Israel Active

The second man to ever walk on the moon, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, 85, is scheduled to make his first touchdown in Israel when he attends the International Astronautical Congress in Jerusalem in October. Aldrin’s 1969 Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong visited Israel several years ago.

If you need to use Israeli app Musketeer to call for help in an emergency, you should get a very fast response. The nearest Musketeers (professionals and do-gooders) will come to your aid and stay with you until the official emergency services arrive. Another caring app from the Jewish State.

Busy women entrepreneurs who haven’t time to spend trying on cosmetics can now use the app TryItOn from Israel’s EZ Face. It connects to a database of 25,000 beauty products. Take a selfie in the store and then scan the Universal Product Code (UPC) of any cosmetic to see what it would look like.

The Space Florida-Israel Innovation Partnership Program has awarded second round funding to four innovative joint space-related projects. The Israeli beneficiaries are Micro-gRx, Israel Aerospace Industries, STEMRAD and Elbit Systems Land.

Microprocessor manufacturing giant ARM has bought Israel’s Sansa Security for at least $85 million. Sansa has developed embedded security for microchips – which will be very useful for ARM as the market for Internet-connected devices increases. Sansa will become ARM’s Israeli R&D center.

Israel’s Ninox Robotics and Bluebird Aerosystems are employing Israeli drones with thermal imaging to guard farms from pests such as kangaroos and wild dogs. It saves farmers hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of sheep, plus hours spent defending them.

Israel’s Elbit has launched a new cyber security unit called Cyberbit. It has two separate departments - one, focusing on law enforcement unit and the other being the Cybershield department, for detecting and defending against cyber attacks.

The Technion Israel Institute of Technology topped the list of institutions outside the US with the most Nobel prizewinners this century.

Tel Aviv’s congested Ayalon highway is to be transformed into an oasis of greenery. The Ayalon Roofing Project will create a 593-acre public space for recreation, while enabling traffic to continue flowing below. It will be Israel’s largest municipal project, costing over NIS 2bn.

Israel’s Shikun & Binui and Spain’s Abengoa are to build a massive 121MW solar power plant, costing NIS 4bn ($1.05 bn), in the Negev desert. It is the second of 3 local solar schemes that together will eventually provide up to two percent of Israel’s total electricity needs.