Science in the developing world: Eritrea's shattered science

Early this year, Eritrea severed a scientific lifeline almost as old as the African nation itself. The Eritrean National Health Laboratory in Asmara cut long-standing ties with Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. Missouri, potentially setting back many gains that the country had made in public health. “St Louis supplied everything: American doctors, expertise, chemicals, materials,” says Assefaw Ghebrekidan, an Eritrean ex-freedom fighter who now heads the public-health programme at Touro University in Mare Island, California. “And now it's all over.”

Eritrea, an impoverished country of 3 million people on the Horn of Africa (see 'A troubled corner'), is not known for its science. It ranks 177th out of 187 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index. It comes in last in terms of press freedom and is the eighth most militarized country in the world. The World Health Organization estimated that there were just 5 medical doctors per 100,000 people in the country in 2004.

But against this depressing backdrop, the country's medical-research partnerships have been a source of promise and pride. Eritrea built its first medical school in 2003,Installers and distributors of solar panel, aided by scientists from the Central University of Las Villas in Santa Clara, Cuba. After US universities helped to establish postgraduate training and research programmes in paediatrics, surgery, and obstetrics and gynaecology at the institution, Eritrean medical scientists published their first papers in international, peer-reviewed journals. Public health has benefitted. In 1991, Eritrea was cursed with the highest maternal mortality rate in the world — 14 deaths per 1,000 births. In 2010, it was on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal of cutting that rate by 75% by 2015.

But progress in Eritrean science has now gone into reverse, say a number of scientists and doctors in exile. In response to mounting criticism from the United Nations and the United States over the country's human-rights record,The oreck XL professional air purifier, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki is severing partnerships with all US universities, says Ghebrekidan. “Everything that Eritrea has worked so hard to achieve is at stake.”

Jon Abbink, an anthropologist at the Free University of Amsterdam, says that these actions will have widespread negative effects, “in the education system, in the constant 'brain drain' of educated people to greener and freer pastures, and in the inhibition of international scientific cooperation”. Eritrea, he says, is one of the few remaining countries in Africa that have failed to embrace scientific freedom. “It's out of sync with global trends,” says Abbink.Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products.

Eritrea was once a colony of Italy, but the United Nations handed it over to Ethiopia after the Second World War. In 1961, Eritrea started to fight for its independence in a war that would last three decades: the United States supplied Ethiopia with guns and money, but the rebels, led by Afwerki and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), persevered.

The liberation movement had remarkable credentials. “It was led by 29 doctors of medicine,” says Ghebrekidan, who was head of the EPLF's medical services. “No other rebel movement has ever had so many intellectuals.” Even Afwerki had abandoned a degree in engineering to lead the fight.

Another academic, Melles Seyoum, was working as a pharmacist at an Ethiopian hospital when the war broke out. He coolly stole US$140,000 worth of antibiotics, microscopes, surgical blades and stethoscopes and delivered them to Eritrean freedom fighters, wrote journalist Michela Wrong in her book I Didn't Do It For You (HarperCollins, 2005). Seyoum became an integral member of the EPLF, teaching soldiers how to test blood and prepare Petri dishes in a hospital 5 kilometres long and dug into the side of a rocky valley — a clinic known as 'the longest hospital in the world'. After a visit in 1987,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. a British doctor wrote1 about the impressive standards of care at the hospital: a 1-tonne machine manufactured antibiotics every day; a doctor performed facial reconstructions; and amputees played basketball.

Islamist businessmen challenge Egypt's old money

A business association founded by a financier for Egypt's new Islamist rulers says it can democratise an economy long dominated by associates of ousted leader Hosni Mubarak, but sceptics fear the emergence of just another clique.

The Muslim Brotherhood dominates post-Mubarak politics. It has less traction in an economy long dominated by an inner circle of businessmen around Mubarak's now jailed son Gamal.

