Good news from the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population.

Israel!

Good News from
Home | Comments? | Subscribe | Archives |

Israelis invent hydrogen car that uses just a tank of water. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, have devised a scheme that gets round the problem of dangerous and expensive hydrogen infrastructure, and makes possible 100% green cars that emit only water from their tailpipe. By reacting water with the element boron, their system produces hydrogen that can be burnt in an internal combustion engine or fed to a fuel cell to generate electricity. The only by-product is boron oxide, which can be removed from the car, turned back into boron, and used again. What's more, they plan to do this in a solar-powered plant that is completely emission-free.

Israeli uses Einstein to help you board your plane faster. Eitan Bachmat and his colleagues at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, were studying the performance of digital storage systems such as PC hard drives, looking at how to read and write data most efficiently. Say you send your hard drive a big bunch of read/write requests. What you want to know is the quickest way to carry out those tasks. How do you find the fewest drive rotations needed to do the job? That looked a lot like airplane boarding, and Bachmat and his colleagues decided to explore this parallel route. Having called their virtual passengers to this mathematical boarding gate, Bachmat and his colleagues can calculate the overall boarding time by finding the equivalent of a free-fall trajectory through that passenger "space-time". The maths isn't simple but it gives you formulae for calculating boarding time under different boarding policies. Crucially, it also lets you see the effect of varying parameters such as legroom and luggage-stowing time.

Mercury acquisition by HP for $4.5 billion proves Israel’s software leadership. Mercury is an Israeli company that started out as an Israeli start-up, based in Israel and founded on Israeli know-how is significant. The know-how of the company and its people is what is being bought.

Israeli chance discovery can stop cancer in its tracks. Work carried out at The Hebrew University has produced a new drug treatment for halting the growth and spread of cancer cells.

New Intel chips based on technology developed in Israel. Intel has replaced its basic series of processors with the new Core 2 Duo series, which has doubled the computing core, and was designed at Intel’s Haifa R&D center in Israel.

Red Herring spotlights Israel. Israel is one of the hottest places for venture capitalist nowadays and a global player in innovation declared Red Herring, the leading internet technology and financial news magazine in the Silicon Valley.

Israeli Network takes France by storm. The Israeli Network, the television channel that broadcasts Israeli programming to Jewish and Israeli communities abroad, signed a broadcast agreement with the French media giant, FREE. The broadcast agreement opens a channel to largest Jewish community in Europe.

Israeli invention gives paralyzed a chance to walk. An Israeli-developed and manufactured wireless, computer-controlled device that enables safe walking for people with a foot paralyzed due to stroke, brain injury, cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury or multiple sclerosis has received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Israeli Company make Fish Farming more Environmentally Safe. Israeli-based Atlantium has developed a UV filter system already in use in Turkey to decrease the need for nasty fish antibiotics by about 90 percent. The largest food conglomerate in Turkey increased production of the two types of fish they grow by 50 and 100 percent, while reducing antibiotic use by 90 percent. Maintenance was reduced from 30 hours to less than one hour per month with hardly any downtime, all of which lead to significantly increased profits. Atlantium's UV-filter is also ideal for cleaning up the aftermath left by natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

Israeli Study Ties Moderate Beer Drinking To Lower Heart Attack Risk. A beer a day may help keep heart attacks away, according to a group of Israeli researchers. In preliminary clinical studies of a group of men with coronary artery disease, the researchers showed that drinking one beer (12 ounces) a day for a month produced changes in blood chemistry that are associated with a reduced risk of heart attack.

Israel Designs "Rotorless" Helicopter for US Military. Israel's Urban Aeronautics is to sign a cooperation agreement with Bell Helicopter for the delivery of helicopters to all branches of the US armed forces. At this stage, the company has obtained financing to develop its vertical-take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, a "rotorless" helicopter, for the US Navy. This week, the company unveiled a model of its helicopter at the Farnborough Air Show in the UK. Thanks to its special structure, the aircraft can approach close to the window of an office building at any floor to rescue people.

Israeli Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) Deal. Israeli Jungo is to provide an American telephony company with platform enabling providers to offer customer rich digital entertainment content over residential networks while minimizing network resources.

Israel Tests New Drugs for Emphysema Breakthrough. Israeli Kamada, a bio-pharmaceutical developer and manufacturer of prescription drugs, has been granted by the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (the EMEA), approval of its plan to begin phase 1 clinical trials on a respiratory form of its API drug product. Successful results of the clinical trials of the respiratory form will mark a breakthrough in the treatment of Congenital Emphysema, as well as other lung disease indications.

Israeli Scientists Decode Global Warming Puzzle. The formation of clouds is affected by the lightness or darkness of air pollution particles, U.S. and Israeli scientists have determined, solving one puzzing question about the role of clouds in global warming. The capacity of air pollution to absorb energy from the Sun is the key to the puzzle. In a breakthrough study published today in the online edition of the journal "Science," scientists explain why aerosols - tiny particles suspended in air pollution and smoke - sometimes stop clouds from forming and in other cases increase cloud cover.

VCs Name Hot Israeli Startups. Three Israeli startups —Amimon, BrainsGate, and Zend — received first prizes Tuesday as the best young companies in their respective sectors at the Israel Venture Association’s annual meeting in Tel Aviv. The competition, co-sponsored by Red Herring and the Israel Venture Association, was limited to early-stage companies with revenue of up to $10 million in 2005 supported by venture funds associated with the IVA. The companies were chosen because of their vision, technological innovation, and potential impact.

Facts about the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population.


  • Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.
  • Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.
  • In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews at risk in Ethiopia to safety in Israel.
  • When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times.
  • When the U. S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day - and saved three victims from the rubble.
  • Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship - and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 - in the world.
  • Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity.
  • Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."
  • Israel has the world's second highest per capita of new books.
  • Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert.
  • Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.
  • Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U.S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions. Israel places first in this category as well.
  • Israel has the highest per capita ratio of scientific publications in the world by a large margin, as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.
  • In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).
  • Israel is ranked #2 in the world for VC funds right behind the US.
  • Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.
  • Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies
  • Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. The per capita income in 2000 is over $17,500, exceeding that of the UK.
  • With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and start-ups, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world (apart from the Silicon Valley).
  • With an aerial arsenal of over 250 F-16s, Israel has the largest fleet of the aircraft outside of the US.
  • Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined.
  • The cell phone was developed in Israel by Motorola-Israel. Motorola built its largest development center worldwide in Israel.
  • Windows NT software was developed by Microsoft-Israel.
  • The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.
  • Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.
  • AOL's instant message program was designed by an Israeli software company.
  • Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel
  • The city of Beer Sheva in Israel has the highest percentage in the world of Chess Grand Masters per capita – one for every 22,875 residents.
  • On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech start-ups
  • Israel has the largest raptor migration in the world, with hundreds of thousands of African birds of prey crossing as they fan out into Asia.
  • Twenty-four percent of Israel's workforce holds university degrees -- ranking third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland -- and 12 percent hold advanced degrees.