‘We are equipped as never before, And the question arises: What shall we do with our strength?’ 1953 Sir Robert Robinson, Nobel Laureate

The papers in this issue are from the 5th conference on Platinum: ‘A Catalyst for Change’.

The platinum industry has suffered a sequence of unfortunate events causing much concern about its future. These setbacks run fairly deep. The most serious is the crippling increase in electric power cost which, because of the heavy demand of the electric smelting furnace, has caused the cost of processing to move into the danger range relative to the prices obtained for the products. The gloom has been deepened by the carbon emissions tax announced in the latest budget.

Read more: New Vistas

The ten papers appearing in the Journal this month were presented during the Ferrous and Base Metals Development Network Conference 2012 held in Johannesburg over the period 15–17 October 2012. With the exception of the paper on the coordination chemistry of zirconium, they cover a spread of research activities associated with the physical and metallurgical properties of alloys.

Read more: The state of the local foundry sector

‘Black Swans occur when there is a, disjoint between what we know and what we think we know’ J.C. Ngoma, Presidential Address SAIMM, September 2009.

Those who attended the Presidential Address in 2009 did not suspect that the prophetic theme of ‘Swinging with the Black Swans’ would materialize within the next three years. ‘These beasts could lie hidden, only to appear unexpectedly and cause much havoc.’

The Mining and Metallurgical industries are going through the most serious criticism that I have encountered in my 62 years’ association with them. This is at a time when South Africans are looking at them to provide the key to the solution to an even bigger crisis facing the Nation: that of unemployment and poverty.

Read more: Black Swans versus White Swans

R‘Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites’, William Ruckelshaus, Business Week, 18 June 1990

Six of the papers in this issue are from an international conference on a topic that many consider as one of the most important in future extraction metallurgy. It deserves its more exotic name of ‘percolation leaching’ rather than the previous names of dump or heap leaching, which suggest that the technology is best suited for treatment of waste materials.

Read more: Percolation leaching

The November edition of the Journal contains papers that were presented at Paste 2012, the 15th International Seminar on Paste and Thickened Tailings that was held in the Pilanesberg during April this year.

I am sure that every reader has heard the joke about the argument between the various organs of the body as to which would be crowned as the ‘King’. The brain, heart, and lungs all made their respective impressive cases. Then an unmentionable organ quietly announced its claim to the title, to be greeted with laughter and derision.

Read more: Paste and Thickened Tailings

‘All men by nature desire knowledge’ Aristotle
‘Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.’ Matthew Arnold

This month’s issue of the Journal carries papers on a wide range of topics in the areas of mining, metallurgy, and mathematics. This gives rise to the question of what constitutes a good paper. Essentially, the subject matter should be of interest or importance to at least some readers; the content should be communicated clearly and logically; and some papers should communicate new knowledge that is worth being referenced by other authors. The ‘value’ of a
paper is a difficult thing to define, let alone to measure, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying.

Read more: The best research in mining and metallurgy

“Rock of Ages cleft for me Let me hide myself in thee” Augustus Toplady 1772.

In the papers in this issue we are exposed to some of the expertise that has evolved over the decades in rock mechanics - the basic science involved in rock breakage, whether accidently or intentionally.

Read more: International Rock Mechanics Symposium

The ten papers in the July edition would appear, at first glance, to have little in common. Upon a second glance, they can be grouped into three broad themes:
 * Environmental (two papers)
 * Technology (four in metallurgy and two in mining)
 * Human knowledge (two papers). I admit that it’s not a
very imaginative analysis, but it’s the best that I can do!

Read more: Breakthrough Technologies

Innovate: ‘to invent or begin to apply’- Collins Dictionary

Several papers in this issue from an international conference on industrial fluidization represent an exceptional opportunity for innovation.

It is common cause that innovation is the prerequisite for job creation, which is rated as the highest priority in Africa.

