IGIHE

Category: Science &Technology

  • Confusion on Internet Future , UN Treaty Split

    The freewheeling, unregulated Internet seemed to survive a push for new rules at a UN treaty meeting, but the collapse of talks leaves unanswered questions about the Web’s future.

    A total of 89 countries endorsed the global treaty on telecom regulations at the UN’s International Telecommunication Union gathering in Dubai on Friday, but the United States and dozens of others refused to sign, saying it opened the door to regulating the Internet.

    ITU chief Hamadoun Toure insisted that the treaty had nothing to do with the Internet, despite what he called “a non-binding resolution which aims at fostering the development and growth of the Internet.”

    “This conference was not about the Internet control or Internet governance, and indeed there are no provisions on the Internet,” the ITU secretary-general told participants at the signing ceremony.

    But James Lewis, who follows Internet governance at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said backers of the treaty distorted the facts.

    “They were lying,” he said. “It was totally about the Internet.”

    Lewis told AFP the ITU lost credibility because “they swore up and down there wouldn’t be a vote, that a decision would be by consensus, and then they took a vote.”

    The outcome underscored a deep divide between the US and its allies, which seek to keep the Internet open and unregulated, and authoritarian regimes that want to impose controls over online use and content.

    Russia, China and Saudi Arabia have been among countries seeking such changes.

    Still, Lewis said the World Conference on International Telecommunication, organized by the ITU in Dubai, failed to wrest control of the Internet addressing system from the global nonprofits group called ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

    It remains unclear, said Lewis, whether the treaty can even become effective without a majority of the 193 ITU members endorsing it.

    “The ITU has to suspend consensus rules to say this treaty is to take effect, and then it becomes an issue for the lawyers,” he said, adding that the matter could end up before the UN Security Council.

    US officials, who led opposition to new Internet rules, said the document adopted in Dubai will have little immediate impact.

    Countries can exercise control of online activity within their borders, but Washington and others objected to a treaty that would legitimize new Internet controls under UN auspices.

    The head of the US delegation, Terry Kramer, walked out of the hall as the signing started after protesting that the treaty was “seeking to insert governmental control over Internet governance.”

    That position drew praise from lawmakers and activists back home.

    House Cybersecurity Caucus co-chairs Jim Langevin and Michael McCaul said the treaty, if implemented, “would result in a significant setback for anyone who believes free expression is a universal right.”

    Google, another critic of the conference, said that many governments taking part in Dubai proved they wanted increased censorship.

    “What is clear from the ITU meeting in Dubai is that many governments want to increase regulation and censorship of the Internet,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

    “We stand with the countries who refuse to sign this treaty and als

  • Homosexuality isn’t Genetic–Science

    No sign of a gay gene, but homosexuality could start in the womb.

    Homosexuality isn’t genetic after all. But don’t start saying this proves it’s a “lifestyle choice,” fundamentalists.

    Researchers from UC Santa Barbara and Uppsala University found a biological basis for same-sex attraction, locating the origins of homosexuality in the womb.

    Epi-marks, the genetic switches that regulate how our genes express themselves, can be passed down from mother to son or father to daughter while the fetuses gestate, the researchers found, adding that certain “sexually antagonistic” epi-marks may also be involved.

  • Region Alert as N. Korea Plans Rocket Launch

    The official North Korean state media carried a statement by the spokesman for the Korean Committee of Space Technology on Monday that confirmed that scientists and technicians have “found a technical deficiency in the first-stage control engine module of the rocket carrying the satellite and decided to extend the satellite launch up to December 29th.”

    The North Korean media had suggested Sunday that a delay could be possible, although they hadn’t clarified why.

    However, satellite images on Saturday have revealed that a new third-stage booster was delivered to the launch pad, and experts predict that the launch will probably take place after the booster has been installed.

    North Korea has received international condemnation for their rocket launch, which many believe to be a cover for long-range missile technology.

    The U.S. has mobilized warships in the Asia-Pacific region to monitor and possibly repudiate the launch, while South Korea has upped their defense level to “Watchcon 2,” which is issued when there is possibly a vital threat to the nation.

    South Korea usually occupies a “Watchcon 3″ status due to their ongoing war with the North.

  • Rwanda has Fastest Internet in sub-Saharan Africa

    Rwanda has become the country with the fastest broadband Internet in sub-Saharan Africa, overtaking Ghana, according to test service provider Ookla.

    The latest broadband speed results from Ookla’s NetIndex show that service providers in Rwanda currently offer download speeds of up to 7.28M bps, up from 3.28M bps six months ago.

    Those speeds overtake those offered in all other sub-Saharan African countries including Nigeria, Africa’s largest telecom market.

    However, President Paul Kagame and the minister of Youth and ICT said that despite the ranking, there is a lot more that Rwanda needs to do.

