Category: Science &Technology

Scientists at the University of Saskatchewan and an international team of researchers have discovered that a protein in semen actually prompts ovulation in females.

The findings, which appears in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, raises intriguing questions about the role of semen in fertility in mammals, including humans.

This implies the semen of a male mammal may actually induce a female’s fertility.

“The idea that a substance in mammalian semen has a direct effect on the female brain is a new one,” Gregg Adams the lead researcher of the international team explains.

These new findings confirm that semen is not only important as a vehicle that carries sperm, but also directly plays a role in triggering ovulation.

Dubbed as the ovulation-inducing factor (OIF), the identified protein acts as a signal to the female brain to trigger the release of other hormones that then prompt the ovaries to release an egg.

For couples who have been struggling to conceive, these findings unlock new clinical insight on the causes of infertility and how it can be treated, including more non-invasive options such as lifestyle changes.

In this case, having more frequent and sexual intercourse may be an option worth trying.

Source: University of Saskatchewan Campus News

On September 12, Kigali will be in the spotlight as one of 36 Tech City Hubs around the world that are hosting regional international Startup World competitions.

Hosted in Rwanda by Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT), under patronage of the Ministry of Youth and ICT, Startup World is an international initiative to promote early stage businesses, entrepreneurship and technology through a global competition to celebrate the world’s most innovative startups.

As a competition hub, Africa is the new hotbed for innovation and Rwanda is a leader in recognizing the need to support new ideas, young innovators and advanced information and communications technology.

Kigali is one of the four cities in Africa that were selected to host this competition this appreciating the government’s commitment to develop ICT as pivotal sector in development of the nation.

Entrepreneurs, innovators and early stage business leaders are encouraged to submit their applications to www.starupworld.com before August 31.

Applications will be screened and 10 finalists will compete by delivering their business “pitches” on September 12, at Lemigo Hotel, Kimihurura before a panel of Rwandan experts.

The national winner will be sponsored to travel to Silicon Valley in the USA for a showdown of finalists in January 2013.

The “pitch” competition event is open to the public but we are inviting particularly technology students and professionals.

In addition to the pitching of the 10 runner ups, the event will be a great networking event bringing together as financial institutions and venture firms will be represented.

We have 100 free seats open, and interested persons are invited to sign up for participation by sending an email [email protected]

VioletteUwamutara, Country Director of DOT Rwanda, says “Through the DOT ReachUp! and StartUp! we have met and helped develop hundreds of young Rwandan women and men who are budding entrepreneurs and business leaders with brilliant ideas.

Events like Startup World are so important to celebrate new ideas and show the world the innovation leadership of young Africans and the transformation of Rwanda as a knowledge based economy.”

As a Startup World host,DOT Rwanda is doing its part in transforming young Rwandans to be leaders of change in their communities as they introduce technology, 21st century workforce skills and business principles to thousands of their peers in communities throughout the country.

In partnership with government ministries and with the support of The MasterCard Foundation and the Canadian International Development Agency, DOT Rwanda is on track to reach 30,000 young Rwandans by 2013 – a new force of growth for the Rwandan economy.

Quote Alex Ntare, Director of the ICT Chamber in the Private Sector Federation, says “This is an awesome opportunity for Rwanda to showcase its commitment to building ICT in Africa through homegrown innovative solutions.”

Our parents have made sacrifices to give us this education, its only right that we give back to our country” he adds.

Quote Didier, Nkurikiyimfura, Director of ICT, MYICT…..

The ICT Chambers at the Private Sector Federation and the Rwanda Development Board are organizing partners of the Startup World Kigali event.

Samsung has unveiled a Galaxy Note tablet designed to make a more personal connection with users and aiming to knock Apple’s iPad off its market throne.

A key feature of the Galaxy Note 10.1 was a sophisticated “S Pen” that can be used as if it were a pen on paper or a computer mouse.

“The mission of this device is personalisation -using pen input to create more human communication,” Galaxy Tab consumer business division director Travis Merrill told press while providing an early look at the new tablet.

“Receiving a handwritten note from someone you know is so much more emotional and powerful than just receiving an email,” he said.

Samsung built technology from Japan-based Wacom into the tablet screen to create a layer that can sense “S Pens” so precisely it can tell how hard they are being pressed or even if they are hovering, slightly out of touch.

“If you don’t want to use the S Pen you don’t have to but it is really the heart and soul of the device,” Samsung Telecommunications America product strategy director Shoneel Kolhatkar said.

Note 10.1 tablets are powered by Google’s latest generation Android software and feature powerful quad-core processors as well as two gigabytes of RAM for quick handling of videos, games and other graphics rich content.

The tablets are Wi-Fi enabled to connect with the Internet at hotspots and will be available in the United States on Wednesday at prices of $500 for a 16-gigabyte model and $550 for a 32-gigabyte model, according to Samsung.

