Newly licensed private Universities in Nigeria

The Minster of Education, Ibrahim Shekarau, has said that the presentation of licenses to the nine universities was to create space for effective mentoring and qualitative growth within the first five years of operation. He said further that newly approved private universities will be affiliated to older generation universities for mentoring (areas of mentoring will be academics, administration and programme implemented by the National University Commission (NUC).

Permanent licenses would only be issued to well-structured institutions after three years of probation, the minister said.

The Nine Universities are

• Augustine University, Ilara, Lagos
• Chrisland University, Owode, Ogun State
• Christopher University, Mowe, Ogun State
• Hallmark University, Ijebu-Itele, Ogun State
• Kings University, Ode-Omu, Osun State
• Micheal and Cecilia Ibru University, Owhrode, Delta State
• Mountain Top Unversity, Makogi/Oba, Ogun state
• Ritman University, Ikot-Epene, Akwa- Ibom State
• Summit University, Offa, Kwara State.

Nigeria had 40 Federal, 39 State and 50 private universities before now.

INEC smart card reader: Its function and role

Saturday 28th March, Nigerians will decide by casting their votes to their respective choice of candidates. The Independent national electoral commission (INEC) says it has adopted the use of smart card reader to verify the permanent voter’s card (PVC) due to speculations that fake PVCs have been produced and are already in circulation. INEC said this model will help actualize its campaign on ensuring transparency. Experts have said that INEC has adopted biometrics methods in countries like Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, Rwanda and Senegal.

To ensure that the readers perform up to the expected standard, they have been subjected to integrity test.  Without leaving any stone unturned, INEC procured an additional 20,000 card readers, apart from the 152,000 acquired. 35,000 backup batteries were also acquired in case there is any occurrence.

The role and function of the card reader include the following:

- The card readers make use of sim cards and have in-built memories, thus poor mobile connection is no problem.

- They are deliberately programmed to work between time frames, and would not work after that set of time.

- The card readers will be pre-configured by INEC staff for polling units before polling officials arrive.

- The smart card reader sends data of people accredited to INEC’s central server ahead of counting of the ballot papers, preventing linkages and exchanging to rig elections.

- Before an individual will be allowed to vote, the thumb print of the voter will be taken with the device and it must match with the one on the PVC.

- Accreditation of voters will last only for 5 hours but card readers have been designed to last for 12 hours if the battery is fully charged.

- INEC officials have revealed that each device has the capacity for the details of about 750 voters which means it can only verify the details of the voters whose data have been entered into the device.

Finally lets vote and not fight ! !! !!!

Today in History: March 27

1998: The drug Viagra from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in treating erectile dysfunction.

1977: Two airplanes, a Pan Am 747 and a KLM 747, collided on a runway in the Canary Islands, killing 582.

1976: Washington, D.C. opens its subway system.

1958: The United States announces a plan to explore space near the moon.

1958: Nikita Khrushchev replaced Nikolay Bulganin as premier of the Soviet Union.

1952: Elements of the U.S. Eighth Army reach the 38th parallel in Korea, the original dividing line between the two Koreas.

1945: General Dwight Eisenhower declares that the German defenses on the Western Front have been broken.

1944: Thousands of Jews are murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Gestapo shoots forty Jewish policemen in the Riga, Latvia ghetto.

1942: The British raid the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.

1941: Tokeo Yoshikawa arrives in Oahu, Hawaii, to begin spying for Japan on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.

1933: Some 55,000 people stage a protest against Hitler in New York.

1912: The first cherry blossom trees, a gift from Japan, are planted in Washington, D.C.

1900: The London Parliament passes the War Loan Act, which gives 35 million pounds to the Boer War cause.

1899: The Italian inventor G. Marconi achieves the first international radio transmission between England and France.

1893: The American Bell Telephone Company makes the first long distance telephone call to its branch office in New York.

1886: German American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose rectilinear forms crafted in elegant simplicity epitomized the International style of architecture, was born.

1884: The first long-distance telephone call is made from Boston to New York.

1866: President Andrew Johnson vetoes the civil rights bill, which later becomes the 14th amendment.

1836: The Mexican army massacres Texan rebels at Goliad.

1814: At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (Tohopeka, Alabama) in the Creek War, Andrew Jackson and his 3,000 troops defeated the Creek Indians, slaughtering more than 800 warriors and imprisoning 500 women and children.

1802: The Treaty of Amiens is signed, ending the French Revolutionary War.

1625: Upon the death of James I, Charles I ascended the throne of Great Britain and Ireland.

1512: Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights Florida.

