Category: Science &Technology

{Facebook announced it had opened its first African office in Johannesburg as part of its efforts “to help people and businesses connect” on the continent. }

The office will be headed by Nunu Ntshingila, a former executive at the advertising agency Ogilvy.

“This office will support the significant growth in businesses and people using Facebook,” said a statement from the world’s biggest social network, which has some 1.4 billion active users worldwide including 120 million in Africa.

“We are inspired by the incredible ways people and businesses in Africa use Facebook to connect,” said Nicola Mendelsohn, regional vice president for Facebook.

“Africa is important to Facebook, and this office is a key part of our strategy to expand our investment and presence across (the region). Facebook is already a central part of people’s lives in Africa, and with more than a billion people in Africa, we want to do more to help people and businesses con ..

{When rats rest, their brains simulate journeys to a desired future such as a tasty treat, finds new UCL research funded by the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society.}

The researchers monitored brain activity in rats, first as the animals viewed food in a location they could not reach, then as they rested in a separate chamber, and finally as they were allowed to walk to the food. The activity of specialised brain cells involved in navigation suggested that during the rest the rats simulated walking to and from food that they had been unable to reach.

The study, published in the open access journal eLife, could help to explain why some people with damage to a part of the brain called the hippocampus are unable to imagine the future.

“During exploration, mammals rapidly form a map of the environment in their hippocampus,” says senior author Dr Hugo Spiers (UCL Experimental Psychology). “During sleep or rest, the hippocampus replays journeys through this map which may help strengthen the memory. It has been speculated that such replay might form the content of dreams. Whether or not rats experience this brain activity as dreams is still unclear, as we would need to ask them to be sure! Our new results show that during rest the hippocampus also constructs fragments of a future yet to happen. Because the rat and human hippocampus are similar, this may explain why patients with damage to their hippocampus struggle to imagine future events.”

In the experiment, animals were individually placed on a straight track with a T-junction ahead. Access to the junction as well as the left and right hand arms beyond it was prevented by a transparent barrier. One of the arms had food at the end, the other side was empty. After observing the food the rats were put in a sleep chamber for an hour. Finally after the barrier was removed, the animals were returned to the track and allowed to run across the junction and on to the arms.

During the rest period, the data showed that place cells that would later provide an internal map of the food arm were active. Cells representing the empty arm were not activated in this way. This indicates that the brain was simulating or preparing future paths leading to a desired goal.

“What’s really interesting is that the hippocampus is normally thought of as being important for memory, with place cells storing details about locations you’ve visited,” explains co-lead author Dr Freyja Ólafsdóttir (UCL Biosciences). “What’s surprising here is that we see the hippocampus planning for the future, actually rehearsing totally novel journeys that the animals need to take in order to reach the food.”

The results suggest that the hippocampus plans routes that have not yet happened as well as recording those that have already happened, but only when there is a motivational cue such as food. This may also imply the ability to imagine future events is not a uniquely human ability.

“What we don’t know at the moment is what these neural simulations are actually for,” says co-lead author Dr Caswell Barry (UCL Biosciences). “It seems possible this process is a way of evaluating the available options to determine which is the most likely to end in reward, thinking it through if you like. We don’t know that for sure though and something we’d like to do in the future is try to establish a link between this apparent planning and what the animals do next.”

Source: University College London

{{ Incubation hub think expands to meet demand by entrepreneurs for fast-track support}}

{{24 June 2015, Kigali, Rwanda,}} {Tech incubator think today announced four new entrants to its incubator as part of a new think Accelerated program. In addition to think’s signature 6-month “core” program, the company has developed a high-intensity 3-month offering. This new track will allow more opportunities for pan-African start-ups to benefit from a faster, more immersive course in Rwanda, and for accelerated financial matching services with investors. think Accelerated offers the opportunity to fast track talented tech entrepreneurs – particularly those digital companies from across the Continent who want to return quickly to their home markets after intense incubator services in Rwanda by providing space, internet and business development services.}

think is pleased to announce the first round of think Accelerated businesses joining the program in June 2015. Each team will receive financing, strategic consulting services, and a tailored growth-training curriculum, as well as access to Tigo resources and global tech mentors. These teams provide a variety of IT solutions across Africa that meet diverse consumer needs, each with an ability to scale rapidly:

{{Asuqu, Nigeria }}

The signature product from multi-prong company GutsHaven, Asuqu.com is the first Nigerian marketplace of more than 300 trusted freelancers and businesses offering high quality creative and professional services at an affordable price. (www.asuqu.com)

{{Esaja, Zimbabwe }}

This B2B marketplace connects companies across Eastern & Southern Africa to each other, creating a truly African marketplace of goods and services. The founders, passionate about a unified African economy, are leveraging technology to bridge borders and magnify African trade zones for the good of small business development. (www.esaja.com). Clinton Mutambo founder of Esaja.com has been recently profiled by Inc. and Forbes Africa named him one of Africa’s 30 under 30. Esaja.com is also one of the Kairos50 global startups 2014/5.

