Crops Can ‘Communicate’ Their Needs Through Revolutionary IoT Technology Phytech

Smart tech agriculture technology firm Phytech, based near the border with Gaza, developed an Internet of Things technology for crops
By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

Sygenta, one of the world’s biggest agriculture technology businesses, along with Japan-based Mitsui, one of the world’s biggest corporate groups, are banding together to invest in an Israeli agriculture tech start-up.

Phytech, which has developed an Internet of Things technology for crops, is to receive an undisclosed investment from the two firms for its PlantBeat service, which equips crops with sensors that record information about the growing environment.

According to Dr. Michael Lee, managing director at Syngenta Ventures, the VC arm of Swiss

agribusiness giant Sygenta – the world’s largest maker of chemical pesticides – “Syngenta’s ambition is to bring greater food security in an environmentally sustainable way to an increasingly populous world by creating a worldwide step-change in farm productivity. In working towards our ambition, we put the grower at the center of everything we do. Phytech’s grower centric solutions join our breadth of technologies in crop protection, seeds, traits and seed treatment, providing the grower with integrated offers and broad-based innovation for the future.”

Already in use on some of the biggest farms in the US, Brazil, Australia, and other countries – including Israel, where some 60% of tomato farmers and 40% of cotton growers already use the system – Phytech’s PlantBeat keeps track of how much water crops get, how moist the soil is, soil temperature, and other data. The sensors upload the information to a cloud server, where it is analyzed and downloaded to a mobile app PhyTech users download, with the app indicating how healthy a plant is and what to do to improve its performance.
The low-cost sensors can be attached to sample plants to take readings within an immediate area of several square meters, with multiple sensors set up as an array to get a full picture of conditions in a growing area. The sensors include simple lithium batteries which can last for up to a year, and the sensors upload the data in an encrypted manner using cellphone networks, with the data secured from prying eyes.

“Investing in Phytech meets our consistent strategy for innovative technology and new business development,” says Mr. Masato Hisamune, SVP & DOO of Innovation and Corporate Development Division at Mitsui & Co. Europe. “We would like to provide Phytech with services and solutions that meet their diverse needs, optimizing Mitsui’s global marketing networks and extensive business experience.”
According to Phytech CEO Sarig Duek, “the support of leading global strategic investors such as Syngenta and Mitsui would allow Phytech to significantly enhance its decision support, cutting edge technology and innovation as well as its commercial development.”

Joint Israeli-Palestinian entrepreneurship youth initiative MEET is crowdfunding for peace

MEET, the Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow program, brings together young Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, using tech and innovation to form relationships
By Gabriel Avner, GeekTime

In the search for the ever elusive peace in the Middle East, one determined team is trying a slightly different approach, stepping away from the historical avenues aimed at resolving the conflict.

MEET, the Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow program, looks to bring together young Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, using technology and innovation as a way to form relationships and open up lines of communication between the two sides.

A week ago, the non-profit organization launched a crowdfunding campaign on the popular Indiegogo platform, hoping to raise at least $10,000. As of the writing of this article, the group has succeeded in raising almost $21,000, with nearly a month left to go until the drive closes. According to their page, a pair of donors have each pledged to match up to $10,000 for the campaign, further adding to the final amount.

Founded in 2004 by a collection of Israelis, Palestinians, and others from around the world, the program is partnered with the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Incorporating volunteers from MIT, MEET works with participants to develop skills in computer science, entrepreneurship, and what they call deeper understanding and leadership.

Locust-Shaped, 3D-Printed Robot Can Traverse Rocky Terrain, Assist In Search And Rescue

In recent years, advanced robotic platforms have provided assistance to crisis intervention teams in the wake of man-made and natural disasters. The objective of such robots, in various sizes and shapes, has been to intervene where humans cannot and send life-saving data to rescue teams in the field
By NoCamels Team

Now, a miniature robot is poised to make a major contribution to the field of advanced robotics. The new locust-inspired robot, developed in Israel by researchers from Tel Aviv University and Ort Braude College, is five inches long and weighs less than one ounce. It can jump 11 feet high — more than twice the height of similar-sized robots, according to the researchers — and cover a horizontal

distance of 4.5 feet in one leap. The researchers believe the robot will perform well in search-and-rescue missions and in reconnaissance operations in rough terrain.

Inspired by nature
“Our locust-inspired, miniature jumping robot is a beautiful example of bio-inspired technological innovation,” TAU’s Prof. Amir Ayali, who led the research, said in a statement. “Miniature robots are of special interest in the robotics field, attracting a lot of attention and research. The manufacture of tiny robots is cheap and efficient; their small size allows them to traverse difficult and unknown terrain; and many can be used in any given situation.”

BioBee To Ship 600 Million Spiders To Colombia

There is a way to get rid of pests without using toxic pesticides, and the solution is simpler than one might think: Employing predatory bugs that will attack and kill damaging insects.
By Alice Menichelli, NoCamels

Israeli company BioBee has been developing this chemical-free technique for years, and is now deploying it in farms all over the world, using living insects instead of chemical pesticides, which could be harmful.

Selling its products to 50 countries worldwide, including Russia, India, Chile and South Africa, BioBee recently started to collaborate with Colombia, which will receive 600 million spider mites over the next year. The company was not available to comment on the price of the spiders, but some reports in the media have claimed that one gram of these spiders costs about $180 – more than five times the price of gold ($34 per gram)!

BioBee breeds a special kind of predatory spider called Bio Persimilis, which can keep pests under control in several crops, such as peppers, tomatoes, beans, maize, cucumber, melon, strawberries and eggplants. It is specifically effective against other kinds of spider mites, but contrary to these other mites, Bio Persimilis doesn’t cause any harm to the plants.

The Bio Persimilis spiders used by BioBee are as big as the spider mites they chase, about one or two millimeters long. They move quickly, hunt their prey and pierce it, sucking out its fluids.

Israeli startup’s suitcase follows you around

NUA Robotics seeks to eliminate travel woes with hands-free luggage
By The Times of Israel

Israeli startup NUA Robotics has unveiled a prototype for luggage that uses Bluetooth technology to sync with a smartphone app, locate its owner, and follow along.
The case also features an anti-theft alarm, a USB port for charging electronic devices on the go, and can send real-time data, including its weight and location, to the app.

