From today's UK papers

Financial Times

The University of Bristol has produced a radio that can run for up to 2,000 hours on a single battery.

The Guardian

Many of the best degree courses in Britain are to be found at the new rather than old universities, the 2001 Guardian guide to good university teaching reveals.

Interview with the outgoing education secretary, David Blunkett.

Pay deal makes the merger of lecturers' unions inevitable.

Tim Boswell, the Conservative further and higher education spokesman, presents the Conservative view on post-16 education.

The Independent

Taking a fourth A level may not help students win a university place and could damage their chances, says Brian Heap, author of Degree Course Offers, an annual directory of university admissions.

Daily Mail

The polio virus could be used to save thousands of brain cancer patients, according to research from Duke University in North Carolina.

New fears over the dumbing down of exams have been raised as higher education adviser Brian Heap warned that AS-level exams are too easy.

Daily Telegraph

As the number of animals culled or awaiting slaughter in the foot-and-mouth epidemic passed the three million mark, a preliminary study of the culling policies by a team at Imperial College suggested that inefficient measures had been used on half of the farms.

The Times

Almost 2,000 companies worldwide have corporate universities which could provide a model for the United Kingdom's National Health Service, but Labour's plans for an NHS university would create the biggest institution of its kind.

Rising depression and irritability could be connected with a deficiency of the trace element selenium in the diet, Margaret Rayman of the University of Surrey has suggested.

Astronomers at the most famous observatory in France fear that their view of the galaxy could be distorted by greasy fumes from a fast-food outlet due to open nearby.

Miscellany

Women smoking the same number of cigarettes as men are twice as likely to get lung cancer, Professor Diane Stover, head of the lung unit at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, New York, has told the American Thoracic Society. ( Daily Telegraph , Times )