afrikanwomen: Professor Tebello Nyokong is a researcher of a ground-breaking cancer diagnosis and treatment. Born in 1951 in Lesotho, this South African Professor has achieved international acclaim for her groundbreaking work in harnessing light for cancer therapy and environmental clean-ups. She is currently undertaking research on a new cancer diagnosis and treatment methodology called ‘photo-dynamic therapy’, which is intended as an alternative to chemotherapy. Through her international reputation, Professor Nyokong has contributed considerably to enhancing the reputation of South African science. Many international scientists have been drawn by her work to visit South Africa, and her laboratory has hosted postdoctoral candidates from around the world. In 2009 Professor Nyokong won the Africa-Arab State L’Oréal-Unesco Award for Women in Science and was named by UNESCO as one of the world’s top five exceptional women scientists. In addition to working on photo-dynamic therapy, Professor Tebello Nyokong, continues to train chemists, particularly women, in the skills needed to keep South Africa at the cutting edge of scientific development. “I work very hard and do not give up easily even when things are tough. I tend to take setbacks in my life as a way of working even harder. I actually get challenged by doing the ‘impossible.”  (—source)

afrikanwomen:

Professor Tebello Nyokong is a researcher of a ground-breaking cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Born in 1951 in Lesotho, this South African Professor has achieved international acclaim for her groundbreaking work in harnessing light for cancer therapy and environmental clean-ups.

She is currently undertaking research on a new cancer diagnosis and treatment methodology called ‘photo-dynamic therapy’, which is intended as an alternative to chemotherapy.

Through her international reputation, Professor Nyokong has contributed considerably to enhancing the reputation of South African science. Many international scientists have been drawn by her work to visit South Africa, and her laboratory has hosted postdoctoral candidates from around the world.

In 2009 Professor Nyokong won the Africa-Arab State L’Oréal-Unesco Award for Women in Science and was named by UNESCO as one of the world’s top five exceptional women scientists.

In addition to working on photo-dynamic therapy, Professor Tebello Nyokong, continues to train chemists, particularly women, in the skills needed to keep South Africa at the cutting edge of scientific development.

“I work very hard and do not give up easily even when things are tough. I tend to take setbacks in my life as a way of working even harder. I actually get challenged by doing the ‘impossible.” 

(—source)
nok-ind: World’s languages traced back to single African mother tongue: scientists. New Zealand researchers have traced every human language — from English to Mandarin — back to an ancestral language spoken in Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. Scientists say they have traced the world’s 6,000 modern languages — from English to Mandarin — back to a single “mother tongue,” an ancestral language spoken in Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. New research, published in the journal Science, suggests this single ancient language resulted in human civilization — a Diaspora — as well as advances in art and hunting tool technology, and laid the groundwork for all the world’s cultures. The research, by Quentin Atkinson from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, also found that speech evolved far earlier than previously thought. And the findings implied, though did not prove, that modern language originated only once, an issue of controversy among linguists, according to the New York Times. Before Atkinson came up with the evidence for a single African origin of language, some scientists had argued that language evolved independently in different parts of the world. Atkinson found that the first populations migrating from Africa laid the groundwork for all the world’s cultures by taking their single language with them. “It was the catalyst that spurred the human expansion that we all are a product of,” Atkinson said, the Wall Street Journal reported. Atkinson traced the number distinct sounds, or phonemes — consonants, vowels and tones — in 504 world languages, finding compelling evidence that they can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors, according to the Daily Mail. Atkinson also hypothesized that languages with the most sounds would be the oldest, while those spoken by smaller breakaway groups would utilize fewer sounds as variation and complexity diminished. The study found that some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, or sounds, whereas Hawaiian, toward the far end of the human migration route out of Africa, has only 13, the Times reported. English has about 45 phonemes. The phoneme pattern mirrors the pattern of human genetic diversity as humans spread across the globe from sub-Saharan Africa around 70,000 years ago. Source: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business-tech/science/110415/language-science-linguistics-mother-tongue-english-chinese-mandarin-africa

nok-ind:

World’s languages traced back to single African mother tongue: scientists.

