Science and Technology

Monday, 23 August 2021 05:49

Factory fresh: Three dimensional printing and construction

Your next home could emerge from a printer A batch of new houses across California is selling unusually fast. In the past two months, 82 have been snapped up, and the waiting list is 1,000 long. That demand should, though, soon be satisfied—for, while it can take weeks to put up a conventional bricks-and-mortar dwelling, Palari Homes and Mighty Buildings, the collaborators behind these houses, are able to erect one in less than 24 hours. They can do it so rapidly because their products are assembled from components prefabricated in a factory. This is not, in itself, a new idea.…

Saturday, 14 August 2021 05:24

Is carbon capture and utilization a lifeline for oil and gas?

The 2050 climate neutrality goals require the right technologies. The current round of post-pandemic investment is decisive for a successful strategy. What role will carbon capture and utilization play in this, if any? As the world gets serious about the 2050 climate neutrality target, technology deployment is speeding up. Amongst the emissions-reducing measures available today, the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) to play critical roles. This 50-year old technology involves capturing carbon dioxide (CO2), which can be used to create products (utilization) or reinjected into the ground (storage), normally in depleted oil and gas…

Wednesday, 11 August 2021 05:43

Fully vaccinated people are still getting infected with Covid. Experts explain why

Fully vaccinated people are still getting infected with Covid, though to a much lesser extent than unvaccinated people. No Covid vaccine is 100% effective but immunization greatly reduces the risk of hospitalization and death. Variants have posed a challenge to the effectiveness of Covid vaccines but whether booster shots will be needed is still unknown. People who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 are highly protected against severe infection, hospitalization and death caused by the virus. But coronavirus cases among the fully vaccinated — so-called "breakthrough" Covid cases — are still being seen among those who have had two doses. While…

Wednesday, 11 August 2021 05:42

WhatsApp has become a hotbed for scams

Criminals are exploiting long-standing issues with global supply and delivery chains to trick victims into falling for identity theft scams, experts have warned. A report from Kaspersky has urged people to be on their guard when opening and interacting with messages claiming to be from delivery firms - especially concerning online purchases. But the company has also flagged a growing number of scams utilizing WhatsApp in order to defraud users out of money, as well as others pushing fake apps and online romance sites. Delivery scams Kaspersky says it has seen a significant rise in scams taking advantage of the…

Saturday, 07 August 2021 05:58

Federal Ministry of Science & Tech gets new name

President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the change of name of Ministry of Science and Technology to Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Ogbonnaya Onu, announced this in a news briefing on Friday in Abuja. He said the change of name was to facilitate economic growth and global competitiveness as well as to make Nigeria a nation of innovators. The minister said that in 2017 the Federal Executive Council, under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, approved the National Science, Technology and Innovation Roadmap (NSTIR 2017-2030). “This was to use Science, Technology and Innovation (STI)…

Friday, 06 August 2021 05:54

Moderna says its Covid-19 shot 93 percent effective 6 months after second dose

Moderna Inc said on Thursday its Covid-19 shot was about 93% effective through six months after the second dose, showing hardly any change from the 94% efficacy reported in its original clinical trial. However, it said it still expects booster shots to be necessary ahead of the winter season as antibody levels are expected to wane. It and rival Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE have been advocating a third shot to maintain a high level of protection against Covid-19. During a second-quarter earnings call, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said that the company would not produce more than the 800 million…

Tuesday, 03 August 2021 05:46

Teenage girls in Kano 'open their minds' with robotics

Teenage girls in the northern Nigerian city of Kano are learning robotics, computing and other STEM subjects as part of an innovative project that challenges local views of what girls should be doing in a socially conservative Muslim society. In a place where girls are expected to marry young and their education is often cut short, the Kabara NGO aims to widen their world view through activities such as building machines, using common software programmes and learning about maths and science. “I came to Kabara to learn robotics and I have created a lot of things,” said Fatima Zakari, 12.…

