Focus on WATER

	The CSIR celebrated World Water Day with the rest of the world on 22 March 2011 An international event hosted more than 1 500 people at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 20 to 22 March.
	Radical improvement to water quality management and treatment technologies needed, warns CSIR researcher The country's freshwater resources will be fully depleted by 2030 and unable to meet the needs of people, industry and our neighbours if we continue to exploit our water resources by following a 'business as usual' approach.
	Saving the Olifants River catchment will require "a truly collaborative effort" The South African government and its organs must play the leading role in directing efforts to halt and turn around the progressively deteriorating state of freshwater in the upper Olifants River catchment, eventually impacting on the water quality in Loskop Dam.
	Helping business respond to water risk in a changing world The CSIR and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) are working with three major South African corporations – Santam, South African Breweries and De Beers – to help them understand the systemic nature risks associated with changing global systems and how they can respond to increase both the resilience of their business as well as the landscape within which they operate.
	New systems developed to study water quality and eutrophication When CSIR researchers needed new types of equipment with which to gather scientific data from water bodies to study the occurrence of harmful algae and eutrophic states, they called in assistance from their research engineering colleagues in the fields of mechatronics and sensor science.

New on the shelf

State of Logistics South Africa’s consistently high total cost of logistics decreased by just 1.2% between 2008 and 2009, from 14.7% to 13.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Within a recessionary context this points to an underperforming logistics sector, according to the 7th State of Logistics™ survey released in March.

Our people

	CSIR nano researcher ranked among world's top 50 chemists The year 2011 is the International Year of Chemistry, and when Thomson Reuters released data identifying the world's top 100 chemists over the past 10 years, the name of the CSIR's Professor Suprakas Sinha-Ray featured at number 50.
	CSIR researcher to serve on global commission on agriculture and climate change CSIR Fellow and systems ecologist Dr Bob Scholes has been asked to serve on a 13-person global commission on agriculture and climate change, chaired by the chief scientist of the United Kingdom, Sir John Beddington.

Building human capital

CSIR spearheads new Master's degree in radar and electronic defence The CSIR, in conjunction with the University of Cape Town (UCT) and several international partners, launched South Africa's first Master of Engineering (MEng) degree in Radar and Electronic Defence in February. The programme at UCT will be taught by expert lecturers from several universities around the world.

Boot Camp creates FPGA learning space for students It was 'Boot Camp' with a difference in February 2011 for 15 electrical engineering students. Students from the universities of Stellenbosch, Cape Town (UCT) and Western Cape, and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology were invited to sign up for this Boot Camp - a field programmable gate array-based hardware design workshop. The workshop was jointly hosted by the Rhino group based at the UCT and the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC).

Health

CSIR and Afriplex – partners in bringing health solutions The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has signed an agreement with Afriplex – a well-known South African manufacturer of nutraceutical and healthcare products – to carry out biological evaluation studies on the herbal extracts that may be beneficial in the management of colds and flu; allergies; male pattern baldness; hair loss; and erectile dysfunction. Afriplex – a company based in the Western Cape – offers innovative product solutions and services derived from Africa’s indigenous plants.

CSIR joins European Union consortium on plant food supplements Drug discovery and development scientists from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have recently joined the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme ‘PlantLIBRA’ consortium, thus strengthening their capacity in support of product development for plant food supplements.

Enabling technologies

Spatial data infrastructure to be established for SA South Africa needs a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) to make masses of spatial data readily available in an integrated format. The Committee for Spatial Information (CSI) will be the main driver in establishing the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI). Antony Cooper, CSIR Built Environment Fellow and the CSIR delegate on the CSI, recently explained the aims of this committee and its implications.

CSIR engineer gets smart with smart card Locally-designed, researched and developed smart card technology – to suit South African needs– is coming to fruition. A smart card is a credit card-sized piece of plastic embedded with computer chips that can securely store information and provide a myriad of other services.

	Internet at their fingertips for globe-trotting SA researchers South African researchers can now have easy access to the internet when they travel locally or abroad. This has been made possible by making available to them eduroam (education roaming), a secure, worldwide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community.
	SumbandilaSat providing valuable imagery SumbandilaSat is living up to its Venda name as it 'leads the way' in providing South African entities with valuable satellite imagery at no cost, despite earlier technical setbacks.
	CSIR unveils Optiplay Cricket: Ball-by-ball scientific analysis A software tool to capture, analyse and guide cricketing performance was recently unveiled to an audience of coaches and teams later this month at the CSIR in Pretoria.