San Diego Jewish World, May 27, 2007

Rep. Wasserman-Schultz helps to collect
memories of U.S. veterans for archiving

DAVIE, Florida (Press Release) -- In recognition of Memorial Day, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) today hosted the Veterans History Project, aimed at collecting the stories of those in our community who have served our nation.

Wasserman Schultz’s event at Florida Atlantic University provided local high school students an opportunity to interview local U.S. Veterans and gather first-hand accounts of their experiences from World War I to the current Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. Each interview was videotaped and sent to the Library of Congress to be archived.

Veterans or those who contributed to the war effort (Red Cross, “Rosie the Riveter,” U.S.O., etc.) were encouraged to come and share their stories and to bring photos, medals, artwork or letters that relate to their service for their country. The congresswoman said the materials will be digitally scanned and stored along with their interview in an archive held by the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and will be accessible on the internet.

The foregoing article was based on information provided by Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz’s office.

Israeli University Research

Baby less attentive to playtime activities? It
may mean that he or she is learning to walk

HAIFA (Press Release)—Your baby, who used to play so nicely, suddenly seems less attentive and appears to have difficulty concentrating. There could be a good reason for this—it could be that he is beginning to walk. New research at the Faculty of Education of the University of Haifa found that a baby's learning to walk affects his play skills.

"Parents need to know that they should modify their demands from their child during certain periods of change and development in order to encourage their child and enhance his feelings of mastery and competence," said Dr. Eleanor Schneider who conducted the research under the direction of Prof. Anat Scher.

The research was based on the assumption that the domain of play reflects the interaction between the child and his environment. When a child begins to walk, the way in which he experiences his environment changes. This change may be manifested in the way he plays. In order to examine this assumption, sixty children were evaluated at ages 10, 12 and 14 months. The researcher measured the child's play using three parameters: persistence and engagement in a specific task while playing with objects, attention span and concentration and the level of sophistication of object play.

Results revealed a tendency to a decrease in the child's level of persistence, concentration and attentiveness at the onset of walking in comparison to the pre-walking stage. This "regression" in play behavior was short-term since the child's persistence and attentiveness tended to increase and improve after mastering the initial stages of independent walking. The researcher also witnessed a regression, albeit not decisive, in task-directed behaviors during this period.

The researcher also found differences between the level of play of children who had already begun to walk and children of the same age who were not yet walking. Those children who had mastered independent walking exhibited a higher level of play than their non-walking peers.

"In order to enable a child to develop in an encouraging, nurturing environment, parents need to adjust their expectations according to their child's current stage of development. Parents, as well as researchers in the field, need to take into account that processes involving attention and persistence are likely to be influenced by current motor processes being experienced by the child," explained Dr. Schneider.

The foregoing story was provided by the University of Haifa.

Hebrew University researcher finds way
to watch the development of brain cells

JERUSALEM (Press Release)—For the first time anywhere, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has succeeded in observing in vivo the generation of neurons in the brain of a mammal.

Dr. Adi Mizrahi of the Department of Neurobiology at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences at the Hebrew University, used mouse models to study how neurons, or nerve cells, develop from an undifferentiated cellular sphere into a rich and complex cell. This has great significance for the future of brain research, said Dr. Mizrahi, since “the structural and functional complexity of nerve cells remains one of the biggest mysteries of neuroscience, and we now have a model to study this complexity directly.”

The results of Dr. Mizrahi’s groundbreaking work appeared in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience. Using special microscopic imaging techniques, combined with virus gene technology, Dr. Mizrahi was able to develop an experimental model to study development of neural dendrites in vivo. The dendrites are the string-like extensions of the neuron that spread out to reach other neurons and serve as the points of communication between the neurons.

The model employed by Dr. Mizrahi in his research was the newborn neuron population which develops into the olfactory bulb of adult mice, providing them with a sense of smell. The development and maintenance of newborn neurons in this area was assessed by time-lapse imaging over several days at different stages of development. Mizrahi revealed that dendritic formation is highly dynamic. Moreover, once incorporated into the network, adult-born neurons in the study also remained dynamic and capable of continuous change.

