#Nano Bible - The smallest Bible in the world #Israel

The incredible story of the world’s smallest Hebrew Bible etched onto a microchip no larger than a grain of sugar. 

The Nano Bible
Copyright: Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Nano Bible - The smallest Bible in the world

26 Apr 2015

A new exhibition gallery of the Israel Museum's Shrine of the Book opened with the display of "And Then There Was Nano: The Smallest Bible in the World", revealing to the public for the first time the world’s smallest copy of the Hebrew Bible.

Developed by the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion in Haifa, "And Then There Was Nano" showcases the incredible story of the world’s smallest Hebrew Bible etched onto a microchip no larger than a grain of sugar. The exhibition includes narrative presentations explaining the story behind the creation of the Nano Bible and details mediums through which the Hebrew Bible has been interpreted over time.

The Nano Bible serves as a contemporary complement to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the oldest Biblical manuscripts in the world, providing audiences with a unique opportunity to examine the technological evolution of the Hebrew Bible from antiquity to the postmodern era. The exhibit is part of the year-long program celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Israel Museum.

What is the Nano Bible?

The Nano Bible is a gold-plated silicon chip the size of a pinhead on which the entire Hebrew Bible is engraved. The text, consisting of over 1.2 million letters, is carved on the 0.5mm2 chip by means of a focused ion beam. The beam dislodges gold atoms from the plating and creates letters, similar to the way the earliest inscriptions were carved in stone. The writing process takes about 90 minutes. The letters belong to a font unique to this technology and appear darker against their gold background. In order to read the text, it is necessary to use a microscope capable of 10,000 times magnification or higher.

Employing a modern incarnation of an ancient writing technique, this technological marvel demonstrates the wonders of present-day miniaturization and provides the spectator with a tangible measure of the achievable dimensions. Dense information storage is not unique to human culture: the blueprints of all organisms are stored by nature at even higher densities in long DNA molecules and transmitted in this form over generations.

The term "nano" derives from the Greek word nanos, meaning “dwarf.” The unit nanometer measures one billionth of a meter, a ratio similar to the size of an olive compared with the entire planet Earth. Nanotechnology makes it possible to construct new materials stronger and lighter than steel, to desalinate water more efficiently, to deliver medications to designated parts of the body without harming surrounding tissues, and to detect cancerous cells in early stages. At the dawn of the Nano Age, scientists and engineers are discovering ways to harness such exquisite control over the elementary building blocks of nature for the benefit of mankind and our planet.

The Nano Bible was conceived of and created by Prof. Uri Sivan and Dr. Ohad Zohar of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. It was made by engineers in the Sara and Moshe Zisapel Nanoelectronics Center and the Wolfson Microelectronics Research and Teaching Center. The first of two copies was presented by the former president of the State of Israel, Shimon Peres, to Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Israel in 2009. The chip on display in the Israel Museum was produced especially for the Dorot Foundation Dead Sea Scrolls Information and Study Center of the Shrine of the Book.

And Then There Was Nano is co-curated by Dr. Adolfo Roitman, Lizbeth and George Krupp Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Head of the Shrine of the Book, and Rotem Arieli, Dead Sea Scrolls Information and Study Center, and was made possible through the generosity of the Russell Berrie Foundation.

See the article online here: Nano Bible - The smallest Bible in the world 26 Apr 2015

Israelis teach Vietnam how to milk it

By Ben Bland

Published: March 17 2011 21:27 | Last updated: March 17 2011 21:27

On a remote farm in rural Vietnam, some 20 or so Israeli kibbutzniks are having to plan ahead for Passover even though it is not for another month.

Their early preparations for the Jewish festival have less to do with spiritual fervour than their location. For they have upped sticks from their homes in the Jordan Valley to move to Nghe An province in north-central Vietnam, where they are helping to build and operate one of Asia’s biggest dairy farms.

It is not easy to get unleavened bread and other traditional Passover fare in these parts. But it is important to keep up morale among the Israelis in their “expat village”, says Barak Wittert, the farm’s director.

Mr Wittert, who grew up on an Israeli kibbutz, has helped set up high-tech dairy farms in the developing world, from Africa to the Middle East. But the TH Milk farm, backed by Thai Huong, a well-known Vietnamese businesswoman, is the most ambitious project he has seen.

The plan, devised by Ms Huong, who runs a local bank, and executed by the Israelis, is to build a huge, state-of-the-art dairy farm and transform the small but fast-growing fresh milk industry in Vietnam.

Audio slideshow: Vietnam’s mega-farm

Ben Bland visits a milk farm in Vietnam that is one of Asia’s biggest, with capacity for more than 100,000 cows

Since construction began in October 2009, 12,000 cows have arrived from New Zealand and nearly 300 workers have been hired.

The first milk cartons appeared on store shelves in December 2010 and more than 2,000 cows are now milked daily.

