Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

By age 6, girls less likely to believe they are ‘brilliant’- study

{The report in the journal Science was based on 400 youths aged between five and seven, who were given a series of tasks.}

Gender stereotypes emerge early, and by age six, girls are less likely to believe females are “brilliant” and more likely to believe boys are, according to a study released Thursday.

The report in the journal Science was based on 400 youths aged between five and seven, who were given a series of tasks.

In one, the kids were told a short story about a person who was “really, really smart,” but were given no hints about whether the person was male or female.

At age five, both boys and girls were equally likely to choose their own gender as “really, really smart.”

But by age six and seven, “girls were significantly less likely than boys to associate brilliance with their own gender,” said the study.

In another part of the study, children had to guess which of four children, two boys and two girls, got the best grades in school.

In this case, both younger and older girls were just as likely to select girls as having top grades, suggesting that the “girls’ perceptions of school achievement were separate from their perceptions of brilliance,” said the report.

Finally, when the kids were asked about their interest in two new games, one for “children who are really, really smart” and the other for “children who try really, really hard,” researchers found that girls aged six and seven were less interested than boys in the game for smart children.

At age five, girls were just as likely to pick the whiz kids’ game as the game for kids who try hard.

The findings may have important implications for the career paths that women choose, perhaps steering them away from fields typically associated with brilliance, like physics and philosophy, said lead author Lin Bian, a researcher at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champlain.

“It is likely to affect women’s career aspirations,” she said.

“We believe it is important to explore whether and how early young kids start learning these stereotypes associating brilliance with males.”

January 27, 2017
Adama Barrow returns to warm welcome as Gambia turns a page

{President Adama Barrow may have been waiting to take power in The Gambia for nearly two months but many in the west African country have been longing for a change of guard for years.}

Yahya Jammeh held on to power for so long that many Gambians almost began to believe his claim he would rule for “a billion years” if Allah willed it.

But after 22 years in the saddle, he lost the December 1 election but refused to cede power. Jammeh only left the country on Saturday and went into exile in Equatorial Guinea under threat of a regional military intervention.

“We have waited 22 years for this. We give him (Barrow) all our trust,” said Ibrahima Jahama, plastering a billboard on the way to the airport in the capital Banjul ahead of the new president’s arrival on Thursday.

{{Heavy security }}

At Banjul international airport meanwhile, marching bands were preparing to welcome a different president home amid heavy security provided by Senegalese and Nigerian special forces.

When Barrow finally arrived from neighbouring Senegal, where he has been living for safety reasons since January 15, dignitaries on the tarmac almost seemed to breathe a sigh of relief that Barrow was safe and sound.

“I’m a happy man today. It was part of the struggle and I think the bad part is finished now,” Barrow told journalists before climbing into a reinforced vehicle and waving to fans out of the sunroof.

His supporters packed onto vans and taxis to follow him, immediately blocking all traffic and replicating the mobile rallies that he held as a candidate in November, where the streets filled with Barrow fans: a defiant gesture in a country where protest was largely illegal.

PEACE, LOVE, UNITY!

The long wait gave Barrow’s supporters a chance to begin the party early in the kilometres of gridlocked traffic that stretched back from his convoy.

“Peace, love and unity!” shouted Binta Makah, swinging her legs off the top of a mini bus.

“We have freedom of speech”, her friend Mariana Darboe told AFP, shouting down from the roof.

Once it became clear no one was moving on the one road back into town, perhaps for several hours, engines were switched off and the dancing and drumming began.

“The moment I saw the president, I felt like I was entering paradise,” said Musa Kitteh, a young man wearing a Barrow T-shirt, who had driven to the airport with a dozen friends, “because he brings freedom to us.”

{{Keeping political opinions secret }}

With tears pricking his eyes, Kitteh continued: “We cannot even emphasise… during Jammeh’s time, we were in a dictatorship. Nobody say your opinions because whatever he decides, we are going to do.”

For Gambians, Barrow’s arrival means the end of looking over a shoulder at all time for the secret police, and of keeping political opinions secret, even among friends.

“You can go home at night and sleep without worrying you will be arrested before daybreak,” pensioner Ibrahima Gaye told AFP earlier in the day.