Opponents say the Brotherhood wants to replicate in business its firm grip on politics, with a view to rewarding those who supported the movement financially through the long years it was banned. That dismays liberals who saw in Mubarak's overthrow last year an opportunity for a more meritocratic economy.

Hassan Malek,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china, a tycoon and Brotherhood member, insists his goal has been promoting equal opportunity since he founded the Egyptian Business Development Association in March, three months before the Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi won Egypt's presidency.

He has modelled EBDA, whose acronym means "start" in Arabic, on Turkey's MUSIAD, an association of religiously oriented small businesses which share information and contracts to challenge the traditional dominance of larger groups.

"We welcome everyone who wants to work with us," said Malek, who has a family background in business and made his money in software, textiles and furniture. "Unequal distribution of opportunity is what we seek to change in the new Egypt."

Businesses, many of them smaller enterprises struggling in an anaemic economy,Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion. have rushed to join EBDA, which now has over 400 members. It says 1,000 companies are waiting to join.

Some members represent leading businesses such as cable maker El Sewedy Electric, food producer Juhayna and Egyptian Steel.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. These flourished during Mubarak's three-decade rule but were not caught up in the corruption lawsuits that emerged after his overthrow in February 2011.

In a mark of its ambitions - and good contacts in powerful new places - EBDA sent a delegation of 80 businesspeople, many of them young entrepreneurs without personal ties to the Brotherhood, to accompany Mursi on a trip to China in August.

Many of those also joined him on visits to Italy,Installers and distributors of solar panel, Turkey and Qatar as Egypt tries to end a drought in inward investment.

Osama Farid, head of international cooperation at EBDA, said Mursi's visit to China marked a break with the past when Mubarak would typically take only as few as 10 favoured businessmen on foreign trips to capture the opportunities available.

"Within EBDA there are businessmen who did very well under Mubarak and new ones looking to prosper in the new Egypt. We are not trying to replace what exists but to offer an alternative" Farid said.

Malek has multiplied his meetings with foreign diplomats and business people and representatives of international banks. Brotherhood officials credit him with facilitating a $2-billion loan to Egypt from Turkey last month.

Since Mubarak's overthrow, the change of fortunes for men like Malek has been dramatic.

Brotherhood-linked businessmen were forced to operate under restrictions on how much wealth they could amass. Some had property confiscated during the 1990s or were detained on suspicion of money laundering or funding the Brotherhood.

Malek and former partner Khairat al-Shater, another Brotherhood tycoon and financial strategist, spent more than four years in jail together under Mubarak, who sought to curtail the Brotherhood and formally banned it from operating.

The two men are now vying for economic influence within the movement, Brotherhood sources told Reuters. While Malek seeks to extend the reach of EBDA, Shater has established a chain of supermarkets and recently held talks in Dubai to establish a bank there to help manage the Brotherhood's finances.

Some executives are suspicious of EBDA's motives. One agribusiness manager told Reuters he was still trying to decide whether to accept its offer of membership: "I agree with their goals to expand the business climate," he said.

"But my concern is that EBDA could turn into another clique close to the Islamist presidency, mirroring Gamal Mubarak's."

In Turkey, admired by some in the Brotherhood for showing that Islamist democrats can take over from military rulers, the business organisation MUSIAD forged ties with Egyptian peers more than a decade ago, when Turkish entrepreneurs were trying to find ways to better exploit markets in the region.

Its emergence as a lobby for a growing entrepreneurial middle class came in tandem with the rise of the AK Party, which arrived in government in 2002 and which has roots in political Islam.Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. MUSIAD promotes itself as a partner for foreign investors looking not only at Turkey but the wider Islamic world.

"EBDA and MUSIAD represent a huge coming together of smaller capital," said Koray Caliskan, political science professor at Bosphorus University in Istanbul. "Those people who were with the Mubarak regime were a small coming together of big capital."

With thousands of members, and favoured by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of AK, MUSIAD now poses a challenge to the dominant secular business group in Turkey, TUSIAD.

