Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Chemist Dennis W. Weatherby will forever be associated with one of the United States’ most well known household cleaning products, the automatic dishwasher detergent known as Cascade.
Born in Brighton, Alabama in 1960, Weatherby attended Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1982. From there he moved on to the University of Dayton where he completed a master’s degree in chemical engineering in 1984.
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Soon after finishing his studies, Weatherby began working for the Procter & Gamble Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, as a process engineer. Almost immediately he had a major breakthrough at the company: At the age of just 27 he was given a chance to lead a team to create a new consumer product, and the result of that effort was a lemon-scented, liquid dishwashing detergent that would become an instant and long-term success.
With his team, Weatherby developed a solution that employed a category of dyes that could be used in products containing bleach and, at the same time, would give the soap a lemon-yellow color that would not stain dishes. Before his invention, pigments were used in such solutions that often stained dishes and dishwasher interiors. With fellow inventor Brian J. Roselle, he received U.S. patent No. 4,714,562, issued on Dec. 22, 1987, for his breakthrough “Automatic dishwasher detergent composition.” The solution serves as the basic formula behind all of today’s “lemon-scented” cleaning products containing bleach.
Following his stint with P&G, Weatherby briefly worked for the Whittaker Corporation, a division of Morton International.....Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Water—or the lack of it—is one of the biggest issues facing urban Africa, which will see a 66 percent population increase to 1.2 billion people by 2050. BusinessWeek: A Water Crisis Threatens Ghana's Economic Growth.
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Charity Atter’s maid, Eva Tetteh, lowers a bucket deep into a well and waits about two minutes for the water to collect inside. Atter, a 37-year-old widow who lives in one of the fast-growing suburbs of Accra, Ghana’s capital, has been relying on well water for three years. “The water situation we’re facing here is a very difficult problem,” she says as she tends customers at her vegetable store in front of her house.
Water—or the lack of it—is one of the biggest issues facing urban Africa, which will see a 66 percent population increase to 1.2 billion people by 2050, according to the United Nations. Although water shortages have long plagued parts of the continent, they’ve become the potential killer of Africa’s economic takeoff. Ghana’s $35 billion economy, whose estimated growth of 8 percent in 2013 would outpace the sub-Saharan African average for a sixth straight year, cannot continue at that rate without a modern water network.
Ghana has had peaceful, democratic elections since 1992 and derives its economic strength from gold, cocoa, and oil. Yet in a speech on March 6, Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama acknowledged that Ghana is “burdened with a major energy and water crisis.” The country’s network of aging water pipes, some of which date back to 1914, does not reach Accra’s expanding and crowded outer suburbs. “Supply cannot meet the increasing demand,” says Kweku Botwe, acting managing director of state-owned Ghana Water. “Investment had stagnated so much over the past 40 to 50 years that you’re no more dealing with the urgent situation, but with the emergency.” Ghana Water can’t account for 55 percent of the water it produces, adds Botwe, because Ghanaians illegally siphon water from its pipes, and decrepit pipes damaged by erosion and construction often burst.
Photograph by Nyani Quarmyne/Panos
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The government is trying—at least on paper—to cleanse an atrocious past. Economist: Côte d’Ivoire; Will the guilt be shared?
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Religious leaders, the minister of justice and other assorted dignitaries emerge one by one from behind the black tarpaulin. Some gaze expressionlessly ahead. Others’ grim faces betray the morbid spectacle they have just witnessed inside. Many wear surgical masks.
Two years earlier, four young men were executed outside the nearby turquoise and white mosque. The conflict that flared after Côte d’Ivoire’s presidential election in November 2010, when the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to concede defeat at the polls to the challenger, Alassane Ouattara, had reached a murderous climax in Yopougon, a district of Abidjan, the commercial capital. The four were guarding the local mosque, where members of the district’s besieged Muslim community had taken refuge. Some time after evening prayers, supporters of Mr Gbagbo shot the sentinels, then set their bodies alight.
A grave containing their charred remains is the first of at least dozens which the Ivorian government is soon to start opening throughout the country. The ministry of justice says it has identified 57 graves in Abidjan alone, 36 in Yopougon. At least 3,000 Ivorians died during five months of violence after the election.