“Any object can be smart and robotic,” the co-founder and CEO of NUA Robotics Alex Libman told Mashable on Thursday. “We want to bring robots into everyday life.”

NUA unveiled its design at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Nevada last week. Of the thousands of companies represented at the annual show, NUA ranked an impressive 323, placing it within the top 92% of all the companies in attendance.

While the suitcase is still in its preliminary development phase, the Jerusalem-based company hopes to have the product available to customers within a year.

Libman said NUA has wider hopes for its robotics technology, and envisions the design incorporated into other consumer products such as shopping carts.

Israeli start-up keeps bad bugs at bay, no poison needed

EdenShield’s GateKeeper kept almost 100% of crop-destroying pests out of greenhouses — without pesticides
By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

Farmers face a major crisis today — a “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” crisis. Farmers need to keep their fields free of insects that eat crops and destroy their livelihood.
However, the pesticides that are effective against those insects are causing major environmental damage, killing off not only pests, but helpful insects such as bees.

Studies have linked the disappearance of bees around the world, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, to the overuse of pesticides. Because bees are the effective pollinators of fruit trees — scientists believe that as much as one-third of human nutrition is due to bee pollination — fewer bees means less food. But without pesticides, bug infestations would rise significantly, causing just as many crop losses.

Fortunately, an Israeli start-up has developed a middle way — a system that enables farmers to protect their crops, while avoiding the use of environment-destroying pesticides. And a new study

conducted by that start-up, EdenShield, showed just how effective are the company’s natural pesticides, which have been developed from plants and herbs.

In the study, greenhouses in Italy where tomatoes are grown using EdenShield’s GateKeeper prevented close to 100% penetration of pests and led to a reduction of over 80% in the use of pesticides. Control greenhouses demonstrated pest penetration of over 500%.

EdenShield, a portfolio company of Trendlines Agtech, develops insect-control solutions derived from natural plant extracts. The products are nontoxic, so they pose no danger to growers or consumers. And they can be used throughout the growing period, especially during the critical pre-harvest period.

According to D. Todd Dollinger of the Trendlines Agtech accelerator, EdenShield’s products “have the capacity to make a major impact on our food chain, making production more efficient and consumption healthier.”

The Israeli-invented device that’s saving American lives in Afghanistan

The Israeli-invented device that’s saving American lives in Afghanistan
By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

Then American troops are injured in the field, the first piece of life-saving medical equipment they may come into contact with nowadays is an Israeli-invented mini-sized manual ventilator. And not just American soldiers on the battlefield; the Pocket BVM has been used to treat thousands of people at the scene of numerous natural disasters, like in the huge earthquake that devastated Nepal earlier this year.
“The US Army decided that our Pocket BVM (bag valve mask device) would fit into combat scenarios much better than traditional BVMs,” said Dov Maisel, an American immigrant to Israel

who invented the unique manual ventilator with his friend and fellow United Hatzalah volunteer Akiva Pollack. “It’s really taken off since the Americans adopted it last year, and now we are working with several NATO armies, first-aid groups in Europe and Asia, businesses, hospitals, and airlines among others.”

To that latter category add El Al, said Maisel; the Israeli airline several months ago signed a contract with MicroBVM, the commercial supplier of the device, and now all El Al planes have miniature BVMs scattered throughout their cabins, so that life-giving oxygen can be provided to a patient quickly and efficiently

The story of the Pocket BVM is one of ingenuity, a drive for start-up success – and a “Jewish heart,” as Maisel puts it.

Two Israeli inventions voted CES favorites

There were two winners in the Last Gadget Standing contest – and both were made in Israel

By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

Thousands of companies showed off tens of thousands of products to over 100,000 visitors at this year’s just-concluded Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas – with the action followed by millions on line. And when the smoke cleared, there were just two gadgets left standing – both of them Israeli.

Both the Last Gadget Standing Live Audience winner, and the Last Gadget Standing Online winner – the VUZE Camera from HumanEyes Technologies, and the Steam CC Ripple Maker, respectively – were feted by no less a tech personality than David Pogue, founder of Yahoo! Tech and a frequent contributor to top news sites like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many others. “It’s awesome to see companies bare their corporate souls in such fun and imaginative ways,” Pogue said of the Last Gadget Standing contest, praising the participants – and especially the winners – for their innovative tech.

Last Gadget Standing, considered the highlight of CES, is a knockdown dragout contest where the top tech winners take all. Twenty five new (created in the latest calendar year) products or technologies at CES, as decided by a panel of 11 judges and on-line voters, are then narrowed down to ten finalists, who show off their tech to thousands in a live show, and millions following on-line. The audience picks its favorite, as does the online crowd.

Israeli-developed ‘nano-nose’ can sniff out bombs, drugs

Tracense’s homeland security odor-detection technology is set to come on the market soon.

Tracense Israeli company, developed “nano-nose” could help homeland security officers sniff out explosives — as well as drugs, large amounts of cash, and even small metal items that are banned from planes. “And we do it with far less false positives than dogs or other technologies that are being

used now to analyze the odor of explosives and other items,” said Matan Barami, chief chemist at Israeli nanotech start-up Tracense.

Barami was speaking Monday at this year’s edition of NanoIsrael, a biennial event on the burgeoning Israeli nanotechnology industry. Over the past nine years, Israeli nanotechnology researchers have filed 1,590 patents (769 granted so far), published 12,392 scholarly articles on the subject, and had 129 nano-success stories, which include establishing start-ups, selling ideas or technology to multinationals, licensing a patent, etc., according to Rafi Koriat, chairman of the event at Tel Aviv University.

The conference, Koriat said, is a place for top researchers and leaders from Israel and abroad to meet and discuss the latest developments in nanotechnology, “and provides visitors with a first look at cutting-edge technologies, leading scientific achievements and unique business and investment opportunities.”

3D Printing Ready For Its Next Big Sprint – Metal

What Israeli 3D pioneer Objet – now integrated with Minnesota-based 3D printing company Stratasys – did for plastic, Israeli start-up Xjet plans to do for metal.

