Tel Aviv University

By Pesach Benson and Omer Novoselsky • January 7, 2026

Jerusalem, 7 January, 2026 (TPS-IL) — Facial expressions may reveal more about human preferences than previously understood. A new study has found that the degree to which people unconsciously mimic the facial expressions of others can predict their choices, sometimes even before conscious decisions are made, Tel Aviv University announced.

The study — led by doctoral student Liron Amihai in the lab of Prof. Yaara Yeshurun, with collaborators Elinor Sharvit, Hila Man, and Prof. Yael Hanein — challenges the long-held view that facial mimicry functions primarily as a social tool for politeness or empathy, showing instead that it is an integral component of preference formation and decision-making.

The findings were published in the peer-reviewed Communications Psychology.

In the study, participants engaged in pairs where one person described two films while the other listened and later indicated which film they preferred. Using specialized technology to track subtle facial micro-movements, the researchers found that listeners consistently favored the option during which they had mimicked the speaker’s positive expressions most strongly. This effect occurred even when participants were explicitly instructed to make a choice based on personal taste rather than the speaker’s behavior.

“Facial mimicry between people — not just a person’s facial expression on its own — can predict what someone will prefer in a realistic social interaction,” Amihai told The Press Service of Israel. In pairs where one participant read aloud two movie synopses to the other, “the listener’s mimicry toward the reader predicted her eventual choice, whereas the listener’s facial expressions per se did not predict which synopsis she chose.”

The study demonstrated that this mimicry occurs automatically, before conscious evaluation. “Participants are not simply listening to a story — they are being ‘swept’ toward the speaker through facial mimicry, and this muscular feedback can influence decisions,” Amihai explained. “This mimicry often happens without awareness and can predict which option will be preferred long before it is articulated verbally. Facial mimicry, therefore, is not merely a polite gesture but also a component of the decision-making system.”

In a second phase, participants listened to an actress reading movie summaries using audio only. Remarkably, even without visual cues, listeners still exhibited facial responses corresponding to a “smile in the voice,” and this mimicry predicted their choices. “This indicates that voice-only settings — such as phone calls, podcasts, or voice agents — can elicit subtle embodied responses that shape preferences,” Amihai told TPS-IL.

The research team explained that facial mimicry functions as an internal signal that the brain uses to evaluate options and form preferences. “It likely serves as an implicit ‘agreement’ signal — a fast, embodied response that accompanies evaluation while preferences are still forming,” Amihai told TPS-IL.

Insights from the study could have practical applications in marketing and user experience. By tracking subtle facial mimicry, companies and designers can better understand consumer preferences and emotional responses to advertisements, products, or interactive content. This approach could inform the design of campaigns, websites, or apps, helping creators craft experiences that naturally resonate with audiences without asking direct questions.

The research also has potential applications in social development, particularly for autistic children. The team is developing platforms to help children recognize and practice mimicry skills, which are essential for forming friendships, navigating social interactions, and understanding others. Strengthening these skills may support improved social engagement and emotional understanding in contexts that can otherwise be challenging.

By Pesach Benson • January 5, 2026

Jerusalem, 5 January, 2026 (TPS-IL) — Israeli scientists have uncovered, for the first time, how breast cancer cells adapt to and survive in the brain, Tel Aviv University announced. The discovery could pave the way for new treatments, improved risk prediction, and earlier intervention for brain metastases — a highly lethal condition for which no effective targeted therapy currently exists.

The findings come from a large-scale international study led by scientists at the Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with 14 laboratories across six countries. The research — led by Prof. Uri Ben-David and Prof. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro, together with Dr. Kathrin Laue and Dr. Sabina Pozzi — addresses a long-standing mystery in oncology: why certain breast tumors preferentially metastasize to the brain.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed Nature Genetics.

“Most cancer-related deaths are not caused by the primary tumor but by its metastases to vital organs,” Prof. Satchi-Fainaro said. “Among these, brain metastases are some of the deadliest and most difficult to treat. One of the key unresolved questions in cancer research is why certain tumors metastasize to specific organs and not others.”

