ISRAEL

Technion-Israel Institute of Technology // A prototype of the new Israeli tuberculosis-detecting skin patch.

Israeli Nano-Patch Uses Smell to Detect TB

A new Israeli-invented skin patch will help detect tuberculosis in the hopes of reducing the number of people who die from the disease due to a lack of diagnosis, according to The Times of Israel. The disease, which is responsible for over 1.4 million deaths a year, is easily transmitted through sneezing, coughing, and spitting, with each infected person passing it on to more than 10 people on average. While treatment is available, lack of easy testing makes diagnosing the disease difficult. While the World Health Organization has estimated that 60 million lives were saved through diagnosis and treatment between 2000 and 2019, about 3 million cases are missed annually.

A research team from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has produced and tested a patch that gives a diagnosis an hour after it is attached to the skin. “The patch contains sensors made from nanoparticles, and what we’re doing is sensing changes in the smell pattern of the person, which can tell us with high accuracy whether or not they have tuberculosis,” Dr. Rotem Vishinkin told Times of Israel “Simplifying diagnosis is important for detecting cases and enabling people to be treated, and this is our focus,” Vishinkin added. He said he hoped the invention will help solve the problem of testing in less developed nations.

NEWS FROM OUR JEWISH HOME

Israeli Nanotech Uses Body to Generate Power for Pacemakers

chombosan via iStock by Getty Images // Illustration of a pacemaker in the human body.

A new Israeli nanotechnology will harvest energy in the human body to help power medical devices such as pacemakers, according to researchers at Tel Aviv University. “In the future, we’ll make it possible for all sorts of medical devices in the body, including pacemakers, to run without batteries, and instead use mechanical energy transformed to electricity in the body,” Dr. Sharon Gilead, part of the team behind the innovation, told The Times of Israel.

“It’s exciting, and will have real benefits for many people who currently need procedures every few years to remove their pacemaker and change the battery. This just won’t be necessary,” Gilead said. She believes the new innovation will allow for much smaller in-body technologies, without the need for built in batteries.

“Batteries are small, but without any need for a battery, we’ll be able to make devices smaller and thinner,” she predicted.

Facial Recognition Firm Raises $235M from Investors

Israeli firm AnyVision, a facial recognition technology firm, has raised $235 million from investors to speed up growth and development of its software, according to a company statement. The investment places the firm’s value at over $1 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The funding will help

boost the adoption of AnyVision’s artificial intelligence-based facial recognition platform to flag potentially dangerous behavior and individuals.

These new funds are “one of the largest funding rounds in the visual intelligence space in Western markets, underscoring the growing importance of AI, machine learning, and biometrics in transforming physical and perimeter security,” the statement read. Some are concerned with the use of the technology, as Microsoft pulled its investment from AnyVision last year out of fear the company may allow the technology to be used unethically..

YouTube screenshot // AnyVision has developed face recognition technology.

Today in Israeli History

July 15, 1965 — The Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, warns Lebanon and Syria they will face consequences if they move forward with an Arab League-backed effort to divert the sources of the Jordan River.

July 16, 1948 — Grammy-winning classical musician and conductor Pinchas Zukerman is born in Tel Aviv. Zukerman plays violin and viola at his debut in New York in 1969 and launches his conducting career in London in 1970.

July 17, 1906 — Yitzchak Ben-Aharon is born in Bukovina, Romania. He helps found Kibbutz Givat Haim and lives there until his death in 2006. A labor activist and World War II veteran, he serves seven Knesset terms.

July 18, 1999 — Folk-rock singer-songwriter Meir Ariel, known for his poetic lyrics, dies at age 57 of Mediterranean spotted fever. One of his most famous songs is “Jerusalem of Iron,” a response to “Jerusalem of Gold.”

July 19, 1999 — Stella Levy, who commanded the IDF Women’s Corps from 1964 to 1970, dies. During her military service she oversaw the transit camps for new immigrants. She briefly served in the Knesset in 1981.

July 20, 1951 — A Palestinian nationalist kills Jordan’s first king, Abdullah I, at the entrance to Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. He is succeeded by a grandson, Hussein, who signs a treaty with Israel 43 years later.

July 21, 1973 — A Mossad team fatally shoots a Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchiki, in Lillehammer, Norway, in the mistaken belief that he is PLO official Ali Hassan Salameh, the 1972 Munich massacre’s mastermind.

July 22, 1939 — Gila Almagor, the “queen of the Israeli cinema and theater,” is born in Haifa. She makes her stage debut at 17 and establishes herself as a leading lady during a long run at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theatre beginning in 1958.

July 23, 2002 — On a 51-41 vote, the Knesset approves the Tal Law, an effort to address the growing problem of Haredi yeshiva students avoiding military service. The Supreme Court rules the law unconstitutional in 2012.

July 24, 2013 — Rabbis Yitzhak Yosef (Sephardi) and David Lau (Ashkenazi) are appointed as Israel’s chief rabbis. Yosef’s father, Ovadia Yosef, was chief rabbi from 1973 to 1983. Lau’s father, Yisrael Meir Lau, was chief rabbi from 1993 to 2003. July 25, 1992 — Aris San, who helped popularize the Greek sound in Israeli music and opened nightclubs across Israel, dies mysteriously in Budapest at age 52. His hybrid music, laika, set the stage for the rise of Mizrahi music. July 26, 1928 — Netiva Ben Yehuda, a writer acclaimed for a trilogy based on her service in the Palmach, is born in Tel Aviv. She calls the books neither fiction nor history, but a “worm’s-eye view” of frontline trauma.