By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

“The layered inkjet printing technology that is used to make medical devices, dental implants, single-run samples for manufacturing, and much more is all based on plastic,” said Xjet CEO Dror Danai. “In the same way that Objet helped create an industry for 3D printing using plastic materials, we intend to create an industry that will allow the same kind of custom printing for metal.”

The reference to the Israeli 3D printing company that was one of the creators of the 3D printing industry, is not coincidental; Danai and many of the 62 people working at the Rehovot- based

company are veterans of Objet. Danai left before the company merged with Stratasys to create the world’s biggest 3D printing firm.

“Objet’s big innovation was inkjet 3D printing, using plastic materials like PLC,” said Danai. “At Xjet, we are developing an inkjet printing tech for liquid metal, the first time this is being done anywhere.”

The technology, said Danai, could revolutionize manufacturing.

 “Right now, the only way to manufacture a piece of metal is by using a mold to fit liquid metal, which then solidifies,” said Danai. It’s the way everything metallic – from a pipe to a coin to a gold ring – is made. “To make an odd-sized piece, you first have to make up a new mold and measure it to ensure it has the right specifications for the machines that are going to produce it commercially. Manufacturing a single, one-time item is a very drawn out and expensive proposition that makes many metal parts very expensive.”

Such parts are used in rockets, spaceships, military jets, and other unique items, but for everyday use, such customized manufacturing is far too expensive and involved.

Enter Xjet, which, said Denai, uses nanotechnology to create special metal liquids that, using its 3D metal printing technology, can create unique, one of a kind items on the fly.

“We allow manufacturers to skip the mold stage, saving them huge amounts of time and money,” said Denai. “All the specifications are made in the software, and when it’s time to print, our nano-based metals are created according to those specifications.”

How Israeli CyberArk became a billion dollar cybersecurity company

Launched in 1999, CyberArk is one of the very first cybersecurity companies. This is the story of how they grew slowly for 15 years then rose steeply on NASDAQ

By Laura Rosbrow-Telem, GeekTime

Two Israelis meet in high school, go to the army, and eventually launch a startup. While many sentences on our site have begun this way, few stories end with that pair of teenagers eventually leading a public cybersecurity company worth $1.42 billion.

But that is what has happened to CyberArk, which went public last year, raised $80 million for its IPO, and has since skyrocketed from opening at $13 a share to a height of $76.35.

Their road to success is atypical of most Israeli startups. Launched in 1999, Co-Founders Udi

Mokady and Alon Cohen aimed to build a large company and resisted getting acquired along the way, pursuing slower, steadier growth instead. They cite Check Point, one of Israel’s most famous and largest security companies, as an early role model.

CyberArk, based in Boston and Israel, is one of the first cybersecurity companies ever. Originally created to protect access to sensitive information against users already within the network (also known as privileged account management), with early customers such as banks and insurance companies, CyberArk eventually expanded its offerings to shield a wider range of companies from outside attacks. Today, they provide automated detection of threats in real-time and ensure that once a hacker has entered a system, their damage won’t spread nor will they be able to gain control.

We had the privilege to speak with CyberArk’s Co-Founder and CEO Udi Mokady about what it’s been like to launch and run a public company, if there were ever moments that he considered selling CyberArk, how CyberArk plans to keep innovating its cybersecurity technology — including its recent acquisitions of CYBERTINEL and Viewfinity — and how he reads CyberArk’s dip in the stock market since their Q3 earnings report on Thursday, which was partially influenced by competitor FireEye’s poor Q3 results.

MIT honors 3 Israelis among its top 35 under 35 scientists

A close look at brain cells, new tools for neurological disorders, and a way to treat a mutation that leads to cancer win plaudits for these young researchers

By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

 Three Israelis are among 35 honored this year by MIT with its annual list of young researchers who have had a huge impact on the world – and are expected to go on to do much more.

The three – Drs. Gilad Evrony, Cigall Kadoch, and Rikky Muller – all satisfy the main criteria of the prestigious Boston-based university, as “people who are driving the next generation of technological breakthroughs.”

MIT’s 35 Innovators Under 35 list has since 1999 selected young innovators whose work, the university believes, has great potential to transform the world. The awards, which cover fields such as biotechnology, materials, computer hardware, energy, transportation, communications and the web, were presented last week at  EmTech, the annual conference of the MIT Technology Review.

Evrony was recognized for his work developing a new way to look at brain cells – analyzing the DNA of single neurons, in order to understand how they mutate, and how the brain grows and develops. The technology has shown that every person’s brain is sprinkled with countless genetic mutations invisible to prior research, “which may help explain some of the many neurologic and psychiatric diseases whose causes are not known,” Evrony told The Times of Israel.

A graduate of MIT, Evrony completed Harvard Medical School’s MD-PhD program where he worked in the laboratory of Christopher Walsh, chief of genetics and genomics at Boston Children’s Hospital. There he developed a way to read the tiny amount of DNA inside single brain cells, which led to a surprising discovery– that every neuron in a person’s brain contains many genetic mutations that occur as the brain develops in the womb and throughout life.

Early during his studies, Evrony managed to take off three years to serve in the IDF’s Intelligence Division, in the Israeli army’s elite communications and technology group whose graduates have made a huge impact on the Israeli start-up scene. “It was there I realized I could do this kind of work, where I was encouraged to think outside the box and learned the power of technology innovation,” Evrony said.

Working with the well-preserved brains of several people who died in accidents– including that of a 17-year-old– Evrony together with collaborators at Harvard performed “deep,” highly sensitive whole-genome sequencing of single neurons that identified so-called somatic mutations (genetic alterations that arise in the body during a person’s life).

“The common perception is that each cell in a person’s body has the same genetic code, but our single-cell sequencing shows that every cell in a person’s body is in fact genetically unique, carrying a unique fingerprint of mutations.”

Each mutation can have an effect on brain activity – or not. “We worked with a cluster of about 300 neurons one at a time, and even with that number we have seen a significant number of mutations,” Evrony said.

This technology promises to reveal how many genetic mutations there are in every cell in our bodies and brains, “a fundamental unknown” that Evrony says is important for “understanding the origins of all genetic diseases. By determining the rate of mutation, we will be able to see how they spread, and what their effects on the brain may be.”

