Monthly Archives: October 2017

Disposable plastics; is this the last straw? Consider this; it takes 200 years for a plastic straw to break down completely. This means that every time we purchase and consume a beverage (most of which don’t actually require a straw), we are inadvertently creating a demand for a plastic product that will most likely only be used once, for a very short amount of time – but yet will remain a part of this planet long after we are gone. According to National Geographic magazine, Americans use a projected 500 million straws daily, each one with a lifespan of almost [...]

Hartebeespoort Hyacinth Crisis Continues Eichhornia crassipes (E. crassipes), more commonly known as water hyacinth, is often considered to be the world’s worst aquatic weed. According to the Agricultural Research Council (ARC): it has gained its reputation as such due to its “invasive potential, negative impact on aquatic ecosystems, and the cost it necessitates to control it.” The water hyacinth can be classified as a herbaceous, free-floating aquatic plant that produces attractive lilac flowers and has submerged roots and doubles every 11 to 18 days. Once the water hyacinth has grown sufficiently, it is able to entangle its petioles (the spongy, [...]

In the Fabric of Time and Space. On the 3rd of October, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the recipients of the Nobel Prize for physics. The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2017 was divided among three recipients: one half was awarded to Rainer Weiss, and the other half was split between Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”  All three scientists contributed key findings that led to the detection of gravitational waves within the fabric of time and space. The discoveries were made by [...]