Israel is the Smart choice

The current news is full of smart Israeli solutions that benefit the world.  It also contains many examples of smart countries, companies and individuals that have recognized this important role of the Jewish State.

Israeli biotech SynVaccine is developing smart, safe synthetic vaccines from the tissue of the recipient’s own cells that the body’s immune system can recognize.  SynVaccine also generates the vaccine using computer technology rather than from a potentially dangerous live virus.  Meanwhile, Tel Aviv University and Schneider Medical Center researchers have made the smart discovery of a genetic mutation responsible for Primary Ovarian Insufficiency (POI) that affects one percent of all women worldwide.  The cause came to light after they DNA tested two Israeli-Arab cousins with the condition.  And the smart staff at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center realized that although they delivered 22,413 babies in 2014 (probably the largest number in the world for one hospital) they could prevent many subsequent deaths and injuries if they provided free infant car seats to get the babies home safely.  Please watch this video to see more of Shaare Zedek’s smart innovations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMjivlcKEc4

Israel’s smart surgeons treat everyone regardless of nationality or religion.

-         Such as the complex heart surgery to save 18-month old Iraqi Christian Maryam Mansour.

-         Or the Syrian boy treated after he lost a leg in an explosion and for whom six Israeli medical students subsequently bought a smart new digital tablet with their own money.

Some of the thousands of Israeli smart apps for smartphones and mobile devices include

-         Green Road Technologies’ smart vehicle monitors that save fuel and reduce accidents.

-         E2C’s interface that makes smartphones easier to use for seniors and the technically challenged.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4kZ5WOTid8

The future of Israeli smart innovations is encouraging, as indicated by the fact that Israeli companies and entities registered 3,555 patents in the United States in 2014 – a 21 per cent increase on 2013.  So it’s not surprising that the smart researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science were awarded the top percentage of grants by the European Research Council’s 7th Framework Program. 

An increasing number of international organizations are becoming wise to the facts about Israel’s smart innovations.  They include

-         The delegation of US reporters and editors who came to Israel’s Ben-Gurion University to see cutting-edge Israeli research in neuroscience, stem cells and medical robotics. 

-         The delegation of leaders from the Miami tech-startup community who have just spent a week in Israel learning from our thriving tech and innovation sector.

-         And the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, which will showcase Israel’s contributions to the world at its 27th annual international conference in Montreal on 29th April.

Countries that have been smart enough to call upon Israel’s help recently include:

-         Taiwan, where Israel has been giving smart advice to the government about public campaigns, recycling and better infrastructure that will alleviate Taiwan’s worst drought in over a decade. 

-         China, which sent a delegation from the city of Shouguang to Israel, as part of the Water City project that Israel is leading. 

-         South Korea, where a delegation of Israeli cyber security companies is showing how Israeli technology can better secure the Asian state.

-         Rwanda, which Israel is helping jump-start its technology ecosystem, using education, skills exchange and investment.

-         And Kenya, where the smartest of its agricultural entrepreneurs hopes to win the Israel Kenya Agri Challenge and where Tel Aviv University’s Pears Challenge for Innovation and International Development encourages smart Israeli agricultural entrepreneurs to develop tech solutions for Kenyan farmers.

Smart companies are investing heavily in Israeli hi-tech companies. 

-         Horizons Ventures, owned by Asia’s richest man - Li Ka-shing, is Israel’s largest foreign startup investor and did a very smart job in persuading Israel’s Waze to accept its funds. 

-         Spanish bank Santander has invested in MyCheck - the largest mobile payment company in Israel.  The move is also smart for MyCheck, which now has access to Sandander’s 107 million-plus customers across Europe and the Americas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_n8aw5ipHI

Israel has also been smart to recognize talent within its borders.  Tarek Abu-Hamed, a Palestinian Arab from Sur Baher in East Jerusalem, has just been named as deputy chief scientist of Israel’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Space.

Finally, news has only just come to light about Muslim nuclear scientist Noha Hashad who spent 11 years in an Egyptian jail, for conducting pro-Jewish Quran research.  During the chaos following President Mubarak’s overthrow in 2011, she escaped and fled to Israel.  “Israel is like a jewel, a diamond, I am very fortunate to be here,” she said.

Now that is Smart thinking!

Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing positive news stories about Israel.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

For a free subscription, email a request to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com

 

How Does Israel Do It?

