NEWS POST: Fed Up With Costly, Dirty Fuels, Nigerians Switch To Cleaner Alternatives

Moving from fossil fuels to cleaner energy for cooking - and solar energy for lighting - has gained momentum in parts of northern Nigeria through groups like Solar Sister. Image source: Joanna Pinneo, Ripple Effect Images, Solar Sister

For Rhoda Tanko, preparing dishes of okra or egusi soup in her small shack was a daily ordeal spent battling the dizzying, toxic black fumes spewed out by her charcoal stove.

"Every time I had to cook for my family, I knew I had to deal with smoke that made my head feel heavy and my eyes swim," Tanko, a 38-year-old mother of four, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the central Nigerian town of Jengre.

Her home's energy needs were costly too: oil-rich Nigeria's unreliable power supply meant she had little choice but to spend a large part of the family's income on firewood, charcoal and kerosene. But that changed earlier this year when, with help from her local cooperative, Tanko bought a new, cleaner-burning stove.

The stove, which cost ₦10,500 (US$34), was provided by Solar Sister, a non-profit that operates in Nigeria as well as in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The charity helps women entrepreneurs sell clean-energy consumer products such as solar lamps and a stove that minimizes emissions by trapping most of the smoke fumes within its aluminium combustion chamber.

A more efficient stove means fewer trees are felled for firewood, said Hanatu Onogu, Solar Sister's business development manager in northern Nigeria. "Because people use less charcoal and firewood for more cooking, it saves resources. In the long run, it reduces the rate of deforestation and conserves energy," Onogu said.

Over the past two years, about 4,500 of these stoves have been sold in Nigeria alone, according to Solar Sister. Tanko, who is one of several hundred women in her area testing out the stove, said it had made a big difference. "It cooks food faster and it doesn't consume much charcoal. Before, a bag of charcoal would not last one month, but now it's been four months and this bag is not finished yet," she said, pointing at a half-empty sack.

Dirty Fuels

Worldwide, more than three billion people use traditional, solid fuels like charcoal, firewood and dung to cook, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And each year nearly four million people, most of them women and girls, die from the effects of these dirty, climate-changing cooking fuels, the WHO says, in part due to inefficient stoves and poorly ventilated homes.

A lack of access to cleaner energy supplies is a problem in Nigeria too - despite the fact that the country of 180 million people is Africa's biggest oil producer. Fuel shortages are common, with its 445,000 barrel-per-day refining system operating well below capacity due to mismanagement and lack of investment, forcing the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to import most of its gasoline.

The country has set a target of expanding electricity access to 75% of the population by 2020 and 90% by 2030.

Solar Sisters bring connectivity to rural families with solar phone chargers. Image: Solar Sister

Meantime, the supply remains unreliable: January saw six power outages in eight days as the national grid repeatedly collapsed, plunging most of the country into darkness. That burden falls harder on Nigerians in rural areas, where just one in four people are connected to the national grid, according to campaign group Power for All, which promotes decentralized, renewable energy, and which funds Solar Sister.

Moving from fossil fuels to cleaner energy for cooking - and solar energy for lighting - has gained momentum in parts of northern Nigeria through groups like Solar Sister.

The non-profit assists low-income families like Tanko's to switch by offering the option to pay in installments. It also provides customer support and raises awareness about the benefits of clean energy.

Lights On

A lack of access to a reliable supply of electricity means many families in Nigeria - and across Africa - use kerosene for lighting, a fuel that experts say is polluting, dirty and bad for human health.

It is also relatively expensive: switching to solar could cut the amount that families in Africa spend on lighting to just 2% of their household income - down from 9%- according to a 2016 report by the Overseas Development Institute, a think-tank based in the United Kingdom.

Using a solar-powered lamp means 28-year-old Nafisa Abubakar can avoid the dangers of kerosene and the inconvenience of blackouts. Sitting in her small shack, she flicked a switch, and a solar lamp lit up her home.

