Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has registered a patent for a new technique that improves tenfold the performance of any type of sophisticated microscope and imaging system without making hardware changes.

 
Their innovative method substantially improves the resolution – the ability to distinguish between details – of images seen through microscopes.The discovery, which has just been published in the Nature Materials journal, has aroused great interest in the scientific world and industry, being described as a “breakthrough with the potential to change” these fields.

“When you look through an optical microscope at an object with features [optical information] smaller than one-half the wavelength of light, you necessarily see a blurred image,” explained Prof. Moti Segev of the Technion’s physics department. “The reason for this is that the information about the structure of very small features does not propagate through space and thus does not reach the eye or the microscope camera.”

Methods exist to achieve a resolution under one-half of the wavelength of light, he said, but they all require point-by-point scanning of the object, meaning that these approaches may be used only for a static object, which does not change during the scan.

Scientists have tried for many years to find algorithms to reconstruct the subwavelength information lost between the object and the microscope camera. But until now, all such attempts were largely unsuccessful. The main reason is that “noise” – random scattering of light, which is inevitable in optical systems – has thus far prevented algorithmic reconstruction of features smaller than one-half the wavelength of light from measurements of the blurred image.

Now the Technion team has presented a breakthrough algorithmic method for improving the resolution of microscopes to considerably under one-half the wavelength of light.

The project was successful due to interdisciplinary collaboration between several research groups from four different Technion faculties: those of Segev and Dr. Oren Cohen of the physics department; Prof. Yonina Eldar of the electrical engineering department; Prof. Irad Yavneh and Dr. Michael Zibulevsky of the computer science department; and Prof. Shy Shoham of the biomedical engineering department.

Just a few months ago, the Technion, together with Cornell University, won the applied sciences campus tender in New York City. However, as with any Israel-related project, the irrational tendencies of people of the Left went into overdrive, in line with their zero-sum mentality. As far as I can tell, the main claim by these objectors has to do with the Technion developing technologies used by Israeli defence contractors, such as Elbit and Raphael.

Much has been written about the sheer hypocrisy of targeting Israeli technological academia for so called “technologies of death” when in fact, they are intended to make weapons smarter, smaller and more accurate, in order to reduce collateral damage. I’m willing to bet that “Technowashing”  is right around the corner, and that this amazing multidisciplinary technological feat will be at the forefront.

Nearly everyone agrees that around 650,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes between June 1946 and May 1948. But when it comes to counting the number of Palestinian refugees alive today, the math gets fuzzy.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – the main body tasked with providing assistance to Palestinian refugees – there are more than 5 million refugees at present. However, the number of Palestinians alive who were personally displaced during Israel’s War of Independence is estimated to be around 30,000.

This enormous disparity is explained by UNRWA decisions in 1965 and 1982 that extended the definition of “refugees” to include the children and grandchildren of displaced Palestinians. Today, UNRWA’s annual budget stands at approximately $600 million, of which $250 million is contributed by the United States. Overall, America has contributed $4.4 billion to the UN agency since its establishment in 1949.

If the US Senate Appropriations Committee has its way, this may significantly change. On Thursday, the committee approved language that would distinguish between Palestinian refugees alive in 1948 and their descendants. An amendment to the foreign operations appropriations bill, introduced by Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk (R), requires the US State Department to report within a year how many people receive aid from UNRWA who were themselves displaced and how many of them are descendants of those people. The former number, estimated at around 30,000, would be used as the basis for formulating US policy on Palestinian refugee issues.

By the way, using the same logic, there are not 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, but anywhere from 5.2 – 5.9 million. But you don’t hear many people talking about them, nor is there a UN agency dedicated to their plight.

Probably because we don’t have a record of leaving them for dead, like the Arabs can boast regarding the treatment of their palestinian brethren.

Photo: Gil Yohanan

The storm surrounding South Africa’s decision to boycott Israeli products manufactured in the West Bank is the result of a successful Palestinian campaign. Yet a Ynet probe reveals that the Palestinian Authority continues to market Israeli products, with locals seeing no reason why they should stop purchasing the products.

The boycott, which was recently announced in South Africa, is set to spread to Denmark and Ireland has also announced that it is considering a boycott. As mentioned, the Palestinian Authority has been pushing a campaign through the Palestinian National Initiative led by Mustafa Barghouti which has been gathering momentum

The storm surrounding South Africa’s decision to boycott Israeli products manufactured in the West Bank is the result of a successful Palestinian campaign. Yet a Ynet probe reveals that the Palestinian Authority continues to market Israeli products, with locals seeing no reason why they should stop purchasing the products.

