AfDB Earmarks N34.5billion for Nigeria’s Agricultural Sector Development.

The African Development Bank, AfDB, has disclosed that it marked down $175 million, about N34.5 billion to improve Nigeria’s agricultural sector. AfDB Country Director, Ousmane Dore, who made this known when he visited some Northern governors in Kaduna, said the initiative was part of the Bank’s intervention strategy to boost the all-important sector in the country. Dore said, the Agricultural Transformation Agenda Support Programme, ATASP-I, of $175 million would consolidate the AfDB’s investments in the country’s agricultural sector Under this scheme, the bank will establish four Staple Crops Processing Zones, SCPZs, to cover four, out of the seven northwest states of Kebbi, Sokoto, Kano and Jigawa. He listed two upcoming projects in the country, totaling $500 million to include a youth programme, otherwise known as ENABLE, meaning Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment, which would gulp $300 million as well as the Phase II of the ATASP-$200 million. The Country Director said these projects are in addition to the Bank’s financial supports to SMEs through lines of credit to several commercial banks as well as the Bank of Industry, BOI and NEXIM. Culled from BizWatchNigeria.

Step inside a rat's brain with this VR reconstruction.

This virtual-reality reconstruction allows you to step inside the brain of a rat. The 3D brain is projected by 12 eight-megapixel streams across the six walls of a three-metre-sided cubic room known as the CAVE (cave automatic virtual environment). It was developed by the visualisation lab at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. "Through our application of electron microscopy, we are able to develop new ways of analysing microscopic cellular structures of the brain," explains Corrado Calì, a lead researcher on the project. The above image is of the hippocampus, an area involved in memory formation. KAUST scientists process extracted brain tissue through ilastik, a program created by Fred Hamprecht and his team at the Heidelberg Collaboratory for Image Processing in Germany, which is mainly directed toward interactive image classification, segmentation and analysis. Once the hippocampus has been digitally logged, its data is fed into 3D-modelling program Blender, with NeuroMorph plug-ins. This converts it into something a bit more compelling - a visualization which grants the ability to dive deep into the brain. for example," says Cali. "The use of CAVE was key to the observation of a non-random distribution of glycogen. This led us to develop tools for measuring glycogen clustering and proximity to other subcellular features." And if you don't have access to a CAVE? KAUST has created an Oculus Rift version, so other scientists can have rats on the brain. read more at wired.co.uk

How thousands of gamers are helping to decode the human body.

EVE Online isn't just a game about internet spaceships and sci-fi politics. Since March, developer CCP Games has been running Project Discovery – an initiative to help improve scientific understanding of the human body at the tiniest levels. Run in conjunction with the Human Protein Atlas and Massively Multiplayer Online Science, the project taps into EVE Online's greatest resource – its player base – to help categorize millions of proteins. "We show them an image, and they can change the color of it, putting green or red dyes on it to help them analyse it a little bit better," Linzi Campbell, game designer on Project Discovery, tells WIRED. "Then we also show them examples – cytoplasm is their favourite one! We show them what each of the different images should look like, and just get them to pick a few that they identify within the image. The identifications are scrambled each time, so it's not as simple as going 'ok, every time I just pick the one on the right' – they have to really think about it." The analysis project is worked into EVE Online as a minigame, and works within the context of the game's lore. "We have this NPC organisation called the Drifters – they're like a mysterious entity in New Eden [EVE's interplanetary setting]," Campbell explains. "The players don't know an awful lot about the Drifters at the minute, so we disguised it within the universe as Drifter DNA that they were analysing. I think it just fit perfectly. We branded this as [research being done by] the Sisters of Eve, and they're analyzing this Drifter DNA." The response has been tremendous. "We've had an amazing number of classifications, way over our greatest expectations," says Emma Lundberg, associate professor at the Human Protein Atlas. "Right now, after six weeks, we've had almost eight million classifications, and the players spent 16.2 million minutes playing the minigame. When we did the math, that translated – in Swedish measures – to 163 working years. It's crazy." "We had a little guess, internally. We said if we get 40,000+ classifications a day, we're happy. If we get 100,000 per day, then we're amazed," Lundberg adds. "But when it peaked in the beginning, we had 900,000 classifications in one day. Now it's stabilised, but we're still getting around 200,000 a day, so everyone is mind-blown. We never expected it." Currently, EVE players are going through images from Lundberg's domain, who serves as director for the sub-cellular chapter of the atlas. It took players just three weeks to get through the entire workload, and are now engaging in a second pass for veracity, with no signs of interest dropping. "Part of the problem with the gamification of science is that participation rapidly drops and that's what we hoped we could prevent by doing it in an existing game, with rewards," says Lundberg. "I think that's the biggest difference, that it's integrated into the game." The Human Protein Atlas itself is expanding on the mapping of the human genome, but at a much smaller level. "We have about 20,000 genes and right now we haven't even proven that more than 70 per cent even exist. So there's a big gap between protein research and DNA research, and there are several reasons for that," says Lundberg. "DNA you can amplify so it's easy to study, but you can't amplify proteins. Also, as all cells have the same DNA, you can [just] take a blood sample [to look at]. But proteins, that's the genes that are expressed, vary through the body. You have to cover the whole body and so it's a lot more difficult, from a technological point of view, to study proteins," she continues. "From my point of view, that's the interesting part – proteins are the molecules that perform the function, and drugs act by targeting proteins. So if you want to develop better drugs, understand how humans work, or understand biology, you have to know what the proteins are doing." Players' efforts will soon be felt in the wider scientific field too. After verifying their categorisations and analyses – a process involving control images that researchers know are correct, used to measure performance of the EVE hivemind – their findings are incorporated into the HPA's database. All data is publicly available, and the atlas has around 100,000 monthly users. Already, an average of two peer-reviewed scientific papers are published every day, and when the next version of the atlas is published in December, future papers will incorporate the EVE players' data. culled from wired.co.uk

Agric Firm Plans to Build N7billion Poultry Farm in Nigeria.

