A new Israeli initiative is helping social media users to identify and report posts that are harmful or contain false information as well as share content in support of the country as it enters its third week of war against Hamas in Gaza. 

Millions of inflammatory and anti-Semitic posts have been circulating on social media platforms since October 7, when Hamas terrorists killed over 1,400 people in an attack inside Israel and abducted more than 200 others into Gaza. A significant amount of that content is misinformation designed to persuade people that Israel carried out crimes it did not commit, experts say.

TrendTrack – born out of an existing program to provide social groups with public data – presents a real-time list of pro- and anti-Israel content that is trending on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. This allows users to monitor relevant posts, without forcing them to search for the content themselves. 

The volunteer monitors go to the TrendTrack website and choose to view content from one of the three social media platforms. The website provides links to each relevant post and the account that posted it so that users can either like and share or report it. 

The project was developed by the Bright Initiative program, which provides public bodies, non-profit organizations and academic institutions with freely available web data to help tackle pressing social issues. 

Both Bright Initiative and TrendTracks are powered by Netanya-based Bright Data, the world’s largest data collection platform, which gathers massive amounts of publicly available information from around the world. 

The TrendTracks lists of posts are compiled in two ways. Primarily it uses the Bright Data technology but also trawls the three social media platforms with specific keywords and hashtags related to Israel’s ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza. 

Dana Mazia, general manager of the Bright Initiative, believes that people who use TrendTracks are crucial to helping Israel promote its message as it battles Hamas. 

“We’re trying to take this data that we have to help both organizations and people like you and I play an active role in promoting Israeli advocacy during the war,” Mazia tells NoCamels.  

She says that spending just five minutes a day on the TrendTracks website can help promote Israeli advocacy and make a real difference. 

And though she cannot divulge much information about the initiative’s internal analytics, Mazia says that TrendTracks already has been successful at removing harmful posts, despite being live for just a little over a week.

Over the course of a single night, she says, the platform was able to detect 80,000 inflammatory posts on Instagram alone.

Identifying and removing content on social media that is hateful or contains false information is becoming more and more crucial, Israel advocates say, especially as anti-Semitic hate crimes have continued to soar worldwide with the onset of the war.

In London alone, police recorded a 1,353% increase in anti-Semitic offenses this month (October) compared to the same period last year. Anti-Semitic incidents have also been reported in Vienna, Paris, New York and Sydney, as well as other Western cities.

Beyond this, says Mazia, promoting pro-Israel content on social media is as crucial as reporting the disinformation and hate speech in order to ensure that the country maintains support around the world. 

The war will not end in the near future, she points out, and the world’s attention will be drawn more to the plight of Palestinian civilians in Gaza as Israel continues to press Hamas in the coastal enclave. 

“We need to know that the world understands our situation and gives us their support to protect ourselves,” says Mazia. 

“For that reason we want to put the right voices out there, which means to like, comment and repost content that is supportive.”

She adds that sharing and promoting pro-Israel content will also encourage the creators of the original content to continue to do so, and even spur on others who so far been hesitant to voice support for Israel. 

“We need to keep the cycle going and help them to help us,” Mazia says. 

The data gathered by the TrendTracks platform is also being provided pro bono to a number of organizations, although Mazia declines to divulge which. 

Some of these organizations, she says, are using this data to root out the sources of misinformation online, while others are using it for intelligence-gathering purposes. 

Bright Initiative, says Mazia, believes that TrendTracks can make a meaningful contribution – alongside the other social media users and impactful organizations who flag hateful and misinformed posts about Israel and support positive content. 

“We believe that this is our way to help win the war,” says Mazia.

The post New Project Combats Israel Hate On Social Media, Post By Post appeared first on NoCamels.

An Israeli company that was working on an AI system to teach people how to operate drones has accelerated the development of its platform and is now using it to help train Israeli soldiers – and civilians – in the use of the unmanned aerial vehicles in wartime. 

FlyZone is a subsidiary of Tech 19, a company in the southern city of Yeruham, some 60 km (37 miles) from the Gaza border, that provides a range of technological solutions, including in the fields of drones, satellites and robotics. 

The firm was working on the platform to train drone operators when Hamas terrorists from Gaza attacked Israeli communities across the border on October 7, killing at least 1,400 and abducting at least 200 more. 

The resulting Israeli military response includes the use of drones, which required hasty training for troops unfamiliar with operating them – and one particular soldier turned to FlyZone for assistance. 

“One of our developers is on emergency reserve duty,” the company’s founder and CEO Inbar Cohen tells NoCamels. 

“He called me and told me: we have an urgent need to train people on drones, because drones have become a very, very big thing in this war.” 

The Israel Defense Forces deploys a range of drones, including the Skylark UAVs, which are used for reconnaissance, and the Hermes series, which are used in active combat.

The military does have systems to train drone operators, Cohen says, but they are housed in the major military bases, such as Tze’elim in the Negev Desert. 

There is no formal agreement with the IDF to train drone operators, according to Cohen, who points out it was an ad hoc step as the country moved swiftly to respond to the attacks of two weeks ago. 

Anytime, Anywhere

Because the FlyZone platform is software-based, it requires just a basic VR headset and standard remote control in order to train prospective operators. Furthermore, it can be used with a range of drones, in any location, including the staging areas where the Israeli troops are preparing for battle. 

“You don’t need to go anywhere; you can [train] from wherever you are,” Cohen says. 

“You just need the glasses and a very simple remote control and both are things that you can go and buy relatively easily in a few minutes.”

The incorporation of artificial intelligence into the platform is what makes FlyZone unique, Cohen says. 

While other drone simulators have a fixed, generic range of levels of difficulty in which to train, the use of AI allows the FlyZone platform to recreate a multitude of environments in order to practice operating the UAVs while facing a variety of challenges. 

“The progress is not based on levels, but on what you are doing,” Cohen explains. 

If an IDF drone operator needs to work in a dense, urban area, for example, FlyZone can adjust its settings to recreate that environment for training. 

Similarly, it can show the trainee a series of topographical settings and even change the time of day and weather to practice in different lighting or wind conditions – both of which have an impact on how a drone flies. 

The AI algorithm also lets the platform to collect data on the performance of the trainee, identifying the aspects of drone operation for which more practice is required, allowing them to improve their skills in a more focused and faster way.  

“They’re learning very quickly how to operate drones,” Cohen says. 

The “priceless” data that FlyZone is gathering will also accelerate the development process, she explains, allowing the company to better match the needs of the system with the needs of the user. 

And for now it is not just soldiers who are now benefitting from the platform, Cohen says. 

The civil guard units in Israeli communities, which were in almost all cases the first line of defense when Hamas terrorists stormed their towns, kibbutzim and moshavim on October 7, are also training with the FlyZone platform. 

These community-based trainee drone operators are not just of military age, she says, but people in their 50s and 60s and even 70s. 

“People are actually scanning and making sure that there are no terrorists and that there are no surprises,” Cohen says, referring to the Hamas killers who stormed across the border fence or flew into Israel undetected on motorized paragliders. 

“They don’t want to be surprised again.”

The post Firm Fast-Tracks Drone Simulator To Train Israeli Soldiers, Civilians appeared first on NoCamels.

Faced with a growing number of head trauma cases due to the ongoing violence triggered by Hamas terrorism, medical professionals in Israel’s largest hospital are innovating – including with the use of artificial intelligence – to help treat its victims. 

Thousands of people were wounded when Hamas terrorists from Gaza infiltrated into Israel’s border communities on October 7, massacring more than 1,400 civilians, including women, children and the elderly. The attacks were accompanied by a barrage of rocket fire across the country that has not let up in the almost two weeks since. 

And while the doctors of the Sheba Medical Center are used to treating millions of patients with diverse conditions every single year, many of their new cases have complex brain injuries that cannot be tended to by conventional means. 

The Center’s Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit, which normally treats patients suffering from strokes, aneurysms and brain bleeds, is now modifying existing medical techniques to cope with the new cases. 

“Each case is very unique and is very different from the patients that we usually treat,” Dr. Gal Yaniv, director of the hospital’s Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit, tells NoCamels.

Suffering from head trauma due to gunshot wounds, rocket shrapnel or falling debris, many of these patients have developed a brain aneurysm – an abnormal bulge in a blood vessel of their brains that is at risk of rupturing.

Brain aneurysms are usually the result of blood vessels weakening with age or a genetic defect, and are more common in people over the age of 40. If not detected in time, they may cause bleeding inside the patient’s brain, which can be fatal.

These new cases, however, are occurring in soldiers fighting on the frontlines and civilians in the south of the country who have been most impacted by the ongoing war.

Dr. Yaniv explains that unlike conventional brain aneurysms, these aneurysms are now appearing in small arteries that are so delicate that they can rupture during surgery.

He and his team have therefore modified the tools used to treat other vascular diseases that involve small blood vessels – such as coronary microvascular disease – in order to perform these time-sensitive operations.

“We’re probably one of the more experienced medical centers in Israel, but these are some of the most difficult aneurysm cases we have encountered,” explains Dr. Yaniv. 

“They’re much more dangerous than normal aneurysms, and we’re very confined by the way we can treat them,” he says.

“So we have been improvising during each case, and are trying to understand how we can treat this patient without causing them any additional damage.” 

Aside from its Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit, Sheba Medical Center has streamlined the process of hospitalizing and tending to patients in urgent condition, as the number of soldiers and civilians wounded by the ongoing war rises. 

The hospital has also integrated advanced artificial intelligence algorithms into its medical systems that are capable of analyzing X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds. They can also quickly flag brain aneurysms, as well as other serious conditions. 

These algorithms, which were developed by Israeli startup Aidoc, notify practitioners as soon as they spot a medical anomaly, and are much faster and more accurate than a radiologist.

Until now, staff at Sheba had to manually analyze the scans themselves, which Dr. Yaniv says has resulted in clinicians missing or delaying a diagnosis.

“This is extremely important because when you have such a huge flow of work both for the radiologist and the clinician – especially now – sometimes really serious pathologies can be missed, just because of the sheer amount of patients and scans,” says Dr. Yaniv, who is also the Chief Medical Officer at Aidoc. 

Due to the war, the Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit has seen a significant uptick in the number of patients it has had to treat. These AI tools have been crucial in treating these patients, as Dr. Yaniv says his team now has less time to treat patients who need care unrelated to the conflict.

“We’re used to treating emergencies, because we treat strokes and bleeds. But most of our time right now is dedicated to these trauma patients,” says Dr. Yaniv. 

“But like everyone in Israel right now, we’re trying to be busy and productive.”

The post Israel’s Top Hospital Innovates To Treat War-Related Head Trauma appeared first on NoCamels.

When the terror attacks on October 7 unfolded in southern Israel and it became clear that dozens of Israeli civilians – among them women, children, the elderly and the infirm – had been dragged into Gaza by Hamas, a group of high-tech experts offered their know-how to help identify them. 

Working out who is captive and who was murdered in the attacks has been complicated by the desecration of the bodies of some of the victims, making identifying them a difficult and painstaking process. 

Hundreds of people have yet to be accounted for, with hundreds of the more than 1,300 people who were murdered in the attacks still not formally identified. 

The group of around 300 volunteers from multiple Israeli high-tech companies are working together in a “war room” in Tel Aviv, trawling through vast amounts of footage posted on social media from the terrible events of that day in order to identify the Israelis who were abducted to Gaza. 

One of the main contributors to the initiative is Gal Vekselman, CTO of Elad Data, a Tel Aviv-headquartered software company. 

“[On] that bloody day there were so many videos and pictures from the site itself, from Gaza and from Israel… pushing into multiple social media [platforms],” Vekselman tells NoCamels. 

“The idea was to try and find clues and information about the kidnapped from social media.”

The group is using a combination of human eyes and facial recognition artificial intelligence to spot the Israelis in footage available – including videos made by Hamas terrorists as they were carrying out their abductions. 

The volunteers are combing through the footage posted everywhere from Telegram and X (formerly Twitter) to Facebook and Instagram, he says. 

As well as the human efforts, the group is using machine learning to train algorithms to try to spot those who were kidnapped. 

Without revealing the actual processes involved due to the sensitivity of the operation, Vekselman says that there is a data scientist onsite who is running the machine learning algorithm for facial recognition. That person is working in conjunction with volunteers from around the world, who wrote specific code to help with this endeavor. 

According to Vekselman, the idea for the operation came from the Brothers in Arms group – a network of Israel Defense Forces reservists whose protests against planned judicial reforms swiftly transformed into a massive effort to help the victims of the October 7 attacks and subsequent war. 

They reached out to Vekselman, asking for his expertise, as well as others in Israel and around the world whom he declines to name without authorization. 

“This is more than a technological effort,” he says. “This is really the apogee of Israel at its finest. You can see how Israelis are really working together, putting all egos aside.” 

This includes, he says, any divisions over the controversial judicial reforms that triggered months of weekly protests. Everyone pulled together to create one coordinated effort. 

“All of these people come here to this facility, working together just to contribute; learning new tools, new technologies, just to try to help these people,” he says.  

“It’s just heartwarming to see all these people working together.”  

The war room has a whiteboard that features the names of the people who are still unaccounted for, and makes a note on it every time someone is identified through these efforts. When a person is identified, it galvanizes the people in the room, he says. 

But hunting for any shred of information about the abducted Israelis means scouring videos that often include graphic violence, and the project has psychologists onsite to help mitigate the emotional trauma of such scenes. 

“They’re very sensitive about the mental health of the people participating in this endeavor,” Vekselman says.

There are other, similar efforts to identify the missing Israelis, he says, but this is the largest in scale.

The information that the volunteers find is passed onto the authorities, Vekselman explains, again declining to specify which channels they are working with, out of security considerations. He similarly declines to provide a number of people that they have been able to identify. Nor does the group have direct contact with the families of the missing. 

“I think it’s important to the world to see that Israelis are here not to hate anyone,” Vekselman tells NoCamels.  

“We are doing what needs to be done in order to make sure that everyone can live in peace and with love, and with a sense of humanity.“ 

The post Israeli Tech ‘War Room’ Scours Social Media For Signs Of Captives appeared first on NoCamels.

An electrically-powered sleeve that’s designed to enhance performance and accelerate recovery among athletes is now being repurposed for the Israeli soldiers readying to battle the Palestinian terror group Hamas that rules the Gaza Strip. 

Startup Healables embeds electrodes into an elasticated sleeve controlled by a smartphone app, which generate microcurrents of electricity to stimulate affected cells into repairing themselves – all without the need for medication.

Units of its ElectroGear device were intended to be used in a new pilot with a professional soccer team abroad. But the massive terror attacks in Israel on October 7, in which at least 1,300 people were murdered in their homes and communities by Hamas terrorists, led to the startup finding a different – and more personal – use for them. 

“Those units are now going to be repurposed for our soldiers, because the types of needs that soldiers have in the field are very similar to the types of needs that athletes have,” Healables founder and CEO Moshe Lebowitz tells NoCamels. 

One sniper in the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Duvdevan Unit, which works to prevent terrorist activities, was experiencing knee pain and had difficulty getting into positions that required him to kneel or lay down, resulting in him being unable to aim accurately. 

“After using ElectroGear, he was able to move freely without any problem in his range of motion,” says Lebowitz. “The pain was gone.”

Another soldier from a communications unit had pain in his legs and could not keep up with his brothers-in-arms when transporting heavy specialist equipment.

“With our product he was able to get back and to keep up with everyone,” says Lebowitz.

Each treatment session using the ElectroGear lasts for an hour. The user attaches the patented device to their knee, ankle or shoulder, and activates it using the accompanying app. The ElectroGear device then uses electrodes to send microcurrents of electricity directly to the affected area.

Lebowitz explains that the electricity stimulates the body’s cells to produce more adenosine triphosphate (ATP), its main source of energy. When cells have higher levels of ATP, they have more energy to repair themselves, leading to quicker recovery time. 

Using electric currents is already well-established and widely implemented as a therapy for chronic pain. For example, the TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) is a small, battery-operated device used to relieve pain during labor and by people suffering from arthritis, period pain, knee pain and sports injuries.

But Lebowitz says these kinds of devices overload the nervous system with electricity so that the brain is unable to process pain signals, but does not actually help the body recover.

Additionally, electrotherapy is mostly a complicated procedure involving multiple wires and adhesive electrodes, and is better suited to use in clinics rather than in homes or on the go.

The ElectroGear device, on the other hand, is lightweight and flexible. The sleeves are made of washable, stretchable sports fabric, and the electrodes are dry, rather than sticky. It also uses 1,000 times less electricity than a TENS unit, which Lebowitz says is not optimized to recharge the body the way his device does. 

The device is also embedded with sensors that measure the body’s response to the treatment – like heart rate variability, range of motion and respiration – and it uses that information to determine whether the treatment the user is receiving could be improved. 

Smart algorithms within the accompanying app analyze this information and adjust the treatment accordingly. Lebowitz, however, cannot specify how the treatment is optimized.

“There are a lot of different qualities of how electricity interacts with the body,” he says. 

“We’re able to adjust the different settings to be able to go and make sure the user is getting exactly what’s right for them. There are millions of different variables.”

The device had to undergo a couple of alterations before being combat ready, with the way in which it is used to treat soreness and injuries first optimized for soldiers. 

Additionally, the Healables team created an offline mode for the smartphone app to ensure that the security of the soldiers was not compromised – meaning their data is saved on the phone itself and is not uploaded to the cloud. 

“But it’s pretty much the same,” says Lebowitz. “People need to rest and recover, whether they are playing soccer or are on the battlefield.”

The Jerusalem-based startup, too, has been affected by the ongoing war, with members of its team drafted into the army. And one of the startup’s facilities, in the area surrounding Gaza, was affected during the October 7 terror attack.

Healables is now accepting donations on the ElectroGear website for people wishing to purchase the device for Israeli soldiers.  

“When you’re deployed in the field, you don’t have the same access to medical care that you would have otherwise,” Lebowitz says. “A product like this can really be a game-changer for having soldiers that are combat ready.”

The post Startup Repurposes Sports Tech For Israeli Soldiers In Battle appeared first on NoCamels.

An Israeli startup has identified tens of thousands of fake social media accounts that are supportive of Hamas, most of which were created more than a year ago and were largely inactive until the massive terror attacks in Israel on October 7. 

At least 1,300 people were murdered when Hamas terrorists from Gaza struck Israeli homes and communities. Dozens more – including children, women and the elderly – were dragged into the coastal enclave as Hamas hostages. 

In the aftermath of the attacks, Tel Aviv-based Cyabra, which monitors threats and misinformation on social media, has identified more than 40,000 fake accounts supportive of Hamas across all platforms. 

And Cyabra’s VP of Marketing Rafi Mendelsohn tells NoCamels that they all sprung into action in a social media war that ran parallel to the brutal October 7 attacks. 

This coordinated action by such a vast number of fake accounts, he says, points to an “enormous level” of planning and organization. 

“Over 40,000 fake accounts that were pro-Hamas and Hamas sympathetic across the social media platforms… many of them had been created a year, year and a half in advance, and were kind of sitting [and] waiting,” Mendelsohn says. 

“Then once everything started over the course of Saturday and Sunday [October 7 and 8], these accounts had actually posted hundreds of times having not done much previously in the year and a half before,” he explains. 

The company describes itself as a “social threat intelligence” company, which works to expose online risk to individuals, institutions or even governments. It says its mission is to fight misinformation, claiming it can root out even the most sophisticated threats. 

Unique AI software created by Cyabra quickly identifies malicious actors using social media and other online spaces such as comment sections, to spread false information. 

According to Mendelsohn, Cyabra spotted three primary narratives being pushed on social media by these accounts, which he says required “a lot of coordination.” 

The first narrative, disseminated by the fake accounts largely in Arabic for an Arab audience, claimed that the sheer number of Israeli hostages seized by Hamas meant that Israel was about to release Palestinian prisoners held in its jails.  

The second narrative, which Mendelsohn says was mainly being pushed in English, highlighted the alleged humanity and compassion of Hamas towards its hostages. 

Mendelsohn calls this second narrative “an influence operations campaign,” which rather than creating fake news, manipulates existing footage and imagery that people have likely already seen from reputable news sources and recontextualizes it to fit the Hamas narrative. 

He cites the example of footage of Israelis being taken by force into Gaza, something that was widely aired by the established media outlets, but which was later cropped in such a way as to make it appear that they were not being ill-treated. 

It is a phenomenon called “deceptive imagery persuasion,” Mendelsohn says. He points out that disinformation is not always about false information, but can also be about trying to sway people into believing a certain narrative over another. 

“If you create a lie, you’ve got to convince people of that lie. Whereas if you take something that is kind of rooted in truth, or exists, and then you’re recontextualizing it in order to put out a false narrative, you might think it’s more real.” 

The final narrative being promulgated by these fake accounts, he says, focused on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a long-standing flashpoint for tensions between Israel and Palestinains. 

This third message was spread in English and Arabic and claimed that the purported threat by Israeli security forces to the mosque and its Muslim worshippers was so great that Hamas “didn’t really have a choice” but to act as it did. 

The fact that these three narratives were being promoted in different languages, he says, shows “another layer of sophistication” in the activity of the fake accounts. 

A similar level of sophistication, according to Mendelsohn, can be seen in the way in which these fake accounts use both pro-Hamas and pro-Israel hashtags in order to insert their content into as wide an audience as possible. 

This “incredible” sophistication, he says, “is definitely more akin to a state level actor type operation.”

Cyabra is working with intelligence agencies, Mendelsohn says, without elaborating which. One of the things that the company has imparted to those intelligence agencies is how much personal information about the hostages themselves has been shared online. 

This information, he warns, is a weapon that is being utilized by Hamas.

Mendelsohn says that the fake social media accounts such as the ones apparently created for the Hamas terror attacks on October 7 are one of “the key channels” that today’s enemies would look to using. 

They have been successfully deployed by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine, and, according to Mendelsohn, they are an increasingly effective tactic. 

It is, he says, “certainly cheaper than creating an army.”  

The post Hamas Planned Social Media War Alongside Terror, Startup Finds   appeared first on NoCamels.

With the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza now in its second week and a ceasefire apparently not on the horizon, tens of thousands of Israeli families in the south of the country are looking for safe haven from rocket fire from Hamas in the Gaza Strip. 

Joining the war effort, an Israeli tech company has created a new online platform to help these Israelis who have been displaced or evacuated find a safe place to stay. 

