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Students at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management have developed computational tools for predicting the success of harvests. These tools will help the volunteer Israeli organization Leket Israel gather unused food and distribute it to those in need, reducing food waste in the process.

A recent event was conducted between Leket Israel and the Technion in the format of a Datathon using Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud environment that provides tools for storing information, computing, and handling big data.

The participants were all undergraduate students in the faculty, studying data science and engineering or information systems engineering. They were required to develop computational methods to predict the amount and type of produce that would be made available to Leket Israel at any given time in any region of the country. These predictions would improve Leket’s ability to plan the harvesting of the produce efficiently, further reducing food waste and increasing the donations of food to the various organizations throughout the country.

The event was opened by data science Professor Avigdor Gal, one of the initiators of the Technion’s Data Science and Engineering program in the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management – one of the first such educational curriculums around the world. He explained that “the event is part of the faculty’s annual extracurricular activities designed to generate social and ethical awareness among students, with the understanding that their professional occupation in the future will require access to data that impacts society, for example social media content, health data, and the like.”

According to Professor Liat Levontin, who is also a member of the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, “the Datathon was designed to improve the food supply chain of Leket Israel while analyzing its collection and distribution data. Data science students from the faculty proposed technological solutions expected to reduce food waste and improve the recipients’ trust in the supply chain. As part of a large study by EIT FOOD, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, we found that consumer trust in the food supply chain has significant implications, for example, on healthy eating habits, and we believe that the Datathon will advance consumer’s trust.”

According to Dr. Gila Molcho, director of academic projects and coordinator of the faculty excellence programs, “beyond the fun of participating in the competitive side of a datathon, the students gained experience in understanding data and extracting insights within a given time frame. Furthermore, they experienced a sense of personal empowerment and satisfaction from being part of the Data for Good experience. Our collaboration with Leket Israel will not end with the Datathon. Our information systems engineering students will continue developing a management tool for Leket Israel as part of their annual capstone project.”

The Datathon was organized by the Technion’s Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Data for Good Israel, Leket Israel, the Technion’s Social Incubator and EIT FOOD – Consumer Trust Grand Challenge with the support of Tech.AI, the Technion’s Center for Artificial Intelligence.

     

On October 9, the most energetic gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever measured was observed. The burst, which occurred 2.4 billion light-years from Earth, was documented as GRB 221009A.

In an amazing coincidence, an article predicting the maximum energy of GRBs written by researchers at the Faculty of Physics at the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology was accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, which many say is the most important journal in astrophysics. Entitled “The Maximum Isotropic Equivalent Energy Of Gamma Ray Bursts,” the article predicted not only the strength of the eruption but also its other characteristics. It was written by Professors Arnon Dar and Shlomo Dado. The professors recently uploaded their findings to “Internet Archive,” a repository whose stated mission is universal access to all knowledge.

A gamma ray burst is a cosmic event during which a huge amount of gamma rays and X-rays is emitted within seconds in a single pulse or in several adjacent pulses. Some 25 years ago, Dar and his colleagues, Professor Ari Laor and Nir Shaviv published an article suggesting the possibility that gamma-ray bursts may be responsible for some of the past major extinctions of life on Earth.

Gamma bursts were first discovered in 1967, when the USA sent satellites to detect possible Soviet nuclear tests in space. Such tests were prohibited by an international agreement, but the Americans suspected that the USSR was conducting them in space on the assumption that it would be impossible to detect them from Earth due to the atmospheric absorption of x and gamma rays. Six years later, in 1973, only after it became clear that they were not caused by humans, their existence was published.

In the first two decades after the discoveries of gamma-ray bursts, most of the scientific community believed these events were taking place in the Milky Way, which is “our” galaxy. Only in 1991 did the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) obtain observational evidence that these events occur mainly in other, very-distant galaxies.

In 1994, Prof. Dar, together with Prof. Nir Shaviv (his doctoral student at the time), published a new model explaining the phenomenon – a narrow jet of balls of matter emitted at the birth of neutron stars or black holes. These balls move at a speed – close to that of the speed of light. This model became the basis of the “cannonball model” that was later developed by Profs. Dar and Dado with their colleague Prof. Alvaro De Rujula from the CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. According to this model, the balls of matter scatter the light and matter in their path, thus creating a narrow beam of high-energy photons, electrons and atomic nuclei. When the photons in the beam reach Earth, they are observed by ground and space telescopes.