The boycott, which was recently announced in South Africa, is set to spread to Denmark and Ireland has also announced that it is considering a boycott. As mentioned, the Palestinian Authority has been pushing a campaign through the Palestinian National Initiative led by Mustafa Barghouti which has been gathering momentum

The Israeli goods are not only found at the local food markets in the PA. Imad Naama, who owns a cleaning and hygiene product warehouse, explains that there is no comparison between the quality of Israeli products and other brands.

“If my clients see that the product has Hebrew letters on it or if it says the product is from Israel, they are sure that it is better,” he notes.

Naama said that during the period before the Second Intifada and before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, products produced in Palestinian factories were marked in Hebrew and people were sure that was their place of origin.

After the Intifada broke out, manufacturers changed the inscription and removed the Hebrew so people refused to buy it, even though it was the exact same product. “They said they weren’t willing to purchase it because it’s what you call ‘Arabic work’,” he joked.

My kids love it. They like the silence and the speed. My youngest child hates mechanical noises. He doesn’t like me using an electric whisk to make pancake batter on Saturday morning and runs out of the room.

I picked him up from his Gan (kindergarten) two hours after I received the car. Walking to the car and starting off he asked me 5 times if the car made a noise. Each time I told him it was the quietest car imaginable.

After a few hundred meters I stop at a light to turn and put on the indicators. Plink plonk plink plonk: it’s a rather sing-songy sound in the Renault Fluence ZE, not really a mechanical click and quite pleasant. From the back a little voice asks (in Hebrew) “what’s that noise?”

I’m now on edge: if he hates this noise we could have screams for a week! Gingerly I tell him it’s the indicator and it means I’m telling the other cars all around that I am going to make a turn.

There’s a pause while this is processed before I get the answer “I love that noise”. Phewwww. He, of course, never even noticed the indicators in the petrol cars because the engine always covered them!

Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

British supermodel Naomi Campbell arrived in Israel in her private jet on Sunday to celebrate her 42nd birthday.

Campbell, accompanied by her partner, the Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin, plus 15 close friends and six security personnel, is staying at Jerusalem’s famed King David Hotel.

On Sunday, Campbell visited the Western Wall and enjoyed a private tour of the Western Wall tunnels.

Campbell, wearing a white shirt and black sunglasses, was flanked by Palestinian guards and her own private security detail as she toured the biblical town of Bethlehem.

She lit candles in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, said Palestinian security officials. The church is built on the spot where Christians believe Jesus was born.

“As much traveling as I’ve done, I’ve never come here,” Campbell told a Palestinian television station. The supermodel said she hoped for peace. “I’m happy to be here. Weapons and war, greed and oil … I hope it all stops. I care about health, about good vibrations, not destruction,” she told the station.

Weapons and war, greed and oil..what an eloquent summary of the Middle East Conflict. All it’s missing is “and stuff” at the end.

But I guess it’s really easy to utter such empty platitudes while wearing your dark glasses, all the time ignoring what’s really going on around you.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate condemned the Palestinian Authority’s heavy-handed treatment of reporters on Tuesday covering a supermodel’s visit to Bethlehem.

The PA’s official Palestine TV recorded an exclusive interview with Naomi Campbell at a restaurant outside the Church of the Nativity, but other reporters weren’t allowed as much as a photograph.

Security guards accompanying the model harassed reporters and even threatened to break their cameras if they got near, according to the syndicate, which said its members were “furious.”

The syndicate, which has protested a series of arrests of journalists in recent weeks, noted that the Palestinian leadership has expressed its commitment to free speech “on more than one occasion,” while they are nevertheless routinely subjected to restrictions on their work.

Not because it portrays him as a terrorist, but because it portrays him as an alcohol-drinking, sex-participating terrorist.

AP

Relatives of a slain Hamas operative seek to block the release of a movie being made in Israel about his 2010 assassination in a Dubai luxury hotel, a family member said Sunday.

The killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was widely blamed on Israel’s Mossad spy agency, which never confirmed or denied involvement. Israeli defense officials have alleged that he played a role in smuggling weapons from Iran to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The movie, which features Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli as a temptress working for the hit team, is a “Zionist conspiracy” to defame Mabhouh, said a cousin, Ahmed, who lives in Gaza. Details of the suit, including where to file it, are still being worked out, he said.

Faik, al-Mabhouh’s younger brother, who was a security prisoner for 15 years and currently resides in Gaza, told Haaretz on Monday that the film attempts to slander his brother’s name, turning him from a freedom fighter into a womanizer, and thus portraying him in such a way that insults him and his struggle for the freedom and independence of the Palestinian people.