1351: As part of the struggle between Charles of Blois (supported by the king of France) and John of Montfort (backed by the king of England) over succession to the duchy of Brittany, their knights waged the Battle of the Thirty near Ploërmel.

1350: While besieging Gibraltar, Alfonso XI of Castile dies of the Black Death.

47: The legendary Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, aided by her Roman lover Julius Caesar, was reinstated as coruler of Egypt (with her brother Ptolemy XIV) this day in 47 BC following a civil war with her brother Ptolemy XIII.

Alia Sabur: The youngest college professor in history

Alia Sabur

Ali Sabur who started talking and reading when she was just 8 months old has been clearly ahead of the learning curve since an early age. She is from New York city in New York. From the report at hand, Sabur had elementary school finished at age 5. She made the jump to college at age 10. She earned a bachelor’s of science degree in applied mathematics from Stony Brook University at age 14 making her the youngest female in U.S. history to do so. She continued her education at Drexel University, where she earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering.

With endless future ahead of her, Sabur directed her first career choice to teaching. She was just three days short of her 19th birthday in February, 2008 (She is of age 26 now) when she was hired to become a full time faculty professor at Konkuk University in Seoul, Korea. Children are considered to be 1 year old when they are born, and add a year to their age every New Year instead of their actual birthday (In traditional Korean culture), so in Korea Sabur was considered 20.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, this distinction made her the youngest college professor in history, beating the previous record held by Colin Maclaurin, who was a student of physicist Isaac Newton in 1717. At the time of her appointement, she said she will take part in classroom instruction, but will also focus on research into developing nanotubes for use as cellular probes that could aid cures for diseases.

In addition to her unprecedented academic achievements, Sabur is a music prodigy, she has been playing clarinet with orchestras since her solo debut at age 11, playing with recording artist Lang Lang and Smash Mouth. She also has a black belt in the Korean martial art of tae kwon do at the age of 9.

In Alia Sabur's wildly advanced studies she came across a famous quote from a German writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which says "Knowing is not enough. We must apply."That could serve as explanation for what prompted the 19-year-old to become the youngest college professor in history.

Today in History: March 26

1992: Heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was sentenced to six years in prison following a rape conviction in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1989: The first free elections take place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin is elected.

1982: Ground is broken in Washington D.C. for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1979: The historic peace accord between Israel and Egypt, agreed to by Menachem Begin and Anwar el-Sādāt and negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, Maryland, in September 1978, was signed this day in 1979.

1971: Members of the Awami League set up a government-in-exile in Calcutta (Kolkata) and declared Bangladesh an independent state.

1969: Writer John Kennedy Toole commits suicide at the age of 32. His mother helps get his first and only novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, published. It goes on to win the 1981 Pulitzer Prize.

1969: The Soviet weather Satellite Meteor 1 is launched.

1961: John F. Kennedy meets with British Premier Macmillan in Washington to discuss increased Communist involvement in Laos.

1954: The United States sets off an H-bomb blast in the Marshall Islands, the second in four weeks.

1953: Eisenhower offers increased aid to the French fighting in Indochina.

1953: Dr. Jonas Salk announces a new vaccine against polio.

1951: The United States Air Force flag design is approved.

1950: Senator Joe McCarthy names Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a Soviet spy.

1942: The Germans begin sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.

1938: Herman Goering warns all Jews to leave Austria.

1930: Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice, was born in El Paso, Texas.

1927: The Mille Miglia, the famed automobile race across Italy, was inaugurated.

1918: On the Western Front, the Germans take the French towns Noyon, Roye and Lihons.

1913: The Balkan allies take Adrianople.

1885: Eastman Film Co. manufactures the first commercial motion picture film.

1885: The first clash of the Riel Rebellion in Canada took place in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan.

1832: Famed western artist George Catlin begins his voyage up the Missouri River aboard the American Fur Company steamship Yellowstone.

1827: German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven dies in Vienna. He had been deaf for the later part of his life, but said on his death bed "I shall hear in heaven."

1827: Ludwig van Beethoven died of cirrhosis of the liver in Vienna.

1804: Congress orders the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi River to Louisiana.

1799: Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine.

1517: The famous Flemish composer Heinrich Issac dies.