Thus, said Evrony, it might be possible to trace the roots of some neurologic and psychiatric diseases, matching up mutations with causations, and in the future potentially reversing the mutations (with tools like CRISPR, a genetic editor).

By studying the patterns of how cells and mutations spread across the brain, scientists can now learn the relationship between cells, and between mutations and diseases, information that could point them toward solutions to problems like how brain diseases arise.

Using this technology, Evrony and colleagues have already found that mutations spread in interesting patterns in the brain so that every person’s brain is a “patchwork” of mutations. For example, some mutations can spread to only a small part of the brain.

“This means there may be subtle disorders nobody has thought to look for before where instead of the entire brain having a mutation only a small part does, such that only a specific aspect of a person’s intellect is affected,” Evrony added.

Taking on medical technology from another angle, Rikky Muller and her colleagues are focused on developing innovative medical devices to study and treat neurological disorders. Under her leadership, Cortera Neurotechnologies, a company she co-founded, is a key contributor to a DARPA program (as part of the Obama BRAIN initiative) aimed at developing neurotechnology as a therapy to treat neuropsychiatric disorders such as major depressive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder.

The World Health Organization estimates that such disorders account for up to 31 percent of the global burden of disease. Additionally, Cortera has developed a catalog of unique and commercially available products for neuroscientific research and discovery.

“I am delighted to receive this award and be included in this global community of innovators advancing technology for human benefit. My work involves developing devices that, among other things, lower surgical complexity and expand the patient population that can be treated for neurological disorders, thus improving and transforming their quality of life,” said Muller.

Meanwhile, while completing her PhD at Stanford, Cigall Kadoch discovered a link between a genome regulator in cells called the BAF protein complex and a rare cancer called synovial sarcoma. She and colleagues later showed that mutations of BAF are involved in at least 20 percent of human cancers, opening the door for research on drugs that target mutated BAFs.

BAF’s job in the cell is to open and close DNA to allow the right genes to be expressed at the right time. When mutated, it can “activate sites that it shouldn’t”—including genes that drive cancer, said Kadoch, who has appointments at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

She learned this by focusing on one particular subunit of BAF. This piece of the protein has a deformed tail in 100 percent of patients with synovial sarcoma. When Kadoch put the deformed subunit into normal cells, she detected “blazing cancer,” she says. “That little tail is entirely responsible for this cancer.”

The good news is that this is reversible. Addiing enough normal pieces of the subunit to cells in a petri dish, she found, replaced the mutated form, killing the cancerous cells on the spot.

It’s technology to “fix” things that gets Evrony going – and it was part of the reason, he believes, that MIT decided to add his name to the 35 Under 35 list. “I’ve always believed in the power of new technologies to drive innovation in science,” Evrony said, “so it’s wonderful to be recognized by an award dedicated to technology innovation. This award represents the efforts of a wonderful team of scientists and my mentors who worked together to try something bold, hoping to make a lasting impact on medicine.”

In Face Of Global Shortage, World Leaders Praise Israel’s Water Technologies At WATEC Conference

25,000 people from 100 countries are attending the 2015 Water Technology and Environment Control Exhibition (WATEC) conference held in Tel Aviv this week, one of the largest water technology events in the world, featuring 150 exhibitors and dozens of speakers.

By Einat Paz-Frankel, NoCamels  

Despite tensions in the region, 25,000 people from 100 countries are attending the 2015 Water Technology and Environment Control Exhibition (WATEC) conference held in Tel Aviv this week, one of the largest water technology events in the world, featuring 150 exhibitors and dozens of speakers.

According to the UN, 1.2 billion people (almost one-fifth of the world’s population) live in areas where water is scarce, and another 500 million people are nearing this situation. This pressing issue is met at WATEC this week with a host of Israeli solutions, from seawater desalination and water conservation, to grey water recycling and wastewater treatment. Other pressing issues on the agenda include drip irrigation (an agricultural technology developed and perfected in Israel primarily by Netafim) and water purification.

Many WATEC attendees are looking to bring such solutions to their countries. And so is Mark LeChevallier, director of innovation and environmental stewardship for American Water, one of America’s largest publicly traded water utility companies. His company is “looking into the Israeli water companies and water-related technologies, trying to find the next big thing and import it to the US,” says LeChevallier, who’s currently meeting with Israeli entrepreneurs at WATEC in order to find projects to collaborate with.

 

Nuno Fragoso and Angeles Ramos, executives at Spanish engineering firm EPTISA who are attending the conference, tell NoCamels they’re looking for water technologies to be used in arid areas of Southern Spain, but not only. “We have projects all around the world, we can help Israeli companies expand into Latin America,” Fragoso says. Angeles says EPTISA is looking “to form a consortium of strong companies that can solve water shortages. I believe Israel can provide these solutions.”

Chinese executive Yanhua Ca of Umore Consulting Group, says she has brought three of her clients – large, Chinese manufacturers – to WATEC. “They’re looking for industrial wastewater solutions, specifically recycling and treatment technologies.”

According to Israel’s Minister of Economy Aryeh Deri, who spoke at the conference, Israel is a “global leader in developing innovative and breakthrough technologies to manage scarce water resources.”

Since 50 percent of Israel is made up of desert – and with recurring droughts – over the years the Israeli government, scientists and companies have developed cutting-edge solutions to avoid water shortages.

 Now, most of Israel’s drinking water comes from desalination plants that are scattered around the country. “Israel has become an oasis of water technologies,” Deri told a mixed crowd of Israelis and internationals at a WATEC panel discussion on Tuesday.

As retold at the conference, Israel used to rely on natural resources for its water, like the Sea of Galilee, but quickly discovered that “Galilee is really a pond,” as desalination expert Ron Yachini of IDE humorously put it, and that the Jordan River is “famous and holy but lacks water,” as former Israeli president Shimon Peres said at the event.

Now that Israel doesn’t solely rely on natural water, its remarkable water management solutions inspire others – including countries in Africa, Asia and America – to implement technologies developed in the Startup Nation.

“Israeli drip irrigation technologies can transform the lives of millions”

According to William Samoei Ruto, Kenya’s deputy president, only 4 percent of Kenya’s available water is used, and the country is looking for solutions to make the other 96 percent usable. The African country looks to Israel, “the superpower of water,” for solutions, he said. “We don’t want to reinvent the wheel.”

