The poor understanding of the task, the concepts involved, or the form the writing should take often results in poor writing. Writing plays a central role in constructing understanding, and is a mode of learning integral to student development. Research in this field suggests that significant improvement in student writing happens best as a result of one-to-one consultation against a background of relevant information.

The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), in collaboration and with financial support from the Inter-Academy Medical Panel (IAMP) is proud to announce a pilot regional workshop on scientific writing skills for young medical scientists. During this workshop mentoring will be provided to participants.

We envisage that this pilot programme will:

• improve the understanding of the tasks, concepts and the form of scientific writing;
• improve writing skills for scientific publications;
• provide mentoring (1-on-1 and in groups), advice and corrective action by scientific experts.

Eligibility:

The workshop is aimed at 25 young medical scientists, and all the following criteria apply:

• Resident in the Southern Africa region;
• Under 40 years old;
• Currently in their final year of their Master’s or Doctoral programmes in Medical sciences, or recently completed;
• In the process of preparing a journal article for publication;
• No, or very limited access to mentoring and other professional help in scientific writing.

Note:

The mentorship programme will not be in competition with research supervisory services but to assist students with their writing skills.

Workshop content:

• Scholarly/scientific literature: what it is; what are its written and unwritten rules and how its integrity is protected;
• General logic and structure of an article/paper;
• Citation practices;
• Drafting, submitting and publishing an article/paper: journal choice;
• Copyright and other publishing issues.

 How to apply:

Please complete the attached registration form (pdf) and send (via e-mail or fax) to Ms Phakamile Mngadi at: Phakamile@assaf.org.za ; fax number: +27 86 576 9521. You can also direct workshop related queries to Ms Mngadi via telephone at +27 12 349 6609.

The application should also be accompanied by:

• A motivation letter as to why you need to be considered for the workshop and mentoring;
• Material for a journal article e.g. results, background information and articles relevant to the article;
• Supervisor’s approval for you to participate in this workshop and mentoring process.

Note: Space is limited and your application does not guarantee acceptance.

To be eligible, scientists must be under the age of 40, have been living and working in a developing country for at least the past three years and have a good publication record of at least 10 peer reviewed  publications in international journals.

The CVs should include
 
- the scientist’s publications
- academic and career milestones
- short abstract on the scientist’s research areas
- awards and recognition

Every year the five TWAS Regional Offices each select up to five scientists to be Young Affiliates for a period of five years. During their tenure, Affiliates are invited to participate in TWAS general meetings and conferences as well as provide feedback to TWAS on how the Academy can respond to the needs of young scientists in developing countries; they are encouraged to provide information about TWAS programmes to their students and colleagues; are encouraged to seek out and nominate excellent scientists from developing countries, especially science-and technology-lagging countries, for TWAS awards and seek out excellent scientists from science-and technology-lagging countries and recommend their nomination for TWAS membership (via a full member of the Academy). 

Note that the idea of the Young Affiliateship is to give opportunities to young scientists who currently do not have them because they are based in Africa or elsewhere in the developing world.

and THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF SOUTH AFRICA http://www.assaf.org.za

INVITE YOU TO A PUBLIC LECTURE BY: 

Professor John Compton,
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Cape Town
entitled

‘Did modern humans originate on the southern coast of South Africa?’

Humans evolved in Africa but where in Africa and what factors may have driven their evolution remains unclear. Major steps in the evolution of modern humans coincide with major fluctuations in global climate over the last one million years. Here it is proposed that repeated expansion and contraction of the coastal plain associated with changes in sea level and climate may have isolated human populations against the Cape Fold Belt barrier and provided a mechanism for driving the evolution of modern humans in southern Africa. The evolution of humans in southern Africa is then considered in relation to the rest of Africa and the expansion of modern humans throughout the world. 

Biographical sketch:

John Compton is an associate professor in geological sciences at UCT where he has been since 1996. He is originally from the United States where he received his PhD in Earth Sciences from Harvard University in 1986 and then taught at the University of South Florida until 1996. He published the book “The Rocks & Mountains of Cape Town” (Double Storey Books, JUTA) in 2004 based on his first semester introduction to Earth Sciences course at UCT. He has been involved in a wide range of research topics while at UCT in the area of coastal and marine geology, geochemistry, geoarcheaology and ecosystems.

