An Israeli startup company called StoreDot has unveiled a prototype charger that can re-energize a phone battery in 30 seconds.

The new technology was based on research for Alzheimer’s disease at the nanotechnology department of Tel Aviv University, but the prototype still needs to be developed into a smaller batter to be of commercial use. The amino acids identified in the research are used for the new charger.

The StoreDot is optimistic it will succeed and projects that the new charger will be on the market by the end of 2016.

One of the rumored investors who have plunked down more than $6 million so far is Samsung.

“We are about one year from a functional prototype that will be inside the device,” StoreDot’s CEO and founder Dr. Doron Myersdorf told TechCrunch. “Right now we show a battery that extends beyond the form factor of the smartphone. So in one year we’ll have reached the size, and in two years we’ll reach the required energy density for the entire day.

“So we are talking about three years for a commercial ready device. So I assume it will be three years before you can actually purchase it on the market.

“We’ve demonstrated an iPhone display that the active material which emits light is a bio-organic material that is created by our compounds. This will be the first ever bio-organic display. We already demonstrated all the colors… we can bring the entire RGB spectrum for the display so now it’s all a matter of being able to reach the lifetime and the efficiency similar to cadmium.”

StoreDot needs approximately an additional $20 million to further develop the prototype and set up a manufacturing facility.

The Chicago-based iCenter, a national Israel education organization, has teamed up with SpaceIL, an Israeli non-profit seeking to land the first Israeli spacecraft on the Moon, to develop a series of educational materials to engage North American Jewish students in Israeli science, technology, and space flight.

SpaceIL is the only Israeli team currently competing in the Google Lunar X Prize competition to become the first team to successfully land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon and send pictures back to Earth.

Anne Lanski, executive director of the iCenter, said in a statement that SpaceIL “represents an unprecedented opportunity to engage North American Jewish youth in an inspiring narrative of contemporary Israel.”

“At a time when Jewish educators and communal leaders are eager to connect youth with the richness, diversity, and sophistication of contemporary Israeli life, SpaceIL provides a unique portal, showcasing the leadership and ingenuity of Israelis in science and technology, and the Israeli spirit of overcoming long odds to accomplish great things,” Lanski said.

The student union of Ryerson University in Toronto voted to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement aimed at Israel, but the university said it will ignore the non-binding decision.

“The student union is a corporation independent of the university, we have to be clear there,” said Michael Forbes, a spokesperson for Ryerson and quoted by the Canadian National Post. “The university does not support a boycott. We don’t support divestment, nor do we support sanctions against Israel. We’ve been consistent on this point.”

Students at the University of Windsor and York University also have voted to join BDS.

The vote at Ryerson was passed amid jeers and boos at Jewish students who walked out in protest, holding as sign stating, “Hate off Campus.”

Oy. He’s logged thousands of hours flying back and forth, meeting with leaders from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and surrounding Arab nations. Sleepless nights, endless days, Middle Eastern food and where has it all led?

Back to Square One by anyone’s estimation – and very likely in the eyes of President Barack Obama at the White House.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reports today (Tuesday) to the president so both can decide what to do next about the persnickety tangle that just won’t untangle in the Holy Land.

The problem is, after the better part of a year, John Kerry may have almost nothing to show for all of his efforts and a massive bill to boot. It’s a credibility problem for him – did he read the situation wrong? Or was it simply a matter of the Western mind not understanding the typical Middle Eastern Arab mentality again? And again. And again. Ad nauseum.

Because we who live here have already seen this before in our neighborhood. There have been so many train wrecks down this gorge, we’ve lost count of the number of peace plans we’ve complied with here in the Land of Israel. Most were American.

And Mr. Kerry is another one lacking the basic understanding of Middle Eastern mentality, the Arab mind and how it works, and the way it goes in this region. Briefings on “Arab culture” don’t cut it when it comes to shuttle diplomacy here. It is just not enough when it gets to the nitty gritty.

The Europeans already know better. They make dry observations, back the Arabs (who they know they can rely on to pull out rather than comply) and then fade out before the sun sets in the West. Of course, ‘intel’ ties always continue with Israel; it would be silly to ignore the needs of national security, right?

But the U.S. has yet to learn that Arab leadership is not reliable. The Palestinian Authority talks one way in English and the other way in Arabic and its word is never its word. Peace is not a concept this entity can understand. The definition of ‘honor’ in this culture is not the same as that of the West – it is defined differently in the Middle East.

Think ASIA when you think of PA government “honor.” That is the closest analogy one can summon. It does not involve life, but death – truly. And age doesn’t count. Babies do qualify. Everyone is expendable.

John Kerry is a well-meaning guy. He really thought he could pull this off. And he did have a peace partner. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu braved his entire coalition to make this last attempt – and almost lost his government over it. In fact, he still might. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman and Labor leader Isaac Herzog are both taking a shot at widening the fractures so they can climb all over it when new elections come around – and they both hope it’s sooner rather than later.

The last thing Israel needed was to free dozens more terrorists, let alone open the roadblocks to create a new free entrance on to Highway 60 from the Arab side of Hevron. But that’s what Israel did at America’s insistence for the U.S. attempt at new talks with the PA, knowing it was likely to come to naught.

It would be a pity if President Obama were now to rake John Kerry over the coals for following his orders and extending his own personal good faith in the process.

