Michal Dekel is the winner of the first prize in the FAMELAB competition

told about an experiment conducted in Japan in which a mouse was born from the joining of the genetic material of two eggs instead of an egg and a sperm * Orlev Levy-Nissenbaum in second place and Roy Tsezana in third place * zero media coverage.

Photographs: Avi Blizovsky

Michal Dekal - holder of a degree in biotechnology at Bar Ilan, a master's student in molecular genetics at Tel Aviv University and a researcher of genetic changes related to male fertility at the genetic institute in Tel Hashomer is the big winner in the finals of the FAMELAB competition, which was held last night at Hamada in Tel Aviv. The participants of the competition are all young scientists, who try for three minutes to explain a complex scientific topic to the general public, not based on extensive knowledge in the field but on general knowledge. Dekal and the two winners in second place, Orlev Levy-Nissenbaum and third place, Roy Tsezana, won a Timudim scholarship from the Teva company.

The international FameLab competition is an initiative of the British Council and is held under the auspices of the Teva company and Scientific American Israel magazine, and Hamada, the Science Festival at the Weizmann Institute and the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem took part in it.
In the lecture titled "Are males necessary to have children?" Dekal told the story of a Japanese mouse, born (in 2004) from the joining of the genetic material of two eggs, and in fact without a father. The mouse was healthy and even gave birth to offspring. In the first experiments, the researchers failed in their mission, because the egg developed for a few hours but not the placenta that was supposed to nourish the fetus. In the end it was discovered that the gene responsible for creating the placenta in mice is silenced in the egg and only works in the sperm. They overcame this and after genetic manipulations managed to unsilence the gene in one of the eggs, as well as silence another gene, to simulate the situation in nature. In humans it is much more complicated and if you don't silence the right genes or silence the wrong ones, it will create genetic problems.
In a conversation with the science website, Dekal provided the source for this article:
Birth of Parthenogenetic Mice that can Develop to Adulthood

Tomohiro Kono, Yayoi Obata, Quiong Wu, Katsutoshi
Niwa, Yukiko Ono, Yuji Yamamoto, Eun Sung Park,
Jeong-Sun Seo & Hidehiko
How did you get to Faymalab?
I heard about the competition from a friend who works at the British Council.

And how did you come to the topic?
"I am doing a master's degree in genetics at Tel Aviv University and I have always loved the subject of genetics, especially the connection to fertility. Fertility problems and everything new in the field. That's how I read about it. The study - from 2004 but did not make enough headlines. This is truly an unprecedented success. Of course, the road to humans is far, but the very fact that they succeeded in creating life in a mammal from two eggs without the involvement of a male is an amazing scientific achievement."

Where does the ability to explain come from?
"I'm trying to simplify the subject in a way that will be the easiest to explain, without missing any scientific detail. Stick to the scientific facts but manage to simplify the subject. I give lectures as part of my degree, I have some experience but this is always what guides me. If I study a good subject, I can reach a good level and translate it well."

The judges in the competition were: Adi Matan of the Cultural Attaché of the British Embassy, ​​Dr. Noah Efron - head of the program for Science, Technology and Society; Tal Berman edits and presents science news on Channel 8 and Prof. Elam Gross from the Department of Particle Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. At the beginning of the conference, the moderator Dr. Eitan Kerin thanked all the participants. All participants were awarded participation in a communication workshop that took place last week, as well as a one-year subscription to the journal Scientific American-Israel, the three first place winners received study scholarships from the Teva company. And the winner will also go to the science festival in Chatham in the middle of June.

