Israel Active

Nevada’s WaterStart public-private joint venture and Israel’s National Technological Innovation Authority signed a memorandum of understanding on water-use innovation, to pave the way for Israeli water companies to set up facilities in the arid state of Nevada.

Facebook is holding its first Israeli developer conference, to help creators of Israeli technologies develop their products in line with the social network’s plan to create a connected world.  Over 600 Israeli developers are attending, along with Facebook officials, engineers and product managers.

Coca-Cola Israel and Tel-Aviv based creative agency Gefen Team have designed a Coke bottle that takes a selfie photo of the drinker.  The novel device easily attaches to a half-liter Coke bottle. It then senses the exact moment the bottle reaches a 70-degree tilt, the ideal angle for taking selfies, before snapping a photo.

A research team from Ben Gurion University of the Negev has won a gold medal at the worldwide synthetic biology competition iGEM, held at MIT. The students’ genetic engineering technology (PlastiCure_BGU) breaks down plastic waste and releases energy.

Since January, NatWest, one of the largest banks in the UK, has deployed technology from Israeli cybersecurity firm BioCatch within its private banking arm Coutts and for some of its business customers, successfully preventing online fraud and helping to protect its 14 million customers.

I reported previously on the Raptor smart glasses for cyclists, developed by Elbit unit Everysight.  A test program is being launched for the Augmented Reality (AR) aimed to boost training and enhance performance, fitness and health.

Israel and Germany have set up a three-year, 30 million Euro plan to promote joint nanotechnology initiatives. The program will support joint projects and aims to boost cooperation between companies and research centers in the nanotechnology sector in Israel and Germany.

A recent workshop at Israel’s Technion presented the latest research cooperation between the Technion and Shantou University to help solve China’s severe ecological challenges. It will increase dramatically when the Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology (TGIT) is completed.

Israel’s Nexar has come a long way since I’ve been reporting it. In addition to its “bad driver” reporting function, it now says it has created the world’s first vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) network that aims to detect dangers on the road and prevent collisions.

The cyber solutions from Israel’s Aperio alert and take action when hackers try to damage critical infrastructures, such as electricity grids or water supply networks. They detect anomalies, such as a wrong noise or temperature, in an apparently otherwise perfectly working device.