The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves only 13.8% of all tested drugs, and these numbers are even lower in “orphan” diseases that affect relatively few people. Part of the problem lies in the imperfect nature of preclinical drug testing that aims to exclude toxic effects and predetermine concentrations and administration routes before drug… Read More
The ancient Samaria ostraca — eighth-century BCE ink-on-clay inscriptions unearthed at the beginning of the 20th century in Samaria, the capital of the biblical kingdom of Israel — are among the earliest collections of ancient Hebrew writings ever discovered. But despite a century of research, major aspects of the ostraca remain in dispute, including their… Read More
The sibling relationship is the longest most people will enjoy in their lifetimes and is central to the everyday lives of children. A new Tel Aviv University and University of Haifa study finds that relationships between children and their siblings with intellectual disabilities are more positive than those between typically developing siblings. The research examines the relationships… Read More
The connective tissue cells known as fibroblasts are vitally important for our recovery from injury. Sensing tissue damage, they gravitate to the site of a wound, instigating an inflammatory response that mends damaged tissue. A new Tel Aviv University study published in Nature Communications on September 26 finds that fibroblasts also play a devastating role… Read More
Bats use echolocation to hunt insects, many of which fly in swarms. In this process, bats emit a sound signal that bounces off the target object, revealing its location. Smaller insects like mosquitos are individually hard to detect through echolocation, but a new Tel Aviv University study reveals that they become perceptible when they gather… Read More
American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU) — a nonprofit organization that is the fundraising arm of Tel Aviv University in the United States — announced it was awarded the coveted 4-star rating from Charity Navigator, America’s largest and most-utilized third-party evaluator of charities. AFTAU earned the prestigious recognition for the seventh consecutive year,… Read More
Tel Aviv University (TAU), Israel’s largest and most comprehensive higher education institution, today announced that it will launch the Dual Degree Program with Columbia University — a first-of-its-kind partnership at TAU that will provide undergraduate students from around the world with an opportunity to pursue an exceptional liberal arts education and earn two degrees. Transcending… Read More
Entropy, a measure of the molecular disorder or randomness of a system, is critical to understanding a system’s physical composition. In complex physical systems, the interaction of internal elements is unavoidable, rendering entropy calculation a computationally demanding, and often impractical, task. The tendency of a properly folded protein to unravel, for example, can be predicted… Read More