Israel Active

Middle school students of Israeli startup Graffiti came 3rd in this year’s Junior Achievement Europe Company of the Year competition. They designed the Sit Up - a safety harness to carry children on one’s shoulders, leaving the adult’s hands free. Sit Up is manufactured by Israeli company Netiv, which employs people with special needs.

Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have analyzed the methods that ants employ to transport food to their nests. Teams of ants are organized into formation by a guiding ant.

A new 22 kilometer extension to Sorek has been laid to the pipeline connecting the Tamar natural gas field to Ashdod. It will increase the gas supply to power stations in the South of Israel. Eventually 160 km of pipelines will transport gas all over Israel.

Israeli startup Argus currently has the world’s only effective system to detect and prevent the kind of electronic attack launched recently on a Jeep Cherokee in St Louis. Argus analyzes data transmitted to a vehicle’s IP address and only accepts genuine commands.

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.