Tanzanian low-cost water filter wins innovation prize

A water filter which absorbs anything from copper and fluoride to bacteria, viruses and pesticides has won a prestigious African innovation prize.

Its inventor, Tanzanian chemical engineer Askwar Hilonga, uses nanotechnology and sand to clean water.

He told the BBC his invention should help the 70% of households in Tanzania that do not have clean drinking water.

The prize, worth £25,000 ($38,348), was the first of its kind from the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering.

Head Judge Malcolm Brinded said, "His innovation could change the lives of many Africans, and people all over the world."

The sand-based water filter that cleans contaminated drinking water using nanotechnology has already been trademarked.

"I put water through sand to trap debris and bacteria," Mr Hilonga told the BBC's Newsday programme about the filter.

"But sand cannot remove contaminants like fluoride and other heavy metals so I put them through nano materials to remove chemical contaminants." He said that before one filter costs $130 but, after winning the £25,000, he will buy materials in bulk and the cost will reduce.

"For people who cannot afford water filters, we have established water stations where people come and buy water at a very very low, affordable price," he added.

Mr Hilonga explains on his YouTube video from 2014 that other resins can remove up to 97% of micro-organisms but his target was to produce nano-filter "that can 99.999% of micro organisms, bacteria and viruses".

His family regularly suffered from water-borne diseases growing up in rural Tanzania, so when he graduated from his PhD in nanotechnology in South Korea he started looking at nano materials that would be suitable for water purification, he told Technology4Change.

The Royal Academy of Engineering aims to help sub-Saharan African engineers to develop solutions to African challenges into businesses.

Mr Hilonga and the three runners-up, who received £10,000 each, have already spent six months developing a business plan.

Source: bbc.com

Apple Watch Credited With Saving Life: What Conditions Can It Detect?

A Massachusetts teen says the Apple Watch saved his life, by alerting him that his heart rate was much higher than normal, leading to a diagnosis of a life-threatening condition. Experts say the gadget — and similar devices — could potentially detect alterations in people's heart rates that might be a sign of health problems.

Paul Houle Jr., a high school senior, said he felt back pain after two football practices on the same day, but he didn't think much of it, according to Huffington Post. However, he later noticed his Apple Watch revealed that his heart rate was 145 beats per minute — about double his normal rate. Although he thought the watch might be broken, Houle told his athletic trainer, and after an exam, was taken to the emergency room.

Houle was later diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which muscles release a protein that damages the kidneys and other organs, and can cause a rapid heart rate. Houle had suffered damage to his kidneys, heart and liver.

"Doctors told me that if I had not said anything and [had] gone to practice the next day, I very easily could have died," Houle told the Huffington Post.

It's important to note that the Apple Watch is not a medical device, and cannot be used to diagnose heart conditions. But because the device monitors heart rate, it could potentially alert people to a health problem that should be evaluated, said Dr. Allen Taylor, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.

"Heart rate is a general signal for how much stress your body's under," Taylor said. The stress could be due to exercise, mental stress or an illness, he said.

Like a fever, a high heart rate could be a symptom of many conditions, and so it cannot be used for a diagnosis by itself, Taylor said. But "For certain conditions, [if] patients find their heart rates running faster, it could alert them to say 'something's not right here,'" Taylor said.

Other conditions that might be detected by a heart rate monitor include:

• Atrial fibrillation, or an erratic heartbeat, might be detected by a heart rate monitor, Taylor said. An episode of erratic heartbeat can last for seconds, minutes or days, and the symptom isn't always present when a patient goes to the doctor. That's why self-detection of the condition can be important, Taylor said.
• Anemia, or a low red blood cell count. This condition can cause problems with the heart's electrical impulses and lead to a faster-than-normal heartbeat, according to the Mayo Clinic.
• Overactive thyroid. When the thyroid gland produces too much thyroid hormone, this can also interfere with the heart's electrical activity and lead to a fast heart rate, even one of more than 100 beats per minute, the Mayo Clinic says.

A heart rate monitor might also be useful for patients who are taking medications to prevent a rapid or erratic heart rate, so that doctors could see if the medications are working, Taylor said.

