Financial Times

Top universities are urging students to take the new AS-level exams to show that they are not limited to the traditional model of three A-levels in the arts, sciences or languages.

IBM has awarded a $600,000 (?430,000) grant to the 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Glasgow to investigate the construction of semiconductor devices less than a tenth the size of existing devices.

A new instrument invented at the Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Italy lets scientists measure the polarisation of X-rays coming from black holes and neutron stars.

The Guardian

Online training works best when it mimics the classroom environment.

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The Independent

The parrots of the world are suffering such a sustained poaching onslaught for the pet trade that many are on the road to extinction, a study from the 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Maryland suggests.

Peter Scott, vice-chancellor of Kingston 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ, regrets that the future of our universities was not an issue during the election campaign.

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Daily Mail

Robin Southgate, a design student at Brunel 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ, has come up with a toaