A Year of Scientific Breakthroughs
Breakthrough Science in Wartime
We are immensely proud of the tremendous scientific contributions made by our community of researchers in the past year. In particular, we celebrate six groundbreaking discoveries made by our Zuckerman Faculty Scholars, despite the ongoing war in Israel and continuing challenges in operating their labs. These important discoveries will have a significant impact on our health and overall wellbeing.
What happens to the stomach itself after sleeve gastrectomy bariatric surgery?
WHO: Danny Ben-Zvi, Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
WHY IT MATTERS:
The human stomach is virtually our first line of defense from all the microorganisms that come with our food, and it is where digestion starts. Each animal has a different stomach that corresponds to its dietary needs, and in particular rodents – where most studies are done – have a very different stomach from humans. We compared the molecular makeup of the stomach in patients who have a normal stomach with those who had sleeve gastrectomy surgery – a weight loss surgery where 80% of the stomach is removed. We asked a very basic question: do the remaining cells in the stomach sense that the organ is different? We found that years after surgery, the stomach is different. We developed a mathematical model that shows that the remaining cells increase their capacity to secrete acid, and that a hormone called Gastrin coordinates this process. In a way, the remaining part of the stomach compensates by literally becoming thicker than the normal stomach. Each gland produces more acid. The stomach is constantly damaged and repaired. We believe that the principles of gastric adaptations found in this study are applicable to conditions such as gastritis, and other forms of gastric damage.
READ ABOUT IT: Nature
Nano tools enable faster diagnosis
WHO: Gili Bisker, Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Tel Aviv University
WHY IT MATTERS:
Dr. Bisker is developing super-thin nanosensors that can detect specific biomolecules which can be used to check for the presence of things like blood clots, disease, or toxins in the human body. Dr. Bisker’s work was recognized with the 2024 Kadar Family Award for Outstanding Research.
WATCH: Gili Bisker talk about her research
Protection against new privacy threats found in AI assistant programs
WHO: Yisroel Mirsky, Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Ben-Gurion University
WHY IT MATTERS:
AI assistants such as ChatGPT are changing the way we interact with technology. But what if someone were able to read your confidential chats? Dr. Mirsky and his research team exposed a new privacy threat within AI programs, such as Chat GPT, that enables attackers to read encrypted chats sent over the internet. Dr. Mirsky’s team informed affected vendors and provided a solution, working closely with their engineers to verify the fix. Dr. Mirsky presented his findings at DEF CON, the world’s largest hacker convention. The discovery was featured at the 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (see abstract link below), and covered in the technology press.
AI assistants are becoming an integral part of society, used for asking advice or help in personal and confidential issues. In this paper, we unveil a novel side-channel that can be used to read encrypted responses from AI Assistants over the web: the token-length side-channel. The side-channel reveals the character-lengths of a response’s tokens (akin to word lengths). We found that many vendors, including OpenAI and Microsoft, had this side-channel prior to our disclosure.
However, inferring a response’s content with this side-channel is challenging. This is because, even with knowledge of token-lengths, a response can have hundreds of words resulting in millions of grammatically correct sentences. In this paper, we show how this can be overcome by utilizing the power of a large language model (LLM) to translate these token-length sequences, providing the LLM with inter-sentence context to narrow the search space; and performing a known-plaintext attack by fine-tuning the model on the target model’s writing style.
READ MORE: What Was Your Prompt? A Remote Keylogging Attack on AI Assistants
The science of intermittent fasting: How the liver remembers
WHO: Ido Goldstein, Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
WHY IT MATTERS:
A recent study conducted by Dr. Ido Goldstein and his research team and published in Nucleic Acids Research found that repeated fasting enhances the liver’s ability to adapt through a cellular memory mechanism. They found that alternate-day fasting (ADF) “sensitizes” key genes and liver enhancers, boosting ketogenesis during subsequent bouts of fasting, giving the liver the ability to adapt through heightened gene activation and production of a fuel termed ketone bodies.
Dr. Goldstein’s discoveries highlight how the body adjusts to recurring nutritional challenges, with new insights as to the metabolic benefits of fasting and potential applications in health and dietary science.
READ ABOUT IT: Nucleic Acids Research
New photonics approach enhances quantum computation efficiency
WHO: Yaron Bromberg, Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
WHY IT MATTERS:
Quantum computation holds the promise of solving problems beyond the reach of classical systems, yet its realization faces immense scalability challenges. One promising solution is measurement-based quantum computation, which relies on generating large quantum states of entangled photons, known as cluster states. However, the generation rate of cluster states decreases exponentially with the number of photons, limiting their scalability. In this work, the team introduces a novel approach to overcome this bottleneck by encoding more information in each photon.
This innovative encoding strategy constitutes an important advance in resource-efficient quantum computation and lays the groundwork for scalable implementations of measurement-based quantum technologies.
READ ABOUT IT: Nature
Opening new routes for kidney therapy
WHO: Moran-Dvela Levitt, Zuckerman Faculty Scholar, Bar-Ilan University
WHY IT MATTERS:
Kidney diseases are a significant global health challenge, with most treatments managing symptoms rather than addressing the underlying causes. In this Innovator Corner, we present our exciting treatment strategy targeting protein trafficking defects, an often-overlooked root cause of many kidney disorders. We highlight our discovery of BRD4780, a promising preclinical agent designed to “clear protein traffic jams” and restore cellular function. We believe that innovative therapies like BRD4780 have the potential to transform kidney disease treatment, improve patient outcomes, and bring renewed hope to millions worldwide.
READ ABOUT IT: JASN
