LWKMD! What Do You Think About This Picture?

ASUU Gives New Demands.

Do you think this ASUU strike is for the betterment of Nigerian students?

After the last meeting ASUU had with the President, one had hoped that the lingering five-month strike would be called off very soon. Instead, ASUU gave the Federal Government a set of new demands which “must be met” before it will ever re-open our universities. The new demands include:

1. “The government within two weeks begin the release and distribution of the N200 billionit pledged to inject into the system”.
2. “The government renegotiates the 2009 agreement by 2014 and that the Attorney-General of the Federation be made a signatory to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)”.

However, the Federal Government, through the supervising Minister of Education, has expressed its disappointment with ASUU and warned that all lecturers must go back to work on or before December 4, 2013 or lose their jobs. The minister said: “…it is only in this country where Mr. President will sit with you for over 13 hours and all issues have been resolved and you promised that within one week you will get back to us only to see a letter now giving new conditions outside what we have discussed. So, if anybody thinks that it is against the labour laws, well, they have a right to challenge government at the industrial court…”

ASUU, by now, ought to know that students are tired of waiting for them; and it no longer draws any sympathy from the Nigerian public.

Image Source: Ynaija.com.

Source: The Sun News.

Twitter Implements "Perfect Forward Secrecy" Against Malware Attack.

In order to ensure that no third party spies on the tweets of its users, Twitter has implemented an extra layer of security protocol called Perfect Forward Secrecy. Forward Secrecy forms an additional protection on top of the existing HTTPS.

The extra security secures traffic on twiiter.com, api.twitter.com and mobile.twitter.com. Twitter explained that “under traditional HTTPS, client chooses a random session key, encrypts it using the server’s public key, and sends it over the network” and an adversary “in possession of the server’s private key and some recorded traffic can decrypt the session key and use that to decrypt the entire session” but under Perfect Forward Secrecy, “the client and server manage to come up with a shared random session key without ever sending the key across the network, even under encryption”.

However, this additional security causes a delay in network by 150 milliseconds or more, which is not a big deal, especially, for a user that won’t tolerate any form of snooping on their tweets.

Twitter had added Forward Secrecy to their networks since October 21 but waited till November 22 to officially inform its users when it is sure that no bugs or issues manifested due to the new security change.

Image Source: CNET.
Source: Blog.Twitter, PC Magazine.

NSA Hacked Over 50,000 Networks, Says Report.

According to a recent report by a Dutch media outlet NCR, based on documents leaked by former NSA employee, Edward Snowden, the US NSA hacked thousands of networks worldwide.

The Dutch media revealed that documents provided by Snowden prove that “the American intelligence service --- NSA --- infected more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide with malicious software designed to steal sensitive information”

For the time being, NSA hasn’t responded to this allegation.

Image Source: ZDNet.

Source: CNET.

Going, Going, Gone!

Here are the latest pics of the demolished market of Umuahia. To read more about it, click: Umuahia Main Market to be Demolished and Latest Gist on Umuahia Main Market Demolition --- Man Dies in a Store.

 

 #Umuahia.

The Red Baron.

Manfred Von Richthofen.

Manfred Von Richthofen with Head Injury.

Google Aims To Tag You By The Neck With an Electronic Tattoo.

Google has been dabbling into many things lately. Yesterday, it was Google Glass; today, it is smartwatches and longevity; and tomorrow, it will be an electronic tattoo by the neck.

Google-owned Motorola Mobility has filed for a patent for an electronic tattoo that can be applied to a throat region of the body. The tattoo will have a sub-dermal microphone, which will enable the wearer communicate to someone without having to use his phone directly, and will use a Bluetooth-like connectivity to connect with smartphones, gaming devices, tablets and other wearable devices. It is likely going to be powered, like some other digital tattoos, by electricity converted from glucose and oxygen found in the wearer’s blood.

#Google. #Digital Tattoo.

Source: CNN.

Gene Responsible For Wolverine-Like Self-Healing Ability Discovered.

Ever since I started watching Sci-Fi movies in which some characters were able to regenerate parts of their body, I have been wondering the type of technology that can make a human being, in real life, spontaneously regrow his body parts. Recently, a Harvard scientist believes he has found the particular gene that can do it.

The researcher, George Daley, noticed that a gene known as Lin28a, when activated, helped his lab mice grow back their ears and toes, which had been clipped, in a few days. As you may know, stem cells are responsible for formation of tissues and organs but as an individual gets older, what these cells do is merely repair the body but don’t usually regenerate any organ. However, Daley says that the human body can be tricked into thinking it’s younger than it is by, in combination with a certain metabolism, activating the Lin28a gene; thereby triggering the regeneration of any lost body part.

#LIN28a.

Source: Gizmodo UK.

Solar-Activated Nanogrid Turns Oil Spills into Biodegradable Compounds.

Photo by Svdmolen.

A new way to tackle oil spills that is easier and more eco-friendly than conventional methods has been developed by a professor from State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Prof. Perena Gauma invented a “nanogrid”, made of copper-tungsten oxide, that when activated by sunlight can break down oil from spills, and leave behind only biodegradable compounds in the contaminated water. The nanogridis in form of a fishing net, this is to provide “maximum exposure to the contaminant to be remedied, while the nanoscale particle sizes enable fast catalystic action”. The net is produced by a self-assembly process in which hot metal clusters diffuse inside polymeric nanofibres and turn into single crystal nanowires, then oxidize to form metal oxide—ceramic—nanoparticles.

