in  minerals (potassium, calcium, magnesium and zinc), and specific phenolics (highly active antioxidants), mostly  phenolic acids and flavonoids.

In light of these studies and others, it is recommended to consume fruits and vegetables associated with the Middle-Eastern diet and Biblical dietary customs. Moreover, bear in mind that consumption of whole fruits and vegetables, and their appropriate combinations, are of higher nutritional benefit in comparison with the intake of a singular ingredient (active only against some specific oxidant), because they work together to neutralize a broad range of oxidative factors and hence – to attenuate atherosclerosis development , and to protect against cardiovascular diseases.

Professor Tony Chan, the President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, headed a senior delegation from Hong Kong that met with Technion President Professor Peretz Lavie and other board members, at a recent visit to the Technion. During his visit, Professor Chan delivered a lecture on the topic of “Building a World-Class University in 21 years” to Technion students and faculty.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology was established 21 years ago and is considered one of the newest leading universities in the world. Recently, the university was ranked in first place for being the top university in Asia, and third among younger universities.

“I see many similarities between our university and Technion,” remarked Professor Chan in his lecture, “I view our university as “the Technion” of China. We have a lot to learn from Israel and from Technion in particular. The university was established a little over two decades ago to promote the development of the high-tech industry in Hong Kong, and with the acknowledgement by our government for the need to invest in science and technology. My dream is that 40 years from now, I will be able to brag about the fact that our graduates are at the forefront of the international high-tech industry and in all of the world’s leading high-tech companies, as can the Technion President.”

The establishment of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology opened up possibilities for high school graduates in Hong Kong and other parts of China to purse higher education closer to home, without the need to travel to universities overseas. “In my time, I had to emigrate to the United States in pursuit of higher education,” said Professor Chan, “Today, we can provide our students with advanced higher education matching international standards in English, in Hong Kong. The vision of building an advanced research university, capable of promoting the high-tech industry in Hong Kong and China, has already started to take shape.”

Following the lecture by Professor Chan, a special discussion on the topic of “Technology Transfer – from Concept to Implementation” ensued, with Technion alumni holding key positions in the high-tech industry and Technion professors actively involved in the founding of the start-ups in attendance.  Mr. Guido Pardo-Roques, General Manager at Phillips Medical Systems Technologies, Professor Eyal Zussman and Mr. Ohad Ben Dror, founders of Nanospun Technologies, and Professor Yoram Reiter from the Faculty of Biology at Technion, participated in the joint panel, hosted by Professor Boaz Golani, Technion’s Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development.

The delegation from Hong Kong wanted to know in what ways Technion contributed to the development of Israel into a “start-up” superpower, and how it encourages the development of entrepreneurship and innovation among students. In addition, the visitors were interested in the connections between Technion and industry and how to cultivate this relationship. Other topics raised by the panel included strategies for returning Israeli academics from the U.S. and Europe to Israel, as well as the absorption of waves of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who arrived to Israel in the 1990s, and their great contribution to the scientific-technological development of the State of Israel.

Mr. Guido Pardo-Roques, General Manager at Phillips Medical Systems Technologies in Haifa, told the panel that “Philips” plans to expand the company’s research and development activities in China.

Technion’s prestigious Harvey Award was awarded to Professors Eli Yablonovitch and Eric Lander.

Professor Yablonovitch from the University of California, Berkley received his prize in the field of science and technology in recognition for his pioneering discoveries in the fields of photonics, optoelectronics and semiconductors. His groundbreaking and influential studies combine deep physical insights with an applied technological approach that can be interpreted to a wide variety of fields. He founded the field of photonic crystals and photonic band gap engineering, in principle and experimental levels as one, and made pioneering contributions in research and development in the field of photovoltaic cells and in the design and improved performance of laser based semiconductors.

