Rugby is a rough sport but it requires very little protective gear. That’s why one in four players can expect to be injured during a season. So, IBM is helping teams such as the Leicester Tigers in the UK to use predictive analytics to understand and reduce the injury rate for rugby players. As more and more money is at stake in pro sports

Can reality trump art? That was the question hovering over the launch on 24 April, at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, of a plan by a firm called Planetary Resources to mine metals from asteroids and bring them back to Earth. It sounds like the plot of a film by James Cameron — and, appropriately, Cameron is indeed one of the company’s backers. The team

In 1086, William the Conqueror completed a comprehensive survey of England and Wales. The Domesday Book, as it came to be called, contained details of 13 418 places and 112 boroughs — and is still available for public inspection at the National Archives in London. Not so the original version of a new survey that was commissioned for the

Picture yourself as a historian in 2035, trying to make sense of this year’s American election campaign. Many of the websites and blogs now abuzz with news and comment will have long since perished. Data stored electronically decays. Many floppy disks from the early digital age are already unreadable. If you are lucky, copies of

A ruling which would let the City of Johannesburg off the hook for inaccurate and inflated billing faces a court challenge, the Sunday Times reported at the weekend. The National Consumer Commission will ask the high court to set aside a ruling made by the National Consumer Tribunal, which cancelled 45 compliance notices which the commission

Unions and opposition parties at the weekend applauded the decision by the high court in Pretoria to put the controversial e-toll system on hold with immediate effect. Trade federation Cosatu said the decision would allow more time to look at alternative methods of funding road construction and usage. “We hope that the e-toll system will be abandoned forever

Marvel’s master plan for an all-star superhero film with some of its most popular characters has finally come together in The Avengers, a rousing special FX blockbuster that delivers exactly what most comic-book fans will be looking for. It’s an enjoyable

Vodacom has bought set-top boxes from Altech’s Durban-based UEC subsidiary that are capable of delivering both fixed-line and wireless Internet protocol television (IPTV) services to consumers, apparently as part of an internal trial. Though Vodacom confirms it has bought two decoders for testing, company spokesman Nomsa Thusi says

First National Bank has launched its first hi-tech “dotFNB” store in Johannesburg. The outlet is meant to introduce customers to FNB’s various digital channels and show off technologies like an “interactive surface” that supports both touch interaction and augmented reality and allows customers to interact with the bank and its products and

Vodacom stands accused of using political and diplomatic pressure in its battle with a fixer who recently won a case against it in a Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) court, which ordered the company to pay him US$21m. A lawyer representing Moto Mabanga, the SA-based fixer, has