The dazzle of chemical reactions, DNA profiling, explosion displays, big bangs and colour changes, marked this year's UCT Science Day - all to lure high school learners to pursue careers in science. As if that was not enough, master's graduate in chemistry from UCT and current PhD student in chemical engineering, Umraan Hendricks, an alumnus of the host school, Trafalgar High School in Zonnebloem, Cape Town, motivated learners by giving a personal account on how he followed his passion in science. Read more...

Retired UCT ornithologist John Cooper has raked in yet another lifetime achievement award for his nearly four decades of study on seabirds. Cooper, now a research associate at the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology at Stellenbosch University, was awarded the Gill Memorial Medal of BirdLife South Africa, making him the first ever local seabird expert to receive the prestigious award. Read more...

UCT's Alan Pifer Award comes with some exacting demands. According to the adjudicators, the work of 2011 recipient Professor Kelly Chibale on drug discovery in Africa has surpassed those criteria. Read more...

Forget everything you've heard about an expanding universe; the truth is that, for high-energy physicists, the world is getting smaller. Bound by their common interest in smashing particles together to bring to light the secrets of matter and the early universe, a group of UCT physicists are currently hosting a visit by Professor Raju Venugopalan, leader of the nuclear theory group at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York. Read more...

Three UCT scientists, all in their early to mid 30s, have been named among the 20 founder members of the new South African Young Academy of Science (SAYAS). Dr Shadreck Chirikure of the Department of Archaeology, Associate Professor Genevieve Langdon of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Dr Jeff Murugan of the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, were inaugurated into SAYAS. Read more...

With the water sector faced with some serious difficulties like the steadily dropping storage levels in Cape Town, UCT master's student Raymond Siebrits' seminar on water research challenges came at the right time. Titled, Water Research Challenges in South Africa, the event was in line with UCT's goal of promoting multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary research teams. Read more...

Consider a very simple experiment involving some light and a mirror. Half the light goes through the mirror while the other half is reflected. Remember, further, that light consists of particles. So what, then, determines which light particles will be reflected and which will be transmitted? Read more...

As her topic, Evo-Devo: Clues to morphological and functional diversity in bats and resurrection plants, indicates, Professor Nicola Illing had some educating to do in her inaugural lecture on 19 October. Evo-Devo, noted Illing from her on-going work with a team of UCT students and collaborators from abroad, is a term coined in the 1990s to explain the evolution of morphology in living organisms through the eyes of developmental genetics. Read more...

UCT postdoctoral research fellow Dr Bruce Merry claimed the runner-up spot at the TopCoder Open finals in Florida, US, in September. Narrowly missing out on the top prize to Japanese programmer Makoto Soejima, known in TopCoder circles only as rng_58, Merry beat off thousands of other contestants to snatch the $5 000 (just under R40 000) purse for second place. Read more...

UCT explores links and collaborations with the Finns; a former VC inspires postgrads in 16 lines of gentle verse; South Africans study algae with Japanese partners; and a distinguished science grad talks about crystals. Read more...

Who would have thought that scientists and journalists develop and require the same skills, such as asking the right questions, thinking systematically, and problem solving, we are both intelligent, curious, observant and need to create a logical flow in the final piece, whether it is a thesis, publication or story. Read more...

UCT scientists among the pick of the SA Women in Science Awards; speaker rues the lack of Africa-focused curricula; a community organisation drops off its annual bursary cheque; and a conservation student wins anniversary award. Read more...

Jewellers abhor diamond impurities, but they are a bonanza for scientists. Safely encased in the super-hard diamond, impurities are unaltered, ancient minerals telling the story of Earth's distant past. Read more...

Unlike many wildlife species, baboons may actually thrive in human modified environments as a result of the abundant and easily accessible food found in both rural and urban human settlements. Ironically it is their similarities with humans, including highly plastic behaviour, a generalist diet and living in extended family groups, which have enabled them to gain pole position on the human-wildlife conflict scale in Africa. Read more...

The Science Post Graduate Studies Association hosted a Science Honours Hour aimed at encouraging students to consider postgrad studies in the Science Faculty. Read more...