Abubakar could not have done that with confidence six years ago, even though her home was connected to the national utility, known then as NEPA. "Our light was very inconsistent. Sometimes for two months straight the light would not even turn on," Abubakar said in Hausa via a translator. We were using NEPA light. Then one day the transformer blew up and it was not repaired until a year later. So we have been using the (Solar Sister) lamp for five years now," she said.

As day turned to night, Abubakar and her husband watched television while their two sons finished their homework under the radiant light of the solar lamp. "We are happy for this light that we have," she said.

Solar Sister says nearly 48,000 solar products have been sold in Nigeria since 2015 - be they phone-charging units, household lights or lamps. And for Abubakar, the lamp has become more than a household convenience: these days she sells solar lights for a living.

Power for All, the campaign group, said the products allowed people to live safer, healthier lives and to save money.

"We are even happier for the women who use them and have built sustainable micro-enterprises selling them, as it has brightened the chances of ending energy poverty," said the group's Nigeria spokesman Mark Amaza.

Originally published on THOMPSON REUTERS FOUNDATION

NEWS POST: Egyptian Students Build One-Person Vehicle To Battle Rising Energy Prices And Promote Clean Energy

The undergraduate students, who built the vehicle as part of their graduation project, are rolling out a prototype one-person vehicle that runs on compressed oxygen

A group of Egyptian students have built a one-person vehicle designed to battle rising energy prices and promote clean energy by running on nothing but air. The undergraduate students created the go-kart as part of their graduation project.

According to the creators, the vehicle can hit 25 mph (40km/h) and has a range of 19 miles (30km) before it needs to be refuelled with more compressed oxygen. However, the students are sure they will eventually get the vehicle to top 62 mph (100km/h) and run for 62 miles (100 kilometres) with future prototypes. 

The vehicle only costs some 18,000 Egyptian pounds (£780/ US$1,000) to build.

A group of Egyptian students has designed a vehicle they say will battle rising energy prices and promote clean energy by running on nothing but air. The undergraduates who built the machine are studying at Helwan University, found just outside Cairo.

The go-kart-like vehicle comes as Egypt pushes ahead with painful economic reforms that include deep cuts to energy subsidies

'The operational cost of the vehicle... will be almost nothing. You are basically using compressed air. You are not paying for fuel and also you do not need cooling,' said Mahmoud Yasser, a student who helped design it.

●Undergraduate students designed and built the prototype one-person vehicle ●The oxygen-powered go-kart vehicle costs just £780 to build ●Students who designed the car are from Helwan University, outside of Cairo ●It comes as Egypt pushes ahead with painful economic reforms ●These measures are tied to a three-year $12 billion (£9bn) IMF loan programme

The team is now looking to raise funding to expand the project and mass produce the vehicles.

They believe they can eventually get the vehicles to top 62mph (100km/h) an hour and run for 62 miles (100 kilometres) before needing to come up for more air. The undergraduate students, who built the vehicle as part of their graduation project, are rolling out a prototype one-person vehicle that runs on compressed oxygen. Students say their vehicle can hit 25 mph (40km/h) and last 19 miles (30km) before needing to be refuelled.

The vehicle only cost about 18,000 Egyptian pounds (£780/ US$1,000) to build. The team is now looking to raise funding to expand the project and mass produce the vehicles.

According to the creators, the vehicle can hit 25 mph (40km/h) and has a range of 19 miles (30km) before it needs to be refuelled with more compressed oxygen.

The go-kart-like vehicle comes as Egypt pushes ahead with painful economic reforms that include deep cuts to energy subsidies. These measures are tied to a three-year US$12 billion (£9bn) IMF loan programme it began in late 2016.

Originally published on REUTERS

NEWS POST: Polygenic Risk Scoring – Inexpensive Test Measures Risk Of Developing Five Life-Threatening Diseases Based On DNA

The researchers gathered data from large-scale genome-wide association studies to identify genetic variants associated with each disease, and combined information from all of the variants into a single "polygenic risk test." Credit: Lauren Solomon

A research team reports a new kind of genome analysis that could identify large fractions of the population who have a much higher risk of developing serious common diseases, including coronary artery disease, breast cancer, or type 2 diabetes. These tests, which use information from millions of places in the genome to ascertain risk for five diseases, can flag greater likelihood of developing the potentially fatal conditions well before any symptoms appear.