New Zealand researchers have traced every human language — from English to Mandarin — back to an ancestral language spoken in Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago.

Scientists say they have traced the world’s 6,000 modern languages — from English to Mandarin — back to a single “mother tongue,” an ancestral language spoken in Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago.

New research, published in the journal Science, suggests this single ancient language resulted in human civilization — a Diaspora — as well as advances in art and hunting tool technology, and laid the groundwork for all the world’s cultures.

The research, by Quentin Atkinson from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, also found that speech evolved far earlier than previously thought. And the findings implied, though did not prove, that modern language originated only once, an issue of controversy among linguists, according to the New York Times.

Before Atkinson came up with the evidence for a single African origin of language, some scientists had argued that language evolved independently in different parts of the world.

Atkinson found that the first populations migrating from Africa laid the groundwork for all the world’s cultures by taking their single language with them. “It was the catalyst that spurred the human expansion that we all are a product of,” Atkinson said, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Atkinson traced the number distinct sounds, or phonemes — consonants, vowels and tones — in 504 world languages, finding compelling evidence that they can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors, according to the Daily Mail.

Atkinson also hypothesized that languages with the most sounds would be the oldest, while those spoken by smaller breakaway groups would utilize fewer sounds as variation and complexity diminished.

The study found that some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, or sounds, whereas Hawaiian, toward the far end of the human migration route out of Africa, has only 13, the Times reported. English has about 45 phonemes.

The phoneme pattern mirrors the pattern of human genetic diversity as humans spread across the globe from sub-Saharan Africa around 70,000 years ago.

Source: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business-tech/science/110415/language-science-linguistics-mother-tongue-english-chinese-mandarin-africa

(via b-sama)

Women Scientists Honored At Pan African University Launch

fyeahafrica:

Several of Africa’s top women scientists have been honored at ceremonies to mark the founding of a new Pan African University. 

The Kwame Nkrumah Science Awards for 2011 went to seven women for outstanding achievements and valuable scientific discoveries. The annual prize carries with it a $20,000 check and a silver medal.

Etheresia Pretorius of South Africa won for electron microscopy research into inflammations within the human body.  She calls microscopy an open field because it’s an older technique, often overlooked by scientists looking for something more exciting to investigate.

“I try to use the techniques of microscopy to find something new, something that might be used as a screening tool, a cheap screening tool used to detect disease long before it’s visible in the human,” Pretorius said.

Pretorius tells VOA she plans to use a large part of her prize money to give orphan girls in her home town a chance to explore possible careers in science. “We’ve got a lot of orphan girls, and there’s an orphanage not very far from my hometown, Pretoria, and I thought myself and my husband would like to contribute to a girl, [a] woman, to come up and study something, some way,” she said.

Other winners include Rose Gana Fomban Leke of Cameroon for her groundbreaking research on prevention of malaria and other parasitic infections, and Ebtehal El-Demerdash of Egypt, for  research on modern drugs used in treating forms of cancer most resistant to chemotherapy.

(continue reading)

(Source: )

typicalugandan:

Building an African Space Programme from the ground up:

After Makerere University unveiled its locally assembled electric car, the Kiira EV, another group of Ugandans continues with yet another innovative venture- that of assembling the country’s first aircraft. The group that started out a year ago has now progressed and is in the final stages of putting up the aero-plane.

Standing in the yard of his mother’s home in a suburb of the Ugandan capital, Chris Nsamba maps out his dream — within the next ten years, the space enthusiast wants to launch one of his countrymen into orbit.

Nsamba, founder of the African Space Research Program, outlined his plans to Agence France-Presse as he showed off the African Skyhawk, an aircraft built by his team of volunteer engineers to test their skills before they begin work on a shuttle. Nsamba is well aware of the skepticism with which many will greet his plans, but it does not seem to affect him. At one time or another, he says, every successful scientist has been called a madman.

