Jerusalem company designs online game for The Hunger Games

Funtactix launches the official game for the new movie, which just had one of the biggest box office openings of all time

The Hunger Games movie, which just had one of the biggest-ever box office opening days ever, has an important Israeli connection: The official online game, The Hunger Games Adventures, was designed and developed by Israel-based Funtactix.

The Jerusalem company has become a “go to” company for Hollywood studios looking to develop companion social games for their films. Over the past several years, the company, led by CEO Sam Glassenberg, has developed games for two other major Hollywood productions, Rango and Mission Impossible. “Like with The Hunger Games Adventures, these were the official social games for those movies,” Glassenberg told the Times of Israel. “We are the only company in the world building social games like these tied to movies.”

Production of The Hunger Games Adventures is likely to be followed by the development of other games, said Fiona Darmon, VP of Investor Relations for Jerusalem Venture Partners, a major investor in Funtactix.

“Israeli tech is moving beyond the infrastructure, the deeply embedded chip or network device that powers the internet. We’ve been very successful in that space, but we also have a large creative community that wants to make its voice heard, and we at JVP are committed to making those voices heard.”

Glassenberg and Darmon spoke to the Times of Israel at an event celebrating the premier of The Hunger Games Adventures. Held in Cinema City in Ramat Hasharon on Friday afternoon, it gave audience members a preview of the game. The game was formally premiered on Facebook to coincide with the movie’s Friday midnight opening in the US. Currently available by invitation only, the game follows a plot that expands on the themes of the movie and the trilogy of wildly popular books by Suzanne Collins.

The movie, based on the first book in the trilogy, describes a bleak post-apocalyptic America in which a decimated population is enslaved to produce goods and services for a decadent Capitol. As punishment for an insurrection years earlier, the 13 districts of the country, now called Panem, must send a teenage boy and girl to fight to the death in The Hunger Games. The heroine, Katniss Everdeen, finds solace from her difficult life in the forest beyond the electrified fence surrounding her home in District 12, and the online game lets players follow adventures that she, along with the story’s other heroes and villains, experience in the forest.

It’s a moving story, one that Glassenberg realized would be a great online experience for fans. “When we propose a project, we look for great properties with interesting characters that have lots of fans, and The Hunger Games certainly fits that description.”

Even more important was the fact that Lionsgate, the studio behind The Hunger Games, “decided to work with a company based in Israel, instead of in New York or Hollywood,” Glassenberg said, adding that the studio was impressed by Funtactix’s ability to bring in projects quickly, and at a reasonable price. It helped that Glassenberg has a strong background in game development, as well as connections in Hollywood – he was Lead Program Manager for DirectX Graphics at Microsoft, and worked at LucasArts as well.

What’s worked at Funtactix will work at other Israeli companies, said Darmon. “Even before the emergence of the tablet, it was clear that content was going to be the major growth area of the future,” she said. JVP concluded years ago that it needed to get more involved in content development, and now includes in its portfolio companies like Animation Lab, which develops animated films, and AnyClip, which lets users search in a database for their favorite movie clips.

So far, this merger of gaming technology with major Hollywood productions is unique to Funtactix. “This is the first official on-line game associated with a film that is being marketed through Facebook,” said Darmon.

“The game is a way of taking film, which had been advertised and marketed until now through the traditional outlets of billboards and newspaper ads, and monetizing it in a new way.”

The Hunger Games was an ideal film for this initial dip by Hollywood into social gaming; a recent article in the New York Times documented the movie’s use of Facebook and Twitter as promotional tools, describing how “by carefully lighting online kindling,” Lionsgate was able to “create a box office inferno.”

Players of the game are in for a major treat, as well, said Glassenberg. “Until now there has been no published map of Panem, the land where the adventure takes place. Many fans have tried to guess, but there was no official map, until now. Fans who play the game will be able to get the full map.”

The fact that Israelis have the creativity to create products like The Hunger Games Adventures and the other social games that Funtactix has produced shouldn’t surprise anyone, Erel Margalit, JVP Founder and chairman, told attendees at this weekend’s event.

