History of MMM

МММ was a Russian company that perpetrated one of the world's largest Ponzi schemes of all time, in the 1990s. By different estimates from 5 to 40 million people lost up to $10 billion. The exact figures are not known even to the founders. In 2011, MMM re-opened as "MMM Global" with up to 110 subsidiaries per country, it became widely popular in various African countries like South Africa ,
Nigeria , Zimbabwe and Kenya

History
Russia

MMM was established in 1989 by Sergei Mavrodi , his brother Vyacheslav Mavrodi, and Olga Melnikova. The name of the company was taken from the first letters of the three founders' surnames.
Initially, the company imported computers and office equipment. In January 1992, tax police accused MMM of tax evasion , leading to the collapse of MMM-bank, and causing the company to have difficulty obtaining financing to support its operations. Faced with difficulties in funding its foreign trade, the company switched to the financial sector. It offered American stocks to Russian investors, but met with little success. Later, MMM-Invest was created for the purpose of collecting vouchers during privatisation. This effort was similarly unsuccessful.
MMM created its successful Ponzi scheme in 1994. The company started attracting money from private investors, promising annual returns of up to one thousand percent. It is unclear whether a Ponzi scheme was Mavrodi's initial intention, inasmuch as such extravagant returns might have been possible during the Russian hyperinflation in such commerce as import-export.
MMM grew rapidly. In February 1994, the company reported dividends of 1,000%, and started an aggressive TV ad campaign. Since the shares were not quoted on any stock exchange and the company itself determined the share price, it maintained a steady price growth of thousands of percent annually, leading the public to believe its shares were a safe and profitable
investment.
An important factor in the scheme's success was word of mouth, but most of the company's success came from its extremely aggressive ad campaign, which appealed to the general public by using "ordinary" characters that viewers could identify with. The most famous of them, a "folk hero" of early 1994, was
Lyonya Golubkov . Another notable marketing effort was a giveaway of free Metro trips to all Moscow citizens on a particular day. MMM also was one of the first well-known companies in Russia with a logotype and slogans ("Flying from shadow to the light" and others).
At its peak the company was taking in more than 100 billion
rubles (about 50 million USD) each day from the sale of its shares to the public. Thus, the cashflow turnover at the MMM central office in Moscow was so high that it could not be estimated. The management started to count money in roomfuls (1 roomful of money, 2 roomfuls of money, etc.).
Regular publication in the media of the rising MMM share price led President Boris Yeltsin to issue a decree in June 1994 prohibiting financial institutions from publicising their expected income.
The success of MMM in attracting investors led to the creation of other similar companies, including Tibet ,
Chara , Khoper-Invest , Selenga ,
Telemarket , and Germes . All of these companies were characterised by aggressive television advertising and extremely high promised rates of return. One company promised annual returns of 30,000%.
On July 22, 1994, the police closed the offices of MMM for tax evasion. For a few days the company attempted to continue the scheme, but soon ceased operations. At that point, Invest-Consulting, one of the company's subsidiaries, owed more than 50 billion rubles in taxes (USD 26 million), and MMM itself owed between 100 billion and 3 trillion rubles to the investors (from USD 50 million to USD 1.5 billion). In the aftermath at least 50 investors, having lost all of their money, committed
suicide .
Several organisations of "deceived investors" made efforts to recover their lost investments, but Sergei Mavrodi manipulated their indignation and directed it at the government. In August 1994 Mavrodi was arrested for tax evasion. However, he was soon elected to the Russian
State Duma, with the support of the "deceived investors". He argued that the government, not MMM, was responsible for people losing their money, and promised to initiate a pay-back program. The amount ultimately paid back was minuscule compared to the amount owed.
In October 1995, the Duma cancelled Mavrodi's right to immunity as a deputy. In 1996, he tried to run for Russia's presidency, but most of the signatures he received were rejected. MMM declared bankruptcy on September 22, 1997.
While it was believed that Sergei Mavrodi left Russia and moved to the United States , it is possible that he stayed in Moscow, using his money to change apartments regularly and employ a group of former special agents.
Mavrodi was found and arrested in 2003. While in custody, Mavrodi was given until January 31, 2006 to read the documents in his fraud case against him (The criminal case consisted of 650 volumes, each 250-270 pages long). At the end of April 2007, Mavrodi was convicted of fraud, and given a sentence of four and a half years. Since he had already spent over four years in custody, he was released less than a month later, on May 22, 2007.
The MMM scandal led to increased regulation of the Russian stock market, but the legacy of the fraud led many to become extremely suspicious of any joint stock companies .

