| NANOTECHNOLOGY
Gold
tipped Nano-dumbbells - Professor Uri Banin from Center
for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in the Hebrew University developed
nanocrystals in the shape of gold-tipped tiny weightlifting bars.
These nano structures, about a hundred-thousandth of the diameter
of a human hair, will bring us one step closer to developing nano
scale electronic circuitry and eventually nano scale computers.
The Full Article
Solid
nano-lubricant the Israeli company ApNano Materials developed
the first ever solid lubricant based on nanotechnology. Unlike
conventional solid lubricants similar to those made from compounds
such as graphite, molybdenum and tungsten that gradually decompose,
break apart, and bind to the metal surface in which they come
in contact, the lubricant developed by ApNano called NanoLub reduces
friction, wear and temperature significantly better than other
solid lubricants, especially at high loads. It also diminishes
galling, seizing and fretting of metal surfaces. Many compaies
around the world including The Volkswagen Group and a number of
international aerospace companies have also showed interest in
the new product.
The Full Article
GENERAL TECHNOLOGY
First
artificial spider silk - After two years of intensive research
a team of Israeli scientists, alongside colleagues from Germany
and England, have successfully created the first artificially
made spider silk fiber, Pound for pound one of the strongest and
most flexible materials known to man. The spider silk was created
using engineered viruses that infected an insect cells which began
producing the proteins, and the artificial spider silk spontaneously
formed within them. The potential application of this new research
is almost limitless. Everything from ultra-thin light body armor
to surgical thread optical fibers and even a completely new line
of clothing might be a reality in less than a decade.
The Full Article
Hands-free
driving directions - revolutionary technology developed
at the IBM Haifa research facility made Honda the first car manufacturer
to equip automobiles with in-car navigation systems using advanced
speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities that can identify
spoken street and city names that exist across the entire continental
United States. This technology allows drivers to say the address
they wish to locate and receive turn-by-turn voice guidance to
their destinations. The new voice-navigation system will be included
in new Honda 2005 models, including the Honda Odyssey minivan
and the Acura RL.
The Full Article
Flying car - Urban Aeronautics,
a small Israeli company, has developed a rotor-less Vertical-Take-Off
and Landing vehicle that will be able to sustain a stable hover
in one place for more than an hour. It will have the capability
of accessing almost any location, including high-rise buildings
or remote mountain ridges making it possible to rescue people
in distress. The X-Hawk as it is called is currently under development,
and its prototype has already performed initial flight tests.
The X-Hawk was recently displayed in an American law enforcement
conference, during which a great deal of interest was shown in
the LE model of the X-Hawk which will be the more powerful version
aimed at police and law enforcement tasks. In 2005 the company
hopes to test a more advanced prototype and acquire the American
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval which will set
the stage for full scale production to begin.
The Full Article
Music recommendation based on a computer algorithm - MusicGenome,
an Israeli based company, has developed a highly accurate way
to identify a persons musical taste through state-of-the-art
technology, and thereby recommending new songs based on it. Determining
a persons musical taste is based on novel research in artificial
intelligence and music cognition that has been carried out by
the company founders, Dr. Dan Gang and Prof. Daniel Lehmann at
Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and
Acoustics (CCRMA) and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. MusicGenome's
musicians use a set of objective measurements to analyze songs
selected from a music library and then assign a "music DNA
marker" to each song. A personal musical profile is built
by analyzing the user's response to a small sample of songs, or
by monitoring his/her listening patterns. With each interaction,
more data is gathered and the user's profile is enhanced and "adapted,"
thus tailoring music recommendations more and more specifically
each time.
MusicGenome is currently offering its services to retail music
chains, cellular telephony providers, content providers and online
music sites. Since 2001 MusicGenome has been collaborating with
Media Markt, one of the leading chains of record stores in Germany.
By installing dozens of Smart Music Terminals across its store
chain Media Markt sales have grown by as much as 20% in six months.
The Full Article
Micro
cooling unit in space - On August 3 the NASA spaceship
MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and
Ranging) blasted off to space on a 6.5 year mission to the planet
Mercury. The spacecraft is carrying with it advanced scientific
instruments to explore the tiny hot planet as well as a small
piece of Israeli ingenuity a micro refrigerator that will keep
the delicate equipment onboard the ship cool as it races ever
closer to the sun. RICOR, The Israeli company which developed
a novel micro refrigerator had to work under extreme constrains.
The refrigerator only weights 400 grams and operates with supreme
efficiency so it can preserve the spaceship valuable power supply
for more important tasks such as the operation of the scientific
instrumentation and the high power communication antenna.
The Full Article
Israeli company will clean Chernobyl
- Environmental Energy Resources (EER), an Israeli based company,
acquired a contract with the Ukrainian government to handle the
disposal of the radioactive waste left by the Chernobyl accident
of April, 1986. During the initial Soviet operation thousands
of vehicles, helicopters and other heavy machinery were used to
try and seal the Chernobyl reactor. All of this equipment was
contaminated by different levels of radioactive radiation making
it both unusable and dangerous. EER's newly acquired contract
will allow it to recycle this material making it both usable and
radioactive free. The process applied by EER uses plasma (highly
ionized gas) in a "reactor" to melt down the radioactive
material and turn it into a gas. Using oxidizing agents, the material
is then cleaned, producing the end result of a glassy material
and gas. This gas is used further as a fuel for a gas turbine
that generates electricity. The other waste product of the process
is a solid glassy environmentally benign material that can be
used later in products for building construction.
The Full Article
Spider
Robot - Technion researchers have developed a spider robot
that is capable of moving through underground cavities, pipe ways
and tunnels. It can search for survivors in collapsed buildings,
as well as check for and carry out control and maintenance operations
on complicated and complex systems in dangerous structures such
as atomic reactors.
The Full Article
|
