Corals Get "Sexy" On The Sea Floor to Fight Global Warming
(A photograph of the female C. echinata coral, expelling its eggs into the water around it.) Research from TAU unlocks the secret of coral survival during global warming Trees do it. Bees do it. Even environmentally stressed fish do it. But Prof. Yossi Loya from Tel Aviv University’s Department of Zoology is the first in […]
Canarius' Tiny "Lab-on-a-Chip" and Glow Bacteria Can Detect Pollutants in Water
For centuries, animals have been our first line of defense against toxins. A canary in a coalmine served as a living monitor for poisonous gases. Scientists used fish to test for contaminants in our water. Even with modern advances, though, it can take days to detect a fatal chemical or organism. Until now. Working in […]
Eco Rabbi: Parshat Terumah – Give of Yourself to Make Room for Our Home
Each week Orthodox Jews read one segment of the Five Books of Moses so that they can complete the entire Five Books within the course of a year. In last week’s Eco-Rabbi post I discussed free trade and the commandments, this week I write about how to create room for God to live within us. […]
Greening Your Breakfast: A Recipe for Winter Muffins
This is about the time of year where we are all just about fed up. The weather is by turns glum, stormy, angry, and generally ill-tempered, there’s little of the new season‘s growth to enjoy yet, and reserves of patience are at their annual low. A freshly baked batch of muffins may not dispel all […]
Supermodels, Free Parking, Biblical Parchments All Part of Israel's Zany Solutions for Combatting Water Shortage
Israel has officially pulled out all the stops for water conservation: Last month, Israeli officials led by Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon sought to combat the country’s urgent water crisis by changing all the mezuzot in the Water Authority offices (Jews traditionally affix a mezuzah, a piece of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, to […]
Abandoned Building Becomes Urban Bat Habitat in Israel
Sometimes the urban environment is an ideal place for wild animals. Here’s an example: In 2006, Petach Tikva’s two hospitals merged to form the Rabin Medical Center. Since then, several new buildings have appeared at the Beilinson campus while the Hasharon campus, a few kilometers away, lies stagnating. The health ministry originally planned to shut […]
Leviathan Energy's Wind Lotus in Action At Eilat Energy Conference in Israel
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYaMRCpMJmc[/youtube] As anyone can see from this video taken at the Eilat Energy conference in Israel last week, Leviathan Energy‘s Wind Lotus kicked in at extremely low winds of 1.6 meter/sec and at the high winds rotates competely quietly. In Hebrew the word leviathan roughly translates to a “whale” – and describes the great sea […]
Impressions of the Eilat Energy Conference in Israel
Two things were clear from attending the International Renewable Energy Conference that took place in Eilat this week. The first is that Israel is now a world leader in clean energy. The second is that there is a small but growing group of players in the field who see this not just as a huge […]
High Radioactive Content Found in Jordanian Groundwater
The Middle East is pretty thirsty right now. Headlines from all over the region chronicle the increasingly serious drought conditions affecting agriculture, industry, and health. Unfortunately, new research from the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology adds reason for even more concern. In their study, “High Naturally Occurring Radioactivity in Fossil Groundwater from the Middle […]
Can the Cedars of Lebanon Survive Climate Change?
“So Hiram, King of Tyre, gave King Solomon timber of cedar and timber of cypress according to all his desire.”-Book of Kings vs. 24 A recent article by Ahmed Khatib in the Lebanese Daily Star emphasized the dangers of climate change and global warming to Lebanon‘s remaining cedar groves, which have been a historic national […]
Groundbreaking Wind Energy Project to Power Palestinian Hospital
As the resting place of the Abraham and (unfortunately) a hot spot for conflict, the West Bank city of Hebron (or Hevron or al-Khalil, depending on who you ask!) is pretty notorious. Soon, this city will also become an important part of the Middle East’s ongoing clean energy revolution! Last week the European Commission signed […]
Permaculture and Green Communal Living Through Eco-Israel
Last year’s Eco-Israel group on a trip to the North. Photo courtesy Naomi Katz. Although winter has come to Israel belatedly in the season’s heaviest rainfalls this weekend, the ecological farm Hava Ve’Adam outside of Modi’in is now accepting applications for the fall term of its Eco-Israel program. For the uninitiated, Eco-Israel is a chance to get […]
Using Black Gold to Build a Greener Future: A Visit to the UAE
Last month, I had the unexpected pleasure of visiting Abu Dhabi and Dubai, two of the seven tiny kingdoms that together make up the United Arab Emirates. I was there to cover the World Future Energy Summit, an international conference on renewable energy technologies. This was my first visit to the Emirates, which have a […]
Guy Lougashi’s Dumpster Diving Designs Inspired By Buttons, Baskets and Brakes
There, the people mastered Lougashi's techniques of weaving baskets from paper -- a process which requires special know-how, such as how to glue the paper, to achieve a desired aesthetic.