Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Categories
UFS News Media Release Research
Years
2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
Months
January February March April May June July August September October November December
Previous Archive
07 September 2018 Photo Stephen Collett
Mathematician makes popular contribution to science Prof Atangana
Prof Atangana is the first African under 40 years of age to be selected as African Academic of Science affiliated in Mathematics. He recently delivered his inaugural lecture and is pictured with Eelco Lukas, Director of the Institute for GroundwaterStudies at the UFS (middle) and Prof Hendri Kroukamp, Acting Vice-Rector: Academic
Prof Abdon Atangana, researcher in the Institute for Groundwater Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS), recently delivered his inaugural lecture on the topic: Understanding God’s Nature with Non-Local Operators.

His research interests are methods and applications of partial and ordinary differential equations, fractional differential equations, perturbation methods, asymptotic methods, iterative methods, and groundwater modelling. Prof Atangana is the founder of the fractional calculus with non-local and non-singular kernels popular in applied mathematics today. He has introduced more than 12 mathematical operators, most of which bear his name (such as the Atangana-Baleanu fractional integral).

He stated: “We will not stop until we change the classical view of doing mathematics. Mathematics is not a subject but a tool given to mankind by God to understand nature. One single mathematical operator cannot portray God’s nature accurately. Therefore the Atangana Baleanu was suggested.”

New weapons

Most physical problems can be expressed in terms of mathematical formulations called differential equations. According to him the differential equation’s aim is to analyse, understand, and predict the future of a physical problem. Prof Atangana introduced the Atangana-Baleanu fractional integral. This brought new weapons into applied mathematics to model complex real-world problems more accurately.

Prof Atangana explained: “The Atangana-Baleanu fractional derivative is able to describe real-world problems with different scales, or problems that change their properties during time and space for instance, the spread of cancer, the flow of water within heterogeneous aquifers, movement of pollution within fractured aquifers, and many others. This crossover behaviour is observed in many empirical systems.”

Sudden change

The Atangana-Baleanu fractional derivative is also able to describe physical or biological phenomena, such as a heart attack, the physiological progression from life to death, structural failure in an aeroplane, and many other physical occurrences with sudden change with no steady state.

The new differential and integral operators are nowadays in fashion and are being applied with great success in many fields to model complex natural phenomena. It is believed that the future of modelling complex real-world problems relies on these non-local operators.

News Archive

There’s more to media freedom than the Secrecy Bill
2012-05-04

4 May 2012

 “Media freedom is a universal human right. It cannot be abolished, but it should be managed.” The freedom of the media is protected by numerous formal documents, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the South African Constitution, and is commemorated annually with the celebration of World Press Freedom Day.

 “As long as those in power have something to hide, media freedom will be under threat. This is a war that takes place on many fronts,” says Ms Willemien Marais, a journalism lecturer at the Department of Communication Science at the University of the Free State (UFS).

“On the one hand we have to take a stand against institutional threats such as the proposed Protection of State Information Bill. This is diametrically opposed to everything that media freedom and freedom of expression encapsulates.

“But on the other hand we also need to educate and transform our society. It is not only up to journalists to defend media freedom. Newspaper reports on the public hearings on this Bill earlier this year proved that ignorance concerning media freedom is a big threat. The lack of resistance against the Secrecy Bill from the general population clearly illustrates that people aren’t aware of what they are about to lose.”

 Ms Marais says the rise of social media and the accompanying awareness of individual freedom of expression have paved the way for more people to exercise this right. “The role of social media in the Arab Spring has been highlighted numerous times. The power of social media is undeniable – but alas, so is the lack of access to especially social media. We can only increase media literacy if we increase people’s access to the media – new and traditional.”

A high level of media literacy is also vital following last month’s recommendation by the Press Freedom Commission of a system of independent co-regulation for South Africa’s print media. This system proposes replacing government regulation with a panel consisting of representatives from the print industry as well as members of the general public. “It is abundantly clear that this system can only work if those members of the general public are media literate and understand the role of media freedom in protecting democracy.”

“The media is not a sentient being – it consists of and is run by people, and human beings are fallible. Protecting media freedom does not only mean fighting institutional threats. It also means increasing media literacy by educating people. And it means owning up to your mistakes, and correcting it.” 

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept