NonHundreds of French scientists resigned from their administrative functions in protest at a funding crisis that’s forcing many young researchers to leave France.
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The directors of 2,000 research centers voted to carry through their threat to step down. Thousands of scientists then marched to the Ministry of Research, where letters of resignation were handed over to officials. The mass resignation was largely symbolic, as the scientists will continue to carry out their scientific duties and receive full pay. However, they warned that the work of many laboratories would suffer. The vote was the culmination of a protest movement that sprang up in January around a petition that has now been signed by more than 60,000 of France’s 105,000 public sector researchers, including 5,000 laboratory directors. The group says the French government has allowed research to slip as a national priority and that poor pay and job prospects are creating a growing brain drain to the US, Canada and Japan. In 2000, about 3,000 science graduates left for the US alone.
New elements
Russian and American scientists created two new “superheavy” elements for chemistry’s periodic table of elements. A few atoms of the newly discovered elements, 113 and 115, existed for a split second after their creation in a particle accelerator. These elements’ properties are unusual in that they go far beyond the 92 elements occurring naturally on Earth. Such tiny amounts of these superheavies will probably never have an everyday use. However, their creation substantially adds to scientific research to establish a single theory to explain the physical forces governing the behavior of all matter.
Oxford fakery
An Oxford University student bluffed his way to China by posing as a lecturer. He now faces legal action after his employers discovered his true identity and the Beijing police launched an investigation into his disappearance. Matthew Richardson, a 23-year-old engineering undergraduate from St Peter’s College, Oxford, arrived back in England from his trip to China after delivering the first part of the advanced economics course to business PhD students before “doing a runner”. Mr Richardson made his way through the first day and a half of lectures by reading from a high school textbook, but then lost his nerve and disappeared half way through the day, before boarding his flight home a day later. His disappearance was so abrupt that it sparked an investigation by Beijing police. Warnborough College, the Irish registered ‘global university’, which claimed it had unwittingly employed the undergraduate to make the trip, is investigating the incident.
Price hike
The Nigerian government backed down from a plan to increase the cost of housing at public universities by more than 10,000 percent, following student demonstrations across the country. Student leaders said they were protesting what they described as the Nigerian government’smove to commercialize education to the detriment of poor Nigerian students. “We’re not happy with the way the Minister of Education sent the directive without consulting Nigeria’s students,” said Nigerian Student Union President, Tony Nwoye. “Nigeria’s university students do not want to be left in a state of despair.”
Green power
Researchers at the University of Minnesota (US) said that for the first time they’ve produced hydrogen from ethanol in a prototype reactor small and efficient enough to heat homes and power cars. Currently, producing hydrogen from ethanol requires large refineries and amounts of fossil fuels. This new reactor is a small (60cm) device that creates hydrogen from corn-based ethanol. The researchers say their reactor can produce hydrogen exclusively from ethanol and do it inexpensively enough that people can then buy hydrogen fuel cells for personal use. Hydrogen does not emit any greenhouse gases
Non
Hundreds of French scientists resigned from their administrative functions in protest at a funding crisis that’s forcing many young researchers to leave France. The directors of 2,000 research centers voted to carry through their threat to step down. Thousands of scientists then marched to the Ministry of Research, where letters of resignation were handed over to officials. The mass resignation was largely symbolic, as the scientists will continue to carry out their scientific duties and receive full pay. However, they warned that the work of many laboratories would suffer. The vote was the culmination of a protest movement that sprang up in January around a petition that has now been signed by more than 60,000 of France’s 105,000 public sector researchers, including 5,000 laboratory directors. The group says the French government has allowed research to slip as a national priority and that poor pay and job prospects are creating a growing brain drain to the US, Canada and Japan. In 2000, about 3,000 science graduates left for the US alone.
New elements
Russian and American scientists created two new “superheavy” elements for chemistry’s periodic table of elements. A few atoms of the newly discovered elements, 113 and 115, existed for a split second after their creation in a particle accelerator. These elements’ properties are unusual in that they go far beyond the 92 elements occurring naturally on Earth. Such tiny amounts of these superheavies will probably never have an everyday use. However, their creation substantially adds to scientific research to establish a single theory to explain the physical forces governing the behavior of all matter.
Oxford fakery
An Oxford University student bluffed his way to China by posing as a lecturer. He now faces legal action after his employers discovered his true identity and the Beijing police launched an investigation into his disappearance. Matthew Richardson, a 23-year-old engineering undergraduate from St Peter’s College, Oxford, arrived back in England from his trip to China after delivering the first part of the advanced economics course to business PhD students before “doing a runner”. Mr Richardson made his way through the first day and a half of lectures by reading from a high school textbook, but then lost his nerve and disappeared half way through the day, before boarding his flight home a day later. His disappearance was so abrupt that it sparked an investigation by Beijing police. Warnborough College, the Irish registered ‘global university’, which claimed it had unwittingly employed the undergraduate to make the trip, is investigating the incident.
Price hike
The Nigerian government backed down from a plan to increase the cost of housing at public universities by more than 10,000 percent, following student demonstrations across the country. Student leaders said they were protesting what they described as the Nigerian government’smove to commercialize education to the detriment of poor Nigerian students. “We’re not happy with the way the Minister of Education sent the directive without consulting Nigeria’s students,” said Nigerian Student Union President, Tony Nwoye. “Nigeria’s university students do not want to be left in a state of despair.”
Green power
Researchers at the University of Minnesota (US) said that for the first time they’ve produced hydrogen from ethanol in a prototype reactor small and efficient enough to heat homes and power cars. Currently, producing hydrogen from ethanol requires large refineries and amounts of fossil fuels. This new reactor is a small (60cm) device that creates hydrogen from corn-based ethanol. The researchers say their reactor can produce hydrogen exclusively from ethanol and do it inexpensively enough that people can then buy hydrogen fuel cells for personal use. Hydrogen does not emit any greenhouse gases
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