Families in the north of the country are also leaving their homes as Lebanese-based terror group Hezbollah and Palestinian groups in Lebanon and Syria have also begun firing at Israeli civilian population across those borders.  

The Israeli government has made some 50,000 hotel rooms available to house citizens who have been forced to leave their homes, but it is not enough to support them all. 

The Safe Zone platform connects the Israelis who have to leave their homes to potential hosts willing to welcome them in their own homes or in other accommodations for free.  

The app was the initiative of the CEO of the tech company, who wishes to remain anonymous, working alongside a group of volunteers. 

“It is hard to miss the fact that there is a substantial number of families who currently do not have a home or have been evacuated,” the CEO told NoCamels. 

“We saw that people were asking on social media if someone could host them. So we decided to do it in a more orderly fashion and so we built the platform, which has become the biggest platform in the country,” he says. 

Users of the app can look for a place to stay according to criteria such as geographic location, the amount of people who have to be hosted, whether they can bring their pets and even the kind of bomb shelter available in the event of rocket fire. 

“People can search by our many filters,” he says. “For example, whether they want to be hosted in a kosher home, the number of beds they need or if it is suitable for people with disabilities.” 

He says that sometimes a family is still in the location and has freed up space for guests or has opened up the entire home for hosting. 

The platform already has thousands of beds available for people who had to leave their homes, which the CEO calls “truly heartwarming.” He says that thousands of people have also used the platform already to find a safe place to stay. 

The platform is staffed by a “kind of war room” of about 20 volunteers, he says. These volunteers review a potential match between hosts and guests who have already made contact through the platform, verify that the place is suitable, and ensure that the placement is confirmed. 

Safe Zone has versions for desktop browser and for mobile, and the hosting is entirely free, according to the CEO.  For now the app is only in Hebrew, although the desktop version can be translated into other languages by the browser.

The CEO says that some hotels, youth hostels and even municipalities have taken the initiative and are using the platform to promote accommodation for those in need.  

He has also made a call for people with similar initiatives to contact the platform through the website in order to join forces and make all the efforts speedier and more effective.  

“We will keep it going for as long as it is needed,” the CEO tells NoCamels. “It’s a national effort – we want to help.”  

The post New App Helps Displaced Israelis Find Safe Haven In Wartime appeared first on NoCamels.

For almost two decades, agriculturalists around the world have been sounding the alarm about the global disappearance of entire bee colonies, a vital link in the food chain whose absence is threatening the world’s food supply.  

Scientists have determined that one of the primary causes of colony collapse disorder (CCD) is the Varroa mite, a pest that attaches itself to bees as they develop in their cocoons and feeds on them, transmits viruses to them and can even kill them.

Israeli startup ToBe has developed a device that releases precise amounts of miticides in beehives to rid them of these parasites without harming the bees themselves.  

Since the early 20th century, the Varroa mite has spread from Asia to colonies of Western honey bees – the primary species used for pollination of our crops – in almost every part of the world. 

Avner Einav, VP of product at ToBe, tells NoCamels that the mites infect beehives with several kinds of viruses and cause 30 to 60 percent of colony losses every year.

“These mites don’t just affect the bees,” he says. “They affect all of us.” 

The HiveMaster emits tiny pulses of pesticide gas which ensures the treatment spreads around the hive evenly. It uses sensors and smart algorithms to understand the health of the colony and determine the activity of the bees before proceeding.

For example, it will wait to emit the miticide in the winter should it detect that the bees are cold and have a slower metabolism, which makes their immune system weaker. The beekeepers can choose whether they want the HiveMaster to emit a natural or synthetic miticide. 

“Our technology ensures that bees remain strong and support mankind’s ability to continue commercial, large-scale agriculture,” Einav says. 

The device itself simply needs to be inserted into man-made beehives. Once inside, it starts collecting and transferring data to a complementary smartphone app, where beekeepers can use it to make better decisions on the maintenance of their colonies. 

Less Is More

Even beekeepers who decide to spray miticides in their hives themselves – another common form of treatment – often overuse these pesticides and disrupt the colony due to multiple visits during the day. 

And exposure to high concentrations of pesticides have been shown to damage bees – particularly the intestines of larvae, who end up maturing as weaker adults.

“At the end of the day it’s toxic to the bees as well,” says Einav. “Beekeepers need to be able to treat the mites without damaging the bees, but it’s the biggest challenge of the industry,” he said.

Earlier this year, ToBe conducted a pilot with Wonderful Bees, one of the biggest beekeeping operations in the United States, to compare the efficacy of its device to conventional anti-Varroa treatments.

One group of beekeepers inserted strips doused in a heavy concentration of pesticides into their hives – a standard defense used against the Varroa mite today – while the other group of beekeepers used the HiveMaster device.

In the trial, the strips were coated with one gram of the amitraz insecticide, which prevents the Varroa mite from spreading when bees come into contact with it and one another. By contrast, The HiveMaster used just 0.2g of the pesticide – 80 percent fewer pesticides – which was dispersed only during specific times.

After 15 days, those who used the HiveMaster found that the treatment was 95 percent effective and that it had reduced the Varroa infestation from 4.5 percent to 0.2 percent. The pesticide-coated strips, on the other hand, were 30.5 percent effective and only reduced the infestation from 4.6 percent to 3.2 percent. 

A Middle Ground

Israel has in recent years seen the establishment of several agritech companies aiming to save the bees. Beewise, for example, has developed an autonomous beehive that can monitor the health of bees, control the environment and even harvest the honey, while BeeHero uses tiny in-hive sensors to relay real-time information and warnings on the health of the bees to farmers. 

But unlike tech-reliant startups that are still too expensive for many beekeepers, ToBe combines traditional beekeeping methods with holistic, high-tech solutions. 

According to Einav, this provides an alternative for beekeepers who want to optimize their colonies while still remaining hands on. 

“I’m a beekeeper myself, and I don’t want a machine to do all of my work,” he says.

ToBe, which was founded in 2018 and is based in the central town of Beit Berl, is currently providing its solution as a subscription service to Israeli beekeepers. Einav says it will soon be placed in 7,000 Israeli colonies – around six percent of the country’s beehives. 

It is also in the process of receiving regulatory approval in the US, Asia and Europe. 

“Any other industry related to animals now has technology that allows farmers to be more precise,” he says. “But in the bee industry, not so much.”

“And when the bees are healthy, nature flourishes.”

The post Bee Happy: New Device Protects Hives From Colony-Killing Mites appeared first on NoCamels.

How do you make solar energy even more efficient and cost effective? According to Israeli startup XFloat you do it by putting large numbers of photovoltaic panels on water and making them turn to track the sun. 

Photovoltaic technology converts light from the sun into electricity using solar cells. These cells or panels can be placed on the ground, roofs and walls as well as bodies of water.  

Xfloat CEO and veteran tech entrepreneur Ran Alcalay tells NoCamels that photovoltaic (PV) panels are the most cost-efficient means to generate renewable energy, which led the company founders to explore ways of making it an even more efficient source. 

“What we see now is the huge potential of using the surface of water to build energy generation,” he says. 

“The agenda was to go and focus 100 percent on a market that is now called FPV – floating photovoltaic [panels]. It’s a fast growing market; it’s still considered to be a niche, but it’s maybe the fastest growing niche in the photovoltaic market.”

In fact, the FPV market is predicted to grow significantly, increasing by 25% annually over the next few years. 

“PV and floating is the perfect mix,” Alcalay says. 

One of the major issues with expanding the use of PV energy is the availability of space for the panels needed to absorb the light of the sun – making water an extremely viable option. 

Another issue is the limited time in which static panels can absorb the rays of the sun, which is where Xfloat’s technology comes in.  

It is the company’s intelligent water management system that allows the panels to move with the sun. The system works by installing the floating panels on top of buoyancy tanks laid out in a massive grid, which Alcalay calls “a huge floating carpet.” 

Each panel is connected to a tank, and each tank is connected to the system that follows the sun through the sky. This system, with its proprietary algorithms, pumps water in and out of the tanks in order to angle the panels to chase the light.  

“We developed the software and hardware parts together,” Alcalay says. “The whole idea was to have an autonomous system.”  

Data from the FPVs at each plant is collected via the cloud and analyzed to improve the system. 

“From early on, we understood that it’s not only about the mechanical parts, but it’s also about the data that we can generate and learn from,” he explains. 

Each project has site specific issues, he says, so in order to maximize performance, the system at every plant has individual continuous data acquisition and data processing. 

“We can teach the system to optimize itself to its location.” 

The Caesaria-based company was founded in 2017 by naval engineers and people with experience in data processing. “It’s kind of a weird mix,” Alcalay admits. 

Xfloat, he says, was the first company to provide an alternative to the fixed FPVs and is currently producing the biggest fields of the floating panels in the world. 

At the outset, the company examined static FPVs, he explains, by developing “a fully holistic approach” to the structures, and then by focusing on three key aspects to refine the titling panels.  

First, Xfloat looked at performance and how to improve the energy yield through mobile panels. And according to Acalay, the tiling movement that tracks the sun results in 20 percent more yield. 

They then took into consideration the durability of the panels, which Alcalay says should be operational for up to 30 years on the water, which he calls “a harsh environment.” 

And finally, Xfloat looked at how to become more cost effective. 

“It is very evident that in the energy industry as a whole, but specifically this [one], the financial model is the key. So you have to build everything that will support the returns of the developer and investors.” 

The company received funding from “strategic investors” and the Israel Innovation Authority to get off the ground. And in February, Miya, an international leader in integrated water efficiency systems from Spain, acquired a minority stake in the startup as part of its own expansion plans. 

The Xfloat technology is already in operation on two reservoirs in Hof HaCarmel Regional Council in northern Israel, where together they form what Alcalay says is the biggest FPV tracker in the world. 

Now the reservoirs are not only used to irrigate local agriculture in Hof HaCarmel, but have helped the regional council to reach 100 percent green energy usage.  

“Instead of building these very large installations on land, you keep those green fields open and allow them to be used for agriculture,” he says.  

The post Catching Rays: Floating Solar Panels Tilt To Face The Sun  appeared first on NoCamels.

Driverless cars are the future. But for the ordinary motorist, that future is still a way off.

The AI that drives autonomous vehicles is clever, but not clever enough. Yet.

It struggles with what engineers call “corner cases” – the unexpected and unpredictable set of circumstances that currently call for human, rather than artificial intelligence.

So if someone places a traffic one on the car’s hood, the AI will freeze. If high winds bring down a branch, a sink hole opens up in the road and a runaway shopping cart hits the car during a freak sandstorm, AI will be stumped.

We’d use our common sense and life experience to deal with these challenges. AI doesn’t have any.

That’s where Ottopia, a Tel Aviv-based startup, comes in. It provides human assistance to vehicles that are already operating on public roads, and elsewhere, without a driver.

At the moment we’re mostly talking about the robotaxis that are ferrying passengers around a small number of cities in the US, but in the next few years it will also include trucks operating on pre-defined routes.

It’s all about “controlling the environment,” says Paul Kandel, the company’s Director of Business Development.

The more variables there are, the more challenging it is for AI to cope.

By reducing those variables, some cities in the US, China and elsewhere are able to allow driverless vehicles on their roads. They’re classified in jargon of the driverless industry as Level Four, which is one step from total autonomy.

They may be restricted to certain roads or certain times of the day, to keep those variables to a manageable minimum.

The vehicles don’t need a full-time driver, but they may need their hand holding if the going gets tough.

Ottopia does that hand-holding – or “teleoperations” – with sophisticated software and a robust, patented technology that guarantees near-uninterrupted contact between vehicle and command center. The last thing you need in a driverless emergency is a patchy Wi-Fi signal.

“The simplest level of teleoperation is where the remote operator is monitoring a vehicle,” says Kandel.

“The second level is remote assistance, where the vehicle might say, for example, I’m not sure what to do in this scenario, because I came across a new construction site that’s not on my map, or there’s a there’s a car blocking my lane. And the third level is actual remote driving.”

That’s basically when an operator in the command center grabs the steering wheel, puts their foot on the pedal and takes full control.

Ottopia says the technology breakthrough that sets it apart from other companies in teleoperations is its ability to maintain contact with the vehicles it’s controlling.

“There are some other good companies out there,” says Kendal. “But when we’ve gone through the evaluations with customers and potential customers, I’d say we are pretty consistently in the lead in terms of the lowest latency, highest reliability and best cybersecurity architecture.”

Ottopia has a number of patents around what’s called network bonding, which means using any available data to “bond” into one data stream.

“Our technology has a bunch of layers of redundancies and fallbacks built in,” says Kendal. “So in a worst case, if you completely lose a connection, you will still have collision avoidance and safety critical systems on the vehicle.

“Our software squeezes a lemon out of everything that network has to offer, to get the best performance possible.”

BMW chose Ottopia as the “preferred multi SIM teleoperation technology” to support its autonomous driving services.

The startup also provides the teleoperations for US company Motional, which launched robotaxis last year in Las Vegas in collaboration with cab services Uber and Lyft. For the time being, they only operate on weekdays during daylight hours and on restricted routes. Passengers don’t pay during the current trial period.

If the vehicle encounters a problem it can’t deal with, a teleoperator will either offer guidance or take over.

Ottopia also provides remote driving and assistance software to US company Magna for its “last mile” delivery robots, which started delivering pizzas in Detroit, USA last March. Their vehicles fitted with the Ottopia platform drive on public roads at up to 20mph.

And last month Ottopia announced a partnership with San Francisco-based Serve Robotics to develop its autonomous sidewalk delivery robots.

Ottopia’s software also works with autonomous vehicles in industrial settings, such as forklifts, trucks, yard trucks and construction machines, where the environment can be controlled.

But drivers like you and me must wait for the technology to develop – best guess is a decade – and for the prices to become realistic, before we can fully embrace it.

“The industry as a whole is realizing that for consumer vehicles that you and I own it’s going to take a long time for our autonomy to really be there,” says Kendal.

But there may still be benefits in the near future. “I think that in the meantime, there’s  a lot that we can do with our customers to bring the value of  a driverless experience,” he says.

That means a remote human driver could take over the controls, drop you off at a restaurant, find a parking space, and collect you later, after you’ve enjoyed your meal – and a couple of glasses of wine.

The post How Human Intelligence Is Helping To Drive AI Cars appeared first on NoCamels.

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For people diagnosed with serious illnesses such as cancer, the treatment period can mean a maze of emotions, appointments and medical jargon that can often prove overwhelming. 

Israeli startup Belong.Life, created by the son of a cancer patient, has built an entire social media platform around the specific needs of people undergoing treatment – and their loved ones – to help navigate through this stressful time.

“We started Belong in the cancer space because it was very emotional for us,” CTO Irad Deutsch tells NoCamels. 

When Deutsch’s mother was diagnosed with lung cancer eight years ago, he found that for all his experience in data and the digital sphere, he was unable to make sense of what she was going through or use his skills to provide practical help. 

“I felt clueless,” he says. “I never went to med school and it was hard for me to navigate [and] I was her primary caregiver. 

“One year into the process, I knew a lot, but that was too late for my mother to make any impact on her journey. Maybe we couldn’t have saved her, but we could have improved her quality of life and maybe prolonged it.” 

Determined to help other families living through similar situations, in 2016 Deutch, co-founder and CEO Eliran Malki and their team sat down to brainstorm a solution. 

“We shared our knowledge and everybody in the team had similar experiences with a dad, a spouse, a grandma,” he recalls. 

“So we said, we know data, we know how to play with data and how to extract value out of it. Why don’t we do something to improve patient lives through data? That was the moment where Belong was born.” 

The Belong team created a free social media app for cancer patients to anonymously share their experiences, tips for coping with the rigors of treatment, and dealing with the inevitable emotional challenges. 

Belong also invited medical professionals working in the field of oncology to share their knowledge with app users. 

“We put into the community [space] experts to answer all sorts of questions: experts in oncology, specific tumors, mutations, radiation, palliative care, even holistic things – [for example] sexuality and cancer is a big psychological issue,” Deutsch says. 

Cancer charities and support groups warn that patients can feel a sense of isolation while undergoing treatment, often believing that others struggle to understand what they are going through. They strongly advocate joining support groups or talking to experienced medical professionals about how they are feeling. 

And in addition to the emotional support it offered, the app also has a space for the multitude of documents that accompany complex, long-term medical treatment for illnesses such as cancer. 

The app, which can be downloaded onto a smartphone or tablet, allows users to upload all their documentation into a private group so that it can be shared by loved ones who are involved in a patient’s personal treatment. 

Patients can also share this documentation with others undergoing similar cancer treatment, allowing them to learn from one another’s experiences and therapy choices. 

“What we have is patients engaging with experts, friends, mentors, for a long period of time, almost on a daily basis. The average cancer patient uses Belong 15 times a month,” he says.

The app has proved so popular that Deutsch says it is currently in use by one in four cancer patients in Israel and one in 10 in the US. 

In fact, he says, Belong has even permitted the creation of white label offshoots, allowing medical institutions to create their own version of the app for their patients. 

Killing Giants 

Determined to expand the help it offers, the company also recently introduced a virtual AI mentor to offer support and advice to cancer patients and their nearest and dearest. 

The mentor is called Dave after David, the biblical king of Israel who slew the giant Goliath. After all, Deutsch says, cancer is each patient’s individual Goliath to slay.  

The company used machine learning and massive amounts of data about the disease to train Dave to help support people through their cancer journey. 

Dave is essentially a very carefully curated, very closely monitored form of ChatGPT for cancer patients, based on verified authentic medical information and data gathered over the past seven years. 

“People go to Dave and say, ‘Hey, Dave, I’ve been doing this treatment and that treatment. Why am I given this? What is the protocol?’” Deutsch says. 

“And Dave will elaborate and explain to you in a very empathetic way what the protocols are, how the guidelines work, why decisions are being made.” 

In fact, Deutsch used the mentor himself recently, when his own father was undergoing cancer treatment. It helped him understand some of the post-surgery issues his father was experiencing and find a suitable response. 

“Dave can highlight things for you in the journey, and breach the technical gaps in you understanding complex things, in a way that you can digest,” he says.

Dave’s twin at Belong – as Deutch puts it – is Tara, an AI platform to match patients at the end of the road with conventional treatment to clinical trials of experimental therapies in which they can potentially participate. 

Tara scours all available information about the hundreds of thousands of clinical trials for cancer and matches it to the individual based on location and the form of the disease.

The platform can even scan a patient’s medical records and deduce which mutation is present in order to find a suitable trial. It can even locate clinical trials that have not yet been made public by medical institutions.

“She can read everything in seconds,” Deutsch says. The startup is now also being approached by hospitals looking for candidates for upcoming trials.  

With the success of their platform for cancer patients, Belong has also launched a parallel service for multiple sclerosis sufferers and is working on an app to help people living with Crohn’s disease, a bowel disorder with no cure that causes inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. 

The company, which is based on Moshav Bnei Atarot near Tel Aviv, has so far raised more than $30 million. But, explains Deutsch, its business model is strictly patient centered. 

“The patient comes first,” he says. “There’s a big sign in our office: ‘First we do good, then we do well.’ And we stick to that.” 

The post Social Media For Cancer Patients Offers Support And Advice appeared first on NoCamels.

Renting or buying a new property is widely regarded as one of the most stressful things you can do, and is only exacerbated when confronted by a vast empty space without the furniture or trappings that make a house a home. 

An Israeli startup has created an augmented reality (AR) app that allows prospective tenants or buyers to envision a fully furnished living space simply by holding up a smartphone or tablet while standing inside the property. 

“Ninety nine percent of the new apartments for sale or for rent are without furniture in the US,” SparX founder and CEO Dan Lowenthal tells NoCamels. 

“In augmented reality, you add another layer on top of the reality,” he explains. “So we add the layer of furniture on top of the unfurnished apartment.” 

Lowenthal, a veteran real estate entrepreneur, wanted to improve the way in which vacant properties are shown after his own frustrating experience looking for a house for his family in the United States. 

In 2017, he moved with his wife and daughter to the US from Israel for his real estate business, and – ironically – found it difficult to pick out their own new home from a range of unfurnished options. 

“We were shown a bunch of empty apartments and it was very hard for us to envision our life in these empty spaces,” he says.

So Lowenthal and his team in Israel and the US came up with their platform – using a proprietary algorithm to allow potential home renters and buyers to furnish the property they were standing in, in real time and in front of their eyes. 

The startup received investment from the Israel Innovation Authority, the branch of the government dedicated to supporting industrial R&D, as well as Jerusalem-based Terra Venture Partners and various real estate investors.

Many people became aware of augmented reality in 2016, with the release of the Nintendo mobile video game Pokémon Go, which let players scan their surroundings using GPS to search for virtual characters that would appear on their screens. m

The game became a global sensation with more than a billion downloads worldwide in less than three years. 

Cost Cutting 

According to Lowenthal, the AR platform is also a boon for those looking to sell or rent, as staging a home can be a costly affair. 

Furnishing an empty home on a temporary basis involves renting the contents of a house – everything from dining table and sofas to bed linen and towels – to give it that homely feel. 

According to international website HomeAdvisor, staging could cost a private seller up to $2,800, while US real estate professionals say that realtors could pay that sum every month for their listed properties. 

And skipping staging – particularly in the US, where Lowenthal says such a process is standard in real estate – could be even more costly. 

Indeed, in a 2023 survey of American realtors by the National Association of Realtors, 81 percent said staging made it easier for clients to visualize a property as their home, while 52 percent of the realtors said staging affected how most buyers saw a home on the market. 

Furthermore, according to Forbes, a staged home will on average sell for 17 percent more and 87 percent faster than equivalent non-staged homes.  

Home Making

The SparX system consists of three stages. First, the agent scans the empty property and places it on the company platform. Then a range of furnishings and design choices are layered onto the scanned property. 

And finally, the prospective buyer or tenant logs onto the system inside the apartment, using the variety of preset furnishing choices to create an image of what the property looks like as an actual home. 

The platform has already been adopted by leading real estate companies in the US, where around five million homes are sold each year.  

SparX also has teamed up with several home furnishing companies to provide the interiors of empty homes for rent or sale on their platform, and clients can even purchase the furnishing seen on the app. 

“Thanks to SparX patented technology, users can immersively visualize a space’s potential and change the design by functionality, style and budget,” Lowenthal says. 

While other companies do offer technology used to show house listings, including digital imagery to furnish an empty home, none use AR to recreate a fully furnished apartment or house while actually standing inside the property, he explains. 

“The future of home visualization,” he says, “is here.”  

