Energy

The debates about appropriate energy sources for South Africa become very heated mainly because of vested interests and hidden agendas. We have seen how the Gupta's have bought Uranium mines in anticipation of a nuclear new build. A well known columnist in the Engineering News worked for the old AEC and for ARMSCOR in the 1980s and now runs an organisation called "Nuclear Africa". He makes some of his money holding annual conferences jointly with Necsa to push the Nuclear option hard. As such he will use every argument under our Sun ( which does indeed send us energy produced by nuclear fusion) to not use solar energy to power our human needs on earth. On the other hand many people in the so called "green" environmental groups neglect the limited life time of solar installations and the limited availability of power from solar or wind installations. Very roughly speaking if a nuclear plant lasts 40 years and a solar plant only 20 years then the capital cost of the solar installation must be less than half that of the nuclear installation to be economically competitive. Furthermore if the nuclear installation only provides power for 80% of the hours in the year, given the need for refuelling an maintenance, and the solar or wind plant only provides power for 20% of the time for obvious reasons, then another factor of 20/80 which is one quarter comes in to play. So the solar installation must be one half times one quarter cheaper to be economically competitive. Hence only when solar and wind installation costs go down to below one eighth that of the nuclear installations can we say that their capital cost is competitive. Now these figures of 20 years, 40 years, 80% and 20% are not fixed and depending on what position you want to take in the debate, you will alter them up or down accordingly to justify your own view. This article by K. Branker a , M.J.M. Pathak a , J.M. Pearce entitled "A review of solar photovoltaic levelized cost of electricity"  provides a useful perspective on how financing options effect the relative cost of energy. In its Table 4 on page 8 it compares the Effect of degradation rate and performance requirement on system life. It shows that at a degradation rate of 0.2% a solar installation could last 80 years while at a 1.0% degradation rate the installation may only last 20 years. The technical challenge then is to reduce the degradation rate. It is these technical nuances which make it imperative that participants in energy debates listen carefully and make scrupulously honest comments in order to make the debate useful. We do not need our energy debates to descend to the level of Nkandla swimming pools being used as fire extinguishers.

State of Capture - Thuli Madonsela's Report

http://businesstech.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/329756252-State-of-Capture-14-October-2016.pdf

Eskom seems compromised in nuclear deal while research demonstrates that SA’s state-owned entities fall short of their constitutional obligations in terms of oversight, writes Neil Overy
01 November 2016 - 07:50 AM Neil Overy
https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2016-11-01-eskom-seems-compromised-in-nuclear-deal/

Nuclear costly and outdated, says US expert, Angelina Galiteva
The peak of California’s electricity consumption is about 60,000MW, just about double SA’s 32,000MW.
"Flexibility is what counts, not base load. Nobody cares about base load any more," Galiteva said. "Renewables can provide enough. You need to have very flexible resources.
https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/energy/2016-11-01-nuclear-costly-and-outdated-says-us-expert/ 

https://nuclear-news.net/category/africa/south-africa/

Wireless Power Transmission of Solar Energy from Space

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/wireless-power-transmission-of-solar-energy-from-space/

Multilingualism

Some notes, links and papers.

Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng nee Setati
Recently appointed Deputy Vice Chancellor Research at UCT
She was at Wits, then at UNISA and now she is at UCT

http://www.uct.ac.za/dailynews/?id=9535

http://www.becomingyou.co.za/women-at-work-an-interview-with-professor-mamokgethi-phakeng/

https://www.researchgate.net/researcher/78181996_Mamokgethi_Setati

MAMOKGETHI SETATI and JILL ADLER
BETWEEN LANGUAGES AND DISCOURSES: LANGUAGE
PRACTICES IN PRIMARY MULTILINGUAL MATHEMATICS
CLASSROOMS IN SOUTH AFRICA
http://moscow.sci-hub.bz/6ccc9e4059ebcfa562eecdcf71d20322/setati2000.pdf