Fraud has grown by 25% in the East African Banking sector compared to a simillar period in 2010.

The statistics have been presented by Deloitte an audit firm.

Deloitte claims that the figures may be understated as financial institutions remain tight-lipped about fraud figures.

“The pervasiveness and magnitude of fraud is on the rise. Technology is turning out to be a double-edged sword,” said Deloitte’s Forensic Director, Robert Nyamu.

The Real Time Gross Transfer System (RTGS) and other electronic money transfer modes pose the greatest fraud risk. Cheque fraud has also increased tenfold.

Deloitte argues that innovations such as Mobile Money and Agency Banking are also presenting money launderers with security gaps to exploit. Both services are gaining regional currency as major banks open subsidiaries across East Africa.

Further, about 50% of total fraud was committed in complicity with banking employees.

Last year, accounting company PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that the surge in banking fraud was due to “disgruntled or disillusioned employees who are usually young and more tech-savvy than their superiors.”

Scientists have announced that the biggest telescope has began capturing cosmic rays of the universe that would give mankind its farthest peek into the Universe.

The “Cherenkov” telescope has the size of two lawn tennis courts and is the biggest of its kind based in Namibia, Africa.

Cherenkov-HESS-II telescope is situated about 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of the Namibian capital Windhoek.

The 600-tonne telescope structure with its 28-metre (92-feet) mirror will be observing the most violent and extreme phenomena of the universe in very high energy gamma rays.

It “not only provides the largest mirror area among instruments of this type worldwide, but also resolves the cascade images at unprecedented detail, with four times more pixels per sky area compared to the smaller telescopes”, Pascal Vincent, one of the scientists, said in a statement released Thursday in Europe.

Successful commissioning of the HESS II telescope represents a big step forward … for the astronomical community as a whole and for southern Africa as a prime location for this field of astronomy,” said Werner Hofmann of Germany’s Max Planck Institute.

South Africa in May secured the right to co-host with Australia the world’s biggest super radio telescope that would give mankind its farthest peek into the Universe, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

Namibian first HESS observatory has been in operation for almost 10 years and run by more than 170 scientists from 12 different countries including South Africa, Germany, France, Britain and Australia.

In Kenya a new innovation could be replicated to help transform farming in rural East Africa, Kenya’s Business Daily has reported.

A group of youths working under Farmlink-Africa has developed a pump that can be powered by a motorcycle engine instead of the traditional diesel engine, which can pump a total of between 22,000 to 40,000 litres of water per hour and consumes 0.2 litres of petrol in an hour.

Mwangi Mbugiro Farmlink-Africa director of sales, explains that The pump is mounted to a motorcycle power take over — commonly known as the engine shaft that drives it as it pumps the water from its source.

The machine can also pump water from a well of up to 40 feet but the speed and amount of water is usually dependent on the depth.

Mwangi adds, “on a not-so-deep place, the water is pumped fast as compared to pumping it from a well that is deep.”

He noted that the advantage of this machine is that it uses a locomotive that can be used for other purposes as compared to the common diesel water pump that performs one purpose only and lies idle when you are not pumping water.”

The new innovation was showcased during this year’s Agricultural Society of Kenya show at the Kisumu showground under the theme, enhancing technology for agricultural food security.

If the World Bank withholds cash meant to build a transmission line to Link Kenya to electricity generated from Ethiopia’s mega Gibe III Dam, the idea would leave East Africa without US$ 1 Billion lost inform of energy costs every year.

The transmission line valued at US$ 1.3Billion is part of a broader plan to link the electricity grids of Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, spurring growth and saving East African nations around $1 billion a year in energy costs.

The World Bank has been urged to withhold support for a power line that would take electricity from Ethiopia to Kenya, citing environmental and human rights concerns.

An advocacy group urged the new WB president Jim Yong Kim to hold fire. “The World Bank needs to rigorously apply its social and environmental safeguards,” a letter to Kim stated.

“Human Rights Watch has very serious concerns that the World Bank has failed to do so as the project currently stands.”

The roughly 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) transmission line is part of a nearly $1.3 billion project to link energy-producing Ethiopia with Kenya — where as many as 80% of the population is without power.

However, Gibe III dam that will be the source of Electricity from Ethiopia is not funded by the World Bank.

There are concerns that Gibe III dam construction could cause serious environmental damage to Lake Turkana, a Unesco world heritage site.

Gibe III dam is the largest hydropower plant in Africa. When completed, the dam’s 243-metre high wall will be the tallest of its kind in the world.
The plan is for electricity to become Ethiopia’s biggest export.

The United States has reported that thousands of computer users may lose Internet access on Monday, when the deadline for a temporary fix to a malicious software scam shut down by the FBI last year expires.

What is it?

Millions of computers were infected with the so-called “Internet Doomsday” virus used in the hacking scam, which redirected Internet searches through DNS servers used by the scammers, who allegedly netted $14 million in bogus advertising revenue.

