Naim K. Qasim adds new layer to Israeli fashion. The 37-year-old designer is stitching a new culture of style that will get people talking.
Write down the name of the fashion label, Naim K. Qasim. Though it has been around for about a decade, the designer by the same name has recently taken a bolder step into the spotlight. The 37-year-old soft-spoken artist just headlined a prominent fashion exhibition in Tel Aviv — Night in the House of Fashion: The Cutting Edge of Israeli Fashion Art & Design – showcasing creations by some of Israel’s top designers as well as artists from across the world.
Trained at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, until now Qasim has focused his talents in his home community of Tira, an Arab city in central Israel.
He says he is known for the way he cuts dresses, his use of layers and his work with traditional elements. People come from all over to be custom-fitted for one of his unique designs.
“I always take inspiration from my community, my day-to-day life,” he tells ISRAEL21c over coffee at the Tel Aviv Port. “When I connect with these sources, I feel more complete and connected to myself. Then I can tap into my inner thoughts and manifest them through creative art.”
Though never instructed by his farmer parents to take a specific profession, Qasim says his choice for a fashion career raised eyebrows in the religious Muslim community in which he was raised.
His family, he says, supported him throughout his journey. “If it wasn’t for my family, I wouldn’t be who I am today,” he says.
What’s in a name
Qasim never dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. One of nine children – he has six sisters and two brothers, one of them his twin – Qasim says he tried to drop out of high school because of boredom but his father wouldn’t allow it.
- An 18-layer Naim K. Qasim dress.
Upon graduation, he set about finding a job he liked and tried his hand at carpentry, hair styling, as a gas station attendant, in construction, and as a warehouse stocker. “There was no guidance counselor back then,” he explains.
It was a television show on the use of virtual mannequins that piqued his interest in the fashion world. So he applied to Shenkar. “I loved it there. It was a journey for me, a celebration,” he says.
In 2001, with two local prizes for outstanding designs and an honors certificate from one of the world’s premiere fashion schools, Qasim headed to New York with big ideas and oodles of enthusiasm.
BioHug’s Israeli pressure garment provides custom soothing for people with autism, PTSD and others prone to high stress.
An occupational therapist at University of North Carolina hospital wearing a BioHug vest.
Most of us have moments when we could really use a hug – when we’re sad, lonely, scared or stressed. The therapeutic value of a good squeeze for emotional wellbeing is well documented. For people affected by autism, post-traumatic stress and anxiety or attention disorders, research has shown that hugging is an especially effective soother.
That is the scientific fact behind the development of the BioHug Vest by Haifa-based BioHug Technologies. Already in use and soon to roll out to a wider market, the vest provides an effective, portable, non-restraining stress-relief solution using deep, hug-like pressure.
“We’re all familiar with stress, which is associated with lots of health problems,” says BioHug CEO Andrew Schiffmiller. “For some populations it can be associated with much more severe symptoms – someone with autism under stress may injure himself or others, while someone with ADHD under stress may be unable to stay on task.”
Technion-educated engineer Raffi Rembrand already had business experience and a few medical-related inventions under his belt. As the father of a son with autism, Rembrand well understood the calming benefits of hugging.
“It has not only an emotional content, but pressure on certain parts of the body has a physiological effect of calming in a measurable way,” says Schiffmiller.
Automatic or manual hugs
On a practical level, it’s not always possible (or ethical, in a school setting) to get a hug as often or as long as needed. Others have tried to solve the problem with devices like the “squeeze machine” improvised by animal science expert and autism advocate Temple Grandin based on a cattle-restraining chute. The hefty box is fairly effective but not practical, says Schiffmiller.
“Others have tried to induce a calming effect using constant pressure from weights, and it works — but only for short time, because after a few minutes the body gets used to it,” he says. The same problem applies to a few pressure vests on the market, which are also less effective because they require manually pumping air into them – something not every wearer can do.
Rembrand’s adjustable-fit, cotton-blend vest shell has an integrated lightweight air compressor and single-board computer, plus tiny valves and pipes that feed compressed air to plastic “bubbles” under the lining of the washable vest.
The unique twist to this invention is that the air can be pumped into the bubbles automatically according to a pre-defined script, or manually via remote control. The location and duration of the “hug” can be varied so the effects are longer lasting.
- Kids can even wear BioHug comfortably while doing homework.
The vest is powered by rechargeable batteries and lasts for up to four hours between charges.
For PTSD and chronic pain
BioHug Vest hit the market a few months ago and is being used in group homes for people with autism in Israel, in schools in Israel and the US, and by occupational therapists in the UK and Canada.
Israeli herbs for the medicine chest
New EU-funded international study of Mediterranean plants finds Israel’s medicinal herbs effective in fighting bacteria, fungus and infection.
The Palestine oak is a source of powerful antibacterial substances. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Your grandmother may have known that the essential oils in nettles help wounds heal. But she did not know why. A unique cross-border team from Israel, Spain, Greece and Palestinian Authority-administered Nablus is developing a database revealing the science behind the medicinal benefits of thousands of plants they’ve been gathering and analyzing since November 2011 – including many native to Israel.