A research team at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and Harvard Medical School reports a new kind of genome analysis that could identify large fractions of the population who have a much higher risk of developing serious common diseases, including coronary artery disease, breast cancer, or type 2 diabetes.

These tests, which use information from millions of places in the genome to ascertain risk for five diseases, can flag greater likelihood of developing the potentially fatal conditions well before any symptoms appear. While the study was conducted with data from the UK, it suggests that up to 25 million people in the US may be at more than triple the normal risk for coronary artery disease, and millions more may be at similar elevated risk for the other conditions, based on genetic variation alone. The genomic information could allow physicians to focus particular attention on these individuals, perhaps enabling early interventions to prevent disease.

The research raises important questions about how this method, called polygenic risk scoring, should be further developed and used in the medical system. In addition, the authors note that the genetic tests are largely based on information from individuals of European descent, and the results underscore the need for larger studies of other ethnic groups to ensure equity. The study appears in Nature Genetics.

"We've known for long time that there are people out there at high risk for disease based just on their overall genetic variation," said senior author Sekar Kathiresan, an institute member and director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the Broad Institute, as well as director of the Centre for Genomic Medicine at MGH and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Now, we're able to measure that risk using genomic data in a meaningful way. From a public health perspective, we need to identify these higher-risk segments of the population so we can provide appropriate care."

Kathiresan led the work with first authors Amit V. Khera, a cardiologist at MGH and junior faculty member in Kathiresan's lab, and Mark Chaffin, a computational biologist also in Kathiresan's lab.

To develop the algorithms for scoring disease risk, the researchers first gathered data from large-scale genome-wide association studies to identify genetic variants associated with coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, or breast cancer. For each disease, they applied a computational algorithm to combine information from all of the variants — most of which individually have an extremely small impact on risk — into a single number, or polygenic risk score. This number could be used to predict a person's chances of getting these diseases based on his or her genome.

The team tested and validated the polygenic risk score algorithms on data from over 400,000 individuals in the UK Biobank, an extensive database of genomic data and medical information from participants of British ancestry.

Importantly, according to Khera, the people with high polygenic risk scores for coronary artery disease did not necessarily exhibit other warning signs of disease risk (such as hypertension or high cholesterol).

"These individuals, who are at several times the normal risk for having a heart attack just because of the additive effects of many variations, are mostly flying under the radar," he explained. "If they came into my clinical practice, I wouldn't be able to pick them out as high risk with our standard metrics. There's a real need to identify these cases so we can target screening and treatments more effectively, and this approach gives us a potential way forward."

Researchers Predict Risk For Common Deadly Diseases From Millions Of Genetic Variants

Here's how the score worked for coronary artery disease: The algorithm pored over more than 6.6 million locations in the genome to estimate a person's risk of developing the deadly disease, which is the most common type of heart disease and a leading cause of death for adults in the United States. Of the individuals in the UK Biobank dataset, 8 percent were more than three times as likely to develop the disease compared to everyone else, based on their genetic variation. In absolute terms, only 0.8 percent of individuals with the very lowest polygenic risk scores had coronary artery disease, as compared to 11 percent for the people with the top scores.

For breast cancer, a leading cause of malignancy-related death in women, the polygenic predictor found that 1.5 percent of the UK Biobank population had more than triple the risk for having the disease when compared to everyone else. Those with the very highest polygenic risk scores had five times the risk — meaning, in absolute terms, that 19% of people with the top scores had breast cancer, versus about 4% of the remaining individuals. The researchers applied a similar approach to polygenic risk scoring for type 2 diabetes, atrial fibrillation, and inflammatory bowel disease.

To develop polygenic risk scoring tests for other common diseases, the team notes that additional research will be necessary to collect genome-wide association data and validate the scores with reference biobanks. In addition, the current polygenic risk calculations are largely derived from genetic studies done in people of European ancestry — so more studies are needed to optimize the algorithms for other ethnic groups.

