Over the past decade, Sibo, a lovable science-minded book character, has introduced South African children to difficult topics such as malaria, water, space, nanotechnology and road safety through books like Sibo and the Sea and Sibo sizes things up. Another, yet slightly different title was recently assigned to her – that of “Sibo, the research…
Later this month, Professor Doug Butterworth will be formally honoured by the Emperor of Japan with the Order of the Rising Sun for contributing to the sustainable management of the very lucrative bluefin tuna fishery. In 2008, Butterworth received a similar national order from the South African president, after he helped to set the benchmark…
A secretary bird called Legs is the first raptor in South Africa to sport a 3D-printed prosthesis. It was designed by some of the South African team members involved in the recent development of the world’s first 3D-printed middle ear bones. Scibraai visited Eagle Encounters Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation Centre at Spier Wine Estate near Stellenbosch…
by Thabiso Goba Dark energy has dominated the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting with a few playful murmurs of a future Nobel Prize for the next discovery. About 5% of the universe is made up of known atoms like protons, neutrons, and electrons and the rest of it is an unknown, invisible gas substance that…
Tien jaar gelede het dr Elmi Muller die eerste nieroorplantings in Suid-Afrika op MIV-positiewe ontvangers gedoen. Sy het sedertdien al 51 sulke oorplantings gedoen.
Ten years ago, Dr Elmi Muller performed the first kidney transplant on HIV positive patients in South Africa. She has since done 51 such operations.
Thanks to funding received from the Royal Society of South Africa, Scibraai will be publishing a few new science stories in the coming months by local journalists. First up is an insert about Dinaledi VR, the world’s first free mobile palaeoanthropology virtual reality app. It provides virtual access to the underground Dinaledi chamber in the…
When the Ford Foundation and the Oppenheimer Family Trust agreed, in 2004, to make a joint Endowment Grant to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) to found the Institute for Human Evolution (now transformed into the Evolutionary Studies Institute) the university set about finding a suitable Director for the institute. When the selected candidate (Dr…
Professor Jonathan Jansen doesn’t enjoy being in the media limelight. “I used to, but now I think it’s a drag,” says the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Free State (UFS). The reason, he says, is that journalists often get the story wrong, and the wrong idea about him. “They see me as this…
In academia, change often happens slowly. Academics are born into a paradigm and, more often than not, they maintain that paradigm rather than interrogating and critiquing it. It is rare to find a researcher who is willing, much less eager, to look outside of his or her field and recognise when a paradigm can be…
Dr Jessica Thorn was recently announced as part of the first three Women in Climate Change Science Fellows, an initiative of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences – Next Einstein Initiative (AIMS-NEI). She will be hosted by the African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI) at the University of Cape Town in South Africa but…