https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjQAnqG-6Qs

More and more technologies are being used in newsrooms to tell such stories. With the advent of data, and a society with access to data. This experiment was to find ways in which such visualisations could be employed.

Mapsense is a simple first draft to test the concept of three dimensional spatial representation. It can be accessed here. http://jmwenda.github.io/mapsense. The image below depicts the representation of MIT.

One can zoom and pan the map in different ways. The data used to achieve this was Boston’s/Cambridge raster data collected in 2009. The height of the buildings was retrieved from the City of Cambridge, hence the heights of the buildings are in scale to one another. Data extracted from OSM was also used to provide as and act as the base map.

On clicking elements on the map, one is able to get detailed information about the entity. Another great case especially in the realm of virtual reality would be to texturize the buildings with their appropriate color schemes. 

The following image depicts attribute data from playing around with building data.  One is able to see the properties of such building and this could also be helpful in other scenarios.

Another aspect to note, this virtual world can be modified to provide building experiences. I did attempt to have the media lab three dimensional model to be represented upon clicking on the building but this requires quite some processing and what I would consider environment caching. To explain this simple concept, 2 dimensional maps, make use of tiling. As on zooms in and out, there is a tiling service running in the background doing the hard work of reprojecting what you see. The same needs to be employed in a three dimensional space. This is possible and is a possible area of further experimentation.

Sensor Data

Through this project, it was my hope to integrate data from one of the open sensing project. The results have been mixed, with challenges of processing and also just the structure of such sensing projects. Looking at the data from safecast,  the biggest challenge was that most sensor data is not provided with the elevation tag. Making this impossible to map on a three dimensional realm.  With sensors, this could help in creation a virtual environment which citizens or the public could experience.  Sadly,when representing 2 dimensional objects within a realm that is three dimensional, is is likely that the objects are at the same level to the elevation zero.  Hence the attempt to give the sensors a slight elevation bias.

Another challenge from sensor data is that most data does not provide for quick ways once could perform arbitrary queries. Case in point and example, was from the safe cast data, I needed to extract all measurements within the US but aggregated by state. Given that the only geographic attributes in use are latitude and longitude, one then has to perform spatial queries against bounding boxes, or multipolygons, that represent the different states and average the measurements. This is indeed a space that needs more work.

Thoughts, would you use this to consume data provided technical hurdles are done away with?

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Several efforts to have them released by the international community have not been successful. The United Nations Commission on Human rights has urged the authorities to promptly release the journalists being held in custody but as we speak today, they are still languishing in jail.

There is need as members of the fourth estate and the general public to put pressure to get them released.  Next it could be a your local journalist. Egyptian authorities are known for infringing on the rights of journalists. Several other journalists have been arrested and are still in captivity.  The case of Peter Greste is not isolated. As stated by Edmund Burke, “Evil prevails when good men do nothing.” We as a people can not sit back and watch an act of travesty go on under our very own eyes. He is what you can do to help.

Sign the petition here. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/583/945/591/freeajstaff-release-detained-al-jazeera-journalists/

Alternatively, make a daily tweet using the hashtag #FreeAJStaff. The following are examples of such tweets.  Feel free and be creative!

Journalism is not a crime. In support of @PeterGreste and colleagues. #freejournalism #FreeAJStaff pic.twitter.com/XOhCHuFHwZ

— BBC Trending (@BBCtrending) April 7, 2014

<iframe width=’100%’ height=’520′ frameborder=’0′ src=’http://afrigeo.cartodb.com/viz/6ab00b8e-ba0b-11e3-acb7-0edbca4b5057/embed_map?title=true&description=true&search=false&shareable=true&cartodb_logo=true&layer_selector=false&legends=true&scrollwheel=true&fullscreen=true&sublayer_options=1%7C1&sql=&sw_lat=-4.193029605360735&sw_lon=29.02587890625&ne_lat=4.477856485570586&ne_lon=47.35107421875′ allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe>

{Need to figure a way to embed html elements on this blog!!!}

Can be accessed here

One year down the line, I have decided to look at the events before the election. Mainly the voter registration statistics. Compare these statistics against the numbers used on the election day. The 2013 election was one of the most contested on all fronts. From the use of social media, the use of cleaver PR strategies to plain political schemes which may not be easily identifiable on the surface. Take for instance, the push by member of certain areas forcing members of their communities to register.  A simple example was to the lead up to the election, bus conductors would request to see one’s voters card to be eligible to catch the bus(matatu) to their destination. This of course pushed the registration numbers in favor of certain politicians. A counter argument could be made that,  other communities that were as not hands on around voter registration have no right to complain of such tactics. One year down the line, politicians who suffered from this maneuver are asking citizens to forgo family planning in-order to increase their political base in future.  This is indeed shallow as those most likely to be born would not be eligible to vote for the next eighteen years.  Also not forgetting the fast changing political dynamic.

Other claims made by the former prime minister, is that the election was stolen yet again.  He points to the several errors that occurred at the hands of the electoral commission. One of the errors he states was the systematic failure of the biometric voter kits which did not work on the election day, resulting in the use of manual registers. The other error cited was the failure of the results transmission system which run into data drive capacity issues. Rumor was rife that other candidates hacked into the Electronic Transmission System(ETS), and managed to interfere with the results. Since then the electoral commission has insisted on the integrity of the elections, and given the supreme court ruling upholding the election of Uhuru, Kenyatta was sworn in as the president of the country.

As per the constitution, the electoral commission is mandated to produce documentary evidence of the election results from each polling station and stream. This data from these forms constitute what they refer to as final election results. On the other hand, the results submitted by the electronic system are referred to as provisional until the results submitted are accompanied by the Form 34 A which is also signed by party agents. Sadly, One year down the line not all forms have been presented to the electoral body, or as the body put is, they have no clue on the whereabouts of the mission forms. On inspecting some of the forms, some were edited poorly and it is not clear if the integrity of the results as per the forms is what actually transpired.

To better understand if these forms could indicate a level of injustice, I decided to scrap all the forms and look at election streams without forms. This process then involved looking at if the numbers in the forms add up to the final results announced by the electoral commission. It is understandable that there could be calculation errors though some errors are clearly glaring. On analysis, there are a total or 2585 missing forms.  Only two administrative units did not have any missing forms. The visualisation below shows missing forms as per those submitted by the electoral body, and the gradient indicated missing unaccounted valid votes. How did I arrive at the valid unaccounted votes? The electoral commision also published presidential results for each and every administrative boundary. On comparison with the Form 34 A , the candidates must get the indicated votes in total to justify the numbers published by the electoral body.

Here is the link

Challenges

If this was to be a fully professional media story, perhaps there would be  agreat challenge with verification. Early on there were rumours that the plane landed in Vietnam which was later proved not to be true. There needs to be a better way to annotate such crowdsource information. Storify does not do a lot of justice especially when one want to annotate and add comments to crowdsources stories.

GMO’s popular depiction

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since Kenya imposed a ban on genetically modified foods.  Many theories have been advanced as to the effects of GMO foods some valid while others not.  What was the main reason for Kenya to impose the ban? A research done by Seralini was indeed the impetus that provided the necessary reason behind the ban. Kenya as we speak is the only country to have a ban in the entire world. Russia also put out a ban after the paper that was published in the Food and Chemical Toxicology journal that GM crops routinely grown by farmers and eaten by consumers cause tumours in rats. It took Russia three weeks to lift the ban. Kenya insists on proper procedures around GMOs and bio safety regulations. This on the contrary has  added wood to the fire with a superstitious populace adding sugar and spice into the debate. What are some of the myths being advocated? Historically, new products that were disruptive were stigmatized. Are we seeing the same with GMO foods? The debate in the early 19th century around coffee, the introduction of tractors on farms and more recently the debate around margarine and butter.

What are some of the theories being advocated and how similar are the theories with cases in the past where products were stigmatised? Anti-GMO proponents as also mentioned in the article say that GMO is known to cause cancer.  The paper by Seralini also lays credence to this school of thought.  The journal eventually pressured Seralini to withdraw his paper as some of the findings were not based on scientific evidence.  He is accused of using a rat strain that is prone to tumors infestation. This debate is still alive to date specifically around coffee.  Many state that caffeine a core ingredient in coffee is responsible for causing cancer. This can not be further from the truth. Studies have shown, drinking coffee in moderation leads to reduced risk to cancer,diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and gall stone disease as well as an increased rate of metabolism.   GMO foods have been in existence in other countries for more that 15 years and no studies have been conclusive enough to link cancer to GMO foods.  There is the counter argument that since it is inconclusive, then we should not consume such foods. On the same note, I think it would be grossly wrong to lay the blame for increased cancer cases squarely on GMO foods. What has been documented has been the increase in food allergens due to GMO foods. This is specifically to Soy grown GMO strain.

The other popular rumour is that GMO’s cause infertility or impotence. This is indeed  further from the truth. No studies have been conclusive enough to come to this conclusion. A recent MIT study came to the conclusion that the herbicides used on GMO plants are likely to cause cancer and infertility more than the food itself. The study focussed on America and the MIT researcher main focus was not weather GMO’s or organic was better but rather the preparation that goes into GMO foods is what could cause cancer. It is important to note that the US has higher levels of glycophosphate than any other country a major contributor to causing cancer.   Though ,the government should respect people’s fears and should not force people to consume GMO foods, it is important to note the percentage use of glycophosphate in the US on GMO food growth is extra high. More research is required to conclusively determine how other countries that do not have such glycophosphate levels fair. With lack of evidence, we would be greatly doing injustice to condemn GMO’s as cancer causing.  Given Kenya’s risk towards drought, there has been a huge debate if such GMO foods should be used in school feeding programmes.  This is indeed causing jitters to parents who take their children to public schools and in this entire debate they are not as worried about the infertility possibility but rather that their children are getting fed. To move this debate forward labelling the foods is a possible compromise though citizens should be provided with the option of GMO food or fully organic food. This is the main reason for the resistance of GMO foods in the UK. Since no conclusive evidence has been tabled to show their effects in causing cancer, the UK took a more moderate approach of having stricter laws until such theories are proven wrong or right conclusively.

[1].http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Letters/Darker-side-to-GMOs-that-proponents-are-not-telling-the-public/-/440806/2156612/-/eaba2w/-/index.html

[2].http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Kenya+imported+3m+bags+of+GMO+maize/-/1056/1228664/-/1001js8z/-/

[3].http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/2148908/-/6gh22jz/-/index.html

[4].http://www.nation.co.ke/business/warning-against-GMO-ban-lift/-/996/2096116/-/q2yg70z/-/index.html

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This story was slightly more difficult to do. This is because most of the content was being curated from online sources. FlightRadar a plane spotting tool also came in handy as I was able to follow the progress of the hi-jacking. I decided to do the story in the form of a timeline.

Please see the link here. Unable to insert html.