The Technion will partner with the Carasso family to renovate the FoodTech building and make it more advanced.

The Technion will be partnering with the Carasso Family and Carasso Motors in revamping the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering. The building that is currently known as the Food Industries Center will be renovated and turned into the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center and will be dedicated to promoting cutting-edge food technologies, teaching, research and development (R&D).

The renovations will expand and upgrade the building, making it unique to Israel, and one of the most advanced of its kind in the world. It will include an R&D center for industrial production, a packaging laboratory, an industrial kitchen, and tasting and evaluation units. There will also be a visitors area for high-school students to be exposed to the world of FoodTech and startups.

“Eradicating world hunger and improving food security are among the main challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, as defined by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “The Technion has the only faculty in Israel for research in food engineering, a faculty that leads the Israeli FoodTech industry.

“We are grateful to the Crasso Family for their generous contribution, which will establish the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center, and will help us promote groundbreaking scientific research in the field, train the next generation of the Israeli FoodTech industry and maintain the faculty’s position at the global forefront of research and development.

“In 1924, our grandfather Moshe immigrated with his family to Israel from Thessaloniki, where he was one of the leaders of the Jewish community,” said Yoel Carasso, chairman of Carasso Motors. In Israel, he cofounded Discount Bank, Ophir Cinema and of course, Carasso Motors. For me and for my uncle Shlomo and my cousins – Ioni, Orli, Tzipa and Arik – this is coming full circle from a century ago.

“We chose to support the Carasso FoodTech Innovation center since the Technion is synonymous with excellence. The Technion is an engine for combining basic and applied science in the Galilee and in Israel as a whole. We believe the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center will contribute to the industry and to collaborative work in this field, and thus strengthen the Israeli economy and society. Our family has a history of supporting the Technion, and when the opportunity to establish this center sprang, we knew it was our calling to lead.

“The faculty is one of the only ones in the world that combines the disciplines of bioengineering, technology, food sciences and life sciences,” said Prof. Marcelle Machluf, the faculty’s dean. “Coping with the COVID-19 pandemic has only emphasized the importance of food and biotechnology in maintaining our existence and meeting future existential challenges. To address the many challenges in this field, including access to healthy, affordable food and innovative medical treatments, we need advanced infrastructure that will enable the integration of new engineering and scientific tools; these will enable us to develop the necessary technologies, as well as the infrastructure and equipment that will support the development and assimilation of knowledge required to tackle tomorrow’s food challenges.”

“Carasso Motors, with its various brands – Renault, Nissan, Infinity and Dacia – is committed to innovation and connection with our diverse customer base in Israel,” said Isaac Weitz, CEO of Carasso Motors. “Food technology is an evolving field that brings value in many ways to our stockholders. Food research tackled environmental and global warming challenges, providing food security and a balanced diet, accelerating paramedical developments that combine medicine and food, and of course, contributing to the development of innovative solutions that will put Israel at the forefront of science globally.

“At Carasso Motors, we jumped at the opportunity to make such a significant contribution to the establishment of this advanced research center, which will also improve and advance Israel’s education and society.”

Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a new, low-cost, low-energy system for producing hydrogen from water.

Water electrolysis is an easy way of producing hydrogen gas. While hydrogen is considered a clean, renewable fuel, efficient electrolysis requires high electric potential, high pH and in most cases, catalysts based on ruthenium and other expensive metals.

As detailed in an article in The Journal of the American Chemical Society and reported on the university’s website, Technion researchers have developed a unique system for producing hydrogen from water using little energy and inexpensive materials. Led by Professor Galia Maayan, head of the Biomimetic Chemistry Laboratory at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, along with doctoral student Guilin Ruan, this is the fastest system of its kind reported to date that uses available copper catalysts.

Maayan and Ruan designed and developed a system in which the catalyst is soluble in water. The system is based on three elements: copper ions; a peptide-like oligomer (small molecule) that binds the copper and maintains its stability; and a compound called borate whose function is to maintain the pH in a limited range.

The major innovation in this work is the researchers’ discovery that the borate compound helps stabilize the metallic center and helps catalyze it.

Maayan explained that the inspiration for the new system came from enzymes (biological catalysts) that use the protein’s peptide chain to stabilize the metallic center and by natural energetic processes such as photosynthesis, which are driven by units that use solar energy to transport electrons and protons.

The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program.

Israel’s leading tech institution, the Technion, has been rated the number one institute in leading European machine-learning research in a rating by CSRankings.

Israel’s leading tech institution, the Technion, has been rated the number one institute leading machine-learning research in Europe in a rating by CSRankings. The rating is based on data gathered between 2016 and 2021.

