Israel Active

A disabled green sea turtle named Hofesh (“freedom” in Hebrew) can now swim again thanks to industrial design student Shlomi Gez. Shlomi built Hofesh a dual fin based on the design of Lockheed Martin's supersonic F-22 'Raptor' jet fighter.

Israel’s Science and Technology Ministry, in conjunction with the Prime Minister’s Office and Keren Hayesod - UIA, is running its second annual competition for Innovation in Alternative Fuels for Transportation. The prize will be awarded in December.

Israeli solar energy developer Arava Power Company has inaugurated six solar fields in the Arava and Negev, generating a total of 36 megawatts of electricity. Arava Power was the first company to inaugurate a solar field in Israel, which supplies 9 million kilowatt/hours of power annually to the grid.

No Chileans died in the tsunami caused by the recent 8.2-level earthquake, thanks to the automatic alerts sent by the geo-targeted notification system developed by Israel’s eVigilo. The system was installed after 400 Chileans died in an earthquake and tsunami in 2010.

In the past six years, 101 world-class scientists immigrated to Israel to become university nanotechnology faculty members. Some 750 doctoral students and 850 master’s students currently study nanotechnology and 7,500 nano-scientific papers have been published in the last 3 years.

Advanced Technologies Park in Beer-Sheva will eventually have 16 buildings on 23 acres adjacent to the main Ben Gurion University campus. Confirmed tenants include Deutsche Telekom, EMC-RSA, NESS, Oracle and incubators Elbit Incubit and CyberLabs.

Tel Aviv University’s Porter School of Environmental Studies is a study building for green construction in Israel. Set to open in May, its sustainable structure demonstrates Israel’s green technologies and serves as a living lab for green building practices.

(Thanks to NoCamels.com) Israel’s Cimagine can show you what products will look like in your home before you purchase them. Cimagine lets you download photos from the web or an on-line catalog and place them on a real-time image of your room.

Every night, nearly 100 water-free, energy-independent robots from Israel’s Ecoppia clean the panels at the Ketura Sun solar energy farm in Israel’s Negev desert. They prevent soiling of the panels, which previously reduced energy production by up to 35%.

Israeli mother Debby Elnatan’s son, Rotem, has cerebral palsy. She would not accept that Rotem would never walk, so she invented the Firefly Upsee. The harness places the child on top of the shoes of an adult who wears specially designed sandals. The child “walks” as the grown-up moves.