Tiny Israel a giant in scientific research

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

http://news.yahoo.com/tiny-israel-giant-scientific-research-173242245.html

By Jonah Mandel | AFP – 13 hrs ago

Israel's contribution to the world of scientific research has won it a growing number of accolades, with the Jewish state turning out an impressive number of achievements relative to its size.

Israeli professor Dan Shechtman on Wednesday became the tenth Israeli to become a Nobel laureate when he won the prize for chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals, which overturned scientific theory on the nature of solids.

"It's a paradigm shift in chemistry. His findings have rewritten the first chapter of textbooks of ordered matter," said Sven Lidin, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Shechtman's win was hailed by Israel's leaders as proof of the country's rich tradition of academic research.

"I want to congratulate you in the name of the citizens of Israel for your win, which reflects the intellect of our people," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

"There are not many countries who have won such a large number of Nobel prizes," said President Shimon Peres, himself a Nobel laureate.

Over the past 45 years, Israel has won a total of 10 Nobel prizes -- a major achievement for a country of just 7.8 million people.

Four have been in the field of chemistry, two were for economic sciences; one was awarded for literature while three Israelis have won the Nobel Peace prize, including Peres.

Israel is the country which counts the most engineers per head and ranks second only to the United States in the number of companies listed on Nasdaq.

Almost all the big names in technology -- from Intel and Google to Microsoft -- have important research and development centres in Israel, and there are 500 new start-ups every year.

Three of the Nobel chemistry laureates, including Shechtman, were graduates of the Technion, the prestigious technological university in the northern port city of Haifa, which has turned out 70 percent of the country's engineers and 80 percent of the executives of Israeli firms listed on Nasdaq.

Israel's fourth chemistry laureate, who won the award in 2009, came from the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv, one of the country's leading research institutes, which has twice won the Turing Award, otherwise known as the Nobel prize of computing.

Other Weizmann researchers have won the Wolf Prizes in Medicine.

Part of Israel's success in academia, as in high-tech, lies in local researchers and developers who "do more with less," said Saul Singer, author of the 2009 bestseller "Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle."

"If you look at the top 25 drugs developed over the last decade or so, seven of them were partly developed at Weizmann. There's no other institution in the world that can say that," Singer told AFP, noting that Harvard developed only two of them -- and on a much larger budget.

"Or Tel Aviv University, which recently ranked number 11 in citations per faculty member. That's above Oxford, Cambridge and Yale. There's no comparison in terms of budgets involved," he said.

Through a mixture of determination and doggedness, Israel had excelled in both academia and start-ups, he said.

"Israel has gotten very good at doing this sort of thing," he said.

"The dynamics of being determined, creative, and doing more with less -- and also trying to solve big problems -- you see that at both the academic level and the start-up level."

Congratulating Shechtman, Education Minister Gideon Saar said scientific research would be crucial to Israel's future.

"Developing human capital and investing in education and higher education are the key to achievement and scientific research in the future," the minister said.

"The future of the State of Israel will be ensured by research on the highest level."

[TBoneTX 45,469]

Bravo!

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Bravo!

Unlike Israel's neighbors, Israel lives in the 21st century. I believe it's due to the large influx of European genes.

[mawilson 2,133]

Unlike Israel's neighbors, Israel lives in the 21st century. I believe it's due to the large influx of European genes.

It's ok, WoM will be here shortly to tell us how Israel didn't really make the desert bloom, how Palestinian farmers are so much more productive and in tune with the environment and how Israeli tanks are so crappy they could be blown to pieces by a home-made Palestinian bomb.

In fact, Palestinians are such an amazing people - so talented, so resilient, so moral - they would probably catch up and overtake America in a few short years if only the poor darlings got their stolen land back from the big, bad Israelis.

[scandal 951]

Low teacher salaries, flagging test scores, sounds just like America

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1006/Israel-celebrates-Nobel-Prize-but-worries-about-declining-prowess

Israel celebrates Nobel Prize, but worries about declining prowess

Dan Shechtman, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, is part of a tradition of scientific achievement that's considered a key asset to Israel's military and its reputation as a mini-Silicon Valley.

By Joshua Mitnick, Correspondent / October 6, 2011

Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman poses for a photo in a lab at the Technion Institute of Technology in the northern city of Haifa on Wednesday. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Shechtman for discovering quasicrystals, patterns in atoms which were thought impossible.

Israel has celebrated this week's announcement of Israeli professor Dan Shechtman’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry as if he won Olympic Gold.

But on the day after claiming the sixth scientific Nobel in the past decade, many here are worried that the Jewish state’s research prowess is past its peak. Budget cuts to top universities have contributed to "brain drain" and test scores among school pupils have dropped.

At stake is more than just positive international PR from the prestige of the Nobel win. Scientific achievement is considered a strategic asset underlying its military prowess and its reputation as a center of technological innovation.

"If we are not a state that is positioned at the top of global science, we will not be a state that stands on strong legs," wrote Sever Plocker, a columnist for the Yediot Ahronot newspaper. "Thanks to science, we have an army with technological capabilities that deter every enemy, and information technology-based exports that bring Israel revenues of $25 billion every year."

Budget cuts, humiliation

But for most of the past decade, Israel’s government instituted budget cuts that forced a reduction of researchers at Israel’s leading universities, which treasury department officials saw as bloated, says Mr. Plocker in a phone interview. That sapped the competitiveness of Israeli universities by forcing young Israeli academics to look for jobs abroad, while hurting the morale of veteran staff at home.

"As scientists, we felt humiliated by the government. It didn’t seem that the government saw our activity as important," Mr. Shechtman told Israel Radio on Thursday.

Dan Diker, a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Policy, says the Nobel win is a morale boost for Israel at a time that it feels increasingly isolated diplomatically. He noted that one newspaper devoted four pages of its front section to the victory.

"It reaffirms in the minds of many in leadership that Israel is an address for scientific innovation, military innovation, and technological innovation," he says.

Low teacher salaries, flagging test scores

At the primary and secondary level, Israelis worry that standardized test scores have fallen off sharply compared to the rest of the world. As in the US, low teacher salaries are blamed for deterring quality instructors from entering the profession.

"The teacher used to be a folk hero in every community. That status has eroded," says Erel Margalit, chairman of Jerusalem Venture Partners, a fund that invests in technology start-ups. "In different parts of the country the public education system isn’t as strong as it used to be. It needs more competitive tools. Management needs to be rebooted and refreshed."

Recognizing the danger, Israel’s government has pursued reform to reverse the decline, allocating an extra $2 billion for universities to expand staff and research institutes meant to lure back Israelis from abroad.

"It's too early to tell, of course, if these various reforms will be enough to restore Israeli research to its former glory," wrote Haaretz in an editorial on today. "But at least there is reason to hope that the phenomenon of Israeli Nobel Prize winners will not become a thing of the past."