July 27, 1955 — Two Bulgarian MiG-15 fighter jets shoot down El Al Flight 402 en route from London to Israel after the Lockheed Constellation veers off course into Bulgarian airspace between Vienna and Istanbul.

July 28, 1923 — Mordechai Golinkin’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” in a movie theater marks the beginning of opera in the British Mandate of Palestine. His Palestine Opera stages 16 productions by 1945.

July 29, 1891 — Bernhard Zondek, the obstetrician-gynecologist behind one of the first reliable pregnancy tests in 1928, is born in Wronke, Germany, now in Poland. He flees Nazi Germany in 1933 and reaches Palestine in 1934.

July 30, 1992 — Tel Aviv native Yael Arad, 25, becomes the first Israeli to win an Olympic medal, taking the silver in judo in the halfmiddleweight (61-kilogram) class at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

Manhattan School of Music Pinchas Zukerman tutors students through the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music.

National Library of Israel Gila Almagor, shown in 1969, starred on stage, in film and on television and wrote novels.

Items are provided by the Center for Israel Education (israeled.org), where you can find more details.

ISRAEL NEWS

Israel First to Ban Fur Sales

By Jan Jaben-Eilon

Starting in December, Israel will be the first country in the world to ban the sale of fur, after already banning the production of fur in 1976, as other countries have also done. Although there will be exceptions for scientific research as well as educational and religious purposes, the ban – signed into law by the previous Minister of Environmental Protection Gila Gamliel – will prohibit the sale, importation and exportation of any items that contain real fur, including jackets and accessories.

“Israel has just made history and put yet another nail in the cruel fur industry’s coffin,” said PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is popping the cork on the champagne in celebration of this huge step toward a day when no animals are suffocated or skinned alive for collars and cuffs.”

Moira Colley, press outreach manager of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) in New York, suggested that the United Kingdom may soon follow Israel’s lead.

In Israel, the religious fur items that will be exempted are shtreimel hats, said Jane Halevy Moreno, founder of International Anti-Fur Coalition. “There are wonderful synthetic fur shtreimels and we hope that soon enough ultra-Orthodox men in Israel and worldwide will all switch to fake fur shtreimels. We hope that this change will be led by religious leaders within the Jewish communities.”

Israel is the first country to ban the sale of furs, said Halevy Moreno, because “we were the first ones to establish and introduce such a groundbreaking bill proposal,” referring to IAFC’s efforts. That was 12 years ago and since then, IAFC “never stopped believing and fighting for this achievement to finally take place.”

IAFC received plenty of Israeli support in its efforts. PETA reported that the banning of fur sales received support from 86 percent of Israelis. “The Israeli public, fashion designers, politicians from all spectrums at the Knesset strongly supported this groundbreaking bill,” Halevy Moreno said. “The reason it took so long to outlaw the sale of fur was because of the strong pro-fur lobby that had constantly sabotaged all our efforts for years. We applaud the Israeli government for finally taking the historic leap towards making fur-for-fashion history. All animals suffer horrifically at the hands of this cruel and backwards industry. IAFC has claimed for years that ‘nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come’.”

Over the years, PETA has conducted a number of video investigations into the global fur industry. These investigations have revealed that animals on fur farms spend their lives confined to cramped, filthy wire cages, according to PETA. “Fur farmers use the cheapest killing methods available, including neck-breaking, suffocation, poisoning and genital electrocution. Animals are still alive and struggling when workers hang them up by their legs or tails to skin them.”

PETA’s motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear.” PETA also noted that California banned the sale of new fur statewide in 2019, as have numerous top designers and retailers, including Macy’s, Nordstrom, Burberry, Gucci, Versace, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo and Giorgio Armani.

Halevy Moreno said the fact that a whole country has outlawed the sale of fur “sends a strong message worldwide about the cruelty of fur. It sends a message that the 2021 status of fur is a status of ignorance, selfishness, arrogance, heartlessness. If such a bill was not that meaningful the world over, it would not have taken us 12 whole years to finally achieve this victory.”

She also added that she is “proud” and “grateful” that Israel “chose moral justice, ethics and compassion over profits, political interests and greed. We believe that this choice will influence other locations worldwide.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Israel also has what is believed the highest percentage of vegans globally, with an estimated 5 percent to 8 percent of the entire population being vegan. In fact, according to The Jerusalem Post, Israel was third on the international food magazine Chef’s Pencil list of top countries for vegans in 2020, ranking behind Australia and the United Kingdom. ì

Photo by Ronen Machleb for IAFC // IAFC founder Jane Halevy Moreno, who lives in Israel, at an anti-fur demonstration.

Having a best friend in the kitchen. That’s the Power of WE.

Imagine your life having a complete support system. It's like an extended family working together, supporting you, lifting you up, raising your spirits and making life easier. Every day. Your meals, your prescriptions, your chores, even a hobby or two, all looked after and taken care of. Smiles at every turn, a joke with a neighbor, a chef who knows just how you like your favorite meal. A life thriving through connection. That’s senior living at The Piedmont.

LUNCH & LEARN Thursday, August 5th • 11:30am

Join us for an informative presentation on senior living and the exceptional services & safeguards offered. Afterwards, take a tour of our beautiful community and enjoy a lunch prepared by our culinary team. Seating is limited. To make a reservation, please call 404.496.5492.

CARF-ACCREDITED INDEPENDENT & ASSISTED LIVING RESIDENCES 650 Phipps Boulevard NE • Atlanta, Georgia 404.496.5492