Equally unfamiliar but more immediately palatable is a dish of cold soba noodles with tororo, a kind of mountain yam.

NEWYORKER: Ootoya

Grating turns the yam to a pulp of unbelievable stickiness. (Wikipedia claims that it was used as a sexual lubricant in the Edo period a fact too good to check.) The soba end up bound so firmly together that pulling a few strands with chopsticks lifts the whole mass off the plate.

NEWYORKER: Ootoya

In November, WinFlex, a wind-power company based in Kiryat Yam, Israel, received one of the most coveted prizes in the GE Ecomagination Challenge for developing a wind-turbine system that uses a light, flexible cloth sheets made out of composite materials as the rotor system for a wind turbine.

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Some senior members of Kibbutz Sdot Yam have started working on a plan to move the commune toward some sort of privatization scheme.

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The Caesarstone wealth means that Kibbutz Sdot Yam can easily keep functioning as a commune.

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Fired by Bat Yam style, matkot was enjoying a revival.

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At a World Economic Forum meeting in Singapore, Yam proudly quoted Barton Biggs, chief global equities strategist for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, as saying he had "come around" to agreeing with Hong Kong on the intervention.

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Or try buying yam and telling the seller you want a particular type when it is obvious to her you cannot tell the difference between the species.

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"Asia must find a solution to the debt market, " says Hong Kong Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen.

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