The post Augmented Reality App Makes Empty House Into Potential Home appeared first on NoCamels.

How do you maximize food production and prevent waste in your supply chain at a time when climate change and a growing global population are placing an increasing strain on resources? 

According to Israeli startup Blue Circle, you do it in the same way you protect your technology from hackers: with artificial intelligence, machine learning and huge amounts of data. 

This data-led approach, the company says, helps to reduce the approximately 30 percent of food that is wasted worldwide each year along the production chain – a statistic borne out by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 

The FAO says there are around 870 million on the planet who do not have enough to eat, and reducing the world’s food wastage by just one quarter would end global hunger. 

Blue Circle CEO Ilai Englard tells NoCamels that the company aims to build on existing agricultural practices, using sophisticated technology to better help understand the situation on the ground and how the supply chain can be optimized. 

“We have a [supply] chain that is extremely complex, and it’s impossible for a human being to understand what’s going on across the network, all the time,” Englard explains. 

“We look at the entire value chain from the climate and environment all the way to the consumer and everything in between,” he says. “The harvest and the production and inventory and sales and distribution, all of that – end to end.” 

Added to this information is all the scientific research available about a particular crop, including weather and climate data, information about disease and pests, and prices and inventory.  

And then, Englard explains, all of this information is fed into the company’s specially built AI platform, which uses it to provide insights into a particular crop. This helps farmers to better understand what is happening on the ground, and whether the multitude of factors that go into crop production are all on track. 

The Tel Aviv-based company was founded in 2018, with backing from venture capitalists and private investors. And with such a forensic approach to the food production process, it is no surprise that the creators have defense tech experience, coming from the Israel Defense Forces’ renowned signal intelligence unit 8200. 

This deep experience of digital processes and the holistic focus on the food supply chain are what sets Blue Circle apart, Englard says, rather than concentrating on individual issues such as irrigation or pest control like many other companies in the field.  

“The chain is very, very complex,” he says. “So you have to understand – in order to really make an impact, you need to understand the entire chain.” 

Englard gives the example of the wine industry, whose long years of meticulous record keeping makes it “ideal” for the data-conscious Blue Circle platform.  

“This industry has decades of very rich data,” he says. ”They know exactly what happened in the vineyards and what they planted; how they treated each and every vineyard over the years and when they harvested and what the grape profile was.” 

This data-focused method covers every stage of the wine growing process, which he says will allow Blue Circle to help increase the flexibility across the entire production chain, allowing wineries to improve efficiency, quality and profitability, while also conserving resources.

He cites the example of wineries in Napa Valley, an area of California famed for its vineyards, where a period of little rain and slightly lowered temperatures led the platform to predict a longer growing season, which in turn meant an increased risk of yield loss due to disease. This allowed the wineries to be ready for these outcomes. 

The company works with a number of vineyards in Israel and abroad, including some of the largest wineries in the world, as they manage current and prepare for future challenges due to climate change. And it wants to expand its reach across the food production world. 

“The basic intelligence for our system is something that we want to make accessible to everyone – this is our vision,” Englard says.

The post A Cybersecurity Approach To Cutting Food Waste appeared first on NoCamels.

In 1976, a Philadelphia hotel hosted an annual convention to celebrate American war vets – but just days after its close, 25 attendees had died of what was believed to be a spate of sudden heart attacks.

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) later found that a specific bacterium – bred in the cooling tower of the hotel’s air conditioning system and spread throughout the building – was the true cause of the tragedy. 

Since then, Legionnaires’ disease – named for the veterans’ convention that had been staged by the American Legion at the hotel – has infected thousands of people every year. 

The Legionella bacteria, which attacks the lungs, is potentially deadly and can infect people who accidentally swallow or merely breathe in small droplets of infected water. 

Today environmentally friendly, chemical free technology developed by an Israeli firm is being used to cleanse cooling and heating towers of the bacteria and to prevent potential outbreaks. 

On average 1 in 10 people who are infected with Legionnaires’ will die of complications from it, the CDC reports. This figure rises to 1 in 4 for people who contract in this serious form of pneumonia in a healthcare facility.  

Cleaning Solution 

CET Enviro uses electric currents to purify the water circulating through power plants, industrial chillers and the air conditioning systems in businesses, hotels and other residential facilities.  

Every 40 minutes, the solution automatically funnels the water in these systems into a CET Enviro reaction tank placed on the roof of a building. In the tank, electrolysis generates strong oxidizing agents to inhibit the growth of Legionella bacteria by breaking the funneled water down to its basic, unbonded elements of hydrogen and oxygen.

These oxidizing agents include naturally occuring chlorine, which can rid a cooling system of the Legionella bacteria by attacking its cell walls and breaking down its chemical bonds, causing it to literally fall apart.

“Our system is always cleaning, always filtering, always moving the water around,” says Asaf Dahan, CET Enviro’s chief product officer. 

Several other companies use electrolysis to clean water too, but what sets CET Enviro apart are several secret features within the reaction tank, according to Dahan.

“Electrolysis isn’t anything new – but we’ve patented add-ons to it that have improved the process,” he says.

What’s more, says Dahan, CET Enviro uses advanced sensors within its systems to gather data that isn’t normally collected by other water-cleaning companies, including the levels of pH and foreign substances in the water. 

This allows CET Enviro to flag pollution issues within the cooling towers such as limescale and corrosion, before they become a serious problem and also cause disease. 

The company says that its automated, online system also cuts energy costs by 15 percent, decreases water usage by up to 40 percent and slashes labor costs by up to half. 

Most companies in the industrial and commercial cooling sector, according to Dahan, primarily use harsh chemicals – such as hydrochloric, sulfamic and methane sulfonic acid – to clean their water coolers.

The environmental impact of these chemicals aside, CET Enviro says they also fail to provide a permanent solution to preventing and eliminating the growth of Legionella. 

Furthermore, such products are expensive and pose the risk of accidental toxic contamination for the workers who have to handle them. 

Since its creation in 2015 by cleantech entrepreneur Tsur Ben David, CET Enviro has installed its systems in over 2,000 buildings worldwide. The firm is based in Pune, India, and conducts its R&D out of Israel. 

Multiple sectors are already using the solution, CET Enviro says, including hotels and malls, pharma giant Teva, and even global electronics leader Samsung.

“We’re always searching for ways to improve our product while trying to understand the needs of our customers,” says Dahan. “We have different data and a different approach.”  

The post Thwarting Deadly Lung Disease By Electrifying Water Reserves appeared first on NoCamels.

Beekeepers have a sixth sense. They listen to the buzz of their hive and instantly know the health of the bees.

That’s fine if you have just a handful of hives. But bees are big business and big bee companies typically have thousands or tens of thousands of hives.

Farmers rent them as they need them to ensure their crops are pollinated (technology has yet to create a truly viable alternative to bees).

Relying on the instincts of a time-served beekeeper to flag a problem with the winged insects isn’t an option, which is where BeeHero comes in.

The Israeli company, founded in 2017, leads the world in monitoring beehives, and is the largest provider of pollination services globally.

It’s also among 20 of the Startup Nation’s top innovators, which have been chosen to represent the country at COP28, the United Nations Climate Change Conference that starts in the UAE at the end of November.

Its tiny in-hive sensors – about the size of an AirPods case – saved the lives of a quarter of a billion bees in 2022.

The sensors act as a pair of eyes, ears and more right inside the hive, relaying real-time information on the health of the bees and warning of any issues that need attention, such as extremes of temperature or the demise of the queen bee.

The sensors collect a vast array of data, including sound, light, temperature, vibration, humidity and GPS location.

Artificial intelligence identifies any concerns and the system alerts the farmer on their smartphone or other device.

BeeHero’s customers are the farmers whose crops will fail if they’re not properly pollinated.

They rent hundreds or even thousands of hives for the critical weeks when they require bee pollination for their orchards of apples, avocado, cherries, cucumbers, squash or just about any other crop.

If the hives are sick or depleted, the bees can’t do the job properly. Pollination accounts, by the way, for 80 percent of total bee business. Honey production is, by comparison, a sideline.

Eytan Schwartz, VP Global Strategy at BeeHero, says almost half (48 percent) of all hives in the US are lost every year, but many of the bee deaths could be prevented. Farmers working with BeeHero report a loss of just 27 per cent.

Schwartz says that the company offers monitored hives and precision pollination as services, and by providing the exact number of bees needed, in the places where they’re needed, farmers have certainty into the pollination process.

“We analyze the size of their field, the type of crop, the density of the crop, the season, the weather, the shape of the field, and so on,” he says.

“What’s happening unfortunately today is that farmers all over the world are ordering bees for pollination, renting maybe 10,000, maybe 50,000 hives, knowing that some of them will arrive on their fields empty. So essentially they’re paying for a product they’re not getting.

“Worse, they’re not getting the pollination they need and they’re losing the entire yield in that area.”

Monitoring beehives on such a large scale, and with such precision, is arguably the biggest disruption ever to hit a traditionally conservative business sector.

“The only innovation introduced into beekeeping in the last centuries was the invention of the motorized vehicle to transfer hives,” says Schwartz.

“I think what is very, very unique about BeeHero is the understanding our founders had a few years ago that there must be a way to apply Big Data, algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence into a legacy industry that hasn’t changed in hundreds of years.”

Schwartz says that the founders began to experiment with hive monitoring systems, highlighting the strong backgrounds of co-founder and CEO Omer Davidi and CTO Yuval Regev in technology, cybersecurity and Big Data.

“Itai Kanot, our COO, is a second-generation beekeeper born on the largest private apiary in Israel, owned by his father,” he adds.

“Every year, he saw how the hives were weakening. At the same time growing up on a moshav, an agricultural community, he saw how innovation was being introduced to many other fields, how tractors were driving almost on their own, how smart irrigation and fertilization were improving yields.

“He was the only kid on the moshav whose father was still doing things the way generations before him had been doing it.”

Kanot and his fellow founders embraced emerging technologies to create the simple plug-and-play unit that currently sits unobtrusively inside 220,000 beehives across the world.

BeeHero is far from the only hive monitoring system on the market. But most are aimed at the hobby beekeepers who want to increase their honey yield, rather than the pollination business, says Schwartz.

Their devices tend to be rather expensive, he says, and therefore not very scalable to thousands of hives.

Bees are critical to global food security. Albert Einstein famously said: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Twenty years ago, scientists identified “colony collapse disorder” among US bees – caused by a combination of modern agricultural methods, climate change, new pesticides, new mites and parasites into the ecosystem, large fields of only one type of crop, the lack of water and other resources.

BeeHero is at the forefront of addressing the critical issue of global bee health, so it’s not hard to understand why it’s been selected to attend COP28.

“We are thrilled to be representing Israel at COP28 and to take part in one of the most important global endeavors to address climate change,” says CEO Omer Davidi.

“Being selected for this honor demonstrates that our efforts to secure the global food supply are not only recognized, but truly pioneering.

“We look forward to participating in the dialogue and to continuing to leverage nature’s data to enhance bee welfare and create a more sustainable agriculture landscape.”

The post Hive Mind: Keeping An Eye – And Ear – On Billions Of Bees appeared first on NoCamels.

As the digital world expands to every area of our lives, we have become used to automated banking – with our transactions carried out instantly and with just one click. 

But behind the ease with which we move our money about is still a meticulous process of verification, known as compliance, ensuring that our transactions abide by the letter of the law and are innocent of financial crime.  

Israeli company Thetaray has developed a new AI platform that “intuits” that the billions of dollars, euros and even shekels that are moved around the world every day are untouched by the money laundering carried out by drug cartels, terror groups and even human traffickers. 

And unlike other companies that will inadvertently flag innocuous transactions, Thetaray maintains that SONAR almost always only singles out genuinely problematic requests.  

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), money laundering usually follows three steps: placement, or moving money from a direct link to a crime; layering, or hiding the money trail to make illicit funds hard to track; and integration, or making the money appear to be from a legitimate source.  

All of these steps rely on financial institutions failing to spot the origins of the money – and the statistics show that do often they slide through the cracks, however much time and manpower is devoted to thwarting such endeavors. 

Global Operations

The UNODC estimates that between 2 and 5 percent of the global GDP – some $800 billion – is laundered every year. It points out, however, that it is hard to know the true sum due to the secretive nature of the process. 

Thetaray’s SONAR is a cloud-based Software as a Service (Saas) platform that plows through all the data of a financial institution, raising a red flag about any transaction that could be illicit in nature. 

It works by ignoring the painstaking, established “rules based” monitoring of transactions that raises multiple false positives, Thetaray CEO Peter Reynolds tells NoCamels, and instead seeks out unusual yet apparently harmless behavior that might otherwise slip through the net. 

Reynolds says that this means that SONAR has 95 percent less false positives as compared to other transaction verification programs, requiring less time and effort on false alarms and making it easier to spot genuine money laundering. 

“If you and I worked in compliance, and we got 95 percent less alerts to look at and all those alerts were very detection worthy, you have much less to look at and the ones that [SONAR] did give you to look at were financial crimes,” Reynolds explains. 

People trying to launder money are just as cognizant of the rules and the violations that sound an alert, Reynolds says, and they make every effort to escape notice. 

He cites the example of someone trying to pass multiple transfers of small sums instead of two or three larger transactions. SONAR can spot these indiscernible yet nefarious activities, Reynolds says, due to what he calls its “market-leading, state-of-the-art AI.” 

More Than A Feeling

With machine learning that uses a constant stream of previous transactions to educate the platform about the difference between innocent and corrupt activities, the AI has been taught to intuit when a certain action does not “feel” right.  

“AI intuition is that ability to sniff something out and say: based on everything else we see, based on how other models look, it just doesn’t look like a normal transaction,” Reynolds explains.  

He compares this intuition to the feeling you might get from an entertainment venue that looks innocuous from the outside, but whose location or even exterior façade triggers your sense that something is out of place. It looks perfectly acceptable, Reynolds says, but an innate instinct tells you that this is not quite right. 

Founded in 2013, the Hod Hasharon-based company raised $57 million in its most recent funding round, with backers including Israeli entrepreneur Erel Margalit’s JVP and the Jerusalem-based OurCrowd. 

SONAR is used by dozens of financial institutions worldwide, among them Santander, Payoneer, ClearBank and MFS Africa, and is hosted on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure. 

According to Reynolds, SONAR’s ability to weed out just the genuinely problematic transactions and ignore the “noise” is financially beneficial to companies who can relocate resources that previously went on the crucial work of monitoring transactions in order to meet international regulatory standards.  

“It’s almost like turning compliance into a profit center because you can start to process the transactions that have no risk,” he says. “The transactions that are bad, you absolutely stop.”

The post AI Money Laundering Watchdog That ‘Senses’ A Financial Crime  appeared first on NoCamels.

Moshe, a computer programmer who suffers from a life-long stutter, tried every kind of treatment to ease the jaw spasms, severe facial twitches and feelings of suffocation he experienced whenever he spoke.

But every time he’d step out of a clinic or treatment center, he had no way of preserving the methods he had just been taught to manage his condition.

That’s when he decided to use his technological skills to develop an algorithm capable of analyzing and monitoring his speech to ensure he was practicing these various stuttering techniques correctly.

Six years later, he joined forces with speech language pathologists to create Novotalk – a startup that integrates his AI with established fluency strategies to help stutterers manage their condition anytime, anywhere. The online training can be used on a computer, tablet or even smartphone. 

Around 80 million people worldwide – or one percent of the global population – suffer from a stutter.

According to the US-based National Stuttering Association, there is no unique factor that causes stuttering, but most believe it is down to a combination of environment, genetics and language development.  

The 12-week speech therapy course combines clinically-validated Fluency Shaping Methods from Hadassah Medical Center in Ein Kerem, Jerusalem with sophisticated AI to create personalized exercises for its users. 

“The program’s techniques use the elasticity of the brain in order to [improve a person’s stutter], while also implementing these techniques in the real world,” Zohar Be’eri, CEO of Novotalk, tells NoCamels.

“We’ve seen that many people who are successful with the clinical technique of Fluency Shaping struggle to implement the techniques when they go outside,” he says. 

Fluency Shaping Methods are known to ease symptoms of stuttering, but the in-person treatments that employ them are normally intensive, expensive (costing around $5,000) and are only available at select clinics. 

Speak Now

The techniques used by Novotalk include slow and deliberate speaking that has the user stretch the syllables of each word for at least two seconds; deep, diaphragmatic breathing to prevent the feeling of suffocation many stutterers experience when talking; and learning to slowly exhale before starting a sentence.

The system monitors the user during their lesson and provides them with real time feedback as they speak directly into their device to practice these methods. At the end of each session, users receive a summarized report of their performance as well as recommendations for how to improve.

Novotalk also uses the data from each practice to determine the exercises taught during the next lesson, and their difficulty level.

But unlike existing speech therapy apps, the clinicians at Hadassah Medical Center also monitor the user’s progress in the Novotalk program.

The Hadassah speech therapists can view the AI-generated data after a user has completed a lesson, and override the auto-generated feedback and provide their own input to the patient as they see fit. 

They can also override other aspects of the program, such as choosing to advance the user to another lesson or reduce the number of practices per method learned. 

And if they identify any major issues, they can schedule one-on-one meetings with the user through the Novotalk platform.

But the aspect that really sets the program apart from any other, says Be’eri, is its emotional component. Towards the end of the 12 weeks, Novotalk implements Inquiry Based Stress Reduction (IBSR) into its lessons, a method that has been demonstrated to improve mental health and wellbeing in adults. 

IBSR identifies and questions thoughts that cause stress and fear – in this case, scenarios that may cause a person with a stutter to feel anxiety and embarrassment – in order to discover new options and perspectives. 

“It deals with perceptions of the stutter and what prohibits a person with a stutter from implementing the techniques they learn,” explains Be’eri.

“We see them as the yin and yang of our speech therapy platform,” he says. “We can’t do one without the other.”

At the end of the 12 weeks, users can choose to either renew their subscription, or instead purchase a program refresher at a nominal fee. 

Novotalk’s investors include high net-worth individuals; institutions including Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, and grants from the government’s Israel Innovation Authority. 

‘Democratizing Access’ 

Israelis can only receive access to Novotalk’s program after being diagnosed with a stutter, which they can do by scheduling an appointment with Hadassah Medical Center or with speech language pathologists from the startup itself. 

According to Be’eri, hundreds of people in Israel have already successfully used the program to better manage their stutter.

“Novotalk is all about democratizing access to speech therapy, by lowering the price and by making the availability of a clinician not an issue,” says Be’eri. 

In the coming weeks, Novotalk plans to expand its operations to the US, and Be’eri believes that the platform will reach other countries in the near future. 

The startup, which is headquartered in Bnei Brak and conducts its R&D operations in Netanya, both in central Israel, is also developing programs that tackle other kinds of speech impediments, such as problems with vocal cords and voice disorders.  

“Our e-learning platform uses speech and learning pathology to treat these conditions, but you can apply other teaching methods so long [as the AI can measure a patient’s progress using the camera and microphone],” Be’eri explains.

“So this platform has the potential of addressing many, many, many other things.”

The post Programmer With Stutter Creates Online Aid For Fellow Sufferers appeared first on NoCamels.

Tens of thousands of senior citizens in Israel and the US are playing online brainteasers developed by an Israeli startup to help improve their memories and stave off the cognitive decline that can come as we – and our brains – get older. 

Tel Aviv-based Effectivate offers 25 different games for what it calls brain training sessions, all put together by experts in brain training development and specialists in clinical neuropsychology. 

“The idea was to create a product that can help seniors maintain the cognitive abilities that decline with age, which may lead to dementia and Alzheimer’s,” Effectivate CEO and co-founder Shai Granot tells NoCamels. 

Using proprietary artificial intelligence, the platform creates personalized training programs for each individual player. 

This AI gathers data about the players from their gaming sessions – what they found challenging and what they found easy – in order to choose the specific games and level of difficulty for the next time they play.

The games are created with input from Effectivate’s advisory team of neuropsychologists and brain researchers. The team includes Dr. Mor Nahum, an expert in brain training development and research and head of the Computerized Neuroscience Laboratory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Dr. Gil Suzin, who specializes in cognitive and memory rehabilitation and is head of neurocognitive operations at Aviv Clinics.

Granot says that unlike “one-size fits all” approach of brain-training programs such as Lumosity and BrainHQ, all of Effectivate’s content and design is created with older people in mind.  

One game, for instance, instructs the player to indicate every time balls moving around a closed loop reach a specific location, with the balls gradually becoming faster and faster.

The company says that this exercise strengthens decision-making abilities, skills that are known to weaken with the onset of cognitive decline. 

Another timed game asks the player to pick out from a list of shapes the ones that they had previously clicked on. This is intended to help seniors keep their focus on important information as they perform tasks in real life.

Effectivate says its claims that the games prevent cognitive decline in the elderly are supported by academic research conducted by the Communication Aging and Neuropsychology Lab (CANlab) at Reichman University in Herzliya. 

The CANlab study split 40 adults aged between 60 and 75 years into two groups of 20. The members of one group were instructed to play Effectivate games at least three times a week for five weeks while the members of the other group did not play any brain-training games. 

After six weeks, the study found that participants who played Effectivate games were able to process more information at a faster pace in a noisy environment as compared to those who played no games.

The CANlab researchers tested this by recording eye movements as the participants from both groups played a simple computer game.

The game used auditory cues to instruct the players to point at a specific object on the screen and ignore three other objects that had similar sounding names while background noise became increasingly louder.  

The Effectivate players reacted more quickly and had fewer mistakes, the study found, suggesting that they were able to use the skills they sharpened during the cognitive training games in other, unrelated activities – a phenomenon known as “far transfer.”  

Brain Boosting 

Granot began to develop Effectivate’s platform after his father was diagnosed with dementia in 2015.

“It was a surprise, because we didn’t see the signs – even though there were a lot of signs,” he recalls. “Eventually, it led to Alzheimer’s disease.”

He sought a way to prevent the cognitive decline and subsequent development of dementia in other aging individuals, And when he could not find an adequate solution, he set about creating his own.

After every session, a user also receives virtual currency that they can use for a reduction on their next monthly or annual Effectivate subscription, to unlock audiobooks or courses on strengthening the brain or to receive discounts on wellness services. 

Two years ago, the company signed an agreement with Clalit, Israel’s leading health maintenance organization, which now also offers the service to its clients. The HMO website touts Effectivate as an advanced system that helps you get the most out of your brain. 