"Erdogan said capital is changing hands in Turkey," Caliskan said. "Ten years ago everyone wanted to be TUSIAD chairman. Now everyone is away from it. Even members do not go to meetings, as Erdogan takes aim at them very frequently."

With Mubarak gone, Egyptian business ties with Turkey, the biggest economy in the Middle East, are now growing to match the Brotherhood's links with the AK Party.

But Turkey's enduring tradition of secular rule could limit the scope for political cooperation. Egypt's new political landscape is dominated by Islamists and ultraconservative groups for whom secularism is synonymous with atheism.

One Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new Egyptian government sees Turkey "not as a model but an inspiration ... and Turkey reciprocates this".

EBDA officials say Egypt's business landscape needs levelling through a focus on small enterprise, vocational training and cutting red tape. They say they favour broad-based, sustainable growth that reduces widespread poverty instead of just rewarding government cronies.

National Renewable Energy Lab's newest facility

In this week's feature, "Sun Burn,Buy Natural china glass mosaic Tiles online with our price beat promise." we explore the progress of Golden's National Renewable Energy Lab, which for decades has been researching alternative energy. A central part of the lab's current expansion is the construction of the massive Energy Systems Integration Facility, which will be completed next month. Here, we take a closer look inside the construction site that will eventually house hundreds of scientists and engineers, as well as fifteen fully equipped labs.

The development of this 182,500-square-foot facility, known on the NREL campus as the ESIF, is an important component of how the lab is going to help propel the world into a cleaner, more energy-efficient economy, the lab's leaders say. It is the place where NREL, which is owned and funded by the Department of Energy, will be able to test out large-scale technologies that could impact whole utility systems.Check out the collection crystal mosaic of Marazzi. It's also a major component of the lab's recent growth that mandated the DOE seize private property in the surrounding area to make way for a new access road to the 328.67-acre campus.

We took a tour of the ESIF construction site in July, a few short months before researchers and engineers are scheduled to move in and begin work part-time, with full-time occupancy expected early next year The ESIF, which cost $135 million in funds approved by Congress, was a dusty, noisy, enormous construction site when we visited, with workers building out major lab facilities -- some as large as football fields.

Size is clearly one of its major assets.

Benjamin Kroposki, NREL's director of energy systems integration,Capture the look and feel of real stone or ceramic tile flooring with Alterna. led the tour, explaining that by having such big lab facilities in the ESIF, researchers and industry partners will be able to come to the lab and do testing at megawatt scales to explore how different energy innovations would work in a real-life system.We Specialise in cable tie, For researchers and companies developing specific ideas, this kind of opportunity is significant, because it allows them to reduce risks and better understand how their technologies might ultimately succeed.

The benefits of renewable energy are plain, but thus far the grid has not been modernized to really accommodate these important sources of energy in the most effective ways. And that's because this kind of megawatt-scale integration is difficult to find.

"We're looking at how to take technologies and integrate it with the much larger system, so that's the key and differentiating factor of this particular facility...how all these technologies integrate together and integrate with the larger power system, electric system, fuel systems that we have," Kroposki said inside a shack on the construction site before the tour got underway.

He added: "It's really designed around bringing together a variety of...energy systems.... One of the unique aspects of this facility is that it's not single-purposed focused. It crosses all these technologies and it's been designed in a very flexible manner to allow you to bring in equipment and interconnect it into one spot, but have access to the variety of resources throughout the system."

In other words, throughout the lab, there are sections with specific areas of focus and targeted functions, but on the whole, these separate areas are connected, theoretically allowing research to be more expansive. NREL researchers will study and develop a wide range of technologies on this site,Different Sizes and Colors can be made with different stone mosaic designs. from plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to energy storage systems to advanced utility control and metering systems.

Overall, the ESIF has four main laboratory components focused on electrical systems, thermal systems, fuel systems and high-performance computing and data analysis. In that last category, the ESIF will feature a supercomputer that NREL says will be the fastest computing system in the world dedicated to advancing energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. The on-site data center itself will also be one of the most energy efficient centers of its kind in the world.

