Israel Active

Mobile World Congress (MWC) Feb 27 - Mar 2 in Barcelona is the world's biggest mobile industry trade show. 65 Israeli companies are exhibiting at the Israeli pavilion, plus about a hundred more elsewhere at the show.

Four Israeli companies were named in the 2017 Global Cleantech 100. Israel’s BreezoMeter, Kaiima, TaKaDu, and Netafim are among the top 100 companies picked (from a list of 9,900) by Cleantech Group as poised to make significant market impact within a five- to 10-year timeframe.

Israel’s Like-a-Fish has re-invented the underwater breathing apparatus. Instead of carrying heavy cylinders of compressed air, the innovative technology extracts the air from the water as you go. Like-a-Fish is developing the air supply system for INOVA’s ATLANTIS hydrofoil / submarine.

Cyber professionals, hackers and other proud geeks convened in Tel Aviv at Microsoft’s first BlueHat cybersecurity conference in Israel to tackle cybercrime. In addition to presentations, there was a competition to break the security of a nuclear reactor plant.

Researchers, led by Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Professor Yehuda Hoffman, have used 3D mapping of the movement of galaxies, to find that our Milky Way galaxy is speeding away from a huge, previously unidentified low density void that they have named the Dipole Repeller.  

Scientists, including from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, have identified the flavor components that contribute to the delicious taste of tomatoes. They will now breed those components back into the modern types of tomatoes.  

The Jerusalem Municipality has completed a pilot program to test the viability of automated parking systems. Each Ferris-wheel-like unit in the Mesilat Yesharim parking lot occupies two parking spots and provides 12-16 vertical spaces in exchange.

I reported previously on the breakthrough by Israeli Technion scientists regarding the efficient splitting of water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Now Weizmann Institute scientists have made electrons spin in a way to avoid producing hydrogen peroxide, which corrodes electrodes.

Israel’s Ben Gurion University has teamed up with Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University to fight advanced cyberthreats like the human body’s immune system fights bacteria. The cyber-immune technology will utilize BGU’s software and NTL’s hardware research expertise.

One of my cyber heroes, Professor Adi Shamir of Israel’s Weizmann Institute has won a 2017 Japan Prize for his pioneering work on cryptography. In 1977 Shamir, together with Ron Rivest and Leonard Adleman invented the RSA public-key algorithm standard for data encryption, valid even today.