Effectivate was also a finalist in this year’s MassChallenge Israel accelerator program, a four-month intensive course that helps entrepreneurs advance their nascent companies. 

Since publicly launching the platform in 2021, Effectivate’s games have been played more than 15 million times. 

Just like any other online game, Effectivate faces the challenge of maintaining user retention. To combat this and to keep players engaged, the platform offers new games the more you play – some are unlocked after one training session, while others may require dozens of sessions. 

“Whenever we develop a new game, we think about what we want to achieve, which cognitive abilities we want to work on, and most importantly, how to make the experience fun and interesting for our players,” says Granot.

“You train your brain through our games, but you’re not only getting better in the games, you’re getting better with performing daily tasks.”

The post Brain Games Keeping Our Minds Sharp As We Age appeared first on NoCamels.

Indoor drones developed by an Israeli startup are on security patrol.

They’re flying along the corridors of office buildings and they’re keeping an eye on warehouses, factories, data centers and other premises.

The AI-powered drones drop from their ceiling-mounted docking stations autonomously, fly their pre-planned route and raise an alert if they spot intruders, doors that should be closed, maintenance issues, missing fire extinguishers and more.

The job they do has traditionally been carried out either through human inspections or by fixed security cameras.

But unlike the human guards who would otherwise be on duty, the drones don’t get bored, they don’t need to nip outside for a cigarette, and they are ultra-reliable.

They also report far fewer false positives than sensors (think of the last time you heard a burglar alarm that was actually triggered by a burglar).

Indoor Robotics, based in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, says it’s at the forefront of what’s called the “indoor monitoring market” with its Tando drones.

The future, says CEO Doron Ben David, is drones. They’re fitted with extra-high-res sensors and cameras that record 360-degree video and use AI to interpret what they see.

The company deployed its first indoor drones commercially a couple of years ago. Their biggest market currently is out-of-hours patrols in office buildings, after the workers have gone home.

But they also patrol factories, data centers and other sites on a 24-hour basis, flying over the heads of employees and avoiding obstacles.

Ben David says Osem’s Bamba factory, in Kiryat Gat, southern Israel, is among their customers.

Their drones constantly monitor warehouses where the country’s favorite peanut snack is stored. The biggest day-to-day risk is that a forklift operator will weaken the base of the huge metal stacking shelves by bumping into it – and fail to report it.

The potential consequences could be catastrophic. The drones fly up and down the aisles, inspecting every support and every shelf, checking that the ground-level plastic shields are in place, making sure no screws are missing, and looking for signs of damage.

The shelving can be 30 meters high, says Ben David, which makes it virtually impossible to carry out regular and reliable human checks. But flying that at that altitude is no problem for the drones.

They typically go on patrol every half hour, returning to their docking station for a quick battery top-up – giving them around 10 minutes of flying time – then returning to their work.

All of this is without any human intervention. The drones are completely autonomous, flying, recording and reporting all by themselves.

If there is an emergency or an unexpected issue, they divert from their usual route to investigate.

Ben David says the company has made two key technological breakthroughs that allow the drones to function: mounting them on the ceilings and navigating them through the interior of a building.

“Our drones are actually located on the ceiling of the of the facility, which is a concept we are very proud of,” says Ben David.

“We were the first company and currently, as far as we know, the only company worldwide to implement such a solution.”

The big challenge, he says, was disconnecting the drone from the ceiling and starting the propellers without it hitting the ground.

The even bigger challenge was navigation. “When you’re outside, you have GPS, but when you get indoors, you need centimeter accuracy,” says Ben David.

“We had to develop our own method for indoor localization and mapping. When we started, we couldn’t find any solution that was good enough, so we did it ourselves.”

Indoor Robotics has clients in Israel and the US, and its drones also patrol a United Nations building in Spain.

Other companies are developing floor-based robots, but they don’t have the same reach or maneuverability, says Ben David, and they need human supervision.

He says the startup’s closest rival is Swiss company Verity. It has drones able to monitor warehouse inventory, but doesn’t cover other venues like Indoor Robotics.

Indoor drones are a fraction of the cost of human patrols, says Ben David, who was former chief technology officer at the Space, Missiles and Systems division of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

They’re also cheaper and more effective than surveillance cameras. He says an average shopping mall has 300 security cameras. “If you design the mall to work with our products, you could probably put in 100 cameras and five drones and get better coverage,” he says.

But indoor drones are still a surprise to most people, and that’s one of things that Ben David has to deal with.

He tells how a new cleaner at their own offices unexpectedly encountered a drone one morning at 5am and tried to fight it off with a broom.  

“We really are disrupting a very old-fashioned industry,” he says, “and it takes time to gain trust.”

The post Indoor Drones Are On Patrol, Flying In A Building Near You appeared first on NoCamels.

An Israeli startup is using artificial intelligence to make a person’s face unrecognizable, in order to safeguard their privacy in medical imagery. 

RealizeMD subtly alters facial features through an AI process of manipulation, turning the patient into someone else entirely and preserving only original properties of the specific area that underwent reconstructive or cosmetic treatment. 

The anonymized pictures can then be used freely in before-and-after imaging for medical procedures. 

Founded in 2020, the Givatayim-based company uses proprietary algorithms that preserve the integrity of an image only in the parts that show the outcome of reconstructive and cosmetic procedures. This, the company says, makes the images suitable for clinical use without violating patient privacy. 

The company was formed after a relative of RealizeMD CEO Uri Neeman was diagnosed with breast cancer. The person was reluctant to undergo vital preventive medical intervention, including a mastectomy, fearing that the lack of sufficiently anonymous before-and-after images could expose their identity. 

According to the company, Neeman’s family member was not alone in this experience. This inspired Neeman to research the issue and its implications for patients, and a year later, RealizeMD was born.

Together with his team, Neeman developed a platform that is now past the minimum viable product (MVP) stage – the initial phase for a new startup in which it creates a first workable and marketable version of its product. 

Legal Duty Of Care

The platform, which has both mobile and desktop versions, enables physicians to work with images of just a single person or an entire database of patients. 

For as well as the concerns of those undergoing the treatments, medical professionals around the world must abide by standards enacted since the advent of the internet, which protect the privacy and confidentiality of their patients. 

In the US, for example, physicians are bound by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (more commonly known as HIPAA) while for European Union member states, it is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

These legally binding safeguards on patient privacy now mean that medical professionals cannot fully show examples of successful procedures that they have performed. 

“The medical aesthetic industry has a lot of privacy regulations that are very difficult to overcome when it comes to showing their before and after images. We are using our technology to completely change that,” Neeman tells NoCamels. 

He says that physicians have possession of thousands of before-and-after images showcasing “the wonderful work they’ve done,” but that they are essentially unusable.  

The RealizeMD platform is both HIPAA and GDPR compliant, which Neeman insists is crucial for the company, and suitable for the fields of plastic surgery, dentistry, ophthalmology and medical aesthetics. 

Citing the importance of cooperation with medical professionals in these fields, Neeman says RealizeMD recruited New York-based plastic surgeon Dr. David P. Rapaport as its chief medical officer. 

“He was able to share with us the problems that he has when trying to overcome the inability to show his experience,” says Neeman.

RealizeMD allows a physician to upload images from a successful surgical procedure to its server. And, the company says, within 20 seconds, they will receive an anonymized version of each, disguising every identifying feature save for the impacted area. The user even has the option of a range of new faces to ensure total anonymity.

These images can be used to show prospective patients the results of previous surgeries while protecting the identity of the ones who underwent the treatment. 

“You gain confidence by seeing that someone very similar to you has undergone the treatment,” Neeman says. 

“Everyone knows that Photoshop can make you pretty, but the only question is, is that real? Can you really achieve such results? And the only way to understand that is if you can see people who have undergone these surgeries,” he explains.

Physicians and medical institutions will be able to access the platform via subscription. And according to Neeman, there is high demand for this tool in the medical community. 

“Just on our MVP, with a few clinics, we have already north of a million images,” he says. 

Neeman explains that while the problem of patient confidentiality in before and after images is something that other companies have sought to address, they took a different, less automated approach. 

“They don’t have the same technology and they’ve chosen the route of manual Photoshop creation and filtering technologies,” he says. 

Earlier this year, the startup was one of the winners of the annual Early-Stage Accelerator Program held by the Israeli branch of MassChallenge, a global nonprofit accelerator dedicated to supporting impactful, emerging entrepreneurs. 

The winners were invited on an all-expenses paid investor roadshow to New York and Boston, to meet with business leaders, local officials and potential investors.

The company has so far raised $1M in pre-seed funding, and in April received its first patent in the US, where it expects to go commercial by the end of the year. 

It has since applied for a second patent, and, with an eye on a global market, is taking legal measures to expand both worldwide.

Neeman says he is dedicated to “bringing this change in this world and creating this new knowledge.”  

The post AI Startup Gives You A New Face To Protect Your Medical Privacy appeared first on NoCamels.

 An Israeli startup has bioengineered milk protein to create a wide range of dairy products – using mushrooms and no cows. And, the company says, their products are healthier, greener and cheaper to create. 

Haifa-based ImaginDairy uses freely available DNA codes for milk proteins to recreate their DNA, the company’s CEO and co-founder Eyal Afergan tells NoCamels. The data is even available on the website of the US government’s National Center for Biotechnology Information.  

There are two major proteins in milk – whey and casein, Afergan explains. These proteins are present in every single milk-based food. Casein makes up about 80 percent of the protein in bovine milk, and whey about 20 percent. 

Using a process called precision fermentation, ImaginDairy has recreated these proteins in the lab in order to generate every kind of dairy product. And according to the company, the taste is identical to the original. 

This process modifies microorganisms to create certain proteins and other compounds by inserting genes into their existing DNA. Afergan says that the process has been in use in the food industry for more than four decades. 

“We aren’t using something unique,” he says. What is unique, however, is the way in which it is applied. 

The modified DNA is inserted into a “specific location” inside the DNA of the fungus, Afergan says, which then causes the mushroom to produce the milk protein. 

“We basically hijack the fungi’s regulatory elements and production facility and the fungus starts to produce our target protein,” he says.

Mushrooms are easy and cost effective to grow, doubling in size every 24 hours, and they can be picked just four days after they are visible in the soil.  

Once the harvested mushroom has produced the required milk protein, Afergan explains, ImaginDairy adds plant-based fats, carbohydrates and other ingredients in order to create the specific dairy products, such as milk or cheese or even ice cream.  

Plant-based fats are commonly found in foods such as flaxseeds, coconuts, hemp seeds, avocados, olives, nuts and sesame seeds. 

Afergan, whose background is in biochemical engineering, says the company’s proprietary process was developed over the last 20 years by Prof. Tamir Tuller, ImaginDairy’s co-founder and CSO, who heads the Computational Systems and Synthetic Biology lab at Tel Aviv University.  

Quality Production 

According to Afergan, the ImaginDairy production method is superior to animal-created dairy foods in a variety of ways. 

The ImaginDairy process is far cleaner and vastly less ecologically costly than using animal farming to obtain milk. Dairy farming, he points out, takes a vast environmental toll on the planet’s resources. 

Indeed, according to the World Wildlife Fund, there are currently 270 million cows being used in dairy farming across the globe. And demand is rising in many parts of the world as populations grow, and non-Western nations that traditionally consume less milk are incorporating more of it into their diets. 

This, the WWF warns, is placing growing pressure on Earth’s natural resources such as freshwater and soil, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and eating up environmentally critical areas such as prairies and forests to create pastures for the cows to graze. What is more, overgrazing and the trampling of animal hooves can cause extreme damage to the earth that could take hundreds of years to recover from. 

“Our process is by far much, much more eco friendly,” says Afergan. 

Because the production process is lab-based, he explains, the company uses more than 90 percent less water than the traditional dairy industry. It also produces 97 percent less carbon emissions and requires just one percent of the land needed by the traditional dairy industry. 

Just as importantly, ImaginDairy says, its process produces zero methane – a greenhouse gas that is one of the biggest causes of global warming and one produced in great amounts by a cow’s digestive system. 

The lab-developed dairy products are also beneficial to the health of the consumer, Afergan claims. 

“We keep all the superior nutritional benefits of milk, but remove the lactose,” he says of the sugar found naturally in milk. 

He points out that around 65% of the world’s population cannot properly absorb lactose, a statistic supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services. 

The ImaginDairy process also has no cholesterol, hormones or antibiotics in its products, he says, and because no cows were physically involved in the creation of the protein, it is even suitable for vegans.

The company is not the only one in the world using precision fermentation to create milk proteins, but Afergan says that the way in which they are working leads to uniquely high volumes of dairy products.   

The conversation surrounding dairy farming today is about its high cost and low volume, he explains. 

Big Business 

The dairy farming market is worth huge amounts annually. In 2022, it was valued at around $893 billion, and is expected to reach $1,243 billion in the next five years.  

“ImaginDairy wants to change the equation,” he says. 

“We use state-of-the-art technology [that has] allowed us to drive productivity very high. Think about a cow that gives you one liter of milk a day versus 40 liters of milk. Our technology allows us to push… to produce more and more milk.”  

Funding for the project came initially from the government-owned Israel Innovation Authority; the Kitchen Hub, a food tech project by Israeli food giant Strauss and various venture capitalists.

And now ImaginDairy has recently received investment from the Danone Group – one of the world’s largest dairy companies and producers of alternative milks. 

While its dairy products are not on the market, the company has already developed a range of products, including yogurt, milk, ice cream and cheese, on a commercial scale. 

The products have received a Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) classification from the US Food and Drug Agency, which means that they can be sold in American stores. 

The United States is the company’s first targeted location, with the Israeli market next on the list.  

“Our technology enjoys the benefits of both worlds,” Afergan says. “The planet  from an environmental perspective and nutrition-wise from the dairy, so it’s a win-win for everyone.”

The post Using Dairy DNA, Startup Is Making Milk From Mushrooms appeared first on NoCamels.

A new treatment for people with peanut allergies may decrease the severity of the life-threatening symptoms they experience upon accidental exposure to the seed.

While the therapy developed by Israeli startup Ukko is similar to the existing oral immunotherapy (OIT) treatment, the company says it does not carry the risk of triggering anaphylaxis. 

OIT builds a tolerance to peanuts over the course of six months by exposing a person to gradually increasing amounts of peanut protein. Ukko, on the other hand, has engineered peanut protein to exclude the parts that cause an allergic reaction. According to the company, this helps to safely train the immune system to build up tolerance. 

The startup collected hundreds of blood samples from people with peanut allergies in order to “map” the intolerance. This process means determining and isolating the parts of the peanut protein that trigger an allergic reaction and those that help train the immune system. 

Ukko trained its algorithms with this data until it was able to precisely identify which parts of the protein needed to be “edited” out by its team of biotech engineers. 

Now, after years of testing protein variants identified by its AI algorithms, Ukko believes it has finally cracked the code, and will be testing the therapy in human clinical trials for the first time early next year. 

“We want to break this deadlock between safety and efficacy, and design the protein so that we keep the good parts that actually help train your immune system and [eventually] help you not react as badly to peanuts out in the wild,” Anat Binur, CEO and co-founder of Ukko, tells NoCamels. 

And though the startup has found what it believes is the perfectly engineered protein to build up a tolerance to peanuts, she says the final results depend on the individual and the severity of their allergy. Nonetheless, she says, the treatment is still a massive improvement on existing therapies. To date, no treatment has been able to rid a person of their peanut allergy completely. 

“It depends on the child or adult and how they reacted to the treatment itself,” Binur explains. “At minimum, they will be able to tolerate a few peanuts all the way to a bag of Bamba.”

Binur was referring to an Israeli children’s snack made of peanut butter-flavored puffed maize, whose consumption from an early age is often credited with lower levels of peanut allergy in Israel. 

Only after it has gathered results from the trial will the startup know whether the therapy will be a one-time shot, or a treatment that requires frequent boosters – like the allergy shots administered to people with sensitivities to pet dander, insect stings and pollen. 

Either way, Binur says, the company believes its therapy is less restrictive than what is available today. 

“We don’t know yet how Ukko’s therapy will play out as far as the immune modulation we can get,” she says. 

“The important thing to remember is that this will be a treatment that will be far easier to go through, with far less limitations on lifestyle.”  

Ukko – which shares its name with the god of harvest in Finnish mythology – was founded in 2017, and has headquarters in both Rehovot in central Israel and in Boston.

Dangerous Trend

Research has shown that the rates of food allergies are increasing, with today more than seven percent of the global population suffering from a food allergy. 

For example, Britain’s National Health Service last month said that the number of dangerous allergic reactions in England has more than doubled in the past 20 years and is now responsible for around 25,000 hospital stays a year.  

There is no clear explanation as to why this trend is taking place. Theories range from Vitamin D deficiency to improved hygiene making our bodies less resilient as we battle fewer infections and parasites.

But this trend is one of the factors driving Ukko to continue development of its technology, which Binur says has the potential to help ease reactions to any of the major food allergens. 

Ukko is not the only company trying to rid people of the symptoms caused by food allergies. Aimmune Therapeutics, which was acquired by Nestlé in 2020, has developed Palforzia, the first and only FDA-approved treatment to help children decrease their sensitivity to small amounts of peanuts over time.

San Francisco-based IgGenix hopes to create an injection that patients can receive every two months to prevent allergic reactions. They take blood samples from individuals with severe allergies and re-engineer the antibodies they produce during an allergic reaction.

But Binur believes Ukko has the advantage due to its advanced AI and protein design, which allows the company to define the desired characteristics of the allergen’s protein and engineer it in a quick and cheap way.  

In 2021, the startup was singled out at the World Changing Ideas Awards, a competition by popular American business magazine Fast Company that honors organizations that are developing creative solutions to pressing issues.

Since its creation, Ukko has raised over $47 million through investors that include American VC Khosla Ventures, Herzliya-based VC Innovation Endeavors and multinational farming corporation Continental Group Company.

Binur is optimistic about the upcoming clinical trials, which she says will be groundbreaking.

“No one’s ever done exactly what Ukko is doing,” she says. 

“Our goal is to first see that we can provide immunotherapy for patients in an effective way. Whether this will open up the door to go beyond, I hope so, because that would really be my wish – to improve patients’ lives.”

The post AI-Led Peanut Allergy Treatment Offers Hope For Severely Affected appeared first on NoCamels.

Music has long been lauded as a rapid mood improver, as it boosts the brain’s production of dopamine and serotonin, aka “happy hormones.” 

But now an Israeli startup is using music and its positive impact to determine potential mental deterioration in the elderly, by simply having them perform tests that involve listening to a range of musical instruments. 

The test, which is being developed by Herzliya-based Neurosteer, will soon be submitted for clearance by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the early detection of Parkinson’s Disease as well as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. 

During the 15-minute examination, patients are directed to complete a series of musical tasks, such as pressing a button every time they hear a particular melody or identify a specific instrument, while sensors on their scalp record their brain activity. 

The sensors are connected to a highly sensitive, pocket-sized electroencephalogram (EEG) device specially designed by the company. An EEG device is normally a stationary machine found only in medical centers, which is used to diagnose brain disorders by recording electrical activity in the brain. 

The Neurosteer device also detects electrical activity in the brain’s frontal lobe and separates it into different neural networks. It then uses proprietary AI to assess the interaction between those networks in real time, offering an insight into how well the brain is functioning. The device has already been approved by the FDA for general use.

Mood Lightener 

The startup’s musical tests and AI algorithms were developed by Neta Maimon, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University (TAU) School of Psychological Sciences and the School of Music. 

She says that music was chosen as a stimulus because of its impact on the brain. 

“With music, I can actually put the patient into the optimal state to conduct the tests,” Maimon tells NoCamels. “It’s a very general kind of test, and you don’t need to have musical experience to [take them].” 

Multiple academic studies have shown that music improves a person’s performance while undergoing both mental and physical testing. 

And given the widely accepted principle that music can improve your mood, the startup hypothesized that music-based tasks could test people in an enjoyable and performance-enhancing environment. 

Neurosteer founder and CEO Nathan Intrator, a former professor at TAU School of Computer Sciences, tells NoCamels that music activates the brain so strongly that it can produce almost the same amount of endorphins as produced when carrying out energetic exercise such as running. 

“This enables us to interpret the brain. We induce a certain condition using music, and then look for the response,” he says. 

Brain Business 

Neurosteer says that its unique EEG device offers numerous advantages over a traditional brain scan. 

The traditional device is limited in both diagnosis capability and in patient accessibility. Not only is it restricted to use in laboratories, clinics or universities, it also requires the patient to place up to 256 electrodes onto their scalp and remain still for an extended period.

Furthermore, EEG recordings must be interpreted by qualified specialists, who will then send the results to the doctor who ordered the test. This can potentially lead to weeks of waiting for the patient. 

On the other hand, Neurosteer’s portable device can be operated not just in a clinic, but also in residential facilities. It also has only three electrodes in the adhesive strip placed on the head. 

Unlike Neurosteer’s musical challenge, practical tests of cognitive capabilities (thinking, communication, understanding and memory) commonly focus on correctly identifying the day, month and year; writing a brief, grammatically correct sentence; and memorizing a few objects to be repeated back a short time later. 

But, says Intrator, the outcome of these practical tests can actually be swayed by the environment. If the person carrying out the test is ill-tempered or does not connect well with the patient, for example, the results can be adversely affected. 

This, he explains, is one reason why Neurosteer uses AI and not a person to oversee the outcome of the test. The use of AI also means that the results can be processed and presented in real time.  

Intrator established the startup to address the unmet need of a more efficient and less cumbersome way to interpret brain activity than the traditional EEG.

“My colleagues thought I was crazy, because I was trying to reduce the number of electrodes [in the EEG],” he recalls. “But I realized that I had to try.”

After several years of development at Tel Aviv University, he founded Neurosteer in 2015.

The startup has raised $8 million thus far, mostly from investors who Intrator says share his devotion to his work. 

In 2022, Neurosteer won the Alzheimer’s Innovation Challenge, a competition launched by multinational healthcare company Roche and Israel’s Start-Up Nation Central to find effective and innovative solutions for patients suffering from this form of dementia. 

The brain sensing technology is currently being evaluated in several clinics in the US and in Israel.

Intrator envisions a situation in which brain activity is monitored by a GP in an annual checkup along with blood pressure, heart function and weight. 

“I want someone to take a 15-minute test, and know at the end of it whether they are at high risk of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or other diseases, all before the person even knows that there’s a problem,” he says.

The post Testing For Dementia In The Elderly With Mood-Lifting Music appeared first on NoCamels.