In their current article, Profs. Dar and Dado link the phenomenon of gamma-ray bursts to cosmic rays, which were discovered at the beginning of the last century and remain a mystery that has not been solved to this day. This should not be confused with the cosmic background radiation that originated in the Big Bang. The researchers explain that the magnetic fields in space scatter the electrons and atomic nuclei in the beam without them losing their energy. These particles become part of the so called cosmic rays which fill space.

Profs. Dado and Dar show that these two phenomena – cosmic rays and gamma-ray bursts – are probably born together in the birth of a neutron star or a black hole. Under this assumption, they estimated the maximum energy of GRBs, only slightly more than that of GRB 221009A.

On average, gamma-ray bursts are observed once a day, but bursts of the magnitude of GRB 221009A are estimated to reach Earth only once every 500 years. The burst observed on October 9 this year was measured by NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope and by an array of gamma-ray detectors that were installed in space. Its location was determined the next day using the giant VLT telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.

To read Profs. Dar & Dado’s article, click here

The eruption report on the NASA website: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-swift-fermi-missions-detect-exceptional-cosmic-blast

Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed an innovative technology for growing tissue for transplantation by printing it into a microgel bath as support material. The research, published in Advanced Science, was led by Professor Shulamit Levenberg and her doctoral student Majd Machour from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering along with Professor Havazelet Bianco-Peled and doctoral student Noy Hen from the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering and The Norman Seiden Multidisciplinary Graduate program in Nanoscience & Nanotechnology.

Tissue printing is an innovative approach for creating tissue for transplantation. In this technique, also called bio-printing, living cells are embedded in biological ink and printed layer upon layer. The printed tissue then undergoes growth for days or weeks until it is ready for printing.

According to Prof. Levenberg, “many research groups around the world are working on improving tissue printing, but most of them are focusing on the printing phase and the initial product – the printed tissue. However, the growth phase of the tissue – that is, the period between the printing and the transplantation in the target organ – is no less important. This is a complex period in which the printed cells divide, migrate, and secrete their extracellular matrix and attach to each other to create the tissue. One of the problems is that in this complex process, the tissues tend to distort and shrink in an uncontrolled manner.”

The Technion researchers thus focused on preventing the uneven shrinkage of the printed tissue in the weeks after printing. The solution was found through changing the medium in which the tissue is printed and grown. The new concept, print-and-grow, is based on an original medium developed by the researchers – an innovative microgel used as a support material in the process, CarGrow, which is a substance mainly composed of carrageenan (Carrageenan-K) and is produced from red algae. In fact, the new support bath preserves the size of the tissue after printing and prevents it from shrinking and losing its shape. This process allows reliable and controlled production of functional tissue in the desired size and shape. Since this material is transparent, it makes it possible for the scientists to monitor the development of the tissue through imaging.

The Technion researchers hope the new method will lead to the development of new technologies for bio-printing. The research was supported by an ERC (European Research Council) grant from the European Union.

About a year ago, Prof. Levenberg published another breakthrough in the field of bio-printing in Advanced Materials. In that study, she was able to create a printed tissue flap based on collagen and living cells containing major blood vessels and small blood vessels that feed the tissue and make possible a connection to the artery after the transplant. This allowed immediate blood flow into the engineered tissue right after the transplant, which accelerates and improves the integration of the tissue in the body. You can read more about that study here.

For the article in Advanced Science click here

Bringing together concepts from electrical engineering and bioengineering tools, Technion and MIT scientists collaborated to produce cells engineered to compute sophisticated functions – “biocomputers” of sorts. Graduate students and researchers from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Professor Ramez Daniel’s Laboratory for Synthetic Biology & Bioelectronics worked together with Professor Ron Weiss from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create genetic “devices” designed to perform computations like artificial neural circuits. Their results were recently published in Nature Communications.

The genetic material was inserted into the bacterial cell in the form of a plasmid: a relatively short DNA molecule that remains separate from the bacteria’s “natural” genome. Plasmids also exist in nature, and serve various functions. The research group designed the plasmid’s genetic sequence to function as a simple computer, or more specifically, a simple artificial neural network. This was done by means of several genes on the plasmid regulating each other’s activation and deactivation according to outside stimuli.

What does it mean that a cell is a circuit? How can a computer be biological?