After U.S. and Estonian authorities busted the malware ring last November, a federal judge ordered that the FBI use temporary servers while the malware victims’ PCs were repaired.

The temporary servers will shut down at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Monday, meaning anyone using a computer still infected with the virus will likely lose Internet access.

“Connectivity will be lost to the Internet PERIOD,” Symantec, the online security firm, said in a blog post. “If your computer is still using DNS entries that are pointing to the FBI servers on July 9, you will lose TOTAL access to the Internet. No connecting to the office from home, no updating Facebook, nothing until the DNS settings are fixed.”

How many computers have it?

It’s unclear how widespread the “blackout” will be. According to a working group set up by security experts, more than 300,000 computers remained infected as of June 11, including 69,000 in the United States.

Last week, 245,000 computers were said to be still infected with the so-called Alureon virus, according online security firm Deteque, including 45,355 machines in the United States.

Wired estimates 64,000 users in the United States and an additional 200,000 users outside the United States are still infected with the malware, “despite repeated warnings in the news, e-mail messages sent by ISPs and alerts posted by Google and Facebook.”

According to Internet Identity, another IT security firm, “12 percent of all Fortune 500 companies and four percent of “major” U.S. federal agencies are still infected with DNSChanger malware.”

But it’s unclear how many of those machines are still in use.

What to do

According to sources U.S. Internet providers including AT&T and Time Warner Cable “have made temporary arrangements so that their customers will be able to access the Internet using the address of the rogue DNS servers.” And the problem, security experts say, is relatively easy to fix.

“It’s a very easy one to fix,” Gunter Ollmann, vice president of research for security company Damballa, told the news service. “There are plenty of tools available.”

Online security firms, Facebook and the FBI are offering free diagnostic checks for users whose computers may be infected. Here are links to several:

• Malware check: http://dns-ok.us/

• FBI: https://forms.fbi.gov/check-to-see-if-your-computer-is-using-rogue-DNS

• DNS Changer Working Group: http://www.dcwg.org/

• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-security/notifying-dnschanger-victims/10150833689760766

• McAfee: http://www.mcafee.com/dnscheck

Of course, that hasn’t stopped local media outlets from breathless reporting on the looming “blackout.”

“Monday morning,” Alabama’s WAAY-TV reported, “hundreds of thousands of Internet enthusiasts could wake up to find nothing but a dark, empty computer screen.”

The hype over a potential “blackout” threatens “to obscure what has been a highly successful effort–one of few to date–to stamp out a global online scam and malware infestation,” Paul Roberts wrote on Threatpost.com.

Six people were arrested in Estonia and charged with Internet fraud in the sting. A seventh, who was living in Russia, remains at large.

A new Car made for Africa in Africa is gaining more attention and could very soon become a car of choice for africa.

In 2009 a computer engineer Joel Jackson arrived in Kenya and one of the first things he noticed was the state of the roads.

Jackson had come to the Kenya with a non-profit organisation to help small-scale farmers increase their productivity, but he soon realised that a more pressing problem existed.

“It became clear that the lack of appropriate transport affected many parts of rural Africa,” he said.

So he set about building something that would fill that gap – a $6,000 car.

Mobius One, as the first vehicle was dubbed, was built by local welders and mechanics.

The car was stripped of all the luxuries that Western drivers take for granted.

“It had a tubular steel frame and off-the-shelf parts. It looked like a dune buggy, took 10 months to build and cost $14,000,” said Jackson.

But it worked, and that was enough to persuade him to quit his day job and move full-time to his newly formed company, Mobius Motors.

He raised a quarter of a million dollars in venture-capital funding and used some of it to recruit a team of engineers to build the second prototype, Mobius Two.

Facebook appears to have quietly unveiled a new feature designed to let people see which Facebook users are nearby at any given time.

The company calls the feature “Find Friends Nearby,” and on Monday it was available through Facebook’s mobile apps and website despite the fact that it hasn’t been formally announced.

The blog ReadWriteWeb already has dubbed the feature a “stalking app” because it could open people up to potentially awkward or threatening interactions with strangers on the social network who know you’re nearby.

To test out the feature, go to fb.com/ffn in a browser, or follow this path in the Facebook’s mobile apps: menu > apps > find friends > other tools > Find Friends Nearby.

In a comment about the new feature, Facebook developer Ryan Patterson, who says he developed Find Friends Nearby, described how he hopes the app will be used:

“For me, the ideal use case for this product is the one where when you’re out with a group of people whom you’ve recently met and want to stay in contact with.

Facebook search might be effective, or sharing your vanity addresses or business cards, but this tool provides a really easy way to exchange contact information with multiple people with minimal friction.”

A Facebook spokeswoman declined to provide additional information. “We are constantly testing new features but have nothing more to share at this time,” she