Category: Science &Technology

{{The only clinical trial data on the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp shows it is 100 per cent effective in monkey studies, even in later stages of the infection.}}

The researchers, publishing their data in Nature, said it was a “very important step forward”.

Yet the limited supplies will not help the 20,000 people predicted to be infected during the outbreak in West Africa.

And two out of seven people given the drug, have later died from the disease.

ZMapp has been dubbed the “secret serum” as it is still in the experimental stages of drug development with, until now, no public data on effectiveness.

Doctors have turned to it as there is no cure for Ebola, which has killed more than 1,500 people since it started in Guinea.

Researchers have been investigating different combinations of antibodies, a part of the immune system which binds to viruses, as a therapy.

Previous combinations have shown some effectiveness in animal studies. ZMapp is the latest cocktail and contains three antibodies.

Trials on 18 rhesus macaques infected with Ebola showed 100 per cent survival.

This included animals given the drug up to five days after infection. For the monkeys this would be a relatively late stage in the infection, around three days before it becomes fatal.

‘Beyond expectation’

Scientists say this is significant as previous therapies needed to be given before symptoms even appeared.

One of the researchers, Dr Gary Kobinger from the Public Health Agency of Canada, said this was a huge step up from previous antibody combinations.

“The level of improvement was beyond my own expectation, I was quite surprised that the best combination would rescue animals as far as day five, it was fantastic news.

“What was very exceptional is that we could rescue some of the animals that had advanced disease.”

However, there is always caution when interpreting the implications for humans from animal data.

A Liberian doctor, one of three taking the drug in the country, and a Spanish priest both died from the infection despite ZMapp treatment.

William Pooley, the first Briton to contract Ebola during this outbreak, has been given the experimental drug as were two US doctors who recovered.

The course of the infection is slower in humans than macaques so it has been cautiously estimated that ZMapp may be effective as late as day nine or 11 after infection.

‘Convincing evidence’

But Dr Kobinger said: “We know there is a point of no return where there is too much damage to major organs, so there’s a limit.”

The group wants to start clinical trials in people to truly assess the effectiveness of the drug.

Commenting on the findings, Prof Jonathan Ball, a virologist at the University of Nottingham, told the BBC: “Before, ZMapp was a total mystery.

“This is an incredible improvement on those earlier cocktails, to have 100 per cent clearance and most importantly that clearance when they’ve started to show outward signs of infection.”

Referring to the seven treated patients, he added: “Clearly there is the caveat that all evidence in humans is anecdotal and no hard evidence has been released on what happens to the virus in those patients.”

Prof Peter Piot, the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “I never thought that 40 years after I encountered the first Ebola outbreak, this disease would still be taking lives on such a devastating scale.

“This well-designed trial in non-human primates provides the most convincing evidence to date that ZMapp may be an effective treatment of Ebola infection in humans.

“It is now critical that human trials start as soon as possible.”

-BBC-

Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger will be switched off in China in October, marking a final end to the 15-year-old service.

Originally known as MSN Messenger, it was launched in 1999 but was switched off for most users in 2013, after Microsoft bought rival Skype.

Users in China continued to use the old service but will now be transferred to Skype by 31 October.

Windows Live still had as many as 330 million users as recently as 2009.

But those numbers later declined, while users of Skype rose to nearly 300 million by 2012.

The service came to China in 2005, but later faced stiff competition from domestic rivals such as QQ messenger, built by Chinese firm Tencent.

A number of Chinese Windows Live users received emails from Microsoft on Thursday, Chinese newspapers reported, informing them of the planned closure.

The emails told users they would get free Skype credit when they migrated over to the new service, the newspaper said.

MSN Messenger began as a simple text chat service in 1999, a rival to AOL’s AIM service and ICQ.

It later added features such as photo delivery, video calls and games as the technology developed.

But Microsoft’s purchase of Skype for $8.5bn (£5.1bn) in 2012 spelled the beginning of the end for the service.

agencies

{{Genetic studies of some of the earliest Ebola cases in Sierra Leone reveal more than 300 genetic changes in the virus as it leapt from person to person, changes that could blunt the effectiveness of diagnostic tests and experimental treatments now in development, researchers said on Thursday.}}

“We found the virus is doing what viruses do. It’s mutating,” said Pardis Sabeti of Harvard University and the Broad Institute, who led the massive study of samples from 78 people in Sierra Leone, all of whose infections could be traced to a faith healer whose claims of a cure attracted Ebola patients from Guinea, where the virus first took hold.

The findings, published in Science, suggest the virus is mutating quickly and in ways that could affect current diagnostics and future vaccines and treatments, such as GlaxoSmithKline’s Ebola vaccine, which was just fast-tracked to begin clinical trials, or the antibody drug ZMapp, being developed by California biotech Mapp Biopharmaceutical.