Date:     Wednesday 15^th February 2012

Time:    17h00 (Tea will be served from 16h30)

Place:    South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) Auditorium, Observatory Road, Observatory* 

*Directions to SAAO Auditorium : Coming from the N2,turn off to the M57 – Liesbeek Parkway; turning in the direction of Cape Town and continue to the traffic lights with Hartleyvale (hockey and football) on your left. Turn right at traffic lights into Observatory Road, pass the River Club; the S A Astronomical Observatory is next on the left. Once through the security gates bear left following the SALT signs to the last building on the left (white with stoep & ramp).

The award consists of a grant of up to £60,000 to carry out a research project linked to an African centre of scientific excellence, which would normally be a university, or equivalent research centre, and a £5,000 prize for the recipient. 

Nominations should be made by senior academics and/or members of national academies of science. The nomination consists of a statement from the nominator outlining the candidate’s scientific record, suitability for the award and impact on Africa, and a research proposal by the nominee for the proposed research project. Full details, including nomination forms and terms and conditions can be found on the Royal Society Pfizer Award webpage http://royalsociety.org/pfizer-award

For full details of the award and an on-line nomination form, visit royalsociety.org/Pfizer-award. If you require further information, please do not hesitate to contact the award secretary on +44 (0) 20 7451 2573 or awards@royalsociety.org

The closing date for nominations is 6 February 2012.

Women scientists who are nationals or permanent residents of any country in Sub-Saharan Africa have until 28 February 2012 to apply for the 2012 L’ORÉAL/UNESCO Regional fellowships For Women in Science in Sub-Saharan Africa. The aim of the fellowship is to assist women scientists to achieve a PhD degree in all fields of science. Ten fellowships to the value of US$20,000 will be awarded. The age limit for the applicants is 40 years.

Applications can be made on the online application platform beginning January 1st. In the meantime, you can access the information required for the application at: www.ansti.org

All questions should be addressed via email to: unesco-loreal@ansti.org or via mail to The Coordinator, ANSTI-UNESCO, UNESCO Nairobi Office, P.O Box 30592, 00100, Nairobi, Kenya.

Prof Salim Abdool Karim, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Director of Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and Professor Helen Rees, Executive Director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute 9 WRHI) both received the ASSAf Science-for-Society Gold Medals. 

ASSAf annually awards up to two ASSAf Science-for- Society Gold Medals for outstanding achievement in scientific thinking to the benefit of society. 

Abdool Karim was co-Principal Investigator of the CAPRISA 004 trial of tenofovir gel which provided proof of concept that antiretroviral drugs can prevent sexually transmitted HIV infection and herpes simplex virus type 2 in women. He is involved in the development, as patent co-inventor, of clade C HIV vaccines and led the first HIV vaccine trial in South Africa. His clinical research on TB-HIV treatment has impacted on and continues to shape the international guidelines on the clinical management of co-infected patients. 

Rees an ad hominem Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She is an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she was also the Heath Clark Lecturer in the Department of Clinical Research.  She is an alumni from Cambridge University and Harvard Business School. She is the chair of the World Health Organisation’s Strategic Group of Experts on Immunisation, is on the board of the international AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and is on advisory committees for microbicides for both the National Institute of Health and the Population Council. She is the protocol chair of the South African FACTS Consortium which is undertaking a Phase III trial for tenofovir gel. 

At the same event, Dr Alexander Zawaira from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) received the Sydney Brenner Fellowship. The recipient of the first AU-TWAS Young Scientists’ National Award in South Africa, Professor Bernard Slippers from the University of Pretoria, was also recognised at the event.

Zawaira is a post–doctoral fellow in the Synthetic Biology ERA (Gene Expression and Biophysics Group) at the CSIR. Previously he worked as a research associate/postdoctoral scientist at the University of Cape Town’s Institute for Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine.  He is a founder in the Discovery Maths Systems, a company that is developing and experimental learning/discovery-orientated Maths Education Kits. 

The Sydney Brenner award was established when Dr Sydney Brenner donated a portion of his 2002 Nobel Prize to ASSAf to permit ASSAf (in partnership with the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust) to offer a prestigious postdoctoral Fellowship for research to be undertaken in South Africa over two years by an outstanding young scientist. Brenner mentors the Fellows during and after tenure of the Fellowship.

