Congestion is expected as a record entry of 8 312 participants from a record 153 Western Cape schools converges on upper campus on Monday evening, 16 April, for the annual UCT Mathematics Competition.

After registration, the young maths boffins will gather in 63 different venues across the campus to write the contest papers. Over 200 maths teachers from local schools will assist.

Engineering group Aurecon has donated R20 000 towards transport for 283 participants from 13 schools in Khayelitsha.

Separate papers for each of grades 8 to 12 have been set by a committee of maths teachers and UCT lecturers. The problems are designed to test insight and creative thinking, unlike school exams that consist of standard exercises requiring stereotyped solutions.

“Full marks in the UCT Mathematics Competition is a rare event,” said Emeritus Professor John Webb of the UCT Mathematics Department. “The UCT Maths Competition has proved to be an excellent way of uncovering mathematical potential in our high schools.”

While the best pupils will vie against each other for top honours as individuals, those who feel that two heads are better than one may compete as pairs. Pairs and individuals write the same paper, but are ranked separately.

The results will announced at a prize giving on 7 June 2012 in the Baxter Concert Hall.

The UCT Mathematics Competition is sponsored by Aurecon and Capitec Bank, with prizes donated by Casio and Oxford University Press.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Congestion expected when young math boffins arrive

Sighs of relief all round. The Green Mile will host FNB Varsity Cup rugby again next year.

A disappointing season could have become a disastrous one had UCT’s Ikeys not recovered from an early scare against the Central University of Technology (CUT) in the Varsity Cup promotion/relegation playoff on 9 April. After conceding a shock early try, the Ikeys cranked up the pace to thrash Varsity Shield runners-up CUT by 60-21.

Lock Levi Odendaal opened the scoring for UCT in typical forward fashion, bashing over near the poles. Havoc was duly cried, and eight more tries followed for an emphatic end to a season that previously contained just one Ikey victory (the obliteration of the Tshwane University of Technology’s Vikings).

For the defending champions, contesting a promotion/relegation match was not on the agenda when Varsity Cup 2012 kicked off. But, unable to shake early underwhelming form, the Ikey Tigers were forced to fight for their lives in a curtain-raiser to the final.

Before the match, UCT captain Ntsolo Setlaba had mentioned how eager the squad was to build a solid foundation for the future. “We’re all looking forward to putting the Varsity Cup behind us and building towards next year,” said Setlaba.

And, with UCT assured of a place in next year’s Varsity Cup, all eyes could turn to the final, in which the University of Pretoria’s Tukkies gave the Maties of Stellenbosch a 29-21 rugby lesson to clinch the crown.

The win marked the first time in the competition’s five years that the Cup silverware has left Cape Town.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Ikeys live to fight another year

Obz Square has been a project of many milestones, each celebrated with due pomp and ceremony.

The latest celebration, on 3 April, was to mark the residence’s official opening, which of course happened earlier this year. Now settled in, the students and staff are reaping the rewards of this labour of love, and they love it.

“The people who designed this building had the chief aim in mind to make students’ lives easier,” says resident and arts student Nina Lewis. “This allows us to focus on our priorities, such as academics.”

And with grand beginnings comes great responsibility.

“While the amazing technology and engineering are the bones and flesh that make up the residence, the spirit that animates its life come from its students and leaders,” Lewis added.

Speaking on the night, both the chair of Council, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, and acting vice-chancellor, Professor Thandabantu Nhlapo, agreed that providing accommodation for all UCT students who need it remains an on-going challenge. The opening of Obz Square is, however, a step in the right direction. “The answer, in part, is in this residence,” said Nhlapo.

The evening also marked the unveiling of the much-anticipated sculpture Layers of Mind by sculptor Angus Taylor, which now stands in front of the residence.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Hail to Obz Square

Lovers of six-string classical music take note – the guitar series now on at the SACM is a box office hit.

Seats were snapped up at the first instalment of Magnum Opus – a series of three concerts organised by head of classical guitar studies at UCT’s South African College of Music (SACM), James Grace, under the umbrella of his record label, Stringwise Records.

Italian guitarist and professor of guitar at the Rossini Music Conservatoire in Pesaro, Italy, Giuseppe Maria Ficara, kicked off the trilogy on 4 April, performing works by Frescobaldi, Paganini and Giuliani. Grace joined Ficara to round off the night with a performance of Sonatina Canónica by Castelnuovo Tedesco.

The next concert, on 18 April, by Goran Krivokapi, lecturer at the prestigious Koblenz International Guitar Academy in Germany, will include the debut work by SACM head of theory, Associate Professor Hendrik Hofmeyr.