The Technion also placed 15th globally in artificial intelligence research and 11th in machine learning.

Some 46 people are researching AI at the Technion and over 100 are conducting research in the fields of industrial robotics, cybersecurity and smart vehicles. Some 42 of these researchers have done work that was published up to 30 times at computer science conferences, according to the rankings.

The Technion’s Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems research center has led groundbreaking research in AI both in Israel and worldwide, collaborating with other institutions involved in research in the field such as Carnegie Mellon University and American software company PTC, and connecting researchers with the industry.

“We are very proud of the recognition The Technion has received in its contribution to artificial intelligence – especially as it continues to make deep and personal connections with others in the field and a significant impact on what we can hope to expect from it in the future,” the Director of Technion UK, Alan Aziz, said.

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa has attained global prestige for work in numerous scientific fields, including life sciences, biotechnology, stem-cell research, sustainable energy, water management, materials engineering and aerospace and information technology. Over 13,000 students currently attend the university.

The risk of severe disease dropped by factor of almost 20 in people over 60—but some dispute the benefits of offering an additional dose

Older Israelis who have received a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine are much less likely to test positive for SARS-CoV-2 or to develop severe COVID-19 than are those who have had only two jabs, according to a highly anticipated study published on 15 September.

The standard regimen for messenger RNA-based COVID-19 vaccines is two doses, but some governments, including Israel’s, have started administering third ‘booster’ shots. The latest study evaluated 1.1 million Israelis over the age of 60 who had received their first two doses at least five months earlier. Twelve or more days after receiving a third jab, participants were about 19.5 times less likely to have severe COVID-19 than were people in the same age group who had received only two jabs and were studied during a similar time period.

“It’s a very strong result,” says Susan Ellenberg, a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who adds that the data might be the most robust she has seen in favour of boosters. But potential biases in the data leave some scientists unconvinced that boosters are necessary for all populations—and the data do not dispel concerns about vaccine equity when billions of people are still waiting for their first jab.

Israel, which got an early start on vaccinating its population, began offering third doses of the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine in July, to people aged 60 and over. The latest analysis links the third jab not only with a significant reduction in severe COVID-19, but also with an 11.3-fold reduction in SARS-CoV-2 infections.

But Ellie Murray, an epidemiologist at Boston University in Massachusetts, cautions that observational studies such as this analysis can contain biases that are difficult to identify and account for. For example, people who sign up to get a booster might have a different risk of COVID-19, or behave differently, from people who do not get a third jab.

Ellenberg says that the authors try to address some of these potential biases. Even if not all biases have been eliminated, she says, the magnitude of the effect suggests that the booster offers some protection, at least in the short term. The authors of the study could not be reached before publication.

GLOBAL RAMIFICATIONS

The findings come as a slew of wealthier nations consider offering booster shots. An advisory committee of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will discuss Pfizer’s application to supply boosters in the United States on 17 September. One of the authors of the Israeli study is slated to present data to the committee.

Murray argues that the potential biases in the data, and insufficient evidence for waning immunity after vaccination, mean that the latest findings don’t indicate a “strong need” for boosters. “From a public-health perspective, it’s way, way more impactful to get more people vaccinated than it is to boost the vaccine effectiveness by a few percentage points in those who have already gotten the vaccine,” she says.

Murray is not alone in finding the Israeli results insufficient to justify boosters. A review published on 13 September by a team that includes two high-ranking FDA scientists cites a preprint of the study and notes that the short-term protective effect documented in Israel “would not necessarily imply worthwhile long-term benefit”.

Dvir Aran, a biomedical data scientist at Technion—Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, says that Israel has deployed boosters to stop transmission in younger people and to prevent severe disease and deaths in older people.

“Is it the best way? Whether a two-week lockdown would have given a similar result, I can’t answer that question,” he says. “But it’s an interesting approach, trying to stop an outbreak like this with vaccinations.”

SOURCE

Study: COVID booster recipients 20 times more protected against serious illness

As US officials set to mull okaying Pfizer’s 3rd dose, data from a million Israelis shows it boosts protection from infection tenfold compared with eligible people who got 2 shots

A new study conducted in Israel shows that individuals given a third COVID-19 vaccine dose are nearly twenty times more protected against serious illness and more than ten times more protected against infection, compared with those who received their second dose at least five months previously.

The research, published on Wednesday by The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that 12 days after receiving a booster shot of a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the chance of infection was 11.3 times less than among those eligible for a third shot but didn’t get one.

