The social determinants to adopting digital grocery retail technology

by Daryl Ilbury

Before supermarkets, smart retail was embodied in the efficient, personal service of the typical neighbourhood grocery stores. Supermarkets squeezed out those stores and introduced the convenience of buying many different products in one location. Today, that location is increasingly digital, the retailer and customer completely separated, and a customer’s value lies not in their friendly wave as they enter a store, but in the data displayed in their online behaviour. Digitalising the shopping experience in this way may open the way for what retailers consider smart retail technology, but as two leading researchers in food retail have discovered, that technology is only as effective as the willingness of humans to use it.

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Making sense of immigrant work integration in Canada

by Daryl Ilbury

For immigrants arriving in a new country, the excitement for a new beginning can be overshadowed by the multiple anxieties that accompany integrating into sometimes vastly different living and working environments and cultures. This is especially true for highly qualified immigrants (QIs) – generally highly skilled immigrants with a foreign post-secondary education who relocate to another country to work and live. It would be fair to assume that countries looking to boost their skilled workforce would embrace such talent. However, for QIs, this is often not the case, and it could boil down to the complexities of sensemaking. Two Canadian scholars from diverse, but associated, fields of study have published research that shines a light on sensemaking amongst QIs and the multiple stakeholders they interact with. Their research could transform our understanding of the challenges facing immigrants.

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UNBSSI – planting the seeds of space exploration

by Daryl Ilbury

There are two indisputable yet oft-forgotten facts about space exploration: space belongs to no one, and you don’t need to enter space to study its immense wondrousness. For centuries, cultures across the world have stared up at the night sky and wondered what lies among the stars. Exploring space needs a keen eye, an inquiring mind, a basic understanding of any of the space sciences, and access to some of the troves of data pouring in from space every day. Knowing this, one organisation within the United Nations is quietly and resolutely expanding the frontiers to space exploration by making education, teaching, and research a key part of its focus. In the process, it has bridged the perceptual and infrastructural barriers around reaching out to space and highlighted the benefits of networking and sharing knowledge.

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Should pre-anaesthesia consultations be done telephonically?

by Daryl Ilbury

It’s tempting to think that a patient undergoing surgery has little to do to ensure the operation is a success – after all, they’re anaesthetised or sedated – but the reality is that a patient should be an active participant in the procedure. Whereas the focus may be on the surgeon during the operation, the most significant responsibility in ensuring the patient is best prepared for their role usually falls on the anaesthesiologist. One Austrian anaesthesiologist and critical care physician is drawing attention to an increasingly important part of patient preparation.

You can read the rest of this article, complete with additional feature content, on the Research Outreach website here. (Opens in a new tab)

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Taming the oil price

by Daryl Ilbury

For the foreseeable future, the world will need oil, but its price volatility makes buying and selling it a challenge for producers and the myriad manufacturers who need it. For brokers who sit in the middle of such transactions, finding the optimal price and the number of clients to spread their risk is one of their biggest challenges. Belleh Fontem, a senior researcher in operations and information systems at the University of Massachusetts, USA, has designed a mathematical programme that embraces oil price volatility. The results could have far-reaching consequences.

One of the main benefits of a highly networked global economy is the sheer scale of access to products and services. On the flip side, being so interwoven, that network is at the mercy of impactful events anywhere within it. Witness the effects when the Ever Given, one of the world’s biggest container ships, blocked the

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Genome Architecture Theory shakes up cancer research

by Daryl Ilbury

It’s an inconvenient truth that after 50 years of concerted research and untold billions of dollars in funding every year, a cure for cancer remains elusive. Perhaps the problem sits with the conventional view of cancer. Henry H. Heng, a professor of molecular medicine at the Wayne State School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan, suggests we need to see the bigger picture and even rethink our understanding of evolution. His Genome Architecture Theory is telling and provocative, which is why it’s attracting interest from an unlikely collaborator who sees progress in disruption.

It’s probably true that every person who has lost a loved one to cancer has wondered at some point why there isn’t a cure. It’s a fair point, given the tens of thousands of scientists who have spent endless hours and billions of dollars in cancer research every year for over 50 years.

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Talk radio station 702 is wrong to believe presenters need to be a certain race

by Daryl Ilbury

Radio station 702’s recent relaunch is a desperate attempt to find a foothold in a crumbling legacy media landscape. It’s quixotic so long as the station holds dear outdated ideas about programming and the media consumer.

The legacy media landscape may be under stress, but talk radio has an advantage over music radio, which is battling advert-free streaming services for the attention of music lovers. Talk radio’s disadvantage is that its presenters cost more to feed than the digital programming software behind music radio. So, talk radio stations need the right people to attract listers.

702 believes these people need to be of a certain colour. In a recent interview in the Sunday Times, Primedia Broadcasting acting CEO Geraint Crwys-Williams admitted to failures at the station but waxed lyrical about the shifting racial profile of its presenters, as if racial diversity is

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I’m afraid it’s not that simple

by Daryl Ilbury

Much has been said about what scientists have said about Covid-19; but all that must be examined against one of the bothersome things about science: its mind-boggling complexity.

[An extract from Tim Noakes: The Quiet Maverick]

Scientific knowledge comes with caveats: it is at best incomplete, at worst wrong, most likely somewhere in-between. At issue is the scope and complexity of the subject matter (our natural world), the robustness demanded of the way we examine it (the scientific method), the demands, frailties and idiosyncrasies of those implementing it (the scientists), and the resultant disconnects, which are euphemistically referred to as ‘dodgy science’. 

Let’s dig deeper into the issue of complexity. If you ever find yourself with a little time on your hands, I urge you to look up a paper titled ‘

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Step up scientists

by Daryl Ilbury

It’s time scientists step up, step out, and put a stop to this catalogue of bullshit.

Scientists are a measured bunch, probably because their careers involve measuring. But those careers are themselves measured, not only in research output but also the impact of that research.

Scientists are also measured in the language they use. They’re generally cautious, sticking to supporting their statements with quantitive evidence - “In our research, 21% of respondents were shown to…” That type of thing. They prefer not to step out of their comfort zone of measured responses.

Right now we need scientists to stop doing that, and to start speaking with a commoner’s tongue. The media is awash with all manner of bizarre claims about Covid-19, and in the absence of firm, authoritative correction, those claims are taking root in the minds of people desperate for

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Dark times ahead

by Daryl Ilbury

We haven’t seen the full effect of Covid-19 yet, and when we do, fingers of blame will hone in without due diligence.

I’m going to put my boot in. This thing’s not over; not by a long shot.

When lockdown is over and the coronavirus takes hold in densely-packed townships and informal settlements, running rampant amongst those denied the luxuries of isolation and working from home, it’s going to enjoy its second breath.

And when people start dying by the dozens, even hundreds - and they will - South Africans will look for someone to blame. Social media has thrown up potential candidates: whites or ‘the rich’ - the two terms are apparently interchangeable.

But surely, that wouldn’t happen? After all, such claims are irrational. 

Think again. In an 

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