Plant Research Reaches a New High
A South African plant called a woolly umbrella is completely unrelated to the cannabis plant, yet it makes a slew of the active compounds found in cannabis – cannabinoids –...
Decades-Old Mystery of Red Blood Cell Production Finally Solved
To get life-giving oxygen into every cell, the human body produces two to three million oxygen-carrying red blood cells, or erythrocytes, each second – about one-quarter of all the new...
Across the Universe: Israeli Tech to Reach Deep Space for the First Time
The journey to Jupiter has begun. The European Space Agency’s unmanned spacecraft JUICE (short for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) recently launched (13 April) from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. JUICE’s voyage, the...
A Weizmann Masters Experience – from Australia to Israel
Can we predict our own future? For Australian scientist, Rebecca Hertzman, currently undertaking her Masters of Science in chemical biology and drug discovery at the Weizmann Institute of Science in…
Immunotherapy Drugs Step on the Gas
Sometimes anticancer antibodies press on the gas and the brakes at the same time. New research from the Weizmann Institute of Research in Israel might help them accelerate better. When...
The Weight of Responsibility: Biomass of Livestock Dwarfs That of Wild Mammals
We often think that our world is an infinite realm comprising great plains, jungles and oceans, teeming with wild animals featured in memorable nature shows like the BBC’s Planet Earth....
The Quantum Twisting Microscope: A New Lens on Quantum Materials
One of the striking aspects of the quantum world is that a particle, say, an electron, is also a wave, meaning that it exists in many places at the same...
NASA to Launch Israel’s First Space Telescope Mission, ULTRASAT
NASA will launch Israel’s first space telescope – the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite, or ULTRASAT – into high-Earth orbit in early 2026, as part of a newly signed partnership between...
International Science Summer School 2023 – applications are open!
The Weizmann International Summer Science Institute (ISSI) in Israel is back and applications are now open for budding, young Australian science students who are studying at University this year, to…
Answering a Question That Has Bugged Ecologists for Decades
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have produced the first global estimate of the combined weight of all land insects and related arthropods. Arthropods crawl and buzz around us...
Building Better Enzymes – by Breaking Them Down
In a major step toward greener industry, Weizmann Institute scientists have created a computational method for generating effective enzymes with unprecedented efficiency. This new study is now published in Science,...
Down to the Synapse: Connecting Brain Circuits to Behaviour
When a threat is looming and an escape route is open, one would expect any animal to flee imminent danger. But when microscopic worms faced a threatening signal in a...
Weizmann Institute scientists observe NASA asteroid shooter in action
NASA’s first-ever interception of an asteroid happened in full view of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, who documented the collision’s debris last Tuesday. DART impact as seen...
Human Tumours Are Prized Real Estate for Fungi, Study Finds
Cancer tumours contain multiple species of fungi that differ per tumour type, according to a large study led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the University of...
Neurons Caught Rapidly Switching Gears
Even during routine tasks such as a daily stroll, our brain needs to shift gears, switching from navigating the city to jumping out of the way of a bike or...
Curbing Candida: The Cells That Keep Fungal Infections at Bay
Of all the fungi that live in the human body, the most infamous is probably the yeast Candida. This distant cousin of baker’s yeast is notorious for causing various types...
The Heat Is On: Weizmann Institute Scientists Uncover Traces of Fire Dating Back At Least 800,000 Years
They say that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and Weizmann Institute of Science researchers are working hard to investigate that claim, or at least elucidate what constitutes ‘smoke’. In an...
Changing the Channel: Study Sheds New Light on a Promising Antidepressant
Ketamine, a well-known anaesthetic used in smaller doses as a party drug, was hailed as a “new hope for depression” in a Time magazine cover story in 2017. Two years...
Harder Winters, Stronger Storms: New Data Reveals Climate Change Might Be More Rapid than Predicted
The Earth’s climate is changing faster than we expected. A new study led by the Weizmann Institute of Science reveals that storms in the Southern Hemisphere have already reached intensity...
Getting Under the Skin of an Autoimmune Disorder
Supporting actors sometimes steal the show, and in a new study published this week in Cell, researchers, headed by Professor Ido Amit at the Weizmann Institute of Science, showed that...