Israel Active

Israel’s Enlight Renewable Energy is to build a $1.1 billion 100MW per hour solar-power plant and data center in Ashalim, southern Israel. It has also signed contracts for NTA (Tel Aviv Metro), Big, SodaStream, Applied Materials, Amdocs and others, who will buy green electricity from Enlight.

Researchers at Israel’s Technion Institute have developed DNAformer – a technology for encoding, retrieving, and rapidly reading data stored in DNA molecules. DNA takes up 100 million times less space, lasts hundreds of millennia, saves energy and emissions, and is thousands of times faster to process.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being widely used to create computer code, but the code generated is often over-complex, full of bugs and security flawed. Israel’s Qodo (see ) sets a new standard for efficiency in code understanding, enabling AI systems to work with code at any scale.

Israel’s Heven Drones (see previously) has increased the size of the loads they can carry. The hydrogen-powered Raider drones can carry up to 50 pounds and fly for up to 12 hours.

Haifa bay’s heavy industry is to be replaced with green spaces, housing and commercial areas. The key event will be the closure of the Bazan oil refineries, which is now scheduled for 2030. Haifa will remain home to the country’s largest cargo port, two smaller seaports, and a small airport.

Israel’s Megatron N.R.G. is developing a nuclear fusion energy reactor no bigger than a desktop computer. It says it has achieved ongoing fusion events in the lab by using micro-entities called stable plasmoids - tangled bundles of super-hot charged gas (plasma) held together by magnetic fields.

Israel’s PlasticBack is working with a USA-based recycling company to scale-up its technology, which converts hard-to-recycle plastics into valuable byproducts. It aims to to upcycle 100,000 tons of plastic waste by 2030, setting a new benchmark for sustainable plastic recycling.

A team in Sweden led by Hebrew University scientists have discovered a chemical process in nature that creates hydroxyl (OH) radicals at low temperatures. It has major implications for pollution control and human health (aging, cancer and immune response).

Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Reichman University have proposed to use aloe vera to improve the sensory experience of eating plant-based meat substitutes. The process holds great potential for sustainable food production.

Scientists at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University have “cracked the code” as to the parts of a dog’s brain responsible for its enhanced ability to distinguish odors. They used laser-based speckle pattern detection and a high-resolution camera to avoid invasive equipment or sedation. Now humans can see what a dog smells.