This AU-TWAS award scheme aims to recognise and award talented young scientists in Africa.

The AU-TWAS Prize for Young Scientists in South Africa is managed by ASSAf, on behalf of its partners, the African Union Commission (AUC), the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

Slippers, an Associate Professor in Genetics at the University of Pretoria, is the first recipient of this award. He is a research leader of the Tree Protection Co-operative Programme and Centre of Excellence in Tree Health Biotechnology at the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI).

The report entitled Towards a Low Carbon City: Focus on Durban identifies key areas of intervention that would position Durban on a pathway towards a low carbon city. 

Climate change is one of the most significant global issues of our time. The population of Africa is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and has done comparably little to cause the phenomenon. South Africa, on the other hand, in addition to being vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, is a major contributor to climate change through its heavy dependence on fossil fuels, particularly coal. Cities are recognised as major contributors to climate change as they are densely populated with high levels of consumption and energy-use. Hence, they have a major role to play in finding solutions to the problem. 

The report provides 12 key strategic recommendations, as well as sector-specific recommendations, which Durban needs to address in order to transition to a low carbon city. While focusing on Durban, the recommendations are generally applicable to cities in developing countries and can be used as a guideline for local governments in other cities. 

In the report the critical issue of transitioning to a low carbon city in the face of high levels of unemployment and the need for economic development is addressed by emphasising the need to shift to a green economy. The green economy provides an overarching framework in which all activities can be steered in a coordinated way in a low carbon and sustainable direction. 

To ensure that climate change policies and actions can be developed and implemented effectively and efficiently, with the full support of the political leadership of the city and local citizens, it is essential for co-benefits of climate change to be emphasised. Furthermore, a strong drive to ensure multi-level governance and the recognition of the role of visionary leaders or local champions is necessary for low carbon development in the city. 

Other recommendations urge the city of Durban to promote low carbon lifestyles and play a leadership role in reducing upstream carbon emissions. An understanding of the carbon footprint of the city from a consumption perspective is important. 

Land-use planning also plays a key role in low carbon development. Key principles include combating urban sprawl, compacting city form, decentralising urban opportunities, promoting sustainable neighbourhood planning, and a shared vision of spatial development in the city amongst all stakeholders. 

Traditionally, mitigation and adaptation activities have developed separately in cities, frequently residing in different municipal departments. There is a need to develop a strong drive to integrate mitigation and adaptation activities across the municipality. 

Urgent attention must be given to the industrial and transport sectors, as they are recognised as the major greenhouse gas emitters in the city. Energy efficiency in buildings is often hailed as the ‘low-hanging fruit’ in the low carbon transition process, as actions can be implemented more easily than in other sectors such as transport. It is recommended that eThekwini Municipality extends its focus on energy efficiency in municipal buildings to the broader built environment in the city.  

The city of Durban has been a leader in South Africa with regard to climate change adaptation and mitigation initiatives and the release of the report coincides with the city’s hosting of the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2011. 

Dr Debra Roberts (Deputy Head: Environmental Planning and Climate Protection) said: “This marks another important step in Durban’s journey to becoming a climate smart city. A city in which a low carbon, green economy provides opportunities for both climate change mitigation and adaptation and fosters a new form of urban development that ensures ecological integrity and human well being”.

The report, entitled Consensus Study on the Future of the Humanities in South Africa: Status, prospects and strategies, currently in production, declares the Humanities to be in a state of crisis which is reflected in the alarming decline in student numbers, falling graduation rates, and decreasing government funding. 

Post-apartheid government focus on developing skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics has benefited these disciplines to the detriment and neglect of the Humanities disciplines. 

This first-ever report into the Humanities in South Africa urges the establishment of a statutory Council for the Humanities to advise Government on improving the status of the Humanities and provides invaluable detail about the challenges and opportunities in building on the existing pools of excellence in the Humanities in the country.

In many parts of the world concern has been expressed about the diminishing role that the Humanities are playing in the knowledge chain. These worries have pointed specifically to the weakening place of the Humanities within the academy, and, more generally, a deepening disregard of the Humanities in society. 

In a number of countries these concerns have led to initiatives and investigations into the Humanities, with recommendations on ways to both defend and to rebuild them. In similar vein, ASSAf undertook this investigation into the crisis in the Humanities. 

