New mobile app makes cheating easy

A mobile app that allows users to have multiple telephone numbers on one phone has been hailed a saviour for cheating partners.

The free software called Swytch, provides up to five additional mobile numbers on a handset and rather than have two mobile phones, love cheats can juggle their separate love lives by calling or texting their multiple romantic interests by swapping between the numbers.

There are other uses for the app aside from cheating. The app also assists in business and people who travel and would like to have other numbers.

Chris Michael, CEO of Swytch, said it was unavoidable that the app “could also attract the unfaithful ones.”

He added: “The bottom line is, if someone wants to hide something, they will find a way.”

HOW IT WORKS

Using a data or WiFi connection, the app works by not having to change your SIM card, device or mobile network provider, numbers are stored in the cloud – a new generation of network operator, and you can make and receive calls, texts and voicemails on all your Swytch numbers.

Currently, you can get up to 5 UK numbers on your existing mobile device. The app is available on iOS and Android platforms.

Tackling poverty, unemployment in Nigeria with tomatoes

It’s a situation that mirrors the giant oil industry, where Nigeria has abundant resources but has lacked the capacity, will or ability to exploit it, forcing a reliance on imports.

But Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote is hoping to change tomato production with a giant factory that will boost domestic output, create jobs — and even, indirectly, fight Boko Haram.

For the past five years, the Dangote Group conglomerate he heads has been working to build a $20-million (18.4-million-euro) tomato processing plant outside the northern city of Kano.

The city and state of the same name has been blighted by poverty and unemployment, seen as key drivers to radicalisation fuelling the Islamist insurgency in the wider north since 2009.

But it’s hoped the giant factory the size of 10 football pitches, set alongside 17,000 hectares (acres) of irrigated fields, will help by tapping a potential agricultural goldmine.

The country’s agriculture ministry puts annual current demand for tomato puree at 900,000 tonnes.

When the Dangote factory opens from next month it will provide 430,000 tonnes of paste that is used widely in Nigerian dishes from jollof rice to fiery soups.

“Nigeria is such a huge market for tomato paste that we will find quite challenging to satisfy,” the factory’s general manager, Abdulkarim Kaita, told AFP.

“Already local tomato paste packaging companies have placed orders with us which we will have to work hard to satisfy.

“We are set to begin operations. We are only waiting for the tomatoes which are ripening in the fields.”

– Supply boost –

Nigeria grows some 1.5 million tonnes of tomatoes every year, making it the 14th biggest producer in the world.

But it’s forced to rely on imports of tomato puree, mostly from China, because of a lack of processing plants.

Dangote’s factory, built by Switzerland-based Syngenta, will directly employ 120 people and 50,000 farmers have been engaged to grow the tomatoes required for the process of making concentrate.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has provided technical assistance such as soft loans for seeds and fertiliser. The factory will then buy the produce at competitive rates, said Kaita.

Currently, about half of the local tomato crop rots because of a lack of storage facilities, poor pricing and access to markets, which has prompted many farmers to stop cultivation, said the CBN.

The improved seed varieties to increase yields, access to chemicals, more up-to-date farming techniques and a ready market for the produce is designed to entice farmers back.

“Once we start production the factory will be providing employment to farmers and (the) tomato paste packaging industry, traders, haulage operators and many others to support the tomato value chain,” said production manager Ashwin Patil.

Plans to increase production — and acquire an idle tomato paste factory in neighbouring Kaduna state — are in the pipeline, he added.

For farmers such as Yusuf Ado Kadawa, it’s a lifeline.

“We really incur heavy losses from our yield, which rots away due to lack of (a) ready market for our tomatoes, which is a perishable produce. But now we have a market close to us,” he said.

– Challenges –

President Muhammadu Buhari is keen to diversify Nigeria’s economy away from an over-reliance on oil as revenues have been severely depleted by the global slump in crude prices.

Former agriculture minister Akinwumi Adesina, now head of the African Development Bank, in 2013 described the sector as “the new oil”.

Some 30 percent of Nigeria’s estimated 170 million people are employed in agriculture, mostly at a subsistence level, although moves have been made to commercialise production.

Erratic power supply, which Nigeria has been grappling with for more than two decades, and lack of import controls remain the factory’s main challenges.