The BioXplore initiative eventually will lead to controlled cultivation of plants for pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals, says Prof. Bertold Fridlender, president of Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem, where the cooperative research was initiated and is being administered with a €2 million European Union grant.
“Some of the plants were known through folklore to be valuable for specific uses, but we are giving a scientific base to that information,” Fridlender tells ISRAEL21c.
“If a certain plant is a good anti-inflammatory, we will try to show why and at what dose.” Fridlender, who has a doctorate in medical microbiology from UCLA and worked in botanical research at Rutgers University in New Jersey, says the potential of plants to generate new drugs is immense.
“About 25 percent of all pharmaceuticals today, including aspirin and many anti-cancer drugs, originated from plants,” he says.
Plants’ survival mechanism can help us, too
Because plants are literally rooted to the spot, Fridlender explains, they must synthesize many protective chemical compounds to survive and thrive despite weather conditions, diseases and natural enemies.
Perhaps because of the hot, arid climate in which they grow, Israel’s medicinal herbs seem particularly rich in healing chemical compounds.
Powerful antibacterial, anti-fungal, antioxidant, parasite-fighting or immune-boosting substances have been found in native plants such as Palestine oak, terebinth, Mediterranean stink bush, chamomile, carob, sage, nettle and marigold.
“Some plants we picked because we knew local people use them for all kinds of folk remedies,” says Fridlender. “A number of others were identified later to have beneficial properties.”
The college (which is independent of the Hadassah Medical Organization) made an internal website where all the BioXplore partners are uploading their findings, some of which have already been published. At the end there will be a database for broad use.
“As a consortium, we would like to interest local industries to take whatever we have discovered and try to develop products together,” says Fridlender.
- Hadassah Academic College President Bertold Fridlender is an accomplished botanical researcher.
- For the rest of the story
-
New Technology Innovation Momentum Fund at Tel Aviv University’s Ramot technology transfer company gets $5 million kick-start.
Technology licensed from Ramot provides the advanced error correcting and digital signal-processing controller inside flash memory chips. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Why did a multibillion-dollar Indian company invest $5 million to kick-start the Technology Innovation Momentum Fund at Tel Aviv University’s Ramot technology transfer company?
It’s simple: Starting with the algorithm for error correction code for flash memory – one of the patents filed by Ramot and now inside billions of dollars worth of SanDisk products – Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a powerhouse for the sort of innovation India’s Tata Industries wants to utilize.
“This is our attempt to scout Israeli technology more deeply,” said Tata Industries’ Rameshwar Jamwal at the April 30 announcement.
“Major corporations are facing increasing competition, and they are rarely investing in basic research,” explains Ramot CEO Shlomo Nimrodi. “As a result, they are all trying to figure out where to get the next big thing. They can go to young companies, but that world has its own challenges in raising money. That leaves academic institutions as the source of groundbreaking innovation.”
International and national grants enable TAU to invest more than $150 million in R&D every year, making it the largest research institution in Israel. About half of its 30,000 students are involved in research across a wide spectrum of disciplines. That translates to 1,800 research projects going on at any given time, encompassing everything from brain science to cyber security.
Over the past couple of decades, Ramot has nurtured thousands of patents. Nearly 600 are active patent families, about a third of them licensed to partner companies such as GM, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Ford, Pfizer and Google and nearly 100 more. Forty of them were licensed to Israeli startups.
Nimrodi tells ISRAEL21c that the new Technology Innovation Momentum Fund is meant to help bridge the gap between early-stage innovation and commercialization – “crossing the valley of death,” as he calls it – for inventions in pharmaceuticals and healthcare, clean-tech and environmental, engineering and software.
That valley is dangerous because many promising technologies are either commercialized too soon or too cheaply, leaving the inventors and their institutions high and dry. Momentum Fund managers will identify worthy ideas, bring them to the right stage and then shop around for the right business partner to commercialize them.
Flash memory, mouthwash, scanners
Six products licensed through Ramot are already in the market.
13 must-see museums in Israel
There are more museums per capita in Israel than anywhere in the world, and they’re all bursting with innovation and creativity.
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Photo by Ariel Jerozolimski
Israel has more museums per capita than anywhere else in the world. With 230-plus museums (and counting), visitors and locals have the luxury of choosing which topic — art, science, history, design, architecture, technology – appeals to them most.
- Visit an Israeli museum on International Museum Day
Every year since 1977, the International Council of Museums has celebrated the importance of these cultural institutions in the development of society with an International Museum Day on or around May 18. Some 32,000 museums in 130 countries participated in the global event. Israeli museums marked this year’s International Museum Day on May 16, 2013 – offering free entrance (in most cases), and free guided tours. If you’d rather not depend on eeny-meeny-miny-mo, ISRAEL21c offers this list of 13 of Israel’s must-see museums:
