Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, working with Amsterdam University, have come to an important scientific conclusion: Emojis are bad for you.

Specifically, they’re bad for you in a work setting. BGU’s new study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science reveals that sliding in that smiley emoticon, while well-intentioned, is likely to undermine you professionally. While a real life smile is likely to make people in the workplace both like and trust you, an ersatz one made of punctuation marks can have an adverse effect. (Emojis and emoticons seem to be used interchangeably here, though traditionally, the former refers to thumbnail images you add from a mobile device, and the latter refers to putting together keyboard symbols that they seem to represent a thing or feeling.)

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post Israeli Scientists Confirm: Everyone at Work Hates Your Stupid Emojis appeared first on Jewcy.

Test tube chicken breast: it’s the way of the future, according to Koby Barak. The Israeli animal rights activist is the Executive Director of The Modern Agriculture Foundation, a non-profit organization “working to promote research in the field of cultured meat.” The Times of Israel reports that MAF has teamed up with scientists at Tel Aviv University to evaluate the possibility of producing chicken breast in a lab, which would be better for animals (obviously), the environment, and also consumers. (All commercially farmed chickens are given hormones and antibiotics to speed up the growth process.)

So, how does it work?

Cultured meat is produced by taking stem cells and placing them in a growth culture (an example would be fetal bovine serum, which is extracted from cow uteruses and is rich with energy substrates, amino acids and inorganic salts to support cell metabolism and growth). The cells would divide and grow, creating solid pieces of meat. The science to develop cultured meat – based on tissue engineering – has been around for several years, and research on developing ways to produce it commercially is being conducted around the world.

If the scientists at TAU can develop an efficient, cost-effective way to produce in vitro meat, it will eventually be grown in vats, and look and taste “as natural as anything that comes out of a meat production facility today.”

Sounds like a recipe for a delicious, ethical Shabbat dinner. We’ll take it—and taste it.

Read the full story here.

(Image: Shutterstock)

The post The Israeli Pioneers Working to Bring Test Tube Meat to Your Plate appeared first on Jewcy.

Good morning, world! We are pleased to present the Judaica you never knew you needed: a 3D-printed kippah.

Craig Kaplan, a computer science professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, is a Jew with a penchant for math, design, Islamic geometric patterns, and 3D printing—so it was only a matter of time until those interests collided to produce the world’s first 3D-printed skullcap.

Kaplan—who has used 3D printers to produce everything from a geometric menorah to a best-selling espresso cup—told Inside3DP that his plan was to print a 3D fedora (hel-lo, Jews!), and a kippah “seemed like a fun design space in which to experiment.” Apparently two rabbis have given the yarmulka their “blessing,” so Design-Gods willing we’ll soon be embracing the rise of 3D-printed, Islamic geometric headwear in the Jewish world.

(Image: Craig Kaplan, Flickr)

The post The Judaica You Never Knew You Needed: a 3D-Printed Kippah appeared first on Jewcy.