Journal Comment
A monthly publication devoted to scientific transactions and specialist technical topics is unlikely to be on the priority reading list of the majority of the mining and metallurgical community. But it is the ambition of the Publication's Committee to make the Journal of much wider interest to our general membership from technician trainees to mine managers to CEO's of our constituent companies. It is to entice general readership that some 1200 words of valuable space are devoted to the Journal Comment each month. This is intended to highlight some of the features and impact of the papers to excite and activate attention.
To entice this preliminary glance before confining the publication to the book shelf or even the wpb, the author has to call on a large measure of journalistic licence in style, titles and quotations. It is essential to be spicy, controversial and even provocative to separate it from the abbreviated authoritative but necessary scientific style of the bulk of the contents.
The Journal Comment aims to be an enticement to dig into some important feature of the papers in the issue. For this reason it has been decided to include it as a separate item on the Institutes Web Site. This might provoke those who enjoy twittering, blogging and googling to submit comment and criticism, all of which will be welcomed and responded to. At least it is proof that somebody has read it.
R.E. Robinson
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Created: Tuesday, 01 March 2011 02:00
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Written by RE Robinson
‘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.
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Created: Tuesday, 01 February 2011 02:00
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Written by RE Robinson
‘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.
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Created: Saturday, 01 January 2011 02:00
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Written by RE Robinson
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.
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Created: Wednesday, 01 December 2010 02:00
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Written by RE Robinson
‘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.
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Created: Monday, 01 November 2010 02:00
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Written by RE Robinson
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.
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Created: Friday, 01 October 2010 02:00
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Written by RE Robinson
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.
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Created: Wednesday, 01 September 2010 02:00
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Written by RE Robinson
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.
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Created: Sunday, 01 August 2010 02:00
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Written by RE Robinson
‘!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.
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Created: Thursday, 01 July 2010 02:00
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Written by RE Robinson
‘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.
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Created: Tuesday, 01 June 2010 02:00
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Written by RE Robinson
‘I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, And express it in numbers, you know something about it; But when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, Your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.’ Lord Kelvin, 1882
The papers in this issue were selected from a conference on sampling and blending held last year. This topic is generally considered by most production industries as a necessary,
