The Technion’s story has been intertwined with Israel’s for more than a century, from laying the foundations for a new nation to shaping its future.
There’s a reason most of us love biting into a slice of rich chocolate cake, or sinking our teeth into a mouthwatering, juicy burger. The high fat content in these foods intensifies their flavors and aromas, and gives them a tender and moist texture. And now an Israeli startup has developed a way to add more of this nutrient into plant-based alternatives to meat, whose fat more often than not leaks out as it is being cooked. “If you’ve ever tried [a plant-based meat alternative] and you were left with a dry, chewy sensation, or maybe the flavors and aroma…
Colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon where bees die for mysterious reasons, caused alarm in recent decades and spurred a flurry of “save the bees” campaigns — because honeybees are needed to pollinate the plants that provide our food. But the bigger problem, according to Emily Speiser, VP of marketing for BloomX, is that honeybees, which have become the default bee for pollination in commercial agriculture because they’re easier to transport and manage — is that they aren’t as efficient as wild bees in pollinating specific fruits and vegetables like blueberries and avocados. In addition, says Speiser, there aren’t enough honeybees as…
The development of high-performance alternatives to silicon in microelectronics has been brought nearer by researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa who stretched an oxide material at an atomic level, thus controlling its conductivity. They said this is a “milestone advancement towards making efficient switches, which are the basic building blocks of computer chips.” Researchers in the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering have been able to control an emerging material that they regard as a possible future alternative to silicon in microelectronics. This is a timely development, because scientists and engineers face challenges in continuing the transistor shrinking…
Israeli company QD-SOL has quite a few things going for it. Not only is it working to produce completely green hydrogen – the renewable energy’s sector game-changing card and biggest buzzword – but it is also backed by none other than Hollywood star and sustainability entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher. “Almost the entire hydrogen production industry is a polluting industry. After it’s produced, hydrogen is an excellent, green energy provider, but it’s usually made by burning gasses that also release a lot of carbon dioxide together with the desired hydrogen,” QD-SOL CEO Gil Davidman tells ISRAEL21c. “The world’s already decided to take steps toward net zero…
Arab Israeli social entrepreneur Imad Telhami has seen phenomenal success from the Babcom customer-service centers he and partner Dov Lautman established to employ Arab women and men in the north, south and Jerusalem. Babcom (“Your Door” in Arabic) now employs 5,000 people providing outsourced services, including call centers and software development, to Israeli companies. In 2018, Harvard Business School built a case study about Babcom into its curriculum. But Telhami was increasingly troubled to note that no Babcom client companies were owned or managed by Arabs.
Space is getting crowded. In addition to the thousands of satellites already orbiting Earth, about 14,000 new satellites are expected to be launched by the end of the decade. That translates into about 9,000 tons of space debris, says Igal Kronhaus, former Technion professor-turned-space-tech startup entrepreneur. It’s gotten so bad that the United States issued new regulations in 2022 that “won’t allow the launch of a satellite unless it has a convincing capability to move out of the way after five years from the end of the mission,” Kronhaus says.
Prof. Gideon Grader from Israel’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology was recently awarded the Grand Prix Scientifique research grant by the Institut de France for developing innovative green hydrogen technology. The Institut de France, a nonprofit organization founded in 1795 that unites five French academies, encourages research, supports creativity, and funds many humanitarian projects. Grader has developed a process — dubbed E-TAC — along with his Technion colleagues, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen by decoupling the production of the two gasses. This is achieved by circulating electrolyte solutions at different temperatures through the electrodes.
Personal sensing data could help monitor and alleviate stress among resident physicians, although privacy concerns over who sees the information and for what purposes must be addressed, according to collaborative research from Cornell Tech. Burnout in all types of workplaces is on the rise in the U.S., where the “Great Resignation” and “silent quitting” have entered the lexicon in recent years. This is especially true in the health care industry, which has been strained beyond measure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stress is physical as well as mental, and evidence of stress can be measured through the use of smartphones, wearables…
A pair of scientists has produced a research paper in less than an hour with the help of ChatGPT — a tool driven by artificial intelligence (AI) that can understand and generate human-like text. The article was fluent, insightful and presented in the expected structure for a scientific paper, but researchers say that there are many hurdles to overcome before the tool can be truly helpful. The goal was to explore ChatGPT’s capabilities as a research ‘co-pilot’ and spark debate about its advantages and pitfalls, says Roy Kishony, a biologist and data scientist at the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology in…
Israel’s Knesset (parliament) has launched a new audio guidance system to help the blind, visually impaired, and people with orientation difficulties navigate its premises. The personalized audio guidance was developed by Israeli startup RightHear, developer of an app that provides talking signage and audio descriptions for indoor locations like hospitals, museums, universities, and grocery stores on a smartphone or tablet. The Knesset launched the system on Israel’s Blind Day (June 6) through an event it held in solidarity for the visually impaired community. Hundreds of guests used the RightHear app as they navigated the legislature’s premises.
A medical breakthrough now allows doctors to freeze early-stage breast tumors – with no surgery, no scarring, no general anesthetic and no tissue removal. The entire procedure can take as little as 40 minutes. Patients can go straight home after its done, and are spared the painful recovery process. The idea of using an extremely cold liquid to freeze and destroy abnormal tissue – or cryoablation – isn’t new. Doctors have been doing it in hospitals for the last 30 years. But IceCure Medical, an Israeli startup, has developed technology that allows physicians to perform the procedure at their own office,…
US gaming and computer graphics giant Nvidia has joined forces with an Israeli startup to roll out a new hardware system to connect the quantum computer with classical computers. The new system, Nvidia DGX Quantum, built together with Israel’s Quantum Machines, a developer of a standard universal language for quantum computers, is expected to be first deployed at Israel’s quantum computing research center at the end of this year. The quantum computing R&D center funded by the Israel Innovation Authority at an investment of NIS 100 million ($27 million), which is headed by Quantum Machines, was established to help Israel build a…