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"The Basketball Game" is a graphic novel adaptation of the award-winning National Film Board of Canada animated short of the same name – intended for audiences aged 12 years and up. It's a poignant tale of the power of community as a means to rise above hatred and bigotry. In the end, as is recognized by the kids playing the basketball game, we're all in this together.

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Byline: Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21C

Israel joins the fruit-fly fight

Israel joins the fruit-fly fight

Biofeed’s Nimrod Israely, top centre, with mango growers in Karnataka, India. (photo from Biofeed via Israel21c)

Shortly before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel in early July, Indian diplomats in Israel heard about a revolutionary no-spray, environmentally friendly solution against the Oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis) made by Biofeed, a 10-employee ag-tech company. They invited Biofeed to be one of six innovative Israeli companies meeting with Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The company’s founder and chief executive officer, Nimrod Israely, who has a PhD in fruit-fly ecology, told the two leaders that Biofeed’s product can protect Indian farmers against fruit flies like the Iron Dome system protects the people of Israel against missiles. The Oriental fruit fly has been decimating 300 fruit species in India and in 65 other countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas and is considered to be the most destructive, invasive and widespread of all fruit flies.

Biofeed’s lures, hung on trees, contain an organic customized mix of food, feeding stimulants and control or therapeutic agents delivered by a patented gravity-controlled fluid release platform. Attracted by the odour, the fly takes a sip and soon dies – without any chemicals reaching the fruit, air or soil.

The launch of Biofeed’s first-in-class attractant for female Oriental fruit flies results from 15 years of development of the core platform and more than a year of development and testing in Israel and Karnataka, India. Mango farmers on four Indian orchards saw an overall decrease of fruit-fly infestation from 95% to less than five percent.

“We were hoping to bring a solution that will replace spraying and increase productivity by 50%,” Israely told Israel21c. “I am excited by the results, demonstrating the future potential for some farmers to bring about 900 times more marketable produce to market.”

photo - A fruit fly feeding in a Biofeed lure
A fruit fly feeding in a Biofeed lure. (photo from Biofeed via Israel21c)

One farmer in the Biofeed pilot explained that previously he had used a trap that attracted only male fruit flies, with limited success. “If you cut 25 fruits, we were getting only one good fruit; 24 were infected,” he said.

K. Srinivas Gowda, president of the 70,000-farmer Karnataka Mango Growers Association, wrote in a letter presented to Modi and Netanyahu that he “would like to have this [Biofeed] technology implemented to all the mango farmers through the government of India. This technology can be used to develop pest-free zones in the mango-growing belts in India.”

The pilot project started after Biofeed won a Grand Challenges Israel grant last year from the Israel Innovation Authority and the Foreign Ministry’s international development agency, Mashav.

“We don’t have the Oriental fruit fly in Israel. However, until now there was no solution for this problem. So, we took the challenge and chose to focus on India,” Israely said. The company worked with Kempmann Bioorganics in Bangalore to carry out the trial.

Biofeed’s products are used in many Israeli fruit orchards against the Mediterranean fruit fly and other common pests, including the olive fruit fly and the peach fruit fly (Bactrocera zonata).

“Bactrocera zonata is the number two pest in India. There are three main pests in India, so now we’ve given, within two years, a solution for the two most devastating fruit flies in India and in other parts of the world,” said Israely.

“We are the only company in the world with a solution for those two pests and both solutions are harmless to the environment,” he added. “We estimate the annual market potential of these two pest segments to be well over $1 billion.”

The Biofeed platform is effective with as few as 10 units per hectare and for a period of nearly a year before the dispenser needs replacing.

Biofeed, founded in 2005, also has a formula targeting mosquitoes that bear viruses such as Zika.

“Evolution has given insects an elaborate sense of smell, which they utilize to find mates, food, egg-laying sites and more,” Israely told Israel21c last year. “The company has developed a liquid formula that ‘knows’ how to tie different kinds of smells to other materials, as the need arises. The result is a special ‘decoy’ that draws the target insect through smell. The decoy is slow-released from a device over the course of a year. The insect is drawn to the decoy, feeds off it and dies shortly after.”

Headquartered in Kfar Truman, Biofeed sees the future of agriculture in developing countries such as India and China.

“We want to bring something that is extremely easy to use: you don’t need tractors, you don’t need to remember to spray once a week, you don’t need to put yourself in danger with sprays, there’s no safety equipment. This is something that can make a dramatic change in agriculture and human health,” said Israely.

For more information, visit biofeed.co.il/enhome.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Format ImagePosted on September 15, 2017September 14, 2017Author Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21CCategories WorldTags ag-tech, agriculture, environment, farming, India, Israel, science, technology, tikkun olam
Capester reports violations

Capester reports violations

Capester offers a platform that allows users to report parking violations by filming and submitting legally admissible videos anonymously. (screenshot)

A great idea for an app was born out of a maddening experience for Ohad Maislish, an Israeli who walked with crutches for years following a skydiving accident. When he arrived for Shabbat dinner at his brother’s house, the sole handicap spot was occupied by a car without the proper permit. Since parking inspectors don’t work on Friday nights, he had to go to a police station and file a report, wait for the case to be processed and face the possibility of testifying in court in front of the offender.

Why couldn’t he simply use his smartphone to document the incident? The police explained that because videos can be doctored, such evidence wouldn’t stand up in court. So, Maislish, who started work at Microsoft’s Haifa research and development centre at age 17, called upon his background in computer science – and some friends with digital security and legal expertise – to create Capester, a platform enabling users to report parking violations by filming and submitting legally admissible videos anonymously.

In October 2014, with seed investment from BRM Capital and OurCrowd First, the founders spent 18 months perfecting a mobile app that would meet the court’s standards, assuring that the videos cannot be fabricated or altered. They worked closely with lawyers, including digital evidence expert Haim Ravia, chair of the internet, cyber and copyright group of the Pearl Cohen law firm in Herzliya.

Capester authenticates the video and sends it to the relevant local authority, which then determines whether to ticket the vehicle owner.

“We approached municipalities and each one had its own general counsel examine our legal opinion before approving Capester,” Maislish told Israel21c.

The app is available for Android and iOS from Google Play and the App Store. For each properly documented violation video, Capester – which is based in Petah Tikva – makes a donation to Access Israel, a nonprofit organization promoting accessibility and improved quality of life for people with disabilities in Israel.

“As a private company, we can’t issue tickets but only provide a platform for supplying evidence,” Maislish stressed. “If you record a violation in India, for example, it has to be in a place where we have an agreement with the relevant authority.”

He is not ready to reveal details of future marketing plans. “We are constantly looking to expand our services,” he said.

Moving violations

In related news, two new apps also help Israeli motorists stay safer on the roads.

The National Road Safety Authority, the Israel Police Traffic Department and the nonprofit Nativ Batuach (Safe Lane) organization have partnered to create the Guardians of the Road program. Using an app developed for the project at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, approved volunteers continuously photograph the road and vehicles visible through their windshield. When they see a traffic violation, they prompt the system by voice to deliver a video report to a control centre in the National Road Safety Authority for further evaluation and possible action by the police.

As well, a private startup, Nexar, has launched what it calls the world’s first AI (artificial intelligence) dashcam app. Nexar employs machine vision and sensor fusion algorithms to leverage a smartphone’s sensors to analyze and understand the car’s surroundings and provide documentation in case of accidents. Using this vehicle-to-vehicle network, Nexar also can warn users in real time of dangerous situations beyond their line of sight, effectively giving drivers more time to react. Founded by Eran Shir and Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz in early 2015, the company raised $10 million from Aleph, Mosaic Ventures, True Ventures and Slow Ventures. It has offices in Tel Aviv, New York and San Francisco.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Format ImagePosted on June 16, 2017June 15, 2017Author Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21CCategories IsraelTags automotive, high-tech, Israel, parking, safety
Bonding over backgammon

Bonding over backgammon

Jerusalem Double tournament at Machane Yehuda market, Jerusalem. (photo from Jerusalem Double via israel21c.org)

On a winter night inside the Mayer Davidov Garage in the Talpiot industrial area of Jerusalem, some 500 university students, mechanics, high-techies and senior citizens – wearing kippot, kaffiyehs and everything in between – played or cheered on contestants in a backgammon championship accompanied by live Arabic music.

Backgammon (shesh-besh in this part of the world) is thousands of years old and remains a popular pastime among Arabs and Jews. And, in Jerusalem, a surprising number of them are playing the board game together since the spring 2016 launch of Jerusalem Double, a project of the nonprofit organization Kulna Yerushalayim (We Are All Jerusalem).

“Backgammon is played throughout the Middle East, so we have this game in common. It’s fun, down-to-earth, accessible and inclusive,” said Zaki Djemal, one of the founders of Jerusalem Double along with Dror Amedi, Mahmoud Schade, Hiday Goldsmith, Kamel Jabarin, Mahmoud Jamal Al-Rifai, Matan Hayat, Noa Tal-El and Shir Hoory.

“Games have an amazing power to reduce tension and create empathy,” said Djemal, 29, also the cofounder and managing partner of fresh.fund, the first student-run venture capital fund in Israel.

Often, players discover other cultural commonalities through the medium of the game. “Shaike, a Jew who runs a car-parts shop, is playing with Munzir, a Palestinian originally from Bethlehem, and they’re speaking in Arabic. Shaike pulls out his oud and Munzir starts singing,” Djemal pointed out to Israel21c.

Djemal, a Harvard graduate born in London and raised in Jerusalem, explained the origins of Jerusalem Double in his recently filmed TEDxWhiteCity talk titled Game Changer: How Backgammon Will Bring Peace to the Middle East.

“I was sitting together with Jewish and Arabs friends at Hiday’s house in Jerusalem,” he said. “We were discussing a project we’d been working on to bring Jews and Arabs together around a shared love for Middle Eastern music, but we couldn’t agree on anything, and very quickly our discussion deteriorated into a heated debate. Then, in the middle of all of it, my good friend Dror said, ‘Guys, why don’t we take a break? Let’s play something. How about backgammon?’… In six short minutes, this game had completely defused all tension.… We thought to ourselves: ‘Why not organize a backgammon tournament for Jews and Arabs … to meet beyond the daily grind of buses, supermarket checkout lines, hospitals? And we wanted there to be crossover between neighbourhoods that for years have been completely segregated.”

Some 150 people showed up for the first Jerusalem Double tournament in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. “A third of them were from West Jerusalem, and it wasn’t easy convincing them to come,” said Djemal.

One of Djemal’s friends, a religious Jew in high-tech, was afraid of coming to Beit Hanina. “He thought it would be dangerous, but we insisted. And he ended up winning the tournament that night. For us, the real victory is that he’s attended every one of the events since and that’s, in a nutshell, what a project like this can accomplish.”