South Africa

In 2015 MMM began operating in South Africa with the same business model as MMM-2011, claiming a "30% per month" return through a "social financial network". The group was identified as a possible pyramid scheme by the National Consumer Commission and accounts of clients were later frozen by
Capitec Bank . In response to mounting criticism and official investigations by state authorities in 2016 supporters of the South African MMM scheme staged a protest march in Johannesburg and has started up again late November 2016.

Nigeria

In November 2015, MMM launched a website targeting the Nigerian audience, also claiming a "30% per month" return including other acquirable bonuses. The entity was self-described as a "mutual aid fund where ordinary people help each other." [7] 2.4 million people had signed up by late 2016, with the country's unemployed as primary targets. Nigeria's
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
has confirmed that they are monitoring the scheme. On the 13th of December, it announced the freezing of all members' accounts due to systems overload and the negative attention brought on by the Government and mass media leading to wide spread panic in the Nation and even attempted suicides. L On the 14th of December, LASEMA (Lagos State Emergency Management Agency) of Lagos State pleaded with Lagosians to dial their emergency number if they spot anyone trying to commit suicide. LASEMA took this action, because of the number of suicides MMM caused in Russia

Zimbabwe

On July 2015. MMM East Africa, launched subsidiary "MMM Global Zimbabwe" targeting the Zimbabwe population. MMM offered it's participants "30% per month" return on all investments. It soon became widely popular in Urban areas of Zimbabwe, The
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe warned it's citizens to stay clear of the program as it could be a fraudulent scheme. On September 2016, MMM Global Zimbabwe issued a freeze on all accounts, speculations suggest that this occurred due to a fall in number of participants. On 5 September 2016, all MMM accounts were unfrozen, and members were encouraged by MMM to continue "investing" their money, however the MMM unfreeze came with a catch; Members would get an 80% loss of their available funds should they decide to withdraw their funds. This made some participants let their funds remain in the program while others withdrew their funds to suffer an 80% loss of their money "invested". This affected 66,000 Zimbabweans and caused some economic instability.

China

In January 2016 the Chinese government banned MMM on the grounds that it is a pyramid scheme, (Ponzi scheme), and it is not registered in the country (and as a fraudulent scheme cannot be registered).

Source: Wikipedia

Why do Nigerians defecate in open spaces?

