Responsibility and vaccine nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

In this article we articulate a case from moral responsibility to assist Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). We contextualize this responsibility by focusing on access to healthcare and the provision of vaccines against COVID-19. We specifically present two arguments from responsibility, one that is global or cosmopolitan, and one that is country-specific. For the latter, we focus on Israel.     

Identifying the Ancient Shibuta Fish

Synopsis The Talmud, a massive Jewish work completed in Persia approximately 1500 years ago, contains references to a fish named the shibuta. Various previous attempts to identify it over the last several centuries took place in lands other than Iraq and consequently the true identity seems to have escaped those Jewish scholars. In this paper we summarize the previous work and present evidence to support the identification of the talmudic shibuta with Barbus grypus.     

A Unique haplotype found in apple accessions exhibiting early bud-break could serve as a marker for breeding apples with low chilling requirements

Most commercial apple cultivars have high to medium chilling requirements and consequently are not grown in regions with warm winters. Furthermore, global climate changes raise the concern that some regions where apples are currently being produced will become unsuitable in the future. Therefore, mapping and understanding the factors governing chilling requirements are important goals towards the breeding of new apple varieties. In this study, we characterized 73 apple accessions: old local accessions, modern cultivars, and selected hybrids, all grown in the Newe Ya’ar germplasm collection in Israel under moderate winter conditions. We measured the time of vegetative bud-break as an indicator of chilling requirements and genotyped the accessions for known genetic markers and for markers we developed by re-sequencing the genome of ‘Anna’, a cultivar with very low chilling requirements. Our results show that while most of the accessions that were characterized as having early bud-break are genetically different from each other, they all share a unique haplotype in a region of ～190 kb, within a previously identified QTL for bud-break time, on chromosome 9. The alleles in the early bud-break-associated haplotype were not found in any of the late accessions tested, suggesting that the causative difference leading to the variation in bud-break time lays within or near this region, and that there is a common ancestor carrying early bud-break trait of the early accessions tested. Moreover, the markers of the unique haplotype can serve as genetic markers to accelerate the breeding of apple cultivars better adapted to warm climates.     

Uptake and Intracellular Distribution of Oligonucleotides Vectorized by a PAMAM Dendrimer

Abstract

We studied the uptake and intracellular distribution of an FITC labelled phosphodiester oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN) vectorized by a dendrimeric structure in cell culture.     

NDNF interneurons in layer 1 gain-modulate whole cortical columns according to an animal’s behavioral state

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