News
The first ever United Nations (UN) Procurement Summit was held in South Africa and hosted more than 500 attendees and 23 exhibitors at the CSIR International Convention Centre on 13 and 14 June 2016.
The aim of the summit was to give the South African defence industry an opportunity to showcase its capabilities to assist the UN in its peacekeeping missions. The CSIR; Denel; Armscor; Aerospace; Maritime and Defence Industries Association of South Africa; as well as the National Defence Industry Council all contributed to making the event possible.
“The CSIR is positioning itself to serve the nation today and in the future.” This view was expressed by Dr Rachel Chikwamba, CSIR Group Executive, at the seventh Military Information and Communications Symposium of South Africa (MICSSA), held in Pretoria, in May 2016.
Frankfurt-Germany – The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) has taken the top prize in the international Student Cluster Competition held at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Germany this week.
The CHPC is no new comer in this competition, having won the top prize in 2013 and 2014 and taken second prize in 2015, the centre entered yet another team of undergraduate students this year and took the overall prize, beating 11 other student contenders from across the globe.
Other entrants included:
The Centre for High Performance Computing’s (CHPC) newly-launched petascale machine, Lengau (Setswana for Cheetah), received international recognition this week by being placed 121st on the computing TOP500 List at the International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany. The CHPC is an initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and is managed by the CSIR. Lengau was recently unveiled in Cape Town.
The unauthorised dumping of waste oil into the ocean, which is commonly known as bilge dumping, is highly illegal and hazardous to marine ecology. Whereas most shipping companies remain on the right side of the law regarding bilge dumping, there are some that blatantly contravene it.
Recently, a ship en-route to Iran performed the longest bilge dump between Madagascar and Mozambique. This was recorded by the CSIR’s SeaFAR, which has been processing historic data in South Africa’s exclusive economic zone (SA EEZ) for the past five years.
The first meeting after the mining component of Operation Phakisa was recently held at the CSIR’s Johannesburg facility, which will soon be known as the Mining hub.
CSIR Group Executive: Operations, Laurens Cloete, opened the meeting by welcoming all participants. “We are open to the institutional model mining will take,” said Cloete addressing representatives from the Presidency, Departments of Science and Technology (DST), Trade and Industry and Mineral Resources, the Chamber of Mines, Sibanye Gold, Anglo Platinum and the University of the Witwatersrand.
There are many misconceptions about the value of wind and solar power, including that it is expensive and unreliable. Joanne Calitz is a young energy system modeller at the CSIR who uses mathematical modelling to quantify the true value of renewable energy in South Africa.
In South Africa, June is celebrated as Youth Month to pay tribute to the school pupils who lost their lives during the 16 June 1976 uprising in Soweto. This year, the theme for Youth Month is ‘Youth moving South Africa forward’ and it marks the 40th anniversary of the uprising, which profoundly changed the socio-political landscape in the country.
South Africa’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is 1 535 538 Km² and its diverse and rich marine ecology is an easy target for illegal fishing due to the difficulty in policing such an immense expanse. Large, illegal fishing vessels are able to hide in the deep ocean and remain undetected for months while stealing thousands of tons of the country’s fish.