Dakar, Senegal |Africa's top scientists, policymakers and start-ups gathered for a landmark conference aimed at stemming the continent's brain drain and encouraging governments to nurture research in fields from virology to maths.
Organisers of the first Next Einstein Forum (NEF) held near Senegal's capital, Dakar, hope to reverse a situation in which Africa's brightest talent feels compelled to move abroad to work at the cutting edge of research -- and earn a decent salary.
The timing is prescient: the NEF cited one inspiration as being a recent Ebola panel during a top US science conference where not a single African researcher or medic was present who had worked in west Africa during the 18-month outbreak.
"There are more African engineers working in the United States than in Africa," said organiser Thierry Zomahoun, CEO of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, to an audience drawn from more than 100 different countries.
Over three days, African researchers will explain how mathematical formulae could eventually lead to vaccines for yellow fever or Zika, how plastic waste might be repurposed to build roads, and how data analytics could warn authorities when schools are failing students.
The NEF's creation of a fellowship programme for Africa's top young scientists will be followed by the establishment of an African Union-linked science and technology institute, while a pan-African team of NEF "ambassadors" will engage their publics at home.
"The pressure is on to catch up and keep pace so Africa is not left in the wake of technological progress," Rwandan President Paul Kagame told the opening ceremony.
"This starts with a change in our mindset. We really cannot be satisfied with just ending extreme poverty. Our aim is shared and sustainable prosperity. And the key to that is science and innovation, bound by research," he added.
Currently, Africa suffered from too few students enrolled in science-related tertiary education, a lack of investment, and too little collaboration between governments and the private sector, Kagame said.
Furthermore, the lack of women in African science "means we are not using our human resources to the full," he added.
"African youth must revive the research tradition that made the continent shine" in centuries past, added the conference's host, Senegalese President Macky Sall.
Miami, United States |A friendly international competition to encourage exercise using pedometers and online tools was successful in helping people lose weight and improve their fitness over the course of three months, researchers said .
The results of the study -- based on self-reported data from 68,000 people who participated in the virtual event known as Stepathlon -- were presented at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting in Chicago.
Stepathlon is run by a start-up company in Mumbai, India. The fee to participate is $62.50 per person. Often, corporations sponsor employees to join as part of a workplace wellness program.
Grouped into teams of five, people from 64 countries were given inexpensive pedometers "and encouraged to increase their daily step count through an interactive, multiplatform application that engages them with frequent emails, quizzes and social media communication," said the study.
The teams competed in a virtual international race that featured prizes for certain categories.
"The idea is to increase physical activity and wellness, but in a fun and social way that builds on teamwork and camaraderie," said lead author Anand Ganesan, associate professor at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.
Researchers found that on average, "participants increased their amount of walking by more than 3,500 steps per day, exercised nearly one additional day per week, lost just over three pounds and reduced their time spent sitting by about 45 minutes per day," said the study.
Even though the data was all self-reported, the consistency across nations and groups of people over the three years studied (2012-2014) led researchers to believe the findings are reliable.
"To our knowledge, our study is the first to provide comparative data on the effectiveness of this kind of intervention in both the developed and developing world," said Ganesan.
Future research will aim to find out whether participants were able to maintain their fitness after the end of the 100-day competition.
"Physical inactivity, sedentary lifestyles and obesity are massive global problems," said Ganesan.
"Our study suggests that by using technology in a clever way, perhaps we, as a community, can devise solutions to this problem."
Mumbai, India |Britain's Prince William and his wife Kate played cricket with children and mingled with Bollywood superstars at a glittering gala dinner as they began their tour of India in style.
During an action-packed first day of their week-long visit to the subcontinent the royal couple displayed handy batting skills on Mumbai's Oval Maidan in front of Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar.
Kate, wearing a long pink and green printed tunic dress by Indian designer Anita Dongre, connected well with a few shots while William even smashed a six, albeit with a tennis ball and a very short boundary.
"Royal afternoon at the Oval with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Bowled over by their humility," Tendulkar later tweeted.
William and Kate received a warm reception at the western Indian city's famous park as they met representatives from three charities and chatted and played ball games with disadvantaged children.
The Duke and Duchess are on their first official visit to India, whose 1.2 billion population has long been fascinated with the monarchy of its former colonial masters.
