Breakthrough in delivering drugs to the brain
By James Gallagher
Health reporter, BBC News
A new way of delivering drugs to the brain has been developed by scientists at the University of Oxford.
They used the body’s own transporters – exosomes – to deliver drugs in an experiment on mice.
The authors say the study, in Nature Biotechnology, could be vital for treating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Muscular Dystrophy.
The Alzheimer’s Society said the study was “exciting” and could lead to more effective treatments.
Research barrier
One of the medical challenges with diseases of the brain is getting any treatment to cross the blood-brain barrier.
The barrier exists to protect the brain, preventing bacteria from crossing over from the blood, while letting oxygen through.
However, this has also produced problems for medicine, as drugs can also be blocked.
In this study the researchers used exosomes to cross that barrier.
Exosomes are like the body’s own fleet of incredibly small vans, transporting materials between cells.
They then fused the exosomes with targeting proteins from the rabies virus, which binds to acetylcholine receptors in brain cells, so the exosome would target the brain.
They filled the exosomes with a piece of genetic code, siRNA, and injected them back into the mice.
The siRNA was delivered to the brain cells and turned off a gene, BACE1, which is involved in Alzheimer’s disease.
The authors reported a 60% reduction in the gene’s activity.
“These are dramatic and exciting results” said the lead researcher Dr Matthew Wood.
“This is the first time this natural system has been exploited for drug delivery.”
Customised
The research group believes that the method could modified to treat other conditions and other parts of the body.
Dr Wood said: “We are working on sending exosomes to muscle, but you can envisage targeting any tissue.
“It can also be made specific by changing the drug used.”
The researchers are now going to test the treatment on mice with Alzheimer’s disease to see if their condition changes.
The team expect to begin trials in human patients within five years.
Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “In this exciting study, researchers may have overcome a major barrier to the delivery of potential new drugs for many neurological diseases including Alzheimer’s.
She said the blood-brain barrier had been an “enormous issue as many potential drugs have not been properly tested because you couldn’t get enough of them into the brain.”
She added: “If this delivery method proves safe in humans, then we may see more effective drugs being made available for people with Alzheimer’s in the future.”
Dr Simon Ridley, head of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This is innovative research, but at such an early stage it’s still a long way from becoming a treatment for patients.
“Designing drugs that cross the blood brain barrier is a key goal of research that holds the promise of improving the effectiveness of Alzheimer’s treatments in the future.”
Exosomes may have other medical applications.
Alexander Seifalian, a professor of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London, told the BBC: “Experimental evidence indicates that exosomes can prime the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells, making them a potential tool as cancer vaccines.”
He also said exosomes “could well form the cornerstone of nanoscale drug delivery systems of the future.”
He added: “The apparent versatility and established biosafety of exosomes underscores the potential of these biological membrane vesicles to be of tremendous potential in the realm of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine.”
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12776222
Courtesy : BBC News
Quantum computing device hints at powerful future
By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
One of the most complex efforts toward a quantum computer has been shown off at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas in the US.
It uses the strange “quantum states” of matter to perform calculations in a way that, if scaled up, could vastly outperform conventional computers.
The 6cm-by-6cm chip holds nine quantum devices, among them four “quantum bits” that do the calculations.
The team said further scaling up to 10 qubits should be possible this year.
Rather than the ones and zeroes of digital computing, quantum computers deal in what are known as superpositions – states of matter that can be thought of as both one and zero at once.
In a sense, quantum computing’s one trick is to perform calculations on all superposition states at once. With one quantum bit, or qubit, the difference is not great, but the effect scales rapidly as the number of qubits rises.
The figure often touted as the number of qubits that would bring quantum computing into a competitive regime is about 100, so each jump in the race is a significant one.
The team’s key innovation was to find a way to completely disconnect – or “decouple” – interactions between the elements of their quantum circuit.
The delicate quantum states that they create must be manipulated, moved, and stored without destroying them.