Mahmoud Al-Rifai, 53, was the one who offered to host the event on his home turf. “I didn’t even know how to play shesh-besh, but I went along with it because I met these young people who were trying to do something important and looking for a place to make it happen,” he told Israel21c. “I like to work with people who do things, not just talk about things. And I knew it would work because I’ve done some joint events in Beit Hanina since 2004. To me, it was an attempt to break the stereotype that it’s dangerous here.”

photo - Jerusalem Double, in Hebrew and Arabic
Jerusalem Double, in Hebrew and Arabic. (photo from Jerusalem Double via israel21c.org)

The stereotype-breaking went both ways. Some local teens known to be wary of Jewish Israelis encountered them in a new light at the Jerusalem Double event.

“They were dancing and hugging Jews, playing shesh-besh with them, exchanging phone numbers,” marveled Al-Rifai, whose nonprofit organization, Jerusalem Consortium for Research and Development, holds interfaith meetings and other mixed events. He also is a Sufi master and runs a computer business and a social jewelry-making business for women in cooperation with the municipality.

“It was beautiful and we can’t just stop here,” said Al-Rifai, a self-described diehard realist.

Djemal agreed: “Our plan is to organize an international backgammon championship in Jerusalem with delegations from Turkey, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt all playing backgammon,” he said.

The crowd that came to the fourth Jerusalem Double event, in Talpiot, included Deputy Mayor Ofer Berkovitch and supermarket king-politician-philanthropist Rami Levy. Djemal said 64 people played “and the rest just come for the party. We have a good following and are getting new participants all the time because we’ve created a way for people to interact.”

Jerusalem Double won $35,000 in the Jerusalem Foundation’s 2016 Social Innovation Challenge. The project is also supported by the Pratt Foundation and Jerusalem municipality.

“It’s pretty amazing to see this happening,” said Djemal, whose long resumé includes entrepreneurial ventures, beekeeping, journalism, mentoring and humanitarian work with Israeli organizations IsraAID and Tevel b’Tzedek. The Jerusalem Double cofounders previously started Simply Sing, a series of popular public sing-alongs in Hebrew and Arabic, which they are now reviving.

Djemal said he returned to Jerusalem after five years in the United States because “I thrive on being close to where it’s all happening and being confronted with so many issues that need to be solved. I didn’t want to come back and be complacent. I see a lot of opportunity in the city.”

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Format ImagePosted on April 7, 2017April 4, 2017Author Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21CCategories IsraelTags backgammon, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, peace
Water expertise helps

Water expertise helps

During an installation of a solar water pumping system at Nyanza Village, Uganda, Innovation: Africa’s engineer and project manager celebrate as clean water flows. (photo from Innovation: Africa via Israel21c.org)

Using ingenuity to overcome its serious water challenges, Israel has become the go-to expert for a world facing an impending water crisis. To celebrate World Water Day on March 22, Israel21c took a look at 10 of these innovative water projects, and Israel’s leadership role.

This year’s WATEC expo and conference, to be held in September in Tel Aviv, is expected to attract 10,000 stakeholders from 90 countries seeking Israeli solutions for water issues. Israel exports $2.2 billion annually in water technology and expertise. In addition, these commodities are shared on a humanitarian basis through training courses, consultations and projects. Keren Kayemeth L’Israel-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) often hosts delegations from around the world – most recently, from California, Argentina and the European Policy Centre – to see how Israel’s system of treatment facilities and 230 reservoirs has achieved the world’s highest ratio of wastewater reuse. About 92% of Israeli wastewater gets treated and 75% is used for agricultural irrigation. Israel plans to recycle 95% of its wastewater for irrigation by the end of 2025.

“During the 1980s, recycling wastewater was a revolutionary concept and many people were skeptical. Today, nearly half of the irrigation in Israel comes from recycled wastewater,” said KKL-JNF development project director Yossi Schreiber.

Israeli water-tech companies are planning and building agricultural and municipal water infrastructure in countries including Angola, Ghana, Serbia, China, Spain and the United States. Here are 10 recent examples.
1. The nonprofit group Innovation: Africa won a United Nations award for transforming lives in seven African countries using Israeli technologies, such as Netafim irrigation systems, that enable farmers to grow more crops with less water; and solar energy systems that pump water from aquifers, saving villagers (mostly women and children) countless hours previously spent finding and fetching water.

2. IsraAID launched its WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) project about four years ago to tailor-make solutions for communities from Fiji to Haiti to Myanmar.

In the rain-dependent South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, a March 2014 cyclone contaminated reservoirs and destroyed water-harvesting systems. Among other steps, IsraAID strategized the engineering of a low-tech gravity system, built and maintained by locals, to bring water from mountain springs down into two villages encompassing more than 600 people and one school. IsraAID is working with the World Bank to construct three more gravity systems.

In Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp and Uganda’s Gulu township, which struggle with waterborne disease and water contamination, IsraAID trains unemployed or underemployed people to be water technicians. Graduates work with local nongovernmental organizations or water companies, or start their own businesses, to contribute their new expertise in anything from drilling wells and building latrines to teaching hygiene.

3. A massive landslide in September 2015 damaged a major irrigation canal partially built by Israeli NGO Tevel b’Tzedek in an impoverished Nepali village. Tevel staff repaired the damage with funding from the Rochlin Foundation and Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief, and worked with the local water council to strengthen the canal walls, reestablishing and assuring water supply to 224 households (about 1,300 people) and subsistence farmers.

Also in Nepal, Tevel is fighting the effects of flash floods – which deplete water available for drinking and irrigation – by building irrigation pools and setting up zero-water-waste systems enabling villagers to conserve water through Israeli methods, including drip irrigation learned by Tevel’s native Nepal director at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Tevel also is teaching village farmers less water-intensive professions, such as beekeeping.

4. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has partnered with Caesarea-based GAL Water Technologies to provide free water-treatment products to African nations for more than 20 years. In 2016, MFA donated GAL mobile water purification, storage and distribution vehicles to drought-stricken Papua New Guinea and to the Pacific Marshall Islands.

5. Earlier this month, the MFA’s MASHAV-Israeli Agency for International Development Cooperation established the Kenya Israel Drought Resilience Agriculture Centre to help in capacity-building with the latest Israeli irrigation and water-resources management know-how.

6. MASHAV’s special envoy for water and food security went to Swaziland this month with the director of overseas training, programs and research at MASHAV-affiliated Centre for International Agricultural Development Cooperation to conduct a water survey by request of Swaziland’s prime minister. The experts are identifying possible areas of cooperation in combating drought and a shortage of water for agriculture.

7. Following a May 2016 earthquake in Ecuador, IsraAID brought a new Israeli water-purification technology from NUFiltration to several affected villages. Instead of having to buy bottled drinking water, residents can use the NUF system to turn washing water into purified drinking water without electricity. NUF was first piloted by the company in Ghana as a humanitarian project to prevent diseases from contaminated water.

8. The Tel Aviv University chapter of Engineers without Borders designed and built a rainwater collection and purification system in a Tanzanian village where the drinking water had dangerously high amounts of fluoride. Since the project was finished in 2014, it has been supplying safe drinking water to more than 400 children daily.

9. The Technion Engineers without Borders chapter designed and implemented a safe drinking-water system serving more than 600 Ethiopian schoolchildren in a rural village with no reliable source of water for drinking and handwashing. The Israelis taught the older children how to maintain the system and treat the water, and continue to provide support to assure a safe and sustainable water supply.

10. In June 2015, the Israeli Ministry of Economy committed $500,000 to the World Bank Group’s Water Global Practice to help developing countries overcome complex water security challenges. The agreement has included two years of study tours and other activities for World Bank staff and officials of various governments.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Format ImagePosted on March 31, 2017March 31, 2017Author Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21CCategories WorldTags Israel, tikkun olam, water
High-tech, fashionable art

High-tech, fashionable art

Fashion designer Noa Raviv (photo by Ryan Duffin)

Avant-garde fashion designer Noa Raviv says her award-winning fashions were triggered by her interest in the power of mistakes.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1987, Raviv is currently developing her couture brand in New York City, after achieving global industry recognition for her Hard Copy garments combining hand-sewn, 3D-printed polymer synthetic tulle with laser-cut appliqués.

“Hard Copy was a really long process that came out of my thinking about the concept of originals and copies in our era,” she told Israel21c. “When I started working with 3D software and printing, I was intrigued by the mistakes I made. If you input a command that can’t be executed, you get unexpected results. It was kind of magical to me. I was fascinated by mistakes created by a perfect machine and started exploring how it could be my answer to designing something original – because a mistake is something you can’t replicate.”

Hard Copy features ribbed polymer shapes printed out on a Stratasys Objet Connex multi-material machine and stitched to voluminous pleated tulle, silk and organza.

Named Fashion Designer of the Year 2014 at the 3D Printshow in London, Raviv has exhibited in Carrousel du Louvre, Paris; Old Billingsgate, London; New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, among other venues.

In November 2015, Raviv gave a keynote talk on The Power of Mistakes, at Futurescan 3, a conference organized by FTC (Association of Degree Courses in Fashion and Textile) at Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. She spoke on the same topic at the Museum of Design in Atlanta, Ga.

Raviv was one of four innovative Israeli women honoured at the 10th annual Israel Day at the New York Stock Exchange, Nov. 10, 2016.

Raviv, who appeared on Forbes Israel’s 2016 “30 Under 30” list, said she is “fascinated by the tension between harmony and chaos, tradition and innovation,” and wants to continue experimenting with technology.

Her current collection, Off-Line, was released in spring/summer 2016.

photo - Noa Raviv’s Off-Line collection was released in spring/summer 2016
Noa Raviv’s Off-Line collection was released in spring/summer 2016. (photo by Ryan Duffin)

Though it’s not 3D-printed, Off-Line combines elements of complex handwork and machine work, beginning with graphic design software and topped off with Swarovski crystals.

Raviv’s collaboration with Swarovski involves sending design files to Austria, where the company custom-makes molds from which millions of tiny crystals are applied onto a flexible transparent material and sent back to New York for finishing.

“Once every crystal is in the right place, they’re applied by heat to organza,” said Raviv, acknowledging that the more complicated pieces take a few weeks to complete.

“Hard Copy explored computers and digital errors. Off-Line explores the more intimate side of the creation process,” she said.

Most of the pieces in Off-Line are ready to wear and others can be made to order. Prices start at $1,800 US.

“My collections are not meant for the masses,” she admitted. “I’m still establishing my clientele – women who appreciate art, fashion and quality and care a lot about uniqueness.”

Neither is 3D fashion for the masses. In fact, Raviv doesn’t believe it will be available on the retail level anytime soon.

“Maybe in the very far future,” she said. “Fashion is far too complex to make in one machine, technique or material. There are so many nuances and the technology isn’t there yet to create what people want to wear. For now, it’s a romantic idea.”

A 3D dress made by another Israeli designer, Danit Peleg, was worn in a dance performance by U.S. snowboarder Amy Purdy at the opening ceremony of the recent Paralympics in Rio.