William's mother Princess Diana caused a sensation when she was photographed looking forlorn in front of the Taj Mahal in 1992, and his imminent visit with Kate to the marble mausoleum at Agra has India's media abuzz.
The British royals touched down in Mumbai shortly after 11:00 am (0530 GMT) and their visit started on a sombre note with the laying of a wreath at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel to victims of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
"TRH (their royal highnesses) then chatted to @TajMahalMumbai staff who helped protect guests during the attacks," which killed 166 people, many in the luxury-five-star hotel, Kensington Palace tweeted.
From there they headed to the maidan where they learnt about the work of three local charities who help some of Mumbai's most vulnerable children and chatted with Indian cricket great Dilip Vengsarkar.
- Bollywood stars -They also took an open-top bus tour with youngsters who had received help from a non-governmental organisation.
After the cricket, William and Kate headed to the ancient Banganga Tank, part of a temple complex and a hugely significant site in Hindu mythology, where makeshift homes sit beneath luxury skyscrapers in the plush Malabar Hill district.
Presented with garlands on arrival, the couple pressed their hands together in the Hindi salutation namaste and scattered petals in the water.
They then met and played football with impoverished children from slums around India's financial capital.
In the evening the royal couple schmoozed with Bollywood film stars and leading lights from the Indian business community at a charity reception at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.
William, dressed in a black tuxedo, and Kate, wearing a blue gown, walked the red carpet, stopping to smile and pose for cameras.
Inside the reception they mixed with a host of Hindi movie stars including Shah Rukh Khan, Anil Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
William, 33, who is second in line to the throne behind his father Prince Charles, and Kate, 34, will wrap up their Mumbai stay on Monday morning by meeting young entrepreneurs.
They then head to New Delhi where they will have lunch with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, among other events, before heading to the remote northeastern state of Assam for a visit to Kaziranga National Park.
The couple will also spend two days in Bhutan where they will meet the Himalayan nation's king and queen and embark on a six-hour hike.
William and Kate will finish their tour in Agra.
New York, United States | Basketball megastar LeBron James will produce his first movie, based on a real-life prank in which a humor writer fooled people into believing he was an NBA draft pick, a source told AFP .
The movie, which the Cleveland Caveliers forward is producing with New Line Cinema, is the first film for his production company, SpringHill Entertainment, which signed a contract in July with New Line's parent company, Warner Brothers.
The film is inspired by a hoax carried out by Connor Toole, a writer for the humor website Elite Daily, a source briefed on the project told AFP, confirming a report on entertainment industry website Deadline Hollywood.
In June, Toole posed as a player selected as a second-round pick during the draft, where NBA basketball teams select new players from American universities and from overseas.
At six-foot ten-inches (around two meters), all Toole had to do was put on a suit and mill about Barclays Center in Brooklyn where the draft took place.
Mistaken as a player, he next headed out on the town in New York wearing a cap with the Utah Jazz's emblem, and was regularly stopped by passersby for selfies.
Toole visited several bars where patrons and bartenders even offered him free drinks, and toasted him.
The less than three minute video of his escapades caught the attention of another production company, Madica, which proposed a collaboration with SpringHill.
New Line and SpringHill then acquired the rights to the video.
Despite it being James' first foray into movie production, the basketball star is no stranger to showbiz. Last year he appeared in Judd Apatow's "Trainwreck," which starred Amy Schumer.
He is also executive producer for "Survivor's Remorse," a show about a professional basketball player on the cable network Starz.
SpringHill, which James runs with his childhood friend Maverick Carter, also produced "Becoming," a documentary athlete series that aired on Disney XD.
Liverpool, United Kingdom | Coleen Rooney came to the defence of the women of the Aintree Racecourse as the Grand National meeting in her native Liverpool marked Ladies Day.
In several Twitter posts, the wife of Manchester United and England football star Wayne Rooney said her fellow female racegoers looked "gorgeous" and were "dressed to perfection".
Her comments came after a statement released by race organisers in February urged women attending this year's Ladies Day to smarten up in a bid to make the event "more aspirational".
This was widely seen as an attempt to rid the day of its 'ladette image', whereby young women in revealing dresses, some from Rooney's home city of Liverpool, were pictured drunk in the British national press after enjoying plenty of alcohol that is on offer at Aintree's many bars.
"Fantastic day at Aintree yesterday, lots of people made a massive effort and looked beautiful!! I am desperate to see these sad reporters," Rooney tweeted Friday.