“It’s a problem I’ve been thinking about for three or four years now, how to turn off the interactions,” UCSB’s John Martinis, who led the research,” told BBC News.
“Now we’ve solved it, and that’s great – but there’s many other things we have to do.”
Qubits and pieces
The solution came in the form of what the team has termed the RezQu architecture. It is basically a blueprint for a quantum computer, and several presentations at the conference focused on how to make use of it.
“For me this is kind of nice, I know how I’m going to put them together,” said Professor Martinis.
“I now know how to design it globally and I can go back and try to optimise all the parts.”
RezQu seems to have an edge in one crucial arena – scalability – that makes it a good candidate for the far more complex circuits that would constitute a quantum computer proper.
“There are competing architectures, like ion traps – trapping ions with lasers, but the complexity there is that you have to have a huge room full of PhDs just to run your lasers,” Mr Lucero told BBC News.
“There’s already promise to show how this architecture could scale, and we’ve created custom electronics based on cellphone technology which has driven the cost down a lot.
“We’re right at the bleeding edge of actually having a quantum processor,” he said. “It’s been years that a whole community has blossomed just looking at the idea of, once we have a quantum computer, what are we going to do with it?”
Britton Plourde, a quantum computing researcher from the University of Syracuse, said that the field has progressed markedly in recent years.
The metric of interest to quantum computing is how long the delicate quantum states can be preserved, and Dr Plourde noted that time had increased a thousand fold since the field’s inception.
“The world of superconducting quantum bits didn’t even exist 10 years ago, and now they can control [these states] to almost arbitrary precision,” he told BBC News.
“We’re still a long way from a large-scale quantum computer but it’s really in my eyes rapid progress.”
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811199
Courtesy : BBC News
A Success Story : ABBAS JUMANNE Family
The Mandarin may be small but it is having a big impact on Tanzanian families. Yesterday I received this report from our friends at Floresta regarding a family who have had one of our lights for a year.
Introduction
Abbas Jumanne Abbas family joined Floresta VICOBA group since 2007 at Matala, Matala is a village in Kilimanjaro region, Moshi rural district and the family has 8 members. Four (4) kids are studying in Primary schools and one (1) kid is in secondary school. Before the introduction of solar lights in March 2010, we were using a lamp that uses kerosene and lanterns for lighting during studying during the evening or at night and cooking time. Our main activities are crops production and livestock rearing in small scale production.
The distribution of solar lights by Floresta Tanzania has changed our lives since March 2010 as described in several aspects below;
Education
Solar lights brought studying harmony to kids in accomplishing their home works as observed after introduction of this simple light, It is simple in handling and no harmful effect like injury, When kids woke up during the night, they simply switch on solar light as compared to kerosene lamps of which most of them fail to light it and ask their parents to help them which seems like a disturbance to them, Kids tend to study at night two days in a week due to unavailability of kerosene and the problem has been solved by Floresta and they are now studying everyday to accomplish their home work. Kids have raised their capacity by studying effectively during the evening and night. Example my child who is studying secondary has raised from top 20 up to the position of top 10 students in the class, this is due to the use of solar light that has little disturbances.
Health
By observation our children had a problem of eyes irritation when using kerosene lamps and lanterns for studying, probably this contributed to lower their capacity in studying, and also Kerosene lamp has a problem of producing pop sound/bursting which is danger to kids. Hence solar lights (Illumination) seem to be more effective in this manner for health of our families and no disturbances.
Economically
Kerosene is very expensive and its cost per liter tends to shoot from time to time. We have many things to accomplish with the available money rather than using in kerosene whereby in my family we were using 5 liter per month.
We are staying far from town and it involves costs for travelling while looking for kerosene but with the use of solar lights there is no costs associated, just the initial cost of buying it. The amount served from not purchasing kerosene help us in bus fare for our child who is studying in secondary at Himo which is a day school.