Professor Lander from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) received his prize in the field of medicine, in recognition for his historic contributions to the field of genomics. He is considered the driving force behind most of the major advances in this field. He has made important contributions in the development of research methods for the study of genetic information, and spearheaded the advancement of computational tools for genetic mapping, gene identification, and functional elements in the genome. Professor Lander also pioneered the use of genomic information for solving a variety of medical and biological problems, including cancer.

Technion President, Professor Peretz Lavie, said that by awarding the prestigious Harvey Prize, the Technion expresses its deep appreciation and gratitude to both winners, on their enormous contributions to the future of humanity, each in their own area of expertise.

The President of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Professor Daniel Zajfman, delivered the keynote speech at the festive ceremony, and emphasized the importance of making science more accessible to the population, and inspiring young people to choose a fascinating career in science.

Above (from right to left): Professor Eli Yablonovitch, Professor Peretz Lavie and Professor Eric Lander. Photograph by Yossi Shram, Technion Spokesperson’s Office

Technion leaders and heads of Israel’s pharmaceutical industry held a commemorative evening in memory of the late Abraham Barry Cohen, who served as Senior Vice President of Merck & Co. and from 1977 to 1988 as President of the Merck Sharp & Dohme International Division, and as a longstanding member of the Board of Directors of Teva and Technion’s AMIT Institute. He passed away a few months ago in New York.

The President of Technion, Professor Peretz Lavie, said that he appreciates that the ceremony was being given at Technion, since Barry Cohen played an important role in his AMIT Institute.

Moshe Arens, Former Israeli Defence Minister, praised the enormous contribution of Mr. Cohen to “Teva” and his foresight and business vision. He said that, “Teva was and remains an Israeli company not looking for an exit.”

Dr. Jeremy Levin, the President and CEO of Teva, said that Barry Cohen interviewed him when he first started working for the company. He said that it was not an easy interview, and that Barry asked him a lot of difficult questions. “He was especially interested in my knowledge of medicine, globalization, and my connection with Israel,” he said. “He again stressed the importance of innovation in helping patients around the world,” he added. “Good people have led Teva to what it is today, and Barry was one of them.”

Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Professor Aaron Ciechanover from Technion’s Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine (both he and his brother were very close friends with Barry Cohen) lectured on “Personalized Medicine.”

The host of the evening: Mr Avi Kerbs, President and CEO of Teuza  .

Above: President and CEO of Teva, Dr. Jeremy Levin, speaking at the event. Photographed by: Moran Wiesman, Technion Spokesperson’s Office

“Vaterite” is an unstable atomic arrangement of “calcium carbonate”

Assistant Professor Boaz Pokroy and his doctoral student Lee Kabalah-Amitai from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, explain that calcium carbonate, a compound of calcium carbonate and oxygen, is the most abundant mineral in nature, and appears in different forms that vary in their spatial atomic positioning (atomic arrangement). “Vaterite” is a specific atomic arrangement of “calcium carbonate” and in relation to other atomic arrangements, is extremely rare (in nature). Although it is not very uncommon, “vaterites” are present in many aspects of our lives.  For example, it can appear as gallbladder stones, can be found in certain geological structures, used as an essential material for the paper industry, an important constituent of cement, and even found in meteorites from space.  Scientists from the Technion are studying the development and formation of vaterits in the important biological process known as Biomineralization. In this process, living organisms control the production of different minerals on its atomic level. For example, when a mollusk shell receives a blow that cracks its shell it uses “vaterite” to repair the damage, a pearl usually has a deep shine (resulting from a collection of different calcium carbonate) but occasionally (as a result of a growth error) vaterite forms in the pearl and eliminates its shine, and fish (such as salmon) grow vaterite in their ears to aid them with their balance.