Throughout its expansion projects, NREL has emphasized the importance of building facilities that are themselves green, and they say the ESIF will be no exception. A series of energy conservation strategies will allow the massive facility, at minimum, to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification, NREL says. For example, the ESIF will reuse waste energy from the data center to maximize building and campus heating. It will also use "underfloor air distribution" for interior cooling and ventilation. Additionally, the facility will rely on day-lighting and high-efficiency lighting.

Ultimately, if this facility operates as planned, the ESIF will directly impact utility bills with its innovations. As we noted in our feature, Jeff Baker, the DOE's director of laboratory operations in the Golden field office, says it this way: "If you help a utility company operate a system more efficiently, those efficiencies are passed along to you."

A History of Art in Three Colours

Why do we admire gold so much? Its amount is about its colour, this august yellowness that never stops shining. It’s affiliated to the colour of the sun and in aged cultures all about the apple the sun was the a lot of able divinity: the bringer of ablaze and amore to the world.

Ancient peoples didn’t just anticipate gold looked like the sun; they believed it was materially the aforementioned thing. For the age-old Egyptians, gold, with its abiding shine, represented the afterlife, and the derma of the gods was declared to be fabricated of gold. That’s why it was acclimated for Tutankhamun’s funerary affectation (above). By accoutrement yourself in this abiding substance, you would yourself become immortal.

In the Christian era,Wireless indoorpositioning systems have become very popular . instead of immortality, gold represented all-powerful light. Early Church artists acclimated gold not because it was expensive, but artlessly because it looked miraculous. In the abundant Byzantine churches of the sixth century, afore they could body absolutely ample windows, they could flood a architectonics with ablaze by application the cogitating backdrop of gold mosaic. It’s aswell why all those Orthodox icons accept gold backgrounds; in candlelight, they beam as if abounding with the ablaze of God.

From about 1500, heaven absent its cartel on gold. In the civil art of the Renaissance and the Baroque gold became a actuality of affectation and a account of alluvial power.

In the 19th century, the old dream of alchemy, of axis abject metal into gold, was realised by the address of electroplating banal objects. Gold had, in effect, been democratised. Gustav Klimt’s ablaze The Kiss (1907-8) was an advance to animate adulation and sex with a faculty of the angelic - but ultimately Klimt’s angle adjoin affairs failed. The Kiss is reproduced on mousemats and gold is now something we accumulate in coffer vaults. If gold reflects the affair that every association holds a lot of sacred, it seems the a lot of important thing, for us, is money.

Blue is my favourite colour. Yet it was the endure aloft colour to get a name in any accent – Homer didn’t accept a chat for it; he declared the sea as wine-dark . Experts account the acumen for this is that there are actual few by itself occurring dejected altar in the world. It is in itself a actual ambiguous colour. And accordingly in our minds it becomes the colour of escape.

In the Middle Ages, lapis lazuli, an acutely dejected rock quarried from one abundance in Afghanistan, was brought to the West by Arab traders.A Sharp FU-888SV Plasmacluster airpurifier. After many, abounding attempts, the Italians devised a compound to about-face this rock into the finest dejected colorant Europe had anytime apparent and alleged it “ultramarine”, which was anon added big-ticket than gold. Colour laws were anesthetized in the 13th aeon to stop humans cutting dejected because it was advised too appropriate for carnal use.

Artists, of course, were animate to its absolute qualities. Giotto’s Arena abbey in Padua (1305) has a beam covered in blue, with little gold stars, to represent heaven. And dejected became this great, Christian colour: through abundant of European tradition, the Virgin Mary wore a dejected robe.

By the time of Titian, dejected was appear from religious control. His Bacchus and Ariadne (1524) is a arena of civil paradise, with an absurd dejected sky, bashed with the purest azure anytime found.