And the chance of suffering serious illness as a result of COVID-19 among those who had received a booster shot was 19.5 times less, the research said.

The study was conducted by researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Ministry of Health, the Technion, the Hebrew University, Sheba Medical Center, and the KI Institute.

Even with a more conservative analysis, which attempted to control possible behavioral differences between the two groups, the infection rate was at least 5 times lower in the group that had received the booster shot, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

The research includes data from more than 1 million Israelis. Among those who hadn’t received a booster shot despite being eligible, there were 4,439 confirmed infections, including 294 serious patients. Among those who received the booster at least 12 days previously, there were 934 infections including 29 serious cases.

The Israeli data could not say how long the boosted protection lasts.

But a separate study conducted at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, outside Tel Aviv, has stoked optimism as to the amount of time for which the booster shot retains its protection.

The study found that the antibody levels a week after the third COVID-19 vaccine dose was administered to its staff were ten times higher than their levels a week after the second dose was administered.

Israel — the first country to officially offer a third dose — began its COVID-19 booster campaign on August 1, initially rolling it out to those over the age of 60. It then gradually dropped the eligibility age, eventually expanding it to everyone aged 12 and up who received the second shot at least five months ago.

As of Thursday, nearly 3 million Israelis had received their third dose.

Meanwhile in the US, influential government advisers will debate Friday if there’s enough proof that a booster dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective — the first step toward deciding which Americans need one and when.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday posted much of the evidence its advisory panel will consider.

Pfizer’s argument is that while protection against severe disease is holding strong in the US, immunity against milder infection wanes somewhere around six to eight months after the second dose.

More important, Pfizer said, those antibodies appear strong enough to handle the extra-contagious Delta variant that is surging around the world.

To bolster its case, Pfizer pointed the FDA to the new data from Israel.

Pfizer said the data published on Thursday translates to “roughly 95% effectiveness” against Delta — comparable to the protection seen shortly after the vaccine’s rollout earlier in the year.

In Israel, the R-value — the reproduction rate of the virus measuring the average number of people each positive person infects — rose to 1.14 on Thursday, after it had hit a 4-month low of 0.81 just days earlier.

Any number over 1 indicates infections are rising, while a figure below that signals that an outbreak is abating.

There were 8,601 new COVID-19 cases diagnosed on Wednesday, according to the Health Ministry.

Of the 83,704 active cases, 654 are in serious condition. Since the start of the pandemic last year, 7,465 people have died of COVID-19 complications in Israel.

Robots have captured the imaginations – and often raised the fears – of people for at least a century. These programmable machines perform boring, repetitive and dangerous tasks that people prefer not to or are unable to do because of size limitations or because they function in extreme environments such as in outer space or at the bottom of the sea.

The term comes from a Slavic root, robot-, with meanings connected to the word “labor” and was first used to denote a fictional humanoid in a Czech-language play R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti – Rossum’s Universal Robots) written 101 years ago by Karel Čapek, (although it was apparently Karel’s brother Josef  who first gave the concept a name).

A robot may be guided by an externally controlled device or the control may be embedded inside its body. Robots can be constructed to look like humans or even dogs, but most robots are functional machines that perform tasks efficiently and thus designed without much attention to aesthetics.

They can be programmed to function autonomously or semi-autonomously and include humanoids such as Honda’s ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) – the apex of 20 years of robotics research that can run, walk on uneven slopes and surfaces, climb stairs, turn smoothly, reach for and grasp objects and even understand and respond to simple voice commands. Robots are beginning to assist in hospitals, take hotel guests to their rooms, accept and deliver food orders and carry out numerous other tasks. But more common are industrial robots that build cars and perform other manufacturing work in factories, medical operating robots, high-flying drones that observe and even attack enemies, patient-assist robots and dog therapy robots that assist and reduce loneliness among the elderly and the disabled.

The 1966 American science fiction movie Fantastic Voyage about a submarine crew who are shrunk to microscopic size and float inside the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain even presaged microscopic nano robots that today are hinting that they are no longer science fiction.

One of the world’s leaders in medical robots – the founder of numerous companies, the inventor with more than 100 individual patents publisher of more than 200 technical papers and three books and the teacher who has inspired many young people in Israel and around the world to enter the field – is Emeritus Prof. Moshe Shoham, who was born in Haifa. His official title is bearer of the Tamara and Harry Handelsman Academic Chair and director of the robotic laboratory in the department of mechanical engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
in Haifa.

