Martian weather and soil conditions that NASA’s Curiosity rover has measured, together with a type of salt found in Martian soil, could put liquid brine in the soil at night. Perchlorate identified in Martian soil by the Curiosity mission, and previously by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander mission, has properties of absorbing water vapour from the atmosphere and lowering the freezing temperature of water.
IBM scientists have demonstrated an areal recording density of 123-billion bits of uncompressed data per square inch on low cost, particulate magnetic tape – a breakthrough which represents the equivalent of a 220Tb tape cartridge that could fit in the palm of your hand. To put this into perspective, 220Tb of data is comparable to 1,37-trillion mobile text messages or the text of 220-million books, which would require a 2 200km bookshelf spanning from Las Vegas to Houston, Texas.
Reflecting both the evolution of the company as well as its vision for the future, Lexmark International has introduced a new corporate brand and logo. “Lexmark’s rebranding represents its successful and ongoing transition to a company well beyond its hardware heritage,” says Nathan Nayagar, Lexmark MD – South Africa & English Speaking Africa.
As the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, was re-started over the weekend, physicists from the University of the Witwatersrand are preparing to further explore the frontiers of science that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson particle in 2012.
A survey of mobile phone usage in five African countries has delivered startling findings on the rise of Internet access via phones, the potential demise of Nokia and the continued appeal of BlackBerry. The Mobile Africa 2015 study, conducted by GeoPoll and World Wide Worx, surveyed 3 500 mobile phone users in five of Africa’s major markets – South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Uganda. The most significant finding was that Internet browsing via phones now stands at 40% across these markets, with 51% of respondents in Ghana and 47% in Nigeria reporting that they use their phones to access the Internet. South Africa lags behind at 40%, and Kenya (34%) and Uganda (29%) are slowest on the uptake.