In this context the most succinct definition of ‘Innovation’ from Collins Dictionary includes two components; invention and application. Concepts are two a penny. Inventions, (let’s call them R&D projects so as not to be confused with patents) are much more demanding in professional expertise at research institutions, and are widely reported in journals such as this one. The application component in all respects is the most comprehensively difficult.

Read more: Innovation from fluidization

Professor Robbie Robinson written his thoughtprovoking comments on a monthly basis since 1995, and he assures the Publications Committee that this is not the end of his comments or his involvement with the Journal. However, May 2012 has fallen to me.

This issue contains ten papers covering a range of subjects. Two mining papers concern uncertainty and planning in mining projects. A topic often discussed in the Journal. A further two present fundamental aspects of rock breakage, elastic deformation energy, compressive and tensile. As a metallurgist, when looking at such papers, I wonder whether the understanding that mining engineers have in the area of rock mechanics could not be borrowed to design a new method of rock breaking. One paper talks about abrasion which only recently appeared in modelling of comminution processes.

Read more: Fascinating Possibilities

Every year the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy holds a student colloquium. This provides the opportunity for selected undergraduate students to present a paper before an audience of their peers and senior members of the Institute. Presenters are drawn from those universities in the region where courses are offered in mining engineering, metallurgy, and minerals processing. This edition of the Journal is devoted to the nine papers prepared subsequently by the presenters, sometimes in conjunction with their academic or industrial mentors.

Read more: Student Colloquium 2011

“Old Soldiers Never Die They Only Fade Away” Song of 1914–18 war.

I was particularly delighted to work through the papers in this issue, for two reasons.

Firstly, a high proportion of the papers are the work of two of the most prestigious research capabilities in South Africa, namely those of Anglo American and De Beers, with headquarters in what might be described as the Crown Mines research park.

Read more: Physical beneficiation

“Tug on anything in nature and you will find It connected to everything else”

John MuirIn this issue there is much for the pragmatist and a great deal for the philosopher. With this Journal Comment, I start my 62nd year of association with mining and metallurgy. The quotation reflects my experience. I have rubbed shoulders with every element in the periodic table, from hydrogen, via the platinum group metals to uranium; from pragmatism to philosophies on job creation. And so it is in this issue.

Read more: Mine Safety with Heritage Security

“There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries……” William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

There is once again a selection of papers for a variety of specialists. The two papers on statistics of sampling are far too erudite to allow comment from me. I mention them in deference to the many students and statisticians who enjoyed the pioneering work of the internationally honoured Danie Krige, a platinum medallist of the SAIMM.

Read more: New Year Options

‘If you are planning for one year, grow rice. If you are planning for 20 years grow trees. If you are planning for centuries, grow men’ - Chinese Proverb.

There is no pre-designated theme for the contributions in this issue. Apart from one review paper, they are research contributions from a range of specialists, and it is impossible to comment in detail on all of them.

Read more: National Planning Strategies

“History must be written of, by and for the survivors, Anonymous

There is a wealth of interesting reading in this issue with papers taken from the recent PyroMetallurgy Conference. It is possibly one of the most pleasing editions we have published with items from our University departments of mining and metallurgy, and our research institutions of highly significant and scientific research stature. Also it focuses on topics representing great future wealth potential.

Read more: PyroMetallurgy Conference

‘Good prose is the selection of the best words……’ Poetry is the best words in the best order; And journalese (legalese) is any old words in any old order’ In a letter (1987) to the Times of London.

There is much food for thought in the papers in this issue, which were selected from a workshop that was held last year on the Health and Safety Acts in South Africa. Three of the papers by W. Le Roux are in the form of a digest and commentary, specifically as valuable guidelines for those in the industry.

Read more: Health and Safety in Mining

‘Give us the tools and we will finish the job’, Winston Churchill, 1941

The highest priority in South Africa is job creation, and this also applies to most of Africa. On a time scale that is critical, this can come about only through international investment and assistance.

