Category: Science &Technology

{{Mobile broadband connections are set to rise four fold in Sub-Sahara in the next three years.}}

This is expected to further accelerate Internet connectivity across the continent.

This has been revealed by a new report dubbed Transformative Solutions for 2015 and Beyond released on Friday.

According to this report, mobile broadband connections are set to rise to over 160 million by 2016 from 40 million in 2012 in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This will have a positive impact on financial growth especially through mobile money transfers across the continent while supporting business growth and service delivery in many countries.

The study was conducted as a joint venture of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Ericsson and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNSECO) through the Broadband Commission Task Force on Sustainable Development.

“The report presents for the first time new research showing how countries around the world use their national broadband plans.

These plans are key policy instruments used to leverage the full potential of broadband as an enabling infrastructure to accelerate sustainable development,” ITU’s Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun Touré, observed.

In Kenya, mobile banking has helped improve financial access to 67 per cent currently compared to 40.5 per cent in 2009.

wirestory

{{You might think you’re a good driver. But you, like all other drivers, tend to daydream behind the wheel. Why? It has to do with the way nature wired your brain. }}

Because millions of sensations bombard us every second, the brain sorts through them to allow only the most important ones to become conscious—for instance, you don’t notice what’s in your peripheral vision unless something moves there.

It’s just the way the brain evolved to protect it from self-destructing.

If it allowed too many sensations to get through, we would be paralyzed by the massive sensory overload. The downside to this is that your mind has a narrow attention span, so it likes to wander—a lot.

That beer you’re thinking about having when you get home from work could distract you long enough to expose you to danger while behind the wheel. Daydreaming can’t be eliminated, only minimized.

Just how dangerous is daydreaming while driving? When the Erie Insurance Group studied 65,000 fatal crashes over a two-year span (2010–11), its researchers found that one in 10 were attributed to driver distraction, and 62% were blamed on daydreaming—five times as many as talking or texting on a mobile phone.

The study was based on a nationwide database, kept by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, called the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, or FARS, that tracks all vehicle deaths. “The results were disturbing,” says Erie senior vice president Doug Smith.

What’s sneaky about daydream driving is that you may feel totally aware of your environment but be out of conscious contact with it. You’re not really seeing what you’re looking at. For example, most of us know the sensation of suddenly snapping to attention during a long stretch of highway or getting home from a drive and not remembering parts of the trip.

While your conscious mind wanders off, your subconscious takes over the wheel. Yes, an emergency can jar you back to full awareness, but your reaction time and sense of perception will suffer when you’re not paying full attention.

If you can’t eliminate daydream driving, how can you minimize it?

• Keep your eyes moving. Change your gaze every 2 seconds. Any longer and you tend to stare, which induces mind wandering and narrowing of peripheral vision. Tiring? No. The eyes were designed to keep in motion.

• To keep alert, interact with your environs by imagining “what-if” scenarios. What if that oncoming car crosses over? What if that truck ahead suddenly stops?

All those what-ifs you’re visualizing feed your subconscious with some valuable data to reprogram your brain for your benefit. They may provide you with a better accident-evasion plan than the one you’ve imagined should a similar event actually happen.

• Chew something. Really. Crunchy foods will keep you alert. Even chewing gum works. One psychology professor advised drivers to chew peanut brittle, calories notwithstanding. Besides the noise made from crunching, he said that searching for the peanuts was oral therapy.

• Try different driving routes when possible. Driving the same long route is boring, and your mind is more prone to wander when it encounters the same repetitive conditions. It’s called habituation.

Perry Buffington, a medical columnist, says, “simply put, we get used to things, and when we do, they’re no longer important to us.” Daydreaming results. And you notice fewer things when you’re bored, even if you’re not daydreaming.

If you want to become more alert behind the wheel, you must first want to. But even with the best intentions, you still have to be on guard. Daydream driving will hit you when you least expect it.

wirestory

{Minister of Youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana surfing on smart phone}

{{The Ministry of Youth and ICT (MYICT), the City of Kigali in partnership with Rwanda Development Board (RDB), Rwanda Utilities and Regulatory Agency (RURA), Rwanda Hotel and Restaurant Association and major Telecom Operators on Friday, launched the Smart Kigali initiative. }}

The initiative is aimed at modernizing the lifestyle of Kigali City dwellers and visitors through use of ICT for better service delivery.