An agricultural company, Multi-Net Group Nigeria, has disclosed plans to build a large poultry farm at a cost of N7 billion in the country. The company’s Chairman, Uzoma Obiyo, who revealed this, said the company would also invest in the full value chain of animal husbandry including breeding of animals and processing, up to abattoir development, declaring that the project was currently on board. According to Obiyo, the company had an interest in developing world class poultry in Nigeria, which was assumed to be very expensive to build. He added that after their visibility reports, Abuja, Niger and Imo States have been chosen as pilot states and about N7 billion would be needed to establish the poultry farms in those states. Obiyo, who pointed out that 14 Federal Government’-owned breeding centres had been abandoned due largely to lack of maintenance and government’s insensitivity to the company’s needs, urged the government to privatize the centres for optimal performance. He maintained that without giving those centres to the private entrepreneurs, their potentials to generate revenues for the government would be jeopardized, which would be a big loss to the economic development of the country. Culled from BizwatchNigeria.

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Feed mill aims to resolve land disputes in Nigeria.

A new feed mill set up by Portuguese and Nigerian partners looks to ease tensions between livestock and arable farmers, and manufacture high-quality feeds. As well as manufacturing quality feeds for local poultry and livestock farmers and offering employment for local people, a feed mill can also help to resolve conflicts over land use, according to the former vice president of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar. Speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony in Abuja recently, he said the establishment of feed mills can help defuse the conflicts between herders and farmers that are costing lives and livelihoods in his country, reports All Africa. Its located in the Idu Industrial District in the Federal Capital Territory, the feed mill is being set up by Rico Gado Nutrition Nigeria, a private limited liability company formed in 2013 as a joint venture between Rico Gado Nutracao S.A. of Portugal and GeseDerdirabe Holdings of Yola in Adamawa State, which is owned by Abubakar. Rico Gardo’s first factory in Nigeria was commissioned last year in Yola. According to Abubakar, the feed produced there has already helped reduce the land area required to raise cattle. “The Yola mill produces 20 metric tons per hour of carefully balanced and locally sourced quality feed for a wide range of livestock, including poultry, cattle, goats, and horses,” he said. “We are also contributing to job creation, technology transfer and progressive change in farming culture. We believe there is a future in farming.” The new feed mill in Abuja is expected to be completed by early 2017 and to have a capacity of 50 metric tons per hour. Representing the Portuguese partner, Rico Gado, Joaquin Da Silva said the new mill has great potential to change the face of livestock production and make a positive impact on socio-economic development in Nigeria. read more at wattagnet.com

Dubai Inaugurates First 3D Printed Office Building, Constructed in 17 Days

While the concept of 3D printed buildings may not sound so far-fetched for the future at all as the technology has been earmarked for great potential in construction and architecture, many may be surprised to hear that Dubai is indeed home to the first 3D printed and fully functional office building, just inaugurated today in Dubai by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. This building represents part of the first major initiative of the Dubai 3D Printing Strategy in the UAE, which we’ve been reporting on repeatedly since plans were initially announced and outlined.In only 17 days the building was 3D printed. One top and bottom unit were fabricated, showing off an incredible feat in new office trends. The Emirates Towers premises will house this temporary office of the Dubai Future Foundation which has all the usual conveniences integrated into the design such as electricity, water, telecommunications and air-conditioning. This is to act as a testimony not just to Dubai’s superiority, but also to 3D printing and all of its benefits, this office is to be 2,000 square feet with space to allow teams to meet and work, as well as offering room for meetings with consultants and industry experts from around the globe. The design, also offering sufficient space for a variety of exhibitions and workshops, is primarily meant to offer an atmosphere that is happy, healthy, and allows those working there to thrive in their environment. The offices, including all interior furniture, detailing, and structural components, were fabricated using a 3D printer measuring 20 feet high, 120 feet long and 40 feet wide, and included an automated robot arm—something we are beginning to see integrated into this technology more and more on larger and smaller scales, with 3D Systems Figure 4 technology coming straight to mind. Materials for this building construction included a mixture of special reinforced concrete, glass fiber reinforced gypsum, and fiber reinforced plastic—all tested in both the UK and China for reliability. The team also built in an arc shape for additional safety and structural integrity. This project reflects the vision of our leadership here in Dubai. We are keen to use the latest technologies to simplify people’s lives and to serve them better. This project is part of our overall innovation strategy to create new designs and new solutions in education, healthcare and cities. Our goal is to increase the happiness and wellbeing of our residents and to pioneer new solutions for the world,” said Mohammed Al Gergawi, Chairman of the UAE National Innovation Committee. “We implement what we plan, and we pursue actions, not theories. The rapidly changing world requires us to accelerate our pace of development for history does not recognize our plans but our achievements,” said Shaikh Mohammad, regarding this very historical office. read more at 3Dprint.com