Teaching Mathematics in a Primary Multilingual Classroom
Mamokgethi Setati
University of theW itwatersrand
http://moscow.sci-hub.bz/a87435f6a5b309faadee2952c100b4bf/10.2307@30034945.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anthony_Essien/publication/280942447_Research_on_multilingualism_in_mathematics_education_in_South_Africa_2000-2007/links/55cdadb008aebebb8f578608.pdf?origin=publication_list&ev=auth_pub_xdl

http://cyber.sci-hub.bz/MTAuNTk1MS9qcmVzZW1hdGhlZHVjLjQ0LjEuMDExOQ==/10.5951@jresematheduc.44.1.0119.pdf

http://mamokgethi.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Kgethi-CV-March-2014.pdf

http://www.uct.ac.za/downloads/email/AbridgedCV.Phakeng.Dec2015.Final.pdf


THE CALCULUS OF SOCIAL CHANGE – MATHEMATICS AT THE CUTTING EDGE
Mamokgethi Setati Phakeng (Chair)
University of South Africa
The aim of this plenary panel is to explore the idea of a Mathematics Education that is at the cutting edge and on the cusp/crest of making a difference, hence the title, “The Calculus of Social Change – Mathematics at the Cutting Edge”. This theme will be addressed by four panellists. In this introduction I give the rationale for the plenary panel and describe how it has been organised.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.671.2061&rep=rep1&type=pdf#page=353

The Universities and the challenges facing South Africa.

Our country is in crisis and our universities reflect that instability.
What is the actual situation at our universities?
Here are some articles which describe the challenges facing our universities
Please note that my publishing these links does not necessarily reflect my agreement or disagreement with the views expressed. I publish them with the intent of trying to understand the problems from as many different perspectives as possible.

1. The UCT Vice-Chancellor, Dr Max Price's restrained report on the UCT situation on Tuesday the 4th October 2016.
https://www.uct.ac.za/dailynews/?id=9989

A report dated 4th November about the arrest of a UCT activist:
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/uct-fallist-masixole-mlandu-arrested-again-for-vio

2. Pastor  Xola Skosana's war with privileged spaces
http://kaganof.com/kagablog/2016/06/10/pastor-xola-skosana-declares-war/ 

3. The thoughts of a socialist student leader - Athabile Nonxuba
http://www.studentinvestor.co.za/athabile-nonxuba-feesmustfall-interview/


4, Wits student leader Mcebo Dlamini
https://madibazradio.wordpress.com/politics/political-report-by-qhawe-ka-mkhwane/the-rise-and-fall-of-mcebo-dlamini/

5. Three old ones from 2013 and 2014 when Adam Habib had just been appointed vice-chancellor of Wits
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-08-30-00-mg-litfest-imagination-needed-to-face-this-new-moment-of-reckoning

http://www.financialmail.co.za/coverstory/2014/01/23/which-sa-universities-get-top-marks

http://mg.co.za/article/2014-11-07-varsities-we-darent-let-the-bucks-stop-here

6. A recent article about South African Business schools
http://www.financialmail.co.za/coverstory/2016/09/29/ranking-the-mbas-which-business-school-is-in-the-driving-seat

7. A overview of the senior management at UCT
https://www.uct.ac.za/about/management/execdirectors/

8. A New York Times Article about affirmative action at UCT
https://www.criminology-dev.uct.ac.za/usr/about/intro/transformation/new_york_times.pdf

9. Two articles from Achille Mbembe

http://www.litnet.co.za/interview-the-end-of-public-universities-in-south-africa/

 

http://mg.co.za/article/2016-09-22-mantashe-and-student-protesters-agree-on-university-shutdowns-but-this-is-the-last-thing-africa-needs-1

Entry Level University text books

Open source textbooks for entry level university courses
http://2012books.lardbucket.org/

2012 Book Archive

Creative Commons licensed, freely downloadable

What is this?

First off, this is not the website for the original publisher. Instead, this is the archive of a small project by Andy Schmitz to archive Creative Commons-licensed copies of all the books which were available online from a specific publisher at the end of 2012. (That publisher has asked to remain unnamed here. For more information, see the attribution page.)
That publisher is a textbook publisher, focusing on (mostly entry-level) college textbooks. From their beginning until the end of 2012, they licensed all of their books under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license, allowing anyone who so desired to copy them, give them away, or modify them, as long as they acknowledged the authors, released the copies under the same license, and didn't do so for commercial gain. This was an unusual model, but they hoped it would work. (They sold access to additional study materials, as well as copies of books that would fit well on e-readers.)
In late 2012, they decided that the process of giving away access to their textbooks online wasn't working, and decided to switch to a different model, requiring students to pay for access to the books starting in 2013. (At least initially, these fees ware rather cheap compared to normal textbook prices, but still not free.)
Because the books were still available under a Creative Commons license at the end of 2012, I downloaded them to have copies known to be available under a Creative Commons license. I then repackaged them so that they are available outside of the publisher's website, and can be used by anyone under the terms of their Creative Commons license.