The fragile bones he was born with never broke Michel Petrucciani’s spirit. Though he was less than a meter tall, he climbed to great heights thanks to his piano playing – much higher than anyone could have imagined when he was a child. A documentary about him will be shown at 9:30 P.M. tonight at the Tel Aviv Museum as part of the Epos International Art Film Festival.

Michael Radford, who has directed high-profile films such as “Il Postino” – directed the documentary, which came out in 2011 and premiered at Cannes. Radford admits that he was hardly familiar with Petrucciani’s work and hadn’t directed a documentary for around 25 years. But for him every film is a journey that culminates in a sense of wonder.

Petrucciani, who wanted to live life to the fullest, suffered from osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disease, which confined him to a wheelchair or crutches. He was born in Orange in southern France to a French-Italian family. The doctors didn’t believe he would live beyond 20.

He had other plans. Jazz and other music genres conquered his heart when he was very young. In the film, he describes how he saw Duke Ellington perform and was awestruck.

“It was kind of – wow! I wanted a piano to play like he did,” he says, wearing dark glasses and the impish smile of someone who knows he’ll get everything he asks for thanks to his enormous willpower.

Since he never attended school, he stayed at home and practiced the piano, to which he devoted 10 hours a day. The keys, in return, gave him their love.

He began performing in his youth and recorded albums in France, but his big dream was to cross the ocean. Like so many other things for him, America didn’t seem too far away. There he met jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd in an encounter that, according to him, changed his life.

As a performer, he used his unusual appearance to his advantage. Wearing a black fedora, he was aware of the magic and charm that flowed from him when he played. Now it was the audience’s turn to gape.

Petrucciani, who performed at the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Eilat in 1989 and 1998, was not only a lover of life. He was also attracted to drugs and became as addicted to them as to the music. But the music didn’t stop. He was signed by prestigious Blue Note Records and recorded albums alongside Roy Haynes, Wayne Shorter and many others.

He was faithful to them, but much less so to his women, it appears, maybe because he felt that his time was short. He was married several times, once for only three months. His heart was broken after he had a son with the same genetic disease.

In 1999, a few days after his 36th birthday, he was taken to a Manhattan hospital after his condition had deteriorated. He died and was buried in Paris’ Pere Lachaise Cemetery, next to Chopin. The documentary, a French-Italian-German co-production, testifies that his musical spirit remains a legacy.

Source: Haaretz.com

While she’s currently in Israel, filming a new TV drama “Allenby,” Moran Atias has received exiting news – that she’s got a role in Will Smith’s next movie.

The rumor is that Atias auditioned for the role of Smith’s wife and the mother of his 13 year old son, but after watching her audition, which was really good, Smith claimed that she looks too young to be a mom of a 13 year old boy, and offered her another role in the movie, a role of a cop.

After finishing her filming in Israel, Moran will pop over to Los Angeles to meet with the casting director and Smith himself, and see if she can officially take the role.

The movie that the role is rumored to be in is “After Earth”, a Sci-Fi where the elder Smith is playing a hero, while Jaden Smith, Will’s real life son, portrays his son, who’s considered a failure as a warrior. When the two crash-land on Earth, it is up to the son to save the dad.

The Hollywood Reporter claims that the role of Will’s wife eventually went to Brit actress Sophie Okonedo, and according to screenwriter Gary Whitta’s twitter, shooting begins next week in Costa Rica. “This week the AFTER EARTH cast & crew moves to Costa Rica to begin filming!” Whitta twitted, “Then onto Philadelphia, Utah, and Northern California”.

Mark Adler speaking in the House about Minister’s Flaherty and Baird visit to Israel.

Givatayim office tower will reach 70 stories; construction to last five years.

A Tel Aviv-area planning committee approved on Thursday a plan to build what will become Israel’s tallest skyscraper.

The 70-story high-rise, approved by the Tel Aviv District Planning and Construction Committee, will be built in the Tel Aviv suburb of Givatayim and rise to a height of 235 meters.

The new skyscraper will contain offices, a shopping center, a conference center and a hotel, as well as the new offices of the Givatayim municipality.

Construction is expected to cost approximately NIS 1 billion ($268 million) and last approximately five years. The project is being constructed by Eurocom Real Estate, owned by businessman Shaul Alovitch.

The tower will be built adjacent to the neighboring city of Ramat Gan’s Diamond Exchange district, where Israel’s current tallest building, the 68-story Moshe Aviv Tower, is located.
Another office tower slated for construction in the area is expected to surpass it in the future, with a height of 270 meters and reaching 72 stories.

Givatayim Mayor Reuven Ben Shahar said the city’s policy was to promote high-rise construction on the edges of the city, while preserving the urban fabric of quieter residential neighborhoods. He added that the new building and other planned high-rises would significantly increase the city’s municipal tax base.

Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which opened in January of 2010, is currently the world’s tallest building, at 830 meters and 163 habitable floors.

