Thursday, 13 December 2012

Crown prince of sprint?

12 year-old James Gallaugher. See him go

Sunday, 7 October 2012

Rape again? Penisectomy is the answer

 
I keep saying that penisectomy is the answer to rape in Nigeria, but it seems nobody is listening to me! How long will we allow the tame laws on rape to continue without deterring anybody?
Will banishment deter anybody from committing 'sweet' rape?
 

Resourcefulness!

If this ain't resourcefulness, I don't know what else is: mobile video and audio shop complete with I-pass-my-neighbour power supply!


Sunday, 30 September 2012

MTN Nigeria's Greek gift

Beware of MTN Nigeria's Greek gift  

Have you been patronizing MTN Nigeria to get bonus advertised as a WOW OFFER? Well, it is a Greek gift, and MTN Nigeria has probably been chopping your money at a higher rate than you are aware of. This wow offer is supposed to reward you with 100 per cent bonus credit when you recharge during the weekend, starting Friday. And yes, you are immediately notified by SMS that you have 100 per cent bonus airtime to be used up by midnight on Sunday. That appears fine; problem is you can't use this bonus credit until you have used up the credit in your main account. If you didn't know this, chances are you would start calling to use your bonus airtime, but it is your main account that gets depleted. Unless you are a very reckless caller or the recharge amount is not much, you will not be able to access this bonus credit until it expires on Sunday. Can an organization be any more fraudulent?

I was not surprised to find this out this weekend. And yes, as a good number of people believe, MTN Nigeria is the most fraudulent organization on the face of planet earth. See the message I got Saturday evening after making several short calls; there was no bonus airtime from anywhere!

Yes, this type of fraud can only be on MTN!
What should we do? Teach them a lesson, of course:

1.    Let other people know that this promotion, as with most other MTN Nigeria promotional offers, is sheer FRAUD,
2.    Don't participate in this fraudulent nonsense anymore, and
3.    Don't use MTN unless you have to; if you have more than one phone, use the one that is not MTN.

It's high time we let fraudulent organizations know that we can teach them a lesson!

Greek gift
A gift given with the intention of tricking and causing harm to the recipient

Wednesday, 26 September 2012

Awolowo Institute of Government and Public Policy, and the Awo Museum at Lekki, Lagos

Chief Obafemi Awolowo, our deceased sage, was detained in a house in Lekki, in present day Ibeju Lekki LGA, Lagos. The bungalow has since been turned into a museum, while an adjoining house serves as the little known Awolowo Institute of Government and Public Policy. On 14 August 2012, I was privileged to pay a flying visit to the institution, which ought to be a better known tourist attraction and resource centre, or a full fledged library dedicated to the study of governance.  

Take a tour of the institution.
Awolowo Institute of Government and Public Policy, and the Awo Museum at Lekki, Lagos
Layout of the institution
The remains of the mattress on the bed he used
The sitting room, which now houses memorabilia from the Awo era
The reading table Awolowo used and some of his clothes in the wardrobe he used
Some of the books with which he passed time during the months in detention

Bronze bust of the late sage




Anthonia Bakare, my escort
The WC in the toilet he used
Bath in the bathroom

Fear can be erased from the brain

Newly formed emotional memories can be erased from the human brain. This is shown by researchers from Uppsala University in a new study now being published by the academic journal Science. The findings may represent a breakthrough in research on memory and fear.

Thomas Ã…gren, a doctoral candidate at the Department of Psychology under the supervision of Professors Mats Fredrikson and Tomas Furmark, has shown, that it is possible to erase newly formed emotional memories from the human brain.

When a person learns something, a lasting long-term memory is created with the aid of a process of consolidation, which is based on the formation of proteins. When we remember something, the memory becomes unstable for a while and is then restabilized by another consolidation process. In other words, it can be said that we are not remembering what originally happened, but rather what we remembered the last time we thought about what happened. By disrupting the reconsolidation process that follows upon remembering, we can affect the content of memory.

In the study the researchers showed subjects a neutral picture and simultaneously administered an electric shock. In this way the picture came to elicit fear in the subjects which meant a fear memory had been formed. In order to activate this fear memory, the picture was then shown without any accompanying shock. For one experimental group the reconsolidation process was disrupted with the aid of repeated presentations of the picture. For a control group, the reconsolidation process was allowed to complete before the subjects were shown the same repeated presentations of the picture.

