News from Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv from the air

Well, off to a slightly slower start than planned after that first post last week.  We took a mini vacation to Kos, Greece over the weekend for 3 nights.  I feel spoiled that with a one hour flight we can do that, but glad to take advantage of the opportunity, as that will be the last time I get on a plane for a few months, now that I am going into my 3rd trimester of pregnancy.  That is a whole additional topic for discussion which I will hopefully get to - my experience with healthcare here in Israel (spoiler alert:  they have excellent quality care, and the US has a lot to learn about taking care of ALL it's citizens).

I have also started a few posts with thoughts on my year in the environmental studies program, and will have to get back to that soon.

But I know at least a few Americans have asked me what the news is on the ground here regarding Iran.  I admit that I don't keep up on the media reports.  I'm not sure there's anything reliable in them anyway.  What I do hear comes from Israeli's.  It is definitely on everyone's mind, but I wouldn't say there is panic.  But concern is real, and it's based on news such as designated shelter announcements on the radio.  In fact, the hospital that we go to, Tel Aviv Medical Center, has reported that within days (maybe hours?)  they can sterilize and operate additional facilities out of their underground parking levels.  People have a (false?) sense of security in the bomb shelters we all have (ours is directly in our apartment, while older buildings have shared rooms, usually in basements).  There is a fair amount of speculation as to whether Israel will try to bomb the nuclear facilities in Iran.  If they do so, it will require the bunker-busting bombs from the U.S.  Of course, the U.S. official position is that they don't support such action.  So who knows what is happening behind closed doors.  In the meantime, life goes on more or less as usual here.  The consensus I hear from the Israeli's I know is that everyone hopes nothing happens - they don't want to start anything, and they hope Iran doesn't start anything.  Sounds good to me.  Let's all put our energy into constructive projects - there are plenty of great opportunities, starting in our own communities.

School is out!

Last Thursday I turned in my last paper, for my last class, for the inaugural year of the International Masters in Environmental Studies at the Porter School at Tel Aviv University.  Our graduation ceremony is this Thursday evening.  Then it is on to new things for me.  One of those new things will be an attempt to re-commit myself to blogging.  I have plenty of content from this year of study to share.  Please let me know if you want to hear more or less about anything in particular as I jump back in.

The top photo is of the Dan David building on campus, where I spent at least 10 hours per week in classes (we generally spent about 16-18 hours per week in class all year). This is a bare-bones building full of classrooms for a variety of programs with those old style desks that are attached to the chairs.  But at least it wasn't portables!  When we were lucky, we got upgraded to the Gilman building, the temporary home of the program, while they wait for the first LEED certified building on campus to be built for the program (scheduled to be completed next year).  

The lower photo is a set of signs as you enter campus from the security gates, with the Gilman building in the background.  This photo was taken back in March.  The Iris is the official flower of the University.  By the time such flowers were blooming in the U.S., these had come and gone. 

Can you read the signs?  With the addition of their many new english language programs, the university has additional work to do in the communications department.

The UN Embraces the Economics of Happiness by Laura Musikanski — YES! Magazine

The UN Embraces the Economics of Happiness by Laura Musikanski — YES! Magazine

Winter storm winds are picking up

The winds picked up on yesterday.  Apparently my olive tree and basil thought they were a sail.  

Solar bus stops in Tel Aviv

These solar powered bus stop information boards are starting to pop up around Tel Aviv.  I don't know much about them, but by making them electronic, I imagine they will have more timely information for riders.  It's a great idea for a city in the middle east!

Red Sea Corals

At the tail end of our trip to Petra, Jordan in October we spent one night along the Jordanian section of the Red Sea shore.  Mom and I took a boat tour with a see through seating level below the water line.  It was a fun way to see the coral reefs, including a sunken ship and an old American tank that was placed there specifically to try to encourage new coral development.

On our drive back to town, we talked to the staff of the company and it turns out they are involved in the preservation of the corals, as well as running their tourism business. 

Below is a summary I wrote following the speaker at the first class meeting on November 3rd. 

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During our first seminar, Eugene Rosenberg, Dept. of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology at TAU provided us an overview of his lab’s research into coral bleaching.  He shared with us the three anthropogenic factors contributing to coral reef deterioration – 1) water pollution, 2) over fishing, and 3) seawater temperature increases.  He elaborated on the impact of temperature increases which correlated with a loss of endosymbiotic algae every summer from 1995-2002.  

