Every Friday morning, SAfm's AMLive's radio anchor Tim Modise speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday's At the Coalface transcript:

Modise: Sasol is sending a team to Germany to firm up development of new low-cost solar panel.

Creamer: Yes, this is good news that we move again on the low-cost solar panels. This idea comes from South Africa. It was developed here, in Johannesburg, by Vivian Alberts and he then started to commercialise it. So, within this team that are now developing it is Sasol with 40%, but there is also the State-owned Central Energy Fund and the National Empowerment Fund.

What we have got to do in South Africa is make sure that we reduce the cost of solar power, because we have got the sun. This is what this is all about. It took the Germans with our idea to start it off. Now, they have done it in Germany and now Sasol is sending a team over to start development so that they can bring it year in the next 12 months and build a factory in Paarl and start developing these low-cost thin film solar panels.

This is what will compete with Eskom. We can become almost competitive. As the Eskom tariffs go up we can introduce this without high costs, which we had in the past associated with solar. A word in their ear, they better hurry up because I see the Americans now have similar technology which is our technology and is starting to come into the world with these products. So their competitive juices are up.

Modise: Wits University, this time, is carrying out a study to see whether mathematics standards of today are still a good indicator of academic ability. Tell me a bit more.

Creamer: For a lot of the more technical sciences at University they would look at mathematics and how much you got in mathematics in order to determine whether you should come in.

This is the first year of outcomes-based education and the first year of the National Senior Certificate and the phasing out of the other certification that we had in the higher-grade maths situation. It has thrown the cat among the pigeons.

Already these lecturers are finding that they have to go back to basics with these students when they analyse their marks position, it seems like the marks have been inflated.

When they looked at student parties that had come in in 2008 under the old system and 2009 under the new system they found that in the old system a student may have got 40% to 49% for maths, now the one coming in with outcomes based education is getting 70%. So they no longer know whether 70% is a good maths mark or a bad maths mark.

They feel that some of the degrees might have to be extended. If it is a three-year degree it might have to go to a four-year degree, because of the need to go back to basics so that these students can cope. A lot of frustration among the students who feel they've qualified and now suddenly find that they can't cope.

Modise: Another story is that of South Africa's first green building being officially certified.

Creamer: We used to have stars for hotels, five star hotels and now we are getting stars for green buildings. If you are ecologically friendly as a building you get your stars. This is from the Green Building Council of South Africa.

The first stars to be awarded have gone to Nedbank's new second phase extension, in Sandton. They have had to go through a whole load of hoops to make sure that they can be qualified as green. Obviously, they have to lower the energy consumption and the water consumption. Interestingly, even the materials are coming into it and, for the first time in South Africa, we have had low-volatility organic compound paint.

So this is an eco-friendly paint that they have had to use. We also had cement that has recycled material in it like fly ash. So all of these earn points in order to get the stars. But, how much does it cost?

We see that this building costs about R600-million and the green aspect added some R20-million to it. It is a bit frightening at this stage and is still going through a learning curve.

They are hoping to make sure that once people become familiar with it that cost will lower. In the meantime, they say that your payback will be quicker because you are going to be using less energy and water and all the other aspects. Green buildings are in and we are going to see more of those.

Modise: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he'll be back with us at the same time next week.