Windsurfing Competition in Tel Aviv

IAI and Airbus to Develop Environmentally Conscious Taxiing System

Article published on Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd website, June 17, 2009

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Airbus have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the 2009 International Paris Air Show to jointly develop and test an innovative environmentally friendly pilot-controlled towing semi-robotic system.
The Taxibot Dispatch Towing system, designed by IAI, allows both wide and narrow body commercial airplanes to taxi to and from the gate and the runway without the use of their jet engines.

The revolutionary Taxibot Dispatch Towing concept represents a potential to reduce annual fuel costs from $8 billion to less than $2 billion, CO2 emissions from 18 billion tons to less than 2 million tons per year, and noise emissions by a significant margin.

Yehushua (Shuki) Eldar, IAI's Corporate VP of Business Development and Subsidiaries says: "We are excited to work on the development of this eco-efficient taxiing dispatch system. The project demonstrates our commitment to the environment and utilizes IAI's robotics capabilities and technological experience.”

IAI and Airbus are studying the performance, operational, commercial, and safety aspects of the system on a series of ground taxiing tests on Airbus' A-340-600 airplane in Toulouse. The companies have agreed that following successful test period results, they may establish a Joint Venture (JV) to develop and certify the Taxibot and market the program.

According to plans, the Taxibot operational system is expected to be ready for first deliveries by the third quarter of 2011.

The special design of the Taxibot gives the pilot full control of the system during the taxiing process, and uses the existing airplane controls in the same way that the pilot is accustomed to when taxiing using the airplane's engines. The use of the Taxibot system requires no modification to the airplane and minimal modifications to the airport infrastructure which will not affect existing taxiways and runways.

For the last three years, IAI has invested R&D resources in environmentally conscious programs, including the development of renewable energy technologies, as part of a strategic plan to increase its civilian activities. Taxibot is a significant step forward that can modify the taxiing process in airports to save fuel, decrease noise levels and air pollution in comparison with today's ground operational processes.

Israeli UAVs expected to steal the show at Paris expo

Article in Jerusalem Post June 14, 2009
By Yaakov Katz

A hovercraft designed to evacuate wounded soldiers from an urban battlefield, an unmanned helicopter and a kamikaze drone will be unveiled to the public on Monday at Israel's official pavilion at the 48th Paris Air Show.

Twelve Israeli companies - including Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Rafael, Urban Aeronautics and Elbit Systems - will present their wares at the Israeli national pavilion, which cost over NIS 6 million to erect at the Le Bourget expo center.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak flew to Paris on Sunday to attend the opening.

One new platform that will be on display is the MULE medical evacuation unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) under development by Urban Aeronautics, based in Yavne.

The IDF has expressed interest in the MULE, which the company has said is capable of delivering supplies and ferrying casualties within a battle zone. The MULE can carry approximately 317 kilograms over an 80-kilometer radius. The speed of the MULE is expected to be in the range of 100 knots, with a maximum operating altitude of 3,660 meters.

Another UAV slated to be unveiled on Monday is the Picador, an unmanned helicopter developed by Aeronautics Defense Systems. The Picador has already made its first flight test and is designed for naval and land-based operations. It has a range of 200 km. and is reportedly capable of carrying a 180-kg. payload.

HAROP being launched and hitting the target

Another drone on display is the HAROP loitering munition, a self-destructing drone that can be used to detect and destroy missile launchers, anti-aircraft systems and naval craft. Developed by IAI, the HAROP can be launched from various platforms.

Rather than carrying a separate missile or warhead, the HAROP drone itself is the weapon and is designed to be a hunter and killer by loitering above a battlefield and attacking targets. It was specifically designed to suppress enemy air defense systems.

IAI recently signed a $100 million contract to supply the HAROP to a foreign customer, reportedly India.

"This is a state-of-the-art loitering munition system which features accurate detection capabilities and minimizes collateral damage to the surrounding area," IAI CEO Itzhak Nissan said.

In related news, Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel has decided to purchase the Iron Fist active-protection system developed by Israel Military Industries for the army's new "Namer" armored personnel carriers (APC). Currently in its final development stages, the Iron Fist is capable of intercepting and destroying a wide range of anti-tank missiles, from old RPGs and standard tank shells to the Russian-made advanced missiles in Hizbullah's and Syria's arsenals.

The Iron Fist consists of a radar and passive optical system that detects incoming threats and destroys them within a fraction of a second using a combustible blast interceptor. Unlike similar active-protection systems, which fire off a large number of projectiles, the Iron Fist intercepts incoming threats by using a rocket the shape of a mortar shell. The rocket destroys the threat with a blast that crushes its soft components or deflects the missile or kinetic projectile in flight.

