From today's UK papers

FINANCIAL TIMES

Princeton University, one of the most selective schools in the United States, is to give outright grants instead of loans to students on financial aid.

GUARDIAN

Lecturers' union leaders warned yesterday of a crisis gripping new universities, which are being forced to shut unviable courses and scale down facilities in the face of dwindling student numbers.

Scientists at the University of Southampton School of Medicine have discovered a gene that they believe could lead to the development of more effective treatments for asthma.

INDEPENDENT

Excavations in Norway by Oslo University archaeologists are yielding new evidence of the great distances travelled by the Vikings in their longboats.

DAILY TELEGRAPH

A computer reconstruction of an Allosaurus dinosaur by Cambridge University scientists has revealed that its head-butt was much worse than its bite, solving the mystery of how it hunted 150 million years ago.

The European Commission approved an £11bn plan yesterday aimed at closing the technology gap with America and stopping the "brain drain" of Europe's scientists.

MISCELLANY

Queuing is an example of the co-operative group behaviour that marks out humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, according to two University of Michigan anthropologists. ( Independent , Daily Telegraph ; from New Scientist magazine)