In April 2019, the Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index was launched. This index relies on Big Data and measures the evaluative mood of a nation in real-time, the first of its kind. A live feed of tweets is extracted from Twitter, and sentiment analysis is used to determine each tweet's sentiment using Natural Language Processing. Subsequently, they use the sentiment scores to derive an hourly happiness score, ranging from 0 to 10. Additionally, each tweet's underpinning emotions are analysed. Currently, a distinction is made between eight emotions: sadness, surprise, disgust, anticipation, fear, anger, trust, and joy. When the GNH Index was launched in 2019, it initially focused on three countries; South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. Subsequently, in June 2020, the GNH project expanded to include seven additional countries, mainly from Europe. For more information on the GNH, please refer to the website https://gnh.today.

Dr Chirove uses mathematical models to understand the prognosis of COVID-19 disease spread subject to factors such as human factors, environmental/ecologic and viral factors within and between the multiple animal hosts, between and with the environment, between and within the human host and cross-cutting among the animals, environment, and humans. The research encompasses the design of mathematical models at various scales of occurrence of COVID-19 infection namely 1) the within host scale, 2) the population dynamics scale and 3) multiscale modelling to enhance the holistic understanding of the infection as well as highlighting the importance of scale specific targets for intervention.

A report of the Institute for the Future of Knowledge at the University of Johannesburg. How do you deal with decolonization in relation to medicine

The Institute for the Future of Knowledge was one of the first think-tanks to take a position to the government’s decision to implement a “full lockdown”. Last year, IFK produced a report titled “A Framework for Decisions in a PostCOVID World”, in which Prof Alex Broadbent argued that the COVID-19 lockdown regulations caused more harm than good.

Leading the conversation on the post-COVID19 world, IFK held a series of webinars (4 to be exact) on the post-COVID world. The main issues noted was that COVID has exposed to the functionality of the following:

~ government response -> corruption and misuse of funds dedicated to combat the pandemic;

~ healthcare –> people with chronic conditions were further disadvantaged; and

~ access to social relief -> the efficacy of the R350 unemployment grant? Food parcels?

To date, less than 200,000 people in South Africa have been vaccinated against COVID-19 with the AstraZeneca vaccine, as South Africa decided to sell the 1 million doses it had procured to 14 fellow African countries.

When WhatsApp announced its requirement for user acceptance of a new privacy policy at the start of 2021, originally slated for implementation by 8 February 2021, panic ensued. Almost overnight people around the world started downloading and installing alternative messaging apps such as Telegram, Signal, WeChat and others. Fearmongering on social media was in overdrive with people dreading a perceived threat that WhatsApp owner Facebook will be within its rights to have access to private messages and other personal, private details shared via WhatsApp, after users accept the new policy. WhatsApp also threatened deletion of WhatsApp accounts if users did not accept the changed policy.

Prof Tshilidzi Marwala, the Vice-Chancellor and Principal, UJ pointed out in his welcoming remarks that the University is proud to host the first Moses Kotane lecture as the institution aims to foster intra-African and global conversation by bringing African insights, questions and values into meaningful conversation. "The University is embarking on a project to write biographies for our African leaders, and our African perspectives must be reflected", said Prof Marwala. WATCH Prof Marwala's opening remarks below.

More click: https://www.uj.ac.za/newandevents/Pages/Political-stalwart-Moses-Kotanes-life-celebrated-at-by-UJ-with-moving-memorial-lecture.aspx

Prof Wole Soyinka - titled “The Gods Who Send Us Gifts : An Anthology of African Short Stories” which took place on the 16th May 2018 at the Chinua Achebe Auditorium, APK Library at the University of Johannesburg

Professor Tshilidzi Marwala argued that speech-recognition technology failed African people because names and places are mispronounced.

"Any technology can be used for the good or bad. Socially, we need to participate. Politically we need technological support and awareness. Economically, we need to invest in research and development," he said adding that if nothing was done we would see "a new kind of colonisation".

UJ Confucius Institute convened a seminar titled ‘The Battle of the Giants?: Shifting Sino-US Relations’ to deal with the important but increasingly strained relationship between Beijing and Washington, as well as discern some expectable scenarios and recommend policy responses for the African continent. Participants in the seminar included renowned political scientist Professor Wang Dong of Peking University as well as poisoner in the field of international political marketing, Dr Henry Sun, along with Sanusha Naidoo who served as a respondent for both.