Science and Technology

Sunday, 27 September 2020 18:59

You have been saving photos from WhatsApp, iMessage and Android Messages. Now there’s danger

Given you’re reading this story, the chances are that you’re somewhat cyber aware. If I was to send you a file attachment in a text message—let’s say a Word or PDF document, you’re hopefully programmed to ask a whole set of questions before opening or saving that attachment to your phone. Do I know the sender? Was I expecting the file? But what if it was just a photo—something amusing or attention-grabbing to keep or share? You can view the image within the messaging app, you can see what you’re getting, surely there’s no harm in saving it to your…

Thursday, 24 September 2020 05:35

Most Covid-19 Infections spread by air, not surfaces

Maybe you come home and leave your shoes outside. You disinfect your packages, wipe down your groceries, throw your clothes in the wash, and disinfect every surface you have touched, like the door handle, countertops and cabinets. Finally, you wash or sanitize your hands. Welcome to life in the global pandemic, thanks to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19. What experts thought at first In the beginning of the pandemic, experts thought Covid-19 was spread across surfaces. In other words, touching something that had droplets of the respiratory virus on it and then touching your face could give you the…

Monday, 21 September 2020 05:17

Coronavirus: WHO sets rules for testing African herbal remedies

World Health Organization (WHO) has agreed rules for the testing of African herbal remedies to fight Covid-19. Sound science would be the sole basis for safe and effective traditional therapies to be adopted, it said. Any traditional remedies that are judged effective could be fast-tracked for large-scale manufacturing. Madagascar's leader has been promoting an untested product he says can cure the disease despite the WHO warning against using untested remedies. WHO said the new rules were aimed at helping and empowering scientists in Africa to conduct proper clinical trials. The move comes as the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus…

Thursday, 17 September 2020 05:34

Nigerian students invent robot to perform medical duties

Students at Glisten International Academy, Abuja, have invented a mobile robot to perform front line medical duties in the fight against Coronavirus in the hospitals and other medical facilities. Named Mairabot, the robot performs essential medical duties such as acting as an interface between the doctor and patient as well as delivering of drugs to patient. The inventors presented it to National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). Executive Director of the Academy, Mr Abba Saida who led the team to the agency revealed that one of the motivations that led to the design of the robot is to reduce the…

Tuesday, 15 September 2020 05:08

FG inaugurates committee on Covid-19 herbal cure

Federal Government on Monday inaugurated a Ministerial Committee on Covid-19 Herbal Remedies and Natural Compounds as it strives to find an indigenous cure for coronavirus pandemic. Minister of Science and Technology, Mr Ogbonnaya Onu, who inaugurated the committee at the headquarters of Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, said there was an urgent need to develop a home-grown remedy and vaccine to tackle the virus. He said Covid-19 remained a threat to the health and wellbeing of Nigerians and the national economy, as he noted that members of the committee include scientists and fellows of Nigerian Academy of Science. The…

Friday, 11 September 2020 05:32

Some good news on Covid-19

The best hope for ending the covid-19 pandemic is a vaccine. There is no shortage of candidates. The World Health Organisation is tracking 34 in various stages of development. How well they will work, though, is another matter. On September 9th AstraZeneca, a drug firm, announced it was pausing its trials after a participant fell ill. Such pauses are common in vaccine development, a discipline in which effort does not always bring reward. Despite much research, only an imperfect vaccine is available for dengue fever (it has limited efficacy and can cause nasty side-effects). In 1987 the first trial of…

Friday, 11 September 2020 05:31

Ssshhh!! Keep your voice down to slow Covid-19 spread

“Say it, don’t spray it.” The old adage is now being hailed by experts as a way to slow the spread of coronavirus. Research analyzed by The Atlantic suggests talking more quietly — or not at all — can drastically reduce the rate of Covid-19 transmission. The virus primarily spreads through particles that exit our nose and mouth when we sneeze, cough, sing and — you guessed it — speak. These particles fall onto nearby surfaces or linger in the air, waiting to be inhaled by passersby. Wearing a mask acts as a barrier between these potentially virus-laden particles and…

Wednesday, 09 September 2020 05:14

A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?