Grace ends the series on 25 April with his favourite pieces, including a version of Abdullah Ibrahim’s The Wedding.

“The classical guitar world is relatively small,” says Grace. “Building up relationships and bridges with other institutions around the world is key.”

Ficara and Krivokapic have performed on separate occasions in South Africa before, says James, and have both taught master’s classes at UCT. “To have them finally performing here seems like a natural progression.”

All concerts take place in the Chrisholm Recital Room at the SACM at 20h15. Tickets are R80, or R50 for students, per concert. To book call 072 434 0345, or send an Email.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Stringing them along

South Africans are all too familiar with HIV/AIDS.

In a new show on at the Michaelis Gallery on UCT’s Hiddingh campus, some artists are now exploring the topic. The A.R.T. Show is the current exhibition in a series that has included Make Art/Stop Aids and Not Alone, all curated by Dr Carol Brown and Dr David Gere with institutional support from the University of California, Los Angeles’ CLA Art and Global Health Programme.

The title of the exhibition is a play on words – the letters A.R.T. stand for anti-retroviral treatment, but also signifies creativity. The exhibition is said to explore the relationship between the complexities of treatment and its representations through visual art.

Some important individual works include those by William Kentridge, Clive Van den Berg, Fritha Langerman, Lunga Kama and American-based artists Sarah Anjargolian and Narineh Mizraean, as well as Daniel Goldstein.

The A.R.T. Show runs from 3 to 26 April.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: A.R.T. on exhibition at Michaelis

Blowing up a storm: The Karendra Devroop Quartet, led by saxophonist Prof Karendra Devroop of North-West University, kick-started the performances at the SAJE conference.	Global sounds: Italian jazz vocalist Antonia de Angelis was among the speakers.

The three-day international conference, held from 25 until 27 March at the South African College of Music and the Baxter Theatre Centre, was crammed with presentations, film screenings and, of course, concerts. It is the only official gathering of its kind in Africa.

With delegates from no fewer than four continents attending, SAJE treasurer and conference organiser, Diane Rossi, says the conference provides a platform for learning and networking.

“That’s what music does,” says Rossi, “and especially jazz. It’s a universal language.”

Cape Town has hosted the past three editions of the conference, held every two years. Which leaves one wondering what makes the Mother City so attractive.

“I think in terms of the music department here, the jazz department, it’s the most prolific in the country,” Rossi explains. “The students here win most of the national awards. Also, we have good organisers.”

Rossi can’t quite put her finger on it, but says that besides the allure of musical excellence, Cape Town just has that something special as a jazz mecca.

“I don’t know what it is! Cape Town is just… We have a very rich and diverse jazz and cultural heritage here, and people like that.”

Among the headline acts were three sons of jazz legend Dave Brubeck – performers in their own rights – in town to answer questions after the local premiere of In His Own Sweet Way, a documentary on their father executive-produced by long-time jazz aficionado Clint Eastwood.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Conference leaves delegates all jazzed up

UCT will host the 2014 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in July 2014.

The IMO is the world championship of mathematics, launched in Romania in 1959. The oldest and biggest of the major international science olympiads for high schools, it today draws participants from more than 100 countries, representing 85% of the world’s population.

Cape Town was selected as the host city by the South African Mathematics Foundation (SAMF). It will be the first IMO to be held in Africa.

Johann Engelbrecht, the executive director of SAMF, said: “2014 could be just what mathematics in South Africa needs. It is an opportunity to show the world that we are able to host world-class events and that we have world-class mathematicians.”

Professor John Webb, emeritus professor of mathematics at UCT, will chair the local organising committee. Webb was responsible for taking the first South African teams to the IMO in 1992, and is currently secretary of the IMO Advisory Board.

“Hosting the IMO is a major task, and we will be calling upon other Western Cape universities to join us in this project,” said Webb. “Local maths teachers will also be recruited to give a hand.”

South Africa has taken part in the IMO every year since 1992, and over the years South African teams have won a total of 42 medals: one gold, nine silver and 32 bronze.

Countries enter teams of up to six students, who must be 19 years old or younger and not registered at university. The teams write two very challenging problem papers over two days. Each paper consists of just three problems.

“The problems are very tough,” said Webb, “and even experienced university mathematicians find them a challenge to crack.”

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: UCT to host Africa’s first International Mathematical Olympiad

Award-winning struggle stalwart Dr Mary Burton – who received an honorary doctorate in social science from UCT in 2011 – says she has given up hope that the state will implement all the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

But she still expects the state to deliver services to people who were excluded by the apartheid regime, Burton said in her talk, How Much Truth, How Much Reconciliation, hosted by the Centre for African Studies in conjunction with the Centre for Curating the Archive in March.