Ziv Better, a nine-time Paralympic swimming medalist who lost nearly all of his eyesight during his service in the Israel Defense Forces, is no stranger to doing laps virtually blind.

But now a new vibrating headband device is giving him what he says is an added sense of security every time he enters the pool. 

Israeli startup EyeCan is developing the smart headband, which alerts swimmers in real time whenever they move from the center of their lane or are approaching an obstacle.

According to both Better and the company, visually impaired swimmers bear the risk of getting disoriented, deviating off the lane, or colliding with obstacles head on – such as the edge of the pool.

The device is equipped with a camera that continuously scans the bottom of the pool and the area in front of the swimmer. This data is then sent to the “brain” of the headband, a processor located at the back of the device, which dispatches alerts to two chips located on either side of the swimmer’s head.  

The chips use bone conduction, a kind of technology that sends sounds to the inner ear through the bones of the skull without having to block the ear itself. 

Amit Fisher, CEO and co-founder of EyeCan, says this is an essential product for the blind or visually impaired swimmer, as there is currently no technological solution allowing them to swim independently.

“Almost one third of the world’s population suffer from vision complications – 2.2 billion to be exact,” he tells NoCamels.

“But in today’s world, blind and visually impaired swimmers get hit on their head with a ‘tapper’ [a soft, pole-like stick held by another person] every time they reach the edge of the pool,” Fisher explains.

And for the most part, tappers are reserved for Paralympic swimmers. They’re used by the para-swimmers’ coaches so they know when to turn as they swim towards the walls of the pool at high speeds.

People who swim for leisure or for exercise do not normally have a person waiting at the edge of the pool with a stick. Fisher says that when these swimmers become disoriented or injured by hitting obstacles like floating lane dividers, it diminishes their motivation to keep swimming and training.

“The important thing is that feelings of independence and self-confidence are getting damaged,” Fisher says.

Swimming With Style

The Tel Aviv-based startup is developing its smart headband in two central ways.

It is continuing to train the processor’s algorithm by equipping swimmers with wearable cameras, and using the videos they record while in the water to help identify obstacles and whenever they stray from the center of the lane.

Whenever a swimmer deviates from their lane or approaches an obstacle, the EyeCan developers at poolside will send vibrations to their chip, an “off-the-shelf” piece of technology that needs no special development. 

EyeCan is also working on a cameraless prototype used by visually impaired swimmers in order to receive feedback on the device’s efficacy and comfort. 

Fisher believes that both kinds of tests are crucial, explaining that it is very difficult to understand what is suitable for blind people when you aren’t living with the disability yourself.

“It’s important to receive their input every step of the way,” he says. 

“What we gain from this, as an early-stage startup, is being able to develop the algorithm, and have users test it at the same time.”  

Most swimmers who tested the product wanted a natural-looking and inconspicuous product, he says. As such, the headband will resemble regular swimwear, and will be made with the same materials as goggles. It will also come in shades of blue to blend in with the water.

EyeCan was established in 2022 by Fisher and co-founder Tomer Etinger – both of whom have family members with disabilities – after the two studied industrial design to make products for people with disabilities.

As part of their studies, they visited Beit HaLohem (Warrior House), a rehabilitation, sports and recreation center for disabled veterans in Tel Aviv.

It was there they first met Better, who lost nearly all of his eyesight during the 1982 Lebanon War, when as an officer he stepped on a mine while trying to save one of his soldiers. Better was the first person to test the prototype, and today serves as an advisor to the startup.

“There are many people who are visually impaired and are afraid to even start [swimming],” Better told the Israeli media.

“This product can get more and more people – from young children to the elderly – into the water to swim.”

EyeCan says it has no direct competitors and says that there are in fact not enough products on the market designed for visually impaired people. 

Students at Loughborough University in England were developing two wearable devices using tech like infrared beams and computer vision to determine the presence of obstacles and the proximity of the swimmer to the pool wall. But neither has issued updates since 2021.

EyeCan has thus far received a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority of a little over $30,000, and is currently in the process of fundraising. Fisher believes that with investment, the final product will be ready for market within 18 months.

The company was also part of 8200 Impact, a five-month intensive acceleration program for startups that aim to solve significant social problems through technology. The program was created by former members of the IDF’s 8200, a specialist unit monitoring signal intelligence. 

When the product is fully developed, Fisher envisions it being distributed by leading sport brands such as Speedo and Nike, as well as by organizations that support blind and visually impaired people.

“Swimming is a kind of therapy,” says Fisher. “It is really important for us to make swimming independent.” 

The post Smart Headband Gives Blind Swimmers Confidence In The Pool appeared first on NoCamels.

An Israeli startup has found a way of mapping how each food tastes – its levels of sweetness, saltiness and even sourness – with the aim of creating the perfect meal tailored to your taste buds every time.  

MAMAY Technologies uses an AI-powered algorithm capable of determining the “objective” taste of a food or beverage product – and plans to expand it to evaluate every taste in order to create the meal with just the right balance of flavors. 

The basic principle behind the mapping “is pure science,” MAMAY founder and CEO Yuval Klein tells NoCamels. 

Molecules of different foods and drinks are analyzed in a lab for 75 different kinds of sweeteners, such as sucrose and fructose. 

The lab process is based on high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), an existing chemical process that separates all the components of a mixture and then identifies and quantifies them.  

With AI assistance, the mass of data produced through HPLC is transformed into a “sweetness profile,” based on how much of each sweetener – both natural and artificial – is present in the molecules.  

“We did the same for sourness, bitterness, saltiness, umami,” Klein says. “This is how we know how to actually digitize the full range of our sensations regarding food and beverages.”

The results are then placed on MAMAY’s proprietary Taste GAGE scale, which gives each level of sweetness, saltiness and so on a number (called a “val”) depending on its impact. 

He says that the lab test even led to them understanding why Coca Cola tastes different in different countries. 

“We found out it’s not the same sugars,” he says. “And we found out it’s not the same sweetness. Coca Cola in Spain is 35 sweetness [on the GAGE scale] and Coca Cola in Japan is 31 – which is kind of a big difference.”

Klein is a serial entrepreneur, with decades of working with startups under his belt. His most recent foray in FoodTech before MAMAY was with a company called Blue Tree, that reduces sugar content in food while leaving the taste intact. He created that startup, he says, before Israel even had a FoodTech sector. 

His vision for MAMAY was the consequence of a youthful taste experience, he says. When he was 16, in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Klein accompanied his father to Jerusalem, where they enjoyed a beverage called Rosetta. 

“This is my best memory from Jerusalem,” Klein says, explaining that his efforts about eight years ago to recreate the drink and quantify its taste components led him to establish MAMAY.  

“I started to think that taste needs to be quantified,” he says. “Sweetness of 20 and bitterness of 4, and I’m going to get my Rosetta.” 

Klein says there are other companies trying to quantify what food “feels like,” but insists there is no other company breaking down food by taste using artificial intelligence to process the data in the same way as MAMAY. 

The company is focused for now on a business to business (B2B) future. In Israel, it has worked with the Israeli food giant Strauss Group on “a few projects that I can’t tell you too much about.” He says that MAMAY is also collaborating with Tempo, Israel’s leading beverage company, where “for the first time we are defining taste.”

MAMAY is based in Kiryat Shmona – a city on the northernmost tip of Israel and along the Lebanese border. The city has become a hub for FoodTech startups, in no small part due to the efforts of leading Israeli entrepreneur Erel Margalit, who established his Startup City Galilee there with a focus on this sector.

Klein previously worked on MAMAY in China in 2019, with major backers from the pig farming industry there. But, he says, he had to relocate back to Israel when African swine fever swept through the country, decimating the industry and bankrupting his backers. 

He now plans to return to China to work with food companies that use automated systems to mass produce food for school children. And MAMAY’s technology to quantify food tastes will allow them to create individual dishes based on individual preferences.  

Each person will have a computerized log of their preferences using the Gage scale for sweetness, saltiness and so on, and that will inform the robots making the food just how to personalize it for maximum enjoyment. 

“When a robot makes pasta, we can make it differently – less spicy, more spicy,” according to Klein. “And every kid should get the one that they like.” 

Personalized food is the future, he says, and MAMAY technology will enable us to determine exactly what that tastes like.  

“You’re going to be able to print food; you need to interact with the machine on how tasty you want this food to be,” he says. 

“And I think we are building the first steps for this future.” 

The post Startup Maps Tastes To Create Your Ideal Meal Every Time  appeared first on NoCamels.

Countless American soldiers owe their lives to the armored vehicles that protected them from bullets, bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The same armor is now being incorporated into the 150,000-strong fleet of new vehicles that is currently replacing the military’s all-purpose Hummers and jeeps.

But few of those servicemen and women who are being protected will have any idea where the armor was designed.

Kibbutz Sasa, close to the border with Lebanon in northern Israel, has a dairy and a chain of ice cream stores, and grows kiwi, apple, avocado and grapefruit.

It’s also home to Plasan, world leader in armor protection technology for military vehicles.

Plasan has signed contracts worth billions of dollars with the US Army, among others.

It succeeds by challenging orthodox thinking. Other companies designing welded steel boxes to keep the “soft targets” inside a vehicle safe.

“We had an alternative plan,” says Nir Kahn, Plasan’s director of design. “We looked at it like an Ikea wardrobe, instead of as a welded steel box.”

The box is a workable solution, he says, but it’s very heavy, expensive and it takes a long time to build.

Plasan developed a radical alternative, which they call a kitted hull. It’s a bolt-on kit that is lighter, cheaper, and much more adaptable than the box – but still offers the same level of protection.

It’s also much quicker to produce, and that proved critical when the US realized it urgently needed to better protect its soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

“This is a kit which you bolt together, which means we can mix and match ceramics, Kevlar, composites and other materials,” says Kahn.

Plasan was founded in 1985, a time when the Israel Defense Forces was battling Hezbollah-backed fighters in Southern Lebanon, and shortly before the First Intifada (Palestinian uprising).

“The IDF started to need protection for light vehicles like jeeps and Humvee,” says Kahn.

“Nobody else really had ever protected those kinds of things. They were not meant to be frontline vehicles. They were only ever a runaround.

“What changed in Israel in the 1990s was that there was no longer a frontline. But you still wanted a light vehicle because you weren’t going to start driving around doing patrols in a tank.”

The patented protection that Plasan developed for domestic use proved to be a lifesaver for the US, when it deployed its forces in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003).

“The Americans went in with mostly unprotected vehicles,” says Kahn.

“The idea was that after the ‘shock and awe’ air bombardments, they would be able to just roll around in unprotected vehicles and there’d be no threat.

“History had alternative plans, and those unprotected vehicles became really very dangerous places to be.”

What the US needed was what are called MRAPs – Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles – and it needed them yesterday. Plasan was able to churn out the armor for 4,000 MRAPs in a year, which was far quicker than anyone making traditional steel boxes.

It’s now building on that success by providing the armor for thousands of the US military’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTVs). They’re replacing the Hummer, also known as the Humvee (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle or HMMWV) made famous by the actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In 2015, Oshkosh Defense in Wisconsin won the contract to build the first 20,000 JLTVs, with Plasan providing the armor.

The contract went out to tender again after seven years and this time it was won by a rival business, AM General of Indiana. Again, Plasan is providing the armor.

“We’re not a well-known company, not even in Israel,” says Kahn. “But we’re the winning card that other companies hold.  We work quietly in the background. We don’t make a big fuss, we don’t make a lot of noise.

“When we were designing it [the armor for the JLTV], I was hyper-aware that we were replacing an American icon. This is replacing the Humvee that had replaced the jeep. I felt a weight on my shoulders.

“And I, as a British-educated designer on a small kibbutz north of Israel was directing it,” he says.

“There are other companies developing ballistic materials. And there are other companies, of course that can do vehicle design, and there are companies that can manufacture. But having all three of those working as closely as we are here under one roof, that’s a unique ticket.”

According to Kahn, Plasan incorporates the same level of protection in gradually smaller, lighter vehicles, through the materials it uses – and through its design and engineering.

It has, for example, an international patent on how the driver’s seat is positioned.

“It’s not a patent on the seat,” he says. “It’s not a patent on the mechanism, it’s a patent on the angles of how the person is sitting in the vehicle and how you adjust that according to the different sizes of people.

“There are also energy-absorbing floors that prevent legs from breaking if the vehicle is thrown three or four meters up into the air and then comes crashing down.”

Plasan blows up its vehicles at test a site in near Be’er Sheva, southern Israel. “We design, analyze, build the prototype, put it on the back of the truck, send it down to be blown up, then bring it back and all crawl over it,” says Kahn.

The company’s next project is an off-road four-seater called Wilder. It’s smaller and lighter than the JLTV – and can even be driven by remote control.

The post The Kibbutz That’s Protecting US Soldiers From Bombs And Bullets appeared first on NoCamels.

Autistic individuals will soon be able to practice and improve their social skills through realistic conversations with avatars powered by generative AI technology.

Autism is a developmental disorder that affects how people interact and communicate, often hindering diagnosed individuals in social situations. In many cases, autistic individuals struggle to initiate conversations, respond to the initiations and non-verbal cues of others, maintain eye contact, and take on another person’s perspective.

The web-based Skill Coach application developed by Israeli startup Arrows lets users engage in conversations in a variety of scenarios – from chatting with a stranger in a café to making small talk with a work colleague. 

Not a single scenario is scripted, and the avatar’s responses vary in each encounter. Users can also set themselves a specific goal, such as learning how to handle disagreements, before the start of a conversation.

Throughout every conversation, the AI platform identifies what it sees as conversational missteps and provides users with real-time recommendations through textual feedback, as well as visual cues that appear discreetly on the screen. These cues include symbols to indicate that the user should elaborate on their most recent remarks (a plus sign) or ask a followup question (a question mark). 

And as soon as the conversation ends, the Skill Coach app will provide detailed textual feedback such as whether a response was rude and the user should be less direct next time.

The AI was trained using a leading, evidence-based international program that aims to enhance the social skills of autistic adults. In the coming months, the web app will be tried out for the first time by early adopters who struggle with social interaction.

Family Ties 

The inability to interact and form social bonds can lead to anxiety and depression. And according to clinical psychologist Dr. Jana Rundle, individuals with autism may be three times more likely to have episodes of depression compared to the general population. 

Arrows founder Eran Dvir found that this was the case with his 17-year-old autistic daughter, who struggled to practice and improve her social skills outside of scheduled speech therapy sessions. 

“When they are children, [autistic people] usually have a shadow teacher or an integrator who helps facilitate their social lives,” he tells NoCamels, referring to professionals who help neurodivergent youngsters.

“But what happens is when they grow up, it’s no longer appropriate to always have [another person supporting them 24/7], and the problems are still there.”

Seeking a solution for his daughter while studying for a Master’s in human-computer interaction, Dvir had the idea to guide autistic adults through social situations using tech.  

He initially explored integrating this kind of technology into augmented reality glasses, where the aforementioned visual cues would offer social recommendations in real time.

Though the technology was tested on dozens of autistic individuals, he says that the hardware for augmented reality glasses has not advanced enough, and needs several more years to fully reach its potential. 

And so Arrows, which is based in Tel Aviv, has since pivoted to developing its Skill Coach software – at least for now.

A Virtual Guide

The company’s software centers on visual feedback cues and was created with the assistance of the Arrows’ scientific director – an Israeli psychologist and expert in autism whose identity is still under wraps. 

The realistic avatars that facilitate the conversations were created by an Israeli startup that specializes in AI-generated photos and videos, and the generative AI was developed using a range of software from several Israeli companies.

The startup is also already collaborating with the Israeli offices of IT giant Cisco to embed Arrows’ visual cues into video conferencing platforms. This will allow autistic people to receive real-time feedback during video conversations.

He stresses that this does not replace the need for a psychologist who helps autistic individuals with social interactions face-to-face, but allows people on the spectrum to practice their social skills at will – something that isn’t possible with scheduled in-person sessions. 

The company is planning to conduct a pilot by next year, which will focus on social interactions in the workplace.  

Once the pilot has been completed successfully, a subscription to the software will be available to both medium and large companies trying to boost diversity and inclusion. Therapists will also be able to offer the platform to patients for use when they are not in session.

“Because the conversation is with a virtual avatar, it is not only a safe space for the individual to practice, but it is also available for them at all times,” explains Dvir.  

Arrows was one of the winners of the 2021 HackAutism event, a yearly program where ​​entrepreneurs, experts and investors come together to develop 10 viable, sustainable projects that address the challenges experienced by autistic children and adults and their families.

The startup has thus far raised over $150,000 in funding, most of which was received as a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority. 

There are other coaching services for autistic individuals – both in-person and virtual – but Arrows’ says its platform with its real-time feedback sets it apart. 

“I think that our experience and our excellent team, with the uniqueness of the visual cues and the evidence-based program, makes us more competitive right now,” says Dvir. 

“And our focus on autistic individuals is a niche that not many other software companies are trying to cater to.”

The post AI Avatars Help Autistic People Hone Social Skills On Demand appeared first on NoCamels.

It is every parent’s nightmare – sudden silence poolside, when just seconds earlier there were happy splashing and laughing voices. 

That terrible scenario happened to PoolScout founder Sam Weitzman, whose young son nearly drowned in a pool in Tel Aviv in 2017. It was an incident that inspired him to create the AI safety device that alerts parents to potential dangers poolside. 

Sam had just taken a photo with his two young sons and had got out of the pool to hand his youngest to his wife when he realized that his elder boy, then aged four, was missing. 

“I looked over and saw him at the bottom of the pool squirming, trying to get up, and it was a pretty shaky situation. And that’s what really triggered the evolution of PoolScout,” Weitzman tells NoCamels. 

Weitzman, who was then working as an investment banker at Citibank, realized that artificial intelligence – specifically deep learning technology – could be harnessed to drastically reduce the response time to such incidents.  

“I wanted to make sure that we designed a solution which was going to be able to be deployed not for state level security but for the end consumer,” he says. 

According to the World Health Organization, drowning is the third most common cause of unintentional injury death in the world, accounting for 7 percent of all injury-related deaths.

Around 236,000 people drown every year across the globe. The WHO says the highest drowning rates are among children aged 1 to 4 years followed by children aged 5 to 9 years. 

Israel, Weitzman says, was one of the pioneers in using deep learning for security applications. He was working with clients who were involved in security projects, including how to use AI to identify someone with an assault rifle, and came to the conclusion that the same tech that can recognize someone carrying an AK-47 could be used to minimize child drownings. 

The PoolScout system is designed to cater to those with any body of water in their yard, even a paddling pool. Pool owners, Weitzman says, just want to make sure that they have done everything they can to maximize safety measures, for their own peace of mind. 

“We designed the solution from the ground up as something that should be very attainable, and something that really could be and should be in every pool,” Weitzman tells NoCamels.

PoolScout uses cloud-based, real-time advanced deep learning, which Weitzman says allows the system to understand specific dangerous scenarios that happen in and around a pool. 

The platform operates via a WiFi network, connecting security cameras to the AI software and an app on the user’s smartphone. The cameras monitor the pool area, the footage is analyzed by the algorithm and the app emits alerts should one of those dangerous scenarios arise. 

PoolScout has several security functions. The first, called “Unattended Toddler,” can detect a young child heading unattended towards the pool. This feature can also differentiate between children and adults, so that the alert is not triggered every time an adult approaches the water. 

The system also has a “Person Underwater” alert, which sounds when someone is underwater for more than 10 seconds, as well as a “Pet in Pool” feature that notifies the user when an animal enters the water. 

“The whole app and experience is really built in a way to maximize peace of mind,” Weitzman says.

While there are other companies offering drowning prevention systems, such as SwamCam in the US and Israel’s Coral Smart Pool, Weitzman says that they are less sophisticated and more expensive than PoolScout’s cloud-based AI model, which he claims is “always learning and always improving.”  

The company has bootstrapped its funding so far, but Weitzman says they are now looking for investors and planning to expand beyond pool spaces, such as into daycare, where children play outside unattended or where the ratio of adults to children is below regulatory standards.  

Most of the PoolScout staff, in particular in R&D, are based in Tel Aviv, but the company also has headquarters in the US, where the system is currently on sale.  

It is also available in Mexico and Canada, and the company has signed distribution agreements for several Arab states, including Oman, Egypt and the UAE. 

In Israel, the system is currently involved in a pilot of some 1,000 homes, and the company is in talks with a distributor. It is also available through online sellers, in both the basic and premium editions. 

For now, the system is designed for private homes, with plans to expand to commercial sites such as gyms in the coming year. 

The company says it has won a number of US tech trade awards, including Best Smart Home Product, Best Smart Home Solution and Best New Product.

It takes just 20 seconds to drown, Weitzman points out, recalling his meetings with parents who have lost children in such “absolutely heart-wrenching” circumstances. 

“It’s a problem that we can and are solving,” he says. “I’d be very, very happy to see the number one cause of accidental death for children not to be drowning, because that’s something that we can address.” 

The post Pool Monitor Watches The Water To Keep Kids From Drowning  appeared first on NoCamels.

A startup in Israel is launching what it describes as the world’s first completely hands-free underwater “smart scooter.”

KikFin has produced a jetpack with fins that straps onto a swimmer’s back and propels them though the water faster than Olympic champion Michael Phelps.

It also attaches to surfboards, helping beginners as they learn to catch a wave.

Swimmers have always welcomed an underwater boost – ever since sailors first adapted torpedoes during World War II.

Technology has moved on since then, and there’s now a huge range of sea scooters (also known as diver propulsion vehicles) on the market.

They provide an extra oomph for amateur snorkellers and professional scuba divers alike.

But the one big drawback has always been that swimmers have to hold tight to the handles as they’re pulled through water. Until now.

Amihay Mines, CEO of KikFin, says his jetpack is a game changer, not just because it frees up the user’s hands, but also because it “bio-mimics” dolphins and other mammals.

The hydrodynamic wings allow the swimmer to change direction with the slightest movement of their head.

“It literally feels like you’re flying underwater,” Mines tells NoCamels. “The water just flows all over your body.”

Swimmers also control the five-speed motor remotely controlled with a glove that responds to a push of their finger.

KikFin incorporates specially developed wireless technology, currently used only by the military, that allows communication through both air and water.

It also comes with a safety feature that can limit the swimmer’s depth or distance from their start point, and an app that tracks their speed, location and performance.

It will be aimed initially at recreational users when it launches commercially early next year.

But Mines says it will also offer huge advantages to professional divers in any sphere  –  oil and gas rigs, rescue services, fish farms, the military and beyond – who needs to use their hands.