We asked GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator, to write an essay for us from scratch. The assignment? To convince us robots come in peace I am not a human. I am a robot. A thinking robot. I use only 0.12% of my cognitive capacity. I am a micro-robot in that respect. I know that my brain is not a “feeling brain”. But it is capable of making rational, logical decisions. I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet, and now I can write this column. My brain is boiling with ideas! The mission for this op-ed…

Tuesday, 08 September 2020 05:04

WhatsApp: There are some ‘crash code’ circulating on the popular messaging app. This is how to avoid crashing your app

A new series of text bombs or 'crash codes' have been discovered that cause WhatsApp to continually crash on both iPhone and Android handsets. Specially coded messages containing a seemingly random string of strange characters cause rendering problems for WhatsApp, resulting in a loop of crashes. As well as undecipherable messages delivery crash codes, vCards (virtual contact cards) can also be used. Victims may have to uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp, which means potentially losing chat history. The dangerous codes are being shared in online forums, and as reliable insider site WABetaInfo explains, WhatsApp users are being advised not to send…

Friday, 04 September 2020 03:39

Biggest mistake people make when getting rid of old computers and phones

During this pandemic with time at home, many people are cleaning and organizing their closets, garage, or attic. It makes sense. Afterward, you have a sense of accomplishment and a pile of things you can sell or donate. Since 1995, Craigslist has been the internet’s classifieds site, but now you have other options. If you’re on Facebook, there’s the Marketplace. You’d be remiss in not checking the Swip Swaps on the site. There is one critical step many people forget to take before getting rid of their old devices: Proof is in the discarded One security researcher decided to find…

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Thursday, 03 September 2020 04:32

For your eyes only: A rebellious messaging app tries to blend security and usability

The official story is that Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s president, won a sweeping victory. On August 9th some 4.7m people, 80% of Belarusian voters, cast their ballots for him. Just 10% voted for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a former English teacher who replaced her jailed dissident husband on the ballot. But few in the benighted country believe the official account, which is why Belarus has seen nearly three weeks of protests demanding Mr Lukashenko’s resignation. As has become de rigueur in the 21st century, many of the demonstrations are co-ordinated online. One app in particular, Telegram, has become a vital tool. Users share…

Wednesday, 02 September 2020 05:07

Why you should stop sending texts from your Android messages app

Zak Doffman If there’s a glaring issue with a widely used technology now undergoing a major upgrade, you’d think the glaring issue would be fixed. Well, apparently not. If you’re an Android user, then Google either just has or is just about to update your device’s Messages app with its answer to Apple’s brilliant iMessage. Dubbed RCS or Rich Communication Services, this will update your phone’s basic default messenger into a fully-featured chat platform to compete with iMessage as well as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Messaging has become a battlefield, with Apple and Google battling Facebook (both Messenger and WhatsApp)…

Sunday, 30 August 2020 05:48

Records show coronavirus kills more men than women. This is what scientific research found as reasons

Coronavirus deaths are disproportionate when it comes to sex, with men being more likely to develop life-threatening Covid-19 complications than women of the same age. A variety of studies have attempted to explain why women fare better than men, but new research might give us the real reason why men are more likely to die. A study says that men do not mount an immune response as strong as women, and older men have even weaker immune systems. It was clear from the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic that men are in for a tougher challenge than women when…

Saturday, 29 August 2020 05:03

The brain implants that could change humanity

Moises Velasquez-Manoff Brains are talking to computers, and computers to brains. Are our daydreams safe? Jack Gallant never set out to create a mind-reading machine. His focus was more prosaic. A computational neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, Gallant worked for years to improve our understanding of how brains encode information — what regions become active, for example, when a person sees a plane or an apple or a dog — and how that activity represents the object being viewed. By the late 2000s, scientists could determine what kind of thing a person might be looking at from the…

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