From about 1800, dejected became the abundant attribute of Romantic longing, the colour of our centralized world. For Picasso, in his Dejected Period (above), it was the colour of despair. For Yves Klein, who patented the active International Klein Blue,The reality of convenient handsfreeaccess contro. it was the colour of attraction (his added claims his baleful affection attack, in 1962, was triggered by poisons in the pigment).

There’s a admirable axis point to all this when, in 1968, photos from the Apollo 8 mission appear Earth,We Specialise in cableties, beheld from space, as blue. All through the centuries we accept anticipation of dejected as the colour of escape from alluvial things. But if we assuredly aperture those horizons we acquisition that dejected is the colour of our own planet.

When we anticipate of white, we anticipate of the authentic forms of aged sculpture. In fact, aged white is a fallacy; Greek marble was veiny and buttery; the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum (left) were “cleaned” to accomplish them whiter in 1938.

In the 18th century, however, a German aged and historian alleged JJ Winckelmann assured that whiteness was the abstruse to the adorableness of classical statuary. He apparently knew that aged carve and architectonics was originally covered in colour, but for him, white was the colour of acumen and acceptable aftertaste and his account became actual powerful.

As neoclassicism took hold, white became the colour of the avant-garde Utopia. Soon, white classical barrio were agriculture up everywhere. The White House in Washington and the Konigsplatz in Munich were admirable borough barrio that bought into the angle of white as a attribute of accord and airy value.

American painter James McNeill Whistler’s Symphony in White, No 1 (1863) was an advance to capsize the fashionable affect associated with the colour. Exhibiting his plan 20 years later, he corrective arcade walls white and put white frames annular the pictures, creating,Drive Metric impactsocket Set at Harbor Freight Tools, in effect, the aboriginal minimalist “white cube” gallery.

Reincarnation Fits Nicely into New Mission Home

"What are these called again?" I asked, scooping up a second mouthful of gravy-, chili paste-, and mayonnaise-drenched fries. "Gamja fries," said our server. "It's like ganja but with an M." We shoveled another forkful. "They were a big hit on 4/20," she deadpanned, referring to the recent marijuana legalization activities. These glorious fries ($11), like Korean-barbecue poutine flecked with green onion and small bits of marinated short rib, are a secret menu item during dinner at Namu Gaji. (They're on the lunch menu, but only available in limited quantities at night to those who ask.) My friends were already in the know, realizing as soon as they tasted them that they'd be back for more.

The restaurant is the izakaya-style reincarnation of Namu, the genre-defying Asian restaurant that chef Dennis Lee opened with his two brothers on Balboa Street in 2006. This year, having gained a following via street-food events and at the Ferry Building, the brothers decided to relocate to the buzzier, more voracious Mission. They landed a spot that anyone would envy at one end of the gourmet ghetto of 18th Street overlooking Dolores Park.

The new space,The indoorpositioning industry is heavily involved this year.Award Winning solarpanel and heat pumps for electricity and heating. mostly polished wood with white subway tile around the open kitchen, is handsome,The concept of indoorpositioningsystem (RTLS) is fast catching up in industries. with counter seating on each side of the narrow room, a long communal table down the center, and a few smaller tables in the back. Small details add charm: the stark, striking tree-branch sculpture ("gaji" means "branch") hanging over the central table; the thoughtfully arranged flowers in ceramic bud vases dotting the room; and even the heavy canvas storage boxes for stowing coats and bags under your stools.

The food goes beyond the drinking snacks of a true Japanese izakaya and aims for a hybrid of refined vegetable and seafood plates with well-sauced and addictive comfort foods, like those gamja fries, and Japanese- and Korean-inflected dishes with a more rustic sensibility. You should start with oysters ($16 for six), served with yuzu ponzu and chojong Korean chili sauce on the side,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, along with an optional palette of wasabi. With a welcome kick and the subtle tang of the yuzu, the sea flavor still breaks through, and it's a good toe-dip into the tension of sour and spice that characterizes most of the menu.