For over 100 years, scientists have failed to reach a clear cut explanation for the atomic arrangement of “vaterite”. Doctoral student Lee Kabalah-Amitai, with the guidance of Assistant Professor Pokroy, studied this topic by examining crystals found on  and within the bodies of small marine animals (from the Tunicate family also known as sea squirts) called “Hardomia momos”, with help from Boaz Mayzel, a sea biologist and scuba diver from the Tel-Aviv University who collected the specimens, Dr. Yaron Kaufman, who examined materials under the Technion’s “Titan” electron microscope (the only one of its kind in Israel), and assistance by Dr. Andy Fitch, a scientist at the synchrotron in  Grenoble, Leonid Bloch from the team of Assistant Professor Pokroy, and Professor Pupa Gilbert from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“This small organism produces a bundle of crystals from “vaterite” that are very sharp and relatively large, making them relatively easy to work with”, explains Pokroy and Lee Kabalah-Amitai. “This is why we examined these crystals; and this is the first time they have ever been studied on the atomic level. Until now, different scientists tried to find a unified atomic arrangement for vaterites or determine which of its original structures were the most accurate. We found that vaterites actually consisted of two different atomic arrangements that exist in harmony with one another. The second atomic arrangement was found in a microscopic area (nano-metric – around 40,000 times smaller than a human hair) and this is the reason it eluded the eyes of scientists who believed this was a singular structure rather than a dual structure.”

Vaterite is an unstable atomic structure, making it a rare formation in nature.  Nonetheless, it can still be found in different areas. Technion scientists expect that their discovery will facilitate future understanding of the formation mechanisms and stabilization of “vaterite”.

Above: Spicule made of vaterite crystals that were removed from the “Hardomia momos”

Scientists from the Technion and the Hebrew University discovered why Heteroxenia corals pulsate – so reports the prestigious scientific journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).  One of the most fascinating and spectacular sights in the coral reef of Eilat is the perpetual motion of the tentacles of a coral called Heteroxenia (Heteroxenia fuscescens). Heteroxenia is a soft coral from the family Xeniidae, which looks like a small bunch of flowers, settled in the reef walls and on rocky areas on the bottom of the reef. each “flower” is actually a polyp, the basic unit which comprises a coral colony. Apparently the motion of these polyps, which looks like flowers that are elegantly spreading out and closing up their petals, is unique in the animal kingdom.

Except the familiar swimming motion of Jellyfish, no other bottom-attached aquatic animal is known to perform such motions. Pulsation is energetically costly, and hence there must be a reasonable benefit to justify this motion. The perpetual motions of jellyfish serve them for swimming, predation and feeding. The natural explanation would be that that the Heteroxenia’s spectacular motions are used for predation and feeding, however several studies indicate that these corals do not predate on other animals at all. If predation is not the reason for pulsating, there must be another explanation to justify the substantial energetic expense by the Heteroxenia.

Maya Kremien found the answers to these questions, while working on her Master’s research at the Inter-University institute in Eilat Under the supervision of  Prof. Amatzia Genin from the Hebrew University and Prof. Uri Shavit from the Technion in a joint research funded by the national science foundation.

After watching several coral colonies with an underwater infrared-sensitive camera night and day, the researchers found their first surprising discovery, that Heteroxenia corals cease to pulsate and take a half an hour break every single day in the afternoon hours. At this stage the afternoon “siestas” remain unexplained.

The labs of Prof. Genin and Prof. Shavit work on the interaction between biological processes of aquatic creatures and the water motions which surround them. Apparently aquatic animals affect the flow and at the same time are absolutely dependant on that flow. In order to solve the mystery of the Heteroxenia coral, the research team developed (as part of Tali Mass’ Ph.D work) an Underwater measuring device called PIV (Particle imaging velocimetry), which allows to measure the flow field just around The coral very accurately. The system consists of two powerful lasers, an image capturing system and an impressive computation ability. A special set of lenses releases a sheet of light in short powerful pulses in order for the imaging system to capture pairs of snapshots of natural particles moving with the flow. The computational system then performs a mathematical analysis of the pairs of photos, producing a huge database of flow field maps, from which the flow speed, characteristics of solutes transport, and turbulent mixing intensity are calculated.

