Integrated Calendar

Water is the most important liquid for life as well as for the environment. In liquid water there is a hydrogen bonding network that originates from the interactions of H atoms with neighboring O atoms from other water molecules. This network reorganizes itself on the femtosecond (10-15 s) time scale and leads to transient liquid structuring on the nanoscale. Because of its complexity, the relationship between the unique properties of water and its molecular structure have not been solved. Techniques that can provide femtosecond structural information over multiple length scales can help. To do so, we developed nonlinear light scattering and imaging tools to access molecular structural information of aqueous solutions and interfaces. With these methods we have found nanoscale ordering in dilute salt solutions, and probe the structure of aqueous nanoscopic interfaces relevant for biology: lipid droplets, liposomes and water droplets. The optical properties of water can also be used to determine the electrical potential (voltage) of interfaces. This unique readout is useful for chemistry, neurology and device characterization. In this presentation I will give an overview of the field and our findings.

The present climate in the Levant is highly variable and suffers from periodic droughts. There is a strong meridional gradient in precipitation and evaporation and influence from both tropical and northern hemisphere climates. The ICDP Dead Sea Deep Drilling Project cores allow for the first time reconstruction of past climate during the warmest and driest periods in the region. We focus here on the Holocene and Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e intervals. These contain thick layers of halite, reflecting the driest periods over the past 220 ky. The fast sedimentation rate (up to several cm per year) allows identification of climatic changes at high temporal resolution. From salt and major element (Mg, Cl and Na) balances in pore waters and fluid inclusions, we have quantified the average runoff, which was 30-50% of the present-day (pre-1964 diversion of the Jordan River) during that time, reaching 20% during the most arid intervals, lasting decades to centuries. 234U/238U activity ratios in authigenic minerals (aragonite, gypsum and halite), which reflect the water sources around the Dead Sea watershed, show drastic shifts in the lake’s hydrology during the driest times, both during MIS 5e and the Holocene. 234U/238U activity ratio decreased during the driest periods from the typical value of ~1.5 to ~1.1, indicating a shift from the typical Mediterranean (northern/western) influence toward tropical (southern/ eastern) influence. Combining the ICDP core record with other climate records and with NCAR climate model (CCSM3) runs of the last interglacial (130, 125 and 120 ka) highlights the temporal variability due to changes in the orbital forcings between 125 ka (peak summer insolation) and 120 ka. While 125 ka, which is salt-free in the core, is characterized by summer and winter precipitation, 120 ka, which is reflected by the thickest salt accumulation, is characterized by dry winters, increases in fall season precipitation and scarce but intense rainfall flooding events.

While tissue engineering can generate thin grafts, its ability to recapitulate the structure and function of bulk tissues and organs has been fundamentally limited, in large-part by the absence of a readily perfusable vasculature. Absent a blood supply, any metabolically demanding tissue thicker than a few hundred microns will undergo rapid core necrosis due to the lack of oxygen and nutrients. 3D bioprinting has recently enabled the construction of complex, heterogeneous tissues with embedded vascular networks, which, when connected to pumps can enable large-scale tissues to remain viable. In this talk, I will highlight two recent advances in 3D bioprinting that can manufacture vasculature networks from the micron scale to the centimeter scale. The first method uses multimaterial bioprinting to manufacture stem-cell laden vascularized tissues that are > 1 cm thick. The second method uses multi-photon photolithography to manufacture, with laser-precision, complex 3D capillary networks at the micron-scale.

Solute Carriers (SLCs) account for approximately 2% of known human coding genes, and play diverse roles in human physiology. Despite ~100 SLCs being implicated in human disease, they also remain one of the most under-studied groups of genes in human biology.
Genetic variants in one such uncharacterized SLC, namely SLC16A11, were recently identified as one of the largest genetic risk signals for type 2 diabetes (T2D).
I will describe the functional follow-up to the genetic discovery of SLC16A11, which led to the identification of two distinct molecular mechanisms that link SLC16A11 dysfunction to disease.
This work suggests that SLC16A11 is a promising therapeutic target for T2D.

Solute Carriers (SLCs) account for approximately 2% of known human coding genes, and play diverse roles in human physiology. Despite ~100 SLCs being implicated in human disease, they also remain one of the most under-studied groups of genes in human biology.
Genetic variants in one such uncharacterized SLC, namely SLC16A11, were recently identified as one of the largest genetic risk signals for type 2 diabetes (T2D).
I will describe the functional follow-up to the genetic discovery of SLC16A11, which led to the identification of two distinct molecular mechanisms that link SLC16A11 dysfunction to disease.
This work suggests that SLC16A11 is a promising therapeutic target for T2D.

Solute Carriers (SLCs) account for approximately 2% of known human coding genes, and play diverse roles in human physiology. Despite ~100 SLCs being implicated in human disease, they also remain one of the most under-studied groups of genes in human biology.
Genetic variants in one such uncharacterized SLC, namely SLC16A11, were recently identified as one of the largest genetic risk signals for type 2 diabetes (T2D).
I will describe the functional follow-up to the genetic discovery of SLC16A11, which led to the identification of two distinct molecular mechanisms that link SLC16A11 dysfunction to disease.
This work suggests that SLC16A11 is a promising therapeutic target for T2D.

Social animals have to know the spatial positions of conspecifics. However, it is unknown how the position of others is represented in the brain. We designed a spatial observational-learning task, in which an observer bat mimicked a demonstrator bat while we recorded hippocampal dorsal-CA1 neurons from the observer bat. A neuronal subpopulation represented the position of the other bat, in allocentric coordinates. About half of these “social place cells” represented also the observer’s own position—that is, were place cells. The representation of the demonstrator bat did not reflect self-movement or trajectory planning by the observer. Some neurons represented also the position of inanimate moving objects; however, their representation differed from the representation of the demonstrator bat. This suggests a role for hippocampal CA1 neurons in social-spatial cognition.

Within the last decade solid-state NMR has grown as a powerful tool ‎in structural biology. This talk will focus on studies of protein ‎dynamics with the use of deuteron NMR under static conditions and ‎over a very broad temperature range. We will discuss experimental ‎and computational methodologies that enabled detailed ‎characterization of side-chain dynamics in hydrophobic cores of ‎globular proteins as well as in amyloid fibrils of various ‎morphologies. Finally, we will present preliminary results pertaining ‎to disordered regions of amyloid-beta.‎

The celebrated KPZ equation (Kardar, Parisi, Zhang, 1986) is an important milestone in statistical physics, originally introduced to describe the late time dynamics in two dimensional growth models. Over the last 30 years, the KPZ story has evolved in various interesting directions, making links on the way to different areas of physics and mathematics. This includes in particular the link to the famous Tracy-Widom distribution in random matrix theory. The story of KPZ is a very successful one, involving theoretical physics, mathematics and experiments--a fertile playground for interdisciplinary science. In this talk, I will review the evolution of the KPZ story, pointing out the important landmarks as I go along. At the very end, I will discuss some recent developments establishing a nice link between the KPZ height fluctuations and the edge physics in cold atom systems.