Source: Haaretz.com 

Weizmann Institute scientists manage to trick immune systems of mice into targeting one of body’s players in autoimmune process

In diseases such as Crohn’s and rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s tissues.

But today, thanks to a group of Weizmann Institute scientists, the immune system is learning that “turnabout is fair play.”

The Weizmann Institute of Science, located in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary research institutions.

The scientists at the Weizmann have managed to trick the immune systems of mice into targeting one of the body’s players in the autoimmune process, an enzyme known as MMP9.

Prof. Irit Sagi of the Biological Regulation Department, along with her research group, has spent years looking for ways to block members of the matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) enzyme family.

But, when these proteins, which expedite wound-healing and offer other benefits, get out of control, they can actually help autoimmune disease and cancer metastasis. Blocking these proteins might lead to effective treatments for a number of diseases.

Originally, Sagi and others had designed synthetic drug molecules to directly target MMPs. But these drugs had extremely severe side effects.

Application for patent
Dr. Netta Sela-Passwell began working on an alternative approach in Sagi’s lab, when they decided that, rather than attempting to design a synthetic molecule to directly attack MMPs, they would try to trick the immune system into creating natural antibodies that would target them through immunization.

Just as immunization with a killed virus induces the immune system to create antibodies that then attack live viruses, an MMP immunization would trick the body into creating antibodies that block the enzyme at its active site.

Soon, an artificial version of the metal zinc-histidine complex at the heart of the MMP9 active site was created. They then injected these small, synthetic molecules into mice and then checked the mice’s blood for signs of immune activity against the MMPs.

The antibodies they found, which they dubbed “metallobodies,” were similar but not identical to TIMPS, and a detailed analysis of their atomic structure suggested they work in a similar way – reaching into the enzyme’s cleft and blocking the active site.

The metallobodies were selective for just two members of the MMP family – MMP2 and 9 – and they bound tightly to both the mouse versions of these enzymes and the human ones.

As they hoped, when they had induced an inflammatory condition that mimics Crohn’s disease in mice, the symptoms were prevented when mice were treated with metallobodies.

“We are excited not only by the potential of this method to treat Crohn’s,” says Sagi, but by the potential of using this approach to explore novel treatments for many other diseases.”

Yeda, the technology transfer arm of the Weizmann Institute, has applied for a patent for the synthetic immunization molecules as well as the generated metallobodies.

Source: ShalomLife.com

Move signals Israel’s increased involvement in global issues beyond the Israeli-Arab conflict, said Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UN.

NEW YORK – For the first time in history, Israel became a member of the Executive Board of the United Nations Development Program on Thursday.

As part of the organization, Israel will be a full partner in formulating the organization’s strategy and determining how resources are allocated to developing countries.

Haim Waxman, the deputy head of Israel’s delegation to the UN, said on Thursday in a speech to the UNDP board that Israel’s membership in the group represented an “important landmark.”

“We are proud to be members of the UNDP’s Executive Board and to take an active role in the international effort to provide aid to developing countries,” he said. “This is an expression of Israel’s journey from being a developing to a developed country.”

The move, he added, signaled Israel’s increased involvement in the global agenda on issues that extend beyond the Israel-Arab conflict.

The UNDP is active in 177 countries, and commands a budget of over $1 billion. The organization runs projects in the fields of health, welfare and poverty alleviation and is headed by Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand.

The UNDP Executive Board is made up of 36 countries.

Source: Haaretz.com

Latina actress Genesis Rodriguez expressed her love for Israel to the Israeli journalist and blogger Yanir Dekel. “I got a tattoo because I was in Israel,” she told him, and revealed her “Hamsa” tattoo on her right leg (‘Hamsa’ is a palm-shaped amulet that provides superstitious defense against the evil eye, it is believed in the Middle East) with the word “Chai” (‘alive’) in Hebrew in the middle.

“I was supposed to take a week in Israel after appearing in a Spanish television show and they took me there because of a soap opera, I didn’t know that soap operas are so huge over there,” she told the blogger. “It was so cool. I like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, they are so different but what you feel… people thought I’m so weird or on drugs but I was feeling the walls and saying to myself this has been there for over 2000 years. It was incredible. They also taught me to say the name of the TV show I was working on in Hebrew. ‘Ha’asira’ ['The Prisoner']”

Rodriguez is the hottest new Latina around, since her Hollywood schedule is full at least until the end of next year. Not only does she currently appear opposite Sam Worthington and Elizabeth Banks in ‘Man on a Ledge’ (now in theaters), she’s about to appear in ‘What to expect when You’re Expecting,’ opposite Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz, in ‘Casa de Mi Padre’ opposite Will Ferrell, and in ‘The Last Stand’ with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Via AbbaNibi.com

Jerusalem’s Mamilla Avenue invites visitors to view 120 pieces created by 60 different artists under the open sky, free of charge

Israel’s biggest outdoor sculpture exhibition was launched in Jerusalem last week. Some 120 pieces created by 60 different artists – all free of charge.