Dr. Ragavendra Baliga, a cardiologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, noted that a new app for the Apple Watch, called AirStrip, can allow doctors to view patients' vital signs, including their heart rates. For people with heart failure, which can cause a rapid heart rate, doctors could use AirStrip to make adjustments to the patient's medications, Baliga said.

However, it's also possible that some patients might be overly assured by monitoring their heart rates, and believe that nothing is wrong if they have a normal heart rate, Taylor said.

"A normal heart rate doesn't mean you're not sick," Taylor said. For example, a heart rate monitor can't detect if you're having a heart attack.

Still, overall, wearables have the potential to empower patients to think about their health in news ways, Taylor said. "Whether it's detecting conditions early, or whether it's monitoring conditions, or whether it's just having grater self-awareness of their health …There're so many potential advantages" to wearables, he said.

Source: livescience.com

Scientists May Have Discovered a Cure for Blindness

When Wayne State University researcher Dr. Zhou-Hua Pan placed a light-sensitive green algae protein into blind mice in 2006, he was amazed to find that it restored the subjects' vision almost immediately. Fast forward to 2015, the year of many great things, and that protein is now the subject of a forthcoming set of human trials aimed at unveiling a potential cure for blindness in humans.

RetroSense Therapeutics, the company who leased the research from Dr. Zhou-Hua Pan and recently received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to administer human trials, is expected to begin testing the protein on 15 patients by the end of the year. 

According to Singularity Hub, channelrhodopsin-2 is the same "magical switch" protein already famous for its ability to "turn a gentle mouse aggressive, shut down obsessive grooming behavior, and implant false memories in unsuspecting mice."

The protein is placed directly into the retina using gene therapy, allowing the rod-and-cone system to be bypassed entirely and giving the eye's ganglion cells the ability to sense light on their own. Though some levels of colorblindness may persist even with successful implementation of the forthcoming human trials, some researchers speculate that the human brain could potentially make adjustments in order to counteract the color loss.

Source: complex.com

Mistakes That Hold All Great Ideas Back

Getting backers for your ideas takes energy and creativity. But it also takes a little bit of self-awareness. Sheer volume alone won’t help push your project forward. Success isn’t a numbers game. It’s about developing a feedback mechanism where you learn from each conversation you have and then refine each pitch as you go.

To help you devise that feedback mechanism I’m going to do a deeper dive and share some of the common mistakes people unknowingly make and 7 strategies that will help you overcome them. I’ve tested these strategies out with engineers who were looking to lead projects, founders who were looking to raise money from investors, and even entry-level employees looking to get their first job!

1. It’s not about you. I’ve noticed that many people just sit down and start talking about themselves, and what they need. They don’t take the time to thank the other person for their time, and get to know what their interests are. Start by giving the other person 3-5 minutes. Let them speak and share their background.

Here’s a simple script you can use:

“Thanks for taking the time to meet with me. Before I dive into telling you about myself and what I’m working on, I’d like to get to know. I know you’ve done a lot, but I’d like to know what your current interests are and what you’re working on?”

This may lead them off-topic, but it will clear their mind. You’ll notice that they’ll put their cell phone down and that they’ll pause to reflect and then speak. They’ll open up to you, because you asked them to. They’ll also tell you something you can use to persuade them: what matters to them and what doesn’t.

2. Talk vision, not skills. Pitches are about possibilities. I’ve come across many engineers who say, “Oh I’m a Ruby on Rails developer.” Instantly the person on the other ends think, “Oh too bad I was looking for a Python developer, moving on…” The engineer should have instead said, “I’m a backend engineer, who has built web applications for growth stage startups. I pick up new frameworks pretty quickly. In fact, here’s an example of a time I had to learn iOS within a weekend for a hackathon…”

3. Offer unique expertise. If you are a domain expert, highlight that, and give clear examples. Think about your own experiences and how that has led to you have a particular expertise.

I just met with a founder yesterday, who told me that everyone on his founding team had worked for at least one of the competitors. Talk about unfair advantage!

And if, after reflection, you find you truly don’t have any unique expertise to offer, consider this your wakeup call. Go out and find something that only you can offer so you – and your ideas – are truly irreplaceable.