Among people with metastatic breast cancer, about 10%–15% develop brain metastases during the course of their illness, according to Breastcancer.org, a nonprofit site offering expert-reviewed information and support on breast cancer.

While the tumor suppressor gene p53 has long been associated with aggressive cancer, the study reveals a previously unknown, brain-specific role for the gene. The researchers identified a distinct chromosomal alteration — the loss of the short arm of chromosome 17 — that strongly predicts the later development of brain metastases in breast cancer patients. This deletion results in the loss of functional p53.

“We found that when chromosome 17 in a cancer cell loses a copy of its short arm, the chances of the cell sending metastases to the brain greatly increase,” Prof. Ben-David said. “The reason for this is the loss of an important gene located on this arm. This gene is p53, often referred to as ‘the guardian of the genome.’”

Crucially, the researchers found that p53 loss does not simply make cancer cells more aggressive overall. Instead, it enables a specific metabolic adaptation that allows breast cancer cells to survive and proliferate in the brain, an environment fundamentally different from the breast tissue where the primary tumor originates.

“The brain’s environment is fundamentally different from that of the breast,” Prof. Satchi-Fainaro said. “The question is how a breast cancer cell, adapted to its original environment, can adjust to this foreign one.”

According to the study, p53 normally regulates fatty acid synthesis, a metabolic pathway particularly important in brain tissue. When p53 is impaired or absent, cancer cells dramatically increase fatty acid production, giving them a growth advantage in the brain. In experiments, breast cancer cells lacking functional p53 proliferated far more aggressively when introduced into the brains of mice than cells with intact p53.

The team also uncovered a previously unrecognized interaction between cancer cells and astrocytes, support cells in the brain that normally secrete substances to nourish neurons. In the absence of p53, cancer cells intensify their interaction with astrocytes and hijack these secreted substances, using them as raw materials for fatty acid synthesis.

A central player in this process is the enzyme SCD1, which plays a key role in fatty acid production. The researchers found that SCD1 expression and activity were significantly higher in cancer cells with impaired or missing p53, making the enzyme a critical vulnerability.

“Once we identified the mechanism and its key players, we sought to use the findings to search for a potential drug for brain metastases,” Prof. Ben-David said.

The researchers tested several drugs that inhibit SCD1, some already under development for other diseases. “We found that SCD1 inhibition in brain metastatic cells with impaired p53 was effective and significantly hindered the development and proliferation of cancerous metastases,” Ben-David said. The effect was observed both in mouse models and in samples taken from brain metastases of women with breast cancer.

Doctors could use the study’s findings to identify breast cancer patients at higher risk of brain metastases before the cancer spreads. By testing tumors for p53 mutations or deletion of part of chromosome 17, clinicians could tailor monitoring, such as more frequent brain MRIs, while sparing low-risk patients from unnecessary imaging or aggressive treatments.

The research also points to a potential treatment by targeting SCD1, an enzyme essential for fatty acid production in cancer cells lacking p53. Drugs that inhibit SCD1, some already in development, were shown to slow the growth of brain metastatic cells in lab and animal models, offering hope for the first effective therapy against breast cancer brain metastases.

“We identified several characteristics of cancer cells causally linked to this deadly phenomenon,” the researchers concluded. “While the road ahead is still long, the potential is immense.”

By TPS-IL • December 30, 2025

Jerusalem, 30 December, 2025 (TPS-IL) — A new study from Stanford University has placed Tel Aviv University at the top of a highly competitive global ranking, finding that undergraduate studies at TAU dramatically increase the likelihood of becoming a founder of a billion-dollar startup.

“It is because the university offers a high level of education alongside active encouragement of entrepreneurial initiatives. We do not only provide knowledge. We encourage students to experience the world of Entrepreneurship during their studies, and that is one of the reasons for this success,” Prof. Moshe Zviran, Tel Aviv University’s Chief Entrepreneurship and Innovation Officer, told The Press Service of Israel.