At its most basic level, a computer consists of 0s and 1s, of switches. Operations are performed on these switches: summing them, picking the maximal or minimal value between them, etc. More advanced operations rely on the basic ones, allowing a computer to play chess or fly a rocket to the moon.

In the electronic computers we know, the 0/1 switches take the form of transistors. But our cells are also computers, of a different sort. There, the presence or absence of a molecule can act as a switch. Genes activate, trigger or suppress other genes, forming, modifying, or removing molecules. Synthetic biology aims (among other goals) to harness these processes, to synthesize the switches and program the genes that would make a bacterial cell perform complex tasks. Cells are naturally equipped to sense chemicals and to produce organic molecules. Being able to “computerize” these processes within the cell could have major implications for biomanufacturing and have multiple medical applications.

The Ph.D students (now doctors) Luna Rizik and Loai Danial, together with Dr. Mouna Habib, under the guidance of Prof. Ramez Daniel from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion, and in collaboration with Prof. Ron Weiss from the Synthetic Biology Center, MIT,  were inspired by how artificial neural networks function. They created synthetic computation circuits by combining existing genetic “parts,” or engineered genes, in novel ways, and implemented concepts from neuromorphic electronics into bacterial cells. The result was the creation of bacterial cells that can be trained using artificial intelligence algorithms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The group were able to create flexible bacterial cells that can be dynamically reprogrammed to switch between reporting whether at least one of a test chemicals, or two, are present (that is, the cells were able to switch between performing the OR and the AND functions). Cells that can change their programming dynamically are capable of performing different operations under different conditions. (Indeed, our cells do this naturally.) Being able to create and control this process paves the way for more complex programming, making the engineered cells suitable for more advanced tasks. Artificial Intelligence algorithms allowed the scientists to produce the required genetic modifications to the bacterial cells at a significantly reduced time and cost.

Going further, the group made use of another natural property of living cells: they are capable of responding to gradients. Using artificial intelligence algorithms, the group succeeded in harnessing this natural ability to make an analog-to-digital converter – a cell capable of reporting whether the concentration of a particular molecule is “low”, “medium”, or “high.” Such a sensor could be used to deliver the correct dosage of medicaments, including cancer immunotherapy and diabetes drugs.

Of the researchers working on this study, Dr. Luna Rizik and Dr. Mouna Habib hail from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, while Dr. Loai Danial is from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering. It is bringing the two fields together that allowed the group to make the progress they did in the field of synthetic biology.

This work was partially funded by the Neubauer Family Foundation, the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, the Technion’s Lorry I. Lokey interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

For the article in Nature Communications click here

Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed a technique to measure the long-term effects of antibiotic combinations, or cocktails. These combinations are of serious interest to the scientific and medical communities because the use of single antibiotics often leads to the rapid development of bacterial resistance to these drugs.

The research published in Nature was led by Technion researchers Professor Roy Kishony from the Faculty of Biology and Dr. Viktória Lázár, a postdoctoral student in his lab who is now working at the Synthetic and Systems Biology Unit of the Biological Research Centre in Szeged, Hungary.

The researchers discovered that in many cases, a combination of several antibiotics may actually reduce the treatment’s effectiveness in the long term – meaning that the combination of drugs could prove to be inferior to the success of each individual drug. However, they point to specific combinations that do manage to prevent the development of resistance and thus protect the patient for a long period from the aggressive bacteria.

The bacterium tested in the study is Staphylococcus aureus, a particularly violent bacterium that has developed resistance to many types of antibiotics. This bacterium is responsible for a significant part of nosocomial (in-hospital or in-clinic) infections. The study was conducted both in cultures of this bacterium in the lab and in an animal model – larvae of the Galleria mellonella moth.

Antibiotics are a family of drugs that play a central role in modern medicine and save lives on a daily basis. The natural antibiotic substances that developed during evolution in fungi and yeast were discovered about a century ago in the research of Londoner Sir Alexander Fleming, Australia-born Howard Walter Florey, and immigrant to England from Berlin who was of Russian-German-Jewish descent Ernst Boris Chain. The three shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1945. In the past century, antibiotic treatment has saved hundreds of millions of people.

However, the success of antibiotic therapy has turned into a double-edged sword because the widespread use of these anti-bacterial drugs leads to the evolutionary development of bacteria that develop resistance. This trend raises a justified fear of a post-antibiotic era, or a period when bacteria will no longer respond to antibiotic drugs and people will die, as in the past, from infections that are now considered mild and not dangerous.