"There showing us all what gorgeous looking people they are, dressed to perfection. Good job people can laugh .. Best way to be!!"
Rooney had been at the course herself on Thursday to celebrate her 30th birthday.
The mother of three was criticised by Britain's Daily Mail for looking a "tad garish" in an "orange fashion fail" after wearing a dress on Thursday which the newspaper said appeared to match her Caribbean tan following a recent family holiday.
However, Rooney added: "Not talking about me....I am in the public eye so expect criticism. It's the innocent people that turn up for a great day and get slated."
But there was support for Aintree's attempt to 'elevate' the tone of Ladies Day from racegoer Kayleigh Donovan.
"We love the races at Liverpool," said the 27-year-old London based Donovan, who came to Aintree on Friday with two female friends.
"It's our annual outing. Everyone has their own individual style, some are a bit out there and can be a bit outrageous.
"People wear things which maybe wouldn't be our choice. I think people have upped their game with the best dressed award. I'm glad they introduced a dress code as it makes it more of a classy event."
Washington, United States | The launch of a robot that will delve deep beneath the surface of Mars has been rescheduled for May 5, 2018, US space agency NASA said.
The InSight lander was originally set to launch this month but that had to be scrapped because of a problem with a seismometer provided by France's space agency CNES.
InSight's primary goal is to study how the solar system's rocky planets, including Earth, formed and evolved.
It will help determine whether the core of the red planet is solid or liquid, and why its surface is not made of moving tectonic plates like Earth.
"The quest to understand the interior of Mars has been a longstanding goal of planetary scientists for decades. We're excited to be back on the path for a launch, now in 2018," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement.
Launch dates are based on relative positions of the planets and favorable conditions for missions from Earth to Mars are available a few weeks every 26 months, NASA has said.
The robot is now expected to arrive on Mars on November 26, 2018.
The delay stemmed from a leak affecting the seismometer device, which measures ground movements as small as the diameter of an atom.
It requires a vacuum seal around its three main sensors to withstand the harsh conditions of the Martian environment.
Officials were studying the cost of the two-year delay, with an estimate expected in August.
The total cost of the mission was budgeted at $675 million, of which $525 million had been spent by December 2015, according to NASA.
NASA is currently working on three Mars missions with the European Space Agency and plans to send another rover to Mars in 2020.
A manned mission to Mars is set for the 2030s.
New York, United States | Billionaire Russian investor Yuri Milner and British cosmologist Stephen Hawking on Tuesday announced an ambitious new space initiative for a mission to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth.
Milner and Hawking are spearheading the "Breakthrough Starshot" team of scientists working on the bold research program to create a fleet of super-compact, ultra-light space vehicles or "nanocraft."
The goal is to send the light-propelled mini space vehicles -- each no bigger than a cell phone -- to Alpha Centauri, which is 4.37 light years away, or 25 trillion miles, from Earth.
They estimate it could take about 20 years to reach the star system from the time of the launch -- rather than the 30,000 years it would take with today's fastest spacecraft.
"Space travel as we know it is slow. How do we go faster and how do we go further? How do we make this great leap?" Milner, who is planning to initially commit $100 million to the project, told a press conference in Manhattan.
"For the first time in history, we can do more than just gaze at the stars. We can actually reach them," added the 54-year-old Russian philanthropist, whose fortune is estimated at $2.9 billion by Forbes.
"It is time to launch the next great leap in human history."
- 'Interstellar sailboat' -Milner -- one of the original investors in Facebook -- said the team hoped to send a super light robotic spacecraft streaking through space at 60,000 kilometers (faster than 37,000 miles) per second -- about 20 percent the speed of light.
The initiative will work by creating a giant laser array to propel the mini-probes -- which would deploy micro-sails -- toward a given star, creating what Milner likened to an "interstellar sailboat."
"The Breakthrough StarChip concept is based on technology either already available or likely to be available in the near future. But as with any moonshot, there are major engineering problems to solve," Milner cautioned.
Hawking noted: "I believe what makes us unique is transcending our limits."
Milner said that he will contribute $100 million from his own pocket for the project, which could cost as much as $10 billion before it is fully realized.
"It's very clear that it's a non-profit initiative," he joked, acknowledging that the chance for success and the final cost were unclear.