An intuitive choice

Always captivated by art and fashion, Raviv wavered between art school and fashion school after two years of army service and another 12-plus months pursuing other interests, including learning to speak Spanish – a very practical skill, as she is married to an Argentine-born startup entrepreneur.

“At the last minute, I intuitively went for fashion,” she said.

Raviv graduated in 2014 from Israel’s Shenkar College of Engineering and Design. Hard Copy was her senior project. Her designs also were included in 2013’s Here Comes the Bride exhibition, which opened at Beit Hatfutsot-Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv and traveled to other countries.

Raviv moved to the New York City borough of Queens a little more than a year ago and is getting used to the more formal work culture in the United States.

“Israel is very small and the fashion scene is small, and it’s hard to manufacture in Israel,” she explained. “It’s important for me to be very close to the development and production of my designs.”

For more information, visit noaraviv.com.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Format ImagePosted on March 10, 2017March 8, 2017Author Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21CCategories WorldTags 3D printing, fashion, Israel, New York, Noa Raviv, Swarovski, technology
Technology for your home

Technology for your home

Singlecue recognizes hand motions for remote control. (photo from Singlecue via Israel21c.org)

Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecom, set up in late 2015 a model “smart home” at its Tel Aviv headquarters and in the IKEA store in Netanya to demonstrate its Bhome subscription service – a package of wifi-enabled sensors and monitors to help keep out intruders and save energy. But you don’t necessarily have to live in Israel to take advantage of Israeli smart-home technologies. Here are some of the many options available now or coming soon.

SwitchBee is a Netanya-based startup that provides a platform including programmable switches, a central control unit, a smartphone/tablet application and cloud-based data services. The plug-and-play devices, featured in the Bhome model home, are designed to embed in existing outlets quickly and wirelessly. The company says you can convert a light switch into a smart switch in less than two minutes, or turn your whole house into a smart home in less than 90 minutes. Using the app’s secure dashboard, the user can program custom preferences for each SwitchBee-enabled light or device including on/off and fine adjustments.

Singlecue is made by eyeSight Technologies, a Herzliya company whose machine-vision systems have been built into devices made by OPPO, Lenovo, Toshiba, Hisense, Phillips and other manufacturers since 2005. It is a standalone device that lets you use touch-free gestures to control infrared- and wifi-enabled media and smart-home devices in its range of sight. You can do everything from lowering the thermostat to lowering the TV volume to lowering the blinds.

Ramat Gan digital health company EarlySense has released myEarlySense, an under-mattress automatic sleep-monitoring system designed to integrate with smart-home solutions. Users can adapt their home environment based on the sleep-cycle data collected from the myEarlySense sensor – for example, arming and disarming home security systems, turning off the TV, turning on the coffeemaker and adjusting the thermostat. The myEarlySense technology is built into Samsung’s new SleepSense IoT (Internet of Things) device.

photo - GreenIQ’s Smart Garden Hub allows you to adjust irrigation based on past, current and forecasted weather
GreenIQ’s Smart Garden Hub allows you to adjust irrigation based on past, current and forecasted weather. (photo from GreenIQ via Israel21c.org)

Launched at Home Depot stores across the United States and also sold online, GreenIQ’s Smart Garden Hub allows you to adjust irrigation based on past, current and forecasted weather – without stepping outside – yielding water savings of up to 50%. The device connects to the internet via wifi or cellular connection and is controlled from an iOS or Android app. The Petah Tikva-based company’s app can also adjust outdoor lighting and can connect to a Netatmo weather station and rain gauge or a water-flow sensor for leak detection.

Sensibo’s tagline is “Give your old air conditioner a brain.” The system includes a pod that sticks onto your A/C and heating unit, and an intuitive app that lets you monitor and modify your settings from any smartphone, tablet or computer. If you’ve got a Samsung in the living room, an LG in the bedroom and a Friedrich in the study, Sensibo will control all of them with one interface. A new public API for developers will enable integration of a Sensibo device with other home appliances as well.

SmarTap’s digital shower system, currently available in Israel and the United Kingdom and next year in the United States, was chosen for Bezeq’s Bhome demo to show how the product can reduce water and energy use by enabling precise control of flow and temperature. An app lets users program actions such as preheating the shower, setting a maximum temperature and flow rate, and specifying how high to fill the bath. The Nesher-based company will be adding functions such as automatic leak detection, opening cold-water pipes to prevent freezing and monitoring usage patterns; the software will be upgraded remotely with each new feature. IBM Research in Haifa is now researching how SmarTap can help reduce water and energy use in commercial buildings.

Anything plugged into a power source can be connected to PointGrab’s PointSwitch product to enable gesture-controlled adjustments and on/off actions up to 17 feet away, even in full darkness. This Israeli gesture-control technology is already powering tens of millions of devices made by Fujitsu, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, TLC and Skyworth. The company is based in Hod Hasharon.

ENTR is a battery-operated smart lock from Mul-T-Lock in Yavneh. It is designed to be retrofitted into existing doors and lets users control entry from a smartphone, tablet or other Bluetooth-enabled device. You can create or disable virtual keys immediately, lock or unlock the door at pre-programmed times and monitor the system remotely. The underlying algorithms were developed at the Israeli research and development facility of American chipmaker Freescale.

Evoz turns an iOS device into a virtual baby monitor. Its technology is built inside the Belkin-Evoz WeMo monitor (which stores and graphs baby’s cries and analyzes the information to provide parenting tips) and in British Telecom’s next-generation home video devices. Evoz also can be used for monitoring housebound seniors, detecting and sending alerts about safety and security, and evaluating electricity usage.

