Internet Service Provider, Linkserve made it double last week, when it announced the appointment of mr. Victor Oisaghie as the company’s new Managing Director as well as the launch of a new product tagged Linkserve Hosting

Making the announcements, Linkserve’s Chairman, mr. Chima Onyekwere, said that the appointment of Oisaghie was in line with the company’s drive to reposition itself in the industry even as it strived to provide the best services possible to Nigerians tapping on Oisaghie’s skill and experience.

Onyekwere described the new Managing Director, as a strong IT person, being one of six Cisco certified internetwork experts in Africa.He said, “Like in everything else we do at Linkserve, we go only for the best because we believe that our clients deserve only the best. Linkserve’s network connection solution is second to none and will only get better as new technology is developed.”

Accepting to employ his knowledgeable skills to provide services to Linkserve customers, the new Managing Director, expressed  enthusiasm on joining the Linkserve team, saying, “I am happy to be a part of one of Nigeria’s landmark brands and look forward to playing my part in taking the company to the next level.

Linkserve possess the potential to continue in its pace-setting role in Nigeria’s ICT industry” he added.  Oisaghie, a Chemical Engineering graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, is coming with over fifteen years experience in Information Technology and Consulting.

Before he joined Linkserve, he was the Technical Marketing Director for VRCon Incorporated, and was celebrated in the company as undoubtedly one of Africa’s leading IT engineers with vast experience in product and business development, project management and networking.

Oisaghie began his IT career with Optimal Systems Integration in Lagos and has since served in key leadership and management positions with several organizations including Anderson Consulting (Accenture), Chevron Overseas Petroleum Incorporated and Cisco Systems Incorporated.

He has expertise in network protocols, issue resolution, requirement analysis, design, component selection, change management and process re-engineering. Oisaghie takes over the Managing Director position from mr. Victor Emodi who resigned to further his personal career.

Linkserve also launched a new product,  Linkserve Hosting which it described as a complete web hosting automation control panel designed for web hosts to experience infinite hosting possibilities in cluster environments. It enables web hosting companies to manage all their servers through centralised interface.

Introducing the product, Onyekwere, stated that it is designed to ease the organisation’s clients. He said, “with Linkserve Hosting, our clients can manage routine tasks of registering new domain names, hosting their businesses websites, likewise transferring their domain names and web servers for hosting while enjoying the flexibility of the software designed to provide seamless and consistent service.’ He added that the software system can manage a cluster of web servers that exposes a centralised interface posing as a single virtual entity.

Also, Linkserve’s Product Manager, mr. Yinka Adesanya, who introduced the product with a live demonstration, listed the features and benefits that individuals using Linkserve Hosting will enjoy. He said, ‘Linkserve Hosting is designed for clients to experience infinite hosting possibilities in cluster environment. It enables clients to manage all their servers on both Windows and Linux operating systems through centralized interface as well as providing the option of managing and automatically regulating traffic within the cluster. It also lowers operational costs.’

New technology such as computers has been, without doubt, developed to make life easier. but it inevitably comes with downsides too.

Among the most common problems for computer users are eye strain, irritated eyes, blurred vision, shoulder pain and  other vision-related symptoms caused by using a computer for too long.

The symptoms can be much more severe especially when you sit on a chair that is adjusted at an inappropriate height.

To relieve such unwanted symptoms, here are some simple eye exercises that can be done at your desk.

Sit in a comfortable position. Rub your hands together until they feel warm. Then place your cupped hands over your closed eyes. Slowly breathe in and out. your exhausted eyes will absorb the warmth from your hands. Repeat four of five times.

Sit on the floor with your legs straight in front of you. Stretch out your arms to the sides with your thumbs up. Look straight ahead. Then slowly breathe out and, at the same time, slowly turn your head to the right until you see your right thumb. Then slowly breathe in while turning your head back to the front. Then slowly breathe out again and at the same time slowly turn your head to the left until you see your left thumb. Then slowly breathe in while returning your head to the centre. Repeat 15 or 20 times. After that, close your eyes for a while.

Below are also shoulder exercises to alleviate muscle pain after lengthy computer use.

Sit with your back straight. Stretch out your arms to the sides and bend your forearms to touch your shoulders. Then pull your arms back as far as possible. After that rotate your shoulders to the front but make sure that each shoulder gets as close to one another as possible. Repeat 10 times.

Sit on a chair with your back straight and feet flat on the floor. Slowly twist your torso towards the right as if you are attempting to see something over your shoulder. Hold the chair’s seat with both hands. Keep your feet on the floor. Twist as much as you could and then hold the position for five to 10 seconds. Repeat these steps turning to the left. – FITNESS FIRST (THAILAND)

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JUPITER —Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter have developed a new technology that appears to accurately diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, and possibly other tough-to-diagnose diseases, before telltale symptoms appear.