Gambians ranging from ministers to farmers have disappeared due to the actions of Jammeh’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and his feared “Jungler” death squad, locals and rights groups say.

The relief that this era was over was clear.

“I pray for him: let God help him, said taxi driver Amadou Ba, speaking of Barrow.

But everyone admitted the new president faced an uphill task having inherited a dysfunctional economy, a highly politicised security force and a drain of young talent seeking better lives in Europe.

January 27, 2017
Museveni’s rule through the eyes of 1986 babies

{On the day President Museveni formally announced takeover of government 31 years ago, a peasant family in the Ntungamo District was thrilled but for an entirely different reason: the birth of a baby boy. }

The parents named him Constantine Ahimbisibwe, a surname meaning “praise him”. This was to acclaim him as God’s gift but not to validate the Kalashnikov rifle-slinging National Resistance Army (NRA) rebels’ march on Kampala.

As President Museveni walked to the podium yesterday to give an account of his three decades in power, making him Africa’s fifth longest-serving leader, Mr Ahimbisibwe, who lives in southwestern Uganda, said his headache will be how to put food on the table for his family of four.

“Life has been miserable because I get problems accessing basic necessities,” said the Senior Four drop-out and father of two.

With inadequate employable skills, Mr Ahimbisibwe’s struggles epitomise his generation’s dilemma and the general divide of the Ugandan society where progress has concentrated opportunities and riches in the hands of a few.

It is the kind of inequality which, according to Oxfam International’s January 18, 2017 report titled “An economy for the 1 per cent”, has enabled the world’s wealthiest 62 people amass as much fortune as half of the global population.

“My biggest trepidation is the likely war between the poor and the rich,” former Museveni government minister Aggrey Awori said of the Ugandan situation. “The gap is getting wider and tribalised. Once the inequality becomes ethnicised, it becomes dangerous.”

Both inequality and sectarianism are two of many ills that the President set forth to fight after seizing power in 1986.

“The third point in our programme is the question of the unity of our country,” he said in his January 29, 1986 inaugural speech on the foyer of Parliament. The crowd thundered.

He added: “Past regimes have used sectarianism to divide people along religious and tribal lines…Politics is about the provision of roads, water, drugs, in hospitals and schools for children.”

To Mr Museveni’s credit, the Universal Primary Education (UPE) his government introduced in 1997, has increased primary school enrolment from 2.5 million to about eight million today. Mr Gershom Nuwemuhwezi, a lecturer at Bishop Stuart University, is a UPE beneficiary. His mother in 1986 began experiencing birth pangs while vending bananas at a market in Kazo in Kiruhura, the President’s home district, and delivered at the nearby Kazo Health Centre III (now Health Centre IV).

{{Period of peace}}

With a First Class Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree pinned to his lapel, Mr Nuwemuhwezi recaps his life lived under one president as a period of “peace and luck”.

“We lived hand-to-mouth,” he said, “While growing up, most of the places were hard-to-reach, and one would even fear to travel at night. But now I board the night bus to go and study at Uganda Christian University [in Mukono] without having to worry about who is seated next to me.” The overnight travels, previously considered precarious due to possible ambushes, are happening across the country.

Peace and stability, discounted in northern Uganda by the protracted Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency that ended in 2005, alongside management of the army and economy are President’s flagship feats. They have earned Uganda regional and international acclaim, projecting the country’s profile.

Besides, Uganda’s gross domestic product under Museveni’s watch increased from $4b (about Shs14 trillion) in 1986 to $33b (about Shs115.5 trillion) in 2013, according to World Bank figures, expanding eight times almost the same as Kenya’s which within the same period jumped from $7.2b to $55b.

In Uganda, what Mr Awori calls “unprecedented corruption” threatens the dividends of this growth in spite of a plethora of institutions such as the Inspectorate of Government, the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, the police and the Anti-Corruption Court assembled to fight graft.

Transparency International’s 2016 Corruption Perception Index report released yesterday ranked Uganda among 25 countries with the worst graft record, and it dropped 12 places from its previous year’s rating.

