bRing: An observatory dedicated to monitoring the β\beta Pictoris b Hill sphere transit

Aims. We describe the design and first light observations from the $\beta$ Pictoris b Ring ("bRing") project. The primary goal is to detect photometric variability from the young star $\beta$ Pictoris due to circumplanetary material surrounding the directly imaged young extrasolar gas giant planet \bpb. Methods. Over a nine month period centred on September 2017, the Hill sphere of the planet will cross in front of the star, providing a unique opportunity to directly probe the circumplanetary environment of a directly imaged planet through photometric and spectroscopic variations. We have built and installed the first of two bRing monitoring stations (one in South Africa and the other in Australia) that will measure the flux of $\beta$ Pictoris, with a photometric precision of $0.5\%$ over 5 minutes. Each station uses two wide field cameras to cover the declination of the star at all elevations. Detection of photometric fluctuations will trigger spectroscopic observations with large aperture telescopes in order to determine the gas and dust composition in a system at the end of the planet-forming era. Results. The first three months of operation demonstrate that bRing can obtain better than 0.5\% photometry on $\beta$ Pictoris in five minutes and is sensitive to nightly trends enabling the detection of any transiting material within the Hill sphere of the exoplanet

Playing with the future: social irrealism and the politics of aesthetics

In this paper we wish to explore the political possibilities of video games. Numerous scholars now take seriously the place of popular culture in the remaking of our geographies, but video games still lag behind. For us, this tendency reflects a general response to them as imaginary spaces that are separate from everyday life and 'real' politics. It is this disconnect between abstraction and lived experience that we complicate by defining play as an event of what Brian Massumi calls lived abstraction. We wish to short-circuit the barriers that prevent the aesthetic resonating with the political and argue that through their enactment, video games can animate fantastical futures that require the player to make, and reflect upon, profound ethical decisions that can be antagonistic to prevailing political imaginations. We refer to this as social irrealism to demonstrate that reality can be understood through the impossible and the imagined

Modern African nuclear detector laboratory: Development of state-of-the-art in-house detector facility at the University of the Western Cape

The upcoming detector facility aims at developing new state-of-the-art particle detectors as well as providing hands-on training to postgraduate students using both analog and digital signal processing from nuclear radiation detectors. The project is two-fold and aims at developing: 1) ancillary detectors to be coupled with the new GAMKA array at iThemba LABS. Of particular interest to our group is the determination of nuclear shapes, which depend on the hyperfine splitting of magnetic substates; 2) PET scanners for cancer imaging using a cheaper technology. Performance of NaI(Tl) inorganic scintillator detectors has been evaluated using PIXIE-16 modules from XIA digital electronics. Gamma-ray energy spectra were acquired from 60Co and 137Cs radioactive sources to calculate the detector resolution as well as to optimize the digital parameters. The present study focuses on improving and optimizing the slow and fast filter parameters for NaI(Tl) detectors which can eventually be used in the list mode of data aquisition

The MASCARA and bRing photometric monitoring networks

Instrumentatio

Formal and Informal Financing Decisions of Small Businesses

This study investigates small businesses’ financing decisions. Drawing upon asymmetric information theory, institutional theory and relevant literature on cognitive financial constraints, human capital and social capital, we propose a theoretical framework in which financing determinants come from three dimensions: entrepreneurs’ individual factors, organisational (firm-level) factors and contextual (institutional) factors. We employ this model to distinguish four types of firms: (1) firms that use no external finance, (2) firms that use informal finance only, (3) firms that use formal finance only and (4) firms that use both formal and informal finance. An empirical test on Vietnamese small businesses shows that factors from all three dimensions are important in understanding small businesses’ financing decisions

A Genetic Basis of Susceptibility to Acute Pyelonephritis

For unknown reasons, urinary tract infections (UTIs) are clustered in certain individuals. Here we propose a novel, genetically determined cause of susceptibility to acute pyelonephritis, which is the most severe form of UTI. The IL-8 receptor, CXCR1, was identified as a candidate gene when mIL-8Rh mutant mice developed acute pyelonephritis (APN) with severe tissue damage.We have obtained CXCR1 sequences from two, highly selected APN prone patient groups, and detected three unique mutations and two known polymorphisms with a genotype frequency of 23% and 25% compared to 7% in controls (p<0.001 and p<0.0001, respectively). When reflux was excluded, 54% of the patients had CXCR1 sequence variants. The UTI prone children expressed less CXCR1 protein than the pediatric controls (p<0.0001) and two sequence variants were shown to impair transcription.The results identify a genetic innate immune deficiency, with a strong link to APN and renal scarring