Archive for Innovations & Discoveries

| June 18, 2012
No comments

Google chairman Eric Schmidt: Israel is a ‘tech miracle’

 Speaking at a Tel Aviv conference, Schmidt praises Israel’s engineers and development centers and discusses the role of technology in the region’s political upheaval.

 

 

Google chairman Eric Schmidt said on Monday that the company’s development centers in Israel are among the company’s most efficient and that Google is constantly expanding them.

Eric Schmidt in Tel Aviv

Eric Schmidt in Tel Aviv - Photo by David Bachar

Speaking at a Tel Aviv conference called “Big Tent,” Schmidt said that the quality of Israel’s engineers is very high, not least due to the country’s universities and the training acquired in the army. He also praised local salespeople as among the best in the world, saying they continue to contribute to the company’s profits. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries |
| June 18, 2012
No comments

TA scientists discover origin of skin disease

After more than decade of research, scientists uncover genetic basis for the severe skin disease pytiriasis rubra pilaris (PRP).

 

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH

 

Only now, almost 200 years after it was first described, Israeli and other researchers have discovered the genetic basis for the severe skin disease pytiriasis rubra pilaris (PRP), which affects people of all backgrounds around the world.
SKIN AFFECTED by pytiriasis rubra pilaris disease - Photo: Courtesy Sourasky Medical CenterSKIN AFFECTED by pytiriasis rubra pilaris disease – Photo: Courtesy Sourasky Medical Center

After more than a decade, the lead researchers at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center finally identified mutations in the gene CARD14 that codes for a very important regulator of inflammation in the skin. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries |
| June 17, 2012
No comments

Time to rethink chemotherapy?

New cell research from Israel suggests the need for a radically different approach to chemotherapy.

 

 

For cancer patients undergoing treatment, the ups and downs can feel like living through one of those B-level movies where the zombies just never seem to die: Victories of remission can quickly end in disappointment as the cancer returns once more.

 

Leukemia cells dividing. Photo courtesy of Public Library of Science

Leukemia cells dividing - Photo courtesy of Public Library of Science

Why this happens has long puzzled scientists around the globe, but a new multi-center team in Israel whittles the problem down to the roots of where cancer begins. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries | Tags:
| June 17, 2012
No comments

Short on space, Israel look to artificial islands

Cabinet to vote on plan to form new landmasses to house airport, infrastructures; environmental group anticipates problems

 

 

Israel is well-known for its innovation and outside the box thinking, but usually not on the scale now being suggested. At the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, ministers are set to decide whether to give the green light to an ambitious new project that would see artificial islands constructed off Israel’s coastline.

Satellite image of Kansai International Airport in Osaka Bay in Japan (photo credit: courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory)

Satellite image of Kansai International Airport in Osaka Bay in Japan - Photo: courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory

Plans for the islands, which will be home to a new airport, a sea port, a power plant and a military testing base, have already been approved by the Ministry of Interior, and if approved by cabinet ministers on Sunday, will go to a special inter-ministerial committee for more specific discussions on implementation. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries |
| June 17, 2012
No comments

Israel gets natural gas supplement from offshore well

Noble energy begins to supply Israel with natural gas month ahead of schedule

Reuters

 

 

A US Israeli consortium began supplying Israelwith natural gas from its offshore Pinnacles well on Wednesday to help stave off a national energy shortage expected this summer.

Natural gas on its way (Illustration) Photo: Reuters

Natural gas on its way (Illustration)- Photo: Reuters

Israel lost about 40 percent of its natural gas supplies in early 2011 when saboteurs in the Sinai peninsula began attacking the pipeline that carried gas to Israel from Egypt

as part of a 20-year deal. In April, Egypt officially terminated the deal, sending Israel scrambling to find alternative power sources. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries | Tags: ,
| June 16, 2012
No comments

BGU students develop autonomous drone

Software engineering students’ program enables AR Drone helicopter to fly automatically, without remote control

By Vita Kairys

 

 

Maxim Kirilov, Yuri Bakolin, and Yuval Kovler, three software engineering students from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, have developed a program that makes the AR Drone helicopter autonomous – allowing it to fly without being remote-controlled.

The drone Screenshot

The drone - Screenshot

With the new program, the drone – equipped with two cameras and an ultrasound sensor – receives instructions by Wi-fi from a computer in range.

Kirilov, Bakolin and Kubler developed the project to see how an autonomous drone could be used for various daily purposes, such as security sweeps of the university’s corridors. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries | Tags:
| June 14, 2012
No comments

Alert System Texts You When Your Dog Feels Threatened

For owners worried about their dog’s safety, a new system developed in Israel is able to recognize when a dog feels threatened or is stressed

 

Dog may be man’s best friends, but while most people would not leave their children home alone, dogs are often left unattended.

For owners worried about their dog’s safety, a new system developed in Israel is able to recognize when a dog feels threatened or is stressed and then send an SMS to the pet owner’s mobile phone.

According to Bio-Sense, the company behind the technology, “to a human being, all barks sound the same; science tells us they are not.” Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries |
| June 13, 2012
No comments

BREAKTHROUGH: Israeli Researchers Grow Human Bones From Fat

Scientists have grown human bone from stem cells in a laboratory. The development opens the way for patients to have broken bones repaired or even replaced with entire new ones grown outside the body from a patient’s own cells.

 

 

The researchers started with stem cells taken from fat tissue. It took around a month to grow them into sections of fully-formed living human bone up to a couple of inches long.