4. Build trust. I cannot emphasize this point enough. People are concerned about their ass being on the line if they back you in any capacity: hiring, financing your idea, even working with or for you. So you need to take the time to mitigate any concerns they have about risk.

Luckily, trust is built in a number of ways. You can have a set of referral customers, highlight where you went to school, past employers who are reputable, tell them about awards you’ve received and showcase things you’ve built. Even writing and speaking builds trust.

My best backers show up to a meeting or call having googled me, read a post, or watched one of my YouTube videos. They already have a solid impression of me before I’m in front of them!

5. Call out the competition. If you’re doing something that everyone else is doing that is OK. It’s not about being original, it’s about how you’re better than the other person, and better also means highlighting how you’re different.

For example, when I was hiring an editor last year for my first book, I met with a handful of editors. Most told me: I do grammar edits, I cost $75/hour, and my turnaround time is usually 48 hours.

The editor that I ended up hiring took the time to tell me how she was different. She explained her process, she asked me questions about my audience, and she even gave me a sample edit of a chapter so I could get a taste of what the finished product would look like. It was a no-brainer for me to choose to hire her versus the pool of candidates who all sounded the same.

6. Plan – but experiment, too. Clear visions are important, but you also need to bring it down to reality. Show how you are going execute. It’s OK to present people with a plan, and make it specific, and acknowledge how that plan might evolve or change. It shows great foresight.

7. Explain the urgency.  Don’t end the meeting wishy washy. Tell them why you need their backing now, not five years from now. When someone isn’t interested, ask for intros for others. Just because they aren’t interested doesn’t mean their friends won’t be.

I had an investor who once didn’t understand my space, he referred me to his friend. His friend was psyched after our meeting, invested, and then convinced the original investor to put in capital along with another. Interesting things happen when you ask.

8. Practice, Practice, Practice. If they aren’t asking to follow up or asking insightful questions, then they aren’t interested. This is not a sign of failure. This is another step closer to your turning point. You edge closer with each request as long as you stay self-aware and read their cues. Ask for feedback, process it and address what you think is relevant to future meetings. Commitment to this strategy will help bring your project to life.

Source:  Poornima Vijayashanker (Founder of Femgineer)

High-tech vest that could protect workers and rescue personnel from highway hazards

Researchers hope to cut roadside dangers by using ever-shrinking radio sensors, GPS tracking, and connected vehicle technology to link highway workers to an alert network. 

Working at a construction site is loud, dirty, and often dangerous. Roadside construction workers deal with the added risk of being struck by car or truck as it passes through a work zone, its driver unaware or ignoring flags, cones, or other warnings.

Fatalities happen: 579 people were killed in highway work-zone related incidents in 2013, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association.

Virginia Tech researchers want to cut that statistic by combining ever-shrinking radio sensors that construction workers can wear on or inside vests with connected vehicle technology that allows cars to "talk" to one another, roadside infrastructure, and personal electronics such as mobile phones.

The idea: If a collision is about to occur between a vehicle and a worker, the vest can warn the worker in a matter of seconds, thus saving a life. Likewise, the motorist will receive a dashboard notification. The instantaneous alert is possible by short-range communication.

"Any warning we can give them is better than no warning at all," said Kristen Hines of Clarksville, Tennessee, and a doctoral student with the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who is helping lead the combined effort of the College of Engineering and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.

The InZoneAlert vest has seen numerous changes in its design and intended use. As of 2014, the vest portion of the alert system -- which incorporates GPS tracking -- had evolved from that of a backpack-sized apparatus to the size of a cell phone. New incarnations could shrink it to the size of a pack of gum.

The vest or similar clothing with GPS-oriented dedicated short-range radio could have wide-ranging uses.

"There are a lot of roadside workers who are not necessarily on construction sites who could benefit from such a warning," said Tom Martin, a professor with the College of Engineering who researches "smart" clothing -- that is, wearable items with woven-in electronic components that can provide data such as a person's movements. "There are folks monitoring the status of interstates, policemen [and] first responders. Anyone who has to be out on the interstate with passing vehicles could benefit from an individualized warning."