The use of solar lights serves time for other activities rather than looking for kerosene from a distance.
Kerosene lamps involve other costs of buying lamp glass as it is fragile of which approximately four to five times per year it may break and hence need replacement while in solar lights there is no such costs, no maintenance has been required so far (we have had the light for one year) unlike other products which were brought in the village which have had problems.
Reference Link
http://illuminationhq.com/blog/a-success-story-abbas-jumanne-family/
Courtesy
ILLUMI Nation HQ
ILLUMI Nation : illuminating nations one at a time with LED lamps: Tanzania
ILLUMi nation has a single goal: the elimination of kerosene as a domestic fuel source in the developing world.
About
Illumination has a single goal:
the elimination of kerosene as a domestic fuel source in the developing world.
Currently there are over 2 billion people throughout the world who do not have access to grid-connected electricity. For most of these people, kerosene is their principal fuel source for light.
Illumination aims to replace kerosene lamps with purpose designed solar LED lamps. Replacing kerosene based lighting with solar LED lighting provides very significant health and economic benefits to those in developing countries. Furthermore it substantially reduces the amount of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere, thus also benefitting the more affluent members of the global community.
The illumination HQ Team
Here at Illumination HQ we have gathered a team of very professional people from a wide variety of backgrounds who all share a committment to improving the lives of those in developing countries. We also believe that we have to enjoy what we are doing to really be successful, therefore we are not adverse to having a bit of fun along the way. The Illumination HQ team is:
- Shane Thatcher – Plenty Steward
- Jim Fraser – Mandatory Old Man
- Liz Aitken – Numbers Wizard
- Eli Mtango – Government Relations
- Edith Banzai – Distribution
- Sebastian Foot – Rainmaker
- Alex Lauber – Gentleman of the Robe
- Nick Barr – Threat Detector
- Kevin Lok – Carbon Ninja
- Harry Kikstra – Life Improver
Explicitly the benefits of the program in Tanzania
- A reduction in global carbon emissions of around 700,000 tonnes.
- Each light will save a family USD 100 annually from a mean monthly income of between USD 150 and USD 300 ($1800-3600 annually).
- Save Tanzanian families over $200 million per year in households costs
- Every light distributed will contribute to local charities, facilitating the advancement of other community based projects.
- Local staff will be employed for the project keeping cash benefits local.
- 25% of house fires in Tanzania are caused by kerosene lamps, this danger is eliminated through the use of solar lights.
- Health problems associated in breathing kerosene fumes in closed areas will be eliminated.
- Lights are priced so that after 2 weeks each family will be cash positive resulting from the elimination of kerosene costs.
Reference Link
http://illuminationhq.com/
Courtesy
ILLUMI Nation HQ
Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges
Do you treat yourself as well as you treat your friends and family?
That simple question is the basis for a burgeoning new area of psychological research called self-compassion — how kindly people view themselves. People who find it easy to be supportive and understanding to others, it turns out, often score surprisingly low on self-compassion tests, berating themselves for perceived failures like being overweight or not exercising.
The research suggests that giving ourselves a break and accepting our imperfections may be the first step toward better health. People who score high on tests of self-compassion have less depression and anxiety, and tend to be happier and more optimistic. Preliminary data suggest that self-compassion can even influence how much we eat and may help some people lose weight.
This idea does seem at odds with the advice dispensed by many doctors and self-help books, which suggest that willpower and self-discipline are the keys to better health. But Kristin Neff, a pioneer in the field, says self-compassion is not to be confused with self-indulgence or lower standards.
“I found in my research that the biggest reason people aren’t more self-compassionate is that they are afraid they’ll become self-indulgent,” said Dr. Neff, an associate professor of human development at the University of Texas at Austin. “They believe self-criticism is what keeps them in line. Most people have gotten it wrong because our culture says being hard on yourself is the way to be.”