This method provides a mechanism for observing, for the first time in a mammal, how a neuron develops into a rich and complex cell and how, once developed, neurons are maintained in the highly active and changing environment of the brain.

As for further research that some day could lead to significant breakthroughs in treatment of neural disorders, Dr. Mizrahi noted that “there are only a few small areas in the brain which are capable of neurogenesis, and they hide secrets we want to reveal.”

The foregoing article was provided by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Technion/ RPI team discovers a new
method for bonding using 'nanolayers'

HAIFA—Technion researchers, in cooperation with a group of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, have found an original way to significantly improve bonding and adhesion between various materials. This was revealed in the latest issue of the prestigious scientific journal Nature.

Prof. Moshe Eizenberg of Technion’s Materials Engineering Department and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, together with Prof. Ganapathiraman Ramanath from RPI, have found an innovative way to bond and adhere materials using nanolayers. These layers are short, organic chains, each one containing groups of atoms that bond to the appropriate surface.

The concrete example upon which the Nature article is based is an original interface in microelectronics between copper layers and silicon oxide (silica) using a nanolayer that is inserted as a diffusion barrier – namely, in order to prevent failure of the devices caused by penetration of copper atoms into the active area of the devices. The research proved that heating the stack to a high temperature (up to 700 degree Celsius) produces a sevenfold increase in adhesion strength. Since the molecules are trapped between the two surfaces, the heating stabilizes the molecular layer producing the desired result, and creating adhesion on every one of its sides through strong chemical bonds. The improved bond using layers of these dimensions is a scientific innovation.

The importance of this discovery to microelectronics translates into improved device performance and greater reliability. In addition, this discovery could be used in nanometric devices that contain organic molecules and need to withstand high temperatures.

The joint research was supported by the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation for three years.

The foregoing article was provided by Technion

Ben Gurion University of the Negev finds a method
to track pollution before it percolates into groundwater

BEER-SHEVA—A new and valuable tool for fighting soil and ground water pollution has been developed by Dr. Ofer Dahan, a researcher at the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research (ZIWR) at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

The information was made public May 16 as part of the 30^th Anniversary celebrations of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research as part of the University’s 37^th Annual Board of Governors meeting. At the same event, the new building for the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research was dedicated.

The Water & Contaminants Monitoring System (W&CMS) provides, for the first time, a simple, fast and cost-effective monitoring system that providing real time data on water and contaminate transport in the areas above the level of ground water, known as the vadose zone. The vadose zone includes the upper soil and rock layers which lies between the land surface and the aquifer water table beneath. Both water and contaminants must pass through the vadose zone prior to entering the water aquifer.

According to Dahan, most sources of man-made pollution originate on land surface right above the vadose zone, including industry, intensive agriculture, landfills and waste lagoons. Unfortunately, vadose zones are not hydraulically isolated – and as a result water and contaminants may rapidly migrate through downward towards the water table and pollute the groundwater. There is evidence that even the thickest vadose zones have limited ability to buffer against the contaminants. (jump to continuation)

Jews in the News
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Like you, we're pleased when members of our community are praiseworthy, and are disappointed when they are blameworthy. Whether it's good news or bad news, we'll try to keep track of what's being said in general media about our fellow Jews. Our news spotters are Dan Brin in Los Angeles, Donald H. Harrison in San Diego, and you. Wherever you are, if you see a story of interest, please send a summary and link to us at sdheritage@cox.net. To see a source story click on the link within the respective paragraph.
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*Randy Cohen, vice president of Americans for the Arts, says the impact of the arts on the American economy is important. In 2005, for example, they accounted for $166.2 billion in spending and 5.7 million jobs. Laurence Arnold of Bloomberg News has the story in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.

*Psychologist Leonard Eron, who warned parents that their children could suffer from watching too much violence on television, has died at 87. An obituary by Patricia Sullivan of The Washington Post is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.

*Deborah Messing plays the lead in a new TV series, The Starter Wife, about a woman who must cope with normal life after she is dumped by her high-powered Hollywood executive husband. The story by Mary McNamara is in today's Los Angeles Times.

