Science Journalist, Scribbler, Question-asker, Audio-wrangler, Note-taker, Tea-drinker, and (Occasional) Author
South Africa and Australia have more in common than clear blue skies, rugby and a penchant for burning meat on an open fire. The two countries – whose economies were founded on the mineral resources under the soil and which are separated from European, Asian and North American markets by thousands of kilometres – also … Read more
THE room has not changed in four years: frosted glass walls enclosing an oval table. A Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) CEO is laying out his plans for the future. Again. “When I arrived, I was the sixth CEO in five years; now I’m the sixth CEO in six years,” says Barlow Manilal. “TIA really needed … Read more
IT IS a difficult sales pitch: a multibillion-dollar giant telescope used to investigate phenomena so esoteric years of study are required to understand them. Countries planning to build large scientific infrastructure have to sell the project and its objectives to their citizens. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a good example of this. The telescope … Read more
IT COULD change the way disease is diagnosed and treated: millions of human tissue samples, their information stored in vast databases, allowing health researchers to trawl for patterns. The patterns could point to disease risk among population groups, and could one day lead to the possibility of personalised medicine. This sort of research is particularly … Read more
A smartphone app that logs data on fish catches is giving small-scale fishers in South Africa hope they can persuade the government to allocate them more of what they regard as their traditional fishing rights. Abalobi, the app which is named for the isiXhosa phrase abalobi bentlanzi,meaning “someone who fishes”, aims to give small-scale fishers … Read more
It’s going to be a long time before I sit through another closing ceremony like that of ESOF2016. Usually, in a post chronicling of the day, I’d offer you some form of chronological structure, but this was just too good: tinged with entertainment, nostalgia and a serving a discomfort. We shuffled into the hall like … Read more
The second day of a conference is when things start to get awkward. On the first day, with your misguided sense of exuberance and nervous energy, you try to meet everyone. You insert your ready-to-be-shaken hand into circles of people like a knife in a birthday cake. (This is also the day when most people … Read more
There is something truly magical about Lindau, the home for the annual Nobel laureates meeting. It might be because you feel as though you’re on the set of a movie — the cobblestones in the quaint pavements are arrayed like small rainbows; everyone is eating gelato and, well, you’re on an island in the middle … Read more
The question on the lips of participants of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting was not if the detectors of gravitational waves would win a nobel prize for their work. It was a matter of when. The Nobel prize for physics will be announced within the next 100 days. On 11 February this year, scientists from … Read more