In 1978, Shoham earned his bachelor of science degree from the Technion in in the Faculty of Aeronautical Engineering, worked in Israel Aerospace Industries followed four years later by a master’s degree from its Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and a doctorate in 1986 from that same faculty. His main professional interests are robotic systems (kinematics and dynamics of robots), multi-fingered hands, sensor-based robots and medical robotics.

There were no approved medical robots in the world when he began. The pioneer in this area was a company named ISS, which developed a robot for replacing the hip joint, thereby opening the market, but eventually it failed to obtain approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company closed down in 2005, exactly when Shoham’s company, Mazor Robotics Ltd., got its marketing approval. In 2001, he founded Mazor, which was acquired in 2018 by the global medical electronics company Medtronic for $1.64 billion.

After working in the Israel Aerospace Industries, Shoham served as an assistant professor at Columbia University in New York and established the robotic laboratory at the department of mechanical engineering, a visiting professor at Stanford University in California. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and a International Member of the US National Academy of Engineering,

Among his numerous awards, are honorary membership – Israel Society for Medical and Biological Engineering, 2020; the Maurice E. Müller Award for Excellence in Computer Assisted Surgery, 2019; Innovation Award – Surgical Robot Challenge, Imperial College, London, 2016; Fellow –Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2015; International Member – US National Academy of Engineering, 2014; Thomas A. Edison Patent Award – American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 2013; Hershel Rich Innovation Award, 2011; Technology Award – the Society for Medical Innovation and Technology (SMIT), 2008; Fellow – The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2008; Outstanding Israeli project – ROBOCAST: ROBOt and sensors integration for Computer Assisted Surgery and Therapy, European Union 7th Framework Program for Research and Technological Development. Awarded by the European Commission to the State of Israel, 2007; Kaplan Prize for Creative Management of High Technology, 2002; and the Juludan Award for Outstanding Scientific Research Achievements, 1999. Shoham is particularly proud of the recent 2021 Yigal Allon Prize for Pioneering Excellence – given annually to individuals, entities or organizations whose activity serves as a model of pioneering excellence and a significant contribution to Israeli society – that he received recently.

The 2021 prize was awarded jointly to Shoham and Start-Up Nation Central for their work in promoting Israeli innovation in industry. “The entire state of Israel walks in your path,” Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said in congratulatory remarks.

Among the most memorable and thought-provoking award for Shoham was in 1999, when he received a research award for the development of a robot that performs knee replacement surgery with great precision.

“Next to me, Prof. Gershon Golomb from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Faculty of Medicine also received the award. The winners’ families were invited to the award ceremony. At the entrance to the hall, I saw and was shocked that instead of coming to me, my mother fell into the arms of the mother of Prof. Golomb whom I did not know and burst into tears. When they stopped crying, my mother told me that Golomb’s mother shared with her a wooden bunk in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust. They encouraged and strengthened each other during all that terrible time.”

This moving event “made me wonder: how many more people could have received the prize but did not because they were murdered in the Holocaust.” Among them were potential writers, poets, musicians, scientists, rabbis, actors, geniuses, shoemakers, carpenters, tanners. “How many worlds will no longer be created, and why?!”

Indeed, if the mothers of Prof. Shoham and Prof. Golomb had (God forbid) perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, their sons would never had been born and their great healing and lifesaving accomplishments would have been lost to the world.

Shoham’s father was born in Romania and escaped from Europe during the Nazi era, fortunately moving to Israel, where he settled in the youth village and agricultural settlement of Mikve Yisrael and helped establish a kibbutz called Tehiya. His mother was born in Czechoslovakia, and after being liberated from the concentration camp, moved to Palestine where she met her future husband at the kibbutz.

Moshe, who recalls that his family lived in modest circumstances, liked from boyhood to build and fix things. That hobby led to his outstanding mechanical engineering career.

Today, he and his wife  live in Hoshaya, a national-religious community settlement in the Lower Galilee. The village was established in three decades ago as a Nahal settlement, originally planned for soldiers from moshavim in the Galilee and later manned by soldier of the Religious Nahal Youth Aliyah, Three years later, it was transferred to civilians, and 15 families moved into caravans on the site, with some of the original Nahal soldiers remaining.

At Stanford, Shoham began to think about developing medical robots, which were then in their infancy. “I returned to Israel and called surgeons in all the hospitals. Even though medicine is very conservative, some of them were very supportive of the idea,” he recalled in an interview. “Some were opposed to the use of robots in surgery, and a few of them said it will not work and no robot would ever replace a human surgeon.” “we would like to apply robots at those tasks in which robots excel – accuracy and accessibility – but the decision making will always remain with the surgeon.”