The laboratory of Prof. Kishony, one of the leading experts in the field of antibiotic resistance, develops methods that make it possible to estimate in advance the resistance of a given bacterium to a given antibiotic in the present and even to predict the resistance level it is expected to develop in the future. In the current study, a combination of different antibiotic drugs that prevent the formation of resistance was examined.

The researchers noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of antibiotics, even though SARS-CoV-2 is not affected by antibiotics on account of it being a virus and not a bacterium. However, giving antibiotics helps COVID-19 patients to avoid secondary bacterial infections. With the growth of antibiotic use, the evolution of resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains accelerates.

To summarize, the Technion researchers discovered that combinations of antibiotics may harm the effectiveness of the treatment and point to specific combinations that speed up or inhibit the development of resistant bacteria. In doing so, they help pave the way for more effective treatments and the curbing of the “resistance epidemic” that threatens humanity.

Click here for the paper in the Nature

A new paper published in Nature Communications presents a study on unique peptides with anti-cancer potential. The study was led by Professor Ashraf Brik and post-doctoral fellows Dr. Ganga B. Vamisetti and Dr. Abbishek Saha from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, along with Professor Nabieh Ayoub from the Technion’s Faculty of Biology and Professor Hiroaki Suga from the University of Tokyo.

Peptides are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds, the name given to chemical bonds formed between two molecules when the carboxyl group of one molecule reacts with the amino group of the other molecule. Unlike proteins that usually contain hundreds of amino acids, peptides contain – at most – dozens of such acids. The cyclic peptides the researchers discovered bind specifically to chains of ubiquitin proteins – proteins that are usually used as a “death tag” for damaged proteins. The labeling of the damaged proteins leads to their being broken down in the proteasome, or the cell’s “garbage can.”

The discovery of the ubiquitin system led to the awarding of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to three researchers, including Distinguished Professors Aharon Ciechanover and Avraham Hershko of the Technion’s Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine.

Over the years, it became clear that the activity of the ubiquitin system depends in part on the point where the ubiquitin molecules are linked to each other in the chain. For example, linking the ubiquitin in the chain at position 48 (K48) leads to the removal of proteins to the proteasome, while linking the ubiquitin at position 63 (K63) leads to the repair of damaged DNA.

In recent years, Technion researchers have developed a new approach to influencing the ubiquitin mechanisms. Instead of interfering with the activity of enzymes that affect these mechanisms, they decided to try to directly intervene in the ubiquitin chain itself.

Based on this approach, the researchers in a previous work developed cyclic peptides that bind the K48-linked ubiquitin chains, preventing it from leading to the breakdown of the damaged proteins. This disruption gradually leads to programmed cell death. In the same study, the researchers hypothesized and then proved that when such an event formed in a malignant tumor, it killed the cancer cells, potentially protecting the patient. This discovery, published in 2019 in the journal Nature Chemistry, has led to the establishment of a new startup that is advancing the discovery towards clinical use.

In the current study, cyclic peptides that bind the chains linked to position 63 in ubiquitin and that are involved in repairing damaged DNA were discovered. The researchers found that when attached to these ubiquitin chains, such peptides disrupt the aforementioned repair mechanism. This leads to the accumulation of damaged DNA, and to cell death. Here too, when this binding occurs in cancer cells, it destroys these cells. The researchers believe this therapeutic strategy could be more effective than existing anti-cancer drugs, against which patients gradually develop a resistance.

Prof. Brik is the head of the Jordan and Irene Tark Chair in the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry. He has won many excellence awards, including the Outstanding Researcher Award from the Israel Chemical Society and the prestigious ERC (European Research Council) Advanced Grant.

For the full article in Nature Communications click here.

A new academic year brings new discoveries & achievements: a rising star, a new center of excellence, a student win, a Healthy Aging Center and more. All this in the October 2022 newsletter. Click here to read.

To a large extent, renewable energy sources depend on environmental conditions that are, over time, changing and uneven. These variables make it impossible to integrate them directly into the electricity grid, and necessitate an energy-storage system that mediates between them and the electricity grid. This presents one of the most significant challenges of our time: the development of energy-storage systems on a significant scale.

Today, flow batteries are considered to be one of the leading solutions for large-scale energy storage. In flow batteries, similar to lithium-ion batteries, an electric current is created as the result of an interaction between two materials, but the essential difference between them is that in flow batteries the materials are not solid and instead are constantly flowing.