Mr. Kerry is not a young man either, and the constant flights could not have been easy. The stress of struggling to deal with Arab leaders fighting your every effort to reach a compromise could not have been fun. And having to second-guess everyone’s thoughts, words, actions and decisions following each session – although that is the job for which he was trained – must have been the stuff of nightmares.

Israel has for the first time set its own precondition for any return to negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beyteynu party, announced the Jewish State will not negotiate again with the PA unless it withdraws all 15 of its applications to international treaties, conventions and memberships in United Nations (UN) agencies and organizations.

“We will not agree to unilateral actions by the Palestinians without exacting a price from them for that behavior,” Liberman stated in an interview Tuesday morning on Voice of Israel government radio.

While Israel favors negotiations, he said, he does not intend for Israel to be “a sucker.” The PA has incessantly set preconditions as a means of dragging security and other concessions out of Israel prior to entering any form of negotiations. As usual, the current round of talks saw Israel forced by the United States – whose arm was twisted by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas – to free dozens of terrorist prisoners in a new round of “good will gestures.”

Four groups of prisoners were to be freed in the deal intended to bring Abbas to the negotiating table and to keep him there, totaling 104 terrorists, including 20 Israeli Arab citizens who were not even technically under PA jurisdiction. To date 78 terrorists have already been freed.

However, this time Israel set a condition of its own: the prisoner release was to be linked to the progress made in the talks, and to the participation of Abbas at the table. But Abbas rarely showed, and had not been seen since November 2013. The talks had accomplished little of significance from the start. Nor did Abbas keep his word, following a pattern he showed during the last such round of negotiations in 2009-2010.

Meanwhile, the final prisoner group would have included the Israeli Arab terrorists, causing a fierce debate among politicians and citizens. Releasing them before the end of the talks, scheduled for April 29,  would have left no reason for PA negotiators to come back the next day.

Israeli ministers and citizens balked and the tranche was blocked. Instead, Israel suggested extending the talks till the end of 2014 and offered to free the final group, as well as an additional 400 prisoners if the PA agreed. In response, an infuriated PA decided to go with a flurry of international applications instead, and also threatened to go to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Liberman directly blamed Abbas for sabotaging the talks, saying the PA chairman submitted the applications just as both sides were about to complete a deal for a prisoner release. The foreign minister added there is no way that Israel is willing to narrow down talks to the sole issue of borders, at the behest of the PA. The Jewish State is willing to negotiate all outstanding issues, but demands from the PA to exclude all core issues but one are not acceptable.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter insisted Monday that Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to ask for membership in international associations of the United Nations actually will help the “peace process.”

It takes a bit of a twisted imagination to follow the man’s mind. Such as it is, but here is what he said in a statement in the name of the “Elders,” a group of bored and boring world leaders who have decided they can promote peace in the world that they helped botch.

“The decision by the Palestinians to exercise their right to join international organizations should not be seen as a blow to the peace talks,” Carter said . “I hope that, on the contrary, it will help to redress the power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians, as we approach the 29 April deadline set by Secretary Kerry.”

When Carter says “imbalance,” he means Abbas’ not having the upper hand. A “balance” of power means that Israel is under the bus.

In order to make that happen, Carter and the Elders ignored the fact the Abbas totally broke the rules of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s Peace Talks Follies when he said he would turn to the United Nations.

What really happened, according to Carter, is that decision to ask to join 12 U.N. treaties and conventions was “consistent with the UN non-member observer state status obtained by Palestine in November 2012.”

Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and deputy chair of The Elders, added, “This move opens the way to more inclusive and accountable government in the West Bank and Gaza. It has the potential to strengthen respect for human rights and provide ordinary Palestinians with essential legal protections against discrimination or abuses by their own government.”

He thinks that the poor Arab on the street in Ramallah will benefit from the Palestinian Authority’s being a member of the organization for the rights of children, for example.  Does the distinguished former prime minister of Norway know that Iran and Saudi Arabia are member of Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Has the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which Abbas wants to join, helped the man on the street in Argentina, Angola, Egypt, Iran,, Libya, and Sudan, some of the most comport countries in the world who are members of the enlightened committee?

But none of this is important, because Carter said it is all going to help the peace process.

A Syrian mortar shell landed and exploded near the security fence in the central Golan Heights Monday afternoon. No injuries or damage was reported.

The IDF said that the firing probably was not intended to strike Israel.

Tel Aviv University has cancelled the appearance at a campus event of a former Arab prisoner jailed by Israel for his activities on behalf of the terrorist Hezbollah organization.

Mohammed Kana’ane, an Arab-Israeli who spent four-and-a-half years in prison, was invited to speak Monday by the left-wing Hadash and Balad student groups at a conference for Land Day, which marks the deaths of six Galilee Arabs in 1976 during riots over a government decision to expropriate land for what it called security purposes.

Land Day took place on March 30.

“In light of concern for public order in the Land Day events scheduled to be held tomorrow, and since the request to approve Kana’neh’s participation was only received recently, leaving no time for preparations, the University does not approve his participation in the event,” the university said in a statement released late Sunday. The statement said that other Land Day events would go forward as planned.

A Sunday protest on campus by Jewish student groups called for the speech to be canceled.

The university last week had issued a statement saying it would allow the event to go forward in an effort to respect students’ right to freedom of speech, which it apparently thought includes screaming “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

JTA contributed most of the material for this report.