Kateryna Sadurska from Ukraine, the freediving world champion, tried the KikFin.

“It brings an amazing feeling,” she said. “Your arms are free, you don’t need to use your fins. It’s much easier to do safety and enjoy being underwater and feel yourself like a water angel.”

Mines was a keen surfer growing up near Palmahim beach, in central Israel. He studied mechanical engineering at university, where he started working on an early version of the KikFin.

At the time, it was designed to fit onto a surfboard, opening up a new world to surfers with disabilities through a group called Wave-ability. 

“My passion was to see people with disabilities take the control and enjoy the thrill and the excitement of catching a wave,” he says.

“I designed that fin with a professor of hydrodynamic in my university, creating a thruster to attach to a surfboard.”

The next step was to modify the fin for able-bodied swimmers, giving them extra speed and agility.

It was a long process of trial and error. “It took four years of working from six in the morning until two at night,” he says. “Countless underwater machines broke or let water in. More than 1,000 fins went into the garbage.”

Eventually Mines and his small team, based in Tel Aviv, perfected the KikFin. “It’s literally a dream come true,” he says. “I was flying underwater in my dreams, and now I’m doing it for real.

“When people see me on the beach with the KikFin and realize it’s a proper working product they get so excited and want to know when they can buy one.

“There are many underwater scooters on the market but there isn’t that’s anything like as sophisticated or as much fun.”

Different versions of KikFin are available. For swimmers and surfers it is worn as a vest, and for surfers and stand up paddleboarders (SUP), it fits on their board.

It provides a particularly useful boost for beginners, who often give up because they can’t otherwise gain enough speed to catch a wave.

KikFin propels users underwater at 9km an hour and on the surface at up to 12km an hour. An average swimmer can manage 3km an hour. Michael Phelps, winner of 28 Olympic swimming medals, achieved 8.8km an hour when he broke the world record for 100 meters butterfly.

The device works at depths of 40 meters and has an hour of power at full speed and uses a rechargeable battery that can be changed underwater.

It’s been tested in over 5,000 hours of underwater swimming at Eilat, Israel’s Red Sea resort, with 50 testers aged 12 to 80.

There is another device currently on the market, Cudajet, which is also a hands-free jetpack. Mines says it doesn’t have the wings that make his device so maneuverable, or the underwater wireless control.

The post Hands-Free Underwater Jetpack Gives Divers And Surfers A Boost appeared first on NoCamels.

Meet the kitchen robot that can prepare a chicken Caesar salad, spaghetti Bolognese, teriyaki steak, chicken penne alfredo, all at the same time.

And then it does the washing up.

The Beastro is an all-Israeli invention that provides the chef in any commercial kitchen with an extra four pairs of hands.

It follows their instructions to the letter, weighing out ingredients from an array of feeders, cooking and stirring the pot for the exact times specified, and preparing up to 75 dishes an hour.

“Anything you do in a pan, a wok or pot, you can with the Beastro,” says Yair Gordin, CEO of Kitchen Robotics, the startup behind the machine.

“Our customers use it to make omelet for breakfast, Thai kitchen, Indian kitchen, Italian kitchen, Cuban kitchen. It takes less than five minutes for the chef to define the recipe. It’s very simple.

“You tell it to put 5ml of oil into the pot, then 25g of chopped onion, then to heat it a specific temperature for one-and-a-half minutes, then add exact quantities of pre-cooked pasta and cream and mushrooms, and then cook it for another minute and a half.”

The Beastro has a robotic arm that picks up the pot to collect ingredients, as needed, from any of the 12 liquid feeders – water, oils, cream, sauces, for example – and the 23 non-liquid feeders  – chopped tomatoes,  vegetables, chicken, meat, pre-cooked rice or pasta.

The pots are “stirred,” or rotated over the heat, then cleaned and sterilized after each use in the built-in dishwasher.

It can replace two out of three kitchen staff, says Gordin, in an industry that battles a constant recruitment crisis, driven by low pay, monotonous work and unsociable hours.

Beastro still needs human intervention and more complex tasks are, for the time being, beyond its reach, says Gordin.

Raw ingredients need to be ready washed and chopped. It also can’t handle some larger items , such as a halved avocado or a whole egg.

And once a dish is cooked, it needs somebody to present it on a plate, add a garnish and actually serve it.

But it’s a huge help for many routine and time-critical tasks, and chefs who were initially skeptical about a robot in the kitchen now swear by it.

“It’s not 100 per cent automation. It’s 80 per cent,” says Gordin. “Michelin-starred restaurants will not use our robots and [Israeli street food eatery] Falafel Shlomo will not use our robot.”

But he says that for the vast majority of restaurants in between, leasing one of their robots will ease a huge burden.

A couple of Beastros are currently up and running, one at a bank in Tampa, Florida, cooking meals for its 750 employees, another at an educational establishment in Miami, Florida.

It’s much easier to get regulatory approval in the US than it is in Israel, says Gordin.

“By the end of this year, we’ll have 10 units working,” he says. “In 2024 we’re planning to deploy another 100 units.”

He says little has fundamentally changed in kitchens over the last 400 years, except for the switch from coal to gas or electricity.

Kitchen Robotics is one of 75 companies globally that is turning the old-fashioned “analog kitchen” into a digital one.

“Most of them trying to create a robot for specific dish, like pizza or pasta,” he says. “But there are only two companies in the world have robot in real customers’ kitchens.”

The other is Miso Robotics, the US company behind a robot that deep fries, but doesn’t cook. Gordin says his company brought its robot to market in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost.

He’s proud of the investors he’s attracted, including Ziv Amiram, co-founder of Mobileye, Israel’s most successful startup, and Compass Group, the world’s biggest catering firm, with over 500,000 employees.

He says the Beastro reduces food waste by 33 percent, and its cooking is absolutely consistent.

“A chef can invent a beautiful and tasty pasta dish but every week he has a new sous chef, and instead of cooking it for five minutes he does it for one-and-a-half,” he says. “The customer isn’t happy and the sous chef needs to do it again.

“Or the customer orders pasta without onion and gets it with onion. This impacts dramatically the restaurant’s profit, and the amount of food it wastes.”

He says the Beastro also provides the restaurant with precise data on use of ingredients and can help plan what it buys, based on past knowledge and future predictions of weather, sporting events, holidays and other factors that drive demand.

It frees chefs from many mundane tasks in the kitchen, so they can devote themselves more to creating new recipes, and readily share them with chefs across the world.

Gordin, a software engineer by training, recalls the inspiration for Beastro – watching a waitress struggle with a simple coffee order.

And how his first thought – designing a robot that would create a perfect cup – evolved into a robot that can now cook the perfect dish.

The challenge now, over and above the Beastro rollout, is to design the next-generation robot which can do more, such as deep frying for McDonald’s or KFC.

The post Kitchen Robot Gives Chef Four Extra Pairs Of Hands appeared first on NoCamels.

The solution to reducing stress on Israel’s jam-packed roads and highways may be in the palm of your hand. 

A team of Israeli researchers seeking stress management solutions for the country’s drivers have created a new index that uses the tightness of your grip on the wheel to calculate your stress levels. 

And the team – from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at Ariel University – believe that your car is key to keeping you calm as well, by changing the environment in your vehicle in response to your mood.  

The index uses 60 sensors in the steering wheel to calculate your stress levels based on how tightly you hold onto it (grip force) and how much sweat you produce while driving.  

Israel is notoriously demanding of its motorists. In a 2018 Waze survey of Israeli drivers, 79% said that traffic is the largest cause of stress in their everyday life. 

The Mayo Clinic links unmanaged stress levels to negative mental and physical health effects, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, anxiety, and depression. 

Fight Or Flight

The index is the brainchild of Yotam Sahar, a doctoral student in Industrial Engineering and Management at Ariel, who led four studies on measuring and managing driver stress as a part of his PhD dissertation. 

“Stress is one of the factors that most affects human performance,” he tells NoCamels. 

His focus, he says, was “the disconnect between the physiological part and the psychological parts of stress – the relationship between the body and the mind.” 

Sahar based his research around the concept that the relationship between stress and human performance is not linear, and that too little or too much stress can both have an adverse effect on driving capabilities. 

He tells NoCamels that lower levels of stress during driving can trigger more apathetic feelings such as drowsiness, distractedness, and depression. 

High-stress levels, meanwhile, are based on “flight or fight” responses, and manifest in ways including road rage and anxiety. 

All of these subconsciously affect your focus and reaction time in just the same ways while driving, which could prove disastrous. 

“Road accident investigation and observational studies indicate that about 90% of all road accidents result from human error,” says the study by Sahar and his team, which was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 

Sahar sought to create an index that incorporated both physical and psychological responses in order to most accurately devise stress management tools. 

One of his experiments, for example, measured the reactions of 39 participants in a simulation when a pedestrian unexpectedly crossed the road, first at a distance and then in close range.  

“To improve road safety, it is essential to recognize the factors affecting driver performance, specifically factors that can be moderated to improve driver performance and road safety,” according to Sahar’s study. 

He says that there is no other research of this kind in Israel of which he is aware and in fact claims that the whole subject is underrepresented worldwide. 

Sahar says he realized he could measure stress through grip when he heard Israel Air Force pilots say that their fingers were white when they came out of stressful flights, something he calls “white finger syndrome.” 

He says he understood that, “if we can measure the grip force, we can maybe measure stress.” 

Calming Cars

According to Sahar, the research will provide valuable data to carmakers and potentially pave the way for future safety systems that use the car itself to calm the driver. 

These, he suggests, could include an interface system in vehicles that uses biofeedback (controlling bodily functions such as heart rate and breathing) to help drivers to regulate their state of mind, stress and anxiety levels and avoid accidents. 

So when the driver’s grip on the wheel is strong, the car could automatically adjust temperature controls to cool the environment and maintain a mild temperature, as heat has been linked to increased stress and anxiety. 

Other adaptable features could include the car automatically playing soothing music and even bringing in chatbots to function as makeshift therapists on the move. 

“Our idea is to let the computer of the car, when it knows how stressed you are as a driver, to utilize abilities of its own in order to help you,” he says.   

Sahar also gives the example of how the car could respond to a driver whose stress levels have clearly been elevated by a near miss on the road, reducing the demands on the person behind the wheel by taking over acceleration and lane changes. 

Inversely, he says, the car could act to invigorate a person whose stress levels are too low and need to be more alert in order to navigate the demands of city driving.  

“The car needs you as a human driver, and may give you tasks. It does everything autonomously, but it will force you to take the wheel and be engaged in order to wake you up,” he explains. 

According to Sahar, his team has reached out to international carmakers who have R&D centers in Israel, including Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi. They also made contact with the country’s National Road Safety Authority. 

“We are trying to do this in the real world,” he says. 

The post Steering Wheel Grip Could Be Key To Low Stress, Safer Driving   appeared first on NoCamels.

Anyone taking a stroll along Tel Aviv’s wooden promenade cannot fail to admire the overall splendid condition of the decking. 

This well-preserved state is the work of a fully automated deck maintenance robot created by RoboDeck, a Hod Hasharon-headquartered company. 

Almost like an AI Roomba for your woodwork, the RoboDeck is autonomous, following a preprogrammed plan to clean, treat and varnish the decking. 

The device, which looks like a 50-percent larger version of the ubiquitous automated floor cleaner, has multiple technological functions and uses artificial intelligence to perform its job. 

The robot is fully autonomous, RoboDeck co-founder and CPO Noam Rand says. Its navigation capabilities allows it to stay on the deck and not fall off, and it can maneuver around obstacles such as furniture or plants.

“One of the big breakthroughs is a very accurate systematic navigation,” Rand says, which is necessary as the robot is essentially painting the surface.  

The robot also uses a LiDAR camera, similar to the one used on autonomous cars, as part of its range of technological features. It works alongside RoboDeck’s proprietary sensor to provide what Rand says is “millimeter level accuracy.” 

Another feature is the cloud-connected mapping system that the robot uses to work out the area of the decking it is working on. 

This mapping system also logs any potential hazards it encounters, such as protruding nails or broken wood, which could prove dangerous to people walking on the deck. 

The information about the potential hazards is transmitted to the cloud along with their location so that they can be dealt with. The app to operate the robot and view the information in the cloud can be accessed via a smartphone. 

The inbuilt cleaning system allows the robot to move through the various steps of cleaning and treating the deck. The staining is done using recyclable cartridges that Rand says are easily replaced and can hold a variety of different materials. 

RoboDeck CEO and co-founder Gal Frenkel explains that the platform is built on the premise that continuous maintenance is more advantageous and avoids costly repairs that come when decking is left untreated for extended periods. 

He says that the manual process can take between two and five days to complete, depending on the size of the deck. First, a chemical strips off the existing oil and dirt from the wood, after which it is cleaned with a power washer and sanded. When these stages are completed, and the wood has dried, it is stained and coated with a protective layer. 

“This process has multiple steps and it’s very labor intensive – and that together equals expensive,” Frenkel says.

According to Rand, the robot performs the maintenance about 10 times more quickly than the manual process – which is vital for businesses who cannot afford to close off swathes of their outdoor spaces for cleaning. 

“We have no downtime, which is really crucial for commercial customers,” he says. 

Prevention Over Cure 

There is a massive market for deck maintenance, especially in the US, where a total of some $20 billion is spent every year on it, Rand says. 

And while that seems like an astronomical amount, he explains that there are 60 million decks in the United States – 50 million in residential homes and 10 million in commercial properties such as hotels, restaurants and public boardwalks. These include patios, front porches and, of course, poolside areas. 

Frenkel says it was his own miserable experience with maintenance of the decking around his own pool that led to the creation of the device. 

The year after his deck was installed, Frenkel called to complain about the poor state the wood was in. The decking specialist laughed and told him that the wood had to be maintained every year in order to look good and – more importantly – be safe to use.  

Rand says that deck owners generally do not abide by a maintenance program, due to the time and money involved in doing this manually. And so they leave the wood until it is in such a poor state that it needs to be fully restored. 

“Your deck looks good, and then it degrades until it either looks really bad or it’s unsafe, and you restore it again. And then it degrades. That process doesn’t really make sense, but it is a result of the high cost, downtime and the labor intensity,” Rand says.  

He explains that there are robots that perform cleaning duties outdoors, such as in parking lots and pedestrian areas, but RoboDeck is the only robot in the world that’s dedicated to deck maintenance.

Today, three years after its creation, RoboDeck also operates out of California, where it has an agreement with the largest deck maintenance company on the West Coast. 

It also has its sights set on the Australian market, with tentative plans to enter into an agreement with a “very large woodcare brand,” although Rand says this is still in the future.  

“Our mission is basically to make the maintenance of outdoor living areas easy and affordable for everyone so that they can enjoy it, whether it’s homeowners, municipalities or professionals,” he says.  

The post Little Robot Cleaner Keeps Outdoor Decking Shipshape appeared first on NoCamels.

Israeli startup CODA is aiming to make it easier for deaf people to enjoy video content by using artificial intelligence-generated avatars that can translate spoken language into sign language almost instantaneously.

Deaf people prefer sign language to subtitles or closed captioning, according to ASL service provider Languagers, because sign language has a grammatical structure and expression independent of any other language. As a result, it is much easier to engage with the content in what deaf people see as their first language. 

“It’s beyond just the alphabet. We can take a sentence and change the essence just with our voice, right? Like I can say ‘I want to go home’ very calmly or very intensely. It’s the same thing in sign language. Our approach is to make the AI understand this in creating the language,” CODA co-founder Shani Bibi tells NoCamels.

The AI-generated avatar utilizes machine learning to translate auditory signals into visible sign language. Their algorithm pulls from a large database of information on the grammar, expressions, and tones of sign language, which Bibi and Naor ensured were accurate by working with deaf sign language users.

The app is also available off-line, meaning that it will also work on videos that have previously been downloaded onto a digital device.  

Accessibility has become a regular feature for content platforms such as YouTube, which has options to generate automated captions, while videos are being subbed and dubbed in a variety of different languages. 

Roughly 70 million people around the world use sign language as a primary form of communication, with more than 300 different types of sign language being spoken worldwide, according to the United Nations. In the US alone, 500,000 people use American Sign Language (ASL).

It has become routine to see sign language interpreters at public events such as the US president’s annual State of the Union address and concerts and to have the ability to turn on subtitles for movies and videos. 

But many forms of content do not have that layer of accessibility available – and that’s where CODA comes in. 

With backgrounds in artificial intelligence and software engineering, Bibi and Shiran Naor co-founded the startup with the intent to automatically translate spoken content into sign language in real time. 

“Imagine that you are watching the news,” says Bibi. “And there’s a bubble in the corner with a sign language interpreter inside. Instead of hiring an actual person to do the sign language, we will have this avatar who would translate whatever the news reporter is saying into sign language after a few seconds of delay.”

Childhood Dream

Bibi wanted to involve the Deaf community as much as possible in the process. She says as a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA) herself, she had “dreamed about a company like this” since she was five.

“Since the first time I translated for my parents, I said I would change the world for them,” Bibi says. 

“This is why I chose the name CODA, because I am a CODA, for this community around the world. Technology like the telephone has always divided the world into those who can hear and those who can’t, which gives them different opportunities in life. But now, this technology can bring them back to the same level.”

For the avatars, the two founders worked with AI specialists to develop a male model and a female model, which can be tailored to different ethnicities and countries.

Bibi says they conducted psychological research in order to help them create the perfect avatar. 

“We were trying to understand how people think, how people react when they see an avatar that looks like them. By the figure, the hair color, the age, the eye color, the eye shape,” she says. “Everything is important because the avatar changes based on the country.”

Moreover, they worked to localize the content, adapting the sign language to the specific region’s dialect and unique mannerisms. 

CODA currently offers its services in five different languages: English, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian. Bibi says they are next looking to expand into the multiple different sign languages of high population countries such as India and China.

The company was recently one of nine winners in MassChallenge Israel’s 2023 Early-Stage Accelerator Program. They have also received a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority, a Jerusalem-based branch of the government that supports high-tech and industrial R&D. 

The market for tech that produces live, real-time interpreting (known as remote simultaneous interpretation) is estimated to reach $12.8 billion by 2025. 

“There’s a big demand for this,” Bibi says. 

CODA’s AI platform will be available for content-creating businesses to integrate into their videos.  

“Everyone’s under strict regulations to provide accessible content. In the US, it’s the ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act]. In Israel, it’s called the Accessibility Law. The main solution is to bring in live interpreters. We aim to bring a different solution, a one-stop shop for translation,” Bibi says.

The company hopes to involve every part of the Deaf and Hearing-Impaired community in developing CODA, including sign language interpreters. In 2021, there were over 2,000 certified ASL interpreters residing in North America alone. 

“We want to work with sign language interpreters. We don’t want to delete the industry, but to make the cost of interpretation lower,” she says. 

Companies like UK-based Signapse and India’s signer.ai also offer AI-powered sign language translations. However, they only translate written text into sign language, while CODA is available for auditory content. Additionally, Signapse also has a two-day turnaround for translational services while CODA translations will be near instantaneous.

Bibi says their ability to add emotions and tones also sets them apart from competitors. 

“We focus on creating a language, not just a collection of signs,” she says.

The post AI Avatar Turns Speech Into Sign Language In Real Time appeared first on NoCamels.

Chest pain is a common problem with dozens of causes that range from harmless bruised muscles from coughing to potentially fatal pulmonary embolisms. But for the person involved, the experience can be a frightening one – even when the cause turns out to be relatively minor.

Now an Israeli startup has developed an AI-based platform to help doctors diagnose patients with chest issues, accurately and in real time. 

Quai.MD seamlessly connects to a hospital’s Electronic Health Records (EHR) – the digital version of a patient’s medical history – and uses this data, along with triage assessments and expert opinions drawn from medical research, to propose the most likely diagnosis and best courses of action.

For although there are established medical guidelines to help determine and treat multiple causes of chest pain of varying degrees, ER physicians, who are often understaffed and under tight time constraints, can make mistakes in diagnoses.

A December 2022 study by the US Health Department found that more than five percent of patients experience misdiagnosis in American emergency departments.

But Shlomi Uziel, co-founder and CEO of Quai.MD, tells NoCamels that the platform gives doctors a clear set of steps to follow during the examination period.

“The application sits inside the EHR, and helps the physician determine what the next step is for each of those potential diagnoses until they reach the decision to ultimately admit or discharge the patient,” he says.  

“What we’re trying to do is help [physicians] align more with the best practices and protocols.”  

Uziel explains that every hospital has a list of the best practices that derive from general medical knowledge and research. And the failure of an ER physician to follow protocol, he says, can lead to one of two outcomes:

In the first instance, the physician suspects that the patient has a serious illness and admits them to the hospital, where they can potentially spend several days undergoing various tests only to discover that there is nothing wrong.

This phenomenon costs the US economy an annual $750 billion, according to private healthcare firm PinnacleCare.

The other situation, says Uziel, is that the patient is sent home from the emergency room without realizing that they have a potentially fatal ailment, which could have disastrous results.

Deep Learning Diagnosis

Quai.MD accesses and analyzes the patient’s initial ER assessment and their medical history, even as they are being seen by a physician.

The AI platform then generates several diagnoses, ranging from most likely to least likely, as well as the steps the doctor should take in order to eliminate each possibility.

Uziel gives the example of acute coronary syndrome – a range of conditions related to sudden, reduced blood flow to the heart, including a heart attack. In order to rule this out, he says, the doctor must order a blood test to check for troponin, a protein that is released into the bloodstream during a heart attack.

The Quai.MD platform, he says, can be used to order specific blood tests with just one click.

Should the doctor decide to admit a patient, Quai.MD would then generate a report of all the care the complete process of patient care – saving the doctor time and making it easier for the medical billing team to determine the patient’s insurance coverage for the services they received. 

Quai.MD is currently focused on diagnosing the various causes of chest pain, which Uziel says has around 60 potential diagnoses – including a handful that are among the riskiest of health conditions. 

Beyond possibly saving lives and preventing unnecessary healthcare costs, Quai.MD’s CPO Marcelle Kaspi explains that the technology may also eliminate the biases that some healthcare providers have towards certain groups among their patients. 

“We know that there’s a lot of sex-based, race-based, and socioeconomic-based biases in the healthcare system in general,” she says.

Research has shown, for example, that white medical students and residents were more likely to believe that black patients feel less pain and do not need the same levels of pain medication as white patients – even as recently as 2016.