Drip irrigation – an Israeli technology that carefully dispenses drops of water to plants, thus conserving water – is especially important for agriculture in Africa, Ruto said. “We have come here with open minds to benefit from Israeli technologies that can transform the lives of millions in our

continent and country.”

Governor of Arizona Doug Ducey said Israel and his state share the same climate and that he feels “truly honored and privileged to be given an unparalleled opportunity to collaborate.” He praised the fact that 80 percent of Israel’s sewage water is reused; combined with extensive desalination for drinking water, these efforts give Israel significant water supplies. “You figured it out,” he said.

And while Arizona is looking forward to collaborating with Israel, California, which is suffering from extreme drought, already provides proof that Israeli water technologies can be successfully implemented elsewhere in the world. Israeli company IDE and its partners are currently building a desalination plant just outside San Diego, which could potentially provide Californians with 54 million gallons of water a day. The plant is using technology Israelis have been using for years, reverse-osmosis, which involves forcing seawater through a film with tiny holes that allow only water molecules to pass through, while the larger salt molecules cannot.

According to Richard Bloom, a California Assembly member attending WATEC, “up until now, Sacramento homes didn’t have water meters, because water has been taken for granted for so long; this needs to change. We never gave another thought to water, and now we’re forced to conserve water and learn from Israel, a world leader in the field.”

Europe's hottest startups 2015: Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv is where the money is. The startup nation became the exit nation in 2014, with Israeli tech sales and IPOs hitting $15 billion (£9.5bn) according to analysis by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Oliver  Franklin-Wallis, wired magazine

Expect 2015 to be another huge year, with $910 million raised in one January week alone and Outbrain and IronSource preparing IPOs. "What sets Israel and Tel Aviv apart is its openness," says Naomi Krieger Carmy, director of the British embassy's UK-Israel Tech Hub. "You can meet almost anyone, and everyone knows and talks to -- and about -- each other."

The next step, says Windward CEO Ami Daniel, is scaling up. "Entrepreneurs will focus not only on innovative technologies," he says, "but on building disruptive companies out of Israel."

CONSUMER PHYSICS

Consumer Physics wants to build a molecular map of the world. Founded by Dror Sharon and Damian Goldring in 2011, it makes the $250 USB-sized SCiO molecular spectrometer that can identify the chemical make-up of objects. It raised $2.7m on Kickstarter, and says it will be ready to ship its first SCiO this autumn, with 1,000 developers signed up.

PLAYBUZZ

PlayBuzz is an app and tool for creating listicles and personality quizzes. Founded in 2013 by Shaul Olmert -- son of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert -- the company now claims 80 million unique users per month. In March 2015, it announced $16m in funding to expand, and has hired 60 staff. It has also opened an office in New York.

STOREDOT

Spun out of Tel Aviv University in 2012, StoreDot has developed a smartphone battery that can be charged in one minute. It has raised $42m in Series B funding from private investors to develop the battery, which uses bio-organic compounds to create ultra-fast charge storage. It is now working on partnering with smartphone makers and plans a 2016 launch.

WINDWARD

Founded in 2010 by former Israeli Navy officers, Windward analyses commercial satellite feeds and maritime data to track the location and contents of every major seafaring vessel in the world. The company secured £7m in funding led by Horizon Ventures in April 2014. Its aim: real-time updates and insights for maritime markets and intelligence agencies.

MOOVIT

Moovit's transport app provides real-time public navigation on buses, trains and tubes. Using a combination of public-data feeds and feedback from users, it claims to provide travel times more accurately than its rivals. Founded in 2011, the company had 15 million users worldwide and, in January 2015, raised $50m from investors including Nokia Growth Partners and BMW.

SIMILARWEB

SimilarWeb is a tool that lets you analyse the performance of websites and apps. It provides traffic rankings and insights by analysing a pool of data from various sources. In November 2014, it raised $15 million in series D funding with plans to expand into app analytics and to open a New York office, having already expanded to London and Dubai.

ZEBRA MEDICAL VISION

Zebra Medical teaches computers to diagnose diseases. Founded in 2014 by Eyal Gura, Eyal Toledano and Elad Benjamin, the startup has partnered with Israeli imaging centres and universities worldwide to build a database of images. "We have millions of diagnosed MRIs, CT scans and X-Rays," says Gura. In April it secured $8m in funding led by Khosla Ventures.

APPSFLYER

More than 5,000 advertisers use AppsFlyer's analytics platform to measure campaigns and user acquisition on their smartphone apps -- for example, tracking the impact of a Super Bowl ad on downloads in real time. Founded by Oren Kaniel and Reshef Mann in 2011, it tracked two billion app installs in 2014 and claims it is now found on nine out of ten smartphones.

ADALLOM

Adallom provides security to companies using software such as GoogleApps and Office365 by detecting potential security breaches in real time. Founded in 2012 by former members of the Israeli Intelligence Corps, it counts Netflix and Pixar as clients. Since appearing in last year's list it has raised a further $30m in series C funding, led by Rembrandt and HP Ventures.

FEEX

Calling itself "the Robin Hood of fees", FeeX identifies hidden charges in investment and retirement funds and suggests ways for users to save money. Founded in 2012 by Yoav Zurel, David Weisz and Waze co-founder Uri Levine, it claims to have saved $277m to date. In August 2014, it raised $6.5m in series B funding, with plans to expand further in the US.

Israeli cyber-security firm gets GE award for Internet technology

ThetaRay to help protect data being processed on General Electric’s cloud platform, Predix

By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

GE   (General Electric) is getting into the cloud business – and it’s taking Israeli cyber-security firm ThetaRay along with it.

After investing along with several partners $10 million in ThetaRay last year, GE presented the company at its recent Minds and Machines Conference in San Francisco with its Industrial Innovation Award for offering the “Most Innovative Industrial Internet Technology.”

The ThetaRay technology, said GE, will be used in its big data platform for industrial and business cloud development, called Predix.

According to Mark Gazit, CEO of ThetaRay, “our relationship with GE will make it possible for many more industrial companies to benefit from our groundbreaking solution. We are honored to receive this award, and proud to be part of the Predix ecosystem.”

