Two headlines that sum up a lot
Ha’aretz: Israel offers aid to Turkey after 41 killed in earthquake
Yediot Aharonot: Turkey rejects Israel’s offer of post-quake aid
Apparently, Ankara thinks it’s preferable for innocent people to die than to accept help from Jews.
Comments (0) »Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 4:08 PM | Stand For Israel
Israel Develops Natural Gas
As Israel continues its quest to reduce its dependence on coal, a material it must import from external sources, an off-shore discovery could signal a vast new energy resource in natural gas.
This week, Noble Energy, a U.S. energy group with significant investment in Israeli off-shore production, said the natural gas reserves will be provided solely to the Israeli market. The two natural gas reserves confirmed off the coast of Haifa (in the regions nicknamed Tamar and Dalit) may together contain a two decade supply of gas based on projected needs.
According to the company, “The significant exploration discoveries at Tamar and Dalit will help meet Israel’s future energy needs and drive additional new uses for natural gas.” This could be a win-win situation for both Israel and Noble Energy. As Israel increases natural gas usage and reduces the use of coal, Noble Energy’s exploration group hopes to meet Israel’s growing need.
Comments (1) »Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 3:39 PM | Alicia M. Cohn
Everything the U.S. ever wanted to know about UAVs (unmanned drones), it learned from Israel
Earlier this week, we told you about Israel’s newly developed drone, The Eitan, the world’s largest un-manned aerial vehicle (UAV). (These are the drones that keep “eliminating” Taliban leaders and helping U.S. forces in Iraq without imperiling U.S. troops.)
What we didn’t tell you is that a significant part of the U.S. technology has come from Israel, which has been at the forefront of UAV development for decades. The U.S. Air Force did try using unmanned drones for reconnaissance in Vietnam, but eventually shut down all its UAV funding until Israel changed world opinion about UAVs in the early 1980s.
During the First Lebanon War in 1982, the IDF used small UAVs to trick radar installations into becoming active in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, thus revealing their locations. Once spotted, regular Israeli fighter places moved in to destroy the radar sites.
According to this interesting article in Popular Mechanics, the Bekaa Valley campaign convinced the Americans that UAVs had major potential. (They’re spending $5.4 billion on UAVs in this year alone!)
The article continues with specifics about how the Eitan might play into an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear installations:
The Eitan can carry a ton of payload and can reach Iran’s nuclear facilities, which the United Nations last week determined is hiding an active weapons program. But that does not mean these will be used as bombers. The IAF has been buying and upgrading airplanes specifically for long-distance strikes such as a potential attack against Iran. At least 50 F-15 Raam and F-16 Soufa aircraft have been converted by installing extra fuel tanks for greater range and countermeasures to defeat radar and missiles. So maybe the warplane/UAV tag team presented at the “operational acceptance ceremony” speaks to how manned and unmanned aircraft will work together on missions: The drone provides information while the manned airplanes drop the guided munitions.
Working from high altitudes, the Eitan will likely be used to provide prestrike information on targets, to eavesdrop on electronic communications and to send battle damage assessments back after an attack. It will also undoubtably be used to monitor any…
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Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 5:00 PM | Stand For Israel
Former VP Gore invests in Israeli “green” company
Former Vice President Al Gore may have his hands full dealing with ongoing controversies arising from climategate, but his “green” venture capital fund is up to productive work: It just announced $10 million in funding for GreenRoad Technologies, an Israeli start-up company with technology that promotes safe driving.
Gore’s cleantech fund Generation Investment Management LLP announced the funding this week, joining other funders, including Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Green Ventures, Israeli business daily Globes reported Monday.
Founded in 2002, GreenRoad technology helps “drivers and fleets to reduce crashes, improve fuel economy and reduce overall vehicle operating costs,” according to the company’s website.
The company says that customers can realize a 50 percent reduction in accident-related costs and a 10 percent reduction in gas usage in the first year, Globes reported:
Like many Israeli high-tech firms, GreenRoad is headquartered near San Francisco but its research and development center is in Or Yehuda, a city near Tel Aviv. It also has sales offices throughout the US and UK.
Many firms choose to move headquarters overseas due to Israel’s prohibitively high taxes and difficult bureaucracy, but keep their research and development divisions in Israel.
Comments (0) »Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 12:55 PM | Stand For Israel
Haifa team’s medical discovery holds hope for tens of millions of those with late-stage kidney disease
A new find by scientists at the Technion Institute–the world-class research university in the northern Israeli city of Haifa– holds new hope for the 40 million Americans who have end-stage kidney disease (ESKD). ESKD is what happens when chronic kidney disease progresses to the point where the only hope for the patient’s long-term survival is a kidney transplant — which is costly, dangerous to already ill patients, and only possible when there’s an available kidney that is compatible with the patient.
Not always good odds.
But the research team–led by Prof. Karl Skorecki–isolated a method of genetic screening that can identify those at high risk for kidney disease, thereby allowing clinicians to treat them before their kidneys ever get anywhere near the point of failing, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The team’s work, which is due to be published in the prestigious medical journal, is expected to lead to future research that might be able to identity to specific genetic glitch that leads to ESKD as well as help doctors understand how the kidneys gets irreversibly damaged — which may lead to better or new medical treatments for those who do develop the condition.
If Skorecki’s name sounds familiar to you, it may be because we wrote about his “hobby” back in November. Although trained as a specialist in treating the kidney, Skorecki taught himself about genealogy and made a big splash when:
…he showed that Jewish men who had been told by their fathers that they were of the priestly tribe shared the same type array of six chromosomal markers in their Y chromosomes. These patrilineal markers were found in both Sephardi and Ashkenazi kohanim, pointing to a common priestly tribe population origin before the Diaspora during the Roman Empire.
The kidney disease Skorecki’s team may be helping affects black and Hispanic Americans at twice the rate it affects Caucasians. About 5,000 Israelis suffer from it.
Comments (0) »Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 8:00 AM | Stand For Israel
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