20 Things To Know About SA’s Research Infrastructure Roadmap
You can find more original science content by Sarah Wild on Wild On Science. [View the story “20 Things To Know About SA’s Research Infrastructure Roadmap, By Sarah Wild” on Storify]
New app for small-scale fishing industry
A free app – co-developed by academics, government, civil society and fishing communities – will be the lynchpin in the government’s efforts to launch and roll out a small-scale fishing industry in South Africa. Traditional and artisanal fishing communities, according to an Equality Court ruling in 2007, have been consistently marginalised during both apartheid and…
The murky morality of biobanking
Human tissue could be a medical game changer, but thorny ethical roadblocks must be navigated, writes Sarah Wild of the Mail & Guardian. Biobanks are in short supply in South Africa, a place whose inhabitants have some of the greatest genetic diversity in the world. These repositories of human tissue, used for health research, could…
Who’s who in Johannesburg’s zoo
Maintaining a zoo is not only a balancing act, it contributes importantly to the world we live in. There’s a science factor to it too, writes Sarah Wild of the Mail and Guardian. It informs the activities of the zoo, from what the animals eat to the habitats designed for them. It sounds like a breakfast…
Race ‘science’ resurfaces but not all is black and white
Sarah Wild of the Mail and Guardian interviewed Gavin Evans, a former South African journalist. He tackles the notion that intelligence is skin deep in his new book,Black Brain, White Brain: Is intelligence skin deep? “The problem with Africa is that Africans don’t know how to do technology. Go look up race and IQ and you’ll see that…
South Africa’s Antarctic history is being unfrozen in time
Used as a gateway to the world’s southernmost continent since the 18th century, South Africa has been actively involved in scientific research in Antarctica and in its only overseas territory, the Prince Edward Islands, since the end of World War II. The Antarctica Legacy of South Africa, a programme based at Stellenbosch University and funded…
iShack delivers power (and television) to the people
If you are poor and living in an informal settlement in South Africa, housing is a waiting game – if you qualify, that is. According to the most recent census data, more than three million people live in shacks in informal settlements, which equates to about 1.2-million households throughout the country. And the government’s subsidised…
Hermanus, the eye of the sunstorm
There’s more to the coastal town of Hermanus than just whale watching. There’s some serious sun watching to be had too, writes Sarah Wild in the Mail & Guardian. Here’s a snippet from her article after she recently visited space weather experts at the South African National Space Agency’s (SANSA) space science directorate, and found out…
Eight ways to fix our water woes
The South African water crisis is a complex series of interlocking problems that preclude a silver-bullet solution. Each water system is unique, with different geographies, weather, populations and quirks, such as an unwillingness to reuse treated waste water. Some short-term interventions are obvious, if expensive, such as reducing demand by cutting losses from leaking pipes.…
What price a peek at the galaxy?
Square Kilometre Array (SKA) scientists and engineers are at this moment trying to predict what the world will look like in 2020. More than 350 of them, representing 18 nations and hailing from nearly 100 institutions, universities and industry, are trying to determine what will be possible technologically and how much it will cost as they design…