Imagine your reaction to a child struggling in school or eating too much junk food. Many parents would offer support, like tutoring or making an effort to find healthful foods the child will enjoy. But when adults find themselves in a similar situation — struggling at work, or overeating and gaining weight — many fall into a cycle of self-criticism and negativity. That leaves them feeling even less motivated to change.
“Self-compassion is really conducive to motivation,” Dr. Neff said. “The reason you don’t let your children eat five big tubs of ice cream is because you care about them. With self-compassion, if you care about yourself, you do what’s healthy for you rather than what’s harmful to you.”
Dr. Neff, whose book, “Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind,” is being published next month by William Morrow, has developed a self-compassion scale: 26 statements meant to determine how often people are kind to themselves, and whether they recognize that ups and downs are simply part of life.
A positive response to the statement “I’m disapproving and judgmental about my own flaws and inadequacies,” for example, suggests lack of self-compassion. “When I feel inadequate in some way, I try to remind myself that feelings of inadequacy are shared by most people” suggests the opposite.
For those low on the scale, Dr. Neff suggests a set of exercises — like writing yourself a letter of support, just as you might to a friend you are concerned about. Listing your best and worst traits, reminding yourself that nobody is perfect and thinking of steps you might take to help you feel better about yourself are also recommended.
Other exercises include meditation and “compassion breaks,” which involve repeating mantras like “I’m going to be kind to myself in this moment.”
If this all sounds a bit too warm and fuzzy, like the Al Franken character Stuart Smalley (“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me”), there is science to back it up. A 2007 study by researchers at Wake Forest University suggested that even a minor self-compassion intervention could influence eating habits. As part of the study, 84 female college students were asked to take part in what they thought was a food-tasting experiment. At the beginning of the study, the women were asked to eat doughnuts.
One group, however, was given a lesson in self-compassion with the food. “I hope you won’t be hard on yourself,” the instructor said. “Everyone in the study eats this stuff, so I don’t think there’s any reason to feel real bad about it.”
Later the women were asked to taste-test candies from large bowls. The researchers found that women who were regular dieters or had guilt feelings about forbidden foods ate less after hearing the instructor’s reassurance. Those not given that message ate more.
The hypothesis is that the women who felt bad about the doughnuts ended up engaging in “emotional” eating. The women who gave themselves permission to enjoy the sweets didn’t overeat.
“Self-compassion is the missing ingredient in every diet and weight-loss plan,” said Jean Fain, a psychotherapist and teaching associate at Harvard Medical School who wrote the new book “The Self-Compassion Diet” (Sounds True publishing). “Most plans revolve around self-discipline, deprivation and neglect.”
Dr. Neff says that the field is still new and that she is just starting a controlled study to determine whether teaching self-compassion actually leads to lower stress, depression and anxiety and more happiness and life satisfaction.
“The problem is that it’s hard to unlearn habits of a lifetime,” she said. “People have to actively and consciously develop the habit of self-compassion.”
Reference Link
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/go-easy-on-yourself-a-new-wave-of-research-urges/?ref=health
Courtesy
The New York Times Company
New approach to programming may boost ‘green’ computing
A Binghamton University computer scientist with an interest in “green” software development has received the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award for young researchers.
Yu David Liu received a five-year, $448,641 grant from the NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. The highly competitive grants support junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research.
Liu joined Binghamton’s faculty in 2008, after earning master’s and doctoral degrees in computer science from Johns Hopkins University. He also recently received a $50,000 grant from Google for a related research project.
Computers and electronic devices, ranging from smartphones to servers, consume a steadily growing amount of energy. In recent years, computer scientists have developed an interest in paring back this consumption, though generally they’ve approached the challenge through modifying hardware or perhaps operating systems. Liu plans to tackle the problem by considering how programmers can create more energy-efficient software.
“Saving energy is an activity that should come from many layers,” said Liu, who plans to build energy-related parameters into a programming language.