GE’s Predix platform offers companies apps that allow them to process cloud-based data to analyze information, helping them use big data to save money and time. Financial news site The Street quoted Bill Ruh, GE’s vice president of global software, as saying at a June conference that GE intends to be a “next-generation industrial company that is going to have as a core competency” the ability to meld the physical and digital worlds.

With its data analysis apps, Predix will help companies analyze specific cohorts of data to do things like providing data to allow wind farm operators to adjust turbines in real time to change the curvature of a blade or make other alterations, allowing a more efficient operation and producing more power, the site quoted Ruh as saying.

When big data meets the cloud, hackers generally aren’t too far behind. It’s much easier for them to get to data that is transmitted to a public cloud than it is to get to that data when it is on a local server, behind a firewall – even when there are substantial defenses in the cloud server. In 2011, for example, hackers were said to have used an account on an Amazon cloud server to steal data from Sony, and in 2014, photos, many of them of celebrities in various stages of undress, were posted on a hacking site after being poached from online accounts on Apple’s iCloud servers (Apple claimed that it was the accounts that were hacked, not the servers).

In any event, ThetaRay’s technology comes in handy for cloud sites seeking to protect their clients. “Hackers are always looking for backdoors,” said Gazit. “They penetrate systems using various methods, like spear-phishing schemes,” in which hackers search for a weak link, matching an email message with a potential victim who is vulnerable to threats, rewards, fear or other psychological tactics to get the victim to click on a link or open a document that will install malware giving them access to data.

“Once they penetrate a system they can put any kind of malware they want into it, turning it into their own little ‘playground,’ installing anything they want. Meanwhile, information continues to flow through the system, and it’s all exposed to hackers’ whims.”

The best way to deal with the threat, said Gazit, was to look at the overall picture in a system, and try to figure out what “doesn’t look right. Our system checks for anomalies both inside and outside a network, evaluating what would be considered ‘normal’ in an organization and what would be anomalous.”

Anomalies could include increased activity inside a network, or greater than usual requests for communication resources outside a network. Those anomalies, for example, showed up on systems that were plagued with the Stuxnet virus, which wreaked havoc with Iranian centrifuges even as it indicated, on screen, that everything was running smoothly, said Gazit.

To arrive at its conclusions, ThetaRay examines lots of data – “the more the better.

“We check for anomalies in the huge amount of data we process, looking for patterns of activity that should not be there,” said Gazit. Data is taken from all input sources — email, web connection data, log files, sensors, cameras and microphones, etc — comparing the activity with expected patterns, with the models, said Gazit, developed over a period of seven years by top graduates of the IDF’s security tech Unit 8200 group, and top professors from Tel Aviv University and Yale University.

ThetaRay was one of only four companies to be honored with Industrial Innovation Awards, alongside PepsiCo, Pitney Bowes, and Salt River Project. The “Most Innovative Industrial Internet Technology” award was designed to highlight a company or offering that significantly advances the Industrial Internet, GE said.

“The success of the Industrial Internet depends on a collaborative ecosystem,” said Harel Kodesh, vice president, Predix, and CTO, GE Digital. “With Predix, GE is driving digital innovation across the industrial world-working with companies like ThetaRay helping advance this mission. We consider its technology a valuable component of the Predix microservice catalog that is helping our customers achieve better outcomes.”

Israeli app-testing startup Perfecto gets $35 million in new funding

Perfecto, an Israeli company that develops cloud solutions for measuring user experience on apps, announced a $35 million Series E funding round on Wednesday led by Foundation Technology Crossover Ventures.

By Gedalyah Reback, GeekTime

The round brings their total haul to $90 million. Current investors FTV Capital, Carmel Ventures,

Globespan and Vertex Ventures also jumped back in. The money will expand marketing operations in North America, Europe, and the Far East. They plan on expanding staff at its Israeli HQ as well as at new locations in Australia, China, Japan, and Toronto. Perfecto previously raised $20 million in Series D last year.

Their main solution is called Continuous Quality Lab, providing constant monitoring and automated testing to optimize user experience on different platforms under real user conditions. They tout being able to test apps in use from any model of device or network. In 2015, they also introduced Wind Tunnel to get predictive analysis of an app’s performance once it hits the market at a later date.

In September, Accenture released survey results of 2,000 executives, only 54% of whom said post-release quality assurance (QA) testing of their apps was critical to their business. Technavio predicted last year that the global software testing marketing would grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.15% through 2018. ABI Research had predicted in 2012 that the market for app testing would quadruple to more than $800 million by 2017.

Its main Israeli competitors are Applause, which has raised $80 million and acquired two companies, and We-Test, which crowdsources testing.

CEO Eran Yaniv, CTO Yoram Mizrahi and former VP Sales Jacky Allal founded Perfecto Mobile in 2006. They employ over 300 people and have more than 1,500 active business customers, including major brands HP, Microsoft, Comcast, Liberty Mutual, and IBM. The company’s HQ are in Rosh Ha’Ayin, Israel.

As cyber-risks abound, airline industry seeks Israeli help

IATA, the largest international airline group, will work with Tel Aviv University to improve on- and off-line security for its members
By David Shamah, The Times of Israel


The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has signed an agreement with Tel Aviv University under which a new joint center for innovation in aviation will be established in order to

develop technologies to protect airline reservations systems, authentication for security purposes, and financial systems, as well as to develop ways to run airlines more efficiently using big data and advanced intelligence.

Two weeks ago, the New York Stock Exchange was shut down for nearly four hours for still-unexplained reasons – possibly, according to some experts, due to hacker activities. That incident generated headlines all over the world, but there was a second unexplained outage as well on July 8 – the grounding of all flights by United Airlines for nearly an hour. Was it due to hacking? A United Airlines official said there was “no indication that this was caused by an outside entity,” but it wasn’t the first time United – or flights by other airlines – were grounded for “unexplained” reasons.

That airlines are vulnerable to hackers is well-established. In June, for example, planes were grounded in Poland after hackers breached the network at Warsaw’s Chopin airport, causing delays that affected some 1,400 passengers. In May, United removed a passenger from a flight after he apparently hacked into a plane’s navigation system via its entertainment system. And in January, Malaysia Airlines saw hackers break into its website.

