(New York Times) Thomas L. Friedman - Beginning March 2, Prof. Hossam Haick will teach the first ever massive open online course, or MOOC, on nanotechnology in Arabic. Haick is an Israeli Arab from Nazareth and will be teaching this course from his home university, the Technion, Israel's premier science and technology institute. So far, there are 4,800 registrations from Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen, the UAE and the West Bank. Iranians are signing up for the English version. Haick, 38, whose Ph.D. is from the Technion, where his father also graduated, is a science prodigy. He and the Technion already have a start-up together, developing "an electronic nose" - a sensory array that detects unique markers in exhaled breath that reveal different cancers in the body. Some 19% of the Technion's students today are Israeli Arabs, up from 9% 12 years ago. This story is a useful reminder that Israel is a country, not just a conflict.
2014-02-20 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive