Archive | 2012 | February | 12

A team of Americans plans to bring the solar tulip technology of Yavne-based AORA Solar to the sprawling Arizona desert.

A team of Americans plans to bring the solar tulip technology of Yavne-based AORA Solar to the sprawling desert of Phoenix, Arizona.

The second generation “power flower,” as AORA chief technology officer Pinchas Doron dubbed the system, was launched on Tuesday at a ceremony at the Platforma Solara Almeria research and development park in the desert hills of Andalucia, southern Spain.

Amid a sea of 52 heliostat solar panels, which revolve according to the sun’s light along two axes, a 35-meter tulip-shaped tower holds a solar receiver that heats the air to 1,000-degrees Celsius to power a gas turbine. The company’s first plant opened at Kibbutz Samar in the Arava near Eilat in June 2009.

One flower alone can supply 100 kilowatts of electricity and generate 170 kilowatts of heat energy as a byproduct, which can be used to power external facilities such as desalination plants. Meanwhile, sitting under the flower is a small diesel tank – which can also use natural gas or other power sources – that switches on when night falls and the receiver is no longer receiving solar rays, AORA CEO Zev Rosensweig toldThe Jerusalem Post at the site on Tuesday.

By bringing two of these flowers for research and demonstration in the arid climate Phoenix, the American collaborators will generate 200 kilowatts of electricity at a site that can act as a model for the US Southwest and beyond, the team said.

“They don’t have to come all the way to Europe to see it,” said Michael Horner, CEO of Phoenix-based Sisener Engineering NA Corp., which also has offices in Spain, Italy, Ecuador and Peru.

Horner and his colleagues have pinned down a location for the facility in downtown Phoenix, and he said it would operate as a research and demonstration hub not only for the US, but also for Mexico and South American nations.

They are in negotiations with a large gas company that may fund the venture, and Horner plans to back up his solar flowers with natural gas.

The hope is to start with the demonstration facility and then build a commercial version in the southwest US, Horner said.

A hybrid system such as AORA’s is much more efficient than a similar solar-thermal system that stores solar energy for off-hours, rather than using an alternative fuel back-up, Horner said.

“You can have gas on site and it acts as storage,” he said. “We think that this will provide much firmer power for utilities and it’s obviously a scale-able size.”

Among its many potential uses, the AORA apparatus could help in mining operations, said Scott Freymuller, of Scottsdale, Arizona-based Young Power Equipment.

“This would be good in a mining application where they have issues of power delivery,” he said.

The flexibility of the system is also a critical advantage to using the flower, according to Freymuller, who stressed the importance of its “constant power” function.

“This technology can operate on a stand-alone [independent of the power grid system],” added Daniel Girard, director of renewable energy and energy storage in the business development department of Chicago-based S&C Electric Company.

“It can run 24 hours a day.”

Source: Jpost.com

Dutch DJ sensation Afrojack will be giving a  concert in Tel Aviv, Israel in March 2012. Afrojack, whose full name is Nick van de Wall, was named as the seventh best DJ in the world in 2011, and he has performed around the world, winning a Grammy award along the way. Afrojack will be performing in Tel Aviv for one night only on March 16, 2012 at the Bitan 1 club in Tel Aviv. Tickets are on sale now.

Tickets are on sale for NIS 165  for standard, or NIS 210  for VIP and can be purchased from the Eventim booking agency.

Source: Tourist Israel 

Anobit’s chip is responsible for making gadgets faster – it enhances flash drive performance through signal processing.

Apple is expected to incorporate technology from Israeli startup Anobit into its iPad 3, which is likely to be released in early March, sources said over the weekend.Anobit’s flash memory technology was used in the iPad 2. Last month, Apple admitted that it had indeed acquired the startup, its first Israeli acquisition.Anobit’s chip is responsible for making gadgets faster – it enhances flash drive performance through signal processing.

It has been used in products including the iPhone and the MacBook Air. The iPad 3 can be expected to be even faster than its predecessor.

News of the iPad3′s expected March launch came following a report in the website AllThings late last week, with the event will be held in San Francisco, likely at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which is Apple’s preferred site for product launches.

Apple has typically introduced the latest versions of its iPad in the first few months of the year. The current iPad 2 was introduced on March 2, 2011. The original iPad was introduced at the end of January 2010.

Apple’s iPad dominates the nascent market for tablets even though deep-pocketed rivals are taking aim at the lucrative segment. Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle Fire, which sells at half the cost of an iPad, has chipped away at the lower end of the tablet market.

Apple iPad tablet sales doubled in the December quarter to 15.43 million units from a year earlier.

Source: Haaretz.com

Woman organizes operation to rescue two stray cats facing execution in neighboring Arab country

This is a slightly odd story about a cat lover from Haifa, who happened to read a Russian blog about two street kittens about to be executed in Egypt, and decided to organize a rescue operation.

This happened days after the Egyptian revolution.