And airlines realize just how vulnerable they are. In May, United announced a Bug Bounty contest, inviting hackers to test its online systems to find weaknesses. Last week, the airline awarded a million frequent flier miles to two hackers were able to find vulnerabilities. While he couldn’t share the specifics of the hack (to prevent details of the vulnerabilities from coming out), Jordan Wiens, one of the winners, said that the bugs were somewhat “lame” – an indication that the system may not have been very well-protected.

Realizing it has a problem, IATA – which represents 260 airlines that are responsible for 83% of the

world’s airline flights – has teamed up with Tel Aviv University to develop security systems in a variety of areas. With the agreement, IATA joined the companies’ forum of Tel Aviv University’s cyber center, and helped organized an international cyber-security conference that took place at Tel Aviv University last month. As part of the joint activity, IATA’s representatives, together with Ramot and Tel Aviv University’s international cyber center, will identify technologies and information that are relevant to the field of international flight.

Prof. Raanan Rein, vice president of Tel Aviv University, who signed the agreement on behalf of the university, said that it was another important step in the university’s links with international companies and industry.

“The agreement with such a large and important organization as IATA demonstrates Tel Aviv University’s leading role in the fields of entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as in research,” said Rein.

Kobi Zussman, CEO of IATA Israel, said that like hundreds of international bodies, IATA and the world of flight also wish to benefit from Israeli high-tech academic capabilities. “We are convinced that our collaboration with Tel Aviv University will be most valuable for the flight industry,” he said.

Novel Eye-Tracking Device EyeControl Enables ALS Patients To Communicate

Now, a new Israeli-made device called EyeControl is striving to give a voice to those who are unable to verbally communicate, using the movement of their eyes.

By Roseanne Tabachnik, NoCamels

The viral “Ice Bucket Challenge” that catapulted ALS into our lives last year, encouraging people to

film themselves pouring ice water over their heads, became a social media sensation within weeks. While the philanthropic blockbuster sparked millions of donations to ALS research, still nearly 6,000 Americans are diagnosed with the neuron motor disease every year, losing almost all of their communication skills as the disease progresses.


Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. On average, most patients are diagnosed with the disease when they’re 55-years-old, and eventually suffer from a complete loss of speech. That’s where the EyeControl device steps in.

The screen-free, affordable mobile communication device was developed by a group of Israeli

entrepreneurs who were personally touched by the disease. Both EyeControl co-founder Or Retzkin and head of product Tal Kelner lost their grandparents to ALS, and have been committed to helping individuals who are “locked-in” or are unable to speak due to muscle deterioration ever since. In addition, CTO Itai Kornberg introduced the technology when he embarked on the mission to help an ALS patient communicate with his eyes using a computer to translate the movements.



The EyeControl system is a combination of computerized glasses and a mobile app that captures eye movements and translates them into audio or text commands using an eye-tracking algorithm. The glasses are integrated with a camera that detects eye movement, which is then analyzed by a micro-sized computer installed in the glasses. Using a Bluetooth connection, the commands are then relayed through the system’s headphones or speaker into the patient’s ear.

The system is based on a three-step model: Patients are able to call for assistance, put together pre-determined sentences such as “I am cold,” and compose sentences simply by swiping their eyes in certain directions.

To get the device to market, the company has launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in hopes to raise $30,000. Since the start of the campaign on July 7, the startup has exceeded its $30,000 goal, reaching $42,000 in less than a month. Today, the company decided to extend the campaign in order to raise up to $50,000 in the course of another two weeks. Despite the company’s time-crunched Indiegogo campaign, Retzkin could not confirm a product release date.

A screen-free and affordable device

EyeControl has set its sights on making a difference in the lives of ALS patients by teaming up with

the non-profit organization Prize4Life, headed by CEO Shay Rishoni, an ALS patient. This long-term partnership is aimed at raising awareness to ALS and advocating EyeControl’s solution.


However, EyeControl is not alone in the realm of eye-gaze systems for the disabled. Systems like Tobii DynaVox, LC Technologies, and even the Israeli-invented technology behind the Sesame Phone, all compete to open up access to touch-screen dependent technologies. EyeControl, which unlike many of its competitors doesn’t require a screen, stands out from the competition mainly thanks its portability.

“Most patients need to be at home or in front of a computer screen to use a device,” Retzkin tells NoCamels. “So, if you go inside a car or lie down in bed and the screen is not in front of you, you cannot communicate.”

The portable device uses an external battery as a source of electricity, allowing the patient to travel and communicate through the glasses, regardless of location.

“We use vocal feedback, so there is an ear set, not a screen,” Retzkin explains. “It’s very intuitive, so you can swipe with your eye according to what you hear.”

And unlike similar devices, which range in cost from $3,000 to $10,000, EyeControl is expected to be priced at the affordable price of $100, with the goal of ensuring accessibility to all patients, regardless of their financial standing. According to Retzkin, his team orders the materials in bulk and is building the device in-house, which makes the system significantly cheaper.

10 Israeli startups to watch in 2015

The Israeli start-up scene is saturated with newcomers fighting for a spot in the limelight. The following 10 companies have passed some key hurdles and challenges that make them an interesting watch for investors and consumers around the world.
By Dennis Mitzner, TNW News

The list comprises an eclectic list of start-ups that are either breaking into the mainstream in their respective industries, or are still at early stages, but look to make significant inroads in the next few months.

Safer VPN

 

SaferVPN, founded by Amit Bareket and Sagi Gidali, launched a VPN-based startup that provides secured re-routed Internet access throughout the world. The company’s software allows users to circumvent local

restrictions and access websites, while simultaneously allowing users to keep their personal information safe and encrypted for anonymous browsing.

“We’ve seen more and more online censorship in the past couple of years, with governments forcing severe restrictions on their citizens’ freedom. In the West we take it for granted that we can express ourselves on social media, publish videos on sites like YouTube, or write letters to newspaper editors for publication. That’s not really a choice if you’re living [under] some regimes,” said Gidali.

Some months ago, the company partnered with Advancing Human Rights, a global non-profit to launch ‘Unblock The Web‘, a crowdfunding campaign to fight internet censorship and give dissidents anti-censorship tools.