The question about why many Nigerians choose to defecate in open spaces even when they can access hygienic toilets has defied rational answers. Nearly two weeks ago, the global community marked the yearly World Toilet Day on 19 November 2016. A depressing report attributed to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and published in the
Vanguard newspaper of 22 November 2016 noted the difficulty many citizens encounter accessing clean toilets within the country. Specifically, more than 51 million Nigerians, according to the UNICEF, do not have access to proper and functioning toilets. This makes for distasteful reading.
While lack of good and hygienic toilets must account for people defecating in public spaces, that should not be taken as the sole reason. Inappropriate behaviour comes in various ways. Our poor and disgusting toilet habit has marked us out as an unhygienic society where a majority of people urinate and defecate indiscriminately in open spaces. Every society is known by the way it responds to, treats, and manages human waste. It is common to find in our streets and suburbs people eating, drinking, sleeping, and dancing beside human faeces.
When pressed by the call of nature, some people respond in the most nauseating manner that makes other people wonder whether we are any better than animals that inhabit our planet. Many Nigerians seem to have that bizarre interest in defecating in public places such as airport terminal buildings, bus stations, petrol stations, footpaths, public roads, playing ground, prayer houses, forests, sports stadium, motor parks, and other public places you can imagine. I am puzzled by certain aspects of human behaviour. Why, for example, do people we consider normal choose to defecate in public spaces even when they are close to toilets either in their homes, workplaces, or in public areas?
I must acknowledge some people reside in areas without decent toilets or facilities for easing themselves. To this group of people, there is no alternative to defecating in open spaces. This is perhaps why they find it more convenient and satisfactory to ease themselves in open spaces without shame, without blinking an eye, and without expressing concern for the impact their unsanitary behaviour would have on the health of other human beings. As far as they are concerned, we cannot blame them and disregard a system that has failed to provide for their basic needs. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps they are not.
People who defecate in public spaces, especially those who have access to clean toilets, should be regarded as public enemies. They contribute to contamination and pollution of our environment, including the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we consume. All of these add to the relatively short lifespan of our population, men and women, boys and girls, the weak and the strong. When we complain that people are dying much younger in our current generation, we must consider the effect of our unhealthy practices on the natural life of our people.
Ordinarily, how, when, and where people prefer to relieve themselves of the food wastes lodged in their bowels should be a matter for their personal decision. Everyone's toilet practice and routine should not attract commentary in national newspapers essentially because it is a private matter. However, that private practice becomes something of a nuisance and a matter of public interest when it interferes with our right to enjoy our natural environment, the air we breathe and our freedom to access public facilities without spitting, without expelling phlegm from our mouth, without hissing, and without overing our noses and our mouths. These nonverbal behaviours suggest our environment has been polluted by people who defecated and/or urinated in improper places.
United Nations (UN) agencies have taken special interest in unsanitary practices by Nigerian citizens. This is why every year, during the World Toilet Day that is usually celebrated in November, UN agencies make the point to remind us about how we constitute public health hazards to ourselves through dishonourable conduct. In 2012, for example, Nigeria was conferred with the dishonourable title, according to the UN, of one of the top five countries in the world in which many citizens freely defecated in public spaces. In the year, the UN report said 34 million Nigerians defecated in open places. When compared with the latest figure of more than 51 million Nigerians who were reported last week to have defecated in public, you could see that our bad behaviour is getting worse. More people are joining the bandwagon of men and women behaving badly. Specifically within four years, a total of 17 million Nigerians saw good reason to join their countrymen and women who defecate in open spaces.
The yearly UN reports constitute an adverse vote of confidence on the Federal and state governments for failing to provide for the healthcare needs of the people. In 2012, Geoffrey Njoku, UNICEF Communication Specialist (Media and External Relations) in Nigeria at the time, quoted a combined report by the UNICEF and the World Health Organisation that said that “34 million Nigerians practise open defecation and Nigeria is amongst top five countries in the world with largest number of people defecating in the open.”
One obvious impact of this unsanitary health practice, according to Njoku, is that an estimated 194,000 children under five years of age die of diarrhoea every year. Respiratory or breathing related diseases also take the lives of about 240,000 children every year. According to Njoku: “These are largely preventable with improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene.” It is easy to see the direct connection between open defecation, pollution of air, and contamination of water. When human excreta are deposited carelessly in habitable places, they cause serious health dangers to public sources of water supply.
I have heard some people try to justify why they defecate openly while others offer numerous reasons to justify their dreadful public health misbehaviour. One of the reasons, perhaps the most ludicrous, is that urinating or defecating in open spaces gives people that feeling of freedom they cannot achieve anywhere else. Other people say they defecate in public spaces because they couldn't find decent public toilets within reach. Even those who can access toilets say they cannot use them because they are uninviting, largely grubby, and they give off putrid smell. Most of the reasons point to negligence by government over people's needs. If this is the case, governments must be held accountable for the growing poor health habits.
While it is incontestable that public toilets are not available or badly managed in many public places in urban centres and virtually non-existent in rural areas, this reason does not explain why people who have access to decent toilets still prefer to defecate in open spaces.
Regardless of what anyone might say and the reasons why people justify defecating in public spaces, that practice signals our society's poor attitude or response to public hygiene at personal and community levels. It is common, for example, to see people cook and consume food in front of broken and stinking sewage, in front of foul smelling gutters and culverts. If you want to see the extent of public health hazards in Nigeria, all you need is a short walk through streets that are filled with heaps of dirt. It is in this disgusting environment that people sit, eat, chat noisily, and conduct daily business.
In many cities, you will find streets, backyards, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, clubs, and the so-called prayer houses that are immersed in mountains of human waste, filth, and industrial wastes. There must be something in our system that helps us to fight off attacks by diseases that breed and run around in dirty environments.
Our repulsive attitude to good sanitation is a form of epidemic on its own. I recall a question someone asked four years ago at a conference that examined public attitudes to hygiene. The man wondered: “What would make an educated man, in a suit, buy cooked corn on the roadside and throw the cob out of the window of a moving vehicle when he is done?” That shameful conduct, I would argue, also explains the behaviour of a woman or man who defecates by the side of a road on the belief that if no one could observe them directly, it must be alright for them to disgorge the contents of their bladder or bowel at any place and time. It is this contempt, this disrespect for the inviolability of public health and our environment that exposes the rotten and mechanistic quality of life we live.
Widespread public defecation in open spaces has reached a level that calls for serious attention by government and private organisations. Coercion cannot change people's attitude to personal and public hygiene. It is possible that a sustained campaign of public health education can help to make a difference. But the success of public health education campaigns will depend on the willingness by governments at all levels to provide decent toilets for public use.