The technology, described in a paper in the respected scientific journal Cell this month, is in a very early stage.

Believing in its potential, a Miami-based company, Opko Health Laboratories, has licensed the technology and is expanding its research and development office in Jupiter, near Scripps, with an eye toward commercializing the test and applying it toward other diseases, including cancer, a spokesman said. Opko’s chairman and CEO is Dr. Phillip Frost, former CEO of Ivax Pharmaceuticals. He is a member of Scripps’ board of trustees.

The research, by Scripps Florida chemist Thomas Kodadek, may represent one of the most significant and commercially important discoveries to come out of the institute since it was founded with more than a half-billion taxpayer dollars in 2004.

Yet the intellectual property rights belong to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School — not to Scripps and Florida. Kodadek, who had his own lab at UT, was recruited to Scripps in 2009.

Scripps President Dr. Richard Lerner predicted there would be more intellectual property to come from Kodadek’s lab, and he noted the discovery will mean jobs for the Jupiter area.

The technology behind the Alzheimer’s discovery is essentially an immune system reader. it is designed to pick out antibodies, the immune system’s targeting system, without knowing in advance what it’s searching for, Kodadek said.

Dr. James M. Anderson, director of the National Institutes of Health Division of Program Coordination, Planning and Strategic Initiatives, which funded Kodadek’s research, credited his group with bold and groundbreaking thinking.

“The results in the paper suggest great potential for using this approach to rapidly develop diagnostic biomarkers for a variety of significant human diseases,” Anderson said.

Kodadek said the idea came to him five years ago, while he was sitting in a UT seminar about lupus, an autoimmune disease which is, like Alzheimer’s, difficult to diagnose and treat. the longer the speakers went on about the difficulty of characterizing and diagnosing lupus, the more frustrated he grew.

“I vividly remember I was thinking, ‘You guys are in the 16th century,’ ” Kodadek said.

He started turning over ways to automate and speed up analysis of the immune system’s record.

Kodadek and his research team were able to create artificial molecules that could snag antibodies so that they could be tagged and identified.

Because they had compared antibodies captured from both sick and well volunteers, they zeroed in on differences, leading them to their likely biomarkers. Further testing validated their theory.

Beyond the technology’s diagnostic usefulness, the findings raise many scientific questions, Lerner said. What are the antibodies reacting to? Inflammation? Are they recognizing an active virus? If so, it would send Alzheimer’s research in a totally new direction. Scripps is studying this now, he said.

“Normally, you don’t make antibodies to yourself,” Lerner said. “We don’t have any clue what these are. either they are antibodies from some exotic thing like a virus, or they are antibodies to self.”

Interestingly, a control subject’s blood turned up some of the same antibodies as the Alzheimer’s subjects. She was a 75-year-old woman who performed well on memory tests and had no outward signs of disease. Kodadek believes the microarray picked up early Alzheimer’s. a key now will be assessing how early these antibody biomarkers appear.

Several other groups of scientists have been trying to find biomarkers that distinguish Alzhiemer’s disease. At Stanford University, Tony Wyss-Coray’s team has found 18 proteins involved in cell communication that appear to be specific to Alzheimer’s disease.

Wyss-Coray called Kodadek’s method “an exciting new tool,” one that had potential to speed immune research. But he cautioned that Kodadek has only studied small numbers, and other studies looking for Alzheimer’s antibodies have had mixed results. more study is needed.

“It remains to be shown how the test would perform if another 1,000 samples were measured,” Wyss-Coray said. Fortunately, he said, that should be relatively easy and quick to do.

If it proves true that these antibodies are attacking some element specific to the progression of Alzheimer’s, that has major implications, he said.

“That would most certainly change the current view of this disease,” he said.

It could also alter the path of Alzheimer’s drug trials.

The lack of a good diagnostic test for Alzhiemer’s is a drag on the search for a cure right now, said Dr. Mark Brody, president of Brain Matters Research, a Delray Beach clinic that conducts drug trials. People are not enrolled until their brain has suffered serious damage, and by then, it may be too late for a drug to change the course of the disease.

Doctors use a combination of brain scans, spinal fluid tests, memory tests and medical history to reach a diagnosis, but because many things can cause dementia, the accuracy isn’t perfect.

“Probably on the order of 15 percent of people in clinical trials for Alzhiemer’s disease don’t actually have Alzheimer’s disease,” Brody said. “If we can pick up people in a reliable way in the preclinical stage, using serum, that would be a paradigm shift.”