Martin started the effort in 2013 with then-doctoral student Jason Forsyth, who graduated in 2015 with a doctorate in computer engineering and is on faculty at York College in Pennsylvania.

The team wants to make the InZoneAlert vest user-friendly, part of a worker's established uniform or equipment. The alert itself also must be distinct but not jarring.

"We don't want to add to their cognitive load," said Martin. "We don't want to give them false alarms. We just want to give them a few seconds notice to know that someone is coming toward them and then give them a chance to get out of the way."

In early tests of the InZoneAlert system, Martin said predictions for potential vehicle-worker conflicts met a 90 percent success rate.

Various alerts are being tested and must work within a loud, tough, dirty, and busy construction site.

"One possible way to get over that challenge is to use other things that the worker is using," said Hines. "Let's take the hearing protection for example. The auditory alert could be placed inside of the hearing protection in a work zone, which means that it can always be heard over everything. Another possible way is to include other alerting methods, such as tactile alerts that use a person's sense of touch. This ranges from vibrations or your clothing suddenly shrinking on you [or] cuffs compressing."

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute will test the vest in real-world demonstrations that involve highway-speed traffic. The institute already is spearheading work on vehicle-to-vehicle to vehicle-to-infrastructure communication at the Virginia Smart Road in Blacksburg, as well as the Interstate 64 corridor near Fairfax, Virginia. Closed-course tests would occur on the Smart Road.

"We have been simulating the concept in demos done on the Smart Road along with other applications such as animal detection, collision avoidance, etc.," said Andy Alden, a researcher with the institute.

Funding for the project has so far comes from inside the College of Engineering, transportation institute, and Virginia Tech's Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, the latter of which Martin is associate director. The researchers are seeking support from the federal and Virginia units of the Department of Transportation.

"Roadside deaths are a major problem and the advent of connected vehicle [technology] has opened up new opportunities for a technical solution that will save lives," said Alden, adding that with proper investment, the vest could start appearing along highways within five years.

Source:Virginia Tech 2015 

3D Computer Cursors could navigate Virtual Worlds

Forget everything you thought you knew about computer cursors. Researchers have come up with a way to turn cursors into a tool that can navigate around 3D space.

Conventional pointers that are controlled with a trackpad and show up as a tiny arrow on a screen will soon be outdated, according to scientists at the University of Montreal in Canada. They have created a way to turn smartphones, tablets or anything with an interactive surface, into a translucent so-called "controlling plane" to select and manipulate objects in a 3D world.

This futuristic technology could play an integral role in how virtual reality software responds to how users move in real life. The 3D cursor was unveiled earlier this month at the SIGGRAPH 2015 Conference, held from Aug. 9 to 13 in Los Angeles.

Traditionally, a mouse and a cursor are confined to a screen "like a jail," said study lead researcher Tomás Dorta, a professor at the University of Montreal's School of Design. "It's the kind of interaction which has to evolve," he told Live Science.

The high-tech cursor developed by Dorta and his colleagues can select objects in the 3D virtual world. Instead of clicking on icons to select things with a trackpad or mouse, the screen of a smartphone or tablet becomes the trackpad itself and produces a translucent plane on the screen that responds to all kinds of movements.

"If I have this cup," Dorta said, picking up a coffee mug. "When it's selected, it's like I have it in my hand."

The controlling plane appears on the screen, which can enlarge or decrease an object when the user pinches or expands it using their fingers. It twists and tilts when the device does and users can also copy and paste with it. In tests so far, the researchers were able to select chairs and tables in a building and organs inside a large, to-scale skeleton image on the screen.

At the moment, the cursor technology can be demonstrated using Hyve3D technology, which is an immersive design system that visualizes 3D sketches on a screen in front of the user. The screen is also collaborative, so people can link their devices to the same software and work together on a project. Contributors can look at the same space from different angles using their various devices, each accessing and manipulating it separately. 

"You can navigate together … working together in the same computer," Dorta said. "Everything 3D, everything collaborative, because the 3D cursor becomes our avatar."