“This is the first time I’ve seen so much achieved in such little time,” says Gil Inbar, chief executive of TH Milk and a veteran of dairy projects in Africa, India, Turkey and Ukraine.

The aim is to expand to 137,000 cows by 2020 after a total investment of more than $1bn.

Mr Inbar concedes that there were “cultural conflicts” initially, as most of the Vietnamese workers were new to dairy farming and unused to operating such high-tech systems. “But sometimes it’s easier to take on people with no prior experience as they have no bad habits,” he says.

Mr Inbar and Mr Wittert work for TH Milk, the Vietnamese company that controls the project. But the farm is being set up and operated by Afimilk, a dairy farm technology company owned by Kibbutz Afikim.

Like many of Israel’s collective farms, Afikim abandoned its socialist ideals in the 1980s for more capitalist activities. Vietnam’s communist leaders, who started opening their country at around the same time, have followed a similar path.

This shared heritage has helped the Israelis to hit the ground running, according to Rami Ofer, Afimilk’s project manager in Vietnam. “There is some advantage for people who come from a socialist background to understand the environment in Vietnam,” he says.

To keep costs down, the Israelis are training Vietnamese dairy farmers and handing over as much responsibility as soon as possible.

The plan is to turn the farms over to the locals within five years.

The pace of progress is all the more impressive in a country where big projects are often delayed by corruption, red tape, financing problems and extreme caution in local government. Senior staff say the initial success is largely down to Ms Huong, whom they describe as an exacting taskmaster.

“It’s not easy to get land and financing in Vietnam, but fortunately we have a very strong chairwoman to bring us everything we need,” says Mr Inbar.

Ms Huong is general director of North Asia Bank, which is financing the project, along with other unnamed investors.

As well as profits, she says the project will bring wider benefits. “Milk is an essential need for the human development of Vietnam,” she says.

Nghe An, birthplace of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s late revolutionary leader, will get some much needed investment, jobs and infrastructure in the area near the farm. Indeed, Ms Huong is already thinking ahead to how she can promote further large-scale industrialisation in agriculture. “You must complete your strategic thinking first in order to develop a project quickly,” she says. “But the critical factor in the success of this project has been the Israeli experts guiding the Vietnamese.”

FT.com / Management - Israelis teach Vietnam how to milk it

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Israel’s clean-tech megaproject

Photo by: AP Israel’s clean-tech megaproject By AMIRAM BARKAT 12/02/2011 Bid to become a leader in renewable-energy technologies aims to help wean world off oil.

‘The global interest in Israel’s energy R&D and technology is out of all proportion to the size of the country,” says Dr. Eli Opper, a former chief scientist who is now the chairman of the Eureka High Level Group. Israel holds the chairmanship of Eureka, the European R&D program, of which more than 40 countries are members. According to Opper, Israel’s technological achievements were an important consideration in the award of the chairmanship. “The world looks for two things in Israel: R&D and technology,” he says. “Our manufacturing and marketing capabilities are of far less interest to it.” Opper says Israel has an impressive record in developing breakthrough energy technologies. “Israel was a world pioneer in developing water-desalination and solar-energy technologies,” he says. “Unfortunately, in Spain and California there are solar installations that operate using Israeli technologies, but in Israel itself we have missed the opportunity to implement them, among other things, for political reasons. “Another reason is the small size of the Israeli market. On this point, Israel has a great deal to gain from cooperation with the large European market. Moreover, Israelis have a lot to learn from the Europeans when it comes to environmental protection. This is an area in which Israel considerably lags behind European countries. Up to now, Israelis have preferred to deal with more urgent issues on the agenda.” This highlights the importance of the conference organized by the European Friends of Israel in Jerusalem last week, in collaboration with Globes. The conference was attended by about 500 of the European Parliament’s 736 members. Over the course of the conference, the European parliamentarians visited Israel’s leading industrial plants. This is no small thing, given that they represent a market of 375 million consumers who could help promote Israeli technology. OPPER defines clean-tech as comprising three sub-fields: water, environment and renewable energy. One of the most interesting Israel developments, he says, is in water. “The hot topic in water technologies these days is prevention of leaks from water pipes,” he says. “There are some very interesting Israeli developments in this area that could be especially relevant to large European cities with antiquated water infrastructure. In cities like London and Paris, the rate of water loss can be counted in tens of percents. “The Israeli technology is twostage: The first stage is locating the leak, using sophisticated control systems; the second is blocking the leak, by introducing special, nontoxic materials.” A few years ago, one of the technology incubators operating in Israel, Kinrot, decided to become a dedicated water-technologies incubator. Another incubator, L.N. Innovative Technologies, based near Haifa, has declared itself an “environmental incubator.” More clean-tech technologies are at various stages of development in more than 26 incubators that operate in Israel under the aegis of the Chief Scientist’s Office in the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry. Opper, who was chief scientist from 2002 to 2010, says there are eight to 10 companies that have been in the incubators for an average of two years, and altogether, the state supports about 200 startup companies. Opper says the past three years have seen substantial change in the scope of activity and investment in clean-tech R&D in Israel. “Energy has expanded in recent years because the market understood that money could be made from it,” he says. “The figures are dramatic and indicate a very clear trend: Investment in clean-tech is growing steadily from year to year.” In 2007, applications received in the Chief Scientist’s Office for research projects in clean-tech were worth a total of NIS 150 million. By 2010, the amount had jumped to NIS 380m., representing a rise of more than 250 percent in three years. The amount of grants and the number of applications approved have grown by similar rates. At the same time, it must be remembered that cleantech still accounts for only a small proportion of the total of R&D projects approved by the Chief Scientist’s Office, which are worth about NIS 5 billion annually.

