Posted on

Sub-Saharan Africa to Grow by 5% in 2011

Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to show 5% growth in 2011, according to the International Monetary Fund’s latest regional report.

Its outlook for next year is even brighter, with 6% average growth.

However, the IMF’s Africa director, Antoinette Sayeh, warned of the impact of global financial volatility on the region.

She told the BBC it could mean “lower exports, inward investment flows and decreasing aid levels”.

Ms Sayeh also said that inflation, driven by high food and fuel prices, could become a problem.

She advised governments of the need to “tread a fine line between addressing the challenges posed by strong growth and preparing to ward off the potentially adverse effects of another global downturn”.

Middle-income countries, most notably South Africa, have not had the same success, with growth of 3.5% this year.

The region has been hit by high unemployment and household debt, fragile consumer confidence and weak demand from Europe

Posted on

Libya Dictator Muammar Gaddafi Killed

Libya’s ex-leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has been killed after an assault on his home town of Sirte, officials from the transitional authorities have said.

Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam said fighters had told him they had seen Col Gaddafi’s body, and other officials also said he was dead.

The claims have not yet been independently verified, and other reports said he was captured alive.

The colonel was toppled in August after 42 years in power.

The International Criminal Court has been seeking his arrest.

Golden gun

Nato, which has been running a bombing campaign in Libya for months, said it had carried out an air strike earlier on Thursday that hit two pro-Gaddafi vehicles near Sirte.

It was unclear whether the strikes were connected with the reports of Col Gaddafi’s death.

Mr Shammam said NTC leaders would officially confirm Col Gaddafi’s death later.

“He was killed in an attack by the fighters. There is footage of that,” he said.

Grainy video footage has been circulating among NTC fighters appearing to show Col Gaddafi’s corpse.

The video shows a large number of NTC fighters yelling in chaotic scenes around a khaki-clad body, which has blood oozing from the face and neck.

Driving into the centre of Tripoli, there are throngs of people out on the streets – men, women and children – many hugging each other and chanting. Gunshots can be heard firing into the air – despite a religious edict banning the practice. Car horns are blaring and many vehicles have their emergency lights blinking.

At some checkpoints, security officials are handing out what have been dubbed “revolutionary mints” and biscuits.

All the flags are out. People are genuinely convinced this is the end of Col Gaddafi. They felt that even in hiding he posed a threat to the revolution – but for them this news means the authorities can now start to rebuild the country.

Another video broadcast by al-Jazeera TV showed a body being dragged through the streets which the channel said was that of Col Gaddafi.

NTC official Abdel Hafez Ghoga told AFP: “We announce to the world that Gaddafi has been killed at the hands of the revolution.

“It is an historic moment. It is the end of tyranny and dictatorship. Gaddafi has met his fate.”

An NTC fighter told the BBC he found Col Gaddafi hiding in a hole in Sirte, and the former leader begged him not to shoot.

The fighter showed reporters a golden pistol he said he had taken from Col Gaddafi.

Arabic TV channels showed images of troops surrounding two large drainage pipes where the reporters said Col Gaddafi was found.

NTC supporters gathered in towns and cities to celebrate the reports of the colonel’s death.

Groups of young men fired guns in the air, and drivers honked horns in celebration.

His apparent death came after weeks of fierce fighting for Sirte, one of the last remaining pockets of resistance

Posted on

Malaria Vaccine: Now A Possibility

GlaxoSmithKline research head Moncef Slaoui explains how change of focus to cellular immunity was key to breakthrough

Moncef Slaoui was on holiday with his family when he heard the results of the first small trial, involving African infants, of the malaria vaccine he helped invent. It was a day he would never forget.

“It was 9 August 2004,” he said. “I’m on vacation with my kids, driving between Chicago and Indianapolis and my phone rings and it’s the team calling from Mozambique. I had to stop for at least an hour. I couldn’t drive any more. That was a big, big moment.”

The vaccine had been classed as around 55-60% effective. It was the first sign that Slaoui, now chair of R&D at GlaxoSmithKline, and his colleagues, were going to be successful in cutting the terrible toll of malaria in Africa. Halving the 200m cases a year would save lives and prevent a huge amount of harm.

It had been a long haul. Slaoui had joined the Belgian lab of what was to become GlaxoSmithKline 23 years ago with a background in immunology. “I brought a fresh perspective in what was then modern immunology,” he said. Some of his new colleagues had started work on a malaria vaccine but “it was more or less stalled conceptually”.

No one then had managed to make a vaccine against a parasite infection. Many in the scientific community thought it impossible. “We heard that a lot. There were many controversial discussions on whether we would be able to achieve success,” said Slaoui.

But his ideas drove the effort in a new and successful direction.

Scientists had been attempting to kill off the parasites injected by malarial mosquitoes as soon as they entered the bloodstream. But any vaccine attempting that has only minutes to work because the parasites quickly go to the liver, where the next stage of their life cycle occurs. After five days there is a burst of new parasites in to the blood cells and that is when the child falls ill.

