Category: Technology

Fossilised lion trackway in the Goukamma Nature Reserve (30cm scalebar). CC BY The coastline near the southern tip of Africa looked vastly different between about 400,000 years ago and 70,000 years ago, compared with today. At times it lay as much as 100km south of its present location, exposing the vast Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, which contained […]

Frame Stock Footage/Shutterstock The question of when animals first evolved is one that has confounded scientists since the time of Charles Darwin. Studying rocks in north Wales in the mid-18th century, Darwin found the sudden first appearance of animal shells and skeletons in layers dating back over 500 million years perplexing. He had predicted a […]

Agriculture in the global south remains under pressure to produce more food while responding to climate change and resource constraints. Policy responses have focused on increasing production. But what about post-harvest losses? Globally, about one-third of food produced for human consumption is estimated to be lost or wasted. The problem was examined in a recent […]

CREATISTA/Shutterstock Do you remember the last time you were laughing and simply could not stop? Perhaps it was a situation when you should not have been laughing at all. This happened to one of us while accompanying a friend to a family court in the middle of an unpleasant divorce case. It led to a […]

The AI doomsday news cycle plays on anxieties about the future. The media has tended to prioritise sensational takes on the risk at the expense of more thoughtful opinions by, for example, experts in the ethics of AI. Alarmist fantasies of superintelligence – where artificial intelligence surpasses that of the most gifted human minds – […]

Not every snakebite injects venom. When venom enters the body, however, it can cause snake envenoming. This is a potentially fatal condition and it mostly affects poor rural communities across tropical and subtropical regions who don’t have easy access to medical care. As researchers with decades of combined experience in snakebite and tropical disease epidemiology, […]

Is AI a climate change villain, whose insatiable hunger for electricity will roast the planet? Or will it help predict where the next climate disaster will strike and what to do about it? In order to weigh these questions up, a good starting point is with AI’s energy consumption. The 2015 Paris agreement was a […]

Much of what scientists know about how genetic differences affect health comes from studying populations outside Africa. This matters because genetic information is increasingly being used to understand disease, interpret genetic tests and, in some cases, guide treatment. Africa has the greatest human genetic diversity in the world, yet African populations remain poorly represented in […]

PeopleImages/Shutterstock Who comes to mind when you think of someone emotionally intelligent? Someone who can read a room, defuse an argument, and who knows exactly what to say when a friend is struggling? For many people, that person is a woman. It’s such a widely held belief that popular psychology treats it as fact. We […]

Africa boasts up to 25% of Earth’s animal and plant species. This diversity is driven by diverse habitats: harsh deserts, vast grasslands, dense forests, towering mountains, lush coastlines and teeming seas. It is also due to deep evolutionary roots, as many animal and plant groups originated here in the distant past. Palaeontologists have been excavating […]