Author: The Conversation

Cyber-skulduggery is becoming the bane of modern life. Australia’s prime minister has called it a “scourge”, and he is correct. In 2022–23, nearly 94,000 cyber crimes were reported in Australia, up 23% on the previous year. In the latest high-profile attack, around 15,000 customers of alcohol retailer Dan Murphy, Mexican restaurant chain Guzman y Gomez, Event Cinemas, and home shopping network TVSN had their login credentials and credit card details used fraudulently to buy goods and services in what is known as a “credential stuffing” attack. So what is credential stuffing – and how can you reduce the risk of it happening to…

Early on Saturday, January 20 2024, Japan hopes to become the fifth country to successfully land a probe on the Moon. To date, the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India have preceded the East Asian nation. Launched in September 2023 by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Japanese Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is set to touch down around 02:20am AEDT. Trialling a novel landing technique with pinpoint accuracy, it is poised to settle on a gently sloped crater rim – a first in lunar exploration. JAXA celebrates the mission as a technology demonstrator. The agency’s main aim…

Misinformation is the number one risk facing society over the next two years, according to the World Economic Forum. With key elections due in the US, UK and many other nations this year, an onslaught of political misinformation can be expected. Some of this material is distributed through paid advertising on social media, like the AI generated “deep fake” videos of British prime minister Rishi Sunak doing the rounds. However, we know that much of the spread of false material is due to the actions of individual social media users. Many people share political news online. Inevitably some of that news is false. Fake political news…

Have you ever wondered what chickens are talking about? Chickens are quite the communicators — their clucks, squawks and purrs are not just random sounds but a complex language system. These sounds are their way of interacting with the world and expressing joy, fear and social cues to one another. Like humans, the “language” of chickens varies with age, environment and surprisingly, domestication, giving us insights into their social structures and behaviours. Understanding these vocalizations can transform our approach to poultry farming, enhancing chicken welfare and quality of life. Our research at Dalhousie University applies artificial intelligence (AI) to decode the language of…

South African astronomy started an important journey two decades ago, when an initiative to attract and train future scientists in the field welcomed its first group of students under the National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme. World class facilities have been established during this period, the most notable of which are the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) and the MeerKAT radio telescope, a precursor to the international Square Kilometre Array. They add to the South African Astronomical Observatory and Hartebeesthoek Radio Observatory which existed already. The National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme has played a vital role in ensuring that these facilities were not simply operated for the benefit…

A recent New York Times article released a list of people “behind the dawn of the modern artificial intelligence movement” – and not a single woman was named. It came less than a week after news of a fake auto-generated woman being listed as a speaker on the agenda for a software conference. Unfortunately, the omission of women from the history of STEM isn’t a new phenomenon. Women have been missing from these narratives for centuries. In the wake of recent AI developments, we now have a choice: are we going to leave women out of these conversations as well – even as…

When South Africa became a constitutional democracy in 1994, it replaced its apartheid-era intelligence apparatus with a new one aimed at serving the country’s new democratic dispensation. However, the regime of former president Jacob Zuma, 2009-2018, deviated from this path. It abused the intelligence services to serve his political and allegdly corrupt ends. Now the country is taking steps to remedy the situation. In November 2023, the presidency published the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill. It proposes overhauling the civilian intelligence agency, the State Security Agency, to address the abuses. The bill is extremely broad in scope. It intends to amend 12 laws – including the main intelligence laws of…

Over ten years ago, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) began mapping the universe to find evidence that could help us understand the nature of the mysterious phenomenon known as dark energy. I’m one of more than 100 contributing scientists that have helped produce the final DES measurement, which has just been released at the 243rd American Astronomical Society meeting in New Orleans. Dark energy is estimated to make up nearly 70% of the observable universe, yet we still don’t understand what it is. While its nature remains mysterious, the impact of dark energy is felt on grand scales. Its primary effect is to drive the accelerating expansion…

The Sun’s energy is effectively limitless. While resources such as coal or gas are finite, if you are able to capture and use solar power it doesn’t prevent anyone else from also using as much sunshine as they need. Except that isn’t quite the full story. Beyond a certain size, solar farms become large enough to affect the weather around them and ultimately the climate as a whole. In our new research, we have looked at the effect such climate-altering solar farms might have on solar power production elsewhere in the world. We know that solar power is affected by weather conditions…

South Africa experienced unprecedented electricity shortages in 2023 as ageing coal plants became increasingly prone to breakdowns. The country urgently needs to develop new electricity generation facilities and reduce reliance on coal power. In the first week of 2024, the South African energy minister, Gwede Mantashe, released a proposed roadmap for the future of electricity in South Africa. Unfortunately, the draft Integrated Resource Plan is a major disappointment. Described by some analysts as “shoddy”, the plan contains, among many flaws, huge errors in costing the different future energy scenarios. Firstly, the plan’s costing estimates aren’t credible. It does not even consider the most inexpensive combination…