There is a long road to travel before South Africa’s scientists live up to the grand expectations to encourage solutions to the country’s problems and boost the economy.
The government has proposed changes to how Australia’s publicly funded research agencies are supported and how their performance is managed to boost the commercialisation of research.
The Australian Study of Health and Relationships (ASHR), the latest findings of which were released recently, has much to commend it. Like its counterpart, the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes…
Mice possess a notable talent: they are excellent at making more mice. Their ability to reproduce at a breakneck pace is one reason they are often used as experimental research subjects. Thus, when Dr…
UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH: What do we actually mean by research and how does it help inform our understanding of things? Those people looking for proof to come from any research in science will be sadly disappointed…
UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH: What do we actually mean by research and how does it help inform our understanding of things? We begin today by looking at the origins of research. It is comforting to feel like…
Can you imagine attending a lecture on, say, string theory and finding that the lecturer was actually explaining this complex scientific concept using his own words – sung to the tune of Queen’s Bohemian…
Including $20 billion for medical research in the recent federal budget seemed like a win for research. At the same time, however, the government imposed fees on PhD and Masters research students. Paying…
The announcement in last week’s Federal budget that fees will apply to postgraduate research for the first time has so far flown under the radar. But the effects will be significant. Coupled with the effect…
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland for questioning over an abduction and murder committed in Belfast in 1972. He maintains his innocence and after four…
As the world wakes up to the power of data, we need to start working out how to join up all this information. We need to turn it into meaningful findings that will help us to make changes to the way we…
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency, is said to be preparing for cuts of up to 20% of government funding – that’s around A$150…
Humans, as a species, are around 200,000 years old. Compared to the age of the universe we’re clearly infants but compared to the internet, we’re pretty old and compared to social media, which is still…
Close your eyes and picture a scientist. What do you see? Perhaps an Albert Einstein, staring intently at a blackboard covered in incomprehensible equations, or of Alexander Fleming, hunched over the laboratory…
James Dyson’s decision to fund a robotics laboratory at Imperial College London may not lead to the super advanced robot friends of our dreams, but what he has planned could make robotic domestic appliances…
There is a tired old mantra that periodically echoes along the corridors of Whitehall. It goes something like: “The UK is great at science but poor at turning it into innovation”. Yet since the Conservative…
One of Australia’s leading experts on cancer therapy at a molecular level is to receive a top research honour by the Australian Academy of Science. Professor Jerry Adams, from the Walter and Eliza Hall…
Many people are surprised to find that insects, jellyfish and sea urchins are animals. Animals are generally thought of as medium-sized four-legged creatures with two sets of eyes and ears — those with…
Previous Vice President of the Academy of Science of South Africa and DSI-NRF SARChI chair in Fungal Genomics, Professor in Genetics, University of Pretoria, University of Pretoria