With nearly 55,000 fans on its Facebook page and with extensive coverage across the world’s leading media outlets, the simple yet thought-provoking campaign proves there might be more to Iranian-Israeli relations than people previously thought.

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Now a Tel Aviv-based startup named Rounds is offering its technology to help connect people from the two countries. The company provides a video platform for Facebook users, which can serve to connect between friends, family or even complete strangers – such as Israelis and Iranians.

One of many "Israel loves Iran" images

Executive Vice President of Rounds, Oren Levy, told The Next Web: “Rounds is a hangout platform and our mission is to take the experience of hanging out in the real world and bring it to the online world.”

Rounds’ technology is based on a combination of video chat with other social activities such as games and content sharing. The company launched its Facebook platform in 2010 – and has now decided to dedicate a unique cyber space for Israelis and Iranians who wish to become friends.

In fact, anyone can access the designated area, but the system will specifically match users from Iran and Israel together. Anyone else from around the world will be matched with other supporters of the cause.

According to The Next Web, the app already counts over 100,000 Israeli users and 10,000 Iranians. The exact figure of Iranian users, however, cannot be known – since many Iranian Internet users need to resort to proxies and other methods to bypass governmental restrictions on Internet use.

Launched last week, it might be too early to see clear-cut results of the Rounds initiative. Nevertheless, Levy is optimistic about its effect. “It might take away some of the prejudice that some governments try to portray. The internet took away a lot of the intermediaries and can bring people together,” he says.

“You can see the other person, see their reactions, and see that it’s just another human being. We hope that people will see we’re just like each other,” explains Levy.

Levy adds that “it’s a fun, emotional and safe place – without any politics. We don’t want to get involved in politics in any way. We don’t care about governments, we care about people. We thought it was a perfect match.”

According to Levy, if the campaign proves successful, Rounds may replicate it for other nations in conflict around the world.

Until recently, it was a rare product grown only in the Atlas Mountains and traditionally made by Moroccan tribes, as the Argan tree could not grow outside of Morocco.

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Now, Israeli company Sivan is developing “Argan 100” – a super strain of Argan that is tolerant of the Mediterranean climate and can produce ten times more nuts than the average tree in Morocco, they say.

“We are the only company that knows how to raise Argan trees and to bring them to market professionally, so that every year we will know how much oil to expect,” says company’s chief agronomist Chaim Oren.

Based on 25 years of field research, Sivan’s agronomists found a way to produce the oil from their own groves and refuted the widespread legend associated with the production of the oil. According to this legend, Argan oil could only be processed from the nut – which looks like an unripe olive – after its hard shell was removed via a goat’s digestive tract.

Argan nuts and shells

Oren says there is in fact no need for goats to perform the job of middlemen.

“I was exposed to the Argan trees many years ago, and we did a breeding session in Israel,” Oren says. “We pollinated trees with other trees. Ours are resistant to soil disease, giving these trees a steady yield every year.”

To date, about 2,500 Argan trees have been planted in the Ashkelon, Arava and Negev regions in Israel.

Sivan, founded in 2007 and based in Ramat Hasharon, Israel, sells Argan oil to wholesalers, with small quantities of leftovers sold online. Their eventual plan is to sell their Argan 100 to other countries.

In the coming months, Israel’s state-owned electric company hopes to change this by rolling out a nationwide, high-speed broadband network. Exploiting the small size of the densely populated country, the effort aims to put Israel at the forefront of the next generation of Internet technology.

Experts say the fiber-optic lines can provide connections of 10 to 100 times current speeds, transforming the way the Internet is used in such areas as entertainment, business and health care.

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“All the developing countries that have a vision for 10 years ahead, or 20 years ahead, understand that the name of the game will be communications, broadband communications, very fast communications,” said Tzvi Harpak, the electric company’s senior vice president for logistics.

The technology is known as “fiber to the home,” or FTTH. Using fiber optic lines, it can provide connection speeds of 100 megabits to a blazing 1 gigabit per second. Today, the typical broadband user in the developed world connects at five to 10 megabits using older cable and DSL connections.

Oliver Johnson, chief executive of British research firm Point Topic, said FTTH technology is the “gold standard” of the next generation of broadband service. Although cable and DSL lines can be upgraded to higher speeds, FTTH has smoother transmission of data and a much higher upside in terms of speed, he said.

“It’s easier to go higher. It’s future-proofed,” he said.

The added bandwidth could transform the way the Internet is used. Massive video files will be downloaded instantly, opening the door for high-definition and 3D movies to be delivered more easily.
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Via Washington Post and Associated Press
Image by roland

Friedson is one of 1,700 responders at United Hatzalah, a non-profit organization that offers immediate response to medical emergencies by sending young volunteers on scooters who can get to emergency scenes before ambulances can.

The volunteers, trained and certified as emergency medical technicians (EMT), carry around basic aid kits and are able to speed through traffic jams to assist patients in the often crucial first minutes.