(via typicalugandan)

Young Chemist Seeks Answers in Traditional Medicine

Johannesburg — When Justin Omolo was growing up in Tanzania, he preferred Western medical clinics to African traditional healers. “I was the only one in my family who didn’t believe in all the traditional cures,” he said. “I guess I wanted proof.”

Now this young African organic chemist is looking for that proof as he conducts research for his PhD on plants used by Tanzanian traditional healers to treat HIV.

Omolo’s research is supported by the Science Initiative Group (SIG), which aims to foster science in developing countries. Based at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, SIG is governed by a board that includes scientists from developing countries, leading U.S. scientists and an entrepreneur, and is supported by the Carnegie Corporation and the Mellon and Packard foundations. SIG’s chief focus is an initiative supporting PhD and MSc-level students in sub-Saharan Africa called the Regional Initiative in Science and Education (RISE).

It is through RISE that Omolo has been able to study potential drugs to combat HIV/Aids. His PhD research was inspired by reports from Tanzania’s northeastern Tanga region that HIV-positive people who consulted traditional healers responded well to treatment with indigenous plants.

“People said that you drink just one cup of this medicine (made from local plants) and your condition improved,” Omolo said. “Doctors at the local hospitals heard about it, too. They said that these people were living as much as 10 years longer than expected.”

The Tanzanian government sent researchers to probe these reports and test the plants for toxicity. Once they proved non-toxic, the Tanga Aids Working Group (TAWG) was founded to investigate the effect of these indigenous plants on HIV. Medical doctors and scientists from the National Institute of Medical Research and the Institute of Traditional Medicine at the University of Muhimbili have joined forces with Dutch and Indian research organizations.

As part of this international effort, Omolo has travelled from the University of Dar es Salaam to South Africa, where he is conducting further research on these plants for his PhD in organic chemistry. The RISE program links graduate students such as Omolo into various networks relating to their specific fields of science.

Omolo is part of the RISE network known as SABINA, Southern African Biochemistry and Informatics for Natural Products, which aims to harness the power of southern Africa’s biodiversity to increase capacity in natural products research. This kind of innovative networking in chemistry and biochemistry among universities in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) aims to contribute to development goals around food security, public health and value-added exports.

Two major South African universities, Witwatersrand and Pretoria, and South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are SABINA partner institutions. Omolo is conducting his PhD research at Johannesburg’s “Wits” University, with support from CSIR. These institutions act as a back-stop to his home university in Tanzania, which has far less resources and expertise.

“In order to do my research, I prepare the plants the way the traditional healers do, boiling the stems, bark, leaves and tubers,” Omolo said enthusiastically. His studies have found chemical compounds in the plants that act against HIV, which targets the T4 cells that are vital to the body’s immune system. The hope is that a drug made from these plants can stop HIV from binding with the T4 cells, thus allowing them to do their job of fighting infections.

Why synthesise a drug in a lab when the plants in their natural environment have been shown to do the job of fighting HIV? Omolo’s supervisor, University of the Witwatersrand chemistry professor Charles de Konig, said that if the plants were to be harvested in Tanzania, it could require a ton of plant material to produce a few milligrams of the active ingredient.

On the other hand, the laboratory can replicate the required climate and soil conditions and make synthetic versions of the plants far more efficiently. Another issue is that SABINA doesn’t endorse the pillaging of a natural healer’s source, which is something that pharmaceutical companies had been accused of doing.

The names of these plants are not being publicly revealed because Omolo’s efforts to identify and synthesise the active anti-HIV compounds could eventually lead to the patenting of an anti-HIV drug. But that’s all in the future - his immediate goal is to finish writing up his research findings by the end of this year, so that he can return to teach at his university in Tanzania as Dr. Justin Omolo.

South African Scientists Find Green Method to Purify Toxic Water

South African scientists have developed an environmentally friendly method to clean highly toxic water and convert it into drinkable water. Once available commercially, the method could drastically reduce the negative impact industry has on water pollution worldwide.

