Category: Science
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MeerKAT to get an optical companion
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It can happen in the blink of an eye: millions of light years away a star collapses in on itself. From Earth, that cataclysmic event is only a sudden brightening of a point in the night sky, and on the ground, astronomers scramble to investigate it. A new telescope, to…
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New app for small-scale fishing industry
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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…
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10 things to know about SA’s 2016 science budget vote
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To save you having to watch Parliament TV when no one is toyi-toying, or reading the minister’s 17-page speech, here are my top 10 things to take away from this year’s science and technology budget vote. #1 @SKA_Africa has supported 730 students and researchers, from undergrads to postdocs since 2005…
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State of the Cosmos: gravitational waves
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This was perhaps the worst-kept secret in all of science: the detection of gravitational waves. It has been seeping out of sources like leaky taps. But on 11 February, it was finally announced that scientists had detected gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are distortions in space and time that – rather…
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The plight of South Africa’s great white sharks
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South Africa’s great white shark may be under threat, and while that may be music to the ears of anyone terrified by the movie Jaws, this actually may have dire consequences for the balance of the local ecosystem. More than 90% of South Africa’s great white sharks share the same genetic sequence, threatening…
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Plant dupes dung beetles
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It looks like a pellet of buck dung, it smells like one too, but the centimetre-long seed is not dung, and is one of the few proven instances of sensory deception for seed dispersal. “The smell is incredible,” says Jeremy Midgley, a professor in biological sciences at the University of…
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Sarah Wild talks innovation, research and how science can shape South Africa
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So ‘Innovation: Shaping South Africa through science’ is launching this week. Here is a taster of what I’ll be talking about:
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Researchers plug carbon sink gaps
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The stormy waters south of the Cape suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and are key to understanding what will happen to our climate as the Earth heats up. The storms are part of the reason the Southern Ocean is one of the most under-researched in the world, although…
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Stem cell research outstrips legislation
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It starts in a dish: a collection of cells that can be made to grow into corneas, hearts or livers, or used to treat currently incurable diseases. This is the future that stem cell therapies could offer us, but the path to that future is strewn with ethical and legal…