“Talkbackers on the blog spoke about the Egyptian’s cruel methods of putting cats to death,” says Marina Egorova. “In some cases they inject poison, and sometimes they choose a cheaper way of using a heavy stone.

“Other talkbackers noted that in the city where they are planning to kill the cats, Dahab in Sinai, there is only one veterinarian with too much work on his hands. I couldn’t stand the thought of the fate of those street cats, who no one wants.”

She decided to go to Egypt to rescue the cats. She traveled by bus, in the heat, as she doesn’t own a car.

“I was scared to death, but all I could think about was my mission,” she says. “I arrived at the home of the woman who published the story on the blog. She took me to the garden and pointed the cats out to me. She took care of the vaccination papers, and I returned to Israel with the two cats. I have no words to describe the feeling.”

Marina herself has several kittens at home, so she is searching for a different owner for the two Egyptian cats. At the same time, she is also checking out adoptive families in Moscow due to the city’s high standard of living, which will guarantee that the kittens get royal treatment.

“Moscow is my hometown,” she says. “In the past I found a family there for a blind cat, and I hope that this time too – thanks to my many vast connections, I’ll be able to give the kittens a better future.”

The project is being sponsored by the Pet Buy chain, which has provided the kittens with veterinary care, food and the supplies needed until a home is found for them.

Source: Ynetnews.com

Prestigious lingerie retailer to open two stores at James Richardson’s Ben Gurion Airport compound

Victoria Secrets is coming to Israel: The famous Lingerie, clothes and perfume brand will be sold in Israel through duty free enterprise, James Richardson. The first two stores will be significantly smaller than the American model of large stores.

Negotiations for the brand’s franchise have completed and negotiations between franchising enterprise and the Israel Airport Authority have begun. The planned stores will span 100-120 square meters, and will be located inside and outside the airport’s duty free compound.

According to estimates, about 300 of the 2,000 items the brand line’s carries will be featured in the stores, especially those featured in its beauty line: Beauty products such as perfumes, soaps and lotions are becoming an important share of the chain’s sales in recent years, due to low prices and prestigious branding.

The Israeli stores will also offer a variety of accessories including bags, belts and jewelry; as well as selected underwear items that do not require fitting, such as panties, baby-dolls and pajamas. The stores aim to cater to impulse-shoppers and as such will not have changing rooms.

The Victoria’s Secrets brand has over 1000 stores in the US, mostly in shopping malls, and over 100 independent stores that feature its beauty products.

For years Voctoria’s Secrets refused offers to globalize the brand. Even the Canadian store was opened under a different name. Many Israeli business corporations tried to convince the pro Israel CEO, Leslie Wexler, to import the brand to Israel including the Sakal family, the Gindi family and Rami Shavit.

Source: Ynetnews.com

Pop superstar, who was found dead in a Beverly Hills hotel room at the age of 48, made one, particularly memorable 2003 trip to Holy Land.

As news of Whitney Houston’s untimely death at the age of 48 sent powerful ripples around globe, Israelis could look back at a brief often eccentric 2003 tour of the Holy Land by the six-time Grammy winner, which, sadly, proved to be her first and last visit to Israel.

In 2003 the U.S. diva, already past the prime of her career and still married to Bobby Brown, made a memorable, if not altogether strange visit to the Holy Land, hosted by the Black Hebrew Israelites, a group centered in the southern desert town of Dimona.

Houston, protected by a ring of publicists and family, rarely spoke to the local media during her trip, even famously evading a hand shake with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon while meeting him with Brown in Jerusalem.

Noting that this was their first trip to Israel, Sharon hoped it would be the first of many, to which Houston replied, “Yes.”

When Sharon asked her how she felt in Israel, Houston said, “It’s home, it’s home.”

Speaking of the awkward encounter, Israeli entertainment reporter Guy Pines remarked in a panel interview to MSNBC at the time that Sharon gave “her his hand, she like pulls Bobby’s hand, very very strongly and she doesn’t want to give the prime minister her hand and she makes Bobby shake his hand.”

“If I had a dollar for every time I said ‘strange’ in this interview, I’d be a rich man by now,” Pines said.

Speaking to the media in the American superstar’s stead, Houston’s sister and acting spokeswoman Patricia Houston said of the visit at the time: “She is loving it.”

“She is a spiritual woman and wanted to come here and touch the land and be around the saints of Dimona,” Houston’s sister added.

The quirkiness of Houston’s Israel visit was a mark of the latter part of her career, which found the musical titan wading in a sea of personal challenges, involving drug abuse and a troubled 14-year marriage to Brown.

In 2000, she and Brown were stopped at an airport in Hawaii, and security guards discovered marijuana in their luggage. In a 2002 TV interview, she admitted using marijuana, cocaine, alcohol and prescription drugs.

The pair also starred in a reality TV series, “Being Bobby Brown,” which painted an often unflattering portrait of the couple.

Source: Haaretz.com

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