The decline of the Humanities has many causes that include government policy and funding, institutional choices and decision-making, school guidance and counselling, as well as parental and student preferences. The weight of scholarship in the Humanities in South Africa lacks international status and standing, with most of the published work appearing in local journals and most of these local publications in non-accredited publication sources. 

Scholarship in the Humanities still strongly reflects the racial inequalities in knowledge production in the national science system, with all but one (the field of Education) of the Humanities fields falling well below 20% of total output being contributions by black scholars — despite marginal gains over the previous decades. 

The single most important threat to the growth of an intellectually vibrant scholarship in the Humanities is the problem of an ageing academic and research cohort, a factor that must be read alongside the evidence of a decline in doctoral graduates in the Humanities. The low proportion of academic staff with doctorates means that the institutional capacity to reproduce and replace high-level scholars and scholarship in the Humanities remains compromised into the near future.

This Consensus Study of the state of the Humanities in South Africa makes ten recommendations. 

The review and refining of government funding allocations to the Humanities with funds earmarked for areas such as African languages, Philosophy, History and the Creative and Performing Arts is one of the key recommendations. 

It calls on the Government to commit to a White Paper on the Humanities that establishes in the public mind, and in Government policy, a renewed emphasis on the Humanities, and its full integration into national science policy.  Funding needs to be restructured for advanced degrees (doctorates in particular) through national funding agencies, such as the National Research Foundation, that enables full-time study for top candidates in the Humanities who make the choice of academic careers. 

The establishment of prestigious Research Chairs and Centres of Excellence in the Humanities should be accelerated by appointing leading scholars to head these initiatives.

The Report should be used as a guideline for policy-makers to take concrete action to improve the circumstances faced by the Humanities, not only in South Africa, but also across the world. 

The Report was developed and guided to conclusion by a Study Panel of experts under the leadership of Professor Jonathan Jansen and Professor Peter Vale. 

Funding for the work of the panel was provided by the Ford Foundation, Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the Department of Higher Education and Training.

Click here for Report

William Kearney, director of media relations at the US National Academy of Sciences, spoke about NAS’s role in the release of the InterAcademy Council (IAC) report, which calls for significant reforms in the processes and procedures of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It was published in the aftermath of the widespread criticism levelled against the IPCC for mistakenly concluding that the glaciers draping the Himalayan Mountains would disappear by 2035. 

The committee that wrote the IAC report found IPCC to be an overall success, but it concluded that IPCC needed to reform its processes and procedures to ensure confidence in its findings amid intense public scrutiny. The report called for a stronger management structure, stricter adherence to IPCC peer review standards, more candid explanations of uncertainty, and a new communications strategy that emphasises transparency. 

The core aspects of the report focused on the need for changes in the administration and editorial processes that would allow IPCC publications to more clearly reflect the state of scientific knowledge concerning climate change, including the limits of the current state of knowledge. It also called for the creation of an executive committee to oversee day-to-day activities and suggested that IPCC set one-term limits for its chairperson. 

When it comes to information, the IAC report emphasized the need for greater transparency and accessibility, and it urged IPCC to develop the capacity to more rapidly respond to media inquiries. During the preparation of the report, a series of conventional and webcast meetings and an online questionnaire provided ample opportunities for public comment and review. Kearney noted that the IAC committee itself emphasised transparency during the course of its review.  For example, it held open meetings that were webcast and solicited opinions from a broad spectrum of scientists, stakeholders and the public. 

The report attracted widespread media coverage. In addition to articles in Nature, Science and other science journals, stories about its findings were published in The Economist, New York Times and other prominent newspaper and magazines. There were also a large number of reports in the broadcast media, including BBC and CNN, and extensive discussions in the new social media. More importantly, the report helped spur significant reforms in the processes and procedures in the IPCC. 

James Gillies, head of communications at CERN, the European particles research facility, presented an overview of the public’s prevailing view of his organization, which he said were at wide variance both with what CERN actually does and how it does it. 

For example, the public largely believes that CERN is a nuclear laboratory. It’s not. The fact is CERN is a particle physics facility. The public largely believes that CERN does military research. The truth is that it is prohibited from doing military research. The public often accuses CERN of being closed and secretive. The reality is there are no restrictions to access to CERN publications and the organisation is open to the public. 

