Friday, January 31, 2014

West African Inventor Makes a $100 3D Printer From E-Waste

Source: http://inhabitat.com/west-african-inventor-makes-a-100-3d-printer-from-e-waste/

Kodjo Afate Gnikou, a resourceful inventor from Togo in West Africa, has made a $100 3D printer which he constructed from parts he scrounged from broken scanners, computers, printers and other e-waste. The fully functional DIY printer cost a fraction of those currently on the market, and saves environmentally damaging waste from reaching landfill sites.

Discarded electronic equipment is one of the world’s fastest-growing sources of waste, as consumers frequently replace “old” models that become more obsolete each year. However instead of letting e-waste sit them on the scrap pile or head to the landfill, Kodjo Afate Gnikou decided to utilize spare parts in order to create a cheap, DIY 3D printer.

Gnikou is part of WoeLab, a hackerspace in the city of Lomé, and has big plans for his recycling project. According to his crowd funding page, he is working with FacLab-France in the WAFATE to Mars project, which aims to make machines from recycled e-waste to prepare for missions on Mars. Systems like the 3D printer could become a crucial part of missions on the Red Planet should they ever go ahead.

Gnikou’s 3D printer was mostly made from materials he obtained from a junk yard in Lomé, though he did have to buy a few parts. The entire system cost about $100 which is a bargain consideringcurrent models on the market can cost thousands of dollars.

According to his fundraising page, Gnikou aims that with his project, he will “put technology into needy hands and give Africa the opportunity to not only be a spectator but to play the first role in a more virtuous industrial revolution.”

To support Gnikou’s project, click here.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

A Guinean solves a 270 years old Mathematics Problem


Ibrahima Sambégou Diallo may have become the first African mathematician of the contemporary era to have elaborated a theorem.  This Guinean journalist who recently reconverted himself into mathematics has found the solution to the Goldbach’s conjecture, which is one of the oldest best unsolved mathematics problems of all times.  The Goldbach’s conjecture was elaborated 270 years ago by Christian Goldbach, tutor of the tsar Peter II, and employee in the Russian Foreign affairs’s ministry.  In 1742, Goldbach sent a letter to Euler, stating the Goldbach’s conjecture: “Every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes.” For instance, 6 = 3 + 3; 8 = 3 + 5; 10 = 3 + 7 = 5 + 5; 30 = 11 + 19 = 13 + 17; 100 = 17 + 83 … This mathematical problem was so hard to solve that it took 270 years, and hundreds of mathematicians around the globe working on it.

It took Ibrahima 14 years of hard work to finally come up with the answer; this projects him in the court of the great mathematicians of this world.  He had been in contest with some well-known and well-supported American researchers.  Ibrahima Sambégou Diallo has been knocking at all doors to validate his work.  Finding no support in his own country, Guinea, Ibrahima has decided to go to Dakar, Senegal to validate his results at the mathematics institute there. He hopes to find support so as to become the first contemporary African to have elaborated a theorem. 
Source: http://diasporas-noires.com/un-guineen-solutionne-un-probleme-de-maths-vieux-de-270-ans