A change at that level would permit and encourage programmers to express their energy-saving intentions directly when software is developed. “Saving energy is often a trade-off,” Liu said. “Sometimes you’re willing to run your program slower so your cell phone battery can last longer.” For such settings — often specific to the nature of the applications — no automated algorithms know as much as programmers.
“Programs today are not just 50 lines of code,” Liu said. They have often grown to be thousands or even millions of lines long. He hopes to employ advanced programming language technologies known as “type systems” to answer questions such as “What is the energy-consumption pattern of a large program, given the consumption patterns of its fragments?” and “Do programmers have conflicted views of the energy-consumption patterns of their software?”
Energy-efficient solutions at the level of programming languages also enjoy a high degree of platform independence, meaning they can have an impact all along the spectrum from phones to servers. “In an era when new platforms are introduced every year,” Liu explained, “an approach that’s platform-independent would be beneficial because it can be applied more broadly.”
None of the mainstream computer languages supports energy-aware programming, he said. However, language designers often create a blueprint that can be extended. Java, for instance, could be extended as EnergyJava and remain 90 percent the same. Such moderate changes would make it possible for programmers to adopt it relatively easily.
There isn’t much history in this area, Liu said, so it’s hard to say how quickly industry will react to the development of an energy-efficient language. However, new language designs have the potential to influence how millions of programmers think.
“I think every researcher wants to make the world better, and we just put it into our own perspective,” he said. “Sometime in the future, every Computer Science 101 class may include a lecture or two on energy-aware programming. As an educator, I’m excited about helping to ensure that next-generation programmers are green-conscious from the beginning of their careers.”
Reference Link
http://discovere.binghamton.edu/features/liu-3583.html
Courtesy
Binghamton University State University of New York
HP's Open Innovation Strategy: Leveraging Academic Labs
HP Labs seek technology from around the world for next-generation smart printers, optical chips, wireless nano sensors, and more.
Credit: HP
When Rich Friedrich of HP Labs looks into the future, he sees desks used as 3-D displays, printers that automatically tailor a newspaper to a reader’s tastes, faster and more secure cloud computing servers, and wireless nano-sensor networks that monitor the environment. But he also sees that achieving these technologies will require tapping into resources beyond HP’s own intellectual property. It will require an embrace of “open innovation,” the idea that companies should make wider use of ideas and technologies that come from other sources—and allow their own technologies and ideas to be adopted by others. Toward that end, HP’s Innovation Research Program, now in its fourth year, gives grants of $50,000 to $75,000 to university researchers. Each grant can be renewed for up to three years. The company is reviewing proposals for this year’s round of grants. “This is not innovation by doing contract research,” says Friedrich, director of the Open Innovation Office at HP Labs. “This really about bottom-up ideas and inspiration and trying to understand how to apply those.” Existing projects include research at the Technical University of Berlin into improved ways to process search queries in the cloud, work at Imperial College London into building nano rods to make new display devices, and data-mining research at Tsinghua University in China.
