Adi Barkan’s BMI battle

May 15, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, design, education, Entertainment, General, health, Politics 

Adi Barkan, a fashion photographer, has been working for years to get the Knesset to outlaw underweight models, following his own exposure to models suffering from anorexia and bulimia.

Back in 2007, after the death of former model Hila Elmalich who was 34 and weighed less than sixty pounds, he told me the following for Women’s Wear Daily:

“The problem is with society, and the low self-esteem of these girls,” says Barkan. “We need to put this out there, to make it a societal norm in Israel and the rest of the world. People need to see these anorexic bodies and move their butts and do something about this.”

Israel21c interviewed Barkan several times about the issue, and posted the following video:

In March, his perseverance paid off, as the Knesset passed what is being called the Photoshop law, for the aspect of the law that regulates the use of Photoshop to make women appear perfect in advertisements. That’s a huge accomplishment. The bulk — no pun intended — of the law focuses on banning underweight models based on their BMI, or Body Mass Index.

The law is making waves in Israel, and around the world. Can Israel set the precedent for changing the way the fashion industry views and uses models’ bodies?

Interestingly enough, it was on Israel’s new fashion channel, Fashion.net., that a panel of fashion professionals, including clothing designer Yosef and a local fashion magazine editor, agreed that despite the new law and its groundbreaking potential, the fashion world will still view impossibly thin model bodies as the ultimate in goal.

“No one wants to see a curvy, zaftig model,” said Naama Chaisin, who is the second generation in the Tovale designer line of clothing. “And I say that as someone who is curvy and has fought to lose weight my whole life.”

Here’s to hoping she’s wrong.

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Searching for a cure to insomnia the Israeli way

May 4, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: health, Technology 

Photo from Israel21c

Haaretz recently published an article about an Israeli website they dubbed “Dr. Google.” The site is called Treato; its goal is to aggregate health and medical information, in particular on drug side effects, in a single place rather than forcing sufferers to wade through thousands of hits on Google, many of which are either irrelevant, unverified, or thinly veiled ads for the drug manufacturers themselves.

I had a chance to speak with the Treato guys last November for an article on Israel21c and their aim, as Elvis Costello might croon, is indeed true. The site, which is backed by the former CEO of Israeli powerhouse Commtouch and some $9 million in venture capital, covers some 13,000 conditions and 11,000 medications. There are 800 million patient discussions indexed, coming from 23 million patients. Treato then analyzes and prioritizes all that data, so you don’t have to.

When I was writing the article, I decided to give Treato the personal touch. I’ve suffered from insomnia most of my life. People who don’t sleep have a lot of extra time on their hands, which often translates into trolling discussion boards in the wee hours of the night. Everyone has their own treatment successes or failures, and they’re all ready to share, push and proselytize as if their solution is just on the cusp of curing the rest of us.

There are the magnet hucksters, the CBT wonks, the magnesium machers, the anti-chocolate crowd, the acupuncture/homeopathy/chiropractor/melatonin/meditation groupies and, of course, an unending stream of recommendations for this or that sleeping pill or anti-depressant.

I’m not putting any of these true believers down – on the contrary, I’ve tried the gamut of proposals and some have actually provided some relief. It’s just that Google is an unforgiving intermediary. She doesn’t tell you what ranks higher and what the potential side effects might be. Treato does.

You still have to work it. A search on Treato for “insomnia + not sleeping” resulted in 33,000 comments, from both expected sites (anxietyzone.com, askapatient.com, healthboards.com) and some surprises (breastcancer.org, autismweb,com, schizophrenia.com). But at least I don’t have to open each site one at a time; Treato puts it all in one place.

Treato launched in 2011, is aiming for revenues of $10 million this year, and hopes to break even in 2013. It’s not a play likely to be picked up by Mark Zuckerberg or other social media moguls. “People don’t like to talk about anti-depressants on Facebook,” Gideon Mantel, the company’s CEO says.

In the meantime, I’ll keep using Treato. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll discover that pickles and ice cream are the perfect cure for insomnia. Either that or I’m pregnant.

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Made in Israel

April 21, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, design, education, Entertainment, Environment, General, health, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs, Music, Science, Social Justice, Technology 
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It’s getting to be that time of year again – where the national holidays come fast and furious. Holocaust Remembrance Day just passed and this week we have Memorial Day and Independence Day right on top of each other as Israel prepares to celebrate its 64th birthday.

While there’s no shortage of subjects to be worried, fearful, skeptical or angry about, I would say that overall, the country’s in pretty good shape. But if the Iranian threat, the political situation, the social welfare crisis and the glut of TV reality shows are getting you down, take a couple minutes and check out this clip that ISRAEL21c’s Nicky Blackburn and Viva Sara Press have put together.

In addition to providing some surprising information about just what Israel has achieved in the past 63 years, it will undoubtedly raise your morale and have you whistling a happy tune going into the coming eventful week. Happy Independence Day Israel! We’re proud of you.

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Will psychokinetic powers propel Shaul Mofaz to the top?

April 3, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: health 

Oren Zarif with a happy patient

For several years the local “In Jerusalem” supplement to Friday’s Jerusalem Post ran series a full-page ads for a “miracle worker” named Oren Zarif who claimed to heal people through his psychokinetic powers. His ads featured rows of elated  patients with brief quotes about how Zarif had “saved me from painful back surgery,” or “made the pain in my neck go away” (the latter presumably had nothing to do with ridding the patient of an ex-husband or wife).

