Author: Sam Schmelzer

Helping Change Lives: BioMed Innovation in the Startup Nation

And The Blind Shall See Again Ever wonder what causes the gradual onset of blindness? While invasive techniques do exist to combat diseases that result in blindness, wouldn’t it be nice if there was some way to deal with these diseases that didn’t involve cutting our eyes open? Well, Professor Shy Shoham and his team at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion felt so—and it seems they are on their way to developing a non-invasive solution to degenerative retinal diseases. So how does this thing work? Without getting too far into the particulars, the retina is to the eye as film is to the camera and degenerative retinal disease causes the eye’s “film” to be less sensitive to light, thus affecting vision. To help the retinal cells regain the necessary sensitivity to light required for vision, light-sensitive algae or bacteria are introduced into the eyes. Using holography, Shoham stimulates the retinal cells with very intense beams of light to specific cells, providing a high-resolution image. The team at the Technion hopes to develop some sort of prosthetic...

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White Hat Hacker, Nir Goldshlager, Saves Face for Facebook—Again…

An Israeli cyber-security specialist saved some major face for Facebook this year. Of course I am referring to Mr. Nir Goldshlager, a cyber-security specialist with the Israeli cyber-security firm—of which there are a growing number—Avnet. Why am I taking the time to present this Nir Goldshlager fellow, you ask?  Well, according to the Times of Israel this year Goldshlager found a way to gain control of any Facebook account he wanted—twice. That’s right, he informed Facebook about the bug, they fixed it—or so they thought—and then he found a bug in the “repaired” code. Not to worry Facebook users of the world, Nir let Facebook know about the second bug as well and they have since fixed the problem. This guy is no rookie, my friends. It turns out this isn’t the first time Mr. Goldshlager has helped out the social networking giant, nor is Facebook the only web-based organization that he has helped. For the second year in a row, he can claim the top spot on the Facebook security hall of fame and in 2011 Nir ranked...

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