Israel Active

The Defense departments of Israel and the USA together with MIT sponsored the recent Combating Terrorism Technology Conference in Tel Aviv.  It included two $100,000 prize competitions for Israeli security-related startups, won by Duke Robotic Systems and Spectory.

JNF has opened the Center for Water-Sensitive Cities in Israel in the city of Kfar Saba.  It employs a hybrid bio-filter - the first of its kind in the world, purifying dirty runoff rainwater in the winter and performing “aquifer dialysis” to purify polluted underground water in the rainless summer.

Eleven Israeli general hospitals and two psychiatric hospitals are to convert to natural gas for kitchens, sanitation, and heating.  The hospitals spend NIS 150-200 million a year on energy, and the transition to natural gas is expected to save them NIS 60 million.

Israel’s Aleinu aeroponic farm sits on the rooftop of the Mishor Adumim industrial park in the desert between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.  It employs some 20 people - Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, Israeli-born and immigrants.  The herbs and lettuces grow in humid air, without soil or water.

I reported previously on the testing of Gibraltar’s wave-energy plant built by Israel’s Eco Wave Power.  It has now been officially "switched-on" by Fabian Picardo - Chief Minister of Gibraltar.  The project is Europe’s first grid-connected wave energy array.

A formidable array of Israeli speakers will be presenting at this year’s Cybertech conference and startup exhibition in Beverley Hills on June 30.

Jerusalem was this year's hosting city for the annual Wikimedia Hackathon. 120 participants from 17 different countries gathered for a weekend dedicated to developing new features in Wikimedia technology, to help reach more countries and more languages.

A group of Israeli scientists and architects, including Nobel Prize-winner Professor Dan Shechtman, have created “Life Object: Merging Architecture and Biology,” a large-scale structure inspired by a 3D scan of a bird’s nest.  It is displayed at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, Italy.

Israeli-developed Hermes 450 unmanned aircraft are being tested by farmers in North Dakota.  The images from on-board cameras will provide a real-time aerial view of how their fields are progressing, allowing them to make fast agricultural management decisions.

Protect your GPS system.  Israel’s Focus Telecom has developed GPSDome - the first low-cost protection against GPS jammers. GPS jamming is used by rogue governments and criminals to disrupt industry and security.  GPSDome’s algorithms streamline the deflection of radio-frequency interference from the jammers.