Called eutectic freeze crystallisation, the technique freezes acidic water - or brine - to produce potable or drinking water as well as useful salts, such as sodium and calcium sulphate.

Alison Lewis, professor for chemical engineering at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, who has led the research since 2007, claims 99.9 percent of the polluted water can be reused after applying the new technique. Unlike other water cleaning methods, it practically doesn’t produce any toxic waste.

“It’s an environmentally friendly and cost-effective technology that can be used pretty much in all industrial sectors that pollute water and thus produce brine,” explains Lewis. This includes sectors like mining, the oil and gas industry, chemical industry, paper processing or sewerage.

The simultaneous separation and purification method is based on bringing the contaminated water temperature down to reach its eutectic point - the lowest possible temperature of solidification. At this point, toxins crystallise to form salts and sink to the ground, while the clean water turns into ice, floating on the surface.

“By its nature, ice is the purest form of water because it repels any impurities. It’s actually very simple,” explains Lewis. “The method is ecologically significant because it can turn toxic waste into a useful product.”

Industrial firms in South Africa, but also in Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia have already expressed interest in the new approach, she says.

The water purification method has also received support from the South African Water Research Commission. “Eutectic freeze crystallisation is a brilliant water recycling method that is superior to all existing methods for cleaning toxic water,” confirms the commission’s research manager Dr. Jo Burgess.

Up until now, industrially polluted water is purified using two methods: the brine is either stored in huge evaporation ponds, which bring the danger of ground water pollution, or through an evaporation- based crystallisation method, that uses huge amounts of electricity. Eutectic freeze crystallisation, however, uses six times less electricity than the conventional evaporation method, says Lewis.

“In addition, both existing methods leave toxic waste products behind and are therefore not ecologically sustainable,” notes Burgess. Conventional methods produce poisonous solids, the accumulation of all toxins in the brine, that then need to be disposed of correctly.

Eutectic freeze crystallisation, in contrast, produces 99 percent usable products - clean water and pure salts. “It is therefore completely environmentally friendly,” says Lewis. She points out that companies can make additional revenue from selling those salts, hoping this will be an additional incentive to use the new method.

Continue reading here…

Today, the market-driven model is dominant in African universities. The consultancy culture it has nurtured has had negative consequences for postgraduate education and research. Consultants presume that research is all about finding answers to problems defined by a client. They think of research as finding answers, not as formulating a problem. The consultancy culture is institutionalized through short courses in research methodology, courses that teach students a set of tools to gather and process quantitative information, from which to cull answers.

Today, intellectual life in universities has been reduced to bare-bones classroom activity. Extra-curricular seminars and workshops have migrated to hotels. Workshop attendance goes with transport allowances and per diem. All this is part of a larger process, the NGO-ization of the university. Academic papers have turned into coporate-style power point presentations. Academics read less and less. A chorus of buzz words have taken the place of lively debates.

Mahmood Mamdani discussing the importance of research in African universities.

(via Pambazuka News)