Eliminating corruption, together with other vices such as tribalism, were among 10 priorities in NRA/M’s must-do-list. Political opponents have accused the President of practicing ‘naked’ nepotism. His wife is the Education minister, their son, who was a teenager in 1986, bypassed predecessors and rose to a one-star general within 12 years to command the country’s Special Forces, before being re-assigned this month as his father’s adviser, a similar role the President’s brother Salim Saleh plays.

Mr Museveni has defended this family-web as a “sacrifice”, not favouritism. Critics call the semantics obscurantism, the parlance the President used in his inaugural address to explain a brand of politics “where ideas are deliberately obscured so that what is false appears to be true and vice versa”.

Mr Elly James Makholo was born in June 1986, but after obtaining a diploma in Social Works and Social Administration from UCU last year, the unemployment reality staring at him contrasts the lofty promises of education.

Unfulfilled aspirations, said Mr Ofwono Opondo, a government spokesman, is likely to alienate the masses from the NRM because people generally have a “high expectation” due to prevailing peace and government’s robust investment in infrastructure.

The construction of Karuma and Isimba dams, once completed next year, will increase electricity supply from the current 852 megawatts to 1,635, likely to spur industrialisation which is at the heart of the incumbent President’s programme to transform Uganda.

For Mr Makholo in Mbale District, there is the disappointment of poor quality public service and joblessness. The construction of Bukeinde Health Centre III in 2014 reduced the walking distance to the nearest health facility to his home by more than two kilometres under the decentralisation policy meant to bring services closer to the people..

“Most of the time, patients are there but there are no drugs. That’s the life we are living,” said Mr Makholo, a leader of Mbale Youth Ministry. His embrace of ministering to the youth mirrors the gust in Pentecostal movement in the country -and the appeal of prosperity gospel- shown in the almost 7 percentage point rise in number of Pentecostals in the decade to the 2014 National Housing and Population Census.
The uneven benefits of Museveni rule contrasts with the chosen theme for today’s anniversary; “Success under NRM: a shared victory”.

Obliterating 27 rebel groups and winning five consecutive elections, questions about vote rigging notwithstanding, have made Mr Museveni the only constant in a changing Uganda. Concerns about how he departs from the scene when the time comes – whether through force, ballot or natural causes- ties Ugandans’ fate to his own.
Mr Opondo said a disruption would be unlikely because “safety valves through democratic elections have provided adequate platforms for citizens to vent…and the elite are unable to merge their concerns with that of the masses”.

January 27, 2017
KDF camp in Kulbiyow comes under Al-Shabaab attack

{Suspected Al-Shabaab militants have attacked a Kenyan military camp in Kulbiyow, Somalia.}

The KDF base was attacked on Friday morning and the number of casualties remains unconfirmed.

“We are under massive attack and there is massive exchange of fire,” Military Spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Njuguna told Nation.co.ke

Although the military spokesman didn’t offer finer details on the exchange, he said the Kenyan troops have been pinned down.

Al-Shabaab, in Twitter posts, claimed it had killed dozens of Kenyan soldiers but the Nation could independently verify the allegations.

The militant group has an elaborate propaganda machinery, complete with a spokesman, that fights to advance it war against the Mogadishu administration and its allies, including Kenya.

January 27, 2017
Tanzania:State vows to probe reports on Gombe deforestation

{Reports of deforestation endangering chimpanzees at Gombe National Park have alarmed the government, which has promised to probe the allegations.}

The Permanent Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Tourism and Natural Resources, Major General Gaudence Milanzi, said in Dar es Salaam yesterday that the government will accord the matter the appropriate weight it deserves.

The ministry quickly responded yesterday to the new report by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with the impact of deforestation around the park. NASA collaborated with the US Geological Survey (USGS) to capture the images with the Landsat satellite in efforts to help in the conservation of chimpanzees, which are described as endangered species.

The report, published on the ‘Mail Online’ newspaper of the United Kingdom, says that increased pressure on the land due to population explosion and poverty has led to the forest clearance for agriculture, logging and charcoal production. There are some 345,000 or fewer chimps in the wild, with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifying them as critically endangered species.

“We, in the ministry, need to work on these reports … claims that chimpanzees at the park are at risk should be looked into critically,” Major General Milanzi noted with concern.