How Does Israel Do It?

This question was asked recently in “The Hindu” – India’s equivalent of the Jerusalem Post – only with a slightly larger circulation.  The reasons for the Jewish State’s scientific success are an enigma to most of the world.  How do they produce so many Nobel laureates?

Israeli kids don’t start a degree course at eighteen and waste their opportunity having a good time in the university bar.  Those who are driving the success of the Jewish State begin university life as mature, proactive individuals in their early twenties already having had leadership and technology training and experience in one of the most challenging organisation in the world – the Israeli Defence Forces.  Every week there is at least one major discovery or innovation that emanates from one or other of Israel’s eight top Universities. 

Israel’s Technion is, in my opinion, a superb advertisement for the Jewish State. Click on any of these three youtube video clips to see how its scientists fine-tune the skills that will make the world a better place.  First, note the cream of Israel’s tech culture currently busy building New York’s Technion Cornell Innovation Institute.  Watch how the International Technion Computer Engineering (TCE) conference attracted speakers from Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, IBM, Mellanox, Microsoft and from Cambridge, Princeton, UC Berkeley, UCLA and UPenn universities.  Finally, this clip highlights how the Technion’s annual “Technobrain” challenge aptly linked modern ingenuity with Israel’s historic past.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_4kg4ndJLg&feature=youtu.be

We now travel to Israel’s capital, where the Hebrew University of Jerusalem recently unveiled "Innovators Way," a permanent photo exhibition showcasing 27 university researchers behind the 7000 patents and numerous commercial products that have revolutionized the fields of health, safety, environment, agriculture, computer science and nutrition.  Moving onto Tel Aviv, Bar Ilan University welcomed 30 male and female undergraduate science majors from Yeshiva University in New York, who will spend seven weeks of the summer carrying out their research in Bar Ilan's state-of-the-art laboratories.  It was quite apt therefore that the magazine Scientific American featured 28-year-old Israeli physicist Eldad Kepten in its “30 under 30” list of future possible Nobel Laureates.  Kepten obtained his first degree at the Hebrew U and is currently embarking on a PhD at Bar Ilan.  His speciality? The stochastic dynamics of chromatin (DNA) in the cellular nucleus with advanced microscopy and single particle tracking.  Good luck!

The younger members of Israeli society have also been demonstrating their potential recently.  We may not have won any medals at the London Olympics, but at the 2012 Maths Olympiad in Argentina, Israel’s youth team won five medals including three silvers, a bronze and one special citation.  Then at the Physics Olympiad in Estonia, Israeli kids won two silvers and three bronze medals.  And at the Chemistry Olympiad in Washington the four-person team took home one silver medal and three bronzes.  Also in Washington, six teenagers from Yeroham in the Negev desert won $5,000 in the FLL Global Innovation competition for youth scientists by designing a “stick” that keeps the contents of a picnic basket cool. Breaking the stick causes chemicals to mix and freeze.

When these budding entrepreneurs are ready to put their ideas into commercial ventures they will be helped by equally innovative Government support, such as Tel Aviv’s first of its kind Patents Exhibition.  It will place 10,000 Israeli and foreign inventors, investors, patent attorneys, mechanical engineers and computer programmers in the same room in order to turn good ideas into actual products.

So what recent innovations have Israelis been producing?  How about perfect chips?  Israeli technology is responsible for the Deep Ultra Violet (DUP) lasers that US based Applied Materials Inc will use to speed up the manufacturing of the world’s microprocessors.  And Tel Aviv University doctorate student Elad Mentovich has designed a molecular memory transistor called C60, based on carbon molecules that can be as small as one nanometer – far too small to see.  But it was failure to see runway debris that caused the crash of an Air France Concorde in July 2000.  This inspired the Israeli company Xsight to develop FODetect, which uses hybrid radar and electro optical technology to detect foreign objects on runways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eWUim5agoGE

But many Israelis (like me) believe that there is yet another factor responsible for the phenomenal success of the Jewish State.  How has this tiny country survived against all odds to reach this stage?  To win existential wars, avoid world financial chaos, discover vast energy reserves whilst simultaneously developing the ability to build a spacecraft to land on the Moon and detect the first stars formed when the universe was in its infancy?

The answer is out there, if you look for it.

Michael Ordman writes a weekly newsletter containing Good News stories about Israel.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

To subscribe, email a request to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com