    Kagame believes Rwanda still has a long way to go to improve the country’s broadband services for the benefit of the poor and those in remote rural areas.

    Kagame two years ago was chosen to co-chair the Broadband Commission set up by the U.N. to speed up broadband rollout around the world.

    “Rwanda is a country to be imitated by other African countries in terms of developing their telecom sectors. The country is slowly being transformed into the knowledge economy while other countries watch,” said Mwape Mutale, CEO of the Center for ICT Development.

    Ghana, which in March ranked top with the fastest broadband speed in Africa, has now dropped to the fourth position in the ranking, with broadband download speeds up 4.42M bps, down from 5.14M bps.

    The improvement in Rwanda’s broadband speed is a result of World Bank-funded broadband projects that connected the country to many international undersea cables, including Seacom and the East Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSY).

    The bank has provided more than $30 million to Rwanda alone for the provision of broadband connectivity.

    The bank wants Rwanda, as they do other countries in the region, to increase the deployment of e-governance services.

    Other African countries with relatively fast broadband speeds include Kenya, with 3.34M ; it is currently ranked fifth in Africa after dropping from second position six months ago.

    South Africa, Africa’s second largest telecom market after Nigeria, is ranked 10th in Africa with 3.31M bps speeds.

    Nigeria ranks 13th in Africa with broadband download speeds of 2.73M bps and remain the second West African country after Ghana with the fastest broadband speed.

    Ookla is a global leader in broadband testing and Web-based network diagnostic application.

    Based on millions of recent test results from Speedtest.net, the NetIndex compare and ranks consumer download speeds around the world.

  • North Korea Vows to Launch Rocket in December

    North Korea is vowing to launch a long range rocket in December — nine months after its failed missile launch attempt in April.

    According to state media, the launch will take place between Dec. 10 and Dec. 22.

    The anticipated December launch would Be the second under Kim Jong Un, who assumed party leadership in January, weeks after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.

    North Korea claims the rocket is for satellite purposes and the one that is set to launch in December will be an improved version.

    But the outside world sees it as veiled cover to test long range missile technology banned by the United Nations.

    The rocket that was launched from the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in the northern part of the country on April 13 failed to enter orbit.

    About 81 seconds into that launch, the United States detected a substantially larger than expected flare and by 10 minutes after launch, the rocket was no longer on several radar screens, U.S. officials said at the time.

    North Korea state media acknowledged the launch failure after U.S. and South Korean officials reported the rocket disintegrated.

    Had the launch been successful, the rocket’s third stage was expected to burn up in the atmosphere about 10 minutes after launch, with debris falling north of Australia.

  • DNA Photographed for First Time

    Fifty-nine years after James Watson and Francis Crick deduced the double-helix structure of DNA, a scientist has captured the first direct photograph of the twisted ladder that props up life.

    Enzo Di Fabrizio, a physics professor at the Magna Graecia University in Catanzaro, Italy, snapped the picture using an electron microscope.

    Previously, scientists had only seen DNA’s structure indirectly. The double-corkscrew form was first discovered using a technique called X-ray crystallography, in which a material’s shape is reconstructed based on how X-rays bounce after they collide with it.

    But Di Fabrizio and his colleagues developed a plan to bring DNA out of hiding. They built a nanoscopic landscape of extremely water-repellant silicon pillars.

    When they added a solution that contained strands of DNA into this scene, the water quickly evaporated and left behind cords of bare DNA that stretched like tightropes between the tiny mesas.

    They then shone beams of electrons through holes in the silicon bed, and captured high-resolution images of the illuminated molecules.

    Di Fabrizio’s images actually show a thread of several interwoven DNA molecules, as opposed to just two coupled strands. This is because the energy of the electrons used would be enough to destroy an isolated double helix, or a single strand from a double helix.

    But with the use of more sensitive equipment and lower energy electrons, Di Fabrizio thinks that snapshots of individual double helices will soon be possible, reports New Scientist.

    Molecules of DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, store the genetic instructions that govern all living organisms’ growth and function.

    Di Fabrizio’s innovation will allow scientists to vividly observe interactions between DNA and some of life’s other essential ingredients, such as RNA (ribonucleic acid).

    The results of Di Fabrizio’s work were published in the journal NanoLetters.

    Wirestory

  • Mars scientists keeping lid on discovery

    The Mars rover Curiosity has found something noteworthy in a pinch of Martian sand. But what is it?

    The scientists working on the mission are not saying. Outside that team, lots of people are guessing.

    The intrigue started last week when John Grotzinger, the mission’s project scientist, told National Public Radio: “This data is going to be one for the history books. It’s looking really good.”

    And then he declined to say anything more.

    Fossils? Living microbial Martians? Maybe the carbon-based molecules known as organics, which are the building blocks of life?