[email protected] by Essence, a Herzliya-based company, is a cloud-administered wireless system that lets users manage and communicate with a large variety of third-party-connected home devices, such as lighting, thermostats and door locks.

photo - BwareIT’s SmartH2O home water meter makes it easy to watch water usage on any faucet
BwareIT’s SmartH2O home water meter makes it easy to watch water usage on any faucet. (photo from BwareIT via Israel21c.org)

Attach BwareIT’s SmartH2O home water meter to your sink or shower tap or your garden hose, download the app and you can see exactly how much water your household is using, how long the water is running and at what temperature, and how much it’s costing you. Now being incubated in Startup Scaleup, the European Commission’s IoT accelerator, the device could be on the market within a year to give conservation-oriented users an unprecedented awareness of water consumption. The app will also inform you of any leaks, and show how your water usage compares with the average in your region or country. If you’re proud of how you stack up to your neighbors, you can share your rating on social media.

Last but not least, Mybitat, an IoT company headquartered in Herzliya, is partnering with Samsung to develop a smart-home solution aimed at helping the elderly remain in their own homes longer and enhancing their quality of life. The technology combines advanced sensors, cloud-based software and behavior analytics to monitor an individual’s daily routine and wellness. If it detects changes in behavior or health, the system will send alerts to preselected family members or caregivers.

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Format ImagePosted on March 11, 2016March 10, 2016Author Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21CCategories IsraelTags Evoz, GreenIQ, Israel, Mybitat, myEarlySense, PointSwitch, Sensibo, Singlecue, SmarTap, SmartH2O, technology, [email protected]
Shaping Israel’s tech future

Shaping Israel’s tech future

Nir Kouris addresses a Tomorrow Israel gathering. (photo from israel21c.org)

Nir Kouris is one of those hyper-accomplished young Israelis who cannot be described in a single phrase. Digital brand manager, tech evangelist, growth hacker, startup mentor, technology conference organizer, wearable-tech adviser, IoT enthusiast – these are all apt labels, but he prefers to call himself simply “a person who loves the future.”

He does not only mean that he loves futuristic technologies, though he really, really does. His passion is nurturing Israel’s future tech leaders by connecting them with peers and experts across the world.

In addition to NK Corporate Digital Strategy, the business he started in 2003 at age 20, Kouris got the ball rolling with eCamp, co-founded in 2008 to bring Israeli and overseas kids together for an American-style summer experience in technology. He founded Innovation Israel – a community for Israeli startups, entrepreneurs, investors, venture capitalists, angels and developers – together with Ben Lang, an American eCamper who moved to Israel five years later at age 18.

Kouris has organized Hackathon Israel, Tel Aviv Hackathon Day and World Hackathon Day, all attracting hundreds of young programmers. In 2014, he helped launch Israel’s first Wearable Tech Conference, headlined by Silicon Valley trendsetters.

Perhaps Kouris’ most ambitious endeavor is Tomorrow Israel, a movement to boost technology education and opportunities in Israel through worldwide collaboration.

“When I was 12, I read a book that changed my life, Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty,” Kouris told Israel21c. This bestselling guide to networking taught him, “If you want to be somebody, go to tech conferences.” And so he did.

“I was always the youngest person at these events and, at one of them, a Microsoft marketing manager asked me what I was doing there; I was only a kid. I promised myself to treat people equally, to listen to people of all ages, because nobody did that for me. That’s why I always dedicate time to young people,” said Kouris, who turns 34 in May.

At the Israeli Presidential Conference Facing Tomorrow, held annually from 2008 to 2013 at the behest of former president Shimon Peres, Kouris was dismayed to see no young faces among the distinguished presenters and few in the audience.

“I proposed creating Tomorrow Israel to take Peres’ vision into reality, a global movement connecting Israeli teens to others using the universal language of technology,” he explained. “I don’t believe in waiting for government officials and people with titles to take responsibility. I believe in regular people taking responsibility for our lives – not for fame, but because we really care and we love doing it.”

At first, Kouris rented venues to present workshops and lectures, and then Google Campus in Tel Aviv offered free space. Global technology gurus began accepting his invitations to Tomorrow Israel meetups, and he started sponsoring local and national conferences and hackathons for kids from Israel and elsewhere.

The Tomorrow movement has spread to Holland, the United Kingdom, India, America and Australia. Though there’s no official age limit, most participants are under 21.

“It’s not an age, but a way of thinking. We attract people wanting to make their countries better through entrepreneurship,” Kouris said. “It’s like a VC for people. Tomorrow is all about smart and good people because being a good person matters most.”

The Amsterdam municipality, Google for Education and other entities have approached Kouris about collaborating with Tomorrow. Members are forming teams and launching projects together via national and international Tomorrow Facebook groups. Kouris is proud that Israel is the nexus of this activity.

“Before Tomorrow, everybody heard the negative stuff about Israel and now they all want to come here to see our startup culture. We’re proving we can find new channels of communicating with the next generation of leaders and empower other nations to be startup nations,” Kouris said. “We have something strong and solid in our hands.”

eCamp becomes Big Idea

When Kouris was a teen in the early days of the internet, he’d sit at the computers in his school library in a village near Afula, earning money by registering and selling domain names.

During his military service, he was sent to work in American Jewish summer camps. “I was inspired to make something like that in Israel, combining the American camp experience with the Israeli tech story,” he related.