Israel-US Team Kills Breast Cancer in the Dark

Article on Arutz Sheva June 12, 2009
By by Karin Kloosterman

With the alarming incidence of breast cancer in America -- one in eight women can expect to get it sometime in their life -- new solutions for women, their mothers, sisters, aunts, daughters and friends, cannot come fast enough. An Israeli-American research team has stumbled onto a new and interesting find - a non-radiation based therapy that may provide relief for an aggressive and hard to treat breast cancer cell known as HER2+, but which could also have wider applications for treating all kinds of cancer.

Breast cancer alone is the most common form of cancer among U.S. women, and the second leading cause of death after lung cancer. About 200,000 women in the U.S. alone had breast cancer in 2008, and about 40,000 will die from it each year.

Prof. Zeev Gross, from the Technion / Israel Institute of Technology has played no small role in the new research paper that shows positive results for the new non-radiation based therapy based on the chemical compound gallium corroles.

Published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Israel-U.S. team, including scientists from the California Institute of Technology and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center were able to show positive pre-clinical results on the new treatment that homes in on HER2+.

Using a new-to-science organic chemical called a corrole, described about 10 years ago, Gross was able to develop a powerful method that synthesizes these chemicals for practical use in medicine. From being able to make a couple of milligrams in two years, Gross' team could produce two grams in two days.

Lights up and kills cancer
The beauty of the new chemical compound, waiting for an investment in order to go to clinical trials, is that it not only works in diagnostics, lighting up and showing doctors where the cancer cells are, it is also somehow able to kill the cancer at the same time. Gross has also found it works for treating arterial sclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, which leads to heart disease.

"We started in cancer wanting to take advantage of a property of this compound," Gross tells ISRAEL21c. "They are highly florescent and we wanted to use them to detect cancer. We found at the cellular level [gallium corroles were] useful for imaging, but also found it could kill cancer with high specificity and could be an alternative to chemotherapy.

"We were surprised," he continues. "It could be used for selective killing of cancer cells. Focusing on breast cancer cells, our collaborators developed a vector, a virus based gene delivery protein, and we said let's use it for corroles."

Testing this idea, the researchers were pleased to see the dual effects of this chemical. Gross explains: "In most cases, if people want to get a closer look at a drug in vivo, they have to attach a fluorescent probe to it - and that turns it into a different molecule.

"But in our case, the active molecule we're tracking does the fluorescing. We get to track the original, unmodified molecule and are hence able to follow its distribution among different organs in live animals."

Fewer side effects than chemotherapy
In the new study the international team combined a gallium corrole with a protein carrier so that the corrole would show an affinity to cancer cells. According to the researchers, when tried on mice with breast cancer, it became a targeted cancer therapy able to both detect and eliminate tumors in mice. They report fewer side effects compared to other breast cancer treatments.

Corroles are similar in structure to porphyrin molecules used today in a well-researched cancer treatment called photodynamic therapy, or PDT. Porphyrin compounds are injected into the body and are then exposed to specific wavelengths of laser light. The light causes the porphyrins to create tumor-killing oxygen radicals.

The difference between porphyrins and the team's corroles, explain researchers, is that corroles don't need laser light to be activated, in effect it's killing "cancer cells in the dark," they say.

In the study on mice corroles, the Israel-U.S. team was able to shrink breast cancer tumors at doses five times lower than standard chemo treatments (based on a drug called doxorubicin). Also, the corroles could be injected straight into the bloodstream and not into the tumor, making the treatment, if developed clinically, easier to administer.

"Using lower concentrations means less toxicity. Doxorubicin tends to have significant heart toxicity; this therapy seems likely to be much less damaging to the heart," Daniel Farkas, a co-researcher in the study and the director of Cedar-Sinai's Minimally Invasive Surgical Technologies Institute tells ISRAEL21c.

Putting statins out of business?
But the Israeli team finds it could work in heart disease as well: iron corroles are also able to provide reversal effects of arterial sclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, says Gross. With a different mode of action than gallium corroles, "We took mice prone to develop arterial sclerosis and treated them with the same family of compounds. It's a very potent antioxidant," he says. "It's interfering with the process causing arterial sclerosis."

"We already know about green tea, red wine, or pomegranate," he explains, noting that his innovation is better than natural antioxidants that at same stage can also attack vital biomolecules. The therapy was shown to work in successful pre-clinical studies, while the medicinal value of corroles, says Gross, was something his Technion lab initiated 10 years ago.

"We discovered how to synthesize corroles and are the main people pushing forward the fundamentals of science," says Gross, noting the applications are wide and three-fold in catalysis, in medicine, and in renewable energy.

The Technion lab's senior scientist Dr. Atif Mahammed, an Israeli Arab is "a leading figure in this whole project," says Gross, who says his lab is also enriched with a team of gifted scientists from the former Soviet Union.

Funding for the research was provided by the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation, the National Science Foundation in the US, the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Defense, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the Donna and Jesse Garber Award, the Gurwin Foundation, and the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.