Sorrow and Hope

Inventions & Innovations

Your Multifocal Glasses Are All Set for a Revolution

Wearers of multifocals (“progressive” eyeglasses) must look through the top of the lenses for distance, through the middle for intermediate distance and through the bottom for close reading. Many people find it hard to adjust to the limited field of view per distance and even get headaches from the distortions. If your progressive glasses could

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Medicine: Your Multifocal Glasses Are All Set for a Revolution

Wearers of multifocals (“progressive” eyeglasses) must look through the top of the lenses for distance, through the middle for intermediate distance and through the bottom for close reading. Many people find it hard to adjust to the limited field of view per distance and even get headaches from the distortions. If your progressive glasses could

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Meet “the Partner”:  Doctor, Butler, Bodyguard—this Futuristic Robot Does it All

ThePartner, with its one-dynamic arm and inquisitive stare, was impossible to miss at this year’s IDF-sponsored Machanet Tech-Shop. At the Machanet, tech gurus from Israel’s security sector network and showcase their creative, homemade gadgets. While ThePartner is the brainchild of Sergeant Major O., an electrical engineer in the navy, he teamed up with Majors A.,

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Mud and Straw Homes for Earthquake Regions

Nepalese villagers now faced with massive rebuilding projects following [a devastating] earthquake could benefit from the lessons learned by eco-minded builders in Israel’s Arava desert. These southern Israeli builders have developed an earthquake-proof housing system that can be manufactured and constructed quickly by people without building experience. Northwestern University Prof. Eric Masanet recently brought Alex

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Against All Odds

The 2009 bestseller, Start-up Nation: the Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, hails the Jewish state as “the greatest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurship in the world today.” The Economist agrees. “Adjust for population and Israel leads the world in the number of high-tech start-ups and the size of the venture-capital industry.” Unlikely Incubator Israel’s lightning

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Hurricanes Begin in Western Africa

A new study published by Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Colin Price and his graduate student Naama Reicher finds that “85 percent of the most intense hurricanes affecting the US and Canada start off as disturbances in the atmosphere over Western Africa…the larger the area covered by the disturbances, the higher the chance they would develop

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To Stop Cancer: Block Its Messages

The average living cell must transmit a constant stream of messages quickly and efficiently from its outer walls to the inner nucleus. But this communication system leaves itself open to mutations that can give rise to a “spam attack” that promotes cancer. Prof. Rony Seger of the Biological Regulation Department [Weizmann Institute] and his team

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Whole New Light Technology

Oree Advanced Illumination Solutions, a revolutionary Israeli lighting company, coincidentally is based in a Ramat Gan office building called Beit Or (House of Light). Oree’s core product is LightCell, a small, thin panel spread uniformly with LED (light-emitting diode), which directs light across its flat surface. “What’s unique is how thin it is, just four

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Shoes That Fit Like a Glove

In recent years Israel has become known as the “start-up nation.” It is an incubator for companies that have been born out of the new and innovative Israeli technologies developed in a wide variety of fields. However, it is also the land that produced Teva Naot—a company whose humble beginnings 70 years ago have led

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Oil Spill Clean-up with New Technology

The 2014 oil spill in Evrona Nature Preserve in the Arava Desert In one of the worst environmental disasters in Israel’s history, between three and five million liters [.8 to 1.3 million US gal] of raw crude oil gushed from a burst pipeline near the Evrona Nature Reserve in the Arava Desert last year. In

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