Featured Research: Science

Story

Could green spaces be a crime-fighting tool for South African cities?

South Africa is a global crime hotspot. But, as residents put up higher walls to stay safe, a new South African study suggests that greenspaces can be an important tool in creating safe and sustainable cities.

Talking Point

A new way to name bacteria: 300-year-old system revised thanks to scientific advances

Nearly 300 years ago the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus secured his place in scientific history when he created what’s known as the binomial system. The year was 1737 and, due to the large diversity of plants and animals collected by naturalist explorers in different parts of the world, Linnaeus saw the need to develop a logical system to classify and group this material in a systematic way.

Stories

RE.SEARCH Issue 3: Renew

Welcome to the third issue of, RE.SEARCH. The first two issues looked at ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Innovation’. Issue 3 looks at how we can ‘Renew’ our ways of thinking and grow possibilities. This edition features research that should excite everyone from the Beyhive to forensic pathology enthusiasts to understanding new ways of work. It is now available online.

Lecture

'Riendzo ri lehile: Tackling Natural Language Processing for African languages to make better sense of our world'

Low-resourced languages pose an interesting challenge for machine learning algorithms, representation, data collection and accessibility of machine learning in general. For African languages this challenge is even more consequential as it also coincides with the challenges of shaping the current revolution in artificial intelligence with the global landscape. In this talk I present our research...

Story

Making light work: UP chemists pave the way towards an ultra-sensitive analytical instrument that can detect water pollutants

A UP-led team is using the momentum of light to trap particles. This optical trap has been used with collaborators to demonstrate a hidden property in light that remains unchanged even when it passes through turbulence.

Stories

UP part of global research team to present the first image of Sagittarius-A

Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. The announcement was made at simultaneous press conferences around the world. Professor Roger Deane, an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria and Director for the Centre of Astrophysics at the University of Witwatersrand and Wits Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Iniyan...