Israel Active

A new video showing the work of Israeli start-up Young Engineers that won Amir Asor the “Youth Business International Entrepreneur of the Year” award from Britain's Youth Business International non-profit organization. Children use LEGO toys to grasp the principles of software engineering.

Netanya students won top three prizes at the Intel-Young Scientists competition. Victor Isserov of the Shai Agnon School was joint top with his project on the quantum characteristics of ions and the development of quantum computers. Victor will represent Israel in the EU science competition in Prague in September.

The Amal network of technical high schools held a nationwide online detection and hacking race at Cisco’s R&D center in Netanya. The goal is to equip a new generation of top-tier computer experts with the skills to benefit Israel and successfully compete in cyberspace.

The Start-Up Nation is hosting a Mini-Maker Faire, “a family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement.” “Making” is the process of taking common household items and “upgrading” them into a new product or technology. The Makers of today are the high-tech inventors of tomorrow.

Professor Shafi Goldwasser of Israel’s Weizmann Institute was joint winner of the 2013 Turing Prize for her pioneering work that brought about computer cryptography – securing transactions on the Internet. The Turing Prize is considered to be the “Nobel Prize” of computing.

Rafi Koren, a lemon farmer from Moshav Avigdor near Kiryat Malachi has invented a product that prevents the spread of Mal Secco, a fungal disease affecting citrus trees that has been known to kill entire lemon groves.

The commercial arm of Israel’s Weizmann Institute has developed a system to protect soil and groundwater from contamination from pesticides. Environmentally friendly substances called prophyrins act as catalysts to dissolve toxic substances into harmless ones after they have served their pest-killing purpose.

Israel’s Dimona Silica Industries has developed a road asphalt compound that uses old tires for strength and safety. The new compound, RuBind, recycles many of the 50,000 tires disposed of every year, and is already in use in Israel’s Beit She’an Valley.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will show President Barack Obama a series of technological products by Israel’s high-tech industries in a special exhibit set up in the President’s honor. The products are in the fields of renewable energy, accident prevention, medicine, search and rescue, and robotics.

Israeli startup VocalZoom has developed an optoelectronic microphone that is able to extract a person’s voice from almost all surrounding noise – including other people’s voices. Its optical microphone “reads lips” by sensing vibrations on the face of the person speaking.