In that the experimental group was not allowed to reconsolidate the fear memory, the fear they previously associated with the picture dissipated. In other words, by disrupting the reconsolidation process, the memory was rendered neutral and no longer incited fear. At the same time, using a MR-scanner, the researchers were able to show that the traces of that memory also disappeared from the part of the brain that normally stores fearful memories, the nuclear group of amygdala in the temporal lobe.

‘These findings may be a breakthrough in research on memory and fear. Ultimately the new findings may lead to improved treatment methods for the millions of people in the world who suffer from anxiety issues like phobias, post-traumatic stress, and panic attacks,’ says Thomas Ã…gren.

Tuesday, 18 September 2012

Joint pissing in public




Guys relieving themselves in public--on the roadsides, anywhere, anytime--is a common sight in Nigeria these days. But joint pissing in public facing whoever cares to see... Are we going crazy?!

Tuesday, 11 September 2012

Nigerians, a happy people?

It is said that Nigerians are top on the list of the world's happiest people . Perhaps so. Indeed it is probably so, but most likely because our population is made up of multitudes of insane people. And this is so clear on the roads, where in our daily rage we shoot ourselves and others in the feet, doing those things that will clearly not serve our interests if our desire were the pursuit of true happiness.

Let me take you through some roads in Abuja and Lagos so you can see for yourself what insanity rules our land.


This is the right side of the fly-over bridge at the Lugbe Interchange on Umaru Yar'Adua Expressway (Abuja Airport Road). This side of the road is for out-bound vehicles from Lugbe, not in-bound. But many motorists coming into Lugbe FHA Estate from an estate on the other side of the airport road, or from the direction of the Abuja airport ignore the risk of taking this route rather than u-turn at the foot of the interchange to take the correct route, an action that will add not more than one minute to the trip. Men of the FRSC (Federal Road Safety Corps) know this, but they come to enforce the road safety laws only at predictable times--in the early morning, and late afternoon. In between, the lawless have a field day.
Another motorist, apparently in a hurry.
And another one.
City Gate on the same Umaru Yar'Adua Expressway: You can learn to drive while carrying outsize cargo, and the traffic wardens at the City Gate Roundabout will just wave you on.
Still on the same expressway, you can chat, read SMS and make calls while driving



Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Oil and gas

The more gray matter you have, the more altruistic you are


Why are some people very selfish and others very altruistic? Previous studies indicated that social categories like gender, income or education can hardly explain differences in altruistic behavior. Recent neuroscience studies have demonstrated that differences in brain structure might be linked to differences in personality traits and abilities. Now, for the first time, a team of researchers from the University of Zurich headed by Ernst Fehr, Director of the Department of Economics, show that there is a connection between brain anatomy and altruistic behavior.

11 July 2012 University of Zurich

The volume of a small brain region influences one’s predisposition for altruistic behavior. Researchers from the University of Zurich show that people who behave more altruistically than others have more gray matter at the junction between the parietal and temporal lobe, thus showing for the first time that there is a connection between brain anatomy, brain activity and altruistic behavior.
To investigate whether differences in altruistic behavior have neurobiological causes, volunteers were to divide money between themselves and an anonymous other person. The participants always had the option of sacrificing a certain portion of the money for the benefit of the other person. Such a sacrifice can be deemed altruistic because it helps someone else at one’s own expense. The researchers found major differences in this respect: Some participants were almost never willing to sacrifice money to benefit others while others behaved very altruistically.

More gray matter

The brain
The aim of the study, however, was to find out why there are such differences. Previous studies had shown that a certain region of the brain – the place where the parietal and temporal lobes meet – is linked to the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes in order to understand their thoughts and feelings. Altruism is probably closely related to this ability. Consequently, the researchers suspected that individual differences in this part of the brain might be linked to differences in altruistic behavior. And, according to Yosuke Morishima, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich, they were right: “People who behaved more altruistically also had a higher proportion of gray matter at the junction between the parietal and temporal lobes.”

Differences in brain activity

The participants in the study also displayed marked differences in brain activity while they were deciding how to split up the money. In the case of selfish people, the small brain region behind the ear is already active when the cost of altruistic behavior is very low. In altruistic people, however, this brain region only becomes more active when the cost is very high. The brain region is thus activated especially strongly when people reach the limits of their willingness to behave altruistically. The reason, the researchers suspect, is that this is when there is the greatest need to overcome man’s natural self-centeredness by activating this brain region.