This is the fourth year in a row that the Alrov Mamilla Avenue management presents an outdoor exhibition under the open sky. This year’s chosen theme was music and the exhibit was named “Muse”.

Visitors will be met by sculptures of a tambourine and King David’s harp, alongside a saxophone, a grand piano, a woman-shaped cello, and couples dancing to the sounds of tango or any other melody one can imagine.

Oldest sculptor: 86-year-old Shoah survivor
One of the most interesting sculptures at the avenue’s western entrance was created by Dr. Martin Kieselstein, a Holocaust survivor who sculpted three images of musicians he remembered from the concentration camps.

Kieselstein, 86, is the oldest among the 60 artists presenting their work at the outdoor exhibition.

The exhibition allows artists to display modern and contemporary art in an avenue combining old and new, reconstructed and modern buildings, restaurants, cafés, clothing and jewelry stores, and most importantly – adjacent to Jerusalem’s Old City and Jaffa Gate.

Tzipi Vital, curator and producer of the “Muse” exhibition, approached many artists and asked them to create different pieces focusing on musical instruments, music and movement and, of course, inspired by a muse.

The artists worked on their creations for about a year and a half. Some of the sculptures are more than two-meters high.

Sixty artists were selected out of a group of many candidates. Their work can be viewed throughout 2012.

Source: Ynetnews.com

Producer David Permut is setting up the project with Howard Franklin writing a script based on a 2009 Israeli comedy about a group of overweight people who become sumo wrestlers.

Space Agency appoints new head; ministries to investadditional NIS 165 million.

The ninth anniversary – on February 1 – of the death of Col. Ilan Ramon is being marked with a whole week of events, including a US astronaut visiting gifted high school pupils and the Israel Space Agency (ISA) meetings to plan the country’s future moves.

Ramon, Israel’s first and only astronaut, was killed in the Columbia space shuttle crash along with six other crew members.

Retired National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Astronaut William S. McArthur, Jr., was clearly excited to meet 500 teens from around the country on Tuesday who came to the Academy of Science and Arts high school in the Malha quarter of Jerusalem. Listening to their questions about his career and space experiences, the West Point graduate encouraged them to strive for the best and think of a scientific or space career. He also expressed his hope for further Israeli cooperation with NASA.

As a veteran of three NASA space shuttle missions and one expedition to the International Space Station via the Russian Soyuz capsule, McArthur has received numerous awards and medals for his breakthrough work in the field and racked up tens of millions of kilometers in space flights. The teens from 20 schools and members of the Ilan Ramon Space Club, learned about how he slept, shaved and ate; which health problems result from the lack of gravity and what caused him the most excitement.

Every year, NASA sends a delegation to Israel to help mark the tragic loss Ramon, and also keeps in regular touch with his widow, Rona, who has since lost a son, Asaf, in the crash of an Israel Air Force F16-A.

Yitzhak Klug, the grandfather of one of the pupils present, wowed the group when he revealed that he was a US engineer involved in developing parts of the the Apollo 11 spacecraft, which in 1969 landed the first men on the moon. Klug subsequently made aliya in 1971 and worked for years at Israel Aircraft Industries.

The Israel Space Agency, meanwhile, announced that it aims to expand its relative advantage to become one of the world’s five leaders in the civilian space field. This, the agency said, will be carried out by developing new microsatellites and multi-spectral cameras, expanding space infrastructure, maximizing international cooperation in space projects and encouraging young Israelis to get interested in space research. This and many other projects, it continued, will bring Israel’s standing in civilian, economic and scientific spheres of space to the level of its expertise in space-related security.

Israel has produced 13 satellites, and nine of them are currently revolving around the earth. Of these, there are six observational and three communications satellites. These were launched and are functioning at a 100 percent success rate, the agency said. ISA’s work has huge economic implications, as the world space market totals $250 billion.

Meanwhile, the ISA – which is a part of the Science and Technology Ministry, has appointed a new director, Menahem Kidron, who has been approved by the cabinet. Kidron, who was congratulated by Minister Prof.

Daniel Herschkowitz, previously worked at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. as a senior deputy director-general involved in space systems. He is replacing Dr. Zvi Kaplan, who is retiring after seven years in the post.

The new ISA director said that the civilian space program is of great national importance and will promote industry, academia and society. Born in Germany, Kidron has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He worked for Rafael (Arms Development Authority) starting in 1972 and studied at Stanford University and New York University to develop lightweight structures and techniques for using coal to produce energy. Since 2009, at Rafael’s space systems administration, he ran business projects worth NIS 500 million a year.

The Finance and Science and Technology ministries have signed an agreement to invest an additional NIS 165 million in civilian space projects over the next two years.

It is expected to have a significant impact on exports. They are considering an additional expansion of their investment in space in 2013, including cooperative projects with other countries.

A feature article on the encounter between McArthur and the high school pupils will appear on The Jerusalem Post’s Science & Health Page on Sunday, February 12.

Source: Jpost.com