Gillies noted that CERN was seeking to change public perceptions by presenting its work in a more appealing and friendly way, and by encouraging the media and public to learn more about what it does. CERN, he said, has interesting stories to tell and it is seeking to tell these stories to as large an audience as possible. 

And an interesting story did indeed emerge when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) unexpectedly “broke down” on 19 September 2008, just one week after the first high-energy beams at the multi-billion euro facility were cast. The LHC would not come back online until November 2009, more than one year later. 

Gillies said that the response of Rolf-Dieter Heuer, CERN’s newly appointed director general, to the mishap focused on two critical issues. First, he emphasised the need to devise a strategy for fixing the facility as quickly as possible while ensuring that nothing like this would ever happen again and, second, he called for developing a communications strategy to accurately convey to the public and media the actions that CERN was taking.    

Gillies observed that the keys to CERN’s communication strategies were openness and transparency. With management backing, CERN provided information about the troubles at the facility in a straightforward manner that sought not to minimize the scope of the problem or the length of time it would take to resolve – although he did admit that the organisation’s forecasts were often too optimistic. 

Gillies concluded that CERN’s forthright response to the shutdown of LHC helped it to regain and build trust with the media and public. He added that the storyline about the LHC has changed in the past year. The focus has shifted from the mishap itself to how CERN has overcome adversity. He noted that he now spends a good deal of time trying to manage expectations. Many people think that CERN scientists are about to make historic discoveries in particle physics that will alter our perceptions of the universe. The reality is that dramatic breakthroughs are likely to occur only through a lengthy process of data collection and analysis. 

Roseanne Diab, executive officer of the Academy of Science of South Africa, discussed the academy’s media strategy for the release of its study report on the state of PhD training in South Africa. 

She noted that this was the first time that her academy had pursued an aggressive plan of action for announcing a publication. She went to say that the exercise proved to be not only a success in terms of media coverage but also a learning experience that would serve the academy well in its future interactions with the media. 

Diab described how the academy designed a media press kit that it thought would attract a great deal of attention. The presentation was kept short and simple, and numbers were used as a shorthand way to highlight the importance of the findings. 

For example, drawing on the report’s findings, the media kit observed that South Africa would need to produce more than 6,000 PhDs a year by 2018 to meet the demands being generated by the country’s expanding knowledge-based economy. That represents a fivefold increase compared to the current graduation rate. The press kit also noted that South Africa has only 26 PhDs per one million population. Brazil, in contrast, has 52 PhDs per one million population, Korea 187 and Sweden 427. It also observed that the average age of humanities PhD graduates is 45 years and that just one-third of the teaching staff at universities has PhDs. 

Diab stated the take home message the academy wanted to convey was this: South Africa was graduating too few doctorates to meet the nation’s needs for a highly educated and skilled workforce and that the country was falling far behind many other developing countries, including Brazil, China and India, in its efforts to create a critical mass of qualified researchers to fill positions in universities, research centres and private industry. 

While the report called for a comprehensive and aggressive strategy to rapidly increase the number of PhD graduates in South Africa, the media focused on other aspects of this educational issue. Reporters, Diab observed, emphasized the “hard choices” the government was facing in providing adequate funding for primary, secondary and tertiary education. The media, she added, also raised questions about the “job readiness” of South Africa’s PhD graduates. 

Diab also noted that the new social media provided opportunities for the public to voice its opinions, and that here again scepticism was raised about the need to invest in university programmes, especially for advanced degrees. Despite the heated response, Diab stated the report did have an impact on educational policy in South, thanks in part to the attention drawn to the publication as result of the academy’s media strategy. 

Ehsan Masood, editor of the Research Group in the UK, offered a series of comments based on the presentations. He focused his remarks on the changing nature of media activities for research institutions and science academies, the challenges created by seeking to simultaneously serve the institution and meet the demands of journalists and public, the limited capacity and funds for communication efforts found in many institutions, and the growing impact of the new social media. 

The increasing number of media outlets, the speed at which information – both good and bad – now travels, and the ability of critics to voice their opinions and reach a broad and receptive audience, Masood noted, suggests that openness and transparency will require a willingness to take a punch without being defensive, as well as readiness not shy away from the public debate when the conversation becomes a bit more heated than expected.

- Daniel Schaffer, TWAS