He said it was fortunate that either the natural resources minister or his deputy will be heading to the area this weekend to award Dr Jane Goodall, a famous British primatologist who has been tirelessly protecting the chimpanzee at the park since early 1970s.

He argued, however, that generally deforestation was not a new challenge and the government has been fighting against it in many parts of the country. Chimpanzees in the region used to live in an uninterrupted belt of forests and woodlands from Lake Tanganyika westward through Uganda and the Congo Basin to western Africa.

The report says it was in the early 1970s, 10 or so years after Dr Goodall first arrived in the region and began conserving chimpanzees that forest began to be cut down. Today the belt per se has gone because it’s being divided into increasingly small fragments,’ said Dr Jane Goodall (82), who is still involved in conservation efforts at her namesake institute. But NASA, the USGS and the Jane Goodall Institute have collaborated in an effort to conserve the chimps and the forest.

“When deforestation happens, important ecological functions and services are lost – impacting both chimps and people. The chimpanzees lose feeding and nesting grounds and it is very difficult for the territorial animals to shift their home range to another location,” said Dr Lilian Pintea, the Vice-President of Conservation science for the Jane Goodall Institute

Dr Pintea said: “When we first got our landsat satellite images from ‘72 and ‘99, we made a natural color composite of Gombe and the area outside Gombe and put them side-by-side and realised that lots of deforestation happened. Added, she: “You can see it, the villages lost maybe 90 to 80 per cent of the forest cover. And they will tell stories about how the hills were covered in forest. But then when you show them a picture, it’s very shocking to everybody, realising what has been lost.”

January 27, 2017
Police intensify operations in border districts to break narcotics supply chain

{Operations in border districts to break supply chains of narcotic drugs have broken rackets of drug traffickers and seized psychotropic substances worth over Rwf46 million in the last three months in the Northern Province, police has said.}

The drugs were seized in the districts of Gicumbi and Musanze.

Drugs worth Rwf23.9 million seized in Gicumbi were destroyed on January 25 in a public exercise held in Kageyo Sector and attended by hundreds of residents.

In Musanze, the drugs destroyed the same day, worth over Rwf22.5 million, also included banned bleaching lotion such as Caro-light, Citron Light and Lairemen, which were also seized in the same operations.

Most seized drugs included banned contrabands such as Kanyanga, Chief Waragi, Zebra Waragi, African Gin and cannabis.

Border districts are usually used as transit routes for narcotics and illicit substances sneaked into the country, according to police, with Gicumbi, Burera, Kirehe, Nyagatare and Rubavu among those on spot, where operations have been intensified.

In Gicumbi, the District Police Commander, Chief Supt. Dan Ndayambaje, while addressing the residents during the destruction exercise, he attributed the success to “ownership” by the residents through various formed groups, and strengthened information sharing on the dealers.

“This is the result of your strong cooperation and ownership to ensure your own safety and security. These are the same substances that fuel most conflicts and crimes such as gender based violence, child abuse, assault and even parents who abandon their family responsibilities and spend most of the time consuming these psychotropic substances,” said Chief Supt. Ndayambaje.

Between June and November, last year, illicit drugs majority banned gin, worth Rwf38 million were also seized and destroyed in Gicumbi.

As part of the effort to deal with the vice, residents of Gicumbi have since formed anti-Kanyanga clubs in each of the 21 sectors, which have been credited for the increased successful operations against dealers and consumers.

In Musanze, the DPC, Chief Inspector of Police (CIP) Jean Claude Kabandana, who warned of continued operations against any drug dealer, also cautioned the residents against smuggling, through which harmful products are also brought on the market.

He gave an example of the seized smuggled lotion, which he said were banned in Rwanda due to their ill-effects and contravenes Rwanda’s standards.

Rwanda’s standards specify that cosmetics should not exceed 0.003 percent of hydroquinone.

Cosmetics such as Elegance, Carolight, Lairemen and Diproson are all bleaching agents with over 2 percent of hydroquinone.

January 27, 2017
Brain shape linked to personality differences

{New research reveals the shape of our brain can provide surprising clues about how we behave and our risk of developing mental health disorders.}

Florida State University College of Medicine Associate Professor Antonio Terracciano joined a team of researchers from the United States, United Kingdom and Italy to examine the connection between personality traits and brain structure. Their study, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, looked at differences in the anatomy of the cortex (the outer layer of the brain) as indexed by three measures — the thickness, area, and amount of folding in the cortex — and how these measures related to the five major personality traits.

