Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Categories
UFS News Media Release Research
Years
2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
Months
January February March April May June July August September October November December
Previous Archive
29 May 2019 | Story Ruan Bruwer | Photo Reg Caldecott
Khanyisa Chawane
Khanyisa Chawane is one of 12 members of the national netball team to the World Cup in July. Other team members include former students of the University of the Free State, Maryka Holtzhausen and Karla Pretorius.
Exactly one quarter of the South African netball team to the World Cup tournament in England in July will consist of current and former students from the University of the Free State (UFS).

Less than a year after making her Protea debut, Khanyisa Chawane was selected for the team alongside former UFS students, Maryka Holtzhausen and Karla Pretorius.

Chawane is a fifth-year BSc Geography and Statistics student who made her Kovsie debut in 2015. 

“The selection means so much to me. It’s such an honour and privilege to represent my country at this high level of netball. I’m super excited about it, because any team can win it this year,” Chawane, a centre court player, said.

Both Chawane (2018) and Pretorius (2014 and 2015) were previously named as die best student netball player in the country.

Pretorius, with 80 caps behind her name and widely regarded as the best goal defender in the world, represented and captained the UFS team from 2009 to 2015. She is the Protea vice-captain.

Holtzhausen, a goal attack and only the second player to reach 100 tests for the Proteas (106 in total), played for and captained the UFS between 2007 and 2014. She played her netball in England over the past couple of months. When she returns from the World Cup, she will again take up her part-time job as a sports manager at KovsieSport.

Burta de Kock, who has coached all three players at the UFS, said they serve as a motivation and example for the current group of players from the UFS.

News Archive

It is not every day you get to build a heart
2014-09-17

According to the World Health Organisation, heart disease is the leading cause of death world wide. Heart transplantations substantially outperform any other available treatment and extend life by an average of 15 years, but the shortage of donor organs and organ rejection still remain a challenge.

Getting closer to the day where it will be possible to produce human organs by using human cells, researchers at the University of the Free State (UFS) announced that they have successfully decellularized a primate heart.

Decellularization is the process of taking an organ and stripping its cells, leaving behind a framework of binding tissue. The organ can then be repopulated (recellularized) with the patient's own cells - a process considered to move heart research closer to the day when a patient can become his own donor.

This process was discovered in 2008 by American cardiologist, Dr Doris Taylor of the University of Minnesota, who decellularized and recellularized a beating rat heart in a laboratory.

World wide researchers already used the process of decellularization on rat and pig hearts, but the research team of the UFS is the first to use this on a primate heart.

Complete media release.

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept