WATCH OUT FOR NAMMES GET TOGETHER/AWARD PRESENTATION

Propose date: June 14th, 2014
Venue: Swan hotel or Solab suite.

Ultraviolet Smartphones

 Mobile phones for the consumer market that transmit
minimal personal information.
Key Players
+ Blackphone
+ CryptoPhone
+ Open Whisper Systems
O
Privacy software from Zimmermann is key to Blackphone. “Like
Steve Jobs said, if you want to do good software you want to build
the computer, too,” he says.
n January 21 a text message flashed on phones held by the
protesters thronging Kiev’s Independence Square. Ukraine’s
president, Viktor Yanukovych, was then still clinging to power and
brutalizing opponents. The message—from the number 111—read:
“Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass
disturbance.” Widely presumed to have been sent from
Yanukovych’s security apparatus to all phones in the protest zone,
the message was a stark reminder of how mobile phones can be
used for surveillance.
Soon after, a Ukrainian man walked into a nondescript office in
National Harbor, Maryland, and sought help from a man named
Phil Zimmermann.
Zimmermann is a cryptologist. His company, Silent Circle,
encrypts voice calls, text messages, and any file attachments. If
you use Silent Circle, your calls to other users are sent through the
company’s servers and decrypted on the other phone. The service
won’t stop the delivery of ominous messages in range of certain
base stations. But it can block eavesdropping and prevent the
snooper from knowing the number of the person you are calling or
texting. Soon, access codes for Silent Circle were making their
way to protest organizers in the heart of Kiev. “Those are the kinds
of environments where you need widespread deployment of crypto
technology,” Zimmermann says, with evident satisfaction.
In the past year, it’s become clearer that places like Kiev are not
the only environments where people might want the privacy
Zimmermann can provide. Documents brought to light by former
U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden
suggest that the NSA gathers huge amounts of information from
cloud computing platforms and wireless carriers, including the
numbers ordinary people called and the times they called them.
Not only could the government be watching you: so could
websites, advertisers, and even retailers trying to track your
movements within stores. Modern smartphones and the apps
running on them are engineered to collect and disseminate
enormous amounts of user data—such as location, Web browsing
histories, search terms, and contact lists.
By summer Zimmermann will be delivering a new way to fight
back: a highly secure smartphone, called Blackphone. Now being
manufactured by a joint venture that includes Silent Circle, it uses
Zimmermann’s encryption tools and adds other protections. It
runs a special version of the Android operating system—PrivatOS—
that blocks many of the ways phones leak data about your
activities. While custom security phones have long been in the
hands of military and government leaders, this effort may signal a
shift toward mass-market phones that are far more private and
secure.
Blackphone, which sells for $629 with subscriptions to privacy-
protecting services, is one of many measures that technologists
are taking in response to the Snowden revelations. One such effort
involves wider encryption of ordinary Web traffic. Stephen Farrell, a
computer scientist at Trinity College Dublin who is leading that
project through the Internet Engineering Task Force, says a phone
that encrypts communications and seals off data leaks is a crucial
part of the strategy. “Personally, I really would like to have a
phone with a much more hardened and privacy-friendly
configuration,” he says.
Crypto Warrior
Growing up in Florida, Phil Zimmermann liked breaking into places
and things: his youthful conquests included Disney World and the
Miami Seaquarium. He studied computer science at Florida
Atlantic University, and he became interested in cryptography in
the 1970s, when papers on a technology called public-key
cryptography emerged. Traditional crypto required the parties in
an encrypted conversation to possess the same unique decoding
tool (or “key”). The new approach was fundamentally different: it
involved two mathematically linked keys, one private, the other
public. Suddenly, applications such as digital signatures became
possible. You could use a private key to “sign” a document; later,
anyone else could use the public key to verify that you were indeed
the author.
Privacy software from Zimmermann is key to Blackphone. “Like
Steve Jobs said, if you want to do good software you want to build
the computer, too,” he says.
n January 21 a text message flashed on phones held by the
protesters thronging Kiev’s Independence Square. Ukraine’s
president, Viktor Yanukovych, was then still clinging to power and
brutalizing opponents. The message—from the number 111—read:
“Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass
disturbance.” Widely presumed to have been sent from
Yanukovych’s security apparatus to all phones in the protest zone,
the message was a stark reminder of how mobile phones can be
used for surveillance.
Soon after, a Ukrainian man walked into a nondescript office in
National Harbor, Maryland, and sought help from a man named
Phil Zimmermann.
Zimmermann is a cryptologist. His company, Silent Circle,
encrypts voice calls, text messages, and any file attachments. If
you use Silent Circle, your calls to other users are sent through the
company’s servers and decrypted on the other phone. The service
won’t stop the delivery of ominous messages in range of certain
base stations. But it can block eavesdropping and prevent the
snooper from knowing the number of the person you are calling or
texting. Soon, access codes for Silent Circle were making their
way to protest organizers in the heart of Kiev. “Those are the kinds
of environments where you need widespread deployment of crypto
technology,” Zimmermann says, with evident satisfaction.
In the past year, it’s become clearer that places like Kiev are not
the only environments where people might want the privacy
Zimmermann can provide. Documents brought to light by former
U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden
suggest that the NSA gathers huge amounts of information from
cloud computing platforms and wireless carriers, including the
numbers ordinary people called and the times they called them.
Not only could the government be watching you: so could
websites, advertisers, and even retailers trying to track your
movements within stores. Modern smartphones and the apps
running on them are engineered to collect and disseminate
enormous amounts of user data—such as location, Web browsing
histories, search terms, and contact lists.
By summer Zimmermann will be delivering a new way to fight
back: a highly secure smartphone, called Blackphone. Now being
manufactured by a joint venture that includes Silent Circle, it uses
Zimmermann’s encryption tools and adds other protections. It
runs a special version of the Android operating system—PrivatOS—
that blocks many of the ways phones leak data about your
activities. While custom security phones have long been in the
hands of military and government leaders, this effort may signal a
shift toward mass-market phones that are far more private and
secure.
Blackphone, which sells for $629 with subscriptions to privacy-
protecting services, is one of many measures that technologists
are taking in response to the Snowden revelations. One such effort
involves wider encryption of ordinary Web traffic. Stephen Farrell, a
computer scientist at Trinity College Dublin who is leading that
project through the Internet Engineering Task Force, says a phone
that encrypts communications and seals off data leaks is a crucial
part of the strategy. “Personally, I really would like to have a
phone with a much more hardened and privacy-friendly
configuration,” he says.
Crypto Warrior
Growing up in Florida, Phil Zimmermann liked breaking into places
and things: his youthful conquests included Disney World and the
Miami Seaquarium. He studied computer science at Florida
Atlantic University, and he became interested in cryptography in
the 1970s, when papers on a technology called public-key
cryptography emerged. Traditional crypto required the parties in
an encrypted conversation to possess the same unique decoding
tool (or “key”). The new approach was fundamentally different: it
involved two mathematically linked keys, one private, the other
public. Suddenly, applications such as digital sign

