Israel Active

This is essentially an old story, but I’ve included it mainly because it is rare that the BBC includes any good news from Israel.

Teenagers from the WIZO Nachlat Yehuda School and Youth Village in Rishon Lezion, an agricultural high school that specializes in life sciences, took their agriculture matriculation exam last week. The curriculum covers animal care and dairy cow production

Here is a new video of US President Obama seeing a selection of Israel Technion’s innovations during his recent visit to Israel. It features robots, ReWalk and nano-technology.

20.5% of the global biotechnology industry's turnover - $24.6 billion out of $120 billion - is based on products that originated in Israeli research. This figure does not include several very important products by Israeli researchers who are currently abroad.

The new 4th generation Intel Core processor, codenamed Haswell, were partly developed in Israel. The Haswell extends battery life by 50 percent compared with the third generation processors, and will give ultrabooks more than nine hours working time.

Apple Inc. will inaugurate the first entrepreneurship development center of its kind at the interdisciplinary arts and sciences Amal High School in Hadera next week. The students will develop iOS-based apps for iPads and iPhones. Sixty 9th and 10th grade students will join the project.

(Thanks to NoCamels) When old computers are disposed of, sensitive personal information recorded in them may still be readable by malicious individuals and organizations. Israeli start-up Sure Erasure removes the data completely, allowing equipment and parts to be recycled without compromising security.

Israeli start-up OrCam has developed a camera-based system that will “read” to the visually impaired whilst on the move. So OrCam employee Liat Negrin, visually impaired since childhood, can pick up a can of vegetables in a grocery store and easily read its label. Ships in September.

Israeli hi-tech Red Bend’s systems allow employees to use their own mobile devices to check company emails and do other work while protecting the company from exposing sensitive information. In the video, my cousin Roger describes Red Bend’s TRUE (TRUsted) solution for BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) at Mobile World Congress. (Warning – it’s a bit technical!)

At Israel’s Volcani Center, Potatoes sprayed with spearmint oil are not sprouting for months; Granny Smith apples deprived of oxygen stay fresh for over a year. Tomatoes are flourishing despite being infected with the common yellow leaf virus.