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Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General and Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, says: “Mobile communication is perhaps the single most transformative technology for rural African villages to improve access to health care and education, create new business opportunities and access to markets, and ultimately to help eradicate extreme poverty.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

For the first time in years, John Phiri*, a health extension worker in Malawi’s central Salima district, does not have to fill in a stack of forms during his monthly round of collecting data to monitor nutrition levels in the community.

Now he whips out his mobile phone and texts the data, including the height and weight of the children in the area, while covering his beat. The information is immediately captured by a computer that stores the national nutritional and food-security statistics in Lilongwe, the capital.
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Popularity: 6% [?]

mHealth (also written as m-health or sometimes mobile health) is a recent term for medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, PDAs, and other wireless devices. mHealth applications include the use of mobile devices in collecting community and clinical health data, delivery of healthcare information to practitioners, researchers, and patients, real-time monitoring of patient vital signs, and direct provision of care (via mobile telemedicine).

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Popularity: 7% [?]

Extract from “The Africa Competitiveness Report 2007″

As African governments seek to liberalise their economies and integrate them more closely into the global economy, their industrial performance increasingly depends on the competitiveness of the firms serving their markets (both local and foreign-owned). Firm-level competitiveness will define the ability of African economies to grow, create new jobs and increase exports. Competitiveness is vital across all sectors of the economy: African firms face intensifying competition both in their domestic markets, as well as abroad.
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Popularity: 11% [?]

Geneva, 23 February 2010 — Prices for information and communication technology (ICT) services are falling worldwide, yet broadband Internet remains outside the reach of many in poor countries, ITU says in its Measuring the Information Society 2010 report released today.

The report features the latest ICT Development Index (IDI), which ranks 159 countries according to their ICT level and compares 2007 and 2008 scores. “The report confirms that despite the recent economic downturn, the use of ICT services has continued to grow worldwide,” says Sami Al Basheer Al Morshid, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT). All 159 countries included in the IDI have improved their ICT levels, and mobile cellular technology continues to be a key driver of growth. In 2010, ITU expects the global number of mobile cellular subscriptions to top five billion. “At the same time, the report finds that the price of telecommunication services is falling — a most encouraging development,” said Mr Al Basheer.
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Popularity: 8% [?]

On 2 January, Mount Nyamulagira in the Democratic Republic of Congo erupted, spewing lava from its southern flank and raising concerns that the 100 000 people in the town of Sake could be under threat.

Fears were also triggered in Goma as rumours circulated that an eruption was imminent at the nearby Nyiragongo volcano, which devastated the city in 2002.
Following the eruption, scientists and local authorities have been using a long series of space images from ESA’s Envisat, together with seismic and helicopter data, to monitor the situation and calm fears of the local population.
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Popularity: 8% [?]

Solar-powered drip irrigation systems significantly enhance household incomes and nutritional intake of villagers in arid sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new Stanford University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The two-year study found that solar-powered pumps installed in remote villages in the West African nation of Benin were a cost-effective way of delivering much-needed irrigation water, particularly during the long dry season. The results are published in the Jan. 4, 2010, online edition of PNAS.

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Popularity: 13% [?]

Diabetics may soon be able to wear contact lenses that continuously alert them to variations in their glucose levels by changing colours – replacing the need to routinely draw blood throughout the day.

The non-invasive technology, developed by Chemical and Biochemical Engineering professor Jin Zhang at The University of Western Ontario, uses extremely small nanoparticles embedded into the hydrogel lenses. These engineered nanoparticles react with glucose molecules found in tears, causing a chemical reaction that changes their colour.

Zhang received $216,342 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) this morning to further develop technologies using multifunctional nanocomposites.

These technologies have vast potential applications beyond biomedical devices, including for food packaging. For example, nanocomposite films can prevent food spoilage by preventing oxygen, carbon dioxide and moisture from reaching fresh meats and other foods, or by measuring pathogenic contamination; others can make packaging increasingly biodegradable.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a leading mobile phone provider, announced the launch of its own open mobile platform, Samsung bada [bada] in December. This new addition to Samsung’s mobile ecosystem enables developers to create applications for millions of new Samsung mobile phones, and consumers to enjoy a fun and diverse mobile experience.

In order to build a rich smartphone experience accessible to a wider range of consumers across the world, Samsung brings bada, a new platform with a variety of mobile applications and content.
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Popularity: 13% [?]

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.
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Popularity: 13% [?]

The Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition launches today, ushering in a new era for Mobile TV. The stunning-looking device is sure to drive appeal amongst the 300 million people expected to be watching mobile TV around the world by 2012. The 5330 isn’t just about Mobile TV though, this 3G speed machine also packs in the latest in social networking, music and gaming in one sleek slide-design.

Based on DVB-H technology, the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition sports a 2.4-inch screen for super sharp images on the move. The headset doubles as an antennae for clear reception and together with Nokia’s own Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) it makes watching TV on the move a joy.
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Popularity: 19% [?]

Cyclos is open source online banking software for complementary currency systems like LETS, Barter networks, Time banks and exchange systems that are introduced in order to stimulate the circulation and the availability of credit in regions or countries with under-use of capacities. The Cyclos team is also looking for opportunities to allow micro finance institutions easy linkage with their administration to use Cyclos as their transactional (on-line banking) system.
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Popularity: 16% [?]

As global temperatures and energy costs continue to soar, renewable sources of energy will be key to a sustainable future. An attractive replacement for gasoline is biofuel, and in two studies published online in Genome Research (www.genome.org), scientists have analyzed the genome structures of bioethanol-producing microorganisms, uncovering genetic clues that will be critical in developing new technologies needed to implement production on a global scale.
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Popularity: 23% [?]

A telemedicine system based on a modified version of the Bluetooth wireless protocol can transfer patient data, such as medical images from patient to the healthcare provider’s mobile device for patient assessment almost four times as fast as conventional Bluetooth and without the intermittent connectivity problems, according to a paper in the forthcoming issue of theInternational Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics.

Telemedicine is a rapidly developing technology of clinical medicine where medical information is transferred via telephone, the internet or other networks for the purpose of consulting as a remote medical procedure. However, there are drawbacks to using direct connections between monitoring devices and the healthcare provider, not least the intermittency of standard connections.

Now, T. Kesavamurthy and Subha Rani of the PSG College of Technology Peelamedu, in Coimbatore, India, have devised a dedicated embedded system that uses the short-range Bluetooth wireless networking protocol to connect patient data to the network and then on to the healthcare provider. This avoids the problem of trying to ensure that a viable connection between monitoring devices and the internet or cellular phone network is maintained constantly.

The team has demonstrated a specific application of their technology which involves the transfer of patient medical images (CT scans) to the healthcare provider’s personal digital assistant (PDA) device as an example of how Bluetooth might work for telemedicine.

“In medical imaging, picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) are computers in networks dedicated to the storage, retrieval, distribution and presentation of images,” the team explains. However, PACS, which replaces hard-copy based means of managing medical images, such as film archives, cannot circumvent the connectivity issues associated with standard internet connections.

The team has developed a system that can handle the digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) standard for medical images and use it to produce compressible images that can be transferred readily using Bluetooth.

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Popularity: 22% [?]

Mobile phones are on the verge of becoming powerful tools to collect data on many issues, ranging from global health to the environment.

Computer scientists at the University of Washington have used Android, the open-source mobile operating system championed by Google, to turn a cell phone into a versatile data-collection device. Organizations that want a fully customizable way to, say, snap pictures of a deforested area, add the location coordinates and instantly submit that information to a global environmental database now have a flexible and free way to do it.
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Popularity: 24% [?]