“We want people to hear our story, the new direction we have here in Israel,” he said. “Israeli technology is not just about networking and security. There is a lot of creativity here, and we have lots of stories to tell. We are an ancient tribe, one that has already told many stories to the world in the form of the Bible – the very stories that are the spiritual legacy of the world, that still reverberate with billions of people.”

Source: Time of Israel

Nano Artificial Nose (NA-NOSE) to detect Cancer

Prof. Hossam Haick of Technion’s Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering is developing the Na-Nose, a nano artificial nose to detect cancer and other diseases.

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Israeli starts a stem-cell zoo

Working with American scientists, Inbal Friedrich Ben-Nun has found a way to generate stem cells from preserved tissue of dead endangered animals.

As sure as you’re born, you may never see another unicorn –– goes the famous song of the Irish Rovers, but in this lifetime we may see the rise of seriously endangered species, thanks to the work of an Israeli scientist.

Working in a post-doctoral fellowship position at the Scripps Research Institute in California, Inbar Friedrich Ben-Nun put herself on a course to do what no scientist had done before – create stem cells from the skin cells of endangered animals.

She did her research under the auspices of Jeanne Loring, a professor of developmental neurobiology at Scripps, with the counsel of Oliver Ryder, head of genetic research at the San Diego Zoo. About five years ago, Ryder contacted Loring to discuss the possibility of creating stem cells from endangered animals. Ryder oversees the Frozen Zoo, a cryogenic bank containing skin cells and other material from more than 800 different kinds of animals.

This unusual zoo was established in the 1970s with the vision that the technology would one day be available to make use of the genetic samples of deceased animals. The time has come, and Ben-Nun has taken the first major step in a new kind of laboratory conservation work.

“We can use this method to save species from extinction,” she says.

The drill is an endangered primate species.

The research was funded by the Esther O’Keefe Foundation, the Millipore Foundation and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. And it’s important to note, says Ben-Nun, that funding in this area is badly needed. With a half million dollars, stem cells could be created from any endangered animal, she believes.

The artificial stem cells created from a rhino and a primate in the lab headed by Loring now provide a basis for new genetic material, via preserved samples of dead animals, to enter into the gene pool of endangered animals at severe risk of extinction. This project was a top-100 story for Discover magazine in 2011.

Rhino test-tube babies

The stem cells developed by Ben-Nun from genetic material preserved at the Frozen Zoo are pluripotent, meaning they are capable of differentiating into one of many cell types. Scientists can create any kind of cell from them, potentially including sperm and eggs that could be “mated” and implanted in a living animal to create new, genetically diverse babies.

Rhino nerve cells originated from stem cells made from rhino skin cells. Nerve cells are stained in red, cell nucleus in blue.

The essential aim of the research was to demonstrate scientifically that stem cells can be created from high-level animals — such as the primate drill species, which does not fare well in captivity, and the northern white rhinoceros, of which only seven exist in the world today.

Stem cells have already been created in mice and are often used as an animal model for testing treatments for human diseases. Little funding and interest has been given to other animals that don’t have medical use to humans. This could change, thanks to the new research.

The next step will be finding donor dollars to develop the stem cells into eggs or sperm. This could take as long as a rhino gestation period –– 15 months –– assuming that rhino in-vitro fertilization actually works, Ben-Nun says.

New hope for dinosaurs and the woolly mammoth?

While it’s possible that the melting arctic icecaps may give rise to previously extinct animals like the woolly mammoth, she does not believe scientists will be able to restore dinosaurs the way they were created in the Jurassic Park movie.

“I won’t say no, but it seems far-fetched. There is a small chance. You need to have preserved cells,” she explains.

The key for successful stem cell research, she notes, is access to some basic and well-preserved skin or body cells. Since the dinosaurs are so long gone, it is not likely that good genetic material is out there. But in the case of recent extinctions, “the sky’s the limit,” she says.

If Ben-Nun could pick one animal to conserve, it would be the northern white rhino. Of the five species of rhinos, this native of Africa was thriving in the Sixties, but became decimated from over-poaching and is in danger of total extinction if solutions aren’t found to preserve it. The last birth of a northern white rhinoceros was in 2000.

