The Surprising Link Between Gut Bacteria and Aggression

A fascinating medical research has uncovered a surprising connection between the microscopic world within our bodies and one of humanity’s most primal behaviors: aggression. Scientists at Bar-Ilan University's Azrieli Faculty of Medicine have found compelling evidence that gut bacteria play a crucial role in shaping social behavior, potentially transforming our understanding of how early-life interventions impact brain development.

Close your eyes and imagine a team of scientists huddling around a microscope. They're not looking at some exotic microbe or newly discovered species.

In a groundbreaking medical research that's capturing global attention, scientists at Bar-Ilan University have uncovered a surprising link between antibiotics and a debilitating digestive condition. While antibiotics are a staple in modern medicine for fighting bacterial infections, they may also be setting the stage for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a condition affecting about 1% of the global population.

The ISF, Israel's premier funding body for cutting-edge basic research, has recognized the exceptional scientific excellence of Bar-Ilan's diverse research community. This substantial financial boost will not only advance innovative studies but also facilitate the acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment for the university's laboratories.

Among the grant recipients are some of Bar-Ilan's brightest minds:

The research team, delving into the digital lives of 1,187 families, uncovered a complex web of interactions between parental behaviors and teen smartphone habits. At the heart of their findings lies a surprisingly simple yet powerful tool: communication. Open, quality discussions about smartphone use between parents and teens emerged as a cornerstone in combating PSU.

A cryptographic proof system is a protocol that allows a powerful prover to convince a much weaker verifier of the validity of a computational assertion. The verifier lacks the computational resources to perform the entire computation by itself, but nevertheless, by the end of the protocol, the verifier is convinced of its validity.

I stood alone among a few,
Between flags and eulogies,
Watching, silently listening.
They turned him, slowly and gently,
From a face to a story,
From abducted to one who loved.
A smiling sports fan.
The night before the funeral,
I climbed to the roof
To breathe, to smoke.
Gazing upwards,
I speak:
“Your sons and daughters are slaughtered,
And you stay quiet.
The judge of all the earth does not do justice.
After all, there was a judiciary overhaul.
You’re quiet, and now, so is he.

The school year opened with a strike by the Secondary School Teachers' Organization. The background for the strike is the huge shortage of teachers, especially in scientific subjects, and the new idea from the Ministry of Education: to bring in "talents" - engineers or researchers without teaching certificates - who will be employed as contract workers and introduced into classrooms without any pedagogical training. Prof. Michal Zion, head of the Biology Teaching Training Program at Bar-Ilan University, writes about this:

French authorities have extended the detention of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who landed in the country over the weekend. At the center of the accusations against him: the lack of oversight that has turned Telegram, with nearly a billion users, into a tool that generates terrorism, crime, drug trafficking and more.

And what does this have to do with the war in Ukraine?