It is aimed at providing free broadband Wi-Fi Internet access in public places that include commercial buildings, Bus Stations, Airport, in public transport buses and cabs; Improving Internet connectivity and access in Hotels and restaurants; establishing online automated navigation system for direction using the newly implemented street and home addressing information system; Introducing automated ticketing and taxi meters in public transport; and electronic payments systems to improve financial services.

The Minister of Youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana hailed the initiative saying, “Broadband is there to fast track business, information exchange, information generation and consumption; it’s a foundation of a knowledge economy. I expect this to accelerate our move from agriculture based economy to a knowledge based economy.”

The Mayor of the City of Kigali Fidele Ndayisaba noted, “This is yet another step in advancing the use of ICT in our city and it will enhance service delivery, access to information for the city residents”.

Ndayisaba also emphasized that High speed internet connection and easy access will also make the visitors’ experience in Kigali more enjoyable. He added, “the City of Kigali is committed to the use of ICT for a better City.”

To start with, free Wi-Fi in public places will be provided at Union Trade Center, Kigali City Tower, Kigali City Market, MTN Center, Nyabugogo Bus Park, Remera-Kisementi, Amahoro Stadium, Kigali Public Library, Kanombe International Airport, KBC, Kacyiru Ministere, KIST and KIE.

Internet connectivity at these sites will be powered by BSC Ltd, MTN Rwanda, TIGO Rwanda Ltd, AIRTEL, LIQUID Telecom and ISPA.

Automated taxi meters have also been installed in some taxicabs showing the fare to be charged for a trip. The automated taxi meters will protect both drivers and passengers from fare-based conflicts.

To improve financial services, the Electronic Payments Systems have been enhanced to promote efficient use of existing payments systems such as ATM’s VISA cards and others that facilitate electronic transactions.

All these services will position Kigali not only as a clean city but also a connected and smart city.

{{Rwanda has signed a partnership deal with South Korea’s largest telecom company, Korea Telecom (KT), to establish a joint venture that will build and operate ICT services in the country.}}

The deal will set an agenda for the utilisation of the high-speed Fourth Generation (4G) broadband network by Rwandans for socio-economic transformation.

In June, KT entered into an agreement with Rwanda to deploy 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) broadband network across the country to ensure fast, reliable and cheaper Internet services.

Jean Philbert Nsengimana, the minister for youth and ICT said, “We are going to transform the way Rwandans do business using IT services the company will avail to the market; for instance, changing our scope into e-governance, e-banking, e-learning and e-health. The company will have a range of solutions to benefit every Rwandan.”

“As we are look forward to facilitating Rwandans and businesses with reliable broadband, we believe the new joint venture will transform Rwanda into the region’s ICT hub, by applying IT solutions to our daily lives,” said Claire Akamanzi the acting chief executive of Rwanda Development Board.

Kim Hong-Jin, the KT president, Global and Enterprise Group said, “This partnership will contribute in developing the ICT industry, stimulating job creation, and promoting socio-economic development in the country,” he said. “This opportunity will also help KT build a global ICT reference, and expand the Rwandan model to other African countries.”

source:{newtimes}

{{What do you get if you fill a helicopter with dummies and drop it from a great height?

No, it’s not the opening line of a joke. On the contrary, it’s a serious question – the answer is data, potentially vast amounts of it, on how to make accidents more survivable.}}

Which is why, at the end of last month, a team from Nasa and the US Army, Navy and Federal Aviation Administration slowly hoisted the fuselage of a CH-46 tandem rotor transport helicopter containing 15 crash test dummies nine metres (30ft) off the ground. And then let it go.

Thanks to design changes driven in part by rigorously testing new cars with crash test dummies, drivers and passengers are far more likely to survive road accidents than they were 30 years ago. But because of the increased cost and complexity, such testing has hardly ever been carried out on aircraft.

There are occasional “barrel drops” in which sections of fuselage are dropped from the height of a second-storey window – which are designed to simulate the effects of rough landings, rather than crashes.

