Audi’s status as a premium automotive brand has been beyond question for many years now. But one could argue that the A5 coupé put the Four Rings on the map as far as desirability and sheer aesthetic appeal are concerned. Mixing gorgeous styling with sports car dynamics, the sleek two-door has just been spruced up. DEON SCHOEMAN drives the fiery S5 version to find out if it still has the right stuff.

Fifty years ago, John Glenn performed America’s first manned orbital flight in space. J. BROOKS SPECTOR remembers the glorious day very well.

All sports cars are desirable – some only more so than others. The Aston Martin Virage is certainly a head-turner, exuding a heady mix of sensual styling, lavish interior appointments and no-holds-barred performance. At R2.8-million, it also carries the burden of huge expectations. The question is can it deliver on its obvious promises? By DEON SCHOEMAN.

Stakeholders remain doubtful the Gauteng health department will change its pattern of late and non-payment to service providers and want the national treasury to take a greater role since intervening in December 2011. This is despite MEC Ntombi Mekgwe’s comments that the department has got its books under control after a R700-million payment to creditors. By GREG NICOLSON.

Starting a new venture can be as much about timing as it is about the product itself. Leading edge technology can very quickly evolve into the bleeding edge if the idea is years ahead of its time. For Snapt founder and CEO, Dave Blakey, patience could prove to be his biggest virtue. By STYLI CHARALAMBOUS.

Sports cars mean different things to different people. For some, the word conjures up images of small, wieldy two-seaters with agile handling and a favourable power-to-weight ratio. Others might think of sports cars in grander, more comfortable terms. The BMW 6-Series Coupé is just that: a grand tourer that combines significant dynamic talent with luxury. By DEON SCHOEMAN.

Green cars might not be top of mind right now, but the threat of global warming and its ensuing calamities is persuading more and more people to sit up and take notice. In other words, green is becoming sexy. Does that make Toyota’s Auris HSD a desirable machine? DEON SCHOEMAN finds out.

Ernest Shackleton was a previous generation’s Steve Jobs – flawed, a failure, but also a remarkable success. There are those that still swear by his leadership style, and consider him a model. That’s both a good thing, and a really, really bad thing. By RICHARD POPLAK.

The charge that science is an inherently sexist discipline is repeated so often it’s a cliché. American historian and author of The Madam Curie Complex, Julies Des Jardins throws a spanner in the works by saying that women often limit themselves. Isn’t it time to debunk the “science” of gender discrimination in science? By MANDY DE WAAL.

Everyone’s looking for the secret to allure, which is why there’s so many strange websites selling even stranger potions that promise to “promote paradise-engineering” or get your target of attraction into an “enchanted and sensual state.” Thank God for authors like Kayt Sukel who puts these outrageous claims to the test in the name of science. By MANDY DE WAAL.

Almost four decades ago, a fledgling automaker called Hyundai produced a modest compact sedan dubbed the Pony. It was small and pokey, with ugly duckling looks, a tacky interior and a flimsy execution. Thirty-six years later, its bloodline is altogether more convincing– proof the Korean auto industry has come a long way. DEON SCHOEMAN drives the latest Hyundai Accent.

For those who believe there is no solution to the regular carnage on South African roads – a thousand or so killed this past holiday season, by way of example – think again. Google’s driverless car is here to save us. It has a couple of twists and turns to manoeuvre before we’re out of the driver’s seat, though. By RICHARD POPLAK.

Kim Schmitz, aka Kim Dotcom, was until his arrest last week the kingpin of one of the largest piracy networks the Internet has yet seen. But the misdirected “libertarian” hacker group Anonymous supported him anyway. What does this have to do with the two pieces of anti-piracy legislation that have just been shelved by the United States Congress? And how can artists, writers and musicians make a living in the face of a populist call for online anarchy? By KEVIN BLOOM.

Rarely has the launch of a new vehicle been preceded with more hype than that of the Range Rover Evoque. And since its much-anticipated arrival, this most radical of Range Rovers has been showered with accolades – and the drool of thousands of would-be buyers. Which means driving one makes you feel a bit like a rock star, as DEON SCHOEMAN found out.

