Today's news

May 24, 2006

Hopes rise in lecturers' pay dispute after 'positive' talks
Hopes of a settlement in the long-running lecturers' pay dispute were raised after seven hours of emergency talks between university employers and unions ended last night; they will resume tomorrow. In a further twist, the employers' group will face further questioning by MPs today on their position in the row, when they are summoned to the Commons to explain why they issued a misleading press notice last week, claiming the education select committee was on their side on the issue.
The Guardian

Agents will chase student fees
International agents, funded by British taxpayers, will be deployed across Europe to track down students owing money for university fees, it was announced yesterday. Students from other European Union countries who qualify for the £3,000 a year loans being introduced in September will be expected to honour the debt and notify the Student Loan Company when they are earning enough to begin repaying the money. But while home students will start making repayments through the tax system on graduation once their earnings reach £15,000 a year, the Government has failed to persuade other EU countries to adopt a similar system.
The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Financial Times

University sells last holding in shipping spin-out to employees
Strathclyde University has exited its successful shipping safety spin-out, Safety at Sea. The university, which had retained a 20 per cent share in the company, said yesterday it had sold its holding for a six-figure sum to four employees, who previously held no equity. Glasgow-based Safety at Sea began trading in 1999 after commercialising existing university operations, and has always been profitable.
The Scotsman

Sleeping pills offer wake-up call to vegetative patients
Clinical researchers have discovered that they can rouse semi-comatose patients by giving them, bizarrely, a common sleeping drug. If more wide-ranging tests are successful, the drug could become the first effective treatment for 'persistent vegetative state', the condition at the centre of the US legal battle over sufferer Terri Schiavo last year. British and South African doctors have reported the cases of three semi-comatose patients who were revived for several hours at a time by zolpidem, marketed to millions of insomniacs under the brand name Ambien.
Nature

Distant gamma-ray burst may be in class of its own
Astronomers may have detected an entirely new class of gamma-ray burst, according to a new study. If the interpretation of the data is correct, it will force astronomers to rethink what causes these powerful cosmic explosions. Gamma-ray bursts are fleeting blasts of high-energy radiation that until recently appeared to fall into two categories. "Long" bursts last more than two seconds and are thought to occur when massive stars explode and their cores collapse into black holes.
New Scientist

It's official: women can't read maps, study finds
Women are not as good as men at remembering the location of items on a grid, according to Edinburgh University academics, who say this may explain their difficulties with reading maps and giving directions. Dr Catherine Jones and Dr Susan Healy found in tests on groups of students that the men were better at remembering the locations of plain boxes on a grid, but that both groups performed equally well when the boxes were replaced by pictures of objects such as flowers, hot-air balloons and motorbikes.
The Scotsman

Scientists seek right recipe for 'super broccoli'
Scientists TS are developing a new "super broccoli" which could last for up to three days longer. University of Warwick researchers are trying to locate the gene which gives some varieties of the vegetable extra shelf-life. This could then be integrated into the new "super broccoli" to keep it fresh for longer.
The Scotsman

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