HP Labs focuses on eight broad themes, including cloud computing, digital printing, and sustainability. Within those areas, the Innovation Program seeks proposals on 26 topics. For instance, the Sustainable Ecosystems Research group is interested in better methods of handling the energy demands of data centers and applying information technology to a city’s infrastructure. So if a researcher has an idea for a mathematical model that could describe how server farms behave, or ways to use analytics to predict leaks in water pipes, he or she could win a grant. The company would like to develop 3-D video that doesn’t require users to wear special glasses, so it’s looking for new ways to design camera systems and new algorithms to handle the images. Digital printing, obviously, is a big area for HP, so it’s seeking ideas to help computers figure out the meaning of text, photos, and video, then print customized newspapers. Another topic area involves the behavior of inks made of nanometer-sized bits of metal and polymers, which could find applications in pharmaceutical manufacturing as well as printing. The idea, Friedrich explains, is neither to come up with a slightly improved version of an existing product nor to do completely blue-sky research with no obvious practical value. Rather, the office is trying to identify some long-term goals and figure out what it takes to reach them. Along the way, HP researchers and grant recipients have coauthored about 200 journal papers. At least 21 invention disclosures, the first step toward securing a patent, have been filed. HP has all grant winners sign an agreement detailing how they’ll share any intellectual property that comes out of the research. “At some point I do expect some of these to have influence and impact on our products,” Friedrich says. “But we’re really engaged in things that go beyond the product road map.” Of course, some of these projects might hit dead ends. “The goal is for us to push the envelope enough that we uncover the boundaries of what’s possible,” he says. “Some people might consider that a failure. I consider it the edge of knowledge.” One grant recipient, Alan Willner, an electrical engineer at the University of Southern California, has had his grant renewed twice. He’s working on better ways to handle signal processing in optical interconnects on computer chips. These interconnects use multiple wavelengths of light to shunt data between chips at higher speeds than is possible with wires. By using one beam of light to transmit many signals simultaneously, they’ll be able to handle the massive amounts of data involved in cloud computing, while drastically reducing energy consumption at the same time. HP aims to double the performance of such interconnects in 2012 and increase it 20-fold by 2017. Neil Savage (www.neilsavage.com) is a freelance writer based in Lowell, Massachusetts. He has written for IEEE Spectrum, Discover, and Nature Photonics.
Reference Link : http://www.technologyreview.com/business/32260/page2/
Courtesy : Technology Review
Super computer to be used for agricultural research
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which pioneered supercomputing in India, is now assisting the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in establishing a national agricultural bioinformatics grid.
This initiative, the first of its kind here, will help scientists enhance agricultural productivity and also address problems like food security. As part of the project, a three-day training-cum-workshop programme on ‘Parallel and High Performance Computing’ began on Monday.
The workshop will provide an insight into the different aspects of high performance computing (HPC) with the goal of capability building in solving complex problems in agriculture and biotechnology. Speaking to DNA, Goldi Misra, group coordinator and head, HPC Solutions Group, C-DAC, said the use of HPC would help scientists address the problem of food scarcity at the grass-root level.
“Now scientists have to wait for a production cycle to get over to analyse various issues like quality of seed, produce, and weather pattern. But with HPC, the same can be done using simulation. This is the first time in the country that a national agricultural bioinformatics grid is going to be started,” he said.
In the first phase, the World Bank-funded project will connect the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi, National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources Karnal, Haryana, National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources, Lucknow, National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms, and National Bureau of Agriultural Important Insects, Bangalore.
“These institutions will be connected with high-speed networks. Agricultural universities and research centres across the country can also be added to the grid. Researchers will be able to perform complex analytical processes,” said Misra.
Anil Rai, principal scientist, Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute, New Delhi, said the establishment of such a grid would provide computational support for high-quality research in areas of agricultural and biotechnological research.
“This will lead to the development of superior varieties seeds, the right fertilisers, and will help various other processes to enhance agricultural productivity on sustainable basis. This will help the scientific community to meet food security challenges in the country,” he said.
Reference Link : http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_super-computer-to-be-used-for-agricultural-research_1505238
Courtesy : Diligent Media Corporation Ltd.
Bamboo bikes are export success for Ghana
February 6, 2011 by David Adadevoh
Ghanian football fans watch a televised match through a bamboo wall in a bar in Kumasi in 2008. The sight of tall, green bamboo stalks swaying above the dusty lands of his west African country led Ibrahim Djan Nyampong to an unusual conclusion: bicycles.
The sight of tall, green bamboo stalks swaying above the dusty lands of his west African country led Ibrahim Djan Nyampong to an unusual conclusion: bicycles.
Under the shade at a workshop in Ghana, young artisans are making them — from mountain racers to cargo bamboo bikes — to suit needs of customers, now as far afield as the United States and Europe.