Response within 2-4 minutes

The goal of Hatzalah (Hebrew for “Rescue”)  is to provide a response within two to four minutes from the onset of an incident: providing vital first aid medical care; transmitting information to control centers and once the local ambulance service arrives, working alongside its crew to enable a swift transfer to hospital.

The Hatzalah call center

According to Eli Beer, founder and chief coordinator of Hatzalah, the incentive to start the organization was a gap in emergency medical services, notably the response time of medical teams to emergencies.

“Research has shown that the first minutes are crucial for a full recovery and the procedures needed there don’t require a great deal of expertise or equipment,” Beer tells NoCamels. “What’s needed within those crucial minutes is to stop hemorrhage, restore a heart beat, or open an airway.”

The secret to Hatzalah’s success, according to Beer, lies in the widespread geographical distribution of their first-responders. The volunteers are living, working and studying in virtually every town and community throughout Israel.

Ambu-cycles

Every EMT has his own private car or is a member of the organization’s biker unit (Ambucycles). But most importantly, the medics receive alerts through the Hatzalah dispatch centers using the Israeli “Life-compass” technology that is installed on their mobile devices. Once a medical situation is inserted into the system, it automatically finds the appropriate responder according to the qualification (MD, paramedic, EMT), proximity and mobility of the responder.

“Our volunteers come from all sectors of Israeli society: Ultra-orthodox Jews, secular Jews, Israeli Arabs, and they all have one thing in common – they want to help save lives,” Beer says.

“You wouldn’t believe what situations I find myself running out of to respond to calls,” says Gavy Friedson. “Some people even develop certain resentment for what I do. Can you imagine being on a date and running off in the middle to answer a call?”

Gavy Friedson, right, and another Hatzalah volunteer

Friedson first started volunteering for Hatzalah at the age of fifteen. For him, the feeling of gratification is worth all of the effort. Recounting his most terrifying experience, he says: “About a year ago I received an alert about a building on fire and I immediately noticed it was my grandmother’s address. I sped over there and carried her out to safety.”

But the toughest part of the work, says Friedson, is that “you never actually know what happened to your patients once you hand them over to the ambulance.”

Eli Beer says that his organization is not trying to replace ambulances: “We only want to fill the gap between the time of an emergency call and the time the ambulance arrives.”

Beer, who last year was lauded as social entrepreneur at the World Economic Forum, says: “When we started this organization we had nothing, we would tap in to the emergency frequencies to find people close to us in need of medical assistance. Now we have 1,700 volunteers, almost 200 ambucycles, 1,500 cars, and 6 control centers spread across the country that receive and answer between 500-600 emergency calls – on our 1221  number – every day.”

While a two- to four-minute response time can already seem unfathomable, Beer’s goal is to reduce the record time even more. “Our goal is to shorten response time to 90 seconds,” he says. “If we had a total of 3,000 volunteers we could make it happen.”

He adds: “We can’t always beat the devil but we’re a growing opposition to his work.”

[Show as slideshow]

Photography by Michael Plutchok

The unit, the first of its kind, is housed in a standard, 12-meter-long skid-mounted container and can produce between 500 to 10,000 cubic meters of water per day, depending on the water type, the company said.

That would be enough for a hotel or small village in remote areas or disaster sites that lost water supplies, said Fredi Lokiec, IDE‘s executive vice president for special projects.

“IDE brought to the industry something that is really new and this facility we don’t use any type of chemicals. So it’s completely green — that’s the name, Pro Green — environmentally friendly,” he said.

Israel is two-thirds arid and to deal with its own shortages has become a world leader in water technologies, pioneering new methods of drip irrigation, water recycling and desalination.

Reverse osmosis is a common desalination method where sea water is passed through membranes under high pressure. Usually chemicals are needed to clean the pre-treated water as well as the membranes themselves. Lokiec said IDE developed environmentally friendly biofilters that can do the job instead.

“We don’t use any type of chemicals, so it’s very economical, no … without the troubles of handling chemicals and discharging them back into the environment. That’s the difference and that’s the beauty of this plant,” he said.

IDE would not disclose what each unit costs, but said it is in line with market standards.

Last year the company opened the world’s largest desalination plant to use reverse osmosis in the coastal city of Hadera and is now constructing an even larger plant which will produce 150 million cubic meters of water each year at a cost of around 2.01 shekels (57 cents) per cubic meter.

Once it is completed, over 50 percent of household water use in Israel will come from desalinated sea water.
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Via ITN
Photo by Angelo González

After arriving in Japan in April, several members of the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid, or IsraAID, tried to offer their know-how on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) therapy to local authorities in the areas hardest hit by the disaster.

To their dismay, they met with a chilly reception and only the Miyagi Prefecture town of Watari accepted their help, even though Israel is known for its expertise on post-traumatic stress disorder therapy because the country has been at the heart of numerous violent conflicts.

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After they began working in Japan, however, their reputation for achievement spread by word of mouth and more communities in quake-hit northeastern Japan began asking for their assistance.

