Emeritus Professor Morna Mathias, formerly of the Department of Geology, celebrated her 100th birthday with friends and family on 20 May. She was born Frances Celia Morna Cameron-Swan, the granddaughter of the late Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, the English physicist and chemist who was most famous for producing an early electric light bulb before its invention by Thomas Edison. Read more...

William Bond, the Harry Bolus Professor of Botany in the Department of Biological Sciences, has been elected as a foreign associate of the United States' National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. Read more...

Africa Month at UCT is packed with things to do, people to meet and great experiences to be shared. These are some of the highlights from now until the end of May: Read more...

Understanding the transition between ape-like human ancestors (genus Australopithecus) and ancestors that more closely resemble us (genus Homo) is one of the hottest topics in palaeoanthropology, according to Associate Professor Rebecca Ackermann, from UCT's Department of Archaeology. Read more...

UCT and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) have formally established the LSE-UCT July School. The summer school-style programme will run for two weeks each July. Read more...

All but one of a high-profile panel of Zimbabwean politicians and activists agreed that the country still had much to do to prepare for general elections later this year, and that holding elections before certain conditions were instituted would do more harm than good to the once-thriving nation. Read more...

As part of Africa Month, there was an exhibition of 70 hand-made bags by first-year students of the Michaelis School of Fine Art in the Richard Luyt Room (iKhaya Day House) whose creations sought to bring together three concepts:- African identity, health promotion messages, and sustainability. Read more...

UCT Libraries got their Africa Month celebrations off to a fine start with the 60th birthday of the Special Collections Section. These are now housed under one roof in the newly restored JW Jagger Reading Room, which Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Crain Soudien officially opened on 10 May. Read more...

It costs mobile phone networks in South Africa a mere 2.6c for a single text message to be sent over their networks. The 3000%-plus profit that these companies make when an SMS is sent - which places South Africa 6th on the list of highest mobile phone charges globally - is hindering basic communication among South Africa's poorest people. Read more...

According to the scoreboard, West Africa had won the final 2-0, but the united festivities after the final whistle showed that everybody felt like a winner. "It's great to see the losing teams celebrating, too," remarked Moses Pieterse of UCT's International Academic Programmes Office (IAPO). Read more...

Despite having 11 official languages and scores of unofficial ones, South Africa's media landscape is dominated by English and Afrikaans-medium newspapers. Now, the resurrection of a newspaper that was last published more than a century ago aims to shake that market up. Read more...

It's rare that a researcher gets to ask questions directly of a Nobel laureate. For UCT's Dr Reyna Ballim, the 5th HOPE meeting in Tokyo, Japan, provided a scientific feast; the meeting hosted seven laureates (from between 1973 and 2008), in chemistry, physics and physiology or medicine. Read more...

Research lead by Professor Jack van Honk (Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health) and Dr Barak Morgan (Department of Human Biology) is revealing new facts about the role of the amygdala, or the 'social brain', in an array of social behaviours - and especially its role in fear and anxiety disorders. Read more...

It's a wet day in Cape Town, and Philippi's sprawling vegetable fields are caterpillar-green under heavy skies. In one small corner along Varkensvlei Road, beyond the farmlands, there's more activity than usual. A new school building for pre-schoolers is going up, and inside the security gates, small groups of people in hardhats and thick-soled boots wait to be briefed. Read more...

South Africa's black middle class has more than doubled over the past eight years, growing 250%: from 1.7 million South Africans in 2004 to an estimated 4.2 million last year. This dramatic growth has been revealed by new research conducted by the UCT Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing. Read more...

"Welcome to all who are my friends and special in the lives of other children in hospital. May you learn new things here and come back to us renewed and energised and continue to give life to many." These were the words of welcome from 14-year-old Elandri, who receives on-going care at the Red Cross Children's War Memorial Hospital in Cape Town, to conference delegates attending South Africa's first ever children's nursing conference. Read more...

UCT's links with its counterparts across the seas have been given a major fillip by the first-of-its kind travel grant, sponsored by the European Union. The European and South African Research Network in Anxiety Disorders (EUSARNAD) research exchange exploits inter-university collaboration to develop a greater understanding of anxiety disorders and develop more effective treatments for patients. Read more...

UCT has been ranked among the top 100 universities in the world for eight of its subject areas, according to the QS World University Rankings by Subject released on 8 May. UCT was ranked at 32 for its Education and Training subject area. The other seven subject areas are: Earth and Marine Sciences, Politics, Psychology, Law and Legal Studies, History and Archaeology, Geography, and English Language and Literature. Read more...