Yearly Archives: 2014

Technion Scientists: Computers and the communication systems are identified as largest Energy Guzzlers

By 2030 half of the US electricity production may be used up to support computers and communication infrastructures. Already now, 8% of the total energy consumption in the United States is directed to support the internet whose rate of growth is growing in an uncontrollable manner.

“Computers and communications are the greatest ‘energy guzzlers’ and it won’t be long before the total energy output will no longer be able to withstand it.” This is according to Technion scientists who organized the first international conference on this topic.

Increasing the electricity production to solve this problem is impractical since constructing new power stations is a slow and environmentally unfriendly process while alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power are inefficient and expensive and their total capacity in insufficient anyways.

Professor Gadi Eisenstein, the Head of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, said that the energy supply will not be able to meet the tremendous growth rate of computer and communications, and in the very near future they will consume more energy than all lighting systems. The solution will not come from new energy production but rather from reducing consumption. This ambitious goal leads scientists to even think about re-inventing the transistor while vastly improving the communication infrastructure.

At the conference, which will be held at the Technion on April 23-24, leading Israeli and international researchers from academia and industry will lecture on the subject. Among the topics to be covered: large-scale computer systems such as data centers, connectivity of supercomputers and the proposed introduction of optics into electronic chips.

“The internet will continue to grow at an uncontrollable rate,” warns Professor Eisenstein. “Any attempts to limit it will not succeed. This is about a subject that is no longer a technological issue but rather, it has developed into a social, economic an dpolitical issue. The Internet is an amazing and positive historical phenomenon that has radically changed our lives and now we must find solutions to the energy problems it has brought on.”

Read the Hebrew article published by Ha’aretz here: http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/science/.premium-1.2288241

In the Photo: Professor Gadi Eisenstein

Photographed by: The Technion’s Spokesperson’s Office

After of a Decade of Research

Scientists from the Technion and the Pasteur Institute in France Solved for the First Time the Structure of a Protein Responsible for Cell-Cell Fusion

The discoveries were made in a model system of a tiny roundworm, and will be useful for future research designed to understand human fusion processes (during fertilization or in the formation of muscle fibers, for example)

Scientists from the Technion and the Pasteur Institute in France have discovered the atomic structure of a protein that is present on the cell surface and is responsible for cell-cell fusion. This discovery was published in the prestigious scientific journal Cell. The scientists also discovered the mechanism that allows this fusion to occur.

Professor Benjamin Podbilewicz, from the Technion’s Faculty of Biology, in collaboration with Professor Felix Rey  from the Pasteur Institute, and their research teams have been studying this topic for nearly a decade. The research focuses on the EFF-1 protein from a tiny roundworm, known as Caenorhabditis elegans, which serves as a convenient research model for a variety of biological processes.

השוואה בין המבנה של EFF−1 לחלבונים של הווירוסים (ניתן לראות בבירור שהם זהים מבחינה מבנית).

“The atomic structure of this protein (but not the sequence) in the roundworm is similar to that of proteins that do the same thing – membrane fusion – in enveloped viruses,” explains Professor Podbilewicz. He describes the way in which an enveloped virus penetrates the body: “The cell ‘swallows’ it and then the membrane of the virus fuses with the membrane of the organelle that swallowed it (an organelle is a specialized lipid-enveloped structure within a living cell). As a result, the genetic material of the virus enters the cell and assumes control over it.”

“We also discovered the differences by which the viral protein fuses with the cell membrane, and the way the EFF-1 protein carries out this process,” added Professor Podbilewicz. “The viral protein, which has no partner in the targeted cells, must do all the work on its own and is endowed with a unique mechanism for this purpose. Conversely, when the roundworm cells fuse with each other, each cell expresses its fusion proteins on the surface. Here, the fusion proteins (EFF-1) of both cells ‘hug’ each other and create a kind of a zipper connecting the cells together.”

The discoveries by the scientists from the Technion and the Pasteur Institute will have implications on research aimed at understanding cell-cell fusion processes in the human body. These processes play a critical role in fertilization (the fusion between sperm and ovum), and in developmental processes taking place in organs such as in muscle and bone.

In the photos:

1. Professor Beni Podbilewicz (photograph courtesy of Ksenia Smurova)

2. Comparison between the EFF-1 protein structure and the structure of fusion proteins from viruses (you can clearly see that they are identical in structure) Pérez-Vargas et al., Structural Basis of Eukaryotic Cell-Cell Fusion, Cell (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.02.020

The Solution to Solving Security Vulnerabilities in all Devices and Protocols – Educating Developers Not to Release a Product until Thoroughly Tested

The solution to solving security vulnerabilities in all devices and protocols lies in the proper education of developers, who should be taught not to release a product until it has been thoroughly tested. This is what was said by Professor Eli Biham at the Seminar Day on Cyber & Information Security, held this week at the Technion. The seminar was organized by Professor Biham, Dr. Sara Bitan and the Technion Computer Engineering Center (TCE), which was founded jointly by the Faculty of Computer Science and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

Ohad Bobrov from Lacoon Security said at the seminar that it is very easy to plan a security breach for the purposes of spying on a particular person through any mobile device. “One in a thousand mobile devices contains a dedicated spyware. The problem is that manufacturers are aware of the loopholes, but it takes them a long time to respond,” he emphasized.