“At first, we had reservations because we know so little about Israeli people,” said Chikako Ishigaki, a welfare official of Iwanuma, another Miyagi municipality. “After hearing about their fine work in Watari, we decided to seek their help.”

Now the Israeli caregivers are working in seven municipalities in Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures.

In Iwanuma, for example, Nira Mizrahi, 67, from IsraAID instructed local women earlier this month in art therapy. Most of the participants in the therapy session were mothers with young children.
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Via mdn.mainichi.jp
Photo by Kordian

In 1986, Yuval and Moshe Lufan, two sons of a fisherman in Kibbutz Ginosar, were walking the shores of the Kinneret [Sea of Galilee]. The drought that year dropped the level of the lake lower that the men had seen in years. One brother noticed something odd protruding from the mud. An old nail. As he poked around with his finger, he found another one. Then another. More digging unearthed pieces of ancient wood.

While they didn’t realize it at the time, they had discovered a fishing boat that dated to the first century.

The necessary permits obtained, archaeologists set to work excavating the vessel. The manner of construction revealed a boat typical of the first century. Assembled with mortise-and-tenon joinery, the boat was built from oak as well as the resilient cedars of Lebanon—wood highly impervious to rot. The construction, the nearby pottery, and three independent carbon 14 dating examinations revealed that the boat dates from 100 BC to AD 70. Apparently, the original owners of the boat salvaged what they needed before scuttling the boat beneath the waves.

Archeologists working on the "Jesus boat"

Archaeologists dug a trench around the remains while keeping the wood moist by spraying it with water. If the soft, spongy timbers dried out, they would disintegrate. After bracing the boat with fiberglass, excavators sprayed on polyurethane foam that hardened around each crevice of the craft. Once dry, the foam served to support the fragile vessel as well as allow it to float. Archaeologists flooded the trench, and the boat—free at last from the mud—floated on the Kinneret for the first time in two thousand years.

The process of preserving the boat occurred over the course of several years. Scientists soaked a synthetic wax into the pores of the planks. The wax stopped any further deterioration that would occur as the wood contacted the air.

Visitors can see this amazing find today in a state-of-the-art museum named in honor of the late Yigal Allon—a former deputy prime minister, a Palmach officer, and a founding member of Kibbutz Ginosar. The museum tells the story of the boat’s discovery through a video presentation, photos and descriptions, as well as a scale model of how the boat would have appeared in its prime. The ancient boat itself, along with the pottery and nails, sits on display, ready for visitors to enjoy.
Many people may not know that the museum also offers the IDF important studies and analyses related to military strategies, including awareness of current and future threats to the security of Israel. In addition, the museum serves as the office and laboratory for the Bethsaida Excavations Project.

Because the ancient boat dates from the time of Jesus of Nazareth, some have sensationally dubbed the vessel, “The Jesus Boat.” Indeed, the seven- by twenty-six foot vessel could have held up to fifteen individuals, and it offers visitors a firsthand look at the kind of boat Jesus and his twelve disciples would have sailed. The Bible refers to boats of this kind playing a major role in the ministry of Jesus, with more than a half-dozen references in Mark’s gospel alone (Mark 1:19; 3:9; 4:1; 4:36–37; 5:2; 5:18; 6:32; 6:45–51; 8:10–14). The Jesus Boat Foundation is developing a 900-seat indoor theater at the museum that will feature a dramatic multimedia presentation of Jesus’ Galilean ministry.

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Via Jpost.com
Photo by Jesus Boat Foundation

Date rape drugs are a class of medications that makes one highly vulnerable to sexual assault. The two most common drugs, GHB and ketamine, are tasteless, colorless and are most often slipped into the beverages of unsuspecting women. These drugs act quickly, causing loss of fine motor control, confusion, dizziness, loss of memory, and sometimes loss of consciousness.

The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that each year nearly 400,000 women are victims of sexual assault as a result of date rape drugs – over half of which go unreported. Since there is currently no way for women to detect GHB or ketamine in their beverages, heightened awareness and never accepting drinks from strangers are the only protection women have against falling victim to date rape drugs.

However, scientists from Tel Aviv University in Israel are now saying that they have developed a new device that can detect these drugs with 100% accuracy. The small sensor uses light rays and optical technology to detect for the presece of GHB and ketamine. The sensor simply has to be dipped into a beverage and, if the drink is drugged, an alarm will sound.

Lead researchers Professor Fernando Patolsky and Dr. Michael Ioffee explained in a news briefing that the final sensor product, which won’t be ready for another two years or so, will be lightweight and slim like as a pen, and can be discretely carried in a purse or pocket. The sensor will use refillable cartridges which can be replaced after several uses and will likely cost less than dollar.

Dr. Ioffee says that in addition to finalizing this sensor, they also hope to expand it to detect for other types of date rape drugs as well.

Via http://www.emaxhealth.com
Photo by Kit Haselden Photography