Below is a summary of the lectures of the other contestants, including the second and third place winners, in the order of their appearance.Rotem Bar-Or, who has a bachelor's degree in atmospheric sciences and is currently finishing his master's degree at the Hebrew University, in which he studies radiation and climate dynamics, spoke about special vision in animals - it turns out that there are animals that see in addition to the colors (light frequencies) and their intensity, they also You see a property of light that is hidden from the eyes of humans and other mammals - polarization. These are insects, and in particular bees, many species of birds, 71 species of fish and more. The feature allows them to navigate, they look at the sky and know where the sun is, where the north is and more. In 1914 they discovered that bees navigate according to polarization. 10 years ago they discovered that there is also an octopus that knows how to change the polarization that is returned from its skin like a chameleon changes its color. We have a secret communication channel. He can transmit to his friend signs of distress or a desire to mate and his friend octopus will understand him without all the fish around knowing at all. At the conclusion of the lecture, Bar-Or thanked Amit Lerner, a doctoral student in his group who is researching the topic.
Adi Natan - who has a bachelor's degree in physics from the Hebrew University, a master's degree in biological physics at the Weizmann Institute, is completing his doctorate in physics - uses of fast lasers to support quantum processes, also at the Weizmann Institute, spoke about a scientist named Avigdor Shertz who, after his wife fell ill with cancer, decided to devote His life is to find cures for cancer. He developed a substance that allows the tumor area to be illuminated. When illuminated, free radicals are formed that damage the inelastic and underdeveloped blood vessels that feed the tumor and do not damage the good blood vessels. 15 years of work gave birth to a series of drugs - the latest - for prostate cancer - offered to patients who are not helped by drugs and chemotherapy, and the photodynamic therapy helped to cure no less than 70% of them.

Eran Shankar - Head of the Department of Space Medicine at the Fisher Institute. Doctor of Medicine from Ben Gurion University and with extensive experience in space medicine, spoke about the relationship between electromagnetic induction, RFID technology and medicines. Will the connection between them change the world? Shankar compares the number of deaths from medication errors in Europe to air accidents and says that this means that every day in Europe a passenger plane crashes full of passengers.
RFID tags are small stickers that are a passive antenna without energy, without a battery, but with the help of the cell phone and the electromechanical cells manage to transfer mechanical energy to electrical energy that returns the information written on it. also in medicines. "Today it is possible to detect a difference in the blood type, the correct dose of the syrup for the baby, to know if the medicine has expired, if the dose is correct. I don't know such simple technologies that can save so many people. If we can save one soul in Israel, I will be the happiest person in the world.:
Roi Cezana - who has a bachelor's degree in biology at the Technion, is completing his master's degree studies and research in the nanotechnology engineering program at the Technion on nanotechnology for tissue engineering spoke about the hormone of eternal life, which is created in plants, but with the hope of finding its counterpart in humans. It turns out that trees can live thousands of years because such a hormone is created in them non-stop. In annual plants, the hormone is initially produced in large quantities and when it stops being produced the plant rapidly ages and dies. A professor from the Technion took a tobacco plant and with the help of genetic engineering re-engineered the DNA. He implanted a menstruum that was sensitive to the youth hormone. When there was a lot of hormone in the plant - menstruation did nothing. When the level started to drop - he makes him produce youth hormone. The researcher planted two tobacco plants side by side - a normal plant and a transgenic plant. The normal plant dies of old age after three months. The transgenic plant continued to bloom, growing to a height of three meters, and it might have lived forever, if a fire had not broken out in the greenhouse where it was grown, after about three years. "Plants are much more similar to humans than once thought. Many biological processes that happen in plants, there is a chance to find the equivalent in humans. Whoever discovers this hormone is the one who will discover the real fountain of youth."

Aryeh Melamed-Katz
Electronics engineer, physicist, scientific writer and editor, with a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering and a master's degree...
The editor of the young Galileo magazine chose to show a show called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Black Hole." In the role of the black hole, the king from the giant chess game in Hamda's court. There are 2 types of black holes in the universe - one that rotates around itself and one that is stationary. If the sun were replaced by a moving black hole, it would be cold and dark but the earth would rotate around the black hole - nothing would happen. To feel the effect of the black hole one had to get close to it, on the way you cross several borders including the photon border, where a real disco party of lights is held, as well as the border that if you cross it and manage to return, fifty years pass when two minutes have passed for the theoretical stay in the area and finally Melamed explained- Katz because whoever enters a stationary black hole disappears forever, while inside a swirling black hole there is an area that bounces those staying in it to the edge of the universe or to another universe.

Lior Cohen - studying medicine at the Technion, with a master's degree in medical sciences, wants to continue in pediatrics. Researches the genes responsible for the development of the nervous system. He told about the contribution of the flies to the research of the Parkinson's department.
"A fly that hangs around the barbecue, the scientific question is how to drive it away. There are flies that will teach us to fight Parkinson's - the fruit flies - Drosophila. They discovered the gene responsible for Parkinson's in flies and succeeded in causing some of the flies to get the disease. Parkinsonian flies were unable to climb half the height of the jar and normal flies were able to climb without difficulty. The ability to climb gradually deteriorated. The scientists then discovered genes that were able to slow down the progression of the disease.

