Israel Active

Companies from Israel and California will enjoy financial assistance for joint R&D projects. The agreement was signed at the Bio Conference in San Diego. An Israeli delegation consisting of 17 Israel bio-med companies took part in the Israeli pavilion at the conference.

Israel’s Hadiklaim Date Growers’ Cooperative commissioned veteran Israeli date grower Moshe Kirat to bring his date growth expertise to the La Quinta Date Farm in California. In one year, Kirat has reduced water consumption by 43% and boosted productivity, saving over $2.4 million.

Those who remember the TV series Knight Rider will be pleased to hear that the Israeli-Californian Robin Labs has designed an intelligent voice recognition and communication system for the driver. It can provide updates on traffic, routes, parking locations, gas prices, weather, and more. It can even tell jokes.

Israel Technion’s 2014 TechnoBrain challenge was to build a device that can climb 25 meters at an 80-degree angle without using combustion or open flame energy sources. It must slide down whilst lifting a space elevator carrying practical cargo. This is how teams solved the problem.

Not a recent video, but a timely one, in view of the current situation in Israel.

Israel is set to enter the thermo-solar arena by constructing the first thermo-solar field in Israel, at Ashelim in the Negev. The NIS 2.9 billion ($850 million) sun tower will generate 121MW of electric power (sufficient for a medium size Israeli city), which will be fed into the Israeli grid.

I always like to highlight when anti-Israel media feature an Israeli innovation. It took the UK Guardian newspaper 2 months to report on Consumer Physics’ SCIO sensor. I wonder what the sensor indicates when Guardian reporters test it on their brains.

(Thanks to Israel21c) Israel’s Qlight has won the Best Nanotech Company of the Year award at Nanotech Israel 2014. Its nano-crystals enhance the quality and colors of LCD TV screens and LED lights while reducing energy consumption. Qlight is 50% owned by Merck.

Graduate student Michael Brandwein from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has incorporated a new module TZD into cardboard packaging for agricultural produce. TZD was synthesized at the HUJ, which is working with Kibbutz Beit Guvrin to commercialize the process.

Israel’s Webydo is one of the fastest growing designer communities in the world and has raised $7 million in investment for its website-creation cloud platform. With it, designers can create, manage, and host innovative websites, without writing code or hiring developers.