Source: Nigeria village square

Women who have their last baby after 35 are mentally sharper in old age

A new study has found that women have better brainpower after menopause if they had their last baby after age 35, used hormonal contraceptives for more than 10 years or began their menstrual cycle before turning 13.
This is the first study to investigate the association between age at last pregnancy, which can be a marker of a later surge of pregnancy-related hormones, and cognitive function in later life, said Roksana Karim, lead author of the study and assistant professor of clinical preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
"Based on the findings, we would certainly not recommend that women wait until they're 35 to close their family, but the study provides strong evidence that there is a positive association between later age at last pregnancy and late-life cognition."
Postmenopausal women who had their last pregnancy after 35 had better verbal memory. Those who had their first pregnancy when they were 24 or older had significantly better executive function, which includes attention control, working memory, reasoning and problem solving.
The main hormones at play are estrogen and progesterone. In animal studies, estrogen has a beneficial impact on brain chemistry, function and structure; progesterone is linked with growth and development of brain tissue, Karim said.
The study, published this month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, includes 830 women who, on average, were 60 years old. The data was adjusted for age, race and ethnicity, income and education.
Participants were given a series of tests that included assessments of verbal memory (remembering a list of words or retelling a story after some distraction), psychomotor speed, attention and concentration, planning, visual perception and memory.
Previous research has shown that many women experience brainpower and memory declines in their postmenopausal years. An outpouring of estrogen and progesterone, especially in later life, appears to be beneficial, Karim said.
Pregnancy, the pill and more hormones
The study found that other reproductive events were also important to later life cognition. More time between first and last period -- longer reproductive life -- proved valuable for executive function.
"Starting your period early means you have higher levels of the female sex hormone being produced by the ovaries," Karim said. "Girls are receiving the optimal levels early, so it's possible that their brain structures are better developed compared to those who are exposed to estrogen levels associated with menstrual cycles at a later age."
Use of the pill or other hormonal contraceptives for at least 10 years was beneficial for verbal memory and critical thinking ability.
"Oral contraceptives maintain and sustain a stable level of sex hormones in our blood stream," Karim said. "Stable is good."
Women who didn't carry their pregnancy to term and those who gave birth to two children had better overall cognitive ability, verbal memory and executive function when compared to women who had only one full-term pregnancy.
"The finding that even incomplete pregnancies are beneficial was novel and surprising," said Wendy Mack, the study's senior author and professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine. "In general, our findings are intriguing and are supported by other clinical studies and animal studies."
In humans, however, previous studies have shown that "pregnancy brain" exists, meaning researchers found that pregnant women have poorer verbal memory, word fluency and word-list learning when compared to non-pregnant women.
"The issue is the human studies haven't followed women for the long term," Mack said. "They just looked at women during pregnancy. We are not sure if we can expect to detect a positive estrogen effect at that point, as the many bodily changes and psycho-social stressors during pregnancy also can impact women's cognitive and emotional functions."
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and included data from two clinical trials: Women's Isoflavone Soy Health and Early vs. Late Intervention Trial of Estradiol.

