30 in-demand skills to prioritise in the workplace for the next 5 years

In a world that continuously punts digital transformation and the fourth industrial revolution, its hard to imagine what the careers of the future are going to look like in order to successfully participate and accommodate these. Its also interesting to see how the demand for certain skills and professions will change and translate on a global level too. Luckily we have online course provider Coursera to provide some guidance in this space through their industry skills report for 2021, which in turn provides a breakdown of  some of the most in-demand skills around the world at the moment, especially considering the inevitable ripple effects of […]

Should social media channels coming with a warning sign?

We use social media daily and generally without question. Most of us have had these profiles since we were on the younger end of the teenager scale, so young that we had no understanding of what the terms and conditions that we were agreeing to by setting up these profiles actually mean. How little we thought about the potential long term of ramifications of all the personal information we so willingly share on these social sites with friends, family, acquaintances and for the most part, complete strangers. We feel comfortable in sharing big parts of our lives with these strangers, and feel gratified and maybe even fulfilled to some […]

From petri dish to poultry

From meat free, plant based and now lab made meat – the search for meat alternatives continues and it has officially hit South African shores with two locally based companies; Mzansi Meat Co. and the Mogale Meat Company wanting to be a part of the international laboratory league. The idea behind ‘cultivated meat’ is to provide a viable alternative to the current traditional agricultural equivalent, that is taxing both environmentally, economically and ultimately ethically in terms of its treatment of the animals before they are bred and slaughtered for consumption. This will be done by ‘’growing the meat in bioreactors in a laboratory from the relevant cell proteins in order to replicate the […]

WTF are NFTs?

If you actively participate in any social media platform, you would have undoubtedly have heard of NFTs. If you’re not entirely sure as to what NFT stands for or why celebrities and influencers seem to be making obscene amounts of money from them, you are not alone – but what exactly are they? Are they emoji’s or cryptocurrency or digital assets, and if so – what does that even mean?  NFTs are largely a product of 2021, and are an interesting addition to the cryptocurrency sphere. NFTs more formally known as Non-Fungible Tokens are “digital assets that represents real-world objects like art, music, in-game items and videos. They are bought and sold online, frequently with […]

Off the back of COVID, Moderna to start HIV vaccination trials

Off the back of their COVID-19 vaccine success, biotech and pharmaceutical company Moderna is looking to begin human trials for two new mRNA-based HIV vaccines as soon as September this year. The vaccination study takes its cue from the core mechanism used in the recent COVID-19 vaccine development which has been rolled out en masse globally. While most of the vaccines have a slight variation in terms of the mRNA strands that they are centred around, it has been largely accepted as the most effective way to work towards vaccinating that world against COVID-19 by getting the body to generate an immune-response to protect itself from the […]

A one of a kind self-certifying machine

By Selina Rapulane

From left, Mr Michael Serapelo: HOD Design Department; Mr Thabang Mamantsebe: Founder of THABI T GROUP(Pty)Ltd; Mr Pule Maake: Co-founder THABI T GROUP(Pty)Ltd and Mr Teboho Kekana: Product Designer, with the e-certify machine.

The Design Department at the Vaal University of Technology Southern Gauteng Science and Technology Park (VUTSGSTP) in Sebokeng has partnered with two of Gauteng’s young innovative entrepreneurs, Mr Thabang Mamantsebe and Mr Pule Maake from Ekurhuleni in designing a self-service certifying machine that is built to assist government sectors and the communities in the township in making things easier.

The E-certify (self-service certifying machine) is a product developed to reduce long queues at government institutions such as the […]

Olympians are worth more than medals in some countries

As the 2020 Tokyo Olympics draw to a close, it was certainly a very different affair this year round given that the world is still in the midst of a pandemic which necessitated strict COVID protocols be adhered to by all personnel including athletes, coaches, support crew and stadium staff and volunteers. It also meant that for the first time, there was no live audience or spectatorship at any of the events, except from those sitting behind their television screens. That didn’t stop the medals from flowing though, with the United States taking home 113 medals including 39 gold medals, 41 silver and 33 bronze. China followed in second […]

The long and short of career goals

With COVID-19 still dominating such large aspects of our lives, it almost seems futile to focus on the long term in almost any context as the future and what it might look like is subject to so much potential change. From a career perspective this may seem especially true, given that the pandemic has compromised the full functionality of many industries and in turn, many jobs. In South Africa, the youth unemployment levels are at an all-time high – so in all honestly the focus right now may just be getting a job, or holding onto the one that you already have, not necessarily what you envision you career to look […]

The revenge bedtime procrastination

Revenge bedtime procrastination may sound a little dramatic, but it’s a phrase that’s being thrown around more and more often despite the fact that so many of us are exhausted and really value our sleep pandemic or not, but despite all these factors, when we’re in bed – do we really try our best to get to sleep, or do we use that time for other things? According to the Sleep Foundation “’Revenge bedtime procrastination’ describes the decision to sacrifice sleep for leisure time that is driven by a daily schedule lacking in free time.”  Sleep is a crucial part of our survival, without it, or with minimal amounts – we significantly impact our […]

Cutting the Cookies

Google recently announced that it was planning to “kill off” third-party cookies within the Chrome browser, however, the multinational tech company has had to push these plans out. If you, like most of us, are more familiar with the edible kind of cookie versus the computer kind, then this may not seem like anything significant. Computer cookies, otherwise known as HTTP cookies, web cookies, browser cookies or Internet cookies form an integral part of the internet as we know it, but also has implications in terms of our privacy online. There are different kinds of cookies that for the most part aren’t all that different to one another, but can be used in slightly different […]