Information systems education in Kenya: Students’ specialization choice trends

online-masters-and-phds.com - Technical University of Kenya (formerly Kenya Polytechnic University College) Article by: Atieno A Ndede-Amadi, Technical University of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya The objective of this study was to determine the time and level of Information Systems (IS) awareness among Kenyan university students and the choice of IS as a field of specialization. The study posited that the choice of a field of specialization is dependent upon a student’s awareness of its existence, its utilization in the real world, its career opportunities, and its strategic importance to the country’s economic development agenda.

How animals help us understand disease

bbc.co.uk - By Dr Alison Woollard University of Oxford

For all the weird and wonderful diversity of the animal kingdom, at the genetic level many species have a surprising level of similarity. As a result we can learn a lot about the inner workings of our own human cells by studying other animals, and not all of them are mammals as you might expect.

In the 2013 Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution, titled Life Fantastic, I discuss a menagerie of creatures that help explain where life comes from and how we grow and age. I also show how the knowledge we gain from the natural world is helping to inform our understanding of human development and disease. 

Rock And Rho: Proteins that help cancer cells groove

medicalxpress.com - Biologists at The Johns Hopkins University have discovered that low oxygen conditions, which often persist inside tumors, are sufficient to initiate a molecular chain of events that transforms breast cancer cells from being rigid and stationery to mobile and invasive. Their evidence, published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Dec. 9, underlines the importance of hypoxia-inducible factors in promoting breast cancer metastasis.

Apple files new patent that could enable voice-based photo search in Siri

digitaltrends.com - According to a new application the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published this week , Apple may be working on bringing voice-based photo search to Siri. The patent, “Voice-Based Image Tagging and Searching,” describes the ability of searching photographs on a device via text strings associated, such as tags, said AppleInsider , which discovered the filing this week (the patent was submitted back in March, but only just published by the USPTO).

Top Health Trend For 2014: Telehealth To Grow Over 50%. What Role For Regulation?

forbes.com - For many years, telehealth advocates have accused payers of being unwilling to reimburse for proven telehealth interventions, which can significantly reduce medical costs. Well, we have crossed that chasm, and telehealth is about to experience explosive growth. RNCOS Business Consultancy Services has just released a report predicting 18.5 percent annual growth in telehealth worldwide through 2018.

Why Ben Silbermann Keeps Creating New Pinterest Accounts

fastcompany.com - It's fair to say that Ben Silbermann spends a lot of time on Pinterest. As the social network's founder and CEO, he's intimately familiar with its every feature. However, Silbermann says that too much attention to detail can blind an otherwise crucial aspect of running a company: a user's first experience. "One of the hard parts about building a service that you use yourself is that it's easy to forget what it was like the very first time someone someone signs up," he says.

Cybersecurity Will Get More Complex in 2014

mashable.com - Bad news for all businesses, big and small. Cybersecurity is going to get a lot more complicated in 2014. Global nonprofit IT association ISACA believes IT and cybersecurity professionals should resolve now to gear up for accelerated change and complexity in 2014, especially in cybersecurity, data privacy and big data. “The pace of change expected in 2014 will put incredible pressure on technology professionals in the workplace with a focus on keeping IT risk in check while at the same time delivering value to the business," said Bhavesh Bhagat, CEO of EnCrisp, co-founder of Confident Governance and member of ISACA's new emerging business and technology committee.

See The Tiny Carnivorous Monster That Just Won Olympus's Micro Photo Prize

fastcocreate.com - "Humped bladderwort" may sound like something from the imagination of J.K. Rowling, but in fact, it's a real aquatic plant, found on all continents except Antarctica. It's also carnivorous--which makes it that much more Potteresque. A hapless microinvertebrate floating by the plant's miniature leaves could easily end up as bladder breakfast. Today, the bladderwort is about to grab the stage from its more popular insect-eating flora.

Google And Apple Gear Up For The Voice-Activated Smartphone Battle

businessinsider.com - Apple Smartphones will be talking to their users and the tech giants Google and Apple are determined to have the edge Google has predicted its dominant web search engine will mean it will beat Apple in the race to turn the smartphone and other devices into intelligent, voice-controlled personal assistants. The rival technology giants are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in their competing services, Google Now and Siri, and the field is expected to be a major battleground for their mobile operating systems, Android and iOS.

SodaStream’s CEO on Turning a Banned Super Bowl Ad into Marketing Gold

hbr.org - Photography: Jonathan Bloom/Getty Global Assignment The Idea: SodaStream was near bankruptcy when Birnbaum joined it, in 2007. He believed that the carbonated beverage industry was ripe for disruption—and that meant going after Coke and Pepsi. What happened was a big surprise. During the 2013 Super Bowl, I was on an airplane en route to a business meeting, so I didn’t watch the game. But back in Israel, where our company is headquartered, a group of SodaStream executives got together at a bar to watch.

9 Huge Government Conspiracies That Actually Happened

businessinsider.com - We all know the conspiracy theories — the government's plan for 911, the second gunman who shot JFK, the evolution of the elite from a race of blood-drinking, shape-shifting lizards. But the people who spread these ideas usually can't prove them. As the years pass, however, secrets surface. Government documents become declassified. We now have evidence of certain elaborate government schemes right here in the U.

Dos and Don’ts of the Post-Breach Report

blogs.wsj.com - When it comes to the investigation Target Corp. is conducting of its massive data breach, putting an attorney in charge of that probe could greatly reduce the company’s risk exposure, one attorney said. The main advantage to putting a lawyer in charge of a post-breach probe—and not someone from IT–is doing so can give the company cover behind attorney-client privilege, said Daren Orzechowski, a partner at law firm White & Case.

