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iPod glasses and an online lie detector: some of Israel’s accomplishments this year

Posted on August 15, 2007 • By Rabbi Aryeh Markman
Category: Business, Featured |

(Original on The Hedgehog Blog.) Despite the second Lebanon war, the divestments, and the boycotts, Israel’s economy enjoyed the largest growth in its GNP of any Western country at 8% for the last quarter of 2006. Foreign investment hit a remarkable high of over US $13 billion and the budget deficit was under 1%. Industrial exports, excluding diamonds, rose 11% to $29.3 billion in 2006 with the hi-tech sector leading the surge, according to the Manufacturers Association of Israel. Israel’s hi-tech industry exported $14.1 billion in goods last year, growing 20% from 2005.

What follows is a selection of Israel’s achievements in the first month of 2007:

1. Scientists in Israel found that the brackish water drilled from underground desert aquifers hundreds of feet deep could be used to raise warm-water fish. The geothermal water, less than one-tenth as saline as sea water, free of pollutants, and a toasty 98 degrees on average, proves an ideal environment.
2. Israeli-developed designer eyeglasses promise mobile phone and iPod users a personalized, high-tech video display. Available to US consumers next year, Lumus-Optical’ s lightweight and fashionable video eyeglasses feature a large transparent screen floating in front of the viewer’s face that projects their choice of movie, TV show, or video game.
3. When Stephen Hawking visited Israel recently, he shared his wisdom with scientists, students, and even the prime minister. But the world’s most renown victim of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, also learned something. Due to the Israeli Association for ALS’s advanced work in both embryonic and adult stem cell research, as well as its proven track record with neurodegenerative diseases, the Israeli research community is well on its way to finding a treatment for this fatal disease which affects 30,000 Americans.
4. Israeli start-up Veterix has developed an innovative new electronic capsule that sits in the stomach of a cow, sheep or goat, sending out real-time information on the health of the herd to the farmer via email or cell phone. The e-capsule, which also sends out alerts if animals are distressed, injured, or lost, is now being tested on a herd of cows in the hopes that the device will lead to tastier and healthier meat and milk supplies.
5. The millions of Skype users worldwide will soon have access to the newly developed KishKish lie detector. This free Internet service, based on voice stress analysis (a technique commonly used in criminal investigations) , will be able to measure just how truthful that person on the other end of the line really is.
6. Beating cardiac tissue has been created in a lab from human embryonic stem cells by researchers at the Rappaport Medical Faculty and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology’s biomedical engineering faculty. The work of Dr. Shulamit Levenberg and Prof. Lior Gepstein has also led to the creation of tiny blood vessels within the tissue, making possible its implantation in a human heart.
7. Israel’s Magal Security Systems Ltd. is a worldwide leader in computerized security systems with products used in more than 70 countries around the world protecting anything from national borders to nuclear facilities, refineries, and airports. The company’s latest product, DreamBox, a state-of-the- art security system that includes intelligent video, audio and sensor management, is now being used by a major water authority on the US East Coast to safeguard the utility’s sites.
8. It’s common knowledge that dogs have better night vision than humans and a vastly superior sense of smell and hearing. Israel’s Bio-Sense Technologies recently delved further and electronically analyzed 350 different barks. Finding that dogs of all breeds and sizes bark the same alarm when they sense a threat, the firm has designed the dog bark-reader, a sensor that can pick up a dog’s alarm bark and alert the human operators. This is just one of a batch of innovative security systems to emerge from Israel, which Forbes calls “the go-to country for anti-terrorism technologies. “
9. Israeli company Bio Control Medical sold its first electrical stimulator to treat urinary incontinence to a US company for $50 million. Now it is working on CardioFit, which uses electrical nerve stimulation to treat congestive heart failure. With nearly five million Americans presently affected by heart failure and more than 400,000 new cases diagnosed yearly, the CardioFit is already generating a great deal of excitement as the first device with the potential to halt this deadly disease.
10. One year after Norway’s Socialist Left Party launched its boycott of Israel, the importing of Israeli goods has increased by 15%, the strongest increase in many years, Statistics Norway reports.

Posted on The Hedgehog Blog. Rabbi Aryeh Markman is from Aish Hatorah, Los Angeles. Hat tip to Adrian Wajsbrem for this post. Adrian manages Launchpad Israel, a site that makes it easy for you to connect with the Israeli hi-tech economy.

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