Israel Active

Engineering students at Ben Gurion University have teamed up with industrial designers at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design to build a futuristic-looking racecar for a collegiate design competition in Italy this month.

The United States has selected Elta, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries, for a radar system to detect illegal immigration and drug smuggling at the border with Mexico. Elta’s systems can identify individuals at 300m to 20 km and vehicles from twice that distance.

Microsoft’s Chief Executive Steve Banner announced that he will attend major MS-Israel events immediately following the launch of the Windows 8 operating system. Banner famously stated in 2008 that Microsoft was almost as much an Israeli company as it was an American company.

Israel’s Nirosoft has been awarded a $100 million contract to desalinate polluted water produced as a by-product of petroleum extraction in Colombia. Previously, the wastewater was disposed of in deep wells. Now, the purified water will be used to grow trees.

Interesting article explaining the success of Israel’s bSolar. The company mass-produces bi-facial solar panels at low cost. The two-sided panels attract more sunlight than standard panels. Also, important is the b for “Boron” which is the key ingredient that improves efficiency by twenty per cent.

The G280 advanced executive jet, built jointly by Israel Aerospace Industries and Gulfstream Aerospace, has been given a certificate of airworthiness by the US Federal Aviation Administration. The G280 carries ten passengers up to 6667 km at Mach 0.8.

James Hurley’s article provides excellent insight into the challenges and strengths of Israel’s technology start-ups. Its talented ex-army entrepreneurs constantly face impossible problems, with limited resources and manage to “solve them yesterday”.

Smart keyboard company KeyView has unveiled Smartype – a new kind of keyboard with a sophisticated built-in display. Users no longer need to split their focus between a keyboard and computer screen, helping minimize typing errors, reducing neck strain and maximize productivity.

Excellent article explaining how Israel’s Seambiotic takes the Carbon Dioxide (greenhouse gas) directly from smokestacks and uses it to feed algae for biofuel projects in Ohio and Italy and for the vitamin industry in China. It’s still early days, but shows much promise.

Watch this film clip of RoboThespian teaching a class of Israeli children how to work with weights and levers. Plus some Shakespeare verse and a song. Lessons were never like this in my time.