He co-founded eCamp after dropping out of college (“What I was learning in class was about the past, and I had to deal with the future”) and working briefly at a high-tech startup. Now called Big Idea, the camp is still going strong, but Kouris left after a year to build his branding consultancy and organize for-profit conferences supported by corporate sponsorships and ticket sales.

“Israelis usually don’t pay for conferences, so it has to be something exceptional you can’t get anywhere else,” explained Kouris, who says his favorite hobby is “meeting people smarter than myself.”

He’s persuaded big names like Robert Scoble, a top American tech evangelist, and Prof. Steve Mann, “the father of wearable technology,” to come to Israel along with participants from China, Europe and the United States. “They come on their own budget because they feel these conferences are the best,” Kouris said.

Kouris is planning two international confabs in Israel for 2016, one to present outstanding technologies to the world on behalf of Innovation Israel; the other a free Tomorrow gathering to introduce the established global tech community to the next generation.

The single Herzliya resident said he is “having great fun and traveling the world” as he helps shape the future of Israel.

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org. Visit israel21c.org/forget-tablets-the-next-breakthrough-is-wearable-audio to listen to Viva Sarah Press speak on TLV1 to Nir Kouris about Israel’s role in this trend.

Posted on January 15, 2016January 15, 2016Author Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21CCategories WorldTags eCamp, Israel, Nir Kouris, technology
Student is CEO of tech firm

Student is CEO of tech firm

Iddo Gino at the 2014 World Hackathon Day in Tel Aviv. (photo from israel21c.org)

There’s something unusual about one of the startups renting co-working space in the newly opened WeWork building in Herzliya: its CEO is still in high school.

Iddo Jonathan Gino, 17, is a senior at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa and hopes to finish an undergraduate degree in computer science at the Open University next year. When he’s not studying in school and online, he heads RapidPay, a year-old company whose four employees have created a mobile in-store and online payment platform for customers – mainly fellow teenagers – who don’t have a credit card or bank account.

“I try to manage my time as well as possible,” he said.

Having lived with his family in New Zealand for a couple of years before high school, Iddo speaks English fluently and has a working knowledge of Italian, as well as programming languages such as JavaScript, PHP and Python.

“When I was about 11, I went with my dad to his workplace and I sat with one of the programmers and saw all the cool stuff he was doing,” Iddo related. “He showed me a program he made to sort out seating for his son’s bar mitzvah automatically. Then he gave me a book to learn how to program. And, from there, one thing led to another.”

Iddo began with “some cool little projects,” learning how to build online management systems, interactive websites and iOS apps. Last summer, he had an internship at a tech startup in Israel.

“I got to experience how a startup works, and then I opened my own,” he explained.

Last year, Iddo teamed with students from the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, N.C., to develop a predictive app, SmartAlarm, which uses traffic data, flight changes and other real-time information to determine the appropriate time for the user’s alarm to ring in order to get to a destination at the right time. They hope to get funding to launch the app.

“Today, many people are referring to the so-called ‘Age of Context,’ where everything will be connected and every product or service will be enhanced using data and technology from elsewhere,” he said. “SmartAlarm is a great concept that utilizes contextual technology and real-time data sources to give users a true benefit.”

This project was part of a long-distance collaboration between the two high schools. Reali, one of Israel’s oldest private schools, boasts many distinguished alumni.

“Reali is a really great school that has allowed me to do college courses and have my own startup, and we have opportunities in school to create stuff, too,” said Iddo, a computer science and physics major.

Last May, he and fellow teen entrepreneur Gil Maman – CEO of HealthBelly and an award-winning veteran of several hackathons – helped organize the Israeli branch of World Hackathon Day, held at the Google Campus in Tel Aviv. This global initiative was the brainchild of Innovation Israel co-founder and wearable technology evangelist Nir Kouris, 32.

With the help of an ROI micro-grant and corporate sponsorships, Kouris and two Netherlands-based co-founders connected Israeli teen techies with peers abroad as they hacked apps for health, finance, music, charity and travel. Hundreds participated in the weekend event last May, leading to some potential partnerships and products.

Behind the scenes, the hackathon also afforded organizational experience to enterprising teens like Iddo and Gil, and their counterparts in Holland, India, Spain, Morocco and Germany.

Iddo said he’s motivated by “all the awesome futuristic stuff out there, like GetTaxi and Waze,” both founded by young Israeli entrepreneurs, though perhaps not quite as young as he is.

“One of my role models is Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook,” said Iddo. “He went to university but didn’t stay there long. He had one good idea to pursue and went with it.”

Iddo also admires Israeli tech legend Dov Moran, one of the early pioneers of portable data storage. “I like the way he created something nobody believed he could, and now we can’t live without flash memory.”

The Haifa whiz kid muses: “One of the things about the Israeli personality and culture is that it enables you to grow quickly and is very open-minded. I could talk to investors when I was 15, and they took me seriously. I don’t know if that’s something that could happen abroad.”

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Format ImagePosted on August 21, 2015August 19, 2015Author Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21CCategories IsraelTags high-tech, Iddo Jonathan Gino, RapidPay, Reali School, SmartAlarm, technology

Reading aloud aids learning

An important tip from Israeli experts: children recall information better when they repeat the material aloud. This is the conclusion of a study conducted at Israel’s Ariel University by Prof. Michal Ichet from the department of communication disorders in collaboration with Prof. Yaniv Mama from the department of psychology and behavioral sciences.

They found that when children hear new information and then repeat it loudly and clearly, this significantly improves their ability to remember the words, compared with their memory of words spoken by someone else.