The decision to start exhuming is perhaps the government’s boldest gesture to date. It has pledged to dig up the remains of hundreds of victims on both sides. It says that autopsies and forensic analyses will help prosecutors bring cases to trial. In Yopougon, investigators in green boots wearing white jackets labelled “Police Scientifique” mill about the crime scene.
It remains unclear, however, whether this latest development will truly bring perpetrators to account. Partisans on both sides committed atrocities. But whereas 150-plus of Mr Gbabgo’s people have been charged, none from Mr Ouattara’s camp has been indicted. A Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission modelled after South Africa’s has barely begun its work, nearly two years after it was set up.
Mourning at last
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Attention tech entrepreneurs: If you’ve never heard of Kathryn Finney before pay attention she is someone you should know. Black Enterprise: Kathryn Finney Is FOCUSed on Getting Black Women STARTed in Tech
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Known across the blogosphere as The Budget Fashionista, Finney is famous for teaching the fashion-conscious, but financially-challenged among us, how to look runway-ready for a fifth of the cost. The Yale epidemiology graduate started the blog in 2003, before the invention of WordPress, and after her husband, a web-developer at Victoria’s Secret, pointed out that her shopping was putting a crimp in their pocketbooks.
“When I started doing the Budget Fashionista I was newly married, living in Philadelphia. Knew no one, but my husband [who] worked a lot. I was shopping. I was bored. I was spending a lot of money,” says Finney, who previously worked as a research scientist, specializing in HIV/AIDS in women. “I’ve always been the flyest scientist. I went to India and didn’t bring any clothes in my suitcase so I could bring back fabrics.”
Budget Fashionista’s popularity grew tremendously. Finney scored a position as editor-at-large for BlogHer, was tapped as a regular fashion contributor for NBC’s Today show; became the first fashion blogger to receive a book deal from Random House, penning How To Be A Budget Fashionista: The Ultimate Guide to Looking Fabulous for Less; and even moved to Los Angeles to begin working on a television show.
Right now, you might be wondering what fashion blogging has to do with the innovation economy. Well, the television show never came to fruition. After everything had been negotiated, the title cards were complete, and only the word Action! was left, Finney’s decided not to pursue a career in entertainment. She felt a deeper calling was still ahead for her in technology.
Kathryn Finney of Budget Fashionista launched DigitalUndivided with the intent to increase participation of black women in tech (Image: Source)
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The experiences of black youth are so often left out of the national discourse. On the few occasions that stories about them appear in pop culture they’re often shown in one of two ways — the overachiever, the kid that “makes it” despite the odds, like Jay-Z, or the lazy underachiever, the "thugs" and "welfare moms" that so many on the right often allude to.
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One of the stories that did receive a lot of media attention in the recent past is the Trayvon Martin case. He was the teen killed last year in Florida by a man who allegedly thought he was threatening his life. Putting the politics of the case aside, Trayvon, a young middle-class black kid, with two involved (if not together parents), who liked hoodies, his girlfriend, Twitter and Skittles, is probably a good example of your average black kid. But how much does America really know about the Trayvons of the world except when violence intervenes? When do their stories get told? When do we understand that most black kids aren’t all that different from white kids?
I know a bit about this because growing up I was that Trayvon. I wasn’t what many would classify as a “burden” to society, but I wasn’t the next Barack either. I lived in a single parent household that was loving and instilled the values of hard work and sacrifice. And I was far from an anomaly. I was surrounded by other black families like mine, some with more money, some with less, some with fathers and mothers together, some with only fathers, but many were happy, working and middle-class Americans.
In the eighties and nineties, mainstream network television and film was better about showing middle-class black families. Girls like Moesha, Rudy Huxtable and Laura Winslow looked like me. Today however, with a decreasing number of black family shows — and an explosion of celebrity culture — storylines about average black youth are even rarer. While it’s a great testament to our nation’s progress to have stories about Will Smith’s talented kids and Obama’s smart girls, we need to make “ordinary” black kids a commonplace as well.
Rudy Huxtable, Moesha Mitchell and Laura Winslow
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Welcome to the porch, where it's always warm, and the conversations are just fine.