According to Faik al-Mabhouh, his family does not oppose the production of a documentary or a feature film that correctly presents the facts, however according to the details known to him and the debated film script, there is no connection between his brother and his actions for the betterment of the Palestinian nation.

He also said the family is currently consulting French lawmakers in order to file a suit.

“I spoke to the director and told him that we have no intention of coming to terms with such a film script and that we would even sue him and the producers, since this is a matter of slander and libel. It is saddening that the actors and director agree to such a thing and it hurts even more that the person playing the role of my brother in a way that slanders his name is an Israeli-Arab Palestinian actor from Umm al-Fahm. I know that my brother’s character was not well received among the Israelis, but he is no longer alive and the dead should at least be respected.”

Faik al-Mabhouh also said he approached Hamas, along with other Palestinian officials, and requested they take all necessary actions to prevent the movie from being screened.

The movie’s producer, Micha Scharfstein, said the movie takes artistic license and is not meant to be factual.

“Mabhouh, from our point of view, was a murderer with blood on his hands, and I don’t see any reason not to do a movie about it,” he said. The French-Israeli co-production “Kidon,” Hebrew for “spear,” is to be released in about six months, he said.

—-

In one scene, Refaeli catches Mabhouh’s eye by the hotel bar. He takes the bait, orders a drink; they have a chat and then leave together, the hotel surveillance cameras filming them as they go.

Hamas is an Islamic fundamentalist organization. Its members are not supposed to drink alcohol or take up with women who are not their wives.

Because everyone knows Islamic terrorists don’t do such things.

Meanwhile, while the film’s working title is Kidon, there are a few other titles being bandied around.

• There’s Something About Mabhouh
• Weekend At Mabhouh’s
• Terrorist Mabhouhller’s Day Off
• Dead And Deader

Iran killed one of its own nuclear scientists but blamed his death on a so-called “Israeli spy” who it executed last week, a leading Arabic news channel reported Wednesday.

Iranian authorities on May 15 executed Majid Jamali Fashi, who was convicted of assassinating nuclear scientist Masoud Ali Mohammadi in a car bombing in January 2010. The New York Times speculated that the assassination of Mohammadi was “part of a shadow war played out between Iran and Israel.”

But Dubai-based news channel Al-Arabiya, quoting Iranian opposition sources, said that Iran used Fashi as a scapegoat to please local public opinion. The opposition sources said they even doubted that Fashi was really executed, noting that the footage of his execution aired on public television was short and blurred.

The sources speculated that Iranian intelligence assassinated Mohammadi, the nuclear scientist allegedly killed by Fashi, because it had discovered that he intended to defect to the West.

Al-Arabiya said that the Israeli passport attributed to Fashi by Iran was so badly forged it “was not becoming of a country capable of building nuclear facilities.”

The channel reported that certain characteristics of the passport indicate that it was issued in the 1990s, not in 2003 as printed on it. Other obvious faults in the travel document include a misplaced passport number and a photo which displays the face tilted to the side rather than directly facing the camera.

“The Mossad would not place an illegal photo on a passport given to an agent in order to travel in Europe and elsewhere, as airport authorities would easily suspect it,” the report claimed.

Emanuele Ottolenghi of Commentary magazine also noted that Fashi is looking away from the camera in the alleged passport and that he appears to be an adult. If the 2003 date was accurate, Fashi would have been 15.

The Harry’s Place blog said that the facsimile displayed by Iranian TV shares exact details with a facsimile of an Israeli passport available through Wikipedia: Both were issued on Nov. 17, 2003 in Netanya.

In an Israellycool exclusive, I can confirm Iranian officials have now released a photo of the dead Mossad spy’s lifeless body.

Here’s more on what he did:

Photo: Nitzan Arni, Nepal Embassy

Only 300 meters were between Nadav Ben-Yehuda and the title of “the youngest Israeli mountain climber to conquer the Everest summit.” But Ben-Yehuda didn’t hesitate for a second when he saw a Turkish climber lying unconscious on the ground.

“If I had continued climbing, he would have died for certain. Other climbers just passed him by and didn’t lift a finger, but I had no second thoughts. I knew that I had to save him,” said the 24-year-old law student from Rehovot.

—-  

But this climbing season, Mother Nature was unkind, causing massive snow storms and avalanches that claimed the lives of at least six people so far. Rescue helicopters that were called to evacuate stranded climbers only made the situation worse by creating wind turbulences that caused more snow avalanches.

