When: 12th of July, 2011.
Where: The Israel Trade Fairs Center, Tel-Aviv (the center of Israel)
Prices: From 295 ILS for the first batch sold and then going up to 370 or higher for VIP seats. (85US$- 105US$)

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Architectural simulation system supplied by Ziggurat Systems for $1 million to be used in construction of soccer stadium in Brazil

One of the Brazilian stadiums slated to host the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament will be built with Israeli knowledge.

Israel-based Ziggurat Systems has signed an agreement with a Brazilian engineering company planning the stadium where the World Cup’s opening ceremony will be held. Ziggurat will supply the company with a technological system for about $1 million. The system illustrates the architectural plans in 3D and locates possible faults at the early stage of the architectural design, while coordinating between all the different engineering systems in the building.After the World Cup, the stadium will be used as the home stadium of Brazil’s Corinthians sports club in Sao Paolo.

“Our technological system for illustrating projects and helping in their construction is also operated in the IDF and Defense Ministry,” says Ziggurat Systems’ CEO Yariv Kafri. According to Kafri, the Ziggurat team uses B4UB – a sophisticated and user-friendly three-dimensional technology, which aims to reduce the inefficiency and dangers in the development of construction projects.Using technological means, the project is set up on a computer screen before its construction begins.

Ziggurat, which has a development center in Kibbutz Shefayim, recently signed a cooperation agreement with two leading entrepreneurship companies in New York City, Plaza and Leonardo, which specialize in building luxury apartments in the city.As part of the agreement, Ziggurat will locate construction faults in two luxury projects in New York.

Source: Ynetnews.com

Uptight or relaxed? Study explains how nations form identities

Ukraine ranks as the “loosest” country in the world, while Pakistan is the “tightest” in a sweeping study of human behaviour.

It also says many cultural differences – from the tendency of the Japanese to follow rules to Americans’ more freewheeling approach — have been shaped by historical threats and dangers.

The more a society has experienced wars, high population density, natural disasters, disease outbreaks and resource scarcity, the more likely it is to be “tight” and restrictive today, an international team led by psychologist Michele Gelfand at the University of Maryland reports Friday in the journal Science.

The study also offers explanations for why people often view members of other cultures as strange or alien.

The team asked 6,823 people in 33 countries to rate the appropriateness of 12 behaviours, including eating, arguing, flirting and crying, in 15 situations, such as being in a bank, a job interview, a class, a library, a party or a funeral.

The researchers compared “psychological world views” of citizens in each country, environmental and historical threats and the way rules are imposed, conformity enforced and deviant behaviour punished.

Pakistan, Malaysia, India, Korea, Singapore and Japan topped the “tightness” chart published in the study while Ukraine, Estonia, Hungary, Israel, Brazil and the United States were near the bottom.

Canadians were not surveyed but would likely line up close to the Americans, says Ara Norenzayan, a cultural psychologist at the University of British Columbia.

He was not involved in the study but reviews it in a commentary in Science.

He said the findings help explain human’s remarkable behavioural diversity.

“One thing people don’t appreciate is that cultural differences can be explained,” said Norenzayan. “There is logic to them.”

The study found threats, such as territorial conflict, resource scarcity, or exposure to high levels of pathogens, tend to foster societies that more strictly regulate social behaviour and punish deviance. These societies tend to have more autocratic governments, more closed media, more monitoring and greater efforts to deter crime than loose societies.

Behaviour in everyday situations — being in park, a classroom, the movies, a job interview, and even one’s bedroom — is more constrained in tight societies, Gelfand said. Individuals tend to be more attentive to rules, have more impulse control and have a higher need for order, attributes she said help people adapt to the level of constraint in their culture, and at the same time, reinforce it.

Norenzayan said he is “puzzled” why Italy ranks much higher on the tightness scale than Greece. He said he was also surprised to see Norway score higher than Japan.

“I would take some of the specific rankings with a grain of salt,” Norenzayan said.

Norenzayan says such studies provide valuable insight into human behaviour and the cultural divides that must be bridged to avert war, co-ordinate global economic policies and reverse climate change.

“If we ignore, underestimate, or misunderstand behavioural differences, we do so at everyone’s peril,” he said.

Norenzayan said the study points to both the challenges and “creative possibilities” for tackling problems such as climate change, which requires the slashing of global carbon dioxide emissions as well as changes in behaviour, which might be tolerated differently in various countries.

In some cultures, incentives to reduce emission might work better, he said, while enforcement might be the better approach in other countries. “Diversity can be harnessed in these kinds of creative ways to find common solutions and hopefully lead to more tolerance,” said Norenzayan.

Source: Canada.com

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