Slaoui suggested using cellular immunity. “Rather than using antibodies that can kill bacteria or a parasite, we used T-cells that recognise [a] cell is not normal because it is infected by a parasite. It opened the opportunity to find the parasite where it [hid] in the liver and kill it there.”

It was easy to say, but hard to do. They needed to find the right adjuvant, a substance that would stimulate the immune system’s T-cells to mount a response against the malaria parasites.

It was in 1996, eight years after Slaoui joined the vaccine effort, that they became sure they were on the right track – during experiments in conjunction with the Walter Reed army medical centre in Washington DC.

Slaoui said: “It was the first demonstration of the proof of concept that we were able to make a vaccine that killed the parasite in the blood and also in the liver.”

The approach used would later be employed in GSK’s pandemic flu and cervical cancer vaccines, which would make money. Slaoui said GSK would not have dropped the malaria vaccine programme, which was solely for the benefit of people too poor to pay, but that the proftable spin-offs undoubtedly helped.

He said: “GSK Biologicals’ leadership was always totally committed to continue the work on the malaria vaccine for two equally good reasons. The malaria vaccine was a great vehicle to advance our platform of adjuvants for many other vaccines, [ones] that were more able to give us a return. But secondly there was truly a commitment to public health in general and our responsibility to society to make vaccines for those who would most benefit, even when they could not afford it.”

This was a stronger motivation in the vaccine community than in the pharmaceutical industry. He added: “Vaccines are associated with public health and the developing world and babies that you save from major infections, and therefore the idealistic motivation is very strong.”

It remained the case, he said. “Yesterday in Seattle [when the results were published] I was with some of the first core-team members – we all started together. It was very emotional.

Posted on

IQ Can Change in Teenage YearsY

The mental ability of teenagers can improve or decline on a far greater scale than previously thought, according to new research.

Until now the assumption has been that intellectual capacity, as measured by IQ, stays quite static during life.

But tests conducted on teenagers at an average age of 14 and then repeated when their average age was nearly 18 found improvements – and deterioration.

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

They have implications for how pupils are assessed, and the age at which decisions about their futures are made.

This study involved 19 boys and 14 girls, all undergoing a combination of brain scans and verbal and non-verbal IQ tests in 2004 and then in 2008.

The results show that a change in verbal IQ was found in 39% of the teenagers, with 21% showing a change in “performance IQ” – a test of spatial reasoning.

The findings are seen to have greater validity because for the first time the variations in IQ correlated with changes in two particular areas of the teenagers’ brains.

An increase in verbal IQ corresponded with a growth in the density of part of the left motor cortex – a region activated during speech.

And an increase in non-verbal IQ correlated with a rise in the density of the anterior cerebellum – an area associated with movements of the hand.

The work was led by Professor Cathy Price of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London and is published in the journal Nature.

The paper suggests that the results could be “encouraging to those whose intellectual potential may improve and… a warning that early achievers may not maintain their potential”.

Professor Price said: “We have a tendency to assess children and determine the course of their education relatively early in life.

“But here we have shown that their intelligence is likely to be still developing.

“We have to be careful not to write off poorer performers at an early age when in fact their IQ may improve significantly given a few more years.”

The research did not seek to understand the causes of the changes.

One explanation is that teenagers mature at relatively different ages – with “early” and “late” developers – while relative standards in education may play a part too.

One of the participants, Sebastian Friston, now aged 23, recorded a marked increase in IQ between the two tests – from average to one of the highest categories.

Educated in the state sector, he told me he had struggled in his early years, needing remedial maths tuition, but is now planning a doctorate in computer engineering.

“I think the change came in school I started doing subjects that really interested me, that I was engaged in, then I found it easier and far more interesting.”

The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust, one of many projects supported under its programme of Understanding the Brain.

Future work may focus on how adaptable the brain may be beyond teenage years, and the implications for tackling mental diseases and other neurological conditions.

By David Shukman Environment & science correspondent, BBC News

Posted on

Republican Michele Bachmann Doesn’t Know Libya Is Part of Africa

Amanda Terkel

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) criticized President Obama’s foreign policy during Tuesday night’s CNN debate, saying, “Now with the president, he put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa. We already were stretched too thin, and he put our special operations forces in Africa,” she said.

Libya, it should be noted, is in Africa.

Bachmann was referring to Obama’s recent announcement that he will be sending 100 U.S. troops to Uganda to help battle rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army.

In October of 2006, before Bachmann emerged as a superstar of the conservative movement, the Minnesota congresswoman raised eyebrows when she suggested that a sizable portion of the scientific community discredits the theory of evolution.

Bachmann said, “There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.”

More recently, Bachmann discussed her views on the matter at this year’s Republican Leadership Conference.

“I support intelligent design,” she told reporters at the conservative gathering, according to CNN. “What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don’t think it’s a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides.”
[ad#AdBrite-468×60]

Posted on

Malaria Deaths Fall over 20% Worldwide in Last Decade

There has been a fall of just over 20% in the number of deaths from malaria worldwide in the past decade, the World Health Organization says.