Milner, Hawking and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will sit on the project's board.
- Search for life -A team has already been working on the endeavor for a year, Milner said.
Initial research results indicate that the giant laser array -- the "light beamer" -- would require about 100 gigawatts, roughly the energy needed to launch a space shuttle, said Avi Loeb, a professor at Harvard University and a project member.
"When there is a vision for a grand project like this one, just like the vision that JFK had in the 60s, it lifts many bolts," said Loeb in a nod to former US president John F. Kennedy, whose vision it was to land a man on the moon.
Milner and Hawking have teamed up previously.
Last July, Hawking launched a massive search for intelligent extraterrestrial life in a $100-million, 10-year project to scan the heavens funded by Milner.
Milner said at the time that the "Breakthrough Listen" initiative would be the most intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of alien civilization.
The project, they said, would use some of the biggest telescopes on Earth, searching far deeper into the universe than before for radio and laser signals.
One aim of the mission to Alpha Centauri is also to look for signs of extraterrestrial life, Loeb said.
And what might those living creatures be like?
"Judging by the election campaign, definitely not like us," joked Hawking -- who is wheelchair-bound and uses a computerized voice system to communicate -- in reference to the drama-filled race for the White House.
by Angus MACKINNON
Verona, Italy —As he swirls a glass of yellowy green wine made from the trendy pecorino grape, Fabio Centini purrs with enthusiasm.
"I hadn't even heard of this grape 15 years ago," the Italian-born chef-restaurateur from Calgary, Canada tells AFP between slurps at a tasting of top pecorinos from the Offida area of the Marche region.
"But it is exactly what my customers want. People are looking for new varietals, new experiences."
Centini is one of 55,000 industry professionals from 141 countries gathered in Verona this week for VinItaly, a giant showcase for the best the country has to offer the world's wine lovers.
The 50th edition is the biggest yet and crammed aisles speak volumes about the buoyant state of a sector that employs 1.25 million people and produces more wine than any other country.
Led by a boom in sales of prosecco, which has surpassed champagne to become the world's favourite bubbly, exports of all forms of Italian wine hit a record 5.4 billion euros ($6.2 billion) last year, up more than five percent on 2014.
The trend looks like continuing. A Mediobanca survey found 92 percent of producers anticipating higher sales in 2016, underpinned by investment which grew 18 percent overall last year and by 37 percent in the surging sparkling sector.
- Strength in diversity -It is all a far cry from the days when Italian wine was synonymous internationally with straw-wrapped bottles of chianti of variable quality and sometimes questionable provenance.
"They have taken out a bit of the monkey business," says Centini, a VinItaly regular since 1990. "There was a time when you didn't always know what was in the bottle."
Although recent growth has been led by sparkling wine and strong sales of easy-drinking pinot grigio and other competitively priced varietals, there has also been an awakening of interest in Italy's indigenous red grapes.
These include aglianico, negroamaro, nero d'avola and primitivo (which shares its DNA with zinfandel) from the south and Sicily, and montepulciano from the central region of Abruzzo, where producers have been quietly picking up international awards in recent years.
The sheer variety can be baffling for consumers and a shortage of strong producer brands is seen as a weakness on global markets.
But Italian wine expert Andrea Grignaffini says diversity is becoming a strength.
"Often the same grape gets made in a different style in different parts of the country, even in the same zone. It is complicated even for us Italians to understand.
"But that's Italy. And the industry is moving so fast now, fashions change. When the moment of one wine passes, it is good to have others to take their place."
Change is also afoot at the top end of Italian wines with producers in Tuscany and Piedmont battling to catch up with the Asia-driven gains of France's Bordeaux and Burgundy.
International critics have recognised a major leap forward in terms of the quality and consistency of the best brunellos, chianti classicos, barolos and barbarescos since the 1980s.
- Italy 'better than France' -But Stephanie Cuadra, of leading Tuscan estate Querciabella, said Italy's fine wine champions also had to be able to transmit "a sense of origin, a sense of place," in the way that Burgundy, where tiny parcels of land are classified on the basis of minute variations of soil and micro-climates, has done very successfully.
"In terms of fine wine, we are an obvious alternative to France and as palates mature in emerging markets they become more curious, it is a natural evolution," Cuadra said.
Moves towards officially recognising sub-zones in Italy's leading wine areas have got bogged down by local battles over re-classifying areas in a way that will inevitably produce winners and losers.