The findings come as the World Health Organization said that the epidemic could infect more than 20,000 people and spread to more countries. A WHO representative could not immediately be reached for comment on the latest genetic study.

Study coauthor Robert Garry of Tulane University said the virus is mutating at twice the rate in people as it was in animal hosts, such as fruit bats.

Garry said the study has shown changes in the glycoprotein, the surface protein that binds the virus to human cells, allowing it to start replicating in its human host. “It’s also what your immune system will recognize,” he said.

In an unusual step, the researchers posted the sequences online as soon as they became available, giving other researchers early access to the data.

Erica Ollmann Saphire of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, has already checked the data to see if it impacts the three antibodies in ZMapp, a drug in short supply that has been tried on several individuals, including the two U.S. missionaries who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and who have since recovered.

{{Innovation is happening all over Africa in all different sectors, from education to energy, banking to agriculture.}}

“It’s the best kind of innovation – the problem-solving innovation born out of necessity,” says Toby Shapshak, editor and publisher of the South African version of Stuff magazine says.

As Technology of Business embarks on a month-long series of features exploring some of these innovation stories, we kick off by looking at Africa’s main technology trends and the challenges facing this vast 54-nation continent of 1.1 billion people.

{{Upwardly mobile}}

You cannot talk about Africa without talking about mobile. Most innovation involves mobile devices and wireless technology in some way or another.

It’s not hard to understand why.

Installing a traditional fixed-line telecoms infrastructure made no economic sense across huge, sparsely populated, and sometimes difficult to cross terrains.

The mobile phone – particularly cheap “feature phones” such as the Nokia 1100 and the Samsung E250 – offered sufficient functionality combined with long battery life.

In a continent where access to electricity is still patchy, particularly in non-urban areas, battery life and energy-frugal applications are key. This is why so many essential mobile services in Africa are based around the SMS texting platform.

Information is power, and before mobiles came along, access to data was limited for millions of Africans.

But by the end of 2014 more than 600 million people – about 56% of the population – are likely to own a mobile phone, with some researchers estimating penetration could reach 80%.

When you consider that just 1% owned a mobile in 2000, the rate of growth seems all the more astonishing. There are now more than 35 mobile network operators in Africa busily extending their base station networks to improve coverage.

Foreign companies are waking up to the commercial opportunities this presents.

“Large, multinational consumer goods companies are now looking for ways to reach their customers and employees in Africa through mobile channels, and are viewing South Africa as a gateway to the rest of the continent,” says Tielman Botha, South Africa country lead for Accenture Mobility.

{{Pocket bank}}

Even though nearly two-thirds of these phones will be accessing 2G and SMS networks rather than the faster 3G and 4G, the range of services they can access is impressive.

Whether it is farmers accessing local market prices for their produce to arm themselves against profiteering middlemen, or nurses, doctors and patients accessing medical monitoring and data services, mobiles and wireless devices are transforming lives.

But it is as a payments platform that the mobile has really blossomed in Africa.

Vodafone and Safaricom’s M-Pesa mobile payments system, launched in 2007, now handles about 1.15 trillion Kenyan Shillings (£7.72bn) a year – that’s 35% of Kenya’s gross domestic product.

The concept sprang from resourceful Africans using and swapping mobile airtime as a form of currency.

M-Pesa is now expanding across Africa, and has also launched in India, Afghanistan and Romania, while other mobile network operators have launched their own mobile banking services.

People can pay for solar lighting, water, groceries and other goods, and also receive credits and person-to-person money transfers via their mobiles.

Such payment systems – and the digital audit trails they leave – are also proving useful for governments tackling tax evasion and corporations combating fraud.

{{Internet for all?}}

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, about 42% have some form of internet access, according to the country’s Federal Ministry of Communication Technology (FMCT).

But with broadband costing about 30% of a household’s income, and half the country’s 167 million people living in unconnected rural areas, take-up of high-speed services is understandably slow.

Mrs Omobola Johnson, FMCT minister, believes information and communication technology (ICT) is “the fourth pillar of the Nigerian economy, contributing about 7.8% to the country’s GDP”.

Her department is working on a broadband strategy that aims to achieve 30% penetration by 2017 through public-private partnerships, in the belief that a 10% increase in broadband connectivity could lead to a 1.3% increase in national GDP.

While mobile phone operators, such as Unitel in Angola, are beginning to roll out high-speed cellular broadband, this does require users to upgrade to more expensive smartphones and tablets.

So Microsoft’s 4Afrika initiative is trying another way to bring broadband to rural and other unconnected communities.

It is using so-called TV white spaces, those unused parts of the wireless spectrum usually used for television, to provide internet connectivity.

Radio signals in the TV bands travel over longer distances than other radio signals and are less prone to interference from obstacles in their way. This means fewer base stations are needed, reducing costs.

{{‘Skills gap’}}

Lack of widespread broadband internet is one problem; lack of education, training and skills is another.