{{SafeMotos, Rwanda}}

Using a sophisticated algorithm to pair proximity and safety metrics, this “Uber” for African motor taxis is providing new levels of convenience and safety for Rwandan commuters. Users love it for the increased knowledge about their drivers; drivers love it for the ease of attracting riders who pay easily with mobile money. (www.safemotos.com). The first African company to be invested in by SOS Ventures. They are also finalists in Pivot East Africa 2015 and their application is live on google play and operational in their first market Kigali.

{{Team Tigo, Rwanda }}

Riding the wave of “intrapreneurship” this Tigo team is comprised exclusively of Tigo staff mainly from Commercial, Marketing and IT business units. Tigo has committed resources to support a think Accelerated course for 3 months, while developing digital solutions for rollout across Tigo platforms.

Paul Soko, Investment Manager of think, said: “ think Accelerated, enables us to attract a wider range of entrepreneurs and tech start ups who will benefit from a fast-track incubator offering, keeping Africa at the forefront of innovation. This new program is a hallmark of Millicom’s commitment to innovation and to growing the IT startup environment across Africa.”

{The National Security Agency successfully hacked into popular anti-virus software to track users and gain access to computer networks, according to documents leaked Monday by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.}

The NSA, along with its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), spent years reverse-engineering popular computer security software in order to spy on email and other electronic communications, according to the classified documents published by the online news site The Intercept.

The spy agencies worked especially hard to crack into the software produced by Moscow-based company Kaspersky Lab which also has a holding registered in the United Kingdom. The company’s name was repeatedly mentioned in the documents. Kaspersky notes that more than 270,000 corporate clients use its services and its software protects more than 400 million people worldwide.

The leaked documents include a warrant renewal request filed by the GCHQ in 2008 that claimed Kaspersky’s products interfered with its spying operations.

“Personal security products such as the Russian anti-virus software Kaspersky continue to pose a challenge to GCHQ’s CNE [Computer Network Exploitation] capability and SRE [software reverse-engineering] is essential in order to be able to exploit such software and to prevent detection of our activities,” the warrant renewal request reads. “Examination of Kaspersky and other such products continues.”

In the request, GCHQ admits the reverse engineering is of questionable legality, noting that in other cases it would amount to copyright infringement.

The leak also claims the NSA would monitor email accounts attached to companies producing security software. Through spying on these conversations, the agency hoped to learn about new vulnerabilities in the programming.

Since the manufacturers of computer operating systems highly trust security software, it is often given clearances and controls that are denied to most other consumer software. The government spy agencies desired hacking into this anti-virus programming because of its expanded access.

{{Source:Agencies}}

{{Rwanda }} {said it was ahead of Wednesday deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to switch over from analogue transition to digital broadcasting.}

Reacting to questions from CAJ News, Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA) Head of Communication and Media Regulation, Jean Baptiste Mutabazi, said all was in place to resume digital broadcasting,
“….already completed switchover,” Mutabazi said.

He said Rwanda closed its digital switchover on July 2014 adding that “no more analogue terrestrial TV since that date”.

Mutabazi said the main challenge then experienced by Rwanda was the availability of set top boxes (STBs) on time, otherwise his country was geared for the new life in digital without analogue.

“This (STBs non-availability) has pushed RURA to postpone the previous agreed time but after thinks (sic) were sorted out.

“The main success of Rwanda was that the Government availed funds to digitize the whole network of the Public broadcaster since 2008,” he said.

Some countries, notably South Africa, are lagging behind.

Mali, where the outgoing ITU Secretary General, Dr Hamadoun Toure, hails from looks set to fail to meet the Wednesday deadline.

On Monday only four countries-Rwanda, Tanzania, Mauritius and Mozambique-of Africa’s 54-member grouping members had already confirmed their migration while Zimbabwe and Uganda pledged to make last minute attempts to beat the cut-off date.