*Alan Nevin, chief economist with the California Building Industry Association, said an economic model by UCSD student Rob Gertz that San Diego will face its worst foreclosure rates on homes over the next three years, is well conceptualized and executed, but that he nevertheless expects foreclosures to "spike" and then settle back to normal rates. The story by Roger Showley is in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.

*Aida Oceransky, a Mexican Jew of Ukrainian origin now living in Spain, says Spaniards are manifesting a revival of interest in Sephardic culture. The story by Michael Levitin is in today's Los Angeles Times.

*Black and White, a novel by Dani Shapiro about an artist who used her daughter as a subject for drawings that were somewhere between high art and pedophilia, has drawn a favorable review from Scott Eyman in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.

*The chairman of the California Horseracing Board, Richard Shapiro, has hired a contractor to the board, Darrell Vienna, to train his own horses, prompting conflict-of-interest questions. The story by Nancy Vogel is in today's Los Angeles Times.

*Civil Rights attorney Carol Sobol has noted that one of the police officers involved in the May Day melee at MacArthur Park—Cmdr. Louis Gray—also was involved in a 2000 incident at Parker Center in which non-lethal force was used on demonstators, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits. Patrick McGreevy and Richard Winton have the story in today's Los Angeles Times.

*Syndicated columnist Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post has invented a new phrase "Googlenopes"—word combinations that even the powerful Google search engine can't find because they don't exist until someone like Weingarten writes a column. His first example: "unintelligent Jew." His column appears in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.

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The Jewish Grapevine

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U.S.-ISRAEL CONNECTIONS— Bar Ilan University on May 24 recently conferred its "Guardian of Zion" Award on Norman Podhoretz, editor at large of Commentary Magazine. Since 1997 when the award for strengthening and perpetuating Jerusalem was given to Elie Wiesel, the annual winners have been A.M. Rosenthal, Sir Martin Gilbert, Cynthia Ozick, Charles Krauthammer, Ruth Roskies Wisse, Arthur Cohn and Daniel Pipes. ..Letters bearing on the Middle East situation from Fred Remington of Del Mar and Merv Spahn of La Mesa are included in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.... Norman Podhoretz

Monitoring programs for ground water protection from pollution hazards were traditionally based on information pulled from groundwater. This monitoring method is well-established around the world, and there are even laws in several countries requiring this type of groundwater monitoring for potential polluters. But the method is flawed. The penetration into the groundwater for monitoring may turn out to cause irreversible damage and cleaning of the contaminated ground water in complicated and extremely expensive.

Moreover, this could not provide any protection to groundwater since identification of contamination in groundwater is by definition too late as groundwater is already contaminated. Note, the so far no groundwater remediation anywhere around the glob has been successful, and no aquifer has ever been fully remediate, in spite of the multi-billion dollar investment in remediation actions. Therefore, monitoring of contaminate transport in the vadose zone, long before it reached the groundwater is the key to groundwater protection, and removing contaminants from vadose zones is a logical approach to preserving the quality, and therefore, the quantity of groundwater resources. Yet, accurate and affordable monitoring technology hasn’t been available -- until now.

The newly developed system is designed to provide continuous measurements of soil water content and water potential in the vadose zones.“The W&CMS has been successfully installed in several places Israel, as well as in other countries where it has demonstrated that it can enhance the overall protection of human the environment and particularly groundwater,” explains Dahan, “by providing earlier and better control of downward water flow and contaminant migration towards the groundwater.”

Fighting groundwater pollution is critically important to many activities, including those associated with agriculture, forestry, hydrology, pollution abatement and engineering.

In recent years, there has been increased environmental awareness and as a result, a greater demand for this kind of pollution monitoring. Solid waste dumps, petroleum stations, waste water treatment plants, chemical industries and many more other activities that might pollute soil and groundwater all need close and careful inspection. The availability of W&CMS system will give governments as well as environmental protection organization more power to demand that potential polluters stay within guidelines and better protect the quality of water and as a result, the quality of life.

The foregoing release was provided by Ben Gurion University of the Negev