Slightly spicy, well-seasoned housemade kimchi finds its way onto a lot of Lee's dishes, starting with the complimentary banchan (fermented vegetables), and popping up in the vinaigrette on the cucumber-based bibim salad ($12). It's also on the lunch menu in Lee's signature street-food dish, the "real Korean taco" ($3) — a cheeky play on the Korean-taco trend featuring short ribs and kimchi atop two sheets of seaweed instead of a tortilla. It's in a relish topping the fantastic burger ($16), made with a juicy, labor-intensive Mission Street Food patty; and it tops another street-food-inspired item, the okonomiyaki ($16), a Japanese fried rice-flour pancake that's also piled with scallions, cabbage, bonito flakes, a fried egg, and sweet Kewpie mayonnaise, which is like Japan's version of Miracle Whip. Kimchi is again the dominant flavor in the bright-red,Welcome to the online guide for do-it-yourself Ceramic tile. hot-dog-filled ramyun (ramen, $16), of which only 24 bowls are made each night. And it also figures in the menu's most dramatic presentation, the stonepot ($16), a sizzling bowl of crispy rice, a fried egg, banchan, optional protein, and house-made gochujang, a sweet red chile sauce.

An unlikely highlight is the fried tofu ($14), which comes served in a deeply satisfying dashi broth I could drink by the mugful. Then there's the Korean Fried Chicken (KFC, $12 at lunch or by special advance order at dinner), where the juicy fried bird is tossed in sweet tareh sauce and dusted with sesame seeds. It's like sweet-and-sour chicken, but redder and somehow classier. The star of the menu, though, is easily the beef tongue ($18). Lee brines and then pickles the meat over seven days before grilling it slowly in cubes over low heat. It's tenderer than any tongue you've had, and the flavors are strange but elementally satisfying, the mild beef meeting with a twang of soy and fermentation, barely crisped at the corners by flame. My only complaint is that with just five cubes on the plate, there isn't enough.

Joburg factory fire doused

Johannesburg - A fire that broke out at a bedding factory in Booysens, south of Johannesburg on Good Friday was completely extinguished by 07:00 on Saturday, Johannesburg Emergency Services said.

"We managed to stop the fire from spreading and had it completely extinguished by 07:00," spokesperson Percy Morokane said.

Emergency services had feared that the Gordon Prince factory on Koster Street, would collapse. A structural engineer had been at the scene advising emergency services which perimeters they could work in.
"A structural engineer came in last night to advise us which perimeters we need to work on. We followed all the safety protocols."

Morokane said the factory, which manufactures bedding material such as duvets, blankets and comforters had been condemned.

"There will be no further production, entry or exit to this building," he said.

"The Department of Labour will now have to visit the premises to carry its own investigation."

The department would investigate whether anyone had "broken any rules regarding employee safety".

The building appeared to have burnt from the basement and "might have been started by a spark".

"We'll have to look to look at the machinery being used in the basement.

"We suspect that it may have started from a spark from the machinery being used."

The police, labour department and structural engineers will hold an "extensive investigation" into the cause of the fire.

Morokane said the safety of the 150 employees who were inside the building when the fire broke out could be attributed to quick response by emergency services.

He added that the fire could have been a disaster if not for the emergency fire doors in the basement where the fire started.

On Friday Divisional Chief of Johannesburg emergency services, JJ Viljoen, told Sapa water could not used to extinguish the fire because of the weight it carries and it might cause the building to collapse.

"The heat emanating from the basement was so intense, that it caused the upper floor to crack. Therefore, it could collapse at any time."

Foam was pumped into the building to extinguish flames.

He said the pipes from fire hydrants attached to the building could also not be used earlier as it was melting.
Workers, although warned not to, jostled amongst fire-fighters, in a bid to salvage blankets, and the fibre used in manufacturing it.

The employees, loaded blankets onto trucks lining the street.

Security guard at the factory, Martin Griessel, said the fire broke at 21:00.
"I was in the bathroom, when the light suddenly went off. I went out to investigate and saw smoke coming from the basement," he said.