#Nanotechnology. #Oil Spill.

Source: Phys.org.

iPhone Converted to Cheap Digital Microscope.

An Instructables user, Yoshinok, has come up with a means of converting an iPhone into a powerful microscope using a wooden board, a pair of Plexiglas slides, a laser pointer and a few nuts and bolts.

The makeshift microscope can give magnifications as high as 175x. It is a stand with Plexiglas slides on which the iPhone is placed to view a specimen that is on the second Plexiglas. Yoshinok detailed the steps of making the microscope stand on Instructables website. He believes the “microscope” will provide a cheaper means of studying microscopic structures in schools that cannot afford standard digital microscope, since smartphones are common among students and the stand doesn't cost much to construct.

Source: TechBeat.

#Instructables. #iPhone. #Microscope.

The Portrait of my Favorite Priest.

The Portrait of my Favorite Priest.

Give That Angel a Gun! --- The Modern Angel.

The Modern Angel.

Robotic Arm That Enables User Lift Extra 40 lbs. wins James Dyson Award.

A team of four mechanical engineering students from the University of Pennsylvania has won the 2013 James Dyson Award for producing a prosthetic hand called the Titan Arm.

The battery-powered robotic arm can augment human weight-lifting strength by 40 pounds (18 Kg). The team also wanted it to be affordable; hence they used cheap aluminium to construct most of its structural parts. Currently, Titan Arm is remotely controlled by a joystick but they hope that in future they can develop models that use electromyography technology. This will enable the user to directly control the prosthetic arm using electrical signals produced in his muscle tissues.

Source: TechBeat.

Show me an Angel.

Some people believe in aliens while many others believe in angels. But I found out that most of those that don’t believe in aliens think that angels exist. Then, I ask myself: “are angels of this world?” No, they are not. They merely visit and, afterwards, go back to their world. So, why can’t I call an angel an alien?

One more thing, since angels, from ancient time, have been pictured as wielding fiery swords and wearing body armours that resemble those of ancient roman soldiers; I consider picturing them, for modern time’s sake, as armed with M4A1or my favourite P90 and wearing Kevlar flak jackets. I may leave the wings if they are part of their angelhood. If not, I’ll suit them up with something very techie --- a rocket pack. I won’t forget the halos. It’s very important in my religion to place a halo over an angel’s head.

The Modern Angel as I picture him.

#Angel.

Image Source: Fanpop!.

ASUU Strike --- Flavour's “Chinny Baby” remixed to “ASUU Baby”.

This ASUU strike is strong. While I was listening to the radio this morning, initially, I thought I was hearing the remix of Flavour’s “Chinny Baby” but not until I heard “ASUU abeg o, when are you calling off the strike…or do we have to wait till November or December?” that I knew it has happened again --- somebody has been inspired! 

I learnt that the “remix” was sung by Alloy, a student of Uniport. I was able to record some part of it directly from the radio with my phone. Click on the video below to listen to the song by Alloy as I recorded it. 

Dowload the remix of "Chinny Baby" (290 kb).

#ASUU #Nigeria.

Why Little Drops of Water won’t make a Mighty Ocean.

It is true that some big things have small beginnings. That is why people say: “little drops of water make a mighty ocean”. But have you wondered, if an ocean can be formed from drops of water, how long it will take? Probably, centuries, right? Or a couple of millenniums. I guess you don’t really know.

As you know, our planet has five oceans, each having a volume different from the other, but it is generally accepted that an ocean contains between 1.3 to 1.5 billion cubic kilometres of salt water. Then, let’s take the volume of our ocean as 1.4 billion Km³. Meanwhile, a drop of water is 0.05 mL in volume. Assuming water is collected at a drop-per-second, which is 0.05 mL per second. Then, in a whole day we will get 4,320 mL of water and after 365 days (i.e. 1 year) we must have gotten 1,576,800 mL --- just a mere 1.5768 cubic meter.

Now, let’s speed things up by determining the quantity of water that will be collected after a century. That is: 100 ӿ 1.577 m³ to give 157.7 m³. This is not enough, especially when you are dealing with a billion cubic kilometres and more. Ok. Say you manage to travel in time to a millennium in the future; you’ll discover that our grand project has grown to 1,577 Km³. But nobody lives for a thousand years.

Let’s say you plan to “live forever” then you’ll live to see your little drops of water make an ocean after 887,761 millenniums. So, lemme ask you. Are you willing to allow that your great plan to last for this long before it’s accomplished? I don’t think so.

Andrewsarchus --- “A Sheep That was a Carnivore”.

 Animatronics of Andrewsarchus in "Walking with Beasts".

Evolution can be very funny. Would you believe that there was a time “sheep were carnivores”? No, not the sheep you see today but their ancestor called Andrewsarchus mongoliensis.

An Andrewsarchus existed during the Eocene era. It was as tall as a horse and is likely the largest mammal carnivore that has ever lived. In appearance, it looked like a wolf or hyena but it is not related to any known existing carnivore. Its closest modern relatives are hoofed animals like sheep and goats.

 Andrewsarchus in "Walking with Beasts".

Like the predator it resembles, it had large, sharp and pointed teeth with strong jaws but had hooves instead of claws. The Andrewsarchus went into extinction at the time of formation of Himalayas mountain ranges.

Source: Walking With Beasts--- a BBC Television Documentary.

#Andrewsarchus