The factory will have to rely on diesel-hungry generators for electricity, adding to production costs and reducing competitiveness with cheaper imports.

Both issues contributed to the collapse of hundreds of factories in Dangote’s home state of Kano in the past two decades, including his textile and wheat flour factories.

But the vice-president of Nigeria’s manufacturers union, Ali Madugu, said the future still looked bright.

“Once the government can place restrictions on the import of Chinese tomato pastes… the sky’s the limit for the Dangote tomato paste because the market is there for them to exploit,” he added.

#DidYouKnow: Sperm carries information about dad’s weight

Turns out dads are also eating for two.

A new study published December 3 in Cell Metabolism reveals that the sperm cells of lean and obese men possess different epigenetic marks, notable at gene regions associated with the control of appetite –  a man’s weight affects the heritable information contained in sperm.

The comparisons, which included 13 lean men and 10 obese men, offer one biological explanation for why children of obese fathers are themselves more predisposed to obesity. Researchers believe that in times of abundance, it’s an instinctual way to encourage children to eat more and grow bigger.

Researchers believe the findings from this study offer one biological explanation for why children of obese fathers are themselves more predisposed to obesity.

 Source:

Cell Press. “Sperm carries information about dad’s weight.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 3 December 2015

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith reveal secret to a successful marriage

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s advice for a successful marriage is to “keep on trucking”.

The couple have been married since 1997 and they believe the secret to a happy relationship is to simply stick with it through the “tough patches”.

Will told ‘Extra’: “Just stay in it,” while Jada added: “Stay in it. Keep on trucking. Marriages go through many different cycles and stages and it gets better and better and better and you will go through some tough patches some really bad ones that are going to make you want to quit, but don’t!”

Will has previously credited the couple’s almost 20-year marriage to not quitting and admitted that it has been “the most difficult, excruciating thing” that he has ever taken on but insisted it was all worth it.

He explained: “We’ve been married 20 years and we’ve been asking ourselves [what’s the secret to marriage] and really at the end of the day it’s just not quitting, You can’t expect it to be easy, it’s like our marriage was the most difficult, excruciating thing that we have ever taken on in our lives. And, you know, were just not quitters.

“We only ever worked on ourselves individually and then presented ourselves to one another better than we were previously.”

E-cigarettes contain dangerous ‘popcorn lung’ chemicals

Three in four e-cigarettes were found to use a flavored liquid that has been linked to severe respiratory disease, US researchers said Tuesday.

Electronic cigarettes are battery-powered devices that heat a nicotine-containing liquid, which is inhaled much like a cigarette.

Unlike traditional cigarettes, the devices are not regulated by US authorities, leading to concern among some experts that they may be harmful to health — and that their candy and fruit flavors may appeal to youths and put them at risk of addiction.

For the study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, scientists at Harvard University tested flavors that may appeal to young people such as Cotton Candy, Fruit Squirts and Cupcake.

They found that 75 percent of tested samples contained diacetyl, which when inhaled has been linked to the respiratory disease bronchiolitis obliterans — sometimes called “popcorn lung” because over 10 years ago it was discovered in workers who inhaled artificial butter flavor in microwave popcorn processing facilities.

Of the 7,000 varieties of flavored e-cigarettes, researchers focused on testing 51 types “sold by leading brands for the presence of diacetyl, acetoin and 2,3-pentanedione, two related flavoring compounds that are listed as ‘high priority,'” because they may pose a respiratory hazard in the workplace, the study said.

In a lab testing environment, each e-cigarette was attached to a device that drew air through the e-cigarette for eight seconds at a time, with a resting period of 15 or 30 seconds, to mimic the action of a human smoker.

The air stream was analyzed, and at least one of the three chemicals was detected in 47 of the 51 flavors tested, according to the report.

“Diacetyl was detected above the laboratory limit of detection in 39 of the flavors tested,” it said.

Acetoin was detected in 46 flavors, and 2,3-pentanedione was found in 23 of the flavors.

“Since most of the health concerns about e-cigarettes have focused on nicotine, there is still much we do not know about e-cigarettes,” said study co-author David Christiani, a professor of environmental genetics.