“The beginning was not easy as people thought it was a joke to make bicycles from bamboo,” Nyampong said as he supervised work at the small factory outside Accra. “Now people are warming towards the bamboo bike.”
With bamboo a strong, affordable and environmentally friendly material readily available to manufacturers, African countries including Ghana, Uganda and Zambia have seen the start of production of such bicycles.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed. The Ghana initiative is one of 30 recipients of the 2010 United Nations Environmental Programme SEED awards for projects that tackle poverty while promoting the sustainable use of resources.
American engineer Craig Calfee, among those credited with introducing the sturdy bicycles to Africa’s rugged terrain, said he developed the technique in 1995.
It was not until 10 years later that he perfected the art and got his first bamboo bike on the market.
The idea of joining bamboo tubes with epoxy-soaked fibre crossed his mind when he was thinking of a “fun bike to draw publicity at a trade show.”
“While I am not the first to make a bicycle from bamboo, I am the inventor of the most effective method that most people are using now,” he said.
Indian scientist Dr. R.A. Mashelkar (right) studies a bamboo bicycle at a technical festival in Guwahati in 2002.
Bamboo grows quickly and has been popular with furniture crafters, among other industries, but it is now winning the hearts of environmentalists seeking sustainable building materials. Bamboo bicycles can be designed to suit individual needs, including “school bus bikes” with multiple seats.
Able to handle shocks and vibrations as well as heavy loads, the bikes have been seen as a potential solution for rural farmers — though the $150 price for the labour-intensive product has limited sales locally.
“My friends have been using the bikes for a long time and they are still strong,” said 60-year-old farmer Kofi Kugbelenu, who travelled 320 kilometres (200 miles) from the Volta Region to place an order.
“I’m buying one for myself and one for my son.”
After harvesting, stalks are smoked and heat-treated to prevent splitting. The tubes are then tacked with adhesive and wrapped using epoxy-impregnated fibre.
While frames are moulded from bamboo, pedals, wheels and saddles are made of conventional materials. Nyampong said his organisation is trying to develop its own bamboo bike handles and crash helmets.
Thomas Finger rides a bamboo bike made by a university group in Berlin last year. The sight of tall, green bamboo stalks swaying above the dusty lands of his west African country led Ibrahim Djan Nyampong to an unusual conclusion: bicycles.
Export demand has surged since the bikes were exhibited during President Barack Obama’s visit to Ghana in 2009.
“Business is now booming, especially in the area of export,” said Nyampong. He said his company expects to sell about 300 bikes this year, mostly for export to the United States and Austria.
After six months on a tour of east and west Africa, Calfee came away with the impression that bamboo bikes would succeed.
“I remembered that there was a lot of bamboo, people valued bicycles and there was a great need for jobs,” he said.
The price puts the bicycles beyond the reach of many rural farmers in Ghana, where about a third of the population lives below the poverty threshold.
But Nyampong, who has been making the bicycles since 2007, believes that with time the price will come down and demand for bamboo bikes will spike.
Producing the bikes does not require costly infrastructure, but takes a large amount of time and effort.
“You do not need to import the bamboo. There are plenty in the bush. Without electricity you can manufacture a bike,” said apprentice Prince Addo-Asante at the factory in Sowutuom, a small town on the fringes of the seaside capital Accra.
(c) 2011 AFP
Reference Link : http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-bamboo-bikes-export-success-ghana.html
Courtesy : PHYSORG
Germany sells vision for 'green toys' to world
February 6, 2011 By MELISSA EDDY , Associated Press
A woman holds a toy helicopter made of biodegradable parts such as bamboo during a press preview on the eve of the opening of the international toy fair in Nuremberg, southern Germany, where high-tech green toys were on display, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011. Germany, a pioneer in many renewable energy initiatives, is also at the forefront of creating environment-friendly toys aimed at making children think about where energy comes from and how much of it they can use, raising awareness through play. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
(AP) — The hottest “green” toy in Germany isn’t made of organic or recycled materials. That’s so 2010. This one has a solar panel and only runs if kids remember to insert bright red “energy stones” that power the rest of the space station.