A unicorn refers to a privately held startup company valued at $1 billion or more. The term was coined in 2013 by U.S. venture capitalist Aileen Lee to emphasize how rare such companies once were — like the mythical creature.

According to the research, published last week by Prof. Ilya Strebulaev of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, entrepreneurs who completed their undergraduate degrees at Tel Aviv University are 260 percent more likely to go on to found a unicorn company than comparable founders who received venture capital funding but did not attend the institution. The figure is the highest recorded among all universities examined in the study, including elite American institutions such as MIT, Stanford, and Yale.

The research focused on the relationship between academic background and entrepreneurial outcomes among founders of venture capital-backed companies. Strebulaev analyzed data from 2,781 founders of U.S.-based unicorn companies, defined as privately held startups valued at over one billion dollars, and compared them to a control group of 2,188 founders of venture capital-backed firms that did not reach unicorn status. To ensure a fair comparison, the groups were matched according to the year in which each company received its first round of venture capital funding.

Within that framework, Tel Aviv University emerged as a clear outlier. While undergraduate education at MIT was associated with a 90 percent increase in the odds of founding a unicorn, and degrees from Stanford or Yale correlated with a 60 percent increase, TAU’s relative advantage more than doubled those figures. Berkeley and Cornell, both mainstays of the global innovation ecosystem, showed an increase of about 30 percent.

In absolute numbers, American universities still dominate the field. Stanford University ranked first overall, producing 139 unicorn founders, or five percent of the total sample. Tel Aviv University, however, was the only institution outside the United States to appear in the top tier of the ranking. It placed eighth globally in the number of unicorn founders it produced, ahead of several major U.S. universities, while simultaneously leading the list in terms of relative impact.

The study points to a distinctive academic and cultural environment that appears to significantly amplify the likelihood of high-growth outcomes among TAU’s undergraduate alumni, Zviran said. At the same time, he emphasized that institutional advantages are only part of the equation.

“We are not creating something from scratch,” he added. “We are refining and channeling what Israeli students already bring with them.”

By Pesach Benson • December 16, 2025

Jerusalem, 16 December, 2025 (TPS-IL) — A rare set of 160-million-year-old dinosaur fossils is reshaping scientists’ understanding of how flight evolved among dinosaurs and birds, offering the first direct behavioral evidence that some feathered dinosaurs may have developed early flight capabilities — and then lost them later in their evolutionary history.

The discovery comes from a new study led by Dr. Yosef Kiat of the School of Zoology and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with researchers from China and the United States. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Communications Biology, the research introduces a novel approach to studying flight evolution by examining molting patterns preserved in fossilized feathers — something that had never before been documented in non-avian dinosaurs.

“This finding has broad significance, as it suggests that the development of flight throughout the evolution of dinosaurs and birds was far more complex than previously believed,” the research team said. “In fact, certain species may have developed basic flight abilities — and then lost them later in their evolution.”

Until now, scientists have largely inferred flight capability in feathered dinosaurs from skeletal features such as wing length, bone structure, and muscle attachment points. While informative, those clues provide only indirect evidence. The new study goes further, offering functional insight into how these animals actually lived.

The researchers examined nine fossils from eastern China belonging to Anchiornis, a small feathered dinosaur from the Pennaraptora group — the lineage that includes the distant ancestors of modern birds and the only group of dinosaurs known to have survived the mass extinction 66 million years ago. The fossils are exceptionally rare because they preserved feathers with their original coloration intact, including white wing feathers marked by a distinct black spot at the tip.

Dr. Kiat, an ornithologist specializing in feather research, said this preservation allowed the team to analyze molting — the process by which feathers are shed and replaced — and use it as a diagnostic tool for flight ability. “Feathers grow for two to three weeks,” he explained. “Reaching their final size, they detach from the blood vessels that fed them during growth and become dead material. Worn over time, they are shed and replaced by new feathers — in a process called molting.”

In modern birds, molting follows different patterns depending on whether the animal relies on flight.

