Author: The Conversation
State of the nation addresses offer government an opportunity to speak directly to its citizens. It can offer reassurances that its policies and actions speak to issues of their greatest concern. In South Africa, public opinion surveys have repeatedly shown that South Africans rank unemployment, crime and corruption as the three most important issues facing the country. Others include housing and water. In recent years corruption has moved up the list of priorities. On reflection, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 6th state of the nation address offered an impassioned and detailed account of prospective policy interventions that promise to address these challenges.…
Which flavours and chemical compounds make a particular variety of fruit more appealing to consumers can be identified and predicted using artificial intelligence, according to our recently published study. Flavour, defined by scientists as the interaction between aroma and taste, is chemically complex. The sugars, acids and bitter compounds in food interact with the taste receptors on our tongues to invoke taste, while volatile compounds that interact with olfactory receptors in our noses are responsible for aroma. Breeding for flavour is a difficult task for many different reasons. For one, fruit and vegetable plant breeding programmes need to improve several…
Some form of basic income support is central to the South African government’s agenda. The lockdown-induced shocks have added to the crisis of structural mass unemployment and of poverty. There also seems to be broad consensus that basic income support is an essential part of the country’s social compact. But the fiscal risks it poses to a fragile economy have not diminished. And government faces some hard trade-offs to ensure these risks are minimised and that other social spending is not compromised. A small cash grant to the poorest workers was introduced as an ad-hoc and temporary response to the…
News emerged overnight of the potential theft of more than US$326 million (A$457.7 million) of Ethereum tokens from a blockchain bridge (which connects two blockchains so cryptocurrency can be exchanged between them). It’s no surprise. Crypto crime has been on the rise – especially since the pandemic began. How are these crimes committed? And what can you do to stay ahead of scammers? Direct theft vs scams There are two main ways criminals obtain cryptocurrency: stealing it directly, or using a scheme to trick people into handing it over. In 2021, crypto criminals directly stole a record US$3.2 billion (A$4.48…
For children suffering from rare diseases, it usually takes years to receive a diagnosis. This “diagnostic odyssey” is filled with multiple referrals and a barrage of tests, seeking to uncover the root cause behind mysterious and debilitating symptoms. A new speed record in DNA sequencing may soon help families more quickly find answers to difficult and life-altering questions. In just 7 hours, 18 minutes, a team of researchers at Stanford Medicine went from collecting a blood sample to offering a disease diagnosis. This unprecedented turnaround time is the result of ultra-rapid DNA sequencing technology paired with massive cloud storage and…
Read enough about Bitcoin, and you’ll inevitably come across people who refer to the cryptocurrency as a religion. Bloomberg’s Lorcan Roche Kelly called Bitcoin “the first true religion of the 21st century.” Bitcoin promoter Hass McCook has taken to calling himself “The Friar” and wrote a series of Medium pieces comparing Bitcoin to a religion. There is a Church of Bitcoin, founded in 2017, that explicitly calls legendary Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto its “prophet.” In Austin, Texas, there are billboards with slogans like “Crypto Is Real” that weirdly mirror the ubiquitous billboards about Jesus found on Texas highways. Like many…
Scholars disagree about whether the formerly whites-only neighbourhoods of Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest and most economically important city, have become substantially desegregated since the end of apartheid in 1994. Some argue that racial residential segregation has declined only slightly, while others argue that it is substantial. My recent research shows that the extent of racial desegregation is much more substantial than is commonly accepted. This research is based on population census data for the years 1996, 2001 and 2011 and is a result of my long-term scholarly interest in the changing nature and extent of racial inequality in Johannesburg. The…
The essence of stand-up comedy is that you have a comedian performing to a live audience with the goal of entertaining through eliciting humour. Comedians hold social, cultural, and political phenomena up to ridicule. Jokes can instigate re-evaluations, reversals and replacements of the status quo – or dominant beliefs of the day. As an art form based on abuse and amusement, comedy uses potentially offensive material. One would expect the audience to be either delighted or infuriated. But stand-up comedy creates a space where a kind of agreement is reached, which renders most offensive gags inoffensive. This happens through elements…
For years, self-driving car technology has remained tantalizingly just beyond the horizon. Bold predictions notwithstanding, fully automated vehicles still haven’t appeared in showrooms. But the technology appears poised for a leap forward in 2022. Companies including Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Honda are bringing so-called Level 3 AVs to market that will let drivers take their hands off the wheel under specific conditions, and virtually every major auto manufacturer is testing self-driving systems. Automated vehicles hold tremendous promise. Cars that handle most or all of the driving tasks could be safer than human drivers, operate more efficiently and open up new opportunities…
Since its launch on Christmas day, astronomers have eagerly followed the complex deployment and unfurling of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – the largest to ever take to the skies. Right around the time this article is published, it’s expected Webb will have reached a place called the Earth-Sun “second Lagrange point”, or “L2”. This is a point in space about 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth (in the opposite direction from the Sun) where the gravity from both the Sun and Earth help to keep an orbiting satellite balanced in motion. Now the astronomical community – including my team…