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Racing Against Day Zero With taps predicted to run dry on 11 May 2018 due to the water shortages caused by Cape Town’s drought, Day Zero is fast approaching. With uncertain rainfall predictions for winter and the risk of over capacitating the system (at a significant cost to the ratepayer), the City of Cape Town had to start investigating alternative solutions for producing water. As such, three desalination plants have been erected across Cape Town, with another five plants in the pipeline. Water desalination is the process of removing excess salt and other minerals from seawater, making it fresh and safe for drinking and for household usage. With over 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered with seawater, a process such a desalination [...]

The Hysteria around Listeria Bacteria In January 2018, it was estimated that South Africa had approximately 750 confirmed cases of Listeria, which according to the World Health Organisation is “believed to be the largest ever outbreak of the bacterial disease Listeriosis”. By comparison, the second largest known outbreak of the disease occurred in the United States in 2011, with a total of only 147 reported cases. So what is Listeria, and why does it matter? Firstly, in its most basic form - Listeria is an organism that is responsible for the contamination of food. According to Kerrigan McCarthy from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases: “Listeriosis is a serious bacterial infection caused by the rod-shaped bacteria listeria monocytogenes. The bacterium is spread when [...]

Artificial Intelligence - an existential threat to South Africa While technological advances like Artificial Intelligence (AI) are likely to give rise to a number of opportunities for both economic and social development, they come with some risks - even more so for developing countries such as South Africa. AI involves the theory and development of computer systems that are able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as decision-making and visual perception.  Ralph Hamann, a professor and research director at the UCT Graduate School of Business, has outlined three of the biggest risks that artificial intelligence could potentially pose to South Africa and other developing countries. With South Africa’s current high rate on unemployment and already lacking quality education systems and [...]

The Big Bang Of Bitcoin Bitcoin, defined as the ‘internet of money’ is a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment system created by Satoshi Nakamoto. Unlike other established institutionalised currencies, Bitcoin is the first of its kind as a decentralised digital currency. It is a decentralised currency in that the Bitcoin system functions without a single administrator or a central bank. The appeal of a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin is that it isn’t physically owned by anyone, which means that it’s accessible to anyone. Bitcoin allows for ‘peer-to-peer’ transactions to take place through the use of cryptography. Cryptography refers to a means of transferring data by encrypting plain text and converting it into a text form that is unintelligible by anyone other than the intended [...]

A Shot In The Shark Shark attacks and the publicised subsequent statistics are often sensationalised by the media thanks to the likes of cinematographic and literary productions such as Jaws, Deep Blue Sea and Into the Blue. However, in reality, shark attacks occur relatively infrequently considering the human populations’ inadvertent everyday proximity to sharks. As the development and popularity of drone photography have shown, humans come into contact with sharks more often than they know, and often without any consequences or risk of attack. It is a well-known and acknowledged fact that your chances of being killed by a shark are less than that of being struck and killed by a falling coconut. According to the International Shark Attack File, “the real-life likelihood [...]