A flow battery is a type of electrochemical cell in which chemical energy is provided by two chemical components dissolved in liquids that are then pumped through the system on separate sides of a membrane. Ion exchange accompanied by flow of electric current occurs through the membrane while both liquids circulate in their respective spaces. The most prominent advantages of flow batteries are a long life, safety, and the use of materials that do not pollute the environment. The problem is that the rate of energy release in these batteries is lower than the alternatives.

Now, a breakthrough from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology could help address that problem. The study published in Flow: Applications of Fluid Mechanics was led by doctoral student Sofia Kuperman and Dr. Rona Ronen in the laboratories of Prof. Amir Gat and Prof. Matthew Suss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Normal flow batteries have a primary flow channel. In the current study, the researchers added a secondary flow channel to the battery that is separated from the main channel by a perforated electrode. The secondary channel causes a flow to form from the main channel towards the electrode, and thus increases the number of interactions (the rate of battery discharge).

The main result of the study is that the innovative design of the flow battery makes possible a 350% faster energy discharge rate compared to the classic design of the flow batteries. The improvement suggested in the article is of great importance in speeding up the application process of flow batteries together with renewable energy sources and in reducing the carbon footprint resulting from emissions from burning fuels for the production of energy.

To read the full article, click here.

Life expectancy is consistently increasing thanks to progress in health care, science, and technology. However, longer lives have not meant an improved quality of life for the elderly. In response to this important global challenge, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has gathered researchers from different faculties in order to establish the Healthy Aging Center where they will address the growing disparity.

The initiative is headed by Professor Shai Shen-Orr of the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Professor Uri Lesmes of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, and Dr. Noga Ron-Harel of the Faculty of Biology. The Center will operate as part of the Technion Human Health Initiative (THHI), which was inaugurated last year by Technion President, Professor Uri Sivan with the goal of advancing interdisciplinary research related to health and medicine.

To map the broad potential of the Technion for impacting healthy aging, the Technion organized a nucleation event – a one-day workshop during which faculty members presented their research as well as their engineering and clinical capabilities for developing solutions to a range of challenges related to aging in the modern era and in the future. The launch event attracted more than 35 researchers and doctors from a wide range of faculties, including medicine, biology, chemistry, biomedical engineering, biotechnology and food engineering, industrial engineering and management, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering, and architecture.

During the first part of the day, participants presented research projects related to aging mechanisms and longevity from the level of the individual cell all the way up to complete organisms, including various aspects of diseases associated with aging and quality of life, and relevant clinical and pre-clinical trials. In the second part of the workshop, the discussion focused on how to organize the breadth of applied research, scientific capabilities, and engineering technologies in a goal-oriented manner that best brings the Technion’s power to bear on these problems. Topics included diagnosing and analyzing medical data, regenerative medicine, nutrition solutions, engineering of supportive technologies, and designing residential environments for senior citizens. These subjects are expected to be the focus of the research activities at the new Center.

The workshop concluded with a discussion involving the researchers, President Sivan, and Professor Alon Wolf, then-vice president for External Relations and Resource Development. The conversation focused on challenges facing the Technion in researching issues associated with aging, and the resources required to lead scientific and engineering breakthroughs that will make it possible to  age healthily in Israel and around the world.

New members of the Technion’s management:

Professor Naama Brenner – Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

A member of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Prof. Brenner completed her Ph.D. in the Technion Faculty of Physics. She is a biophysicist and a member of the Network Biology Research Lab. Her research deals with adaptation and learning in complex biological systems, in particular cells, cell populations, genetic and neural networks, and biological control at various organizational levels.

Prof. Brenner replaces Prof. Shimon Marom, who held the position from October 2019 to September 2022.

Professor Wayne Kaplan – Executive Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development

Prof. Kaplan, a faculty member in the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, completed all of his academic degrees at the Technion. He conducted his post-doctoral work at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. Prof. Kaplan is a fellow in the American Ceramic Society and the Israel Microscopy Society. He studies the structure, composition, and energy of surfaces between different materials and the development of microstructures of materials.

Prof. Kaplan was the dean of the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering from 2010 to 2014, and served as the Technion’s executive vice president for Research from 2014 to 2019. He replaces Professor Alon Wolf, who held the position of executive vice president for External Relations and Resource Development from October 2019 to September 2022.