The first trial in patients is on course to be conducted later this year, by an Israeli biotechnology company that has been working with academics on the technology. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries | Tags:
| June 13, 2012
No comments

Israeli wins World Food Prize for 1st time in history

Growing up in what was then Palestine, Prof. Daniel Hillel became fascinated with plants thriving in tough conditions.

 

 

Growing up as a young boy on a Jezreel Valley kibbutz in what was then Palestine, Prof. Daniel Hillel became fascinated with plants thriving in less than favorable conditions.“That’s where I discovered and became enthralled by open spaces – and land and water and plants and sunshine,” Hillel, now 81, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday evening.
Produce, agriculture [illustrative photo]                        Agricultural fields – Photo: Thinkstock/Imagebank

Earlier that afternoon, the World Food Prize Foundation, in the presence of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, announced Hillel as this year’s winner of the World Food Prize at a ceremony in Washington. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries, Israel News |
| June 11, 2012
No comments

With New Cameras, IAF Could Peek into the Ground

Hyperspectral camera could allow UAVs to detect hidden weapons and chemical agents.

By Gil Ronen

 

The Israel Air Force is currently examining hyper-spectral camera technology, which could allow unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to collect a wide variety of information, some invisible to the human eye, the IAF Website writes. Among other things, the camera could identify hidden weapons and underground bunkers camouflaged with vegetation.

“The camera will alert its operator regarding the location of suspicious targets and even of spots that are saturated with chemicals and other substances,” Lt. Col. Yoav, chief of the Intelligence Department of the IAF’s Equipment Squadron, told the website. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries | Tags: ,
| June 11, 2012
No comments

Researchers Find Cluster Of Genes That Predict Parkinson’s

Technion researchers from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine have identified five genes that predict Parkinson’s disease.

 

 

Blood Test - Health News - Israel - Photo by Jeremy L. Grisham for the U.S. Navy

Blood Test – Health News – Israel – Photo by Jeremy L. Grisham for the U.S. Navy

 

“Currently, there is no blood test that can diagnose PD, making the detection of individuals at risk or at earliest stages of PD practically impossible. Instead it is identified by a clinical neurological examination based on findings suggestive of Parkinson’s disease,” says Dr. Silvia Mandel, Vice Director of the Eve Topf Center

Mandel adds that “finding biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease will help to capture those high-risk subjects before symptoms develop, a stage where prevention treatment efforts might be expected to have their greatest impact to slow disease progression.” Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries | Tags:
| June 10, 2012
No comments

Israeli company develops diagnostic device to map brain disorders

Every third person suffers from a brain-related disorder – be it Alzheimer’s, Parkinson, attention deficiency hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), chronic pain or depression. But there is no definite diagnosis to document the effects of treatment, which is still based lot on guesswork, resulting in low success rates at high costs.

 

By Indian Science Journal

 

 

Brain

An Israeli company – EIMindA, has developed a technology, which promises in clinical studies of brain-related disorders. The company claims the non-invasive brain network activation (BNA) technology helps in diagnostics in a way no other existing technology can do.

The procedure is simple and painless. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries |
| June 10, 2012
No comments

Israeli Scientists Try to Create ‘Green’ Car Fuel

Israeli scientists are working on creating “green” fuel for cars from greenhouse gas emissions.

By Chana Ya’ar

 

 

The project makes use of technology developed by Professor Jacob Karni, head of the Weizmann Institute of Science Energy Center in the department of environmental sciences of energy research. Karni is also a supervisor for the institute’s solar program.

Together with Dr. Avner Rothschild from the Technion in Haifa, Karni received a $200,000 grant in 2010 to carry out the research from the Israel Strategic Alternative Energy Foundation, based in Silicon Valley.

The technology uses concentrated solar energy to divide the two oxygen molecules in carbon dioxide, thereby creating oxygen and carbon monoxide. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries | Tags: ,
| June 10, 2012
No comments

This virus will self-destruct in 5,4,3,2,1 …

The operators of the highly advanced Flame virus activated a self-destruct mechanism over the weekend, removing any traces of the virus from infected computers they managed to control.

By Ilan Gattegno and Israel Hayom Staff

 

The operators of the highly advanced Flame virus activated a self-destruct mechanism over the weekend, removing any traces of the virus from infected computers they managed to control.

Iranian technicians at work in the Bushehr nuclear power plant in 2010. | Photo credit: AP

Iranian technicians at work in the Bushehr nuclear power plant - Photo: AP

Analysts from security software giant Symantec released a statement saying the virus included a module called Suicide, which could have enabled the virus to delete itself.

Continue Reading »
Category: Innovations & Discoveries | Tags:
| June 10, 2012
No comments

New lab test to ID early lung cancer

 

Israel’s BioView is pairing its imaging technology with fluorescent DNA markers to help doctors find this deadly cancer before it’s too late.

 

A new non-invasive test to aid in early detection of lung cancer may soon be available, thanks to an agreement between Israel’s BioView and a leading California laboratory.

 

If a certain percentage of the cells show abnormal fluorescent patterns, that indicates lung cancer.

bioview-device: If a certain percentage of the cells show abnormal fluorescent patterns, that indicates lung cancer.

 

The test involves analyzing a patient’s sputum (phlegm) using BioView’s scanning-microscope imaging equipment and fluorescent DNA markers called FISH probes. BioView licensed these markers from MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries | Tags:
« Older Entries   Recent Entries »