Ben-Yehuda was scheduled to start his journey to the summit last Friday, but decided to delay it by one day, due to the weather conditions and over-crowdedness at the base.

“I didn’t want to get stuck at these heights, so I decided to sleep at a base that is located at an altitude of 8,000 meters,” he explained. “It was a difficult night. I slept in a sleeping bag inside a rickety tent set up in between rocks.”

The following day, Ben-Yehuda started the final stretch of his climb. “Throughout the route, I kept seeing bodies of dead climbers,” he recalled. But Ben-Yehuda was focused on his goal, and knew that at the rate he was going he could reach the peak as early as sunrise.

Then, only 300 meters before reaching the coveted destination, Ben-Yehuda spotted Aydin Irmak, a Turkish climber whom he met at camp, sprawled unconscious on the icy ridge.

“People passed him by and didn’t do a thing. I didn’t think for a second about politics – the fact that he was Turkish and I was Israeli. I also didn’t think about the glory. All I though about is that I can save this person – and that’s what I did,” Ben-Yehuda noted.

The resourceful climber described the difficult journey down the mountain. “I attached him to my harness, and we started the descent. It was very hard to carry him because he was heavy. At times he would gain consciousness, but then faint again. When he woke up he would scream in pain, which made it even more difficult,” he said, adding that it took 8 to 10 hours until they arrived at the closest base, located at an altitude of 7,900 meters.

However, the young mountain climber had one last hurdle to overcome on the way down when his oxygen mask broke. Shortly afterwards, Ben-Yehuda encountered another climber, from Malasia, who was also in his last breaths. At that moment he spotted a group of climbers who were making their way up the mountain. He shouted over to them, and asked that they give the two injured climbers some oxygen. By doing so, Ben-Yehuda also managed to save the Malaysian climber.

After they reached the base, Ben-Yehuda and Irmak were evacuated by helicopter to Katmandu, where they were hospitalized. Ben-Yehuda suffered from severe frostbites in his fingers because he had to remove his gloves during the rescue operation.

“I hope the doctors don’t have to amputate them, because I want to keep climbing,” he said, adding that despite the heavy cost, he does not regret saving his Turkish friend.

“I faced a choice – to be the youngest Israeli to ascent the Everest summit, which would have been good for my career, or to take the climber off the mountain and save his life. I picked the second option. I managed to do so thanks to all the training I did, which gave me enough power to descend the mountain while carrying another person on top of me.”

Expressing his gratitude, Irmak, 46, told Yedioth Ahronoth, “If Nadav wasn’t there, I would have died on the mountain. It was a miracle.

“I remember falling down. I woke up with Nadav standing over me and shouting my name. Nadav did a great thing. He built a bridge between Turkey and Israel, and our leaders can learn a lot from him. Politics doesn’t matter much, what matters is human nature.

“I may have missed the summit, but I gained a new brother. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll climb the Everest together,” Irmak noted.

Meanwhile, in their living room in Rehovot, Nadav’s parents – Yoram and Dorit – are bursting with pride. “He did the right thing, no doubt,” said Yoram. “This is the education he received not only at home but also from his military service in Golani –a friend in need comes first.”

Meanwhile, I have not seen anything in the Turkish media on this yet, but admittedly, my Turkish is as rusty as a tin roof from a B-52s song.

But armed with my buddy Google Translate, I have been able to determine that Turkey’s Hurriyet has not posted anything, despite posting about the perils of Everest.

I guess the Turks are too busy trying to sue our military commanders over the killing of Mavi Marmara terrorists.

“Through the Hebrew language we can understand the structure of the Israeli society, the way they think,” explained Mahmoud Matar, director general of the Hamas-run Ministry of Education here.

“The Arabic language is a basic thing for the Israelis, and they use it to achieve what they want,” Dr. Matar added. “We look at Israel as an enemy. We teach our students the language of the enemy.”

BTW, when we teach our kids Arabic here in Israel, we do not call it “the language of the enemy”. We reserve that for French. (Only kidding….)

So what did Doucheblogger™ Richard Silverstein have to say about this article?

@rudoren Calling this “my journal fr Gaza City” is misleading since it implies u reported fr Gaza which u didn’t. I wish u wld, but u didn’t

— Tikun Olam (@richards1052) May 23, 2012

Her reply:

@richards1052 Yes I was in Gaza. Datelined stories in the NYT mean bylined person was there. Fares helped, tons, hence tagline

— Jodi Rudoren (@rudoren) May 23, 2012

Ouch.