This simple “listen and repeat” method can be used to help even pre-reading students learn and memorize information – including facts, vocabulary and foreign languages – more effectively.

The study was conducted in Hebrew but is applicable to any other language of instruction, say the researchers.

“I personally have always thought that repeating something aloud helps me commit it to memory. Now we’ve found that the research that supports this theory is indisputable,” Ichet said.

The learning is not as effective if the children hear the words spoken by someone else or if they repeat the words to themselves quietly or silently.

Previous studies on the “listen and repeat” technique have focused mostly on adults who have the ability to read and write. The increase in an adult’s capacity to remember information using this method is about 20%. In the 5-year-olds tested by Ichet and Mama, the increase was as high as 35%. They theorize that repeating words aloud creates a pathway in the brain. These words then receive “preferential status” when being set into memory and thus become more familiar.

The researchers suggest that teachers, parents and caregivers take this tip to heart in order to improve young children’s mastery of new information.

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Posted on August 21, 2015August 19, 2015Author Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21CCategories IsraelTags education, learning, Michal Ichet, Yaniv Mama
Driverless cars one step closer

Driverless cars one step closer

Prof. Zvi Shiller in the RAV Lab. (photo from israel21c.org)

Within a few years, you may be traveling in a car with nobody at the wheel. Whether you call it an autonomous, driverless or self-driving vehicle, this automobile of the near future needs a host of complex components, some now under development at Israeli companies and academic laboratories.

“You will be able to go to, let’s say, Paris or Tokyo, rent a car, swipe a card and tell it where you want it to go. You won’t have to know the area or the traffic rules,” explained Prof. Zvi Shiller, founder of the department of mechanical engineering and mechatronics at Ariel University and director of its Paslin Laboratory for Robotics and Autonomous Vehicles (RAV Lab).

The biggest benefit will be fewer traffic accidents than we have today – which cause more than 30,000 casualties annually in the United States alone – by eliminating human error in driving. But that requires a very, very smart car.

In the RAV Lab, Shiller and his students are developing algorithms that will automatically modulate speed and handling in response to constantly changing, unpredictable road conditions. Driverless cars will need this capability to meet future safety regulations.

“Today’s driverless cars, introduced by leading car companies such as Ford, Volvo and even Google, can drive very well on a road that is smooth and flat. Our research is about driving over a surface with bumps, ruts and hills,” said Shiller. “This is much more difficult because you can easily lose stability on that kind of terrain. If you’re driving too fast over a bump, you may jump into the air. You have to know at which speed you can drive safely without losing contact with the ground. You may need off-road driving capabilities less than 10% of the time, but you can’t trust a car that cannot handle those 10%.”

The current research continues Shiller’s work at the University of California-Los Angeles Laboratory for Robotics and Automation, which he founded and headed for 14 years before joining Ariel University in 2001.

At the RAV Lab, Shiller and his students have developed a small mobile robot that manoeuvres between obstacles at high speed, showing how the driverless car would handle itself.

“I haven’t seen a similar robot moving as fast,” said Shiller. “This stems from our ability to compute the optimal velocity that exploits the robot’s motion capabilities.”

A couple of years ago, the lab published their results from testing a simple version of this algorithm against one developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Shiller earned graduate degrees in mechanical engineering.

“Our algorithm computes a collision-free path among 70 tightly spaced obstacles in half a millisecond, compared to 500 milliseconds (0.5 seconds) it took the algorithm from MIT,” he reported. “That’s 1,000 times faster!”

RAV Lab’s technology could be one of a few systems for driverless cars to come out of Israel. The different systems address everything from motion planning to cyber-security.

Among the companies working on self-driving car technologies is Jerusalem-based Mobileye, whose driver-assistance software is already built into approximately 3.3 million vehicles worldwide. Mobileye reportedly is collaborating with American electric car manufacturer Tesla on developing its driverless vehicle.

Shiller said that one of the most difficult functions to automate is the 3-D mapping system to take the place of human perception in identifying and avoiding moving and stationary hazards in the car’s vicinity.

“Researchers are still working on this,” he said. “Once we map the region around the vehicle, we can use this information to do the next part, which is planning the vehicle’s motion. That’s where my research comes in.”

Making life easier

Over the years, Shiller’s students have produced robots that climb stairs, clean windows, operate wheelchair lifts, dispense pills, push baby strollers uphill, turn pages and accomplish other everyday tasks. They’ve built up a portfolio of almost 90 robotic products over the last 10 years to solve daily life problems in a futuristic way. “Some of these are world firsts,” said Shiller.

The RAV Lab’s research has been supported by Israel’s ministries of science, transportation and defence, the Israeli Space Agency, General Motors and the Paslin Foundation.

As head of the Israeli Robotics Association (IROB), Shiller is optimistic that Israel can become a world leader in smart robotics.

“Quite a few of the Israeli robotics companies are world leaders in their fields,” he said, citing examples such as Robomow, the Dolphin swimming pool cleaner, the SpineAssist surgical device, Mobileye and the ReWalk exoskeleton.

“The research we do in Israel is state of the art,” said Shiller. “I believe that if we build upon the infrastructure developed over the last 25 years in the remarkable Israeli high-tech industry, we can become world leaders in robotics as well.”

For more information, visit ariel.ac.il/sites/shiller/ravlab.

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Format ImagePosted on June 12, 2015June 10, 2015Author Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21CCategories IsraelTags automotive, driverless cars, high-tech, RAV Lab, robotics, Zvi Shiller

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