Vision in venture: Israel’s high-tech incubator program

Israel is known for its innovative spirit and nowhere is that spirit more alive than in the country’s high-tech sector. In a country of only 7 million people, roughly 150 out of every 10,000 people are scientists or engineers. On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotechnology startup companies in the world and ranks second, behind the U.S., for venture capital funds. Yeda and Yissim, the technology transfer arms of the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem respectively, hold thousands of patent families generating billions in revenues.

The country’s high-tech incubator program reflects the same inventiveness.

Originally launched to leverage the skills of 750,000 Russian immigrants, mostly scientists, engineers and physicians, today the country’s 23 incubators form the nucleus of Israel’s technology sector. Thanks to the program’s unique public/private partnership, the Israeli model is itself a type of incubator closely watched for smart start-up strategies.

What’s the secret sauce? Many incubators are little more than real estate deals. They are typically owned by universities, municipalities or by research institutions that provide nascent companies with low-cost facilities and possibly shared resources like labs, equipment and office services. In the Israeli model, experienced equity investment firms license the incubators from the government, significantly invest in the start-up projects and provide management support for the portfolio companies. The model, like the market, changes with the times.

Initially the incubators were quasi-governmental, not-for-profit entities. About 10 years ago the government decided to privatize them, hoping that installing a profit motive would help increase their success rate. Since then there’s been a dramatic improvement in the success rates of incubator companies as measured by their ability to raise follow-on funding and continue operations after graduation, attract capital into the country, create jobs and, subsequently, products and exports.

For insights into what’s working and what lies ahead, CELL CYCLE talked with Yossi Smoler, director of Israel’s high-tech incubator program and two leading incubator investors with portfolios in the life sciences – Steve Rhodes, CEO of the Misgav Venture Accelerator and Tami Kfir, CEO of BC&P Consulting and a board member of Maayan Ventures. Download the article.     

Angels on a Pin: Dimensions of the Crisis in Invertebrate Conservation

Problems of measuring invertebrate diversity in natural communitiesare discussed, together with the rationale of setting prioritiesfor effective conservation of invertebrates. The "Crisis" ininvertebrate conservation has scientific, logistic, and ethicaldimensions. There is need to estimate these in conjunction witha range of values and educational imperatives to overcome publicprejudice against invertebrates and to increase conservationfunding for invertebrates. Values for selecting priority groupsare discussed, and a suite of priority taxa defined to maximisethe conservation value of the limited resources available.     

The Age of Angels: spiritualism and evolutionary progressionism in a nineteenth-century geologic time chart

The term ‘Anthropocene’ often carries apocalyptic overtones of environmental devastation, but many nineteenth-century iterations of the ‘Age of Humans’ idea were explicitly optimistic. The current time period was framed as a ‘Psychozoic Era’ or ‘Age of Mind’ in which human beings took their predetermined place at the pinnacle of ‘creation’. Hiram Alvin Reid, an amateur scientist in the midwestern United States, took this line of thinking a step further. He drafted a geologic time chart in which the current ‘Age of Man’ was succeeded by a future ‘Age of Angels’, wherein humans will become higher beings. Reid was a Christian spiritualist who thought that evolution drove both physical and spiritual advancement, including the recent development of a ‘sixth sense’ that allowed humans to perceive ghosts and angels. Reid’s views, while idiosyncratic and coloured by his metaphysical beliefs, drew heavily on mainstream concepts in biology and geology. Prominent geologists like James Dana and Joseph Le Conte argued for an Age of Mind in terms that mixed scientific rigor with religious and progressionist ideas. The Psychozoic was also embraced by many progressive-minded individuals outside the natural sciences, paralleling widespread modern interest in the Anthropocene.     

Vision without Frames: A Semiotic Paradigm of Event Based Computer Vision

Conventional imagers and almost all vision processes use and rely on theories that are based on the principle of static image-frames. A frame is a 2D matrix that represents the spatial locations of intensities of a scene projected on the imager. The notion of a frame itself is so embedded in machine vision, that it is usually taken for granted that this is how biological systems store light information. This paper presents a biosinpired event-based image formation principle, which output data rely on an asynchronous acquisition process. The generated information is stored in temporal volumes, which size and information depend only on the dynamic content of observed scenes. Practical analysis of such information will shows that the processing of visual information can only be based on a semiotic process. The paper also provides a general definition of the notion of visual features as the interpretation of signs according to different possible readings of the codified visual signal.     

Vision: in the brain of the beholder

It is commonly thought that neural activity in the visual cortex reflects retinal input. Recent studies, however, suggest that patterns of cortical activity are mostly intrinsically generated, and that visual input exerts but a modulatory influence.     

Vision: in the blink of an eye

Although we blink every 4 to 6 seconds, we notice neither the act of blinking nor the mini-blackouts they cause. A new study using imaging techniques identifies the neural structures in humans involved in suppressing vision processing and visual awareness during blinking.     

Vision: the when of perception

A visual image can be described by its temporal as well as spatial properties. A recent study of the asynchronous colour and motion perception has led to a new view of perceptual synchronisation, in which the temporal structures of events in the external world provide a general explanation of how events are bound or misbound in time.