Read more: International Interaction

“Science is built of facts, as a house is built of stones; But an accumulation of facts is no more a science Than a heap of stones is a house Henri Poincaré 1854–1912

Once again, the Journal presents a miscellaneous group of papers, rather than a collection from a colloquium or conference. All of them represent facts and footsteps forward in areas of importance in Mining and Metallurgy, rather than the final chapters in a new plant or mining enterprise

Read more: Facts and footsteps forward

‘Every revolution evaporates, Leaving behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy’ Franz Kafka 1883–1924
There is no common theme such as a topic of a conference in this issue, but rather a collection of papers from different countries and different subjects.

Read more: Restoration and rocket science

The alchemists of past centuries tried hard to make the elixir of life: ...Those efforts were in vain; it is not in our power to obtain the experiences and the views of the future by prolonging our lives forward in this direction. However, it is well possible in a certain sense to prolong our lives backwards by acquiring the experiences of those who existed before us and by learning to know their views as well as if we were their contemporaries. The means for doing this is also an elixir of life. Hermann Franz Moritz Kopp.

The papers in this issue are a selection of the best presentations at a colloquium of undergraduate student projects held between the mining and metallurgical orientated faculties in Pretoria and Johannesburg, together with students from the Tshwane and Vaal Universities of Technology.

Read more: Student Projects

‘In its short commercial life, titanium has been tagged ‘the wonder metal’. As strong as steel, it weighs only half as much; Heavier than aluminium, it is twice as stong’. Time Magazine 11 August 1952

The papers in this issue are a selection from the ‘Advanced Metals Initiative: The Light Metals Conference 2010’, held at the CSIR, the home of much of the materials science work in the last few decades.

Read more: ‘Tickle Four’ Future Foresight

‘Do you know who made you’ ‘Nobody, as I knows on said the child, with a short laugh I ‘spect I grow’d’. Topsy, in Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

It was in 1924 that Hans Merensky first reported the presence of the platinum group metals (PGMs) on the rim of the largest and most complex igneous extrusion known.

Read more: The Platinum Group Metals

Apuleius, Roman philosopher (124–170 AD).

From the time that mining involved working in holes in the ground, it has been considered a dangerous occupation. It is obviously so because of the possibility of the walls, the hole, or the roof of a tunnel collapsing on the miners.

Read more: Safety bonus in blasting

‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’

It is appropriate that the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy devote an issue of its Journal to the 12th International Ferroalloys Conference, even though published proceedings are available.

Read more: 12th International Ferroalloys Congress: Future sustainability

Everything has its limitations Iron ore cannot be educated into gold - Mark Twain 1906
The papers in this issue are of a pragmatic nature and they provide examples of new applications and improved operating procedures for the well-known physical beneficiation processes.

Read more: Ore Dressing

F.T. Cawood, Professor of Mine Surveying and Head of School: Mining Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand
This SAIMM Wits Special Edition is a special tribute to Professor Huw Phillips, who has led the School for 25 years and has left, as a legacy, the largest Mining Engineering school in the English-speaking world.

Read more: Wits Mining: moving from great to the exceptional—the road ahead

The Journal had a flying start in the October issue when we were privileged to publish a collection of papers to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Mintek.

Read more: Some features of the Journal during the year October 2009 to August 2010

‘!ke e:/xarra//ke:’ South African Motto; Coat of Arms.’ ‘Unity in Diversity’
In this August issue, among the papers that give the conclusions of well-done scientific work, we also present a paper that admits defeat in providing a final answer. This is a legal paper on the ownership of slimes dams.

Read more: Sustainability and slimes dams

‘No one should approach the temple of science, with the soul of a money changer.’ Thomas Browne

Appropriately this issue contains papers from the recent International Coal Processing Conference, which was held in Lexington, USA in April. In past decades this aspect of coal mining was not generally considered as a topic of advanced highly scientific opportunity for forefront research.

Read more: Traditions, transactions, and technology transfer