While she believes that the whole truth was not revealed at the hearings, Burton, a commissioner on the TRC’s Human Rights Violations Committee, said that the commission provided both victims and perpetrators of apartheid human rights violations a genuine opportunity to reach out to each other.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: TRC is unfinished business

The bones don’t lie: Prof Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan and Dr Daniel Thomas collaborated on a project that investigated the bone structure of the Alaskan polar dinosaur.	A long, long time ago: The bones of duck-billed dinosaurs that lived at higher latitudes of the Arctic revealed a winter and summer growth pattern, unlike the bone structure of similar dinosaurs found at lower altitudes.

A team of dinosaur palaeontologists from South Africa and the US have uncovered these insights in the bones of Edmontosaurus, or duck-billed dinosaurs, which lived in the Arctic about 70 million years ago.

Bone histologist and head of UCT’s Department of Zoology, Professor Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, and colleague Dr Anthony Fiorillo, of the Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas, reasoned that perhaps clues showing how these dinosaurs lived at such high latitudes might be recorded in the microscopic structure of their bones. With this in mind, the team – which included postdoctoral researcher Dr Daniel Thomas, then at UCT, and Dr Allison Tumarkin-Deratzian of Temple University in Philadelphia, US – began a study of the microscopic structure of the bones of the Edmontosaurus, aka the Alaskan polar dinosaur.

The bones, the researchers found, had an odd structure. Similar to tree rings, they showed periodic changes in texture, suggesting a summer and winter bone deposit pattern – most likely related to the availability of food.

“Since there would not have been green foliage [during the polar night], they probably fed on alternative food such as underground tubers,” Chinsamy-Turan says.

In one of the largest individuals (approximately 65% of adult size), at least eight cycles of faster bone deposition were counted, suggesting that this individual lived through eight summers. Bones of Edmontosaurus that lived at lower latitudes (in Southern Alberta, Canada) did not have the regular, alternating bone pattern, implying that these duck-billed dinosaurs were spared the stress of long, dark winters.

The unique pattern of bone deposition in the polar dinosaurs also suggests that they overwintered well within the Cretaceous Arctic circle. So out go the assumptions of nomadic dinosaurs.

But another question has cropped up after the researchers found bones mainly belonging to younger animals.

The fact that many of them seem to have died at the beginning of spring, and that their fossilised bones are found in melt deposits, have led researchers to believe that seasonal flooding may have led to their death, says Chinsamy-Turan.

“Perhaps the adults were better able to cope with seasonal flooding than the young.”

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Dinosaur bones debunk migratory myth

His work and life’s legacy is widely celebrated, but who’s the man behind UCT’s Professor Neville Alexander? Few knew the inner workings of this acclaimed linguist and anti-apartheid struggle veteran – he’s fiercely private and humble – until now.

The launch of Glimpses of a Life: Neville Alexander, a documentary film by local filmmaker Nicki Westcott, in March lifted the veil from a man well worth talking about.

The event was hosted by the Centre for African Studies, the Centre for Curating the Archive, and the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa. The half-hour documentary is part of an umbrella project by Westcott titled Conversations with Remarkable Africans.

Speaking at the launch, deputy vice-chancellor Professor Crain Soudien said that the documentary was not just about Alexander, but about a bigger set of messages that need to be surfaced and used to understand the immense puzzle of what it means to be a human being in South Africa.
“He represents this individual experiment of what we are all trying to come to terms with,” Soudien said. “He attempts to speak to those things that we are all afraid to articulate.”

Glimpses of a Life: Neville Alexander can be purchased from Westcott at Westcott.

Details of further public talks, launches and exhibitions hosted by the Centre for African Studies can be found on their Facebook page.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Life’s journey immortalised in doccie

His work and life’s legacy is widely celebrated, but who’s the man behind UCT’s Professor Neville Alexander? Few knew the inner workings of this acclaimed linguist and anti-apartheid struggle veteran – he’s fiercely private and humble – until now.

The launch of Glimpses of a Life: Neville Alexander, a documentary film by local filmmaker Nicki Westcott, in March lifted the veil from a man well worth talking about.

The event was hosted by the Centre for African Studies, the Centre for Curating the Archive, and the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa. The half-hour documentary is part of an umbrella project by Westcott titled Conversations with Remarkable Africans.