While insisting that Italy's wines are better than their French rivals, even Prime Minister Matteo Renzi acknowledges that the French have done a better job of selling their wines on global markets.
French wine retails at prices that are 120 percent higher on average than Italy's output and total Gallic export earnings are some 60 percent higher.
"In the last 20 years, Italy has let too many opportunities slip by in this sector," Renzi said during a visit to VinItaly on Monday.
The flipside is that there is still plenty of room for growth, particularly in Asia, which accounted for only 3.4 percent of Italian exports last year. Italian producers are noticeably underperforming in China, which increased imports by 60 percent overall in 2015 but by only 15 percent from Italy.
That was one reason why Renzi's guest at VinItaly was Jack Ma. The Alibaba boss told his audience that the Internet could provide a digital bridge linking Italy's 300,000 producers with what is potentially the biggest wine market in the world.
"China will be home to half a billion upper-to-middle-class consumers in the next 10 years," Ma said. "You must reach out to them where they are."
Miami, United States | Taking steps to recover from depression and boost vitamin D levels may improve heart health, according to new research.
The findings were contained in two studies presented at the American College of Cardiology conference in Chicago.
The first focused on depression, a known risk factor for heart attack, stroke and even death.
Researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City studied a registry of more than 7,500 people, and found when depressed patients get effective treatment, they can lower their risk of heart damage to the same level as a person who never suffered from depression.
"Our study shows that prompt, effective treatment of depression appears to improve the risk of poor heart health," said Heidi May, a cardiovascular epidemiologist with the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute.
However, those who remained depressed had higher rates of heart problems -- at a rate of about six percent, compared to around four percent of people without depression.
"The key conclusion of our study is: If depression isn't treated, the risk of cardiovascular complications increases significantly," May said.
A second study, also led by May, focused on two measures of vitamin D, which when too low can predict the likelihood of heart attack, stroke, heart failure or death.
Some 4,200 people aged 52 to 76 were studied. Most already had coronary artery disease (70 percent) and one quarter were diabetic.
For doctors who treat these patients, the most important measures of vitamin D are known as total vitamin D and bioavailable vitamin D, since both were "the most accurate in predicting harmful cardiovascular events," said the findings.
"Our study found that low levels of both total vitamin D and bioavailable vitamin D appear to be associated with poor cardiovascular outcomes," said May.
"And evaluating usable vitamin D could mean the difference on the amount of vitamin D prescribed, if it's prescribed at all."
May added that more research was needed to examine Caucasian and African-American patients, since these groups are known to be affected differently by vitamin D.
Ottawa, Canada | Researchers said they have found a way to fashion a cheap mosquito trap out of old tires that can collect thousands of eggs that may carry the Zika virus.
The contraption is called an "ovillanta", and consists of cutout tires and a liquid solution that lures Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which can transmit chikungunya, dengue and Zika.
The females lay their eggs on a wooden or paper strip inside the tire trap. The strip can be removed weekly and the eggs destroyed by using fire or ethanol.
Health experts are hopeful that the trap could help people in remote areas where screens and air conditioning are rare, to reduce people's contact with the kind of mosquitoes that spread Zika, a virus that has been linked to a surge of birth defects in Brazil.
"We decided to use recycled tires -- partly because tires already represent up to 29 percent of the breeding sites chosen by the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, partly because tires are a universally affordable instrument in low-resource settings, and partly because giving old tires a new use creates an opportunity to clean up the local environment," said researcher Gerardo Ulibarri of Laurentian University in Ontario.
Researchers tested the traps in the Guatemalan town of Sayaxche over the course of 10 months.
They "collected and destroyed over 18,100 Aedes eggs per month using 84 ovillantas in seven neighborhoods," said the study.
This was "almost seven times the roughly 2,700 eggs collected monthly using 84 standard traps (made from one-liter buckets) in the same study areas."
The tire traps were also far cheaper, costing only 20 percent what it would to target adult insects with pesticides, researchers said.
The project was funded by the Canadian government.
Ulibarri collaborated with Angel Betanzos and Mireya Betanzos of the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico, and Guatemala's Ministry of Health.
The milk-based solution used to attract the mosquitoes was developed by Laurentian University.
Researchers have also released a how-to video (bit.ly/1S3YFjH) for making the traps.
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