City Notes: Rambam swimming toward heart disease prevention
A round up of news from around the nation.
By COMPILEDJULIE STEIGERWALDRambam Medical Center campus contains the National Poison Control Center (NPCC)(photo credit: Courtesy)NORTH Hundreds of swimmers from Israel and around the world are expected to participate in a charity swim meet hosted by Rambam Health Care Campus on May 27 in Haifa.The “Swim from the Heart” event is organized to raise funds and awareness for sudden cardiac death prevention.The open-water swim meet is open to swimmers of all levels of expertise, and it will include four different heats, ranging from 1 to 7.6 kilometers in the Haifa Bay. The initiative, inspired by open-water swimmers in northern California and Israel, seeks to raise $200,000 in funds that can be used toward developing approaches for early detection, prevention and management of SCD.“Sudden cardiac death is a major cause of natural death throughout the world, and we hope this event will not only raise awareness but also fund additional research in this field to help save lives throughout the world,” says Prof. Rafi Beyar, the director-general of Rambam Health Care Campus. “Swimmers will also affirm life with each stroke as they ‘Swim from the Heart.’”For registration and further details, visit the website http://bit.ly/Swim-From-the-Heart US, Australian day schools win Technion Passover contestTeams from Jewish day schools in the US and Australia won the first three places on April 18 at a Passover-inspired competition held by the Technion in Haifa.The student participants in the inaugural Technion Jewish Day School Challenge were tasked with the mission of building a Rube Goldberg machine – a mechanism that is deliberately over-engineered to carry out a simple task – that would ultimately reveal a Seder plate.More than 600 students from 41 schools, hailing from Africa, Australia, Europe and North America, took part in the competition.The first place prize in the high-school category went to the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York. In the same division, the Felicia Penzell Weber Jewish Community High School in Atlanta won second place. In the middle- school contest, Melbourne’s Bialik College and Miami’s Scheck Hillel Community School tied in first place.CENTER Residents of razed TA neighborhood file suit against stateEvicted residents of Tel Aviv’s disputed Givat Amal neighborhood filed a class-action suit on April 17 against the state, on the responsibilities of the Israel Lands Authority and the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality.The residents are seeking to sue the state for what they argue was a decades-long failure by the state institutions to meet their commercial obligations in the neighborhood and provide housing solutions to those who were displaced by plans to build a luxury residential complex in the vicinity.The lawsuit, filed in the Tel Aviv District Court, demands compensation and damages amounting to NIS 400 million.“The commitment has not been implemented to this day, and resulted in the forced evacuation of the residents of Givat Amal by the commercial companies that purchased the land, causing vast economic and property damages to the residents of the neighborhood,” read a statement from a representative of the residents who were evicted in 2014.White City looks to boost ‘smart tourism’ with travel appsIn efforts to turn Tel Aviv into a “smart tourism” city, the metropolis is beginning to integrate locally made travel apps into some of the city’s hotels, the Tel Aviv Municipality announced on April 18.The apps developed in Tel Aviv are designed to allow tourists to enjoy enhanced communication with the hotels before and during their stay. The platforms are also expected to aid tourists by suggesting activities and events. The 12 percent of the city’s hotels that are due to implement the technology are slated to benefit from advanced tourist profiling.The hotels participating in the initiative include Royal Beach, Isrotel Tower, the Dan Group hotels, Deborah, Golden Beach, Arcadia Tower, Carlton, Margoza, West, Alexander, Embassy, Cucu and Port.Some of the technologies taking part in the enterprise are: the guest-hotel connection platform Howazit, the personalized event guide Dotz and the customer review provider Aspectiva.SOUTH BGU accelerator unveils 11 start-upsBen-Gurion University of the Negev’s technology accelerator, Inno-Negev, recently unveiled 11 communication and information start-ups in Beersheba, the university announced.Upon conclusion of the accelerator’s first cycle, the new start-ups were showcased during a demonstration day at WeWork in Beersheba’s Advanced Technologies Park.The 11 start-ups, including fitness platform FitUp, cybersecurity initiative CyBellum, comparative pricing index Goodies, urban noise device Voxi and mathematics system Mathodix, were chosen from 130 applications from entrepreneurs primarily located in the Negev city and its surroundings.“One of the start-ups has already garnered its first investment, and another team is set to sign a deal for a significant investment in the upcoming days,” said Netta Cohen, CEO of the university’s BGN Technologies firm – one of the accelerator’s partners. “Some of the teams already have proof of concept, while others are launching their product within the next two months.”
