Category: Science &Technology

An interdisciplinary team, led by researchers at Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), have just published the most comprehensive analysis to date of the corn genome.

The team expects the achievement to speed up development of improved varieties of one of the world’s most important agricultural commodities.

The results should boost international efforts to increase yields, expand areas where corn can be cultivated and produce varieties better equipped to resist pests and disease.

Funded in the United States by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the USDA, the work was a collaborative effort by scientists at 17 U.S. and foreign institutions that include the University of Wisconsin-Madison; University of Missouri-Columbia; North Carolina State University; Beijing Genome Institute; University of California, Davis and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Mexico City, Mexico.

The study appears in two corn genome projects published in separate reports in the June 3 online edition of the journalNature Genetics.

“This work represents a major step forward and an important tool in the arsenal available to scientists and breeders for improving a vital source of nutrition,” said Edward B. Knipling, administrator of USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.

The analysis could also help those who develop corn yields as a source of fuel, who manage crops in the face of changing climates and who are concerned about the diminishing supply of arable land and growing populations, he said.

“This project is a stellar example of how collaborations of scientists, here and abroad, leverage resources across multiple agencies to enable transformational research with the potential to address urgent societal needs for a bio-based economy,” said John Wingfield, assistant director for NSF’s Biological Sciences Directorate.

It is anticipated that the tools and approaches generated in this project will enable scientists to look at genetic differences in other organisms as they respond to global climate change, human disturbance and invasive species, Wingfield explained.

The studies’ collaborators shed light on corn’s genetic diversity, detail how it evolved and outline how corn–known as maize among scientists–continues to diversify as it adapts to changing climates and habitats.

One study, published in the journal led by team member, USDA-ARS and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory scientist Doreen Ware, examines the genetic structure and the relationships and sequential ordering of individual genes in more than 100 varieties of wild and domesticated corn.

Another study led by team member Jeff Ross-Ibarra from the University of California, Davis gives an extraordinary glimpse into how corn evolved more than 8,700 years ago from a wild grass in the lowland areas of southwestern Mexico into today’s ubiquitous international commodity.

The researchers compared wild varieties with traditional corn varieties from across the Americas and with modern improved breeding lines. They identified hundreds of genes that played a role in the transformation of corn from its wild origins to today’s cultivated crop and show how that transition was largely achieved by ancient farmers who first domesticated it thousands of years ago.

Last year, the economic value of the U.S. corn crop was $76 billion, with U.S. growers producing an estimated 12 billion bushels, more than a third of the world’s supply.

Corn is the largest production crop worldwide, providing food for billions of people and livestock and critical feedstock for production of biofuels.

A major Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) says the key to food security is to farm smarter, not to plow more land.

The strains on agriculture are growing as the global population rises and emerging economies demand more types of food.

Frank Rijsberman, CEO of CGIAR noted,“Agriculture had been neglected for several decades. We had become used to abundant and cheap food. The world got a wake-up call in 2008, ’10, ’11 with spikes in food prices. People realised that we have to produce an awful lot more food for a growing world population, as much as 70% by 2050,”

The world population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, an increase of 2 billion from the current level. However, to feed that many people, is it simply a matter of planting more seeds on more land?

Rijsberman explained; “No, actually, that’s the wrong way to go. Crop yields – the amount of crop that we get per hectare has plateaued. It is no longer increasing. The only thing farmers can do is indeed plow under more land and they are doing that at an alarming pace.

They are doing that now more rapidly than during the green revolution. But if they do that they’re going to plow under marginal lands, key environmental areas. That would be quite disastrous and not a long-term sustainable path,” he said.

He said the key is research to learn how to get greater crop output from existing agricultural land. That’s one of the main goals of CGIAR.

“There’s a lot of private sector research in agriculture, but that serves primarily the big commercial farmers. We are serving the smallholder farmers – the 500 million farmers on less than two hectares – that provide most of the food in developing countries,” he said.

A second goal is to get the latest research into the hands of smallholder farmers as quickly as possible. Information such as ways to better access markets and reduce post-harvest loses.

Another is to address the issues of climate change, nutrition and gender, since women account for much if not most of the agricultural production around the world.

Rijsberman said while recent spikes in food prices may not hit consumers very hard in developed countries, they can have a devastating effect in poor countries.

In 2013, Facebook smartphone will be available to clients of the Social networking giant.

In 2010, facebook was reported to have been “secretly” building a smartphone – although this particular project is said to have broken down.

Facebook recently admitted it was struggling to make money out of its growing mobile audience.

It is in this regard that the Facebook had been hiring several smartphone engineers—as noted by some facebook employees.

It is also said that Facebook has hired experts who worked on the iPhone and other smartphones.

Facebook recently floated on the stock market, has also just launched its own mobile application store.