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan congratulated Profs. Brenner and Kaplan and wished them great success in their new positions. He also thanked the three faculty members finishing their terms in management – Prof. Boaz Golani, who served as vice president and CEO of the Technion, Prof. Marom, and Prof. Wolf – for their leadership and dedication during a very challenging time.

Good luck to everyone!

Planting forests in vast semi-arid areas will not moderate global warming and may even worsen it, according to researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel in a study that contradicts some long-held assumptions.

The researchers attribute their findings partly to the fact that forested areas retain more heat than barren land, which is more reflective of solar radiation.

Based on their extensive study of the climate change mitigation potential of the world’s semi-arid areas over a total of 448 million hectares, the researchers also developed a global-scale smart map that shows how their findings can be applied anywhere at a resolution of up to a few kilometers.

In a paper published today in Science, the researchers presented a study of the potential climatic impact on global warming of large-scale afforestation. Their findings show that while semi-arid areas offer the largest potential for afforestation, even extensive afforestation is not an effective climate change mitigation solution.

These unexpected findings are attributed partly to the often overlooked “albedo effect,” which warms the Earth’s surface, according to the research led by Professor Yohay Carmel and his then-PhD student (now Dr) Shani Rohatyn from the Technion’s Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, along with Professor Dan Yakir and Dr. Eyal Rotenberg from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

“When we began the research, we expected to show that extensive planting of forests in semi-arid areas would significantly slow down climate warming,” said Prof. Carmel. “But our study disproved this accepted hypothesis. It is disappointing indeed. Yet, this is how science works – it discovers the truth regardless of what we want to discover. There is also an important lesson here – planting forests, no matter how extensive, will not save us from climate change. Instead, we should focus on reducing emissions.”

The study shows that even if trees are planted in every possible location, their carbon absorption by year 2100 would offset only about 1% of all carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. This is because areas darkened due to forestation absorb more solar radiation than exposed areas like deserts and glaciers (the so called “albedo effect”). Therefore afforestation, while absorbing large quantities of carbon, also typically increases the heating of the previously exposed surface.

The albedo effect was already known in the context of climate change, but this is the first study to produce a worldwide mapping of the phenomenon and to calculate the site-specific balance between the two contrasting effects of forestation – the cooling effect of carbon sequestration and the warming effect of change in albedo. The resulting maps give not only a global perspective of afforestation’s potential for climate change mitigation, but also inform the intelligent planning of forestry.

Dr. Shani Rohatyn, who built the model, points out that smart afforestation – that is, planting forests only in climatically beneficial places based on the current research – is expected to double the emissions offset by afforestation and to increase it even more significantly at the local and regional levels, as the researchers showed in an accompanying article.

“The climatic consequences of planting forests depend on many factors, including the reflection of local radiation from the ground, precipitation and trees’ ability to fix carbon,” said Prof. Yakir. “The good news of our research lies in the tools we developed that make it possible to predict where afforestation can indeed have a positive effect. We hope planners will take these findings into account and use them for optimal planning of planting trees.”

About half of the world’s afforestation potential is located in semi-arid areas, and large-scale plantings are already underway presently in China, Saudi Arabia, the Sahel in western and north-central Africa, and beyond. These projects are expected to transform about 5 million square kilometers of barren land into forests. The current research shows that without proper planning, these projects are liable to create undesirable climatic results, so it is important to conduct site-specific planning of planting in semi-arid areas.

“Afforestation is a process that has many advantages, including local cooling, prevention of soil erosion and more,” concluded Prof. Carmel. “However, uninformed afforestation may destroy rare species adapted to live in the open desert and thus harm biological diversity and, as mentioned, also harm the greater goal of minimizing climate warming. That is why it is so important to take into account all the considerations before starting the wholesale afforestation of large areas.”

The research was supported by the Technion and the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Stephen and Nancy Grand Water Research Institute at the Technion, Israel’s National Science Foundation, the Minerva Foundation, the Yotam Project, and the Sustainability and Energy Research Initiative (SAERI) at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

To read the full article in Science, click here

A total of 2,026 new students – 48.2% of whom are women – began their studies at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa this past Monday. The continued increase in the percentage of female students on campus in recent years is the result of an ongoing effort by the Technion’s management to encourage female high school pupils to major in STEM subjects and to increase the proportion of outstanding women who apply to study science, engineering, architecture, medicine, and teaching. On Sunday morning, a ceremony in honor of the new students was held to launch the academic year.