Only seven individual specimens of this rhino are alive today, two at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and four others in a monitored reserve, where they were released in a last-ditch attempt to preserve the species. But time is running out.

Having met the rhinos at the San Diego Zoo before she started her project, Ben-Nun and her lab staff went back to the zoo to celebrate and see the rhinos after their paper was published in a September issue of Nature Methods, a prestigious science journal. The lab’s accomplishments are outlined in the paper to inspire labs around the world to try doing the same.

Since the paper was published, Ben-Nun has been contacted by several labs offering to sequence the genomes of the drill and the rhino, another step to ensuring their survival.

“The best way to manage extinctions is to preserve species and their habitats,” says Ryder, “but that’s not working all the time.”

Stem cell research can improve reproductive success and increase the gene pool. Ben-Nun, a mother of two, started on the groundbreaking project in 2008.

After one year of trial and error, the team found that the genes that create pluripotency in humans worked for the drill and the rhino. Only a few stem cells are produced each time, but this is enough: “We have the start of a new zoo, the stem-cell zoo,” says Ben-Nun.

Source: MFA

Precious timepieces ticking again at Museum for Islamic Art

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An invaluable collection was stolen from the Jerusalem museum and only returned 24 years later.

In the early 20th century, Sir David Salomons collected almost 200 incomparable watches and clocks. He later donated them to the Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem (http://www.islamicart.co.il/en/)

Among the collection on display is a watch made for Marie Antoinette, "but she was executed before she could enjoy it," say curator Rachel Hasson.

In 1983, this watch and about half the collection were stolen from the museum and weren't found until late 2006, when police were able to locate 100 of the 110 original pieces. "It is a miracle, after 24 years, to receive such a collection," says Hasson.

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Film aims to encapsulate ‘Start-Up Nation’s’ success

New film sets out to examine core character strengths that have helped Israelis turn a desert into a flourishing nation.

A film aiming to change Israel’s image around the world will premiere on Independence Day, Israel’s 64th birthday, in 64 communities worldwide, the film’s producers announced at a Jerusalem press conference this week.

The film aims to follow up on the success of Start-Up Nation, the best-selling book by Dan Senor and former Jerusalem Post editorial editor Saul Singer, which has been translated into Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Turkish.

Titled Israel Inside: How a Small Nation Makes a Big Difference, the 55-minute documentary attempts to portray an often unreported side of Israel to the world. The film is narrated by Dr. Tal Ben- Shahar, a best-selling author and former Harvard professor who taught a popular Harvard course on positive psychology.

In the film, Ben-Shahar examines the core character strengths that have enabled Israelis to overcome challenges and turn a desert into a flourishing nation. It focuses on Israel beyond conflict and national security, themes most often associated with the country’s identity.

“By shifting the conversation and highlighting the strength and resilience of the Jewish people in the face of adversity, there is a hope that it may help in dealing with the conflict,” Ben-Shahar said.

At the press conference he said the film was about addressing misconceptions many people have about the Jewish state.

“While I think about Israel as a country characterized by technology, and prosperity, they think about camels, war, felafel,” he said. “The film is about changing the conversation and changing that idea. We have a lot to celebrate as a nation, so the film was made to highlight those aspects and to change the focus people have about the country.”

Ben-Shahar is joined onscreen by Harvard Prof. Alan Dershowitz and leading Israeli entrepreneurs, businessmen and political figures, including Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Better Place’s Shai Agassi, venture capitalist Jonathan Medved, and Teva’s Eli Hurvitz who died in November.

Raphael Shore of JerusalemOnlineU, an online portal for Israel and Jewish distance learning that utilizes film-based education programs, produced the film. Shore wrote and produced the documentary films on radical Islam and the Middle East.

Shore’s wife, Rebecca, was the head writer for Israel Inside.

“The film aims to take ‘Start-Up Nation’ further and delve deeper into the essence of what makes Israelis on an individual level do what we do to thrive,” Rebecca Shore said.