Source: University of Southern California

Red is good: The brain uses color to help us choose what to eat

Red means "Green light, go for it!" Green means: "hmm, better not!" Like an upside down traffic light in our brain, color helps us decide whether or not to eat something. This, according to a study at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste and recently published in the journal Scientific Reports stating that vision is the main sense we use to guide us in food choices. To evaluate calorie intake, we rely on a "color code."
"According to some theories, our visual system evolved to easily identify particularly nutritious berries, fruits and vegetables from jungle foliage," says Raffaella Rumiati, SISSA neuroscientist and coordinator of the new study. The human visual system is trichromatic: in the retina, the light-sensitive organ of the eye, there are three classes of photoreceptors (cones) tuned preferentially to three different bands of the visible spectrum. This implies that we can see a large number of colors (more than monochromatic and dichromatic animals, less than those with 4, even 5 types of photoreceptor). "We are particularly efficient at distinguishing red from green," says Rumiati. This sophistication testifies to the fact that we are "visual animals," unlike others, dogs, for example, who depend on their sense of smell. "It is mainly the color of food that guides us, and our experiments show how," explains Rumiati. "To date, only a few studies have been focused on the topic."
What do we look for in food? Nutrition, of course, or calorie-dense content, and high protein. "In natural foods, color is a good predictor of calories," explains Francesco Foroni, SISSA researcher and first author of the study. "The redder an unprocessed food is, the more likely it is to be nutritious, while green foods tend to be low in calories." Our visual system is clearly adapted to this regularity. "The participants in our experiments judged foods whose color tended towards red as higher in calories, while the opposite was true for greens," continues Giulio Pergola, a researcher at the University of Bari, and one of the authors of the study. "This is also true for processed, or cooked foods, where color loses its effectiveness as an indicator of calories."
Actually, the scientific literature shows clearly that cooked foods are favored over natural foods and the phenomenon has been observed even in other species besides humans. "Cooked foods are always preferred because, compared to natural foods, there is more nutrition for the same quantity," explains Rumiati. "With cooked foods, however, the dominance of red over green no longer provides reliable information, which might lead us to believe that the brain would not apply the rule to processed foods. On the contrary, it does, which hints at the presence of ancient evolutionary mechanisms from before the introduction of cooking."
Another nod in favor of this hypothesis is the fact that the color code in the Rumiati and colleagues experiments does not come into play for items other than food: "The preference for red over green is not observed with non-edible objects," says Rumiati. "This means that the color code of the visual system activates correctly only with food stimuli."

Inner traffic light for eating healthier

Our findings, besides increasing our knowledge of the visual system, offer interesting possibilities on many fronts which could have an important impact on the public health: marketing food, for example, and treating eating disorders. "Much is being done today to encourage healthier eating," notes Rumiati. "For example, trying to convince the people to eat foods lower in calories." Some countries propose bans on certain types of products, such as carbonated soft drinks and high fat foods. In some cases, there is a disclaimer on the packaging, as with cigarettes. Perhaps food color could be used to produce significant results, even if artificial. "

Source:  Sissa Medialab

Even physicists are 'afraid' of mathematics

Physicists avoid highly mathematical work despite being trained in advanced mathematics, new research suggests.
The study, published in the
New Journal of Physics , shows that physicists pay less attention to theories that are crammed with mathematical details. This suggests there are real and widespread barriers to communicating mathematical work, and that this is not because of poor training in mathematical skills, or because there is a social stigma about doing well in mathematics.
Dr Tim Fawcett and Dr Andrew Higginson, from the University of Exeter, found, using statistical analysis of the number of citations to 2000 articles in a leading physics journal, that articles are less likely to be referenced by other physicists if they have lots of mathematical equations on each page.
Dr Higginson said: "We have already showed that biologists are put off by equations but we were surprised by these findings, as physicists are generally skilled in mathematics.
"This is an important issue because it shows there could be a disconnection between mathematical theory and experimental work. This presents a potentially enormous barrier to all kinds of scientific progress."
The research findings suggest improving the training of science graduates won't help, because physics students already receive extensive maths training before they graduate. Instead, the researchers think the solution lies in clearer communication of highly technical work, such as taking the time to describe what the equations mean.
Dr Fawcett said: "Physicists need to think more carefully about how they present the mathematical details of their work, to explain the theory in a way that their colleagues can quickly understand. It takes time to scrutinise the details of a technical article -- even for the most distinguished physics professors -- so with many competing demands on their time scientists may be choosing to skip over articles that take too much effort to digest."
"Ideally, the impact of scientific work should be determined by its scientific value, rather than by the presentational style," said Dr Higginson.
"Unfortunately, it seems valuable papers may be ignored if they are not made accessible. As we have said before: all scientists who care about the dialogue between theory and experiment should take this issue seriously, rather than claiming it does not exist."

Source: Science Daily