The traits include neuroticism, the tendency to be in a negative emotional state; extraversion, the tendency to be sociable and enthusiastic; openness, how open-minded a person is; agreeableness, a measure of altruism and cooperativeness; and conscientiousness, a measure of self-control and determination.

The study involved an imaging dataset from more than 500 individuals made publicly available by the Human Connectome Project, an ambitious effort by the National Institutes of Health to map neural pathways underlying human brain function.

“Evolution has shaped our brain anatomy in a way that maximizes its area and folding by reducing thickness of the cortex,” said senior author Luca Passamonti from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge. “It’s like stretching and folding a rubber sheet — this increases the surface area, but at the same time the sheet itself becomes thinner. We refer to this as the ‘cortical stretching hypothesis.’”

“Cortical stretching is a key evolutionary mechanism that enabled human brains to expand rapidly while still fitting into our skulls, which grew at a slower rate than the brain,” Terracciano added. “Interestingly, this same process occurs as we develop and grow in the womb and throughout childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood: The thickness of the cortex tends to decrease while the area and folding increase.”

In other research, Terracciano and others have shown that as people get older, neuroticism goes down — people become better at handling emotions — while conscientiousness and agreeableness go up — people become progressively more responsible and less antagonistic.

The researchers found that high levels of neuroticism, which may predispose people to develop neuro-psychiatric disorders, were associated with increased thickness as well as reduced area and folding in some regions of the cortex, such as the prefrontal-temporal cortices.

In contrast, openness, which is a personality trait linked with curiosity, creativity, and a preference for variety and novelty, was associated with the opposite pattern: reduced thickness and an increase in area and folding in some prefrontal cortices.

Brains imaged as part of the Human Connectome Project all belonged to healthy individuals 22-36 years old with no history of neuro-psychiatric or other major medical problems. The relation between brain structure and personality traits in young and healthy people can change as people age and provide a reference frame for better understanding the brain structures in conditions such as autism, depression, or Alzheimer’s disease.

“Linking how brain structure is related to basic personality traits is a crucial step to improving our understanding of the link between the brain morphology and particular mood, cognitive or behavioral disorders,” Passamonti said. “We also need to have a better understanding of the relation between brain structure and function in healthy people to figure out what is different in people with neurological and psychiatric disorders.”

January 27, 2017
Eastern Province: Governor challenges Nyagatare residents against drug abuse, GBV

{The Governor of the Eastern Province, Judith Kazayire has called upon residents of Nyagatare District on to desist and report anything that would lead to domestic and gender based violence, which are still common in the district.}

While addressing the residents on Wednesday in Nyagatare Sector, the Governor noted that most of such criminal acts are committed by people under the influence of drugs, which they should give emphasis to partner with the police to apprehend anyone still involved in drug-related crimes.

This was during a one-day consultative meeting committed to solving issues faced by the communities in Nyagatare.

Present was also the Regional Police Commander, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Dismas Rutaganira and other security organs’ representatives in the region.

“It’s everyone’s responsibility to fight human rights violations of gender and domestic violence. The country counts on you in each and every aspect of security and development,” the Governor said.

She urged them to always report anything illegal, criminal or suspicious to police adding that by establishing Police stations in each and every sector, some of which are constructed by the people themselves, Rwanda National Police is bringing services closer to the communities for their own safety and quick response.

The Governor went on to tell those present that the region still faces cross-border criminal acts especially those related to Kanyanga and other banned gin, and cattle theft.

She urged residents to form a strong partnership with the security organs with an objective of bringing to justice those thought to be engaging in these illegal acts.

Kazayire warned that investing in illegal trade like narcotics is a huge loss both individually and to the economy of the nation because people involved in such criminal acts, when arrested they are charged with heavy fines or long-term imprisonment while seized drugs are destroyed.

The Governor further warned against anyone who shields criminals engaged in criminal acts and cautioned commercial motorcyclists against transporting illicit drugs and drug dealers.