    That so much excitement could be set off by a passing hint reflects the enduring fascination of both scientists and nonscientists with Mars.

    “It could be all kinds of things,” said Peter Smith, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona who was the principal investigator for NASA’s earlier Phoenix mission to Mars. “If it’s historic, I think it’s organics. That would be historic in my book.”

    Grotzinger and other Curiosity scientists will announce their latest findings on Monday in San Francisco at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

    Do not expect pictures of Martians, though.

    Guy Webster, a spokesman for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which operates Curiosity, said the findings would be “interesting” rather than “earthshaking.”

    Whatever is revealed will be linked to the work of Curiosity’s sophisticated chemistry laboratory instrument, Sample Analysis at Mars — SAM, for short. The rover’s robotic arm dropped the first bit of sand and dust into the instrument on Nov. 9, and the scientists have been analyzing and contemplating ever since.

    One of the main goals of SAM is to identify organic molecules, but it would be a big surprise for organics to show up in a first look at a sand sample selected more as a test exercise than with the expectation of a breakthrough discovery.

    Curiosity will be headed toward layers of clays, which could be rich in organics and are believed to have formed during a warm and wet era early in the planet’s history. But Curiosity has months to drive before arriving at those locations.

    The Curiosity scientists have learned through experience that it pays to double-check their results before trumpeting them. An initial test of the Martian atmosphere by the same instrument showed the presence of methane, which would have been a major discovery, possibly indicating the presence of methane-generating microbes living on Mars today.

    But when the scientists ran the experiment again, the signs of methane disappeared, leading them to conclude that the methane found in the first test had come from air that the spacecraft had carried to Mars from its launching spot in Florida.

    Webster, who was present during the interview with NPR, said Grotzinger had been talking more generally about the quality of data coming back from Curiosity and was not suggesting that the data contained a breakthrough surprise.

    “I don’t think he had in mind, ‘Here’s some particular chemical that’s been found,’ ” Webster said. “That’s not my impression of the conversation.”

    “I do want to temper expectations,” Webster said. “But then again, I don’t know exactly what they’re going to say they’ve found.”

  • Ghanaian Developed Software, mPawa, to Represent Africa in U.S.A

    An SMS-based software developed by four young Ghanaians to serve as a link between artisans and persons who need their services has been nominated as one of the five Demo Lions of Africa to represent the continent at the 2013 Demo in San Francisco.

    mPawa, developed by 2012 graduates of Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, has a database where previous works of blue-collar workers such as masons, painters, plumbers, carpenters among others are stored for future reference.

    Maxwell Kofi Donkor CEO of Innokiq, developers of the software, said mPawa was designed to correct the anomaly where most internet-based vacancy announcements are targeted at white-collar workers living out blue-collar workers.

    “Their work doesn’t demand them to visit the internet, so they are labor intensive workers, they want the next construction site or the next person to call them to go and do some carpentry jobs, no internet is necessary.

    That’s why we built mPawa. So, all these people have very, very limited resources but challenging problems, so what mPawa seeks to do is give them an application that they can use the means they have now – that’s why we went to SMS, because they already get SMS. Most of the telecom companies are bombarding them with SMS, and they read them.”

    Explaining how mPawa works, Mr Donkor said when an employer indicates that he needs say 100 carpenters, 15 masons, 20 steelbenders, because these blue-collar workers are registered with mPawa, “these jobs that they post specifically go to the people who need them.

    So mPawa automatically matches the job requirement; so if it is carpenters, masons won’t receive that job notifications, but only carpenters that are on our system.”

    He further explained, “in just a few minutes of posting the job on mPawa, they can see who has received the job, they can see who is getting ready to join them to start their project… With mPawa, everything that has to do with the job seeker is free”.

    MyJoyonline

  • ICT Ministry in Plans to Increase TV Penetration

    Youth and ICT Minister Jean Philibert Nsengimana has said plans are underway to increase television penetration in the country.

    He said through Tunga TV programme, more homes are expected to own TV sets.

    According to the Ministry of Youth and ICT, the digital television signal presently covers more than 95% of the country’s territory.

    Other technologies are being considered so that people can watch Television using other devices like computers and phones among others.

    Commenting on the fact that people can be given loans to buy TVs, representatives of BPR noted that Content Creation and Energy hinder them to help Rwandans get funds to buy TVs, however, added BPR officials, “they are ready to finance people to be able to buy TV sets.”

    Tunga TV programme aims at providing viable options to commercialize the Digital TV Broadcasting infrastructure and increase TV penetration in Rwanda.

    It recommends that a Public Private Partnership (PPP) be established with a domestic solution integrator that is experienced, and has efficient and effective capabilities to handle smoothly the analog to digital TV migration.

  • Rwanda Has fastest Internet Speed in Africa

    (more…)