Monday, 26 July 2021 05:33

What do Covid breakthrough infections mean for the fully vaccinated? We'll explain

Coronavirus infections are rising throughout the US again (nearly 69,000 new cases in one day) due to the highly contagious delta variant, and the virus is particularly impacting areas with low vaccination rates. More cases have started to be reported of fully vaccinated people contracting the virus. So, if you're fully vaccinated, should you be worried about getting Covid-19? Not necessarily, but don't throw away your face masks yet. Currently, 162 million people in the US have been fully vaccinated, nearly half of the country's total population. But across the globe only 13.3% of people have been fully vaccinated. That…

Sunday, 25 July 2021 05:48

Large study finds Covid-19 is linked to a substantial drop in intelligence

People who have recovered from Covid-19 tend to score significantly lower on an intelligence test compared to those who have not contracted the virus, according to new research published in The Lancet journal EClinicalMedicine. The findings suggest that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 can produce substantial reductions in cognitive ability, especially among those with more severe illness. “By coincidence, the pandemic escalated in the United Kingdom in the middle of when I was collecting cognitive and mental health data at very large scale as part of the BBC2 Horizon collaboration the Great British Intelligence Test,” said lead researcher Adam…

Friday, 23 July 2021 05:55

Major websites down in global internet outage

Many popular websites fell offline on Thursday in a widespread global outage of service. Visitors attempting to reach some sites received DNS errors, meaning their requests could not reach the websites. Affected services included Airbnb, UPS, HSBC bank, British Airways and the PlayStation network used for online games. One popular DNS provider, Akamai, reported "an emerging issue" with its Edge DNS service. It has now tweeted that the issue has been fixed and "the service is resuming normal operations". Internet outage monitoring platform DownDetector had reported thousands of problems from its users across dozens o platforms. Previously it said the…

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Tuesday, 20 July 2021 06:07

WhatsApp will let you join group calls after they start

WhatsApp is rolling out a new joinable calls feature which will let you hop onto group calls after they’ve started, the Facebook-owned company announced Monday. The new feature means you’ll be able to join a call with your friends and family when you’re ready, kind of like what you can do with a group Zoom or Google Meet call right now. Given the massive popularity of WhatsApp, this could be a useful feature for many people who communicate over the messaging service. You can get an idea of how the interface for hopping onto calls works in the image below…

Friday, 16 July 2021 05:50

WhatsApp will let you send and receive messages without your phone. Here’s how it’ll work

WhatsApp is testing a new feature that will let people message without using their phone for the first time. At present, WhatsApp is linked to a user's phone. Its desktop and web apps need that device to be connected and receiving messages. But the new feature will let users send and receive messages "even if your phone battery is dead". Up to four other devices - like PCs and tablets - can be used together, WhatsApp said. To begin with, the new feature will be rolled out as a beta test for a "small group of users", and the team…

Monday, 12 July 2021 05:39

Richard Branson completes successful Virgin Galactic space flight

Richard Branson reached the edge of space and safely returned to Earth, an hourlong trip that marks a turning point in the billionaire entrepreneur’s multidecade effort to help create a space-tourism industry. The space trip that Mr. Branson and five other crew members completed Sunday on a Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. vessel lends credence to the company’s ability to safely take passengers to and from space. Virgin Galactic, the company Mr. Branson founded, plans to initiate commercial service next year, charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for such flights. The test flight was aimed at evaluating systems and showing the…

Saturday, 03 July 2021 05:39

US companies hit by massive cyber attacks

About 200 US businesses have been hit by a "colossal" ransomware attack, according to a cyber-security firm. Huntress Labs said the hack targeted Florida-based IT company Kaseya before spreading through corporate networks that use its software. Kaseya said in a statement on its own website that it was investigating a "potential attack". Huntress Labs said it believed the Russia-linked REvil ransomware gang was responsible. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, a federal agency, said in a statement that it was taking action to address the attack. The cyber-breach emerged on Friday afternoon as companies across the US were clocking off…

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