Africa Monitor- Wariness toward science impedes research and development By G. Pascal Zachary Skepticism about the value of scientific inquiry abounds in many parts of Africa, fed by four related forces: -Afro-centrism, or the belief that African sources of knowledge have been unfairly downgraded in comparison with Western knowledge -fervent Christianity, especially evangelical movements who insist that faith is more important than rationality -the persistent hold of “juju,” of magical thinking, on the behavior of Africans at all levels of society -romanticization of “indigenous” knowledge by Western scholars studying bio-diversity and medicine in Africa Anti-science attitudes to Africa stand behind seemingly unrelated developments: -the repeated insistence by Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s former president, that Western scientists have failed to explain the cause of HIV-AIDS -the widespread practice by rural Africans, and many wealthy city dwellers, of eating “bushmeat,” or wild animals, despite growing concerns that serious diseases – perhaps even Ebola and AIDS itself – are transmitted through such dietary habits -the resistance in northern Nigeria against innoculating children against diseases such as TB -in several African countries, “traditional healers” have received government sanction, giving them some of the same state legitimacy provided to nurses and doctors. The large numbers of highly educated people who move to Europe and the US and lack of social and financial support for scientists in most African countries means that there are few voices defending science in political and media debates in the region. The most passionate defenders of science often are foreigners and thus anti-science attitudes are fueled by resentments against outsiders. To be sure, South Africa remains an outlier: the technoscientific establishment is robust in the country (as I’ve shown in a recent article), but political demands for more social and economic relevance from research highlight the tensions between the grassroots and elites in South Africa. Aid donors and educators from Europe and the US often argue that improving African science is simply a matter of supplying more inputs: get more of the diaspora scientists to return to their home countries, spend more on higher education, provide more funds for scientific research, forge more links between scientists in Europe and the US and African scientists. More inputs into African science will help, of course, but much less than proponents expect. Anti-science attitudes in Africa are deeply rooted, and they are worsening in some ways because of the rise of pandemics and evangelical Christianity and the continuing political and moral appeal of Afro-centrism. The anti-science movement in Africa displays curious parallels with a similar movement in the US. This suggests that merely dismissing science skeptics in Africa as irrational or irrelevant won’t work. These science skeptics must be understood on their own terms. And the case for greater financial investment in research and development in Africa must be made convincingly in political, economic and moral terms. That greater benefits to African societies will result simply from more spending on more R&D should not be presumed but rather demonstrated.

Africa Monitor- Wariness toward science impedes research and development

By G. Pascal Zachary

Skepticism about the value of scientific inquiry abounds in many parts of Africa, fed by four related forces:

-Afro-centrism, or the belief that African sources of knowledge have been unfairly downgraded in comparison with Western knowledge
-fervent Christianity, especially evangelical movements who insist that faith is more important than rationality
-the persistent hold of “juju,” of magical thinking, on the behavior of Africans at all levels of society
-romanticization of “indigenous” knowledge by Western scholars studying bio-diversity and medicine in Africa

Anti-science attitudes to Africa stand behind seemingly unrelated developments:

-the repeated insistence by Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s former president, that Western scientists have failed to explain the cause of HIV-AIDS
-the widespread practice by rural Africans, and many wealthy city dwellers, of eating “bushmeat,” or wild animals, despite growing concerns that serious diseases – perhaps even Ebola and AIDS itself – are transmitted through such dietary habits
-the resistance in northern Nigeria against innoculating children against diseases such as TB
-in several African countries, “traditional healers” have received government sanction, giving them some of the same state legitimacy provided to nurses and doctors.

The large numbers of highly educated people who move to Europe and the US and lack of social and financial support for scientists in most African countries means that there are few voices defending science in political and media debates in the region. The most passionate defenders of science often are foreigners and thus anti-science attitudes are fueled by resentments against outsiders.

To be sure, South Africa remains an outlier: the technoscientific establishment is robust in the country (as I’ve shown in a recent article), but political demands for more social and economic relevance from research highlight the tensions between the grassroots and elites in South Africa.

Aid donors and educators from Europe and the US often argue that improving African science is simply a matter of supplying more inputs: get more of the diaspora scientists to return to their home countries, spend more on higher education, provide more funds for scientific research, forge more links between scientists in Europe and the US and African scientists.

More inputs into African science will help, of course, but much less than proponents expect. Anti-science attitudes in Africa are deeply rooted, and they are worsening in some ways because of the rise of pandemics and evangelical Christianity and the continuing political and moral appeal of Afro-centrism.

The anti-science movement in Africa displays curious parallels with a similar movement in the US. This suggests that merely dismissing science skeptics in Africa as irrational or irrelevant won’t work. These science skeptics must be understood on their own terms. And the case for greater financial investment in research and development in Africa must be made convincingly in political, economic and moral terms. That greater benefits to African societies will result simply from more spending on more R&D should not be presumed but rather demonstrated.

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