Nevertheless, the researchers propose that it is time for the biomedical community to consider including this approach in clinical care. To do this, a number of factors need to be considered, such as: whether the disease has a genetic component; if the disease is prevalent enough in the general population to make screening worth incorporating into routine clinical care; and if knowing the genetic risk for a disease would be useful in guiding care to offset this inherited risk.

"Ultimately, this is a new type of genetic risk factor," said Kathiresan. "We envision polygenic risk scores as a way to identify people at high or low risk for a disease, perhaps as early as birth, and then use that information to target interventions — either lifestyle modifications or treatments — to prevent disease. For heart attack, I foresee that each patient will have the opportunity to know his or her polygenic risk number in the near future, similar to way they can know their cholesterol number right now."

Originally published on SCIENCE DAILY

NEWS POST: How Anki Wants To Put A Robot In Every Home

Vector is a robot for grownups

A future where every home contains a robotic assistant is possible if the robots themselves have personality and emotion, a leading firm in the field has said.

San Francisco-based robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) firm Anki recently announced its second mobile robot designed to interact with users around the home.

The small bot, called Vector, is capable of responding to voice queries and commands in a similar fashion to virtual assistants such as Alexa, but has also been built with input from animators to ensure it has character and personality in its interactions.

Anki co-founder and chief product officer Mark Palatucci said the company’s aim is to create robots that can interact with humans in a deeper way and almost become part of the family as a result.

“This has been our goal from the beginning – how do we build robots for the home? Ones that useful – they’re not just for fun or entertainment – they’re actually doing something that helps people around the house,” he told the Press Association.

“But then also how do they do it in a way where it’s not just utility but it can add an emotional aspect that this robot could really become a member of the family? For example a lot of the bond that you have with a pet – how can we take that kind of emotion and psychology and build it into a physical machine and ultimately create better user experiences?

“Humans communicate in an emotive way, we understand people not just through language but also through emotions and facial expressions. We think that’s how people should communicate with technology. It shouldn’t just be taps and swipes and clicks, but rather the technology or the robot should understand you speaking in natural language and sentences.”

Vector is due to go on sale later this year and will be fully autonomous and able to return itself to its charging station, as well as use its built-in microphones and camera to recognize faces and voices as it learns.

Anki believes this robot is well-positioned to offer users the gateway to the next generation of home robots.

It will be connected to the cloud, enabling Anki to push various updates and improvements to the device, but also help with some processing when it comes to answering queries.

But Mr Palatucci says it is the manner of Vector’s responses that make it stand out from existing virtual assistants, and could change how people interact with robots.

“We’re not trying to compete with Alexa or Google Home, but at the same time, if you think about the state-of-the-art virtual assistant you realise that we’re really just scratching the surface. Typically with virtual assistants there’s no character, there’s no emotion, there’s very little personality and you get these very stoic responses,” he said.

“And if you think about the future and where this kind of technology is going, it’s funny because many people have almost a fear of AI and there’s been a lot of news media – sometimes a lot of misinformation – sci-fi books and films that often create this dystopian future and we’re trying to think very differently about that.

“We’re trying to create a different future, a friendly future where robots are not taking people’s jobs or a threat to humanity but rather they’re additive. They’re fun, they’re engaging and ultimately they do something useful. They’re doing it in a way where you could have an emotional bond or affinity for this type of character and that’s really the direction we’ve been on and what we’re trying to do with this product.”

He added that placing such a device in people’s homes also meant taking a serious approach to security.

“I think everyone at the company recognized the enormous responsibility that we had as a company when you have a microphone and a camera on wheels inside someone’s most trusted space,” he said.

Vector will be connected to the cloud, enabling Anki to push various updates and improvements to the device, but also help with some processing when it comes to answering queries

None of the audio or visual content gathered by Vector is ever stored in the cloud by Anki, with audio deleted once it has been analyzed to help complete queries, while visual content never leaves the robot, Mr Palatucci said.

“You only get one shot at this and if you blow it, it’s hard to get back people’s trust. If you’re going to welcome a robot into your home – your most trusted space – you’ve got to nail it.”

Originally published on PRESS ASSOCIATION/DAILY MAIL WIRES and TECH CRUNCH