The call everyone was waiting for is in: NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft phoned home last night to tell the mission team and the world it had accomplished the historic first-ever flyby of Pluto. The pre-programmed “phone call” – a 15-minute series of status messages beamed back to mission operations at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland through NASA’s Deep Space Network – ended a suspenseful 21-hour waiting period.
South African universities have failed to gain a place in the QS University Ranking for BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries. The ranking compares the top 400 institutions in the five major emerging national economies. The ranking was published shortly after the Chinese Parliament ratified the creation of the BRICS Development Bank. The agreement had already been ratified in India and Russia. The New Development Bank, also known as the BRICS Bank, will finance infrastructure and development projects in BRICS countries, which are likely to include higher education related investments to further increase the global competitiveness of these economies.