Googlopolis - Interview by Christina Larson | Foreign Policy

Googlopolis

Eric Schmidt tells FP what makes a city smart, how not to lose $1 trillion -- and the one place he's never been.

INTERVIEW BY CHRISTINA LARSON | SEPT. / OCT. 2010

Can there ever be another Silicon Valley, in the United States or anywhere else? What makes it so special?

One thing is the weather. You think I'm joking, but the weather is certainly a part of it.

There can be many Silicon Valleys. It is absolutely a reproducible model; it's not something in the water. You know, the history starts in the '50s. What basically happened in Silicon Valley is that you had strong research universities, a relatively liberal and creative culture, lots of reasons for young people to stay in the area -- and young people are the ones with the new ideas. Then you had the development of the venture capital industry.

What's interesting is that every 10 years someone writes an article about how Silicon Valley was responsible for the last innovation wave, but it will miss the next wave. Yet Silicon Valley has now been at the forefront of four or five successive tech waves and has proved itself remarkably resilient because of the combination of the universities, the culture, the climate, the capital. My point is that if you have all of those elements, you can have your own Silicon Valley wherever you want.

If Google weren't located in Silicon Valley, is there anywhere else you've visited that you can imagine it could be located in -- or any places that remind you of Silicon Valley around the world?

That's a very hard question to answer. Most would argue that Cambridge, England has a lot of the criteria -- there's been an explosion of start-ups there. Another scenario would be New York City. Obviously it does not have the weather, but it has the draw for young people and certainly the financial sophistication; plenty of smart people and the sense of globalization are very important. It's unlikely that would occur in a place that does not see itself in a global context. The Bay Area, because it's a gateway to Asia, has always seen itself in a global context.

What about a place like Shanghai or Beijing?

Shanghai could do it, although in China the universities are strongest in Beijing. Shanghai isn't quite the New York of China, but it could be. Bangalore emerged as a tech hub in India in part because of favorable weather, a strong university system, and concerted support by the state government. So there are partial versions of that happening.

How is information technology changing the world?

When I was growing up, an elite controlled the media. And the majority of the world was very, very poor, both in a resource sense and an information sense. Since then, a set of things have occurred: the digital revolution, the mobile revolution, and so forth -- of which I am enormously proud because they are roughly the equivalent of lifting people from abject poverty and ignorance to a reasonable ability to communicate and participate in the conversation.

Information empowers individuals. And it has a huge and overwhelmingly positive impact on society. Think of someone who can now get information about finance or technology, or they're in school and they can't afford textbooks but access information online. Or imagine medicine -- I mean there's just issue after issue.

Globalization has clearly been responsible for lifting at least 2 billion people from abject poverty to extremely low levels of middle class. As a result, they have greater access to education and opportunity; they are much less likely to attack you, and they're busy trying to fulfill their low-cost version of the American Dream. They're trying to buy a car.

Is there a downside to hyper-information access?

I am worried about the decline of what I call deep reading. In other words, the sort of "here I am on the airplane, there's no Internet connection, I am reading a book thoroughly" reading. You do less of that in a world where everything is a snippet, everything is an instant message, everything is an alert.

What are you reading right now?

Steve Coll's Ghost Wars.

What is one place in the world that you have never visited but you would like to?

Israel.

What's a good risk?

You cannot eliminate all risk, but you can certainly put yourself into situations where the failures are not horrific. In other words, fail early. Fail early in a small team before you have devoted $20 billion to something. If 10 people fail, maybe you have lost their time and a couple million dollars, but if a space shuttle blows up and the whole thing is a disaster, you have lost a trillion dollars.

How does innovation happen?

Real insights don't come out of linear plans; they come from collecting ideas and thinking about things and then all of the sudden -- creativity occurs on Saturday morning when you least expect it.

Illustration by Joe Ciardiello for FP

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Illustration By Joe Ciardiello for FP

Eric E. Schmidt is CEO of Google.

Interview by Foreign Policy contributing editor Christina Larson.

Googlopolis - Interview by Christina Larson | Foreign Policy

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