Prof. Uri Shanas of the University's Oranim campus has launched an unusual new initiative: a massive, international, and democratic “purchase group” open to all that aims to save the Earth. “It is neither possible nor necessary to conserve the entire planet all the time,” Prof. Shanas explains. “But if we manage to conserve even a small percentage that is home to an unusual diversity of plant and animal life in danger of extinction, we can go some way to halting the current process of species extinction.” Prof. Shanas is using the crowdsourcing technique to raise the funds needed to launch the initiative.

A groundbreaking new study at the University has found, for the first time, that emotions are not only the product of the processing of information by the brain, but that they also directly influence processes of learning and memory in the brain. Dr. Shlomo Wagner of the Sagol Department of Neurobiology, who undertook the study, explains: “It turns out that different emotions cause the brain to work differently and on distinct frequencies.”