פרופ’ ארנה גרימברג

According to Professor Biham, the problem is not connected just to the ability of hackers to break into computers and mobile devices, but to the vulnerabilities that make it possible. “There is a significant problem in the education of programmers around the world; institutions are less concerned about enlightening individuals studying to be programmers about all of the attacks that the software they are learning to develop may suffer from. All those trying to meet product release deadlines almost always sidestep security. The problem is that customers don’t care either, and are willing to buy these products even if it isn’t secure, whether in the mobile market, the PC market and any other product.”

“Only after consumers start refusing to buy products that haven’t undergone testing for security aspects will any type of modification be made to programming education,” added Professor Biham. “I have yet to see a person who is ready to go to the post office and buy a transparent envelope at half the price, with which to send his/her secret mail. But when it comes to telephones or computers, no one asks if it’s see-through.”

As for the timing of the conference, at a date when massive attacks are plotted and carried out on servers all around Israel, Professor Biham stated that these types of security attacks are ongoing occurrences, usually not planned for any particular date. “Today we are getting ready for DOS attacks (Denial of Service),” he explained. “This kind of attack only succeeds if numerous requests are sent to a server simultaneously, and therefore, they are usually more coordinated than other kinds of attacks. Many have suggested that we shutdown servers on this day, and my answer to this is that this is precisely the hackers’ intensions – that we shutdown our servers, why should we help them accomplish their goals?”

During the first session of the seminar, Professor Orna Grumberg from the Technion’s Faculty of Computer Science presented a system she developed along with Dr. Gabi Nakibly – an algorithm capable of automatically routing out security breaches in OSPF network traffic protocols, which determines the data routes sent from computer to computer. An OSPF protocol studies the network structure in order to know how to transmit packets, and it is impossible to run a network without such a protocol. Until now, the only way of tracking breaches was by employing experts who examined the protocols manually. The algorithm successfully simulated a security breach event that amazed scientists.

Ohad Bobrov, co-founder of Lacoon Security, demonstrated how easy it is to download data from a network by simple and common means: how to hack into any phone, view a list of contacts, listen to a microphone, turn on the camera, and anything else that comes to the mind of the hacker.

“The examples were astounding. I always knew that it was awfully easy to break into any mobile device, but today I was amazed to see just how easy it is,” concluded Professor Biham.

In the photo: Professor Eli Biham at the Seminar Day on Cyber & Information Security.

Photographed by: Shiatzo Photography Services, the Technion’s Spokesperson’s Office

Technion Scientists have succeeded for the First Time in Transplanting Engineered Tissue Bearing Major Blood Vessel to Repair Severe Abdominal Muscle Injury

Till now scientists have only successfully transplanted engineered muscle tissue bearing small blood vessels

Technion scientists succeeded for the first time to transplant engineered tissue bearing major blood vessels to repair severe abdominal muscle injury, as published by the prestigious US science journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ (PNAS). In the past, researchers were only successful in transplanting engineered muscle tissue with small blood vessels. This medical breakthrough may do away with the need for complex surgeries in the future, and the Technion holds a patent on it.

Professor Shulamit Levenberg from the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute explains that in the current study, researchers fabricated an engineered muscle flap bearing its own functional vascular pedicle for repair of a large soft tissue defect. Technion scientists successfully reconstructed a full-thickness abdominal wall defect using this engineered vascular muscle flap in a mouse.

In tissue reconstruction, two approaches exist to address the clinical challenges involved in the successful restoration of tissue defects: 1) GRAFT where tissue is being transplanted  to the damaged area. The blood vessels in the body penetrate the tissue and nourish it with a blood supply.

2) FLAP – where tissue is being transplanted to the damaged region with its own blood supply. Flaps are used for treating injured areas where there is an absence of blood supply and when postimplantational vascularization is not established, such as in cases of soft tissue defect closure, or exposed bone, cartilage or tendons.

Tissue engineering constructs laboratory-grown tissue for transplantation. In this study, the engineered tissue was a three dimensional engineered tissue constructed of a porous, biodegradable polymer scaffold embedded with endothelial cells, supporting stromal cells (fibroblasts), and muscle cells (myoblasts). The tissue was grown in the lab by Technion researchers and then implanted to the region around the (femoral) artery and veins in the thigh, before being transferred as a flap. The flap is the stage where tissues can be transferred with their own blood supply and are joined to the blood vessels in the region of transplant, to repair large defects, such as in the abdominal wall region.

Grafts are effective for repairing small defects, but ineffective at repairing severe injury. Consequently, this medical breakthrough is very noteworthy.

The study was performed in collaboration with Dr. Yulia Shandalov (who was a doctoral student of Professor Levenberg during the time of the study), and Dr. Dana Egozi, from the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Rambam Health Care Campus, who was recently appointed Director of the Department of Plastic Surgery  at the of Kaplan Medical Center.

The study is part of a research project led by Professor Shulamit Levenberg, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) in the amount of 1.5 million euros.