NAMMES E-LIBRARY

This is an electronic material which contain all semesters in folders. The material is set for distribution. Contact your classrep for a copy or contact Emmy on 07060572285 to get it directly from the association.

NAMMES FREE FUNDAMENTAL AUTOCAD TRAINING

This is to inform all members of the association of the fundamental AutoCAD training for all 200L NAMMESITES & ABOVE slated for Wednesday 21st of May, 2014 @ MME LT by 4pm to 6.30pm.
The program is organized to help broaden our knowledge om computer aided design.

Agile Robots

Computer scientists have created
machines that have the balance
and agility to walk and run across
rough and uneven terrain, making
them far more useful in navigating
human environments.
W alking is an extraordinary feat of biomechanical engineering.
Every step requires balance and the ability to adapt to
instability in a split second. It requires quickly adjusting where
your foot will land and calculating how much force to apply to
change direction suddenly. No wonder, then, that until now robots
have not been very good at it.
Meet Atlas, a humanoid robot created by Boston Dynamics, a
company that Google acquired in December 2013. It can walk
across rough terrain and even run on flat ground. Although
previous robots such as Honda’s ASIMO and Sony’s diminutive
QRIO are able to walk, they cannot quickly adjust their balance; as
a result, they are often awkward, and limited in practical value.
Atlas, which has an exceptional sense of balance and can stabilize
itself with ease, demonstrates the abilities that robots will need to
move around human environments safely and easily.
Robots that walk properly could eventually find far greater use in
emergency rescue operations. They could also play a role in
routine jobs such as helping elderly or physically disabled people
with chores and daily tasks in the home.
Marc Raibert, cofounder of Boston Dynamics, pioneered machines
with “dynamic balance”—the use of continual motion to stay
upright—in the early 1980s. As a professor at Carnegie Mellon
University, he built a one-legged robot that leaped around his lab
like a pogo stick possessed, calculating with each jump how to
reposition its leg and its body, and how aggressively to push itself
off the ground with its next bound. Atlas demonstrates dynamic
balance as well, using high-powered hydraulics to move its body
in a way that keeps it steady. The robot can walk across an
unsteady pile of debris, walk briskly on a treadmill, and stay
balanced on one leg when whacked with a 20-pound wrecking
ball. Just as you instinctively catch yourself when pushed, shifting
your weight and repositioning your legs to keep from falling over,
Atlas can sense its own instability and respond quickly enough to
right itself. The possibilities opened up by its humanlike mobility
surely impressed Google. Though it’s not clear why the company
is acquiring robotics businesses, it bought seven others last year,
including ones specializing in vision and manipulation.
Atlas isn’t ready to take on home or office chores: its powerful
diesel engine is external and noisy, and its titanium limbs thrash
around dangerously. But the robot could perform repair work in
environments too dangerous for emergency workers to enter, such
as the control room of a nuclear power plant on the brink of a
meltdown. “If your goals are to make something that’s the
equivalent of a person, we have a ways to go,” Raibert says. But
as it gets up and running, Atlas won’t be a bad example to chase
after.
— Will Knight

Incredible New Nanomaterial is Great at Multi-Tasking

If you thought graphene was going to be the next do-everything
material, we’ve got news for you: Multi-Use Titanium Dioxide
(TiO2) has just taken its place. Developed by scientists at
Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, this wonder
material can do everything you might expect a wonder material to
do – and more.
So far, TiO2′s uses include producing clean water, producing
clean energy, generate hydrogen, kill bacteria, be formed into
flexible solar cells, and even extend the useful lifespan of
batteries. What’s more is that the materials used to make TiO2
are cheap and readily available, making its possibilities nearly
endless.
TiO2 is made by forming titanium dioxide crystals into nanofibers,
then forming those nanofibers into flexible membranes. The
scientists who developed the material are hoping that it can help
with two of the world’s biggest problems: a lack of clean drinking
water and the need for clean, renewable energy. The seriously
amazing substance needs some more research and work, but so
far it looks to be extremely promising in the race for solving these
problem.

New Bio-Plastic is Good for the Environment + Employment

When plastic was invented, it was thought of as a miracle material
and manufacturers starting using it as a cheap alternative to
wood, metal and glass. But eventually the world realized that this
toxic, non-renewable, non-biodegradable material wasn’t as
miraculous as we had once thought. Researchers have been
looking for years for a suitable (but equally strong and versatile)
alternative to plastic. A material called Zeoform might be that
alternative.
Zeoform, developed by an Australian company, is made of natural,
biodegradable materials: cellulose and water. Using fibrous
material from plants like flax or hemp, or using recycled textiles
and paper, the process sounds rather simple. The material is
added to water and then ground into tiny pieces. It’s turned out as
pellets or sheets, which can then be formed into any imaginable
shape.
According to the company behind the miracle material, it can be
treated just like wood: it can be sanded, coated, or whatever is
necessary to create new products. The company isn’t just
concerned with their own bottom line, either – they believe that the
abandoned paper mills in many towns could be revived and
countless jobs created by simply retrofitting those paper mills to
make Zeoform. The crowdfunding campaign for the Zeoform
project is meant to raise awareness of the material and get the
open-source formula out to as many designers, makers, and
entrepreneurs as possible.