Germany, a pioneer in many renewable energy initiatives, is also at the forefront of creating environment-friendly toys aimed at making kids think about where energy comes from and how much of it they can use, raising awareness through play.
A panoply of high-tech green toys are on display at this year’s Nuremberg toy fair, which runs through Sunday. Among them, hydroelectric-powered toy cars, and doll houses with wind turbines and rainwater catchers.
The bright green “Future Planet” space station features an inner atrium with a fan that is powered by a functioning solar cell. Its aim is to get kids to use their imagination about how energy will be created in the future.
Makers and retailers believe such toys will play an increasingly important role in their future – and that of our kids.
“Energy is the question of the future and we are definitely thinking about this as we move ahead,” said Judith Schweinitz, a spokeswoman for Playmobil, maker of the solar panel-fitted space station. “It is increasingly being brought into our play concept.”
Green toys – which range from those made of sustainable materials to ones like the space station that just raise environmental awareness – make up only a sliver of the nearly $84 billion international toy market, but their share is growing, studies indicate. Environmental research firm Earthsense, based in Syracuse, New York, predicts that green toys will account for about $1 billion, or 5 percent, of U.S. toy sales in the next five years.
Stacy Lu, a 46-year-old mother of twins from Allendale, New Jersey, is a self-described “rabidly eco-friendly” consumer who has researched toxins in the household – and is drawn to toys that make kids think about the planet’s future.
“In my mind, just knowing that there are alternatives to energy sources that involve environmentally disastrous digging and drilling is important,” said Lu, who recently bought her godson an alternative-energy electrical kit as a gift.
Eco-friendly toys were given a special section at the New York toy fair last year and organizers of the Nuremberg fair, Germany’s leading international gathering of toy makers and sellers, also highlighted green toys.
Robert von Goeben, co-founder of San Francisco-based Green Toys Inc., started making toys and other children’s products from recycled milk jugs in 2008. Since then, he said, sales have exploded, recording 80 percent growth last year as demand for the toymaker’s bright tugboats, pastel tea sets and colorful trucks surged.
“I think that the success of our company, shows that there is clearly a wide segment of the population that will pay a little more for environmentally friendly toys,” said von Goeben, whose toys cost roughly a third more than comparable playthings made from conventional materials.
But Wild Toys, makers of animal figures and exploration sets, said their experience had shown otherwise.
The company, which sells mainly to zoos and museum shops, jumped on the green bandwagon two years ago, bringing out a line of purely organic plush animals, even making sure the cotton for the stuffing was grown with organic fertilizer. The toys cost about 25 percent more than their conventional counterparts.
“They are still sitting in our warehouse,” said Wild Toys spokesman Valdemar Barde, adding that consumers are not yet ready to swallow the cost of going green in the toy box.
“We are still in that phase on toys that consumers say, ‘Yes, we want to be green, but no, we don’t want to pay for it.”
But according to a survey conducted by the Nuremberg toy fair, roughly a third of consumers in Germany said they would pay 10 to 20 percent more for playthings made from sustainable products, also with an eye to their longevity.
“Sustainable toys are also high-quality toys, meaning they last longer and then we also have the aspect that it is worth it to invest a few more euros,” said Rainer Weisskirch spokesman for Germany’s TUV quality control organization.
Von Goeben noted that safety concerns play a role and that recent scandals over cadmium in many Chinese-made toys and BPAs in conventional plastics have made parents more concerned about what goes into their kids’ toys.
“No longer can we have this anonymous plastic thing from someplace and give it to the child. Parents are smart and they want information about what’s in the product. That’s what’s really driving the market.”
©2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Reference Link : http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-germany-vision-green-toys-world.html
Courtesy : PHYSORG
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