10 American Industries That Are Going To Boom In The Next Decade

businessinsider.com - A decade ago, Google had not yet gone public, the Affordable Care Act wasn't law, and no one saw big data coming. The job market was entirely different then, as it will be a decade from now. A new data release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals which industries are going to grow the fastest between 2012 and 2022. Health care and technology, already giants today, are expected to keep up their rapid growth over the next decade.

Why Successful People Have So Many Groups Of Friends

fastcompany.com - While ideas may appear to be only in your head, it turns out they're super social: Darwin talked about evolution for decades before publishing the Origin of Species . And while it might be you that gets the promotion, it's your connections up, down, and across a company that predict performance .Why? Because ideas are like germs: they don't diffuse through populations of people at random; they make their way through networks --that is, the relationships you have with people and the connections they have with others.

New Zealand Health improves diabetes policy with big data analytics

futuregov.asia - The Ministry of Health New Zealand uses big data analytics to accurately determine current and predict future diabetic population to improve diabetes policy planning.In collaboration with experts from the New Zealand Society for the Study of Diabetes ( NZSSD ), the ministry created a Virtual Diabetes Register ( VDR ) that pulls and filters health data from six major databases.

Georgia Tech Designs Its Udacity Pilot to Avoid Failure

chronicle.com - G.P. (Bud) Peterson, president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, is determined not to become the next casualty of a failed MOOC experiment.Mr. Peterson saw what happened at San Jose State University earlier this year: An experiment with Udacity, a company that specializes in massive open online courses, turned into an embarrassment for Mohammad H. Qayoumi, San Jose State’s president, after its first run, in the spring semester, produced underwhelming results.

 

Mandela saw education as a powerful weapon for freedom

timeshighereducation.co.uk - Martin Hall considers the legacy of academic values left by South Africa’s first black presidentMandela saw equality of opportunity through education as the key to emancipation, a principle yet to be realised in South Africa, or elsewhereWhat more can be written about Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, world icon? His political longevity embraced the entire span of formal apartheid, from before the election of the National Party in 1948 and to the end of the first term of South Africa’s democratically elected parliament in 1999.

5 Great Live Blogging Tips For Teachers

edudemic.com - This post was co-authored by Jennifer Carey and Beth Holland.Live Blogging is a popular medium to convey information as it is announced. Unless you’ve been privileged enough to get an invitation to the latest Apple or Google Event, then you have likely seen the release of information via Twitter or other live blog platforms. Live Blogs include not only writing, but images, video, links, and more. In essence, they are multimedia publications.

Nobel winner declares boycott of top science journals

theguardian.com - Leading academic journals are distorting the scientific process and represent a "tyranny" that must be broken, according to a Nobel prize winner who has declared a boycott on the publications.Randy Schekman, a US biologist who won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine this year and receives his prize in Stockholm on Tuesday, said his lab would no longer send research papers to the top-tier journals, Nature, Cell and Science.

Mosquitos Hunt Humans by Smelling Breath and Skin Odours

ibtimes.co.uk - Mosquitoes track down humans from a distance by the smell of carbon dioxide on our breath and then find exposed areas through skin odours.Mosquitoes are the most deadly animal on the planet, killing an estimated two million people every year.Researchers at the University of California have found that female mosquitoes, which transmit deadly diseases like malaria and dengue fever, are attracted to humans by smelling the CO2 we exhale.

Genetic flaw in males triggers onset of liver cancer, diabetes

medicalxpress.com - Michigan State University researchers have uncovered a genetic deficiency in males that can trigger the development of one of the most common types of liver cancer and forms of diabetes.The research, published in the online issue of Cancer Cell , found that when the NCOA5 gene, present in both men and women, was altered in male mice to a deficient level, a spontaneous reaction occurred producing cells that can lead to hepatocellular carcinoma, a type of liver cancer found to be two-to-four times more prevalent in men than women.

'Genetic Surgery' May Be Enabled by a New Technology

scientificamerican.com -  Feng Zhang is one of the founders of Editas Medicine, which aims to use CRISPR gene-editing technology to treat disease.  

Instead of taking prescription pills to treat their ailments, patients may one day opt for genetic 'surgery' — using an innovative gene-editing technology to snip out harmful mutations and swap in healthy DNA. The system, called CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), has exploded in popularity in the past year, with genetic engineers, neuroscientists and even plant biologists viewing it as a highly efficient and precise research tool. Now, the gene-editing system has spun out a biotechnology company that is attracting attention from investors as well.

Editas Medicine, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced its launch on 25 November with an initial $43 million venture capital investment. The company, founded by five leading CRISPR researchers, aims to develop therapies that directly modify disease-related genes.

Will e-publishing help Africa discover the joy of reading?

m.bbc.co.uk - Publishers have long bemoaned Africa's lack of a "book culture" but some hope that the advent of smartphones and the internet could help change this, writes journalist Chris Matthews.

The 566% increase in worldwide internet usage since the start of the millennium might appear staggering but not when compared with Africa, where online activity has grown by an astonishing 3,606%. More than 160 million people are now connected throughout the continent, mostly on mobile phones.

With internet access surging and connectivity increasing, the doors are being thrown open to digital publishing. All of which suggests a new chapter has been started since Kenyan publisher Henry Chakava's withering attack on Africa's book culture back in 1997.

Experimental HIV vaccine targets virus envelope protein

medicalxpress.com - AIDS research has investigated many strategies to tackle the HIV virus. Now, a new type of vaccine developed within the EU-funded project EuroNeut-41, targets an HIV envelope protein called the gp41. The protein is directly responsible for the fusion of the HIV virus with human cells. By integrating the gp41 protein into the vaccine, researchers are attempting to trigger the production of antibodies that would block the entrance of HIV into human cells.