It’s said that most traffickers of illicit gin and cannabis use motorcyclists especially at night to transport the illegal goods from one place to another.

“There is a need for strong partnership amongst residents especially in strengthening night patrols, identifying families with conflicts and help them settle disputes,” she said.

She reminded them of the importance of community policing saying that it is a proven way of preventing crimes before they happen.

January 27, 2017
How insects decide to grow up

{Scientists discover key mechanism that controls when fruit flies sexually mature.}

Like humans, insects go through puberty. The process is known as metamorphosis. Examples include caterpillars turning into butterflies and maggots turning into flies.

But, it has been a long-standing mystery as to what internal mechanisms control how insects go through metamorphosis and why it is irreversible.

Now, a team of scientists, led by an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside, has solved the mystery. They also believe the findings, which were just published in an early version in the journal PLOS Genetics, could be applied to mammals, including humans. The final version of the paper will be published Feb. 8.

Using the model organism fruit flies, the researchers found that the amount of DNA in the fruit fly controls the initial production of steroid hormones, which signal the start of metamorphosis.

More specifically, the cells that produce steroid hormones keep duplicating their DNA without cell division, making their nuclei huge. The team found that this amount of DNA in steroid hormone-producing cells is a critical indicator of their juvenile development, and it even determines when the insects get into metamorphosis.

Naoki Yamanaka, an assistant professor of entomology at UC Riverside, likened the accumulation of DNA to rings found inside trees that are used to date trees.

“The amount of DNA is like an internal timer for insect development,” Yamanaka said. “It tells the insect, ‘OK, I will grow up now.’”

Their finding explains, for the first time, why insect metamorphosis, just like human puberty, is an irreversible process. It is irreversible since DNA duplication cannot be reversed in cells. Once the cells increase the amount of DNA and start producing steroid hormones, that is the point of no return; they cannot go back to their childhood.

The findings could have multiple applications. In the short term, they could be used to help control agricultural pests by manipulating their steroid signaling pathways. They could also be used to aid beneficial insects, such as bees.

In the long term, the findings could also be used to develop better ways to treat diseases in humans related to sexual maturation, since human puberty is also controlled by steroid hormones, just like insects. The results may also aide future studies on steroid-related diseases such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, and menopause-related symptoms.

Yamanaka will continue this research by focusing on other insects, such as bumblebees and mosquitos, to see if they have a similar internal timer.

January 27, 2017
Rulindo: Campaign on security and hygiene continues

{The mayor of Rulindo District Emmanuel Kayiranga has asked residents to observe maximum sanitation and hygiene as part of the safety and security campaign.}

He further cautioned against littering roads and other prohibited places adding that wastes should be dumped only in specified places like dustbins.

The mayor made the remarks on January 25 during the campaign of “keeping streets clean and green.”

“There are some people who litter streets, a habit that is punishable by the law and should be fought by everyone,” Kayiranga said.

He particularly cautioned passengers, who buy edibles and throw packaging materials and water bottles through the car windows, throwing cigarette ends, newspapers, and chewing gum.

Article 32 of organic law determining the modalities of protection, conservation and promotion of environment in Rwanda, stipulates that, no one is permitted to dispose waste in an inappropriate place, except where it is destroyed from or in a treatment plant and after being approved by competent authorities.

Article 107 states that “any person who deposits, abandons or dumps waste, materials, or who pours sewage in a public or private place, is punished by a fine ranging from Rwf10.000 to Rwf100.000 except if such a place has been designated by competent authorities.”

It adds that: “The person is punished by a fine of Rwf10.000 or he or she may be compelled to clean the place where persons have polluted public or private property with human and domestic waste, except if such a place has been designated by the competent authorities.”

The Mayor urged them to equally make sanitation and hygiene part of their domestic activities to prevent diseases caused by dirtiness.

The District Police Commander, Supt. Aphrodis Gashumba appealed to drivers to responsibly provide where passengers can dispose-off the waste and always communicate to them against throwing rubbish through the window.

He further called for ownership in reporting criminal activities like drug dealers, and conflicting families for quick response.

The campaign also includes inspecting restaurants with those that will found to be unhygienic risking closure.

January 27, 2017