{{Source: CAJ News}}

{Scientists for the first time have created animals with dinosaur features using fossils as a guide. They have transformed chicken beaks into something similar to a dinosaur snout.}

Many have pondered the idea of recreating dinosaurs while novelists and sci-fi film directors tempted our imagination with such as creations the Jurassic park film and novel series.

A research team led by Yale paleontologist and developmental biologist Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar and Harvard developmental biologist Arhat Abzhanov, have conducted a successful experiment which allowed them to create chickens with dinosaur-like features.

Researchers were able to transform chicken embryos in a laboratory into specimens with a snout and palate configuration similar to that of small dinosaurs such as Velociraptor and Archaeopteryx, according to a Yale press-release published on Tuesday.

“Our goal here was to understand the molecular underpinnings of an important evolutionary transition, not to create a ‘dino-chicken’ simply for the sake of it,” said Bhullar, lead author of the study.

“The beak is a crucial part of the avian feeding apparatus, and is the component of the avian skeleton that has perhaps diversified most extensively and most radically – consider flamingos, parrots, hawks, pelicans, and hummingbirds, among others,” Bhullar said.

“Yet little work has been done on what exactly a beak is, anatomically, and how it got that way either evolutionarily or developmentally.”

The research team also found that major living lineages of birds have a unique, median gene expression zone of two different facial development genes early in embryonic development, which the non-beaked creatures lack. When they blocked this gene expression not only did the beak structure revert into a snout, but the process also caused the palatine bone on the roof of the mouth to go back to a dinosaur-like state.

“This was unexpected and demonstrates the way in which a single, simple developmental mechanism can have wide-ranging and unexpected effects,” Bhullar said..

{{World Bulletin}}

{On Friday 5th and Saturday 6th June 2015, Hope Academy Rwanda celebrated its 2nd Annual Science Fair at its Gisozi Campus. Students from Grade 1 right through to Grade 10 showed off their projects to public school students, parents, and visitors for two days in the almost-completed school building.}

The projects spanned all the sciences, including Mathematics and ICT, to demonstrate the impact of science on our everyday lives and its integral importance to everything we do.

On the first day, the Fair was visited by 600 public schools students from GS’s Kagugu, Kacyiru and Sainte Famille, along with their teachers. The students were enthralled by the projects on display and excited to have been invited. Hope Academy Rwanda hopes this is the first step in a partnership which is fruitful for both sides.

The second day of the Fair was honoured by the presence of Dr Marie Christine Gasingirwa, Director General for Science, Technology and Research at MINEDUC, who gave a talk on the importance of curiosity in developing knowledge.

The Fair ended with an award ceremony to celebrate the effort and achievement of the students. The judging was carried out by an expert panel on Friday afternoon with the tension left to build overnight. Primary and Secondary (Grades 5-10) were judged separately to allow the younger students a chance to triumph. Primary students worked in pairs to present their projects and the Bronze Medal in Secondary was a tie. The results are as follows:

The Gold Primary project was about soil erosion, while the Gold Secondary project revolved around a Corn Starch Pool.

Hope Academy Rwanda is grateful to all who attended the Fair and helped to make it the success it was. A special thank you to Dr Gasingirwa for taking the time out of her busy schedule to be with us. Congratulations to all the students who participated; Hope Academy Rwanda hopes this is just the beginning of a life-long love of learning and discovery.

{In line with regulatory requirements, MTN Rwanda will be changing the codes for loading Airtime and checking balance for all MTN Mobile customers in Rwanda, effective 15th June 2015.}

The new directive that has been implemented across all Telcos in the East African region will help harmonize the sector operations and ultimately improve user experience.

MTN Chief Marketing Officer, Yvonne Manzi Makolo, assured customers that they would be given enough time to adapt to the new codes so as to avoid any confusion.
“In order to continue driving a positive customer experience, the old codes will still be working alongside the new ones until the end of the year to ensure that all our customers have adapted to the new codes,” she said.

MTN has changed the codes for loading Airtime from *111*voucher number# to *130*voucher number# and checking airtime balance from *110# to *131#. The MTN call centre toll free line has also changed from 456 to 100. Voicemail deposit and retrieval service have also changed and will now be accessed by dialling 123 and 121 respectively.

Harmonisation of the service numbers seeks to improve user experience by enabling mobile phone subscribers to recharge, check their phone balances or get customer care services using similar codes, regardless of the service provider in all the East African countries.