The App Center currently offers links to Facebook-enabled apps within Apple’s iOS and Google Android stores but developers will soon be able to write apps to be placed exclusively in Facebook’s store.

It quoted a Facebook employee as saying the site’s founder Mark Zuckerberg was “worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future… Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms”.

There are high chances of developing a new male contraceptive pill after researchers in Edinburgh identified a gene critical for the production of healthy sperm.

Experiments in mice found that the gene, Katnal1, was vital for the final stages of making sperm.

The authors of a study in PLos Genetics say a drug, which interrupts Katnal1, could be a reversible contraceptive. A fertility expert said there was “certainly a need” for such a drug.

Contraception in men is largely down to condoms or a vasectomy. Researchers at the Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh were investigating the causes of male infertility.

They randomly altered the genetic code of mice to see which became infertile. They then traced the mutations that led to infertility, which led them to Katnal1.

It contains the blueprints for a protein that is important in cells, which support the development of sperm. Without the protein, sperm do not fully form and the body disposes of them.

Scientists hope they will be able to perform a similar trick in humans to stop sperm developing, without causing lasting damage.

One of the researchers Dr Lee Smith said: “If we can find a way to target this gene in the testes, we could potentially develop a non-hormonal contraceptive.

“The important thing is that the effects of such a drug would be reversible because Katnal1 only affects sperm cells in the later stages of development, so it would not hinder the early stages of sperm production and the overall ability to produce sperm.

He said it would be “relatively difficult” to do as the protein lives inside cells, however, he said there was “potential” to find something else that protein worked with, which might be an easier target.

The world’s tallest tower is the fabulous SKY TREE of Japan. It measures 634 meters into the sky making it the biggest new landmark. It opened to the public on Tuesday.

Nearly 8,000 visitors were expected to take high-speed elevators up to the observation decks of the 634-meter (2,080-foot) tower to mark its opening.

Some reportedly waited in line more than a week to get the coveted tickets for a panoramic view, though Tuesday ended up being cloudy in Tokyo.

Skytree is recognized by Guinness World Records as the tallest tower, beating out the Canton Tower in China, which is 600 meters (1,968 1/2 feet).

The world’s tallest structure is Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which stands 828 meters (2,717 feet). That’s in a different category because it’s a skyscraper, not a tower.

The Skytree will serve as a broadcast tower for television and radio, along with being a tourist attraction. It replaces the 333-meter-tall (1,092 1/2-foot-tall) Tokyo Tower — a symbol of Japan’s capital since 1958 — as the broadcast hub.

Aimed at increasing Rwanda’s internet capacity, the Rwanda Development Board has awarded a 6.7 million US dollar contract to Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited (TTCL) to provide 1.244 GB/sec of internet bandwidth.

The bulk international bandwidth has been procured off the World Bank grant through the Regional Communication Infrastructure Programme-Rwanda (RCIPRW).

The project aims at lowering prices of internet capacity as well as extending the geographic reach of broadband networks in the country.

“Rwanda strongly believes in regional integration and is strategically positioned as a link between East Africa and Central Africa. What we are witnessing today is an important step in Rwanda’s efforts to grow as a service hub in the region,” said Patrick Nyirishema, the Head of Information and Communication Technology department at the Rwanda Development Board.

Nyirishema explained, “For Rwanda to achieve higher and sustained growth performance through transforming itself into a service-based economy, it has embarked on developing the ICT infrastructure and services.”

While noting that Rwanda faces significant challenges in getting access to low-cost international connectivity as a landlocked country, Nyirishema explained that; “This purchase of bulk international capacity on regional and international networks will significantly boost our vision to make bandwidth a commodity on the Rwandan market.”

He added that if broadband becomes a commodity on the Rwandan market, it would stimulate deployment of a wider and improved range of services to consumers at affordable prices.

“We are using demand aggregation for bandwidth to drive down prices of internet capacity, to stimulate investment into regional network infrastructure and to ensure that affordable access is made available to all market participants on an open-access basis,” added Nyirishema.

The CEO of TTCL, Said Amir Said noted that this contract is more than just business because it links two sister countries.

“This is just the beginning. Not only TTCL but also the government of Tanzania is honoured to work with Rwanda to promoted the East African countries,” noted Said.

Within two weeks of signing of this contract, TTCL will provide part of the capacity and will progressively scale up to the full contracted capacity in less than six months.

A half-lying in a wooden chair, completed by a board on which is fixed a metal housing, Uwayezu Martin, 25, a pedal force to recharge with small LED lamps (LED).

This pedal generator of simple design and craftsmanship has changed the lives of thousands of Rwandan countryside, living in areas without electricity, bringing them to light for some cheap and a new revenue stream.