“There’s a disconnect between employers and educators – a skills gap,” says Njideka Harry, president and chief executive of the Youth for Technology Foundation, based in Owerri, Nigeria.

“We fundamentally believe that technology should be a basic human right – accessible and affordable and available to every human on the planet.”

About 21 million children are not in school across Africa, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

In the Central African Republic there can be 86 pupils to a classroom, while schools in other countries can lack water, basic sanitation and electricity. Textbooks are often in short supply, as are qualified teachers.

While technology would seem to offer some answers, electronic libraries, digital textbooks, online exam marking and distance learning projects can only flourish once faster wireless connectivity has been rolled out.

“Without this connectivity we will never be competitive – ever,” says Farouk Gumel, partner at consultancy PwC Nigeria.

{{‘Made in Africa’}}

As and when such ubiquitous connectivity is achieved, young people also need to be taught how to use these technologies and understand their potential, Ms Harry believes.

Her academy teaches “technology, entrepreneurship and life skills to young people” and is looking at the potential for “3D printing to transform the African continent from an ‘Aid to Africa’ to a ‘Made in Africa’ model”.

By using low-energy, low-cost kit, such as the Raspberry Pi computer and inexpensive laptops and tablets, “our young people are creating an ecosystem of relatively inexpensive, yet innovative, technologies,” she says.

Projects by her entrepreneurial students include domestic security systems and LED lighting programs.

“Technology is also enabling more people to create, record and edit their own content then distribute it cheaply via Facebook and Twitter,” says Chichi Nwoko, chief executive of Hey What’s On? – a media company based in Lagos and New York.

Home-grown companies like Jumia, Konga and Iroko TV are beginning to give global brands like Amazon and Netflix a run for their money, she believes.

Innovation is happening in other sectors, too.

For example, satellite mapping, GPS tracking systems, civilian drones and mobile cloud-based databases are helping farmers monitor their livestock against disease and theft, track pesticide residues in their crops and study weather patterns.

For Africa, it seems, necessity may be the mother of invention, but technology is its father.

{BBC }

{{FACEBOOK’S investment in WhatsApp is looking more and more promising.

WhatsApp now has more than 600 million monthly active users, according to a tweet from CEO and cofounder Jan Koum late Sunday night.}}

That’s up from the roughly 450 million it had in February when Facebook first announced plans to acquire the messaging service for $16 billion with another $3 billion in restricted stock units for employees kicked in for good measure.

WhatsApp previously announced hitting the 500 million active user mark in April, meaning it has added 100 million active users in just four months.

Facebook CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg alluded to the staggering growth rate in the original announcement of the acquisition, leading some to conclude that WhatsApp may be on pace to hit the 1 billion user mark more quickly than Facebook did.

With 600 million users, WhatsApp continues to be significantly ahead of its competitors in the fast-growing messaging app space.

Free messaging and calling app WeChat revealed earlier this month that it had 438 million active users, and analysts estimated last month that Line had around 235 million active users.

The WhatsApp acquisition received regulatory approval in the U.S., but it is still being reviewed in Europe.

In its most recent earnings call, Facebook’s execs reiterated that they expect the deal to close later this year.

{{Honeybees probably originated in Asia, not Africa, said scientists on Sunday who had teased interesting tidbits from the busy little pollinators’ genome that they hope can be used to protect it.}}

They sequenced the genomes of 140 honeybees from 14 populations from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, United States and Brazil, looking for DNA clues as to how the insects responded to survival threats throughout their 300 000-year history.

Honeybees, responsible for pollinating a large chunk of the fruits, nuts and vegetables we eat, are in decline in many parts of the world, raising concerns for food security.

An international expert team reported in the journal Nature Genetics that they had found evidence of evolutionary adaptation on some 3 000 individual genes of the Apis mellifera species, that boosted functions like immunity and climate adaptability.

This information could lay the foundation for producing bees in future that are more resistant, for example, to the Varroa mite that has been implicated in hive declines in Europe and North America.

“We have compared the entire genomes of honeybees from Africa and Europe and identified positions in the genome where they differ,” study co-author Matthew Webster from Sweden’s Uppsala University told media.

“Amongst these positions may be specific differences that make African bees more resistant to Varroa… If we could identify these genetic differences we could understand what makes them more resistant.

This could help us to produce more disease-resistant honeybee populations in Europe and North America, which would be a major step in fighting honeybee declines.”

The team had also found a “surprisingly high” level of genetic diversity for a domesticated species.

This diversity was obtained through mixing honeybees from different parts of the world – suggesting that inbreeding is not the cause of the current colony losses, the researchers said.

The genetic analysis also showed that climate changes over the past 300 000 years had affected honeybee population sizes.

“If we knew how bees are adapted to warm or cold climates then this could help us to maintain populations that are adapted to local environments and protect them from climate change,” said Webster.

AFP