Author: The Conversation

The main water supply to South Africa’s economic hub, greater Johannesburg in the Gauteng province, and to the country’s breadbasket in the Free State, is scheduled to be cut off for six months. Maintenance work on the 37 kilometre Lesotho Highlands Water Project tunnel is due to begin in October 2024. Ifedotun Victor Aina, a senior researcher at the Water and Production Economics Research Unit at the University of Cape Town, takes a critical look at who could be affected by the shutdown and what might happen. What is the Lesotho Highlands Water Project? Why is it so important? It is a…

How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it turns out, is about one-third the speed of light, as our team has just revealed in a new study published in Nature. Energetic cosmic beams known as jets are seen throughout our universe. They are launched when material – mainly dust and gas – falls in towards any dense central object, such as a neutron star (an extremely dense remnant of a once-massive star) or a black hole. The jets carry away some of the gravitational energy released by the infalling gas, recycling it back into the surroundings on far larger…

Do you ever use your cellphone while driving? Don’t feel too guilty about saying yes – nearly 60% of drivers admit to using their phone in hands-free mode while driving. But don’t become complacent either. Using your cellphone in hands-free mode while driving is not a perfectly safe activity, despite the impression you might be getting from laws, marketing messages and the behaviour of people around you. Fatal crashes caused by driver distraction have not gone down significantly over time: Distraction caused 14% of fatal crashes in 2017 and 13% of fatal crashes in 2021. Given that these numbers are calculated based on police-reported…

Outside the world of open-source software, it’s likely few people would have heard about XZ Utils, a small but widely used tool for data compression in Linux systems. But late last week, security experts uncovered a serious and deliberate flaw that could leave networked Linux computers susceptible to malicious attacks. The flaw has since been confirmed as a critical issue that could allow a knowledgeable hacker to gain control over vulnerable Linux systems. Because Linux is used throughout the world in email and web servers and application platforms, this vulnerability could have given the attacker silent access to vital information held…

In a world where technology is increasingly intertwined with our feelings, emotion-AI harnesses advanced computing and machine learning to assess, simulate, and interact with human emotional states. As emotion-AI systems become more adept at detecting and understanding emotions in real-time, the potential applications for mental health care are vast. Some examples of AI applications include: screening tools in primary care settings, enhanced tele-therapy sessions and chatbots offering accessible 24/7 emotional support. These can act as bridges for anyone waiting for professional help and those hesitant to seek traditional therapy. However, this turn to emotion-AI comes with a host of ethical, social and regulatory challenges around…

Have you ever wondered how an email sent from New York arrives in Sydney in mere seconds, or how you can video chat with someone on the other side of the globe with barely a hint of delay? Behind these everyday miracles lies an unseen, sprawling web of undersea cables, quietly powering the instant global communications that people have come to rely on. Undersea cables, also known as submarine communications cables, are fibre-optic cables laid on the ocean floor and used to transmit data between continents. These cables are the backbone of the global internet, carrying the bulk of international communications, including…

Instead of developing new mining infrastructures, what if we recovered the metal deposits contained in the electronic objects we no longer use, such as smartphones or computers? There are very good reasons for focusing on the potential of these “urban mines”, also known as secondary mines to distinguish them from the “primary” mines where resources in the ground are exploited directly. A strategic challenge for the European Union Not only would these alternative resources address a shortage of mining infrastructure, they could also help to slash electronic waste, otherwise known as “e-waste”. The fastest-growing waste stream in the world, electronic junk wreaks…

The second instalment of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune has dominated most conversations about cinema in the first few months of 2024. Adapted from Frank Herbert’s classic novel, the two-part epic has been credited with reviving the science fiction genre, and the blockbuster experience in general. Villeneuve’s latest movie, however, is not just a mere sci-fi blockbuster. Although Dune features many familiar sci-fi visual trappings – interstellar travel, atomic arsenals and distant planets inhabited by alien lifeforms – its main strength resides in telling a fantasy story outside the traditional confines of this genre. After all, Dune is the story of an aristocratic hero who, after undergoing…

When Aleksandr Zhadan used ChatGPT to talk to over 5,000 women on Tinder, it was a sign of things to come. As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated and easily available, online dating is facing an onslaught of AI-powered fraud. The industry, which is dominated by a small number of incumbents, has already proven slow to respond to long-standing problems on its apps. AI will be its moment of reckoning — there are even apps that can help people write their messages. Opponents of dating apps may be happy to see the industry crash and burn. The rest of us should worry. Online dating plays an…

A groundbreaking announcement for the recovery of lost ancient literature was recently made. Using a non-invasive method that harnesses machine learning, an international trio of scholars retrieved 15 columns of ancient Greek text from within a carbonized papyrus from Herculaneum, a seaside Roman town eight kilometres southeast of Naples, Italy. Their achievement earned them a US$700,000 grand prize from the Vesuvius Challenge. The challenge sought to incentivize technological development by inviting public participation in the research. It emerged from collaboration between computer scientist Brent Seales — who has a long-standing interest in non-invasive technologies for studying manuscripts — and technology investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. While…