Israel Active

Introducing a new fruit that many will want to say a special blessing on this year. The Israeli company Ben Dor Fruits & Nurseries took 10 years to perfect the nectarine/mango. The fruit is heart-shaped and has the smooth peel of a mango. It is currently being exported to the UK and South Africa.

366 new doctorate students received their Ph.D.’s from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They also received a pep talk from honorary doctorate Rick Hansen who has been paralysed since the age of fifteen. “New goals and new dreams will be unfolding. Anything is possible.”

The Israel Innovation (MIXiii) conference is the first in the world where Biomed and High-tech join hands in a unique and exciting new international conference format. At least 1,500 participants from over 45 countries and 4,500 one-on-one meetings are expected.

Over 2000 people viewed PM Netanyahu’s speech prior to the Rio+20 Environmental Summit (featured here last week and on my JPost blog). Please also watch Gilad Erdan - Israel’s Environment Minister – who was elected Vice Chairman of the conference.

Tiny Israel is well known for its outside-the-box thinking, but the cabinet’s approval for new islands is truly ambitious. Plans include a new airport, a seaport, a desalination plant, a power plant and a military testing base that would normally have required valuable coastal land.

Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie credits the media for bringing about Israeli scientific improvements such as teaching science in Hebrew, Israeli Summer Time and “silent” radio to provide an emergency channel to alert the public if necessary during wartime.

Ben Gurion University Professors Moti Herskowitz and Miron Landau have just been awarded a grant to further their groundbreaking research in liquid fuels. Weizmann and Technion scientists and Israeli start-up NewCO2Fuels are also working to achieve a similar result.

A new paper, co-authored by Ph.D. student Noam Josef and Dr. Nadav Shashar of Ben Gurion University's Department of Life Sciences, suggests that octopi focus on a limited selection of nearby objects in order to determine their disguise. The youtube video is remarkable.

Ruth Boneh, formerly of Intel, is Director of Technion's new Computer Engineering Centre. She describes this one-of-a-kind centre where students can study academic and practical computing in one place. It leads to some amazing developments.

Four Israelis were included in Twitter's "2012 White Hat Hackers" list, honouring users who helped prevent hackers taking over user accounts. The four discovered a security "hole" in Twitter itself, provided solutions and even helped Twitter through the repair process.