Israel Active

Half of Israel’s electricity now comes from natural gas – mainly from the new Tamar offshore gas field. Israel Electric Corporation announced that this is its cleanest year ever for environmental quality and the production of clean, green electricity.

Israel Corporation subsidiary IC Green Energy has inaugurated a facility in New Jersey to produce gasoline from natural gas. The plant can produce up to 100,000 gallons (440,000 liters) of gasoline a year. Automobiles will be able to use the lower cost, less emissions fuel without any modifications.

Israel’s Ormat Technologies builds Recoverable Energy Generators (REGs) that turn waste energy from industrial processes into usable electrical power. It already recovers 160 megawatts in the USA and 595 MW worldwide. It has just agreed to build a 5MW REG power plant for eBay in Utah.

Tel Aviv University is to set-up a new research center at China’s Tsinghua University. Initially, the new “XIN” center will focus on life sciences and nanotechnology. It will recruit researchers and students in Israel and China.

Israeli agriculturists have cultivated the world’s largest date. The Anbara date species, which can grow to over 10cm, was planted at the Eden R&D center seven years ago and is being harvested for the first time. The largest specimen was presented at President Peres’ open succa.

(Thanks to Size Doesn’t Matter) The 2x2x2 inch CuBox-i from Nazareth-based SolidRun has no moving parts. You need a separate monitor (or TV screen) and power adaptor, but you have probably got these already. From $45 to $119. Deliveries begin in November.

(Thanks to Eli) Defeating the threat from Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) has been the aim of the world’s anti-terrorist forces. The Miniature Reactive Jammer (MRJ) from Israel’s Elbit Systems was launched at DSEi in London. The device detects, analyzes and disrupts the IED trigger signal.

Israel’s PointGrab has won the 2013 European Technology Innovation Award from Frost & Sullivan for its achievements in "gesture recognition for consumer electronics." PointGrab’s technology is in computers, smartphones and TVs, including Samsung’s Smart TVs, Acer and Fujitsu PCs.

This video will give you some appreciation of the high calibre of the graduates from Israel’s Technion. Professor Beth Murinson says at the end – “As you can see, I’m quite busy”.

Georgia Kotantoula, a Greek biomedical masters’ student at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, won first prize in a European Association of Orthodontists’ competition. Georgia’s dental bacteria remedy has been patented by the university and will commence trials shortly.