“Birds that depend on flight molt in an orderly, gradual process that maintains symmetry between the wings and allows them to keep flying,” Kiat explained. “In birds without flight ability, on the other hand, molting is more random and irregular. Consequently, the molting pattern tells us whether a certain winged creature was capable of flight.”

The preserved feather coloration in the Anchiornis fossils enabled researchers to distinguish fully grown feathers from new ones still in development, identified by black spots that had not yet aligned with the continuous black edge of the wing. When the team analyzed these growth patterns across all nine fossils, they found that feather replacement occurred irregularly rather than in a coordinated, symmetrical sequence.

“Based on my familiarity with modern birds, I identified a molting pattern indicating that these dinosaurs were probably flightless,” Kiat said. “This is a rare and especially exciting finding. The preserved coloration of the feathers gave us a unique opportunity to identify a functional trait of these ancient creatures — not only the body structure preserved in fossils of skeletons and bones.”

The findings challenge a long-standing assumption that flight evolution followed a straightforward, linear path. “The dinosaur lineage split from other reptiles 240 million years ago,” Kiat noted. “Soon afterwards, many dinosaurs developed feathers — a unique lightweight and strong organic structure, used mainly for flight and for preserving body temperature.” However, he added, environmental pressures may have reversed that trajectory in some cases, much as they have in modern flightless birds such as ostriches and penguins.

“Feather molting seems like a small technical detail — but when examined in fossils, it can change everything we thought about the origins of flight,” Kiat said. “Anchiornis now joins the list of dinosaurs that were covered in feathers but not capable of flight, highlighting how complex and diverse wing evolution truly was.”

In recent weeks, the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) has identified a large-scale phishing campaign targeting organizations, employing a method that appears highly credible to recipients. The systematic attack attempts are attributed to the Iranian-linked attack group MuddyWater. A special report on the campaign was released today and will be presented during Cyber Week (CyberWeek) at Tel Aviv University.

As part of the attacks, threat actors breach legitimate organizational email accounts and use them to distribute phishing emails that appear authentic – featuring proper Hebrew, content tailored to the organization’s field of activity, and attachments with relevant filenames. The emails include a malicious Word document, and once the user clicks “Enable Content,” the malicious tool takes control of the workstation. The messages are customized to match the organization’s environment, including the use of official-looking logos, signatures, and documents.

Upon opening the file, a dedicated attack tool known as BlackBeard is installed on the endpoint. This relatively new malware enables the attacker to gain full control of the system, map the environment, bypass security products, and download additional attack components as needed. From the moment of infection, the compromised user’s email account is leveraged to further propagate the attack both inside and outside the organization, reaching thousands of recipients. The malware employs stealthy persistence techniques that allow it to remain active without appearing in locations commonly monitored by security tools. This operational pattern is highly consistent with MuddyWater’s known tactics and has been observed in previous attacks in Israel.

MuddyWater, which operates under Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, focuses on intelligence collection and establishing long-term footholds within target networks. In recent years, the group has consistently attempted to attack Israeli entities, including government, healthcare, education, and small-to-medium-sized businesses. The group combines self-developed tools with distributed command-and-control infrastructures. Its attack attempts have also been identified in other countries, including Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, the United Kingdom, Azerbaijan, the United States, Egypt, and Nigeria.

The Israel National Cyber Directorate calls on organizations across Israel to exercise heightened vigilance, strictly implement several critical protective measures, and review the published indicators of compromise (IOCs) and recommended mitigation actions.

According to INCD cyber researchers, authors of the report: “The recent attacks once again demonstrate persistent attempts by Iranian actors to infiltrate Israeli networks and establish long-term presence within them. The impersonation, precise language, and legitimate-looking files are all designed to bypass human instinct and lure users into opening the malicious attachment. A single successful intrusion of this kind can rapidly escalate into a widespread attack across entire organizations. This is why the INCD continues to issue updates, warnings, and hands-on guidance to organizations in order to reduce risk and strengthen national cyber resilience.”

Click here for the full report