Angelina Jolie Pitt: She removed her ovaries due to the genetic mutation she inherited

Angelina Jolie Pitt

Only few individuals knew that the actress, filmmaker and activist had her breasts removed two years ago. Angelina Jolie had an insight of been a much higher than usual risk of breasts and ovarian cancer. She has a harmful mutation of the BRCA 1 gene she inherited. According to researchers, mutations in this particular gene give women a 65% lifetime risk for breast cancer and a 39% lifetime risk of ovarian cancer. Jolie’s mother had breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer, and her grandmother also had ovarian cancer. This analysis was what prompts Jolie to remove her breast and ovaries for she said her own particular set of mutation genes gives her an 87% risk. Debbie Martin her aunt, died of breast cancer at age 61, less than two weeks Jolie had a double mastectomy

She took the decision to go for the ovariectomy because study revealed last year that people with certain BRCA1 mutations can cut their risk by as much as 80 percent if they get their ovaries removed by age 35. The researchers said ovary removal should become standard for anyone with so-called BRCA1 mutations.

Ovarian cancer kills 15,000 women a year in the United States. Only 46 percent of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer survive for five years or longer. That’s mostly because the disease usually is detected late, after it has started to spread. Jolie had a blood test for a compound called CA-125. It’s produced by ovarian tumors and is a good way to check to see how well treatment for ovarian cancer is working. It’s not such a good test for finding ovarian cancer in the first place, however. There is no good screening test yet.

The treatment for ovarian cancer usually involves a harsh process, the first step is surgery to remove the ovaries and surrounding affected tissue. That can include the mean parts of the colon and bladder, as well as the uterus, depending on how far the cancer has spread. Chemotherapy is also almost always given, usually the so-called platinum-based drugs such as cisplatin or carboplatin, plus a taxane drug such as paclitaxel. Women may receive the drugs intravenously and also infused into the abdominal cavity.

The side effects include hair loss, nerve damage, nausea, hearing damage and kidney damage. Radiation therapy is also common and it can damage nearby organs and tissues, causing incontinence, rash, upset stomach and pain.

Word of advice: Prevention is better than cure.

Today in History: March 25

1965: Martin Luther King Jr. leads a group of 25,000 to the state capital in Montgomery, Ala.

1986: President Ronald Reagan orders emergency aid for the Honduran army. U.S. helicopters take Honduran troops to the Nicaraguan border.

1981: The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador is damaged when gunmen attack, firing rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.

1975: King Fayṣal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by his nephew.        

1975: Hue is lost and Da Nang is endangered by North Vietnamese forces. The United States orders a refugee airlift to remove those in danger.

1970: The Concorde makes its first supersonic flight.

1969: John Lennon and Yoko Ono stage a bed-in for peace in Amsterdam.

1962: Nelson Mandela witnessed Algerian liberation leader Ben Bella inspecting fighters in Morocco
1957: The Treaties of Rome were signed, establishing the European Community and the European Atomic Energy Community.

1957: The European Common Market Treaty is signed in Rome. The goal is to create a common market for all products–especially coal and steel.

1954: RCA manufactures its first color TV set and begins mass production.

1953: The USS Missouri fires on targets at Kojo, North Korea, the last time her guns fire until the Persian Gulf War of 1992.

1941: Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers.

1940: The United States agrees to give Britain and France access to all American warplanes.

1931: Fifty people are killed in riots that break out in India. Mahatma Gandhi was one of many people assaulted.

1919: The Paris Peace Commission adopts a plan to protect nations from the influx of foreign labor.

1918: French composer Claude Debussy died in Paris.

1911: A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City killed 146 people, prompting the creation of health and safety legislation.

1911: A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a sweatshop in New York City, claims the lives of 146 workers.

1915: The first submarine disaster occurs when a U.S. F-4 sinks off the Hawaiian coast.

1905: Rebel battle flags that were captured during the American Civil War are returned to the South.

1881: Hungarian composer Béla Bartók was born in Nagyszentmiklós.

1879: Japan invades the kingdom of Liuqiu (Ryukyu) Islands, formerly a vassal of China.

1865: Confederate forces capture Fort Stedman, during the siege of Petersburg, Va.

1813: The frigate USS Essex flies the first U.S. flag in battle in the Pacific.

1807: The British Parliament abolished the slave trade in the British West Indies.

1807: British Parliament abolishes the slave trade.

1776: The Continental Congress authorizes a medal for General George Washington.

1668: The first horse race in America takes place.

1655: Puritans jail Governor Stone after a military victory over Catholic forces in the colony of Maryland.

1634: Lord Baltimore founds the Catholic colony of Maryland.

1306: Robert the Bruce, crowned Scottish king at Scone this day in 1306, freed Scotland from English rule, winning the decisive Battle of Bannockburn (1314) and confirming Scottish independence in the Treaty of Northampton (1328).

1305: The Arena Chapel, containing frescoes by Giotto, was consecrated in Padua, Italy.

708: Constantine begins his reign as Catholic Pope.