Speaking at the launch, deputy vice-chancellor Professor Crain Soudien said that the documentary was not just about Alexander, but about a bigger set of messages that need to be surfaced and used to understand the immense puzzle of what it means to be a human being in South Africa.
“He represents this individual experiment of what we are all trying to come to terms with,” Soudien said. “He attempts to speak to those things that we are all afraid to articulate.”

Glimpses of a Life: Neville Alexander can be purchased from Westcott at Westcott.

Details of further public talks, launches and exhibitions hosted by the Centre for African Studies can be found on their Facebook page.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Life’s journey immortalised in doccie

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.

The event, the sixth of its kind, was hosted by the Faculty of Science in conjunction with the , iThemba LABS, Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, the South African Astronomical Observatory, , Cape Town Science Centre, Career Planet and the South African Weather Service. The aim, according to Katherine Wilson, the faculty’s communication and marketing manager, was to take science to the community, and inspire learners to do well in maths and science, providing good grounding for careers in science.

The science faculty’s Associate Professor David Gammon spoke of the shortage of scientists in South Africa and highlighted the role of science in people’s lives, from developing vaccines and finding cures for diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS, to exploring fresh water sources and developing new technology.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Whiz, bang, pop: UCT takes science to the community

Sonja Loots is treading deep tracks in the Afrikaans literary world – she recently joined an elite list of novelists recognised for their early work.

Loots, a lecturer in the Afrikaans and Netherlandic Studies section in the School of Languages and Literatures, has won this year’s Eugene Marais prize from the South African Academy for Science and Art, for her book Sirkusboere.

The award, first introduced in 1961, recognises up-and-coming Afrikaans writers. Previous UCT recipients include literary legends André P Brink (1963), Etienne van Heerden (1984) and Joan Hambidge (1987).

“I am proud to follow in the footsteps of many of my favourite writers who won it before me,” Loots says.

Her debut book, Spoor, was published in 1995. The ‘break’ between the two books, she says, was used to do the extensive research for Sirkusboere – a historical novel about former Anglo-Boer War generals who were recruited to the US to form the so-called ‘Boer War Circus’, where they enacted scenes from the war.

Despite her initial fears of how the book would be received – there’s lots of humour, some risqué scenes and serious politics – Sirkusboere is flying off the shelves.

Can we expect a next book? She’s writing a play, she says, and working on her PhD at Stellenbosch University.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Loots wins coveted author’s award

The dragon is a revered Chinese symbol of power, superiority and rule. And the Confucius Institute Spring Festival Gala, hosted by UCT’s Confucius Institute to celebrate the year of dragon, was as compelling. With dance, song and traditional Chinese music, a student art troupe from Renmin University of China in Beijing captivated the hundreds of Cape Town revellers who flocked to the Baxter Theatre Centre on 21 March.

The group, which also performed at other universities in Southern Africa, was sent by the Confucius Institute headquarters in China in accordance with its promise to continue cultural tours, lectures and giving life to its teaching exhibitions.

At the event, also attended by Tong Defa, deputy consul-general of the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Cape Town, the group also performed solo and group dances of the Tibetan, Miao and Dai minorities in China, as well as performances on percussion and other traditional musical instruments of the Uygurs and Mongolians.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Dragon festivities hit the city

Today, Minister of Higher Education and Training Dr Blade Nzimande and concerned scholars from around the country and abroad will gather in Pretoria to discuss the future of the humanities and social sciences in higher education in South Africa.

Under the theme The Future of Humanities and Social Sciences in South African Universities, the conference is part of Nzimande’s initiatives to rejuvenate and strengthen social sciences and humanities in SA’s Higher Education system since he became Minister in 2009. It will run until 30 March.

Following his appointment, Nzimande set up a Ministerial Task Team, led by UCT’s Professor Ari Sitas and Dr Sarah Mosoetsa of Wits University, to examine existing initiatives in South Africa and elsewhere, to explore innovative programmes and make recommendations for deepening the study of human and social sciences in South African universities.

Earlier this week, at a UCT Open Planning Forum hosted by deputy vice-chancellor Prof Crain Soudien, Sitas laid out some of the outcomes he expects to come from the work of the task team and from the conference.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Conference spotlights social sciences at universities

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.

In February he also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Seabird Group in Hawaii.

Cooper retired from UCT in 2008 after 35 years of research on seabird biology and conservation with the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology and the Animal Demography Unit.

In his acceptance speech aptly titled My Life – An Alternative View, Cooper looked back on his career – from seabirds, clearly, to broader interests, including the arts, history and cycling.

Read More on University of Cape Town / Daily News: Second lifetime achievement award for Cooper