A new report said that one-third of the 108 countries where malaria was endemic were on course to eradicate the disease within 10 years.

Experts said if targets continued to be met, a further three million lives could be saved by 2015.

Malaria is one of the deadliest global diseases, particularly in Africa.

In 2009, 781,000 people died from malaria. The mosquito-borne disease is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, where 85% of deaths occurred, most of them children under five.

An earlier report here incorrectly referred to a 40% drop in deaths.

It has been eradicated from three countries since 2007 – Morocco, Turkmenistan and Armenia.

The Roll Back Malaria Partnership aims to eliminate malaria in another eight to 10 countries by the end of 2015, including the entire WHO European Region.

Robert Newman, director of the WHO’s Global Malaria Programme, said “remarkable progress” had been made.

“Better diagnostic testing and surveillance has provided a clearer picture of where we are on the ground – and has shown that there are countries eliminating malaria in all endemic regions of the world,” he told an international Malaria Forum conference in Seattle.

“We know that we can save lives with today’s tools.”

Global eradication

A global malaria eradication campaign, launched by WHO in 1955, succeeded in eliminating the disease in 16 countries and territories.

But after less than two decades, the WHO decided to concentrate instead on the less ambitious goal of malaria control.

However, another eight nations were declared malaria-free up until 1987, when certification was abandoned for 20 years.

In recent years, interest in malaria eradication as a long-term goal has re-emerged.

The WHO estimates that malaria causes significant economic losses, and can decrease gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 1.3% in countries with high levels of transmission.

In the worst-affected countries, the disease accounts for: Up to 40% of public health expenditures; 30% to 50% of inpatient hospital admissions; and up to 60% of outpatient health clinic visits.

Posted on

GlaxoSmithKline Malaria Vaccine Tests Show Hopeful Results

ATLANTA — The quest for the world’s first malaria vaccine appears to have taken a big step: A study in Africa shows experimental shots cut the risk of disease in young children by half.

The initial results from a final stage of vaccine testing were released Tuesday, and the vaccine’s developers called it a milestone in helping to tame one of the world’s most devastating killers.

However, the vaccine won’t be available for at least three years, as crucial further testing must be completed to see how well it works in infants and how long protection lasts. Then the vaccine must be reviewed by government agencies in Europe and in individual African countries.

“We still have a way to go,” Tsiri Agbenyega, lead researcher for the African study, said in a conference call with reporters.

The early results show the vaccine is only about 50 percent effective, significantly lower than the protection seen in more common vaccines. But some experts said it’s a vast improvement over the current situation, and could still save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Globally, malaria kills nearly a million people annually. More than 90 percent of them live in Africa, and most are young children and pregnant women.

Scientists have been trying for decades to develop a malaria vaccine and the one tested – developed by GlaxoSmithKline – is furthest along. Without a vaccine, efforts have concentrated on malaria drugs and other ways to prevent infection such as mosquito bed netting and insecticides.

The new vaccine targets a malaria parasite found in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria spreads through mosquitoes, which bite people and flush malaria parasites into the bloodstream. The parasites cause bouts of high fever and can end in fatal organ failure.

In the United States, malaria has been eradicated since the early 1950s. Only about 1,500 cases are diagnosed in the U.S. each year, most of them travelers or immigrants from South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa or other places where malaria commonly spreads.

The new study – still under way – began in 2009 and involves more than 15,000 children in Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.

The results focus on about 6,000 children ages 5 to 17 months. A year after three doses, the vaccinated children had about half as many cases of malaria as a group that didn’t get the vaccine.

Meanwhile, experts are waiting for results from research in a younger group – infants ages 6 to 12 weeks. That’s the age when children in sub-Saharan Africa are vaccinated against other diseases. Earlier vaccination also affords earlier protection.

Although there are an array of vaccines against viruses and bacteria, there has never been an effective vaccine against a parasite, which is a more complicated organism. Adding to the complexity is there are five species of malaria parasites – the new vaccine is designed specifically to protect against the deadliest one, which is common in sub-Saharan Africa.

GlaxoSmithKline paid for the study along with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, a program funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The results were released Tuesday at a malaria conference in Seattle and published by the New England Journal of Medicine.

___

Posted on

Making a Case For Tuition Reimbursement and Flexible Hours

[ad#GBAF-2-pix]
Folks who have been in the industry longer will tell us one thing: the landscape has changed, and it is a big change. Gone are the days when you got hired after college and you were certain that you were going retire with that employer if you chose to. These days, it is possible to change careers several times in one year and many times in your career.

At some point, you may realize that the skills that you brought out of college are no longer needed or inadequate to meet the ever-changing demands at the workplace. At other times, all you may need is a different challenge. All these situations may require you to go back to school or take some additional courses to make your position more secured or just for personal fulfillment. Continue reading “Making a Case For Tuition Reimbursement and Flexible Hours”