Huaxi claims to be the richest village in China. It also bills itself as a model socialist community. How does it do it? By REBECCA DAVIS.

As motoring years go, 2011 was arguably one of the busiest – at least as far as new model launches are concerned. While we covered almost 50 new cars in the 12 months, the list of 2011 debutants is a lot longer. For DEON SCHOEMAN it all boiled down to a handful of finalists.

Care to take a guess at what the most dangerous occupation in the world is? If you’re thinking “Iranian nuclear scientist”, you’ve won a free trip to Tehran and a tour of the Natanz uranium enrichment plant. For another young man working on Iran’s nuclear program has been killed. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. By RICHARD POPLAK.

On Sunday, 8 January, a birthday celebration at the University of Cambridge unfolded without the famous celebrant. He was too ill to attend. The wheelchair-bound theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, despite almost half a century of infirmity, just turned 70. Where would we be without him? By RICHARD POPLAK.

Among physicists, there is now a largely worked out, generally internally consistent theory for how the universe works. However, there is a whopping hole in the model as it does not explain how it is that particles have mass – the answer to which lies with the elusive Higgs boson.  By J BROOKS SPECTOR.

Call of Duty 3: Modern Warfare is the fastest-selling video game of all time and the biggest entertainment story of the year. $1-billion in 16 days, it has Hollywood execs slobbering in envy and wonder. But the Internet is in its own lather over the sheer “sequel-ness” of the sequel, which has inadvertently caused a crisis of confidence in the gaming industry. What does all that dough actually amount to, if the fans aren’t happy? By RICHARD POPLAK

The Norwegians have long known what the English-speaking world has for most of the last 100 years refused to admit – in terms of achievements alone, Roald Amundsen was the greatest of the polar explorers. On this day, a century after he claimed the South Pole for the first time, we look at some of the other “firsts” that Amundsen has been denied by popular history. By KEVIN BLOOM.

It was a year which saw awards given, and awards returned. REBECCA DAVIS reviews some of South Africa’s major happenings on the arts scene over the course of 2011.

The Foreign Policy website is generally hailed as an expert voice in international affairs. It’s just released its predictions on what the top foreign-policy stories of 2012 will be. By REBECCA DAVIS.

From sublimely graceful to daringly acrobatic, the show brings a touch of magic to the stage this festive season. By LESLEY STONES.

For men of the early twentieth century, the polar caps were the last real geographic extremities remaining to be conquered and explored. The goal of reaching the South Pole first set up a classic competition between British and Norwegian explorers, Robert F Scott and Roald Amundsen. J BROOKS SPECTOR looks back on the race into nothingness.

Last week’s discovery of a potentially-habitable planet, Kepler-22b, might have been the most exciting space-related story of the year. But 2011 has been a big one for astronomical discoveries. REBECCA DAVIS takes a look at some of the hits of the year.

A great irony of the cyber age is the way it connects seemingly incongruous and anachronistic opposites in bizarre and unexpected ways. Now the ragtag though powerful Islamist terror group, Al Shabaab, is taking on the Kenyan army on the battlefields of … Twitter. By SIMON ALLISON.

Domain names using the suffix “.xxx” went on sale for the first time last week. The idea is purportedly to attempt to restrict pornography online to one domain area. Yet elements of the project sound like one big scam. By REBECCA DAVIS.

Justice has come slowly for Zoliswa Nkonyana, the 19-year-old woman murdered in Khayelitsha for being a lesbian. Sentencing is set for 19 December in a trail plagued by justice system flaws and failures. But this is the norm in a South Africa where brutalising or killing someone because of their sexual orientation is no hate crime, where rape’s under reported and most offenders get away scot-free. By MANDY DE WAAL.

When Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic on 1 June 2009, its causes became one of the greatest mysteries of aviation. Now Popular Mechanics has published the transcript of the pilots’ conversation in the final moments before the plane went down, and it makes for chilling reading. By REBECCA DAVIS.