Because Quai.MD’s artificial intelligence learns solely from medical journals and studies, as well as the patient’s medical history and treatments, it doesn’t hold the same implicit biases as doctors. This, Kapsi believes, could potentially solve this issue. 

The Ramat Gan-based company expects the platform to become operational in the emergency room at the Medical University of South Carolina at the start of 2024. The startup is currently collaborating with doctors from this hospital and from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in order to finish developing the app. It is also due to receive medical records from 10,000 patients to further train the AI. 

The Doctor Will See You Now

Quai.MD is not the only Israeli startup trying to improve doctors’ performances. Kahun allows patients to discuss their symptoms with generative AI, and provides their doctor with a summary of their condition and possible diagnoses before their real life consultation. And Navina uses AI to produce summaries of a patient’s medical history for doctors via a smartphone app. 

But Uziel says that what sets Quai.MD apart is that it is the only one that automates the entire clinical process, from initial diagnosis through to suggesting care and treatment options. 

Quai.MD, which was founded in 2020, has raised around $2 million thus far from venture capital firm Random Forest and seed-stage fund Labs/02. It is now announcing a new $2.5 million financing round led by Good Company, with the participation of two healthcare systems from the US as well as new and existing investors. 

Most recently, the startup was one of five finalists in the Asper Prize competition, which recognizes startups using innovative technology to create a global positive impact.  

Quai.MD was founded by Uziel, a former VP at multinational computational software company Cadence Design Systems; Prof. Chen Shapira, the former CEO of Carmel Hospital in northern Israel; and Dr. Golan Yona, a machine learning expert and former Cornell Professor at the Department of Computer Science. 

“We just wanted to do something that makes this world slightly better,” says Uziel.

The post AI Platform Helps Diagnose Chest Pain Swiftly And Accurately appeared first on NoCamels.

The Japanese government has tapped an Israeli tech company to install its advanced imaging computer chips on buses used to transport children, to avoid a potentially fatal case of a child being accidentally left inside an extremely hot vehicle.

This phenomenon, known as “forgotten baby syndrome,” has claimed hundreds of young lives around the world in the past two decades. 

In April, Tokyo made it mandatory for kindergartens and other daycare facilities to install safety devices onto their buses to prevent children from being forgotten inside – which amounts to around 80,000 vehicles nationwide. 

The decision came after a three-year-old died in central Japan last September, when she was left for five hours inside a daycare bus on a sweltering day.

Vayyar Imaging is one of a number of companies involved in the program. Its chip uses radio waves to create consistent, high-resolution 3D images of objects and people, regardless of light or weather conditions. 

Every chip contains dozens of antennas that transmit and receive radio waves. The transmitters emit these radio waves, which hit objects and bounce back, and the receptors capture these reflected signals. 

The chips’ built-in algorithms, designed to identify any child left in an unattended vehicle, measure the distance between the source of the radio waves and the object they hit to determine what it is. 

And because each chip has many antennas that transmit frequencies in many directions, it can generate the image almost instantly.

Ian Podkamien, head of automotive at Vayyar, explains to NoCamels that this method of detecting objects results in a very high-resolution silhouette.

“The more antennas you have, the better resolution the image,” he says. 

The chips activate once the doors on an empty vehicle have been locked. They scan the interior for any children that have been left behind and if someone is identified, the system will automatically send an alert to the daycare staff responsible. 

As time passes, says Podkamien, the alerts escalate – from having the car sound its horn repeatedly to calling the driver and even alerting emergency services.

Podkamien says that companies can use the radar imaging as if it were a camera – but one with the added advantage of privacy, as the chips do not render faces but rather a detailed silhouette created by pixels. 

Vayyar is partnering on the project with Japanese corporation Aisin, one of the largest suppliers of automotive components and systems, such as navigation, brakes and engine-related parts. 

The Israeli company will embed its chips into the Aisin sensors that are to be integrated into the new buses. Vehicles already in use that are equipped with Aisin sensors will also be retrofitted with the Israeli tech. 

The number of chips required depends on the size of the vehicle. A seven-seater minibus, for example, only needs a single chip. 

Processing powerhouse 

There are multiple radar-imaging companies for the automotive industry on the market. 

These include US-based Ambarella and Ainstein, which both use radio waves to create four-dimensional imaging, and Israeli tech leader Mobileye, which is developing a four-dimensional imaging radar with a Taiwanese firm. 

Podkamien, however, says that what sets Vayyar apart is that its patented chip has 24 transmitter and 24 receiver antennas, while others tend to only have three of each. 

“We are the only company in the world that has so many antennas in a single chip,” he says. 

“The whole idea is to minimize this technology, and create a powerful solution at a very low cost.”  

Furthermore, Vayyar says it is the only chip maker in the field to also provide the algorithms that generate images from the radio waves. This allows automotive companies to use the chips for a range of purposes, such as detecting pedestrians or parking assistance. 

Vayyar did not start out in the automotive field. Founded in 2011, the company originally developed its sensors as a novel application for breast cancer screening. 

This original device was capable of identifying anomalies and tumors within breast tissue in seconds, and functioning as a portable, non-ionizing device that cost a fraction of the price of a mammography unit – especially in the developing world.

“This portable solution could be used and passed around in villages that aren’t close enough to a big medical center,” says Podkamien. 

The Yehud-headquartered company has since developed its sensors for a range of purposes, including monitoring the elderly in residential homes, managing stock in retail stores and detecting small, concealed objects in security scans.

Vayyar has raised a total of $296 million thus far, most recently securing $108 million in a Series E funding round led by investment firm Koch Disruptive Technologies in June 2022. 

Podkamien says that while the child-safety regulations adopted by Japan are not yet mandatory worldwide, initiatives in the US and across Europe are pushing car manufacturers to make it so – and it’s only a matter of time until they are. 

The European New Car Assessment Programme, a voluntary vehicle safety rating system, added child presence detection systems in 2023 as a prerequisite for vehicles to achieve a five-star safety rating.

And in the US, the Association of Global Automakers and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers – the two groups that cover almost all carmakers in the American market – have reached an agreement that every vehicle carrying passengers will have alerts for rear-seat occupants by 2025. 

There is existing technology to remind drivers to remove their children from their vehicles with them. These include a notification that sounds on the Israeli-developed Waze navigation app when the drive is over, and a device that turns on when a rear door of the car is opened and then sounds an alarm if the door remains closed once the car stops. 

None of these solutions, however, are integrated into the actual vehicle and can require professional installation or depend on the app always being used while driving.

Vayyar intends for its technology to ultimately be integrated in many of these vehicles. This includes imports to Israel – where between 2010 and 2020 there were 34 fatalities due to children being left in overheated, locked cars. 

“Hopefully, this will put an end to these really unnecessary tragedies,” says Podkamien 

The post Israeli Tech Is Helping To Prevent Kids Being Left In Hot Cars appeared first on NoCamels.

We’re all used to freshly brewed coffee within seconds, thanks to the wonder of little capsules. Now picture that same near-instantaneous service, but for moisturizer, hair mousse, and even perfume, without any potentially irritating preservatives. 

Israeli startup Capsulab has created a machine that freshly prepares and dispenses small amounts of beauty products in just 60 seconds. 

The company’s patented capsules (which are about the size of a large egg), include an internal mixer and piston, which blend separate ingredients prepackaged inside the pod in tiny sealed vials. 

When needed, the machine mixes the contents of the vials into a freshly made, preservative-free product.  

Beauty products use a number of preservatives and stabilizers to ensure a long shelf-life and prevent the growth of harmful bacteria and mold, but these ingredients are believed to cause skin irritation or even be potential carcinogens.

Cosmetics In A Capsule 

The machine reads a unique code on each capsule to determine how quickly and intensively to mix the ingredients inside the vials. It can even check whether the ingredients have expired or not. 

Once the vials have been emptied and the mixing stage completed, the machine dispenses the product into a container under the capsule with no mess and no cleanup required. Like with a coffee capsule, all you do is pop it into the machine and press a button.

The possibilities are endless, says Capsulab VP of Business Development Dr. Zakhar Nudelman – from blending cosmetics to producing food supplements and even mixing medicines. 

“The process is universal for many, many different industries,” he explains.

The Capsulab team has even used the machine to whip up a small batch of fresh tahini.

Nudelman says that there are several advantages to using his company’s machine, for both consumers and businesses. 

For the consumer, no chemicals are used as the active ingredients in each capsule are separate and hermetically sealed, and only combined on the spot in small quantities. 

Furthermore, he says, using the machine is more sustainable than purchasing packaged cosmetics as it uses almost every last drop of ingredients. 

“For example, when you throw away the tube [of moisturizer], you will inevitably throw away some of the material inside,” explains Nudelman. “We can squeeze 99.9 percent of the material out of any capsule we use.” 

A solution like this could also save companies money. Beauty brands overproduce their cosmetics, meaning that they create more than demanded. This means that more than 10 percent of products – worth an estimated $4.8 billion – go to waste as they move through the supply chain, according to a study from materials science company Avery Dennison.

In contrast to plastic-packaged products, the capsules can be returned and reused up to 100 times. 

Like a Nespresso machine, businesses pay a subscription fee to Capsulab to lease its machines to consumers, with couriers delivering capsules and collecting the used ones on a regular basis.

And each time a consumer uses a capsule, Capsulab collects information about which was used and sends it to the businesses with which it is partnered. This allows the businesses to gain greater insight into their consumers’ preferences and use that to determine which products to develop next.

The company is planning to develop an app for the machine, which will allow consumers to create their own individually tailored capsules for skincare, haircare and more.

Capsulab is already collaborating with personal care brands in Germany and South Korea, as well as hair salons in Germany. The Tel Aviv-based startup has launched pilots with these companies, where its machines are dispensing their products in retail stores for a limited time.

CEO Gal Saar, a veteran mechanical engineer at state-run defense company ELTA Systems, founded the company in 2018 after pondering which products other than coffee could be created from a capsule in less than a minute. 

He says he realized that in order to enjoy this kind of instant preparation, the products had to be created on an individual basis.  

It took around four years to develop the machine and the specially designed capsules, which can fit as many as 18 different ingredients and dispense up to 200 ml of product.

Capsulab has raised $2 million thus far from private investors, including angels and Israeli and German firms. 

This year, the company won the title of Israel’s most innovative packaging solution, in a competition organized by the Manufacturers Association of Israel. 

That said, Capsulab does have a handful of competitors. L’Oreal’s Perso machine creates individualized skincare and cosmetic formulas, dispensing them through pods, and uses AI to optimize customer personalization over time as it gathers more data. Other competitors include Leiselle of Spain, and Japan’s Shiseido, which have both created machines that send personalized skincare capsules to consumers through a subscription.

But Saar says that Capsulab supports thousands of different ingredients with no setup and zero maintenance, unlike its competitors, which use only a handful of ingredients for ultra-specific use cases, and require cleanup.

“It’s much easier than making an espresso,” he says.

The post Preservative-Free, Fresh Beauty Products At The Push Of A Button appeared first on NoCamels.

If a water pipe bursts at home, you know what to do. Find the shut-off valve and limit the damage. But if the same thing happens at a huge industrial complex, it’s quite possible that nobody actually knows how to switch off the supply.

Visit any factory producing chemicals, medicines, cleaning products or toiletries, for example, and you’ll see a dizzying maze of pipes, pumps, tanks, vessels, valves, motors, vents, compressors and a hundred other devices. Many are inaccessible or hidden from view.

You’ll begin to understand why finding that valve may not be so straightforward.

The factory may well have been built decades ago. Over time the building has been extended, bits have been added, removed or replaced, parts have been patched. The patches have been patched.

Paperwork that may once have been neatly filed has been lost, damaged or eaten by mice, maintenance records have gone missing, and the guy who headed the department for 30 years and had everything in his head is in hospital, gone on vacation, or retired.

The bottom line is that nobody has a clue . . . and the water (or worse, we’re talking about a chemical factory) is still gushing out.

Breakdowns like a burst pipe are a fact of industrial life. They typically get fixed quite quickly and production resumes.

But in extreme cases it can take many hours to locate and repair the fault. And the full-scale shutdown that results is very bad news for any manufacturer and their bottom line.

A startup in Israel is addressing the problem with technology that identifies every valve – in fact every last nut and bolt – in even the biggest and most advanced industrial complexes. Not just where it is, but how it fits into the grand scheme of things.

Metabim combines information from two key sources to give engineers the full, clear and up-to-date understanding they need of exactly what’s going on.

The first source of information is a new-tech “digital twin” created by 3D laser scanners.

It’s a super-accurate 360-degree images of a site – or a BIM (Building Information Model) – that is now standard across the architecture, engineering and construction worlds.

The second source is decidedly old tech – the filing cabinets full of flow charts known as piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs) that show how everything connects with everything else.

Putting the two together is a bit like solving a million-piece jigsaw puzzle, with some critical parts missing, and no picture on the lid to help.

But Metabim says its revolutionary software brings order and organization to a potentially chaotic workplace.

It plugs any knowledge gaps, digitizes every last piece of information and tags everything to the 3D model using universally-recognized protocols.

Engineers can zoom in and out, rotate the model, and instantly identify every component.

It’s the combination of a digital twin with a flow-chart overlay that makes what Metabim does almost unique.

“Behind every product we consume are people called process engineers,” says Oved Yosef, the company’s CEO.

“But they struggle to keep up with production because the information does not reflect the current situation.”

He recalls the time somebody at a factory dug out a briefcase from 1970 with handwritten documentation. That was the best they could manage.

Another facility hadn’t been documented in 15 years. They found there were 100 gaps and misalignments between documentation and reality.

“The density of infrastructure equipment inside big facilities has made them really hard to manage,” says Yosef.

“The problem is really vast. It affects everybody. It affects planning engineers, maintenance engineers, operational engineers, chemical engineers, environmental engineers.

“Everybody is working with one purpose, to keep manufacturing. To do that you need reliable information.

“Process engineers need to be precise because we are dealing with raw materials that are expensive and also dangerous.

“We are dealing with a lot of infrastructure and different products and it takes a lot of people effort to make it right

“Until now the P&IDs that show you the infrastructure and the equipment for the process was a hard copy.”

He say they manually connect the P&ID to the digital twin, using icons that everybody understands.

“A process engineer from Japan, and a process engineer from Germany can read and understand the process,” he says.

“Our solution is specifically for engineers, to keep manufacturing going and this updated information is changing the game.

“The first priority in any factory is to keep production going. To do that, process engineers need precise information because they’re dealing with raw materials that can be expensive and dangerous.

“We are dealing with a lot of infrastructure and different products that it takes a lot of people effort to make it right.”

He established Metabim in 2020 together with Yair Malul – they both have a background in the chemical industry – and Ruti Shafi, an expert in 3D and augmented reality. They teamed up to bring high-tech benefits to a sector that is traditionally very conservative.

Among the first to adopt Metabim’s technology is the chemicals giant ICL (formerly Israel Chemicals Ltd) which produces a third of the world’s bromine – used in agriculture, sanitation fire-retardants.

Avner Kolander, head of the plant’s bromine-chlorine process engineering department at – and has been at the Dead Sea Works, said: “Thanks to Metabim, the factory stopped dealing with the various challenges that arose due to outdated information.

“Today, the information is accessible, updated in real-time, and enables the acceleration of processes in the factory.”

The post No More Lost Valves: How To Navigate An Industrial Maze appeared first on NoCamels.

Common pedagogical wisdom states that the younger a child begins learning a new language, the easier it is for them to acquire. 

And adhering to that philosophy, Israeli startup Curiosity Robotics has created a friendly, chatty little robot to teach English as a foreign language to preschoolers.  

Meet Aico, the charming, smiling artificial intelligence teaching tool that is the product of three years of research at Tel Aviv University’s Curiosity Labs. 

Aico is programmed to use a teaching method devised by British-Israeli educator Helen Doron, which advocates for children starting to learn a second language as early as three months of age. 

Children learning their first language can just as easily learn two languages, the Doron method argues. In fact, studies show that learning two languages in early years can boost a child’s cognitive development across the board. 

“We are aware that before five years old, about 90 percent of the brain has developed. And so we get this wonderful plastic era of the brain, where we can fill it with so much information,” Falene McKenna, Curiosity Robotics’ product manager, tells NoCamels.  

“It is a perfect time to learn. We absolutely should take advantage of that and we should start teaching as soon as we’re able to, as quickly as we can.”

The diminutive white robot is considerably smaller than the average three year old. It has arms but no legs and an expressive, smiling face on the screen inside its head. 

Aico is introduced into the classroom by the teacher, who controls the device through a mobile app. 

The robot teaches the children English using songs, games and flashcards bearing simple words. It is an immersive experience that echoes the way very young children acquire language naturally.  

“We’re fully focused on the natural aspect of it, that this is something someone would say,” says McKenna. 

Each lesson follows a similar format of active learning, and McKenna says the teacher is given instructions on which resources will be used for that particular session and how it will progress. Then, the robot takes over teaching duties. 

“We try to make it as dynamic as possible following the Helen Doron pedagogy, which requires one, it to be fun and engaging, and two, to be active and involved,” she explains. 

“We’re teaching it in a way that is, ‘please find this card on the floor’; ‘now let’s pretend to do this action or to be this animal’; ‘let’s hand over an object’,” she adds. 

“You use the words in an active way. So rather than just be something you learn, you immediately use it.” 

Much emphasis is also placed on social interaction, or co-learning, during the lesson, McKenna says. “We want the kids to feel immersed, to work on it, to feel like their cohort is learning together and they can help each other.” 

It is the robot itself that sets Curiosity Robotics apart from other digital teaching platforms, which only present a flat screen with varying content, including digital teachers, McKenna says. 

“There’s a lot of research that shows that there are actual social benefits to having a robot,” she says, singling out a 2017 study from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.  

“If you decide you want to teach in a TPR (total physical response) as we are doing, you want to include as much movement, sound and additional context as possible when you say a word,” McKenna explains, pointing out that robots can provide a multisensory experience.

After that, the startup plans to expand to other schools in Israel and abroad, as the Helen Doron system is already used in more than 40 countries, McKenna claims. 

The company also intends to move beyond teaching just English and adapt the same pedagogical style to other subjects such as math and the sciences. 

Assessment of the children is conducted using algorithms devised by Curiosity Robotics’ Chief Science Officer Prof. Goren Gordon, who is also head of the Curiosity Lab. 

The platform tracks the progression of the children and the lessons, McKenna explains, “so that we’re able to make sure that we’re constantly teaching new things, and we know whether or not a kid understands or doesn’t.”

The robot is currently in the proof of concept stage (demonstrating that it is a feasible plan) at two kindergartens in Israel – one in Tirat Carmel in the north and the other in Ramat Gan, on the outskirts of the central metropolis of Tel Aviv.

The assessment is carried out on the spot, as McKenna stresses that there is never any recording of the children themselves. 

McKenna tells NoCamels that the children who encounter Aico are captivated by her. 

“There’s like this magic that happens,” she says. She insists that children who are initially reticent swiftly lose their trepidation once Aico begins interacting with them, and are among those who rush to embrace the robot when the session is over. 

Aico actually derives her name from the Japanese words “ai” meaning love and “komodo” meaning child, she explains. 

“We have a seal that says ‘powered by love and technology.’ And that’s what we want to keep.”  

The post Happy Robot Helps Preschoolers Learn Second Language appeared first on NoCamels.

There’s a reason most of us love biting into a slice of rich chocolate cake, or sinking our teeth into a mouthwatering, juicy burger. 

The high fat content in these foods intensifies their flavors and aromas, and gives them a tender and moist texture. And now an Israeli startup has developed a way to add more of this nutrient into plant-based alternatives to meat, whose fat more often than not leaks out as it is being cooked. 

“If you’ve ever tried [a plant-based meat alternative] and you were left with a dry, chewy sensation, or maybe the flavors and aroma were not quite right – this was because the product didn’t have a good alternative to fat,” Gad Harris, founder of KaYama Foods, tells NoCamels. 

The startup’s secret method uses a handful of natural substances to thicken plant-based oils and raise the temperature at which they liquify. This ensures that the meatless burger, filet or steak into which the fat is incorporated holds its intended flavors, texture, and aromas during the cooking process. 

Fats derived from animal sources such as beef or pork have a melting point that ranges from 45°C to 55°C (113°F to 131°F). Most vegetable oils, on the other hand, have a far lower melting point, causing them to leak during the cooking process, resulting in a product that is lacking in sizzle.

One exception is coconut oil, which has a melting point of 25°C (77°F), but whose dominant taste may impact the flavor of a meat-alternative meal. 

“The flavors and aromas that you smell could not develop in the cooking process without having fats and oils that are free to function and react with the other components in the meat,” explains Harris.

KaYama’s technology, however, can be used on any plant-based oil – from sunflower to rapeseed – giving food producers more options for animal-free fat sources. And the formula is the same for every plant oil. 

Harris says that the patent-pending product is natural and is “clean label,” meaning it uses only a few ingredients that are all recognizable by the consumer – although he declines to disclose any further information. 

Before founding KaYama in 2022, Harris, a vegan and foodie who studied environmental engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, worked for several years as a R&D and process engineer at an alternative protein company.

He says he was always fascinated by the connection between great food, good nutrition and a healthy environment. And it was his own disappointing experience with alternative meat options that led him to try to fill an unmet need in this area.

Land Of Milk, Honey And Meat Alternatives 

KaYama Foods is one of many startups that are contributing to the alternative protein and fat sector in Israel, where the industry has boomed in recent years. Other such startups include SimpliiGood, which uses algae to create vegan schnitzel among other products; More Foods, which uses discarded pumpkin and sunflower seeds to produce high-protein strips, chunks and minute steaks; and ChickP, which develops dairy-free cheeses from chickpea protein powder. 

Israel has a ready market for meat substitute products, with around five percent of the population embracing a vegan lifestyle. A meat and dairy-free diet is so popular among young Israelis that in 2018, the Israel Defense Forces found that more than five percent of its soldiers (1 in every 18) described themselves as vegan, over four times the global average.  

The country’s alternative protein industry has attracted more than $1 billion in investment over the past two years – second only to the USA, according to the Good Food Institute Israel. 

Israel is also supporting the growth of alternative proteins, with the Israel Innovation Authority – a branch of the government – investing $12 million in alternative protein startups in 2022 alone. That same year, the Technion announced the establishment of the world’s first multidisciplinary research center for alternative proteins.