However, since then, his team has not been able to isolate V. shiloi, the bacteria studied and understood to act as an infectious disease for the O. patagonica coral found in the eastern Mediterranean.  This discovery led to development of his coral probiotic hypothesis.  The importance of this finding is that it shows that coral, like all other plants and animals, live in a symbiotic relationship with a set of bacteria.  This combination of host and microorganisms is called a holobiont.  The bacteria are more rapidly adaptable to changes in the holobiont’s environment than the host is.  Over time, the type and quantity of bacteria that joins the host impacts the overall function of the holobiont.  In this case, the coral acquired beneficial bacteria that killed V. Shiloi. 

It is only in recent decades that the ability to study bacteria that are “viable but not culturable,” (VBNC) has become possible.  New techniques like this have increased our knowledge, and yet we are only at the beginning.  For example, Professor Rosenberg shared the history of knowledge on bacteria in the human gut, believed to have about 100 types in the 1970s, and now known to have at least 40,000.  In addition, he stated that these bacteria hold 200 times greater genetic material than we, as the human host, do.  It is also important to note that the holobiont is not just the sum of the genetic material of the host plus the microorganisms.  The symbiotic relationship enhances the adaptability and survival of the collective group.

His findings are significant because he has extrapolated the coral probiotic hypothesis to the hologenome theory of evolution.  This theory has far-reaching, cross-disciplinary implications, from human health, to social structures, and just about every topic under the umbrella of environmental studies.  It has the potential to change the way we view relationships between species, from the Darwinian focus on competition, to that of cooperation.

Back to School

I haven't been posting much lately, as I have become a bit busier this past month. After 10 years, I am going back to school. I signed up for the International Environmental Studies masters degree program at the Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University. This is the first year of the new English language program, but it is based on the Hebrew program that is internationally recognized, and many courses are taught by the same Professors.  I have 15 classmates and they range in experience, from an Economics masters, a school teacher, a variety of social science majors, and several environmental studies undegrads.  Some are just out of undergrad, but I discovered that my German classmate shares my birthday - yes, my exact birthday!

The last week of October was orientation week. We began on Monday and Tuesday with meetings on campus at Tel Aviv University.   I had to temper my expectations for organization as the University runs like the rest of Israel - they don't seem to get too concerned about the details. ID cards weren't ready, course offerings were not finalized (and therefore neither were syllabi), online access was not yet available, and yet we were being asked to meet deadlines utilizing these tools. To our program coordinator's credit, it appeared that our class was considerably more organized than other programs. But she was running into the same institutional barriers that we were, and working feverishly to address them.   As an American who immigrated to Israel about 10 years ago, she has been wonderful in helping us navigate this new experience.

Wednesday and Thursday of orientation consisted of a "Tiyul," or field trip. We were taken north to Israel's national water carrier, Mekorot, for a tour and lectures about the country's water sources. Israel has only one fresh water lake as I have mentioned before - the Sea of Galilee, known locally as the Kinneret. It also has two natural aquefers in the north. Already over 30% of their water comes from desalination, and this is expected to become 50-70% in the next 5-10 years. They re-use grey water (waste from homes) at a rate of 78%, far beyond any other country in the world. They treat it, then send it out for agricultural use.

We stayed overnight at a simple kibbutz hotel, common in the north, then visited one of the few significant year-round water sources (I would call it a stream, but they call it a river). It is in the Banias Valley (We visited this site with my dad last May, when it was rushing full of muddy water from spring rain. This time it was clear.)

Our last stop was the Hulu Valley, where feeding practices have made it a major stop on the bird migration from Europe to Africa and back. We saw pelicans and cranes by the thousands. They gave us a brief demonstration of the bird research they do here, and I released one of the tiny tagged birds.

In case you are interested in learning with me, our pre-program reading included:

1. Tal, Alon, Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel, 2002. Chapters 1, 2, 12.

2. Meadows, Donnella H. "Envisioning a Sustainable World," 1996. http://www.sustainer.org/?page_id=107

3.  Hardin, Garret "The Tragedy of the Commons",

Science, December 1968, Volume 162, pp. 1243-1248. 

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html

4. Lovins, Amory; Lovins, L. Hunter; Hawken, Paul "A Road Map for Natural Capitalism," 1999.

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/NC99-08_NatCapRoadmap