AFRICA DAILY - 24/7 Africa News Coverage

SHAKE AND BLOW Off-rift volcanoes explained

Rift valleys are large depressions formed by tectonic stretching forces. Volcanoes often occur in rift valleys, within the rift itself or on the rift flanks as e.g. in East Africa. The magma responsible for this volcanism is formed in the upper mantle and pond... more

EARTH OBSERVATION Innovative tool allows continental-scale water, energy, and land system modeling

Hydroeconomic models are increasingly becoming an important tool for water resources planning in river basins. Taher Kahil, the IIASA researcher who led the development of the Extended Continental-scale Hydroeconomic Optimization (ECHO) model, explains that hy... more

SPACE INDUSTRY Global Spending on Space Decreases for First Time in 20 Years

According to Euroconsult's newly released research report, Profiles of Government Space Programs, global budgets for space programs dropped to $72.1 billion in 2013 following peak spending at $72.9 billion in 2012. This is the first time since 1995 that public... more

IRON AND ICE Asteroid that impacted near Berlin identified as a rare Aubrite

"They were devilishly difficult to find because, from a distance, they look like other rocks on Earth," said SETI Institute meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens. "Close up, not so much." Jenniskens traveled from San Francisco to Berlin to search the fields j... more

ABOUT US Fire record shows cultural diffusion took off 400,000 years ago

The earliest evidence for possible fire use is sparse and can be difficult to distinguish from natural fire residues. By contrast, after 400,000 years ago, multiple different types of fire evidence are found in many sites with good preservation conditions. Int... more

FARM NEWS A life-changing fertilizer for rural farmers in Kenya

The situation amounts to a multigenerational crisis as elders have watched their crop yields dwindle over the course of decades. Now Safi Organics is using a technology honed at MIT's D-Lab to make organic fertilizer that can help restore such farmlands. The f... more

TECH SPACE Clever monkeys plan their food trips to avoid stronger rivals

These results, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, mean that vervets have excellent cognitive skills for quickly appraising the social context and planning their route accordingly. These skills allow them to choose foraging strategies that we woul... more

SPACE INDUSTRY An exciting year in space for Intelsat

This past year brought a number of positive developments in the ongoing partnership between commercial satellite service providers and our government customers. Perhaps the most exciting was that Intelsat launched and deployed our next-generation high-throughp... more