Fisher, Daniel sets his traps Ntibaziyandemye little before dusk, among dense brush in the river Akanyaru, chasing mosquitoes of the hand, ear alert to detect the possible presence of crocodiles that infest the place.

At night, he returns to venture into the dangerous water to collect his catch, a small LED lamp on the front.

“Previously we were using flashlights to find our traps at night,” said Daniel. “But the batteries were so expensive that our profits were meager. Now with these new bulbs, you can fish for a week for less than what it was costing us before. ”

When discharged, Daniel carries his lamp to the merchant who sold it to him and who, like Martin, is the reload pedal strokes.

The generator is a small box approximately 30 cm high, with each side of pedals. We must ride just 20 minutes to recharge and give them five lamps up to 25 hours of battery life, about a week of use for most people.

Every minute and 375 minutes pedaled generates light, a system much more efficient than solar energy, says the company Rwandan Nuru Energy, the source of this invention that allowed him to win the 150,000 euros in 2008 to reward Price Lighting Africa, an initiative of the World Bank.

The company sells on credit generators and lamps to local retailers. They sell the lamps, then recharged every week for one low price.

Nuru Energy “gave me six months to repay the credit of my first lamps, but with the money earned by recharging, I was able to repay in two months,” said Martin Uwayezu.

“I was poor, now I’m a businessman,” he says proudly.

Attack the markets in East Africa and India

Most of rural Rwanda does not have access to electricity and people light up with kerosene and cooking over a wood fire. Over 90% of households in Rwanda use kerosene lamps whose fumes are harmful.

“In addition to being dangerous, it is inefficient and expensive,” explains Holazman Sloan, marketing director Nuru. “Families are spending between 10 and 25% of their income on oil for the only light.”

The boss and co-founder, Sameer Hajee, said he studied the energy requirements and practices of rural Rwandans to imagine a clean and inexpensive technology that can compete with oil.

“Kerosene is expensive, harmful, polluting and dangerous. But it is also portable, reliable and available, “he says.

In addition to the LED lamps, Nuru Energy plans to expand the use of its generators to recharge the mobile phones and other appliances in rural areas without grid.

After launching his first pedal generator in Rwanda, Nuru Energy is developing pilot projects in other countries such as India.

The company now boasts 10,000 customers in Rwanda and seeks to expand to other countries in East Africa such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda by the end of the year.

REPRO Ltd is a little known company in Rwanda. It was founded in 2007 with a mission of bringing energy to the rural population.

In 2008, it started a project on river Rwishwa, in Western Province, called Murunda Micro Hydro Power Plant aimed at producing electricity and availing it to the local population. But, this being done within the private approach.

We are used to big parastatal companies exercising this activity of producing and distribution of energy.

But our government always in promoting the private sector scrapped off the law that gave RECO then, the monopoly of this activity thus allowing the private business to invest in this high tech activity.

The Managing Director Gregory Tayi of this company was approached to give a brief view of the project:

Your Company was recently invited in the international conference namely “the First High Level meeting of the Africa-EU Energy Partnership in Vienna”. Would you please tell us why you were invited?

Gregory Tayi : Our Company was invited as the first ever privately initiated, owned and operated micro hydro plant in the region to discuss the private sector approach in renewable Energy and share its success story as a role model private initiative.

Would you tell us briefly about this company?

GT: REPRO is a private company with mission of producing, distribution and selling of energy. It is a young company and so far has realised only one project: the Murunda Micro Hydro Power Plant. The success of this project was the reason behind our invitation in Vienna.

For your information the Minister of State in Charge of Energy officially inaugurated this plant on May 25, in presence of Netherland’s Ambassador who financially supported us through PSP Hydro GTZ project, international community such as GTZ, DFID, World Bank, and the Belgian Cooperation also was present, delegation from the Ministry of infrastructure just to name a few.

Your success seems to have echoes outside but little known in Rwanda, why is it?

GT: I would ask you the same question! But I think that people here do not realise what energy and renewable energy in particular is in our modern time. The world needs energy, and this need is exponentially increasing.

If we do not look around how we can satisfy this need, we are running into trouble of perpetual poverty, as energy is the engine of development.

But the outside world is aware of it. The government of Rwanda knows it too. But the government cannot do all, it can change laws but it is up to everybody to be sensitized and do what he can in this area.

That is why the law that gave RECO the monopoly of this business changed and was opened to private entrepreneurs too.

Let us talk about this project. We assume it is not an easy task to enter into this business. What were the challenges that you met?

GT: Challenges were of 2 kinds. Technical and Financial.

Would you explain briefly these problems?

GT: On one side as you may know, a hydropower plant whatever the size, requires mechanical, electrical and Civil engineering. The design and the execution needs expertise which is costing too much and not easy to find.
On the other side this project needs big financial capability.

Though PSP Hydro granted us with a subsidy of 50%, the additional part was not easy to put in place.

Our banks are not used to finance such project and it was not easy to convince them. And when they agreed, the interests are based on the usual commercial ones and not perceived on the basis of a long term project.

Therefore we obtained a bank loan in same conditions as short run business.

Fossils found in China in 1970’s and 1980’s have been subjected to intense scrutiny by Australian and Chinese scientists who say the fossils might represent unknown people. They have stopped short of calling them a new species.

The scientists believe they have identified a new group of Stone Age people, dubbed the Red Deer Cave people, who lived alongside modern humans in China as recently as 11,000 years ago.

The fossils were discovered in the 1970s and 1980s but have only recently been subjected to intense scrutiny.

Professor Darren Curnoe from the University of New South Wales was one of the team leaders that looked at the remains.

“We’ve discovered a new population of prehistoric humans whose skulls are an unusual mosaic of primitive features, like those we see in our ancestors of hundreds of thousands of years ago, some modern traits, which are similar features to what we see in living humans, as well as some unusual features,” he said.

He says the Red Deer Cave people are anatomically unique in the human evolutionary tree.

“They have rounded brain cases but their brow ridges are quite prominent, their skull bones are quite thick, their faces are short and quite flat and they’re tucked under the frontal part of the brains – they’re modern characteristics,” he said.

“But they have a broad nose, the jaws jut very forward of the face and they lack a human-like chin.

“Their brains were moderate in size and the frontal part of the brain, what we call the frontal lobe, was quite modern-looking, but the posterior parts are quite primitive-looking, and they also had very large molar teeth.”

He says the Red Deer people would have shared the land with modern-looking people as farming was starting in China as recently as 14,000 years ago.

“One of the sites of the human remains are dated to around 14,500 years ago and the other site 11,500 years ago,” he said.

“And at this time in China there were very modern-looking people who were living immediately to the east and to the south of this population … and these modern humans were in fact beginning the early stages of farming, so there were economic transitions that were going on.”

The scientists have called the group the Red Deer Cave People after one of the main sites where they come from, Maludong, which literally means Red Deer Cave.

But they have stopped short of claiming the discovery of a new species.

“At this stage we’ve actually been quite reluctant to classify them, that is to place them into a species, whether it be Homo sapiens or something else,” Professor Curnoe said.

“In the study of human evolution, there’s a major ongoing controversy, or an open question if you like, about just how we actually define our own species Homo sapiens, biologically.

“They are a human-like group, technically we call them hominids. They’re clearly a population that’s quite closely related to humans and possibly closely related also to the Neanderthals.”

There has been one unsuccessful attempt to extract DNA from the remains, and Professor Curnoe says they are trying again.

“If we could extract ancient DNA from these fossils, that would really be a wonderful thing because it would allow us to really decisively test some of these ideas that we’ve developed, hypotheses that we’ve developed directly from the bones themselves,” he said.

“We’ve actually expanded our collaboration to work with a couple of international ancient DNA laboratory specialist groups who have been very successful in amplifying ancient DNA.”

Source: PLos One

Bharti Airtel Limited has regiserted significant milestones in its endeavor to build a ‘green’ environment friendly mobile network aimed at reducing its carbon footprint in Africa.

Airtel is currently established in Rwanda where they are also constructing their Home. A lot of technical activities are ongoing. However, they haven’t announced when they will officially launch their services.

The Company says in the last one year, it has reduced telecom sites running solely on diesel by more than 50% by overcoming the challenge of lack of grid connectivity through use of innovative models such as Hybrid Battery Bank.

By 2013, the Company aims at completely eradicating dependence on diesel to power its network. This means no telecom site of the company will rely solely on diesel power 24 hours a day.

Hybrid Battery Banks collect the excess energy produced by the diesel powered generator in a battery that powers the site once the generator in switched off reducing the use of diesel by up to 14 hours a day.

Close to 60% of Bharti Airtel’s telecom sites in Africa are now powered using the Hybrid model resulting in major reduction in emissions and also operating costs for the company.

The telecom giant is targeting over 70% of all its sites to be powered by the Hybrid model by end of 2013. Airtel is also working on the use of solar and wind power to power its telecom sites.

Eben Albertyn, Chief Technical Officer, Bharti Airtel, saiys,“Our first priority is to reduce the number of sites that are completely reliant on diesel generators by connecting the sites to electricity grid in areas where this option is feasible.

Where it is not, alternative forms of power supply are explored including Hybrid Battery Banks and solar/wind power. This is our part in conserving the environment”.

Bharti Airtel said that it has already made significant strides in using solar panels to power sites in select markets. Over the last two months, 105 solar sites have already been set up in Niger reducing the use of diesel generators from 24 hours a day to a meager 3 to 4 hours.