Laptop wifi may damage sperm, study suggests

Men, might want to consider keeping that laptop off your lap.  A new study in the journal Fertility and Sterility found that when exposing sperm taken from 29 men to electromagnetic radiation from laptop WiFi for four hours, the sperm had DNA damage and decreased motility.
Reuters reports that about 25 percent of the sperm had stopped moving after the four-hour laptop radiation exposure, while just 14 percent of the sperm had stopped moving when kept away from a computer. Nine percent of the radiation-exposed sperm had DNA damage, which was three times the damage of the non-radiation exposed sperm.
The researchers, from Nascentis Medicina Reproductiva in Argentina and the Eastern Virginia Medical School, wrote in the study that they "speculate that keeping a laptop connected wirelessly to the internet on the lap near the testes may result in decreased male fertility. Further in vitro and in vivo studies are needed to prove this contention."
However, it's important to note that the finding was only seen in semen samples taken from a man's body -- and not in a real-life setting, Reuters reported.
"This is not real-life biology, this is a completely artificial setting," Dr. Robert Oates, president of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology, told Reuters. "It is scientifically interesting, but to me it doesn't have any human biological relevance."
In addition, Oates told Reuters that there's no scientific evidence from studies that pregnancy success is linked at all with the use of laptops.

And aside from sperm production, the heat emitted from laptops could also lead to a condition coined "toasted skin syndrome," which can lead to skin discoloration and even skin damage that could possibly put you at risk of skin cancer, CBS News reported. 

Dr. Kimberley Salkey, an assistant dermatology professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, told CBS News that skin burned by a laptop looks, under a microscope, similar to that of skin that has been damaged over a long period of time by the sun.

Why Boko Haram scares me

Boko Haram is an extremely dangerous plague in this country – extremely dangerous. I have been wondering if Dr. Goodluck Jonathan knew that Boko Haram was not just a religious problem. At the surface, it looks like it, because they have been bombing churches and so on. But it also comes with a serious political and geo-political consequence. I don’t pray it ever happens that the South would start responding with reprisal attacks. Then Nigeria would have had it.

Niyi Osundare

I have never seen a country that has won a religious war, because religion is so passionate and so irrational. So you can’t win it by rational argumentation or by reasoned reconciliation or whatever. No, it is really a fight to the finish. That is what bothers me here. 

And this takes me back to the way I felt after that election last year. Mr. Buhari took the North, Mr. Jonathan took the South, and there was some kind of line, which was like a diaphragm, a horizontal line, dividing the country into almost two equal parts . When I looked at that map, what I saw was the Sudan. And I tell you, this is frightening.
This was how Sudan began. Gafar el-Nimeiry and others did all they did when John Garang was there. They did all they could to suppress him. And all kinds of rebel groups sprang up until eventually, July last year, a new country was born and Sudan was divided into two: the North-South, Muslim- Christain dichotomy. It is extremely dangerious for this country.
Does Dr. Jonathan still remember the election that brought him to power? Does he realise how rickety the structure of the country over which he presides is? He has cajoled his security people, he has threatened them, he has done all kinds of things – go get the Boko Haram. But they cannot get them because they are so grassroots. You don’t know them when you see them. Now a state of emergency was declared recently; exactly two days later, Adamawa was bombed. An arrested Boko Haram leader walked away under the very watch of a top-ranking police officer. Talk of defiance and ridicule of Jonathan’s security arrangement!
Boko Haram scares me, I must tell you, because of its social and political dimensions. I am also looking at it from the point of view of the under-privileged.
When people talk about poverty in this country, we think that poverty is something you see in the South and that the people in the North, they are not so poor, after all they have produced more heads of state than any other part of the country. That is a lie. The poor places in the North are far, far poorer than the poor places in the South.

There are so many poor children in the North that do not go to school – the Almajiris and so on. They are not receiving the right kind of education. They get into the hands of extremist clerics who sell all kinds of ideas to them, and indoctrinate them at a very young age. By the time they are in their teenage years, their minds are already formed. This is the group of people that form the core of Boko Haram.

Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekarau

So what we are seeing in Boko Haram, will be a good study for a sociologist, a political scientist and a psychologist. I don’t see it just as a religious issue. It is a multi-dimensional kind of issue. If these young men had enough to eat, were put in good schools, and they were well educated, they had hope; if they lived in a just and egalitarian country, it is not likely they would sell themselves so easily to the kind of fatalism that is causing the kind of mayhem that Boko Haram is unleashing on the people of this country.
There is a certain kind of anger in the way they are carrying out their bombings. This really bothers me. It is a fire that will be extremely difficult to put out. And with the so many fires that Jonathan has set for himself in this country, he might not even have time to face Boko Haram squarely. How do you talk about national unity in the present situation? I would like Jonathan to see the connection between this escalation in Boko Haram activities and the flawed election that brought him to power last year.

Excerpts from Osundare's interview with The News magazine

Boko Haram's youtube message to President Jonathan

“You Jonathan cannot stop us like you boasted, instead we will devour you in the three months like you are boasting. If death is your worldly gain, for us, it is eternal victory to die working for Allah. Our joy is to die in Jihad for Allah against infidels like you…"

“We are also aware of some Muslims using our name to make money, we will say nothing but let them continue, and they will meet Allah in the last day.

“We are not doing physical human service, but Allah’s work and it is clear your aim is killing us. Let me tell you with Allah we will triumph over you and your men in hundreds. We are not boasting rather keeping quiet and working for Allah.