Zarif never explains how he does it, but the ads featured graphics of some squiggly lines going from Zarif’s head to the now-cured-ones.

Frankly, I always found the ads kind of pathetic. I mean, who would feel the need to pay good money to have some unknown guy with long stringy hair send squiggly lines across the ether.

Apparently, Zarif thinks that Shaul Mofaz should. In a letter to Mofaz, the new head of Kadima who displaced Tzippi Livni in the party’s primaries last week, Zarif has apparently demanded that Mofaz make him his number two man in Kadima. This comes from this morning’s online edition of The Times of Israel.

Zarif has always had a big ego – the copy in his ads leave no room for modesty – but this latest play goes over the top. Zarif claims that it was only because of his supernatural powers that Mofaz won and that “the political system can’t operate without the aid of [his] alternative powers.” It’s also not the first time that Zarif says he has intervened in the past on behalf of other politicians, though he wouldn’t provide specifics.

Zarif operates four treatment clinics in Israel where he “transfers energies to the subconscious of the patient, awakening a process of self-healing,” according to his website. This, however, appears to be his first foray into politics.

It comes with an explicit threat. If Mofaz doesn’t heed his demands, Zarif says, he will send those squiggly lines towards Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, ensuring his future success in the next election.

Perhaps Mofaz should give in to Zarif’s psychic blackmail. Zarif promises that “if I am number two on [Kadima’s] list, I will retire from my business.” That might not be good for Mofaz, but it sure could help the rest of us. And isn’t that what politics is all about – helping the voters.

Squiggly lines coming your way, Shaul.

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Foto Friday – The Innovators Way

March 30, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, education, Environment, Foto Friday, General, health, Medical Breakthroughs, News, Picture of the Week, Profiles, Science, Technology, tv 

The Innovators Way is a new photo exhibition showcasing 27 researchers whose innovations, developed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, improve quality of life and human welfare worldwide in fields such as health, safety, environment and nutrition.

The exhibition celebrates the work of those researchers whose initiatives have led to commercial products on the market today.

These creative initiatives came about as the result of intensive and wide-ranging scientific research, followed by patent registration, commercialization and finally marketing by Israeli and international companies.

None of this would have been possible without Yissum – the Technology Transfer Company of the Hebrew University. Yissum is solely responsible for the commercialization of innovations and technologies originating at the university. The company was among the first of its kind in the world when it was established in 1964, and is today ranked among the world’s 15 leading companies in this field.

To date, Yissum has registered more than 7,000 patents on more than 2,000 inventions, and has established 72 spin-off companies.

The scientists and innovations documented in the new exhibition include:

Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch (right) and Prof. Nachum Kedar established the foundations for the introduction of genes for extended fruit shelf-life into standard tomato cultivars, turned cherry tomatoes into a global commodity, and developed the cluster tomatoes. (The original research was conducted jointly with Prof. Yosef Mizrahi of Ben Gurion University and Dr. Ehud Kopeliovitch. The seeds are produced and manufactured by Vilmorin (France), Monsanto (USA), Syngenta (Switzerland) and Bayer (Germany).

Prof. Marta Weinstock-Rosin who developed Exelon, a medicine prescribed for people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Exelon can slow the progression of the disease in a significant proportion of patients and improve cognitive function in some subjects. Exelon is manufactured by Novartis (Switzerland).

Professor of Chemistry David Avnir, developer of Sol-Gel Technology for the formation of new materials which combine the properties of glasses or ceramics with the properties of organic and biological compounds. Applications of Sol-Gel Technology have been developed in the fields of optics, catalysis, sensing, polymers, biochemistry and pharmacy. Many researchers at the Hebrew University have participated in the various developments. Sol-Gel Technologies, Inc. (Israel) was established to commercialize products based on these newly invented materials, and is active especially in the fields of dermatology and agriculture.

Prof. Alexander Vainstein, the Wolfson Family Professor of Floriculture, who developed the MemoGenetechnology which enables the creation of new traits in plants and the enhancement of agricultural crops through genetic modification. MemoGene is a groundbreaking process for targeted and site-specific plant genetic modification, using highly innovative novel tools for genomic modification. The technology, which was patented jointly by Yissum and Danziger Innovations (Israel), is applicable to all plants.

Prof. Shmuel Peleg has developed technologies upon which two Israeli startups were founded. One technology creates panoramic stereo images from photographs taken by an ordinary camera, which has been commercialized by HumanEyes Technologies (Israel). The second is a technique for video synopsis, which enables hours of video surveillance footage to be viewed in minutes, and which has been commercialized by BriefCam. [Full disclosure: I work for BriefCam and know Prof. Peleg personally. I also thought the photo really captured his spirit.]

The exhibition’s photographer, Nati Shohat, is the founder of Flash 90, a photographic agency that supplies images to newspapers, magazines and other customers in Israel and abroad. Shohat’s news photography and artistic and portrait work have been exhibited in many venues and in publications such as Stern Magazine, Paris Match, Le Monde, Time and others.

Hebrew University has about 1,000 senior faculty members and a student body of approximately 23,000. To date, it has conferred over 120,000 degress. The University has some100 research centers and more than 4,000 research projects. Faculty members and alumni have been awarded 8 Nobel Prizes, 1 Fields Medal, 269 Israel Prizes, 12 Wolf Prizes, 18 EMET Prizes and 41 Rothschild Prizes. Founders include Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Chaim Nachman Bialik.

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