“In addition to containing varying levels of the addictive substance nicotine, they also contain other cancer-causing chemicals, such as formaldehyde, and as our study shows, flavoring chemicals that can cause lung damage.”

Babies with older mothers are born healthier: Study

Women who have babies in their 30s give birth to “healthier” babies according to a new study.

In a study published in December’s journal Biodemography and Social Biology, researchers found that babies born to mothers in their 30s had the top cognitive scores whilst children born to mothers in their 40s were more likely to be obese, the Metro newspaper reports.

This article uses data from the Millennium Cohort Study (UK) and ordinary least squares and logistic regression models to compare cognitive and behavioral outcomes, and obesity at age 5 for first-born children by maternal age at first birth.

The findings suggest that giving birth to the first child at ages 30–39 compared to ages 23–29 is positively associated with children’s cognitive and behavioral outcomes and not associated with obesity.

“First-time mothers in their 30s are, for example, likely to be more educated, have higher income, and more likely to be in stable relationships, have healthier lifestyles, seek prenatal care earlier and have planned their pregnancies,” lead researcher Dr. Alice Goisis explains.

Although the results are unable to support the argument that this occurs because of the health risks associated with giving birth at advanced maternal ages, they suggest that there is a need to more closely investigate the potential trade-offs involved when births are delayed toward older maternal ages.

Richest 1% own more than the rest of us

The richest one percent of the world’s population now own more than the rest of us combined, aid group Oxfam said Monday, on the eve of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

“Runaway inequality has created a world where 62 people own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population – a figure that has fallen from 388 just five years ago,” the anti-poverty agency said in its reported published ahead of the annual gathering of the world?s financial and political elites in Davos.

The report, entitled “An Economy for the 1%”, states that women are disproportionately affected by the global inequality.

“One of the other key trends behind rising inequality set out in Oxfam International’s report is the falling share of national income going to workers in almost all developed and most developing countries… The majority of low paid workers around the world are women.”

Although world leaders have increasingly talked about the need to tackle inequality “the gap between the richest and the rest has widened dramatically in the past 12 months,” Oxfam said.

Oxfam’s prediction, made ahead of last year’s Davos meeting, that the richest one percent would soon own more than the rest of us, “actually came true in 2015,” it added.

While the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income of the poorest 10 percent has risen by less than $3-a-year in the past quarter of a century, a increase in individuals’ income of less than one cent a year, the report said.

– ‘Few dozen super-rich people’ –

More than 40 heads of state and government will attend the Davos forum which begins late Tuesday and will end on January 23.

Those heading to the Swiss resort town for the high-level annual gathering also include 2,500 “leaders from business and society”, the WEF said in an earlier statement.

Describing the theme — the Fourth Industrial Revolution — WEF founder Klaus Shwab has said it “refers to the fusion of technologies across the physical, digital and biological worlds which is creating entirely new capabilities and dramatic impacts on political, social and economic systems.”

Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanima, who will also attend Davos having co-chaired last year’s event, said: “It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world’s population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus.”

World leaders’ concerns about the escalating inequality crisis have “so far not translated into concrete action ?- the world has become a much more unequal place and the trend is accelerating,” she warned.

– End tax-havens era –

As a priority, Oxfam is calling for an end to the era of tax havens which has seen the increasing use of offshore centres to avoid paying taxes.

“This has denied governments valuable resources needed to tackle poverty and inequality,” the report said.

As much as 30 percent of all African financial wealth is estimated to be held offshore, it added, costing an estimated $14 billion in lost tax revenues every year.

Getting hold of the proper level of taxes will be “vital” if world leaders are to meet their goal, set last September, of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030.

Byanima challenged those attending the Davos meeting “to play their part in ending the era of tax havens, which is fuelling economic inequality and preventing hundreds of millions of people lifting themselves out of poverty”.

Of the 62 people said to hold as much wealth as the poorest 50 percent, Oxfam said that 53 are men and just nine are female, highlighting that women are ill-represented even at the highest levels.

The headline Davos guests include British Prime Minister David Cameron, US Vice President Joe Biden, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

President Mauricio Marci of Argentina, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alexis Tsipars, the Greek prime minister, are also due to attend.

Oxfam said it had calculated the wealth of the richest 62 people using Forbes’ billionaires list.