Source: Jpost.com

Joint IAF and Polish Air Force exercise

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Fighter pilots from the Israeli and Polish air forces completed a week of joint exercises- that were held nine years after the Israeli air force held a flyby over Auschwitz. The cooperation is the first of its kind between the two military forces and included such tasks as mock attacks and interceptions where the sides took turns as attacker and defender. The sides are expected to plan a reciprocal exercise in Poland.

Israeli-made processor responsible for 40% of Intel’s 2011 sales

Top Intel Israel executives speak at Sunday's press conference (photo credit: Courtesy)

The company and the country have a deeper relationship than most realize

While many people know of the close relationship between Israel and Intel, the depth of that relationship may come as a surprise to many: Intel Israel has been responsible for many, if not most, of the processor breakthroughs for Intel, and the Intel Sandy Bridge processor, developed in Israel, was responsible for 40 percent of Intel’s sales worldwide in 2011.

That fact was revealed Sunday at a press conference in Tel Aviv, where top Intel Israel executives discussed the company’s activities last year and plans for this year. 2012 is set to be an important year for Intel Israel, as the company refits its Kiryat Gat facility to manufacture the new 22-nanometer Ivy Bridge processor.

Currently, the Kiryat Gat facility makes Intel’s 45-nanometer Sandy Bridge processor, and the company has invested $3 billion in preparing the facility for Ivy Bridge.

One highlight of the press conference was the introduction of top Intel exec Mooly Eden as Intel Israel president. Eden will share top executive status with general manager Maxine Fassberg. There had been speculation that Intel has been dissatisfied with Fassberg’s leadership of the company, with Eden being appointed to gradually take over operations. At the press conference, however, both Eden and Fassberg praised the appointment, with Eden pointing out that the appointment of a president and general manager was Intel’s way of honoring the Israel facility for its accomplishments.

Fassberg said that Intel Israel had hired some 700 people in 2011 and planned to hire at least 600 more in 2012. Fassberg added that Intel Israel employs nearly 8,000 workers directly, and is indirectly responsible, through suppliers and subsidiaries, for the employment of 23,000 heads of households — and altogether employs 10% of all workers in the electronics and software industry in Israel. Intel employs about 100,000 people worldwide. A special point of pride, she said, was that Intel Israel did not lay off any workers during the 2008-2009 economic downturn. “We had plans ready for all scenarios, but we were able to work things out to ensure that we did not have to lay off even one worker because of the recession,” she said.

Intel Israel is a strong contributor to Israel’s bottom line, said Fassberg, with $2.2 billion in exports in 2011.

That was about 20% lower than in 2010, but Fassberg attributed the shortfall to the limited capacity of the Kiryat Gat plant during its refitting for 22-nanometer processors. The company expects to more than make up for it this year as it gears up to sell the Ivy Bridge processors.

Besides Kiryat Gat, Intel has facilities in Jerusalem, Haifa, Petah Tikvah, and Yakum.

Eden presented the company’s plans for 2012, discussing a slew of new products Intel intends to release.

Among those products are the Ultrabook, Intel’s answer to small, light laptops like the Macbook Air. The company will be marketing some 75 different Ultrabook designs, so “there will be something for everyone,” Eden said. Besides Ultrabooks, Intel will be pushing forward with completion and development of its smartphone, and later in the year, an Intel tablet will be available. Eden also described a number of software innovations, including an “end-to-end” service that will allow access to data and content along a series of devices via the cloud — similar to current offerings by Apple, which stores data in the cloud and allows users to access it on its line of Macbooks, iPads, and iPhones.

Eden also rejected notions popular in the media, that the PC was outmoded and would die a quick death, and that tablets were going to replace laptops. “There may be some cannibalization at the fringes,” Eden said, referring to a “blurring” of distinctions among some devices. However, all four “device streams” — PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones — were growing and would continue to grow in tandem. PCs were becoming household necessities and not luxuries, and as such have become a recession-proof product.

Regarding tablets, Eden challenged audience members who believe that the tablet is set to replace the laptop to “give me your laptop for two months, and then we’ll see whether or not you don’t need it.”