Centenary: Still in search of sanity

Many things are happening that many people cannot understand. So many circumstances have proven to us beyond any reasonable doubt that in this part of the world, we know it is a spade and call it a spoon. It takes insanity to do so. Since 1914, we have journeyed through four different types of government which includes: colonial rule, parliamentary system, military rule and the presidential system, but unfortunately, none of this government system have located the sanity missing in the country.
As Prince Tony Momoh has rightly said, only the mentally retarded would glow with pride when misfortune strikes the nation and the nation is always been struck with misfortune anytime we do things outside the laid down procedures for doing them. This has been witnessed in the areas of defection to another party, impeachment of public office holders and so many other areas in which the provision of the constitution is been aberated.  Our constitution which is seen as a road map has been ignored in the breach than the observance. The constitution has become a victim of misinterpretation and has suffered as an orphan. Even when it clearly states a point, we still have to say what it means in another way, and since the majority has this problem of insanity, they all neglect the clearly stated interpretation. Even those who defended it with integrity over the years have changed gear.
Considering the misfortune that has befallen this nation within 2003 till date base on this same aberration of the constitution, we can jump to conclusion without committing any fallacy that the country is densely saturated with insanity. Putting the following analysis into consideration, I believe you will bow to my argument. Taking the case of Alamieyeseigha as the first instance, a man who stole and almost emptied the treasury of his state, with the provision of the constitution, the only body that could tame him was the House of Assembly, but he bought them over and all the constitution could do was weep. He took a self proclaimed medical leave from office to allow the news of his public fund misappropriation faint and gradually fade away. The only radio station that was updating the people about him was closed down, the police and the army were sent to a very peaceful Yenagoa. At the long run, the House could not resist the pressure of probing him, they fixed a meeting outside Bayelsa which is another aberration, they signed his impeachment at that meeting which does not pass through the normal procedure, the House should set their claims to the chief judge of the state, the chief judge will set up a panel that will look into the claim and decide if he should be impeached or not.
Another analysis I want to make is that of the unfortunate Governor Rasheed Adewolu Ladoja, he was also a victim of the insanity dominating the system. Two-third of the 32 members of the House would decide that the allegations of misconduct be investigated before the chief judge would pick a panel, but we introduced a new approach to calculating the two-thirds as it Chief Richard Akinjide did in the case of twelve two third, members of the House suspended some of their colleagues which are loyalist of the sitting governor, the decision for the suspension of the governor was taken afterward depriving their people a voice in deciding whether the governor should stay or go. The two-third was calculated on the number present and voting which should be two-third of the total members of the house. Afterward, the Court of Appeal was able to give verdict and vindicate him, but Ladoja once again suffered from system insanity when he was not allowed to step into the government house until the Supreme Court effect the order. He has to return with thick security atmosphere since the general officer commanding Ibadan politics has threatened that the court is just wasting its time. Aint that insanity?
Another insane scenario was spotted in Ekiti state, where the chief judge picked a panel and refuse to grant the House their request in respect to the impeachment of the governor, the House their request in respect to the impeachment of the governor, the House sat afterward and impeached the chief judge, the newly selected one picked his own panel and found Governor Ayo Fayose and his Deputy guilty which prompted the House to successfully impeach them and replace the governor with the Speaker. They created a situation where the speaker and the deputy governor will be struggling for power. This chaotic situation led to the dismissal of both and declaration of a state of emergency.
Other scenes of insanity were seen when a president could openly say his election was not free and fair, but he still won in Tribunal, when a President was away for over three month without any information of where to find him placing the country under security threat. Another insane act is asking an aspirant to sign a one term agreement; it was this particular act that has prompted the problem that befell the largest party in Africa, which has led to the formation of new PDP. Another act of insanity is what has cost people like Godwin Agbroko, Funsho Williams, Bola Ige, the senior Officers in the 2006 air crash, their lives. They have to eliminate them in order to retain or attain power.
Morever, individuals have to correct his insane acts as it has become the order of the day, mental revolution needs to take place, the people should force sanity back into the system as it was rightly done in Ghana, our people should change their suffering mentality and quick adaptation, we should all voice out against those who have seen the public office as a means of siphoning the public fund. Some years ago, Chief Obafemi Awolowo said, “we don’t need to act for the people, a time will come when frustration will push the people to act for themselves”, it has happened in South Africa, people were ready to face gun with stones and sticks, and here they are today, India has done their own, Egypt is doing their own, Syria is doing their own, but in Nigeria, we fear everything, we fear to fight for freedom , happiness, basic amenities, we fear to request for our fundamental rights, they hurt us every term and we still allow these people to come, rule for four or eight years, leaving sorrow, tears and pains, but, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, therefore, allowing this acts of insanity on the government part over and over again is an act of insanity on our own part also. SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE MUST ACT NOW!
Finally, I believe this sanity is not totally gone but hidden somewhere in you and in the constitution, it is expected of every citizen to be a loyal patriot, if this is truly believed in and the land is served because you love the land, then, definitely, sanity will return and insanity will disappear, but without this mind of loyalty and patriotism, insanity will continue to be the order of the day.

Silence will do nothing.

Distinguish ladies and gentlemen, the state of things in this
country has gone beyond we staying by the corner to watch
people die like chickens, over 1500 people has been forced to
kick the bucket within the last three months, one day, if we
remain silent in time of this conflict and crisis, the blood of the
murdered patriot will definitely question you...say or write sth
about this abduction or blastings now...Operation Free the
Nation.- Comrade Bamidele Emmanuel

FUTA/FAMU MoU

This is to inform all 400 level students of the Metallurgical and Materials engineering students of the Federal University of Technology, Akure that the memorandum of understanding the management signed with the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University has now been fully implemented, the registration has started already, in which the pioneers will be travelling to the United States of America toward the end of this year.For further info: contact the HOD of MME Prof. B. O Adewuyi on 08034700715...
Interested students are to apply by writing to the HOD, obtain international passport.
Bamidele Emmanuel
NAMMES president.
07060572285

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ASUU commences nation wide strike

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has commenced indefinite strike nationwide today, national president of ASUU, Dr Nasir Isa Fagge has said.

He made this declaration, Monday, at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) after their NEC meeting held at Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Ogun State.

Speaking to news men, he said: “We are embarking on indefinite strike nation wide because the Federal Government reneged in the Memorandum of Understanding MoU signed with ASUU in 2009 to pay lecturers their earn allowance.”
According to Fagge, the Federal Government, in 2009 made a law to pay each lecturers N12,500 per month as earn allowance which it never did since 2009.

More details soon…