Ernst Fehr adds: “These are exciting results for us. However, one should not jump to the conclusion that altruistic behavior is determined by biological factors alone.” The volume of gray matter is also influenced by social processes. According to Fehr, the findings therefore raise the fascinating question as to whether it is possible to promote the development of brain regions that are important for altruistic behavior through appropriate training or social norms.

Attached files

  • The junction (yellow) between the parietal and the temporal lobes, in which the relative proportion of gray matter is significantly positively correlated with the propensity for altruistic behavior.

Wednesday, 13 June 2012

Multi-million pound new national supercomputer to perform astronomical feats

The University of Leicester has been awarded funding to establish a multi-million pound national supercomputer which will make it possible to study space in unprecedented detail and provide new insights into the history of the Universe.
It will allow astronomers to address some of the most challenging problems in physics and astronomy -such as What is dark matter? How do stars form? And why do galaxies always have black holes at their centres?”
The University of Leicester has been selected as one of four sites to host national high performance computing (HPC) facilities for theoretical astrophysics and particle physics research. Funding for the new facility was announced in late 2011 by David Willetts as part of the Dept. for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) e-infrastructure budget.
The facility will be managed by IT Services at the University of Leicester in collaboration with the Department of Physics & Astronomy. The University is further supporting the project by investing in a major upgrade of its data centre to host the new facility. Hewlett-Packard was recently selected as the supplier of the new computer system which will be used to run state-of-the-art simulations.
Dr Mark Wilkinson from the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the University of Leicester is the principal scientist for the project. He said: “This is incredibly exciting news. We will now be able to carry out the largest and most detailed simulations of planets, stars and galaxies that have ever been performed and answer questions that we could not even have asked just a few years ago.”
A supercomputer
Dr Chris Rudge, head of the Research Computing Services team at the University of Leicester who will manage the new facility said “This is a terrific opportunity for Leicester. It confirms our reputation as a major national provider of HPC for scientific research, and it enables us to showcase our cutting-edge technological solutions that minimise the environmental impact of large-scale computing facilities.”
Once operational, the machine will be part of the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) DiRAC facility. The DiRAC consortium, of which the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the University of Leicester are founder members, provides HPC facilities for top UK research institutes in particle physics and astronomy. “The unique feature of DiRAC is that researchers have access to four national facilities, each of which use different computing architectures designed to attack specific science problems.”
University of Leicester astronomers are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new facility which will be commissioned over the summer, and will immediately be put to work on some of the most challenging problems in physics and astronomy.
Professor Andrew King, head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the University of Leicester said: “Leicester has a well-established reputation at the forefront of theoretical astrophysics world-wide and this will secure our position as a major international research centre for computational astrophysics..”
The Head of the College of Science & Engineering, Professor Martin Barstow, added: “In securing this award, the University of Leicester have once again shown that they can compete at the very top level.”
As well as providing new insights into the history of the Universe, this facility will also be used to train the next generation of young researchers in the use of the latest computer technology which is at the core of the UK knowledge economy. Professor Kevin Schurer, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise said: “This excellent achievement is the latest success for the University of Leicester’s policy of providing a fruitful and stimulating environment for cutting-edge research.”
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, Professor Sir Robert Burgess expressed the University’s support for the project: “I am delighted with this news, which confirms Leicester’s leading status among research-intensive Universities. It is the result of excellent work by my colleagues.”

Attached files
  • Simulation of a galaxy-wide outflow breaking up to form stars. The supermassive black hole at the centre of this galaxy is swallowing large amounts of gas; the gas radiates and pushes the surrounding material outwards in a large-scale outflow. The outflow is unable to escape the galaxy, however, but instead breaks apart into dense clumps, seen as bright knots in the web of filaments. Stars form vigorously in these knots, building the galaxy with the help of a black hole at its core. Figure taken from Nayakshin & Zubovas (in preparation)

  • A simulation showing the result of a short period of activity in the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy. Six million years ago, the black hole swallowed a large amount of gas and blasted the material surrounding it with intense radiation. The radiation pressure created an outflow, which could escape the Galaxy in the directions perpendicular to the Galactic plane. The figure shows one such bubble; the black hole is at the bottom of the figure in the middle, and the Galactic plane runs along the bottom edge of the figure. The left hand side of the plot shows gas density, with brighter colours representing denser regions, and you can see the temperature on the right with a similar scaling. The bubble, after expanding for six million years, now closely resembles the Fermi bubbles recently discovered by the Fermi gamma-ray telescope. Figure taken from Zubovas & Nayakshin (2012, MNRAS in press)

Source: http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=120835&CultureCode=en