Eden, who is also an Intel worldwide senior vice president, has been working for Intel in the US since 2003, and was responsible for the sharp growth in notebooks and netbooks for Intel, the company said.

Intel is strongly committed to Israel, Eden said. Israel is the third largest investment target for Intel outside the US — after China and India — and over the past 15 years, the company has invested in 64 different Israeli companies. A big believer in working with start-ups, Eden said that he intended to not only look for companies Intel can work with directly, but for partnerships with other Intel partners around the world for promising Israeli startups. “The most important contribution we can make to Israeli startups is through our rolodex, the connections we have in the industry that we can share with Israeli startups,” Eden said. “We believe in the ‘startup nation,’ and intend to help it reach its full potential.”

Source: Times of Israel

Peace between Israel and Iran on Facebook

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An online call for peace initiated by an Israeli couple has managed to achieve the support of 1,000 Israelis and Iranians. Ronny Edry and his wife Michal Tamir, uploaded posters to Facebook depicting images of
themselves with their children alongside the words, "Iranians, we will never bomb your country, we [heart] you." By Sunday afternoon, faceless posters prepared by Iranians, sharing a similar message of thanks and love, were posted onto the Pushpin Mehina Facebook page and the "Israel Loves Iran" blog.

Simple blood test can diagnose gestational diabetes, Israeli team finds

Researchers say new ways could increase by up to 50 percent the number of cases of gestational diabetes that are diagnosed in the course of pregnancy.

An Israeli research team has come up with what it says are simpler and more accurate ways to screen pregnant women for gestational diabetes, a condition with profound implications for the health of both mothers and their unborn and newborn infants.

The researchers, led by Prof. Moshe Hod of Petah Tikva’s Rabin Medical Center, proposed simple alternatives to the standard oral glucose tolerance test, which is usually administered between the 24th and 28th week of pregnancy and which involves drinking one or measured doses of glucose and then testing blood sugar levels over a period of hours.

They said using either a simple blood-glucose test, without prior oral glucose ingestion, or measuring the size and weight of the fetus, could increase by up to 50 percent the number of cases of gestational diabetes that are diagnosed in the course of pregnancy.

Gestational diabetes often causes complications such as pregnancy-induced hypertension or an exceptionally big fetus, which increases the chances of child obesity. Every year 10,000 Israeli women – accounting for six percent of all pregnancies – are diagnosed with the disease. That rate is low for Western countries.

“Israeli pregnant women are younger and thinner,” said Dr. Ofra Kalter-Leibovici, director of the Unit of Cardiovascular Epidemiology at Gertner Institute for Epidemiology & Health Policy and a member of the research team. “Therefore they are less prone to suffer from gestational diabetes.”

The team’s recommendations differ from those of a landmark study that was published in 2008 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, carried out by the International Association of the Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Groups, found that the current glucose tolerance tests fall far short of reflecting the real number of women suffering from diabetes during pregnancy.

It recommended using a single-dose, two-hour glucose tolerance test instead of the variant that can include successive ingestion of glucose and multiple blood tests. This recommendation was adopted by the American Diabetes Association.

Recent studies have shown that mild gestational diabetes can be treated through diet and exercise, with only 10 percent of cases requiring medical intervention.

“General practitioners can diagnose gestational diabetes in most cases,” Kalter-Leibovici said. “These cases should not be treated by obstetricians specializing in high-risk pregnancies, who are unable to see all of these patients.”

The findings of the study led by Hod were recently presented at a conference of the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research.

“We are not adopting the recommendations automatically,” Hod said. “We examine them according to the findings of Israeli and international studies, and measure potential financial costs. In any event, the findings prove that the modes of diagnosis of gestational diabetes need to change.”

A panel will be set up to devise concrete recommendations that will in turn be submitted to respective panels of gynecologists and diabetes specialists for approval. At a later stage they will require the stamp of the the Health Ministry and the country’s health maintenance organizations.

Another team, this one composed of both Israeli and American physicians, is in the process of developing a mathematical model that would assess the overall cost of the suggested alternatives to glucose tolerance tests.

Source: Haaretz.com