The next competitor was Orlev Levy-Nissenbaum, who holds a doctorate in molecular and cellular biology, and a medical student, a lecturer at Hadassah College and published a book on teaching biology and biotechnology. Levy-Nissenbaum decided to explain using blue balloons that represented normal cells, red balloons that represented bacteria, and sticks in both colors that represented phages. The colors and shapes are of course imaginary, and were created just to explain: "The blue phages - look for square doors in the cells of humans, enter the cell, multiply and break in. The red phages look for the round holes - in bacteria and are called bacterial phage. It is a non-chemical - biological alternative instead of antibiotics. The State of Israel is less focused on bacteriophage research. The one who is leading the move is actually Georgia, which managed to isolate quantities of bacteriophages dedicated to certain bacteria. The reason it has not been used in the West is mainly due to the concerns of introducing living material into the body. Another problem is that in the West research is conducted with control groups and in this case it is very difficult to conduct an orderly study."

The last participant was Naomi Ziv, a postdoctoral student in bioinformatics at the Weizmann Institute, with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, a master's degree in pharmacology in Tel Aviv, and a third degree also from Tel Aviv. She actually chose to tell why the champagne bubbles are formed (about 10 million bubbles in a glass). She described the champagne production process and especially the addition of carbon dioxide immediately before sealing the bottle. The gas is found in two ways - free in the air above the liquid, and dissolved in the liquid. When you open the bottle, the free gas is released immediately, the gas inside the champagne also tries to release to equalize the pressures and then the bubbles are formed.

Dr. Noah Efron, who spoke on behalf of the judges, wanted to thank all the participants for the creativity and enthusiasm they showed throughout the evening. "We are aware of how difficult it is for you, especially since you are scientists to do something that is completely different and we appreciate what you were able to do. We have selected the 3 best. There was no agreement between the judges, it required a rather intense negotiation and everyone saw different virtues in all of you. In the end we reached this result. "

From right to left - Michal Dekal, Rotem Bar-Or, Adi Natan,Orlev Levy-Nissenbaum, Eran Shanker, Lior Cohen, Naomi Ziv,Roey Tsezana, Aryeh Melamed-Katz
Director of the British Council: There is a gap between public participation in science between Britain and Israel, and it does not depend on the quality of science in Israel which is high

At the break of the competition, I spoke with Jim Buttery, director of the British Council in Israel and asked him to compare the treatment of science in Israel with the treatment received by scientists in Britain. By way of comparison, in Israel there is not a single full-time scientific reporter in the main media (half-time in the country, in the other newspapers - occasional news mainly from the news agencies), the budgets for scientific information are zero in Israel, and the proof - the British Council is responsible for many lectures by guests who came to Israel and appeared before students, Among other things, science cafe events last year, and several visits by scientists and scientific explainers (including the winners of the British Famelab competition).
According to him, even in England it is not a situation that has always existed, it took decades to build the status of science and the status of scientists, so that in every public discussion their advice is sought. There are more science reporters today than ever before in Britain, in any self-respecting media outlet, and the evidence is that many programs on BBC television and radio deal with science as a matter of course and not just when there is one or another event. There are many lectures, the youth are involved.
He is aware that the situation is not like this in Israel, this despite the fact that the quality of scientific research in Israel does not fall short of that in Britain and in some cases even exceeds it, nevertheless there is a disconnect between the scientists and the public. The Israeli scientists are at best known among their peers in the field in the world, but not in the Israeli public. Britain has no competitors in Europe either, however, he also criticizes the scant interest of the media in Israel for the event. For comparison in Turkey, the final event was broadcast live on the local television station of the CNN network and received 3 million viewers.

Zero coverageAfter this conversation, with the presentation of the winner, Michal Dekal, the moderator, Karin, sadly announced that the invitation to the winner to perform the next morning on Channel 10 was canceled due to the flurry of events following the Winograd Committee. Unfortunately, apart from the PM, not even one journalist participated in the event. In the original event - in England, Channel 4 and the Daily Telegraph are sponsors of the event, and of course cover it. So although it is not a pre-Eurovision, nor a beauty contest, but when they come to the various channels and newspapers and offer them to hear interesting things, then if there is no blood in them, they don't come.