The measurements were performed at night with the support of divers who volunteered to assist the research team. It was found that if a diver lightly touched the coral, the polyps “close” and remain motionless for a few minutes, after which the coral returns to its normal pulsation activity. The researchers used  this behavior in order to repeatedly measure the flow field around the Heteroxenia during pulsation and rest.

These measurements lead to the research group’s next discovery. Analysis of the direction of water flow indicated that the motion of the polyps effectively sweeps water up and away from the coral tissues into the ambient water. Corals need carbon-dioxide during daytime an oxygen during nighttime, as well as nutrients (such as phosphate and nitrogen) during day and night. One of the challenges for coral colonies is to render their surrounding waters rich in essential commodities by efficiently mixing the water around them. By using the sophisticated measuring system, the researchers calculated the mixing intensity of the water as a result of the coral’s pulsation. The unexpected discovery was that even though the polyps’ motions are uncoordinated (i.e. each polyp starts its period of motion at a different time) the accumulated effect of the polyps is a significant enhancement of the flow around the colony, particularly in the upward direction which sweeps water away from the coral, hence reducing the probability of re-filtration of the same water.

However these findings do not yet answer the question why would a coral invest so much energy to move its tentacles. After receiving a permit from the Nature and Parks authority, the research team collected a few Heteroxenia colonies from the sea in order to run a series of laboratory experiments. All corals were returned back to their original location after the experiment terminated. The Hypothesis was that the pulsation motions enhance the coral’s photosynthesis rate.

Corals are amongst the most ancient creatures surviving on our planet. One of the “secrets” of their amazing survival abilities is that they “host” photosynthetic algae in their tissues. The symbiotic algae provides the coral with essential nutrients and lives off the waste of the coral. In a previous study of the same research team (which the results of were also published in PNAS) it was found that the motion of water around corals is essential in order to enhance the efflux of oxygen from the coral tissues. Without water motion the oxygen concentration in the coral tissues would rise and the photosynthesis rate would drop.

The answer to the question why the Heteroxenia pulsates was finally revealed through the lab experiments. first the photosynthesis rate of a pulsating Heteroxenia was measured, and it was found to be an order of magnitude higher than that of a non-pulsating colony. Next, in order to prove that the mechanism of pulsation is intended to sweep away oxygen, the researchers artificially increased the oxygen concentration in the measurement chamber so that even when the coral managed to mix water via pulsation, it was replacing oxygen rich water with new water, which, unfortunately for the coral , was also rich in oxygen. And indeed it was found that the photosynthesis rate was low in this case, and even when the coral was constantly pulsating, the oxygen concentration remained high and photosynthesis remained low, as if the coral was at rest (i.e. not pulsating).

The elegant motion of Heteroxenia tentacles has been fascinating  the scientific society and capturing the attention of researchers for nearly 200 years (Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 1744-1829), yet it has not been explained. Now, in the study of Kremien, Genin and Shavit, it was found that the pulsation motions augment a significant enhancement in the binding of carbon dioxide to the photosynthetic enzyme RuBisCo, also leading to a decrease in photorespiration. This explanation justifies the investment of energy in pulsation – the benefit overcomes the cost. In fact, thanks to pulsation, the ratio between photosynthesis to respiration in Heteroxenia is the highest ever measured in stony and non-pulsating soft corals.

The findings of this study indicate that pulsation motions are a highly efficient means for sweeping away water from the pulsating body, and for an increased mixing of dissolved matter between the body and the surrounding medium. These two processes (expulsion of medium and mixing of solutes) may lead to future applications in engineering and medicine. Currently the research group is focusing on attempts to broaden the results of this study and on developing mathematical models which could  serve for various applicative purposes.

In the picture: The soft coral Heteroxenia (Heteroxenia fuscescens). Each coral is a “colony” of tens to hundreds of brother polyps. As seen in the photograph, each polyp has eight feather-like tentacles, each with a very big surface area. During pulsation the tentacles of each polyp close up and spread out periodically, without synchronization between neighbor polyps. In the photograph polyps are seen in different phases of the pulsating period. Photography (stills and movie): Victor China.