The most notable recent passenger plane crash test was carried out last year when several television production companies teamed up to film a Boeing 727 loaded with dummies and sensors hit the ground in the Sonoran Desert, Baja California, Mexico, at 140mph (225 kph).

This latest test, the first of two planned by Nasa, is designed to simulate a severe, but survivable crash. Having been stripped of its rotors and stub wings, the sacrificial CH-46 was effectively just a stubby tubular fuselage, with a few notable extras.

“We had over 350 channels of data in terms of instrumentation and sensors on board,” says Martin Annett, Nasa’s lead test engineer. “The majority of that data came off crash test dummies or the airframe itself.”

The test was carried out at the Landing and Impact Research (LandIR) facility at Nasa’s Langley Research Centre in Hampton, Virginia, which has a rich and distinguished history going back 50 years.

It was first used to train astronauts how to land on the moon for the Apollo missions, before being converted into a crash-test facility. It still has space links. The water-landing capabilities of Orion, Nasa’s new spacecraft designed to be used in missions to the Moon and beyond, are being tested there.

{{Sudden impact}}

The 14m- (45ft-) long CH-46 fuselage was suspended on cables before being swung down towards a bed of hard soil. Just before impact a series of pyrotechnic devices fired to release the cables, allowing it to hit the ground at about 30mph (48 km/h). It was kitted out with a vast array of sensors such as accelerometers, and the dummies were monitored by almost 40 cameras both inside and outside.

One side of the fuselage was painted with black polka dots on a white background to aid high-speed photography. The dots were used as data points and with 500 images captured per second, the researchers are able to observe precisely how different it bent, buckled, cracked or collapsed at the moment of impact. (The video above shows some of those pictures for the first time.)

The dummies were arranged in a number of positions to simulate different scenarios. Some were seated, others were standing, and one was even arranged on a stretcher to see what would happen to a patient being transported in that position.

Analysing the data will take months, however initial results reinforce the warning usually given on planes to stay seated with your seat belt fastened.

“The test went really well in terms of the data we were able to collect,” says Annet. “The dummies that were seated in what are considered energy-absorbing seats fared pretty well, but “a lot of bad things happened to those in the standing position.”

BBC

The Government of Rwanda through the Ministry of Youth and ICT (MYICT) in collaboration with the National IT Promotion Agency (NIPA) of South Korea has embarked on development of a comprehensive e-Government Master Plan.

The goal of e-Government Master Plan Project is to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of government-to-government (G2G), government-to-citizen (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B) processes in Rwanda.

This has been revealed during the kick off meeting on e-Government Master Plan Project held on September 10, where Rwanda and experts from NIPA shared best practices on e-Government.

Rwanda adopted the National Information and Communication Infrastructure Policy (NICI Plan) in its third phase from 2011-2015 which will see the development and use of new services acquired during phases one and two; where e-Government is one of pillars in this phase is also a critical focus area in NICI plan.

The Minister of Youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana speaking to the press after the kick off meeting stressed that Rwanda achieved a lot in ICT sector but it can also boost the service delivery in Rwanda.

“Our aim is to provide facilities to the citizens in Rwanda to access services without travelling vast distances; with the use of ICT in service delivery will be accessible online or via cell phones and will mainly drive the development of our economy,” Minister Nsengimana says.

Ambassador Hwang Soon-Taik of South Korea to Rwanda hails Rwanda for embracing e-Government; he stressed that “I see how Rwanda is planning and set goals of how to fully integrate e-Government in all services in the country; this is very important and will be a foundation to achieve more as we did in Korea.”

Meanwhile the Government of Rwanda (GoR) has embarked in an ambitious ICT for Development agenda in line with its Vision 2020 that seeks to transform the country into a middle income economy and information-rich knowledge based economy.

To achieve her vision, The GoR has put in place legal and regulatory framework and has invested in developing and rolling out key Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) such as national fiber backbone, the Kigali Metropolitan network and Wireless Broadband networks that are the most critical enabler of all sectors of the economy.

Through this project, parties will assess the existing e-Government initiatives of the Republic of Rwanda, to identify new opportunities of e-Government initiatives of the Republic of Rwanda.

{Above: Hon Minister of Youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana (L) and Ambassador Hwang Soon-Taik of South Korea to Rwanda (R).}