Shoham established Mazor Robotic company, specializing in spinal surgery. Shoham founded a number of companies, each with a robotic surgery specialty. One company that is based on technology developed in his medical robotic laboratory donated by the late Betty and Dan Kahn, is Xact robotics, which has developed a robot for precise navigating  of flexible needle within the body. This technology is suitable for a variety of types of operations requiring penetration by a narrow instrument to a precise point deep within the body, such as biopsies, injections of drugs into internal organs, ablation (precise searing of tissue within the body) and drainage from within the body.

Another company he founded, Diagnostic Robotics, aims at dramatically reducing the time spent in emergency rooms. Shoham does not discuss what this robot can do, so it is possible that it can already perform several physical examinations even before the doctor.

ForSight Robotics is developing a surgical robotic platform for eye surgery to assist ophthalmologists. Microbot Medical (a company listed on Nasdaq as MBOT) that he co-founded has developed a system that includes miniature robots for internal cleaning of an implanted medical device, including devices implanted in the brain. His Microbot ViRob, an autonomous advancing micro robot – less than one millimeter in diameter, has the ability to crawl within cavities and lumens, allowing physicians to target a disease site with amazing precision.

So far, the device has completed animal trials; in the future, the product is likely to also prove suitable for cleaning blood vessels so as prevent heart attacks and strokes.

A company based on his doctoral student Hadas Ziso’s thesis is Tamar Robotics, which is developing a surgical robot for revolutionizing brain surgery, finally giving doctors a safer, minimally invasive tool to remove tumors and blood clots and treat other life-threatening brain conditions that now require major surgery.

“We hope we will be able to let the people suffering from these conditions get back to their lives,” Shoham says. “We believe that our robotic system is additional outstanding armament in the surgeon’s hand that can be used at those instances they perform better  than a surgeon’s free hand.” The neurosurgery robot has been tested so far on rodents, removing tumors from their brains, and removing blood hemorrhages from the brains of pigs. Shoham expects it will be permitted to be used in clinical trials in two years or so.

In many cases of robot-assisted minimally-invasive surgery, instead of directly moving the instruments, the surgeon uses telemanipulation one or several robot hands to administer the surgery. A telemanipulator is a remote manipulator that allows the surgeon to perform the normal movements associated with the surgery. The robotic arms carry out those movements using end-effectors and manipulators to perform the actual surgery.

One advantage of using the computerized method is that the surgeon does not have to be present, leading to the possibility for remote surgery.

In 1985 a robot, the Unimation Puma 200, was used to orient a needle for a brain biopsy while under computerized tomography guidance during a neurological procedure.

Another surgical system in which Shoham was not involved is the da Vinci Surgical System, made by the US company Intuitive Surgical. Approved by the by the FDA in 2000, it is designed to assist doctors in surgery using a minimally invasive approach and is controlled by a surgeon from a console. The system is used to remove prostate glands and increasingly for cardiac valve repair and hysterectomies. It was called “da Vinci” partly because  15^th-century Italian genius Leonardo da Vinci’s “Study of Human Anatomy eventually led to the design of this first-known surgical robot.

“Da Vinci works as a telemanipulation, just following what surgeon does,” noted Shoham, “but we are involved in developing robots that are not telemanipulators but have higher sense of autonomy. not just following the surgeon’s hand motion,” said Shoham. “The robot will not be just a remote manipulator, but it will proceed to be fully autonomous. There are only two companies in world approved FDA to be autonomous, and this type is more of a challenge than semi-autonomous ones.”

He is very proud that many of his students have become chief executive officers or other senior developers in other companies involving medical robots. Israelis are world leaders in medical robots, thanks to the Technion professor.

As for the concern among some people that robots will put them out of a job, Shoham stresses that they will replace low-paying, tedious jobs but create many new positions.

Just as a few decades ago, they didn’t dream that everybody would carry a mobile phone around with them instead of being dependent on a land line.

On a larger scale, the initial steps for personal robots are already being sold in the form of Siri, a virtual assistant that is part of Apple Inc.’s  operating systems. The assistant uses voice queries, gesture-based control, focus-tracking and a natural-language user interface to answer questions, make recommendations and perform actions by delegating requests to a set of Internet services. The software adapts to users’ individual language usages, searches and preferences, with continuing use.

People will soon get used to the idea that everybody will have his or her own personal robot, Shoham concludes, and they will be better off. Unwilling to predict exactly where robotics will be in a decade or two, he ventured: “They definitely will be a substantial part of our lives. Combining robots with artificial intelligence and machine learning equips humanity with a strong new power. I hope it will be used wisely.”