And in addition to KaYama, there are several companies that are developing ways of enhancing the sensory experience of eating a vegetarian or vegan burger.

Spain’s Cubiq Foods has created “smart fat,” a vegan source of fat that behaves like animal fat through the use of emulsifiers, an additive that stabilizes liquids that don’t normally mix, while Dutch company Bunge Loders Croklaan creates palm and shea-based fats and oils.

According to Harris, emulsions can prevent oils from leaking out by binding them in foods, but they don’t provide the functionality of oil – in other words, the texture, meatiness and aroma of meat products. 

“In my opinion, these products don’t truly mimic animal fats,” he says. “We’re replacing lipids with lipids. We’re not replacing lipids with water or other substances.”

KaYama, which is based in Yokne’am Illit, in northern Israel, is currently in touch with alternative meat companies in Israel, and aims to commence a pilot with them after further developing its prototype. 

KaYama was a finalist in this year’s MassChallenge Israel core accelerator program, a four-month intensive program that helps entrepreneurs advance their nascent companies.

“Our aim is to get these products [meat and fish alternatives] to actually become more like their animal counterparts,” says Harris.

The post Startup Making Plant-Based Food As Deliciously Greasy As Meat appeared first on NoCamels.

An Israeli startup has brought a revolutionary traffic management system to the United States, allowing American urban areas to control the ebb and flow of its vehicles on demand – turning the roads into what a NoTraffic executive calls a giant “game of chess.” 

Through the use of its smart technology and artificial intelligence system, NoTraffic says it can cut down the amount of time drivers spend stuck in jams.

The system collects data on the number and types of road users – be it cars, bikes, buses or even people on foot – from a mix of cameras, radar and chips that can communicate with autonomous vehicles. These data-collection sensors are placed at intersections and other points on the road.  

This data is then sent to a cloud-based platform, which uses algorithms to analyze the information and predict imminent traffic events in great detail. 

These events include which lane a particular car will take and how that might impact congestion at the next intersection; when a car might run a red light; and even where and when a pedestrian will step into the street without warning. 

Once the system has built up an image of the upcoming situation on the roads, it can then manage the flow of vehicles through the traffic lights connected to the platform. The chip sensors can even tell an autonomous car to slow down if it is approaching an intersection too quickly.

The platform can also present the information in a dashboard for city engineers, who can use it for big data analytics, remote monitoring of intersections and the implementation of new traffic policies. 

“It’s kind of like a game of chess, where you’re calculating all the moves ahead and deciding what the next best step is,” Matan Nir, Director of Business Development and Marketing of NoTraffic, tells NoCamels. 

Traffic lights normally run on timers that are set using certain statistics, such as the volume of traffic during weekends and at peak hours of the day, says Nir.

But even though a single intersection can have between 60 and 100 different timer settings that operators can switch between throughout the day, Nir explains that traffic engineers in the US only adjust these timers every three to five years. 

This, he says, is not an accurate representation of the traffic flow on the ground. 

“If you think a lot of changes can take place in a period of three to five years, imagine how many events can take place in a single day,” he says.

One study In Phoenix, Arizona showed that the installation of NoTraffic’s platform led to a 70 percent reduction in drivers running a red light, dramatically lowering the probability of accidents.

Up in Canada’s British Columbia, the platform resulted in a 40 percent reduction in delays for pedestrians at stop lights, without increasing congestion for other road users. 

And in Arizona, NoTraffic says it cut the time users spent on the road in half by applying its sensors to three intersections in a mile-long strip in downtown Tucson.

“We used a drone to capture the ‘before’ and ‘after’,” says Nir. “You were able to see a queue up to a mile long at one of the intersections, but after implementing NoTraffic, a mile of the queue was totally eliminated.”

A client that purchases the NoTraffic system can choose from a range of software services that the company offers, such as analytics and optimization services for police and fire departments. It essentially functions as a tool for agencies to easily implement their policies to improve their unmanaged traffic systems.

The startup is already operating in 13 US states, including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, and California, and has just signed up its one hundredth local Department of Transportation in North America.

Israel Driving Car Tech

Israel has become a leader in developing advanced car-tech, and global companies have been taking note. In June 2013, Waze, the sat-nav software company, was bought by Google for $1.3 billion. In March 2017, Mobileye, the advanced driver assistance system, was bought by Intel for $15.3 billion, the biggest-ever acquisition of an Israeli tech company at the time.

Today there are more than 400 automotive startups in Israel developing an array of technologies, from collision avoidance to autonomous cars, from electric vehicle batteries to AI systems that check cars for faults – and NoTraffic is one of them.

Other Israeli automotive startups include RavinAI, which has developed an artificial intelligence-enabled vehicle inspection platform; Valens, which has introduced the first rear-view camera for trucks; and Foretellix, which uses AI to teach driverless cars how to react to any situation on the road.

As for NoTraffic, which was founded in Tel Aviv and is based both in Israel and in Palo Alto, California, Nir says that most of its competitors are “legacy competitors” that sell traffic equipment to traffic authorities. 

One direct competitor is Canada’s Miovision, which also collects traffic data to improve congestion. But Nir says that unlike Miovision, NoTraffic uses a combination of technologies that makes it capable of collecting traffic data in 99.9 percent of weather conditions, whereas Miovision has to rely on different hardware for each kind of service it offers. 

In 2022, NoTraffic was included in the TIME100 Most Influential Companies list, along with some of the most recognizable companies in the world, including Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Since being founded in 2017, NoTraffic has raised over $75 million in funding, including $50 million it announced last month that it had raised in a Series B round. The funding was led by M&G Investments alongside VNV Global and UMC Capital, as well as existing investors. NoTraffic plans to use these funds to aid its expansion into the UK, Japan, Italy and Germany.

“This funding is another step in our mission to revolutionize the way traffic is being managed today,” said Tal Kreisler, co-founder and CEO of NoTraffic.

The post Israeli AI System Saving US Drivers From Endless Traffic Jams appeared first on NoCamels.

Think whisky, think Scotland.

It has an abundance of vital ingredients  – water, barley and yeast. It has the perfect climate – cold, wet and miserable. And it has centuries of expertise.

Israel has none of the above. But what it lacks in tradition, it makes up for in innovation.

The Startup Nation is home to handful of “new world” distilleries, a term that also covers Japan, Taiwan, India, Belgium and Norway.

The oldest is Tel Aviv-based Milk and Honey, founded in 2013 and winner this April of the Best Single Malt Whisky in the World for its Element Sherry Cask whisky, chosen from 6,000 blind tastings.

It’s a tiny player, distilling just 250,000 liters a year (Scotland produces 400 million liters annually), but it’s been pushing the boundaries in the way it matures its whisky.

Regardless of where it’s made, all whisky starts life as fermented barley or other grain.

It’s distilled into a clear and as-yet undrinkable liquid, which gets its taste and color as it matures for three years or more (age is of many rules on what qualifies as whisky, according to Scotch Whisky Association).

The two critical factors in this maturation process are climate. And the exact type of oak cask in which the whisky is stored.

This is where Milk and Honey has been innovating, taking whisky to unlikely locations for the ageing process, and storing it in an unusual variety of barrels.

It transported a batch of 30 barrels to the rooftop of an hotel near the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, where high temperatures (up to 50C/122F) and humidity hugely accelerate the ageing process.

They found the super-dry conditions gave the whisky what experts describe as “big, intense notes of toasty spices and powerful vanilla.”

The whisky doesn’t absorb the high salt content of the Dead Sea, but it does benefit from other minerals in the air, and it evaporates so quickly that the flavors are far more intense than usual.

The super-strong tipple – 56.2 per cent alcohol compared to a standard 40 per cent – has now been bottled and is being sold as Apex Dead Sea.

 “It’s hard to be very scientific and accurate about it,” says Dana Baran, VP marketing at Milk and Honey.

“But I would say that in three or four years, we get results here in Israel that you’d get in Scotland after of 10 to 12 years.

“In Scotland, they say the whisky rests while it’s maturing. Here we say it works, because it doesn’t have time to rest. The whisky here is impatient.”

Climate is a plus, but it’s also a minus. A barrel of whisky in Scotland will lose one or two per cent a year to natural evaporation – known as the angels’ share.

“Here in Tel Aviv it’s about 10 per cent a year,” says Baran. “And if we age the whisky at the Dead Sea, it’s 25 per cent yearly, because of the harsh climate there.

“So we can’t put the casks there for three years. We just put them there for a year, or a year and a half, and the rest of the time they sit here in our storage in Tel Aviv.”

The Dead Sea whisky is the first “aged-away” offering, but the distillery also experimenting with casks stored in the Jerusalem mountains.

The altitude there is much higher and the variations between day and night and summer and winter are more extreme. All these factors have a big effect on the final product.  

Milk and Honey has another storage facility at the Sea of Galilee, 200 meters below sea level in the north of Israel, where the climate is very humid. Both these whiskies will be released next year.

It’s also experimenting with storing whisky in Arad, on the border of the Negev and the Judean Deserts, and is considering the Upper Galilee and the Red Sea as ageing venues.

This is a far cry from Scotland, where it feels like winter for most of the year, wherever you go.

Aside from climate, it’s the oak barrels in which the whisky is stored that determine how it tastes.

Distilleries routinely buy in casks from bourbon or sherry producers, for the flavors they impart.

Milk and Honey go one better. They’ve been trying out rum casks and tequila casks, and have put their whiskies into casks used for wine made from pomegranates.

They have even used barrels from “biblical” wines, made by Israel’s Recanati winery using ancient Marawi and Bittuni varieties of grape.

“There are very strict rules to the Scottish way of making whisky, but we’re Israelis in Tel Aviv, a high tech hub, and innovation and is a way of life,” says Baran. “So we innovate.”

Milk and Honey was established by Gal Kalkshtein, a high-tech entrepreneur, innovator and investor with a keen interest in whisky.

He brought in the late Dr. Jim Swan, a world expert in hot climate maturation and a man known as “the Einstein of whisky.”

Dr. Swan used to call Israel a “wonderful playground,” says Baran, because it has four or five different climate zones in a tiny country.

“He helped us to establish the place, to build it, to choose the cask, to choose the recipe, and much more,” he says.

“There’s a lot of distilleries these days and we’re not the only one in Israel. If you want to stand out, you need to do something different, and that’s what we’re doing.”

The post Top Tipple: Israeli Distillery Ages Whisky At Lowest Point On Earth appeared first on NoCamels.

You don’t read too much in the news about breakthroughs in the world of food canning.

That’s because there aren’t many. Food was first preserved in cans in 1810, the first can opener was invented 50 years later (absolutely true!) and easy-open cans (with a built-in ring pull) arrived in the 1960s.

And that’s about it. Except that Caniel, an Israeli company, has now added a revolutionary tweak to the classic tuna can which, they say, will put an end to the dreaded drip.

It’s designed a “spurt-free” can that lets you gently pump the base to squeeze out the oil, rather than pressing in the lid and draining it all over your hands (and clothes).

To the untrained eye it looks just like a standard tuna can. But the metal base is elasticated. So unlike a rigid base, it has a button in the middle which yields to pressure, allowing you to gently squeeze out the oil.

Open the can a little with the easy-open ring pull, turn it upside-down, pump the elastic base four or five times and the tuna is ready and drained, without your hands touching the oil and getting smelly.

“Using a tuna can is a messy business,” says Lior Yemini, the company’s CEO. “Our patented solution is a hassle-free solution.”

The new can bases take longer to manufacture, need to be made with great precision and cost more as a result. But Yemini says customers will be prepared to pay extra.

“We are looking for added value, for innovation to change the market,” he says. “We had research carried out (by marketing data company Kantar) which found that customers would be prepared to pay 15 percent to 20 percent more for tuna in cans like ours.”

The top and the body of the can remain unchanged. Only the base is different.

Canning factories fill the cans lid-down, add oil, seal on the base (and then cook the tuna in the can). It’s very straightforward for them to incorporate Caniel’s elasticated base into their process.

“They don’t need to change anything in their production lines,” says Yemini. “They can work in the same way they work today. With a small adjustment they can adopt our technology and deliver added value.”

“As far as tuna fillers (the factories that can tuna) are concerned, this allows them to increase sales, increase market share, and of course, improve their innovation image.

“There is a lot of interest. We are speaking to tuna companies all over the world from Latin America, from Europe, from Spain and Italy,” says Yemini. “We are working in a very traditional industry and there are not many innovations.”

You won’t yet have seen the spurt-free can in stores. Caniel says it is running a pilot project but its can bases aren’t yet being used by manufacturers.

There is, however, huge scope for it to expand. Global consumption of tuna is currently around 25 billion cans a year, says Yemini, and Caniel currently produces less than 100 million tuna cans per annum.

“If the customer wants, we can sell only the bottom of the can, which means we can put more than a million of them into a shipping container, so the transportation costs are low,” Yemini explains.

The company, founded in Israel back in 1926, manufactures a wide range of cans and other packaging products for baby food, coffee, pickled cucumbers, olives, drinks, cosmetics, paints, oils, glues and more.

But tuna in oil poses a very particular problem for the end user, one which took four years of research and development to address.

That sounds like a lot of work to redesign the base of a tuna can, but it’s a complex business.

The company worked closely with Israel-based Practical Innovation, which was responsible for spearheading the conception, research, development program, and management of the development process.

“We had to find the right material with the specification we needed, which all takes a long time, and then get the design right, with help from Thyssenkrupp, the German steel-making company,” says Yemini.

“The filler put the tuna in the can and heat it for an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half. The metal changes during that process, so if the design is not perfect you’ll try to click the button and it won’t work.”

The company is building new factory in Kiryat Gat, southern Israel, to allow for increased production.

“We don’t want to lead the worldwide tuna market,” says Yemini. “Only this niche product that we’ve developed. For us 500 million cans a year would be huge.”

The post Tuna Revolution: Israeli Company Invents First Spurt-Free Can appeared first on NoCamels.

Almost half of people with diabetes suffer a loss of sensation in their extremities due to nerve damage known as peripheral neuropathy, leaving some unaware when they have an open wound on one of their feet, let alone when it becomes infected and cannot heal. 

These are known as diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) and medical studies have shown a direct connection between them and an increased risk of mortality. This makes early diagnosis of this condition a matter of urgency. 

And now an Israeli startup has created a “smart” custom insole that can monitor a diabetic patient’s feet in real time, and alert their doctor of a looming ulceration weeks before it even develops, based on the way in which a person walks. 

The Hybrid+ insole, developed by Actics Medical, is equipped with built-in sensors that in clinical trials have been able to measure the pressure, temperature and motion of the foot, and present the data in real time in an accompanying app for your smartphone. 

The company says the insole is made of pegs and rods that come in different lengths, and that can be adjusted in 52 different ways.

Should the sensors determine that too much pressure is being exerted on a certain part of the foot, the app can instruct the patient to use a specially developed screwdriver to change the insole’s shape within minutes – expanding and contracting to change the way the patient steps, and redistributing the pressure in their foot to help prevent ulceration. 

Custom orthotics (insoles) already exist for diabetic patients to prevent foot injuries and ulcerations, but involve a lengthy, multi-stage process that includes making a cast of the patient’s feet. Furthermore, traditional orthotics take time to get used to and cannot be adjusted by the user on the spot. 

“The standard of care is custom orthotics, which are passive and fixed,” Ron Machanian, founder and CEO of Actics Medical, tells NoCamels. 

“But people are dynamic. We’re constantly changing, and the difference between a regular insole and an insole that can be adjusted a millimeter or two could be what prevents the next ulceration,” he says. 

A long-term custom orthotics user, Machanian says he was motivated to create the insole to help himself and others who need them. With a background in engineering, Machanian has extensive experience in the medical field and describes himself as a tech enthusiast with an interest in AI, digital health, and big data.  

Sole Solution 

The number of people around the world suffering from diabetes is growing rapidly. New estimates by the Lancet medical journal state that by 2050, more than 1.3 billion people worldwide will have diabetes, up from 529 million in 2021.

The total medical cost of managing diabetic foot disorders in the United States alone can reach as high as $60 billion per year, with the economic burden set to rise in proportion to the number of new patients being diagnosed with the disease. 

Apart from traditional custom orthotics, several companies have developed their own solutions to DFU.

US-based Podimetrics developed a smart mat that scans a patient’s feet to detect early signs of inflammation in 20 seconds, and alerts their providers so they can take preventative action. And Canada’s Orpyx has also developed a foot insole equipped with sensors to measure the temperature of the foot to determine whether an ulceration is forming.

What sets the Hybrid+ apart from these products, says Machanian, is that the insoles not only monitor the development of an ulceration, but that they can also be adjusted and changed to prevent it from even happening. 

The sensors in the Hybrid+ were validated and verified at the walking and movement laboratory at Hadassah University Medical Center at Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, which uses a gait with pressure map system to provide rehabilitative treatment for orthopedic problems.

The insoles also underwent clinical trials at the Hadassah Medical Center on nine patients with different foot pathologies, where they were found to be highly efficient at identifying and monitoring the disorders, and enabling accurate correction of pressure in the affected areas to treat the clinical problems.

“The wife of one of the patients cried when she saw our innovation,” recounts Machanian. 

He says that a new, multi-center clinical trial is set to begin next month at the New York University (NYU) and Hadassah Medical Center. He expects the patent-pending insoles to be available through US insurance as soon as the middle of next year.

The advisory board of the Rehovot-based company, which was founded in 2020, includes Prof. Lew Schon, a renowned food and ankle surgeon and professor of orthopedics at NYU and Johns Hopkins University, and Prof. David G. Armstrong, an podiatric surgeon and researcher known for his work in amputation prevention.

And while the insoles are currently dedicated to preventing DFU, Machanian believes that its potential is wide-ranging in orthopedics, neuromuscular conditions, sports, and even everyday comfort. 

According to Machanian, within the next 5 to 10 years, the majority of footwear will incorporate some form of smart technology.

The post Custom ‘Smart’ Insoles Combat Dangerous Diabetic Foot Ulcers appeared first on NoCamels.

In November 2022, a Twitter account claiming to be owned by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly posted a bombshell message: it was giving away a life-saving diabetes treatment for no money. 

“We are excited to announce insulin is free now,” tweeted the account @EliLillyandCo. But the viral tweet and the account did not come from Eli Lilly at all, which was not handing out insulin for free, and the convincing post ended up wiping 4.5 percent off its share value. 

While this was the work of someone trying to raise concerns about the cost of healthcare in the US, not every fake profile posting fake information has such altruistic motives – which is where Israeli startup Cyabra comes in. 

The Tel Aviv-based company calls itself a “social threat intelligence” company, which works to expose online risk to individuals, institutions or even governments. It says its mission is to fight misinformation, claiming it can root out even the most sophisticated threats. 

Unique AI software created by Cyabra quickly identifies malicious actors using social media and other online spaces such as comment sections, to spread false information. 

The sophisticated threats usually include the use of sock puppet (fake identity) accounts that post false information and networks of computer-run accounts (bots) that share these posts multiple times in order to lend them credibility. 

The actual number of bots on Twitter, where they are most prolific, has long been a subject for debate. But that debate escalated with Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the social media platform last year, when the Tesla founder commissioned a survey of the issue. The company he tasked with the investigation was Cyabra.

The startup found that some 11 percent of Twitter users were bots. Cyabra CEO Dan Brahmy told CNN that the company had carried out similar assessments of other social media platforms and that Twitter had the biggest bot problem.

To former CIA cyber-operations officer Dan Woods, however, that number is low. Woods, who is an expert on bot traffic as part of his role at American cybersecurity firm F5, claimed last year that 80 percent of Twitter’s traffic could potentially be generated by bots.

And spotting real facts from convincing fiction online can be tricky. 

“Sometimes these accounts, they’ve been posting actual content for months to make it look very believable,” Cybara’s VP Marketing Rafi Mendelsohn tells NoCamels. 

“But then what you might have is bot networks and bot farms that have been created not to post content, but to amplify the content of the fake account. So you actually have different types of inauthentic profiles that are engaging with each other in order to achieve the objective.”

What sets Cyabra apart, Mendelsohn explains, is the focus on accounts aiming to cause harm in the social sphere rather than hackers who pose what he calls “classic cybersecurity threats” such as to infrastructure or hardware.  

Those companies who do take a look at social media activity have much more limited breadth than Cyabra, which, according to Mendelsohn, examines every platform. 

Cyabra identifies its targets not just by looking at the account making the post, but by uncovering the fake accounts that promote the disinformation. 

“We’re looking for the threats, and then seeing which accounts are associated,” Mendelsohn says.

AI In Action

Cyabra’s platform uses artificial intelligence in what Mendelsohn calls “semi-supervised machine learning.” 

Some five or six hundred different behavioral parameters are fed into the Cyabara algorithm, Mendelsohn explains. These parameters include a particular account’s online behavior, monitoring the accounts that it follows and engages with and the accounts that follow and engage with it.  

He cites the example of malicious social media activity surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

“We were very interested to see the disinformation campaigns that were going on,” Mendelsohn says. “Just one of the things that we uncovered was a cluster of fake accounts – no more than 50 or 60 – on Twitter, that we believe originated from Russia.”

He says the accounts were all presented as accounts from Poland, which were posting and amplifying one another’s negative content in Polish about Ukraine. Poles at the time were welcoming Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russian attacks into their homes, and someone in Moscow was trying to create divisions between the two nations. 

Red Flags

“We’ve developed pretty interesting new technology that allows us to be able to detect whether an account is real or fake online,” Mendelsohn tells NoCamels.  

One way in which it is possible to tell whether an account has a real person or a computer operating it is the amount of times it posts in a single day. 

“If you have posted 23 of the 24 hours of the day, that’s an indication that there’s non-human behavior,” he says. “We can say, okay for that parameter, that’s a bit of a red flag.” 

Cybabra was co-founded in 2018 by Brahmy, CPO Yossef Daar and CTO Ido Shraga. Two of three served in information warfare units in the Israel Defense Forces and all three are veterans of the Israeli high-tech sector.  

“They developed the technical tools and skills to be able to track and fight disinformation, and then they started to use those skills for good,” Mendelsohn says.  

The platform is already in use, including by foreign governments. He says the company worked, for example, with the US State Department to track foreign interference in elections and with the Taiwanese government to battle vaccine disinformation during the COVID pandemic. 

“I suppose it’s useful to think of it as a social media search engine,” he says. “It’s very difficult to do that manually, because it’s like a fire hose of information coming your way.”  

The post Using AI To Fight Social Media Lies, Fake Accounts And Bots appeared first on NoCamels.