Israel Active

Israeli PM Naftali Bennett and Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel dedicated the first “fiber-optic connection” in Ma’alot-Tarshiha in the north of the country. Hendel said that fast Internet was vital for Zionism and that other countries would see no profit in connecting remote communities.

A fifth Israeli startup has a technical solution to the problem of preventing the hatching of unwanted male chicks (see previously).  NRS Poultry, a research group at Israel’s Volcani Institute, is developing a way to stop a hen’s male-producing Z chromosome being transferred to the egg.

Tel Aviv’s municipality will require dog owners to provide a DNA sample from their pets to be kept in a city-run database. Inspectors will match these to samples from uncollected dog droppings left on the street and offending owners will be fined. Tel Aviv is world number 3 for dog ownership.

Moona – a Space for Change (see previously) began as an extracurricular program for Jewish and Arab Israeli high school students to learn space technology, robotics, drones etc. It has now added advanced vision and IoT technologies, plus hi-tech job-specific training.

Japan’s ispace missions to the Moon in 2023 and 2024 plan to carry the Lunar Extractor payloads of Israel’s Helios (see previously).  Helios aims to demonstrate the production of oxygen and metals on the lunar surface.

Researchers from Israel’s Weizmann Institute have used data from NASA’s Juno space probe to reveal the mysteries of Jupiter’s massive polar cyclones. They explained why Jupiter’s storms, as opposed to the earthly variety, do not disperse and rarely change.

Israel’s Ben-Gurion University has established the Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Food Security in the Desert. It will focus on water conservation, treatment and recycling. President and CEO of Watergen and Vertical Field Dr. Michael Mirilashvili is a key partner for the center, named after his father.

The Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD) is investing $6 million into six joint US-Israeli projects including cybersecurity, depression therapy and satellite tracking. The Israeli startups are Cyberint Technologies, GrayMatters Health, Over-Sat, , Skillreal, and YonaLink.

Israel’s SpaceIL has raised $70 million from investors for Beresheet 2 - its second mission to the lunar surface, to launch in 2024. It is the first ever lunar mission attempting to land two small crafts detaching from a mothership. One aims to be only the second craft to land on the far side.

Technion scientists have made a breakthrough discovery in the manufacture of nano-sized precise optical components (e.g., medical imaging). If the component is placed in liquid (water plus glycerol), light slows down, and the component needs to be much larger. It can even be printed on a 3D printer.