Technion President Professor Uri Sivan congratulated the new students and said “Today you are joining one of the leading academic institutions in the world, but first and foremost you are joining a new family – the Technion family. Along with your justified pride at being accepted to the Technion, the real challenge begins now. We expect you not only to graduate successfully and to continue the Technion tradition, but also to excel and to lead. The knowledge you will acquire at the Technion is ultimately intended to serve society and improve the quality of life for humanity on this planet, for your sake and for the sake of future generations. The Technion you are entering today is very different from that of 50 years ago, and even five years ago. Information has become accessible to everyone on a variety of platforms, and the Technion must adapt the ways of teaching to the present in order to give additional meaning to the meeting hours in the classrooms and the various forums. We place great emphasis on the quality of the teaching to provide you with the set of skills that you will need in a dynamic world that is rapidly changing. I wish you great success and a fruitful academic year.”

This year, a total of 9,061 undergraduate students will study at the Technion. The proportion of women among all undergraduate students currently stands at 44.2% – the highest in the Technion’s history since its founding in 1912. The faculties that are most in demand among the new students are those that prepare them for the hi-tech and bio-tech professions, in the tracks of electrical and computer engineering, computer science, and data and information engineering. Among master’s degree students, biomedical engineering is very popular.

 

There are also 4,275 graduate students. Some 2,940 of them are pursuing master’s degrees, 251 of whom study at the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute in New York. Some 1,335 students are pursuing a Ph.D.

     

Dean of Students Professor Ayelet Fishman said when she was studying at the Technion, female students made up just 25% of the student population. “Today, the percentage of new female students stands at 48%, and I am proud to congratulate them, as well as the other 52% who are male. Welcome to the ranks of outstanding students in Israeli academia,” she said. “You are all smart and have high academic qualifications, but in all other parameters, you are different from each other. Such differences and diversity are signs of strength, not weakness. Be open to other opinions, help those who are different from you, use these years to expand your social circle and empower yourself – and in the words of tennis legend Serena Williams, ‘A champion is defined not by their wins, but by how they can recover when they fall.’”

At the opening ceremony, Dean of Undergraduate Studies Professor Hossam Haick said: “since time immemorial, the Technion has seen its students as future leaders who will reach crossroads where important decisions are made. Our graduates are required to make decisions out of economic and social responsibility and out of integrity, professionalism and a sense of commitment to the community and society. You, the students of today, are agents of change for the future, leaders who will be ambassadors of science and technology in society.”

Liby Manash, the chairman of the Technion Student Association, told the new students: “You are excited, and this excitement stems in part from the fact that you have been accepted to the best academic institution in Israel. Be involved, don’t be afraid to fail, use these years not only for academic and professional learning but also to get to know yourself better and, above all, don’t give up meeting with friends, sports, and other activities.”

New at the Technion this academic year:

In the past year, the Technion worked to expand the Department of Humanistic Studies and Arts as part of a process designed to expose its students to humanistic subjects, such as ethics, history, art, and philosophy. This exposure will be part of their scientific-technological education, under the belief that in order to train the cutting edge of the State of Israel’s engineers, doctors, architects, and scientists, the students must be given a broad worldview that will enable them to make professional decisions with a clear social and ethical stance in the future.

An important pillar in the department’s expansion is the opening of the “Artist on Campus” program, which invites artists to the Technion to perform and present their works, lead projects and workshops for the entire Technion family, study, and conduct joint research with researchers and students. The first artists chosen to participate in the program are Dr. Orit Wolf, Nardeen Srouji, and Dr. Elad Schneiderman.

Number of students living in the dorms: Technion remains 1st in Israel

The Technion provides students with a variety of housing options on campus that include some 4,600 beds. This is the highest number among the academic institutions in Israel. In preparation for the opening of the academic year, the new Cypress Towers, the construction of which was recently completed, were inaugurated on the campus. The apartments in the new dormitories were designed in a modular way that allows them to be used as shared apartments or as apartments for young families. The opening of the new dormitories increased the housing options on campus by 390 additional beds.

Preparatory courses for the new students

In anticipation of the opening of the new academic school year, a preparatory mathematics course was held. Around 700 new students participated in the course, which was affectionately dubbed “summer camp” by the participants.

Have a great, successful academic year! Good luck with your studies!