Israel Active

Technion Professor Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals. But not a lot of people know that he is also a talented jewellery craftsman. He recently exhibited 15 unique pieces that he made for his wife Zippy.

The Technion’s new supercomputer is the most powerful computing cluster ever deployed for civilian use in Israel. The “Tamnun” (Hebrew for octopus) is an SGI Infiniband Cluster, consisting of 1260 processor cores, with 96 GB of RAM memory per node. Nerds like me just sigh.

Thanks to Donald Harrison, editor of San Diego Jewish World, who has published a feature about the editor of the newsletter you are now reading. Please click on the following to read it.

The Nefesh b’Nefesh “singles project” is bringing another 60 Jewish American unmarried men and women to Israel this year. They hope to join the 640 previous unattached immigrants who came with NbN and who have since found partners and married in Israel – most to native Israelis.

The average Israeli eats 10 litres of ice cream per year – 50% more than the average Italian. How come? Because ice cream makes you happy!

Israel’s Olympic team gives the BBC a geography lesson. And even the Mayor of Tel Aviv informs the UK Press Council that Jerusalem was Israel’s capital over 3000 years ago and it still is!

CNN has named Yosef Abramowitz, president and co-founder of the firm responsible for Israel’s first solar field, as one of six global “Green Pioneers.” The program highlighted the significant environmental achievements of “men and women with big ideas to change the world.”

Eight disabled IDF veterans will receive new, top of the line artificial knees, enabling them, for the first time in years, to run, jog and ride a bicycle. The imported Genium bionic knees cost $85,000 each.

(Thanks to NoCamels) As part of a class science project, students at Ha’kfar Hayarok High School in Central Israel gathered a few dozen seeds of the rare plant Rumex Rothschildianus, sprouted them in their lab and produced 100,000 new seeds. The seeds were given to the Israel Nature and National Parks Service, which is now planning to plant them in its parks.

The Israeli Cabinet decided on Sunday to speed up the immigration of Ethiopia’s remaining 2,200 Jews. The government’s aim is to have all remaining members of the country’s Jewish community arrive in Israel by March 2014.