TAU Trends in Research June 1998

TAU Scientists With Grant Awards

Haim Sarnat and Eliyahu Samuel have combined forces, with an award from the Ralph and Bette Rothstein Fund, to study dental health in autistic children in eight special kindergartens. Despite the lack of brushing, bizarre eating habits and other risk factors, the number of cavities was comparatively limited. Dental trauma was found in about 20% of all such children.

TAU research teams have recently won research grants to further their research on a variety of social issus, past and present. For example, Zohar Shavit recently received a DM 1 million award (Israel's first) from the Deutsches Forschungs Gemeinschaft to explore, with a German colleague, how children's literature both reflects and helps shape societal values.

Elie Rekhess has received support from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for his Program on Arab Politics in Israel. The program conducts annual polls, workshops and research on the political orientations and organization of Israel's Arab minority.

Israel Gershoni and an American colleague, have received a U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation grant to study national identity and ethnic relations in 20th Century Egypt. Throughout this period, Egypt's highly diverse historical and ethnic heritages have struggled to construct more modern individual, group and common (national) identities.

The German-Israel Foundation for Scientific R&D has awarded a grant to Israel Finkelstein and David Ussishkin to look much further back into the past to clarify the process of state formation in Israel in the 10-9th centuries BCE. Studies of ancient texts and archaeological laboratory research will be complemented by excavations of a monumental palace at Megiddo and field studies in the surrounding Jezreel Valley.