A study presented Wednesday during a conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows that those who participate in Taglit-Birthright Israel trips are more likely to choose Jewish partners and also tend to marry later in life. The study—conducted by Professor Leonard Saxe, director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University—shows that Taglit-Birthright participants have a 31 percent chance of getting married by age 28, while non-participants have a 39 percent …More

Maya Yarowsky, NoCamels - Israel Innovation News If you have ever been scuba diving and seen pulsating coral, you may have wondered why such a simple specimen would engage in such an intense activity. Marine biologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology have begun to discover the biological processes that make the pulsating coral, or Heteroxenia coral, move the way they do. MA student Maya Kremien, along with Professor Amatzia Genin from Hebrew …More

Physicists have long known that quantum particles can influence each other regardless of how much distance is between them in a phenomenon Einstein mockingly called "spooky action at a distance." Now, scientists at Hebrew University's Racah Institute of Physics have proven that this rule holds true for quantum particles that do not even exist at the same time. Einstein's observation, called entanglement, describes the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. Quantum particles of light, called photons, exist in …More

Barbra Streisand is set to receive an honorary doctorate of philosophy from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The legendary Jewish songstress will be granted the honor while in Israel to perform at Shimon Peres’s Israeli Presidential Conference. “Barbra Streisand’s transcendent talent is matched by her passionate concern for equality and opportunity for people of every gender and background,” said Hebrew University President Professor Menahem Ben-Sasson. “Equally important, her …More

A Ben Gurion University delegation from the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research (BIDR) toured the Galapagos Islands in April. The delegation, led by Professor Ariel Novoplansky, signed a cooperation agreement with the Directorate of the National Park to promote the conservation of the endangered biological diversity of the islands. The Israeli delegation had been invited by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment and the Directorate of the Galapagos National Park. During their visit, the group …More

The Philharmonic Orchestra of Monte-Carlo will perform a concert in Monaco featuring instruments of Jewish Holocaust victims. Several violins belonging to Jews murdered by the Nazis will be played at the May 5 concert at the Grimaldi Forum, and the stories of their owners will be told, according to a report in the Nice Matain French daily. The Violins of Hope concert, initiated by Smadar Eisenberg, president of Friends of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Monte-Carlo association, obtained the instruments from the …More

NoCamels Team, NoCamels - Israel Innovation News The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has started teaching its global course in partnership with Coursera, which provides free online courses from senior lecturers at some of the world’s leading universities. The course, Synapses, Neurons and Brains, has approximately 40,000 students from around the world registered, including students from Lebanon, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, India, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco and Algeria, as …More

Researchers at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Haifa’s Technion recently made an interesting observation while studying the coral outside the resort city of Eilat. For one half an hour each day, the coral colonies appear to nap. “During the day the coral uses the photosynthesis to generate its food, and during the night it goes through respiration like other animals,” said Uri Shavit, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Technion. “Just before sunset when the level …More

Dozens of Dutchmen preyed on Jews for cash during the Holocaust, according to a new study. According to the research by Pinchas Bar Efrat, 82, as many as 80 bounty hunters roamed the Netherlands during the German occupation during World War II. Led by two men, Wim Henneicke and Willem Briede, the bounty hunters were paid by authorities five guilders for every Jew they brought in, the equivalent of a week’s pay for unskilled laborers. The research by Bar Efrat, a Dutch native who two years ago received his …More

It is often overlooked that Yiddish, the language spoken by millions of Ashkenazi Jews for nearly 1,000 years across Europe, played an important role in the formation of Israeli culture. For Professor Chava Turniansky from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, that point is very clear. The 75-year-old professor was awarded the prestigious 2013 Israel Prize on Israel’s Independence Day for her lifelong research on the history of Yiddish and literature among Ashkenazi Jewish communities in the …More

Alexander Levitzki of Hebrew University was named the recipient of the 2013 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Chemical Research. The prestigious award was presented Tuesday by The American Association for Cancer Research. Levitzki also delivered a lecture to the association. Levitzki, a professor of biological chemistry at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, received the honor “in recognition of his contributions to signal transduction therapy and his work on the development …More

An inventor and businessman, Emile Berliner revolutionized the world of technology by inventing the microphone and the gramophone. He opened the world’s first record store—and he helped to launch the record industry. Born in Hanover, Germany, in 1851, Emile was one of the 11 surviving children of Samuel Berliner, a linen merchant and Talmudic scholar, and Sarah Fridman, an amateur musician. The family kept an orthodox Jewish home and money was tight. Emile’s formal education stopped at the age …More