Dorta said potential uses for a collaborative, 3D technology range from interior and architectural design to the development of virtual reality computer games. If phones or a tablets can become 3D cursors, then the ultimate goal is for users to access the same program or desktop as their colleagues, wherever they are, he said.

Eventually, this type of cursor technology could be available for operating systems like Windows and Mac OS, Dorta said. This could enable people to access each other’s desktops and see the files and applications on there in 3D, rather than through a window. Dorta thinks people are currently restricted by the window format on computers, and a 3D version of a desktop would make people’s computer interactions easier. Sending a file also won't require a USB or an online folder — you would just need to swoop at it with your phone to "grab" it and it'll be saved to your device, Dorta said.

Source: livescience.com

2015 Shell Nigeria LiveWIRE Youth Enterprise Development Programme.

Shell LiveWIRE is a social investment programme that aims to help young Nigerians explore the option of starting their own business as a real and viable career option.


Application Deadline: September 14th 2015

Link:  http://www.livewire-nigeria.org/home/application-form

African Innovations Award 2016 for Africa’s Innovative Thinkers ($USD25,000 Prize)

The African Innovations Award identifies and rewards Africa’s innovative thinkers between the ages of 18 - 40 in the Science &Technology, Healthcare, Education, Energy and Agriculture sector.
 
Application Deadline: November 30 2015

Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1lLU8l153KtYu6MoNOgl8vNNYImBktddof4i-yABCqTM/viewform?c=0&w=1

To get girls more interested in computer science, make classrooms less 'geeky'

A new study of 270 high school students shows that three times as many girls were interested in enrolling in a computer science class if the classroom was redesigned to be less "geeky" and more inviting.

The results, by University of Washington researchers, reveal a practical way for teachers to help narrow the gender gap in computer science by helping girls feel that they belong.
"Our findings show that classroom design matters -- it can transmit stereotypes to high school students about who belongs and who doesn't in computer science," said lead author Allison Master, a post-doctoral researcher at the UW's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS).
The Journal of Educational Psychology published the study online August 17.
"This is the earliest age we've looked at to study stereotypes about computer science," Master said. "It's a key age group for recruitment into this field, because girls in their later adolescence are starting to focus on their career options and aspirations."

Co-authors of the paper are Sapna Cheryan, a UW associate professor of psychology, and Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of I-LABS. The National Science Foundation funded the research.
"Identity and a sense of belonging are important for adolescents," Meltzoff said. "Our approach reveals a new way to draw girls into pipeline courses. It is intriguing that the learning environment plays such a significant role in engaging high school girls in computer science."
In the study, high school boys and girls (aged 14 to 18 years) completed questions about:

• Their interest in enrolling in a computer science class
• Their sense of belonging in a computer science class
• How much they thought they personally "fit" the computer science stereotype

Then, the UW team showed the students photos of two different computer science classrooms decorated with objects that represented either the "geeky" computer science stereotype, including computer parts and "Star Trek" posters, or a non-stereotypical classroom containing items such as art and nature pictures.
Students had to say which classroom they preferred, and then answered questions about their interest in enrolling in a computer science course and their thoughts and feelings about computer science and stereotypes.

Girls (68 percent) were more likely than boys (48 percent) to prefer the non-stereotypical classroom. And girls were almost three times more likely to say they would be interested in enrolling in a computer science course if the classroom looked like the non-stereotypical one.
Boys didn't prefer one classroom's physical environment over the other, and how the classroom looked didn't change boys' level of interest in computer science.
"Stereotypes make girls feel like they don't fit with computer science," Master said. "That's a barrier that isn't there for boys. Girls have to worry about an extra level of belonging that boys don't have to grapple with."

Previously the UW team reported that inaccurate negative cultural stereotypes about computer science deterred college-age women from the field and that altering stereotypes can increase girls' interest.
The researchers say that changing computer science stereotypes to make more students feel welcome in high school classrooms would help recruit more girls to the field, which has one of the lowest percentages of women among STEM fields.
"Our new study suggests that if schools and teachers feel they can't recruit girls into their computer science classes," Master said, "they should make sure that the classrooms avoid stereotypes and communicate to students that everyone is welcome and belongs."

Source: University of Washington

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