“Allah that finishes Pharaoh and others wicked rulers that you are not even up to them, will finish you and end your government. We are not afraid because we are not doing man work but Allah’s work. And we will see who will carry the day.”

Easter bomb blasts kill at least 50 in Kaduna

At least 50 people were killed when explosives concealed in two cars went off near a church during Easter Sunday services in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna, eye-witnesses said.
The explosions, a stark reminder of Christmas Day attacks that left dozens of people dead in Africa's most populous nation and largest oil producer, hit the city of Kaduna, a major cultural and economic centre in the north.
Motorcycle taxi drivers and passers-by caught much of the blast.  Shehu Sani, the President of Civil Rights Congress based in Kaduna, said two explosions took place at the Assemblies of God's Church near the centre of the city with a large Christian population and known as a major cultural and economic centre in Nigeria's north.
"There were two explosions and the casualty figure may go up because some injuries were really critical," he said on phone.
As news of the attack spread, security forces boosted patrols in key areas, including in the capital Abuja, where soldiers were sent to reinforce police posted near churches, an AFP correspondent reported.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
At least one car said to be driven by a suicide bomber was involved in the Kaduna attack, but a rescue official speaking on condition of anonymity said two vehicles packed with explosives detonated.
Officials were still counting the number of wounded, he added.  "Bombs concealed in two cars went off just opposite this church," said one of rescue officials.
A police officer at the scene said a man believed to be a suicide bomber driving a car was stopped at a checkpoint near the church and turned back, but drove to a nearby area close to a hotel and detonated the bomb.
Other cars in the area were damaged, but it was unclear if they were also carrying explosives, he said.
A spokesman for the national emergency management agency said most of the victims appeared to be motorcyle taxi drivers.
Police said the explosion was a bomb, but did not comment further.
"We have a bomb explosion. We are trying to sort things out," police spokesman Aminu Lawal told AFP.
Residents reported seeing dead and injured being taken away. An AFP correspondent said he saw 10 bodies, while one resident said he counted at least 10 wounded.

"From my balcony, I could see policemen loading the dead and the injured into waiting vans," another resident said.

One resident said the explosion was strong enough to shake his house and cause his ceiling to cave in. He ran to the site, which had already been cordoned off, but he said he could see damage to the Assemblies of God Church as well as cars.
Islamist group Boko Haram carried out a series of attacks on churches and other locations on Christmas day, the bloodiest at a church outside Abuja, where 44 people died.
Authorities as well as foreign embassies had warned of the possibility of an attack on Easter Sunday.
Boko Haram's increasingly bloody insurgency has left more than 1,000 people dead since mid-2009. Police and soldiers have often been the victims of such attacks, though Christians have regularly been targeted as well.

Nigerian among victims of California shooting

Doris

The police in California, United States, yesterday identified a Nigerian, Doris Chibuko, an indigene of Enugu state, as one of the victims of the Oakland shooting that killed seven students of a Christian university in the city of Oakland.
Chibuko, 40, and a mother of three, worked as a lawyer in Nigeria before migrating to the United States in 2002 after marrying a fellow Nigerian,  who is based in the state of California.
"She was a very happy person, very caring, very loving," said husband of the diseased, a technician at AT&T.
"She liked to spend time with her family. Right now I'm just trying to grieve."

Husband

Doris met her husband whose name was given as Efanye Chibuko while at the university and they got married in 2002. That same year, the couple immigrated to the United States, where they had three children, who are now ages 3, 5, and 8.
Doris, who worked part time at Villa Fairmont Mental Health Rehabilitation Centre in San Leandro, was two months away from graduating with a degree in nursing before the gunman killed her and six others in Oikos University  in what has been described as one of the worst school shooting incidents in California.

Celebrity activism goes high-tech

From viral videos and tweets to George Clooney’s satellite network, celebrities are becoming more tech savvy in their activism.

Clooney

According to Dominic Basulto, blogger for Washington Post, while celebrity activism is a notably fickle endeavor, it’s clear that new Web-based tools are leading to radically new types of initiatives to bring about political change. Look no further than the hyper-viral Kony 2012 campaign, which raised awareness around the world about Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony.
What made the campaign so powerful was the ability to message 20 major "culturemakers" (i.e. celebrities) to get the word out about Kony, via social media. With a simple tweet, these celebrities were able to recruit thousands of people to the cause and attract the attention of U.S. legislators. After all, it’s one thing when the United Nations comments on Kony, but it’s quite another when Oprah or Kim Kardashian messages a veritable army of followers with the plea: “Stop Kony!!!”

In tech, a quest for more women

Adriana

When I first met Adriana Gascoigne in 2006, she was managing public relations for an online-video company I had joined (that was not, unfortunately, the soon-to-be-acquired YouTube). She stood out from the crowd because of her overwhelmingly positive energy, multilingual phone conversations, and because she was one of just three women in the 25-person office.
That gender ratio, Gascoigne realized, was a problem — she wasn’t alone in making that observation, but, unlike many, she decided to do something about it. A few months later, Gascoigne launched Girls in Tech, a group that offers networking events, seminars, and mentoring programs that currently reach 10,000 members in 30 chapters across the globe.
Five years after beginning the venture, and one month after opening a chapter in Singapore, her new base of operations, Gascoigne took time to answer a few questions about the persistent issue of gender diversity in tech.
Read more here