“It has become increasingly hard to stop the flow of information. People in the free world can play a key role in helping activists get information out to alert the world to their regime’s brutality,” said David Keyes, the Executive Director of Advancing Human Rights.

Funding: In March 2015, Safer VPN received approximately $500k from private individuals. The company  has been generating revenue from day one, with a steadily growing user base.

“The money was raised a month ago and will be used to accelerate growth, user acquisition and unique projects that we plan,” said Sagi Giladi, CEO of the company.

Start-up cracks wheat genome – in months, not years

For a decade, dozens of scientists in 55 countries toiled to figure out the DNA sequence of wheat – but were unable to meet their goal.
Israeli biotech start-up NRGene, which announced this week that — working with experts at Israeli universities — it was able to map out the genome for wild Emmer wheat in about three months.
By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

“It’s a tremendous accomplishment, both from the technology point of view and for helping to

prevent world hunger,” said Guy Kol, founder and vice president of research and development at Ness Ziona-based NRGene. “As a result, it will be much easier for scientists to develop breeds of bread wheat that will thrive in drier, hotter climates. This is going to be crucial as the world’s population grows, and climate change becomes even more pronounced in the coming decades.”

“The repercussions of the mapping will be felt around the world,” said Dr. Assaf Distelfeld, PhD, of Tel Aviv University (TAU), a renowned wheat geneticist and the primary researcher on the project. “Scientists will now be able to identify key genes in the Emmer wheat and introduce them into commercial wheat via classical breeding, creating hardier varieties across environmental conditions, ultimately increasing the global food supply.”

The potential of genome mapping

Genome sequencing is the latest tool, and among the most important, available to agronomists who are helping farmers develop better versions of staple crops – the most important, according to UN statistics, being maize (corn), along with wheat and rice. As the global population grows, more, and more nutritious food will be needed. This becomes an ever-greater challenge as the world “loses” arable land to the effects of pollution, desertification, and other man-made and natural causes.

Mapping genomes for plants allows scientists to see what makes them “tick” and the attributes they contain which allow them to thrive in specific environments. This holds out great promise for helping to increase the food supply, which is one reason why, as DNA sequencing became feasible in the 1990s, scientists wasted no time in trying to decipher the genetic code that make up maize and rice.


Those projects took between five and ten years to complete, with the rice genome mapped in 2002, and the maize genome completed in 2009. Wheat’s genetic complexity and the amount of information to be analyzed proved to be a much greater challenge. The wild Emmer wheat genome is four times bigger than the human genome, which was mapped in 2003 – and 30 times bigger than the rice genome.

While the data culled from genome mapping could be used to genetically modify a crop, Kol told the Times of Israel that the more common use case is to enable more precise breeding of specific traits in subsequent generations of crops. Farmers have actually been doing this for thousands of years, saving seeds from plants that were better able to withstand the vagaries of weather, insect infestation, and other environmental factors.

Usually it takes 15 years or more to develop a strain that it more suited to specific conditions. With DNA data pointing out a variety’s specific characteristics, farmers will be able to breed crops that can stand up to arid surroundings, brackish water, and other harsh environmental conditions in as little as three years, said Kol.

Wheat genome sequencing research was undertaken in 2005, by the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC), which includes over 1,100 scientists, farmers, and food industry executives. By 2015, the group had spent $54 million on developing the genome for bread wheat (the variety used in most temperate climates) – but had not yet completed its work.

How to process 17 billion pairs of base codes?

Enter NRGene, which, in collaboration with Tel Aviv University’s Institute for Cereal Crop Improvement, undertook to map the genome of wild Emmer wheat, an ancient variety endemic to the Middle East, found in many archaeological excavations and ancient tombs. The variety, thought lost, was (re)discovered in 1906 in what is today Rosh Pina, and is used chiefly in mountainous regions in Turkey, central and northern Europe due to its ability to withstand drier and colder environments endemic to those areas.

It looked like a good place to start in the search for genetic factors that could help breed hardier varieties of bread wheat (the preferred variety for commercial production), said Kol. Using its advanced and patented big data analysis system, NRGene was able to generate the Emmer wheat’s genetic base pair codes – 17 billion of them (humans have about 3 billion). Besides the sheer amount of data, said Kol, the NRGene system had to differentiate between a lot of confusing and excessive information.

“Almost 99 percent of the code is the same in each gene,” said Kol. “The difficulty in deciphering those differences was one of the reasons the IWGSC was unable to complete its work.” Instead of the tens of millions of dollars the IWGSC spent, NRGene spent under a million dollars to map Emmer wheat.


Now, with the Emmer genome deciphered, he added, scientists will be able to isolate specific characteristics that could successfully pair up with traits in bread wheat that will allow for growing under specific circumstances. “For example, many farmers are adopting drip irrigation to save money and water, but not all varieties of bread wheat thrive under those circumstances. With specific knowledge of genetic data, we could breed a variety that includes characteristics that would be more successful in a drip irrigation environment.”

Besides the benefit to the world of the wheat research, NRGene’s accomplishment is also a major development for the agricultural business. “Besides wheat, we have successfully mapped over 30 other genomes, some for academic research, and others for commercial use.” In that latter category, said Kol, was a major producer of animal feed, which turned to NRGene for a genome that would help it breed more nutritious varieties of corn for its animals.


In May, NRGene announced that, together with scientists from the USDA and the University of Illinois, it had mapped the rainbow trout, which will enable the breeding of tastier and longer-lived varieties of farmed fish, said NRGene CEO Dr. Gil Ronen.

“Aquaculture is at a critical juncture. The significant decrease in the wild fish population means that they must take the lead in continuing to ensure genetic diversity while still breeding healthy, protein-rich, and disease resistant fish,” said Ronen. “Mapping a full and reliable reference genome is a critical step toward efficient breeding, and the trout is simply the first of many critical species for the aquaculture industry that must be mapped.”

Now that Emmer wheat has been “conquered,” NRGene will be working on more basic crop projects, said Kol. “The world is getting drier, and the need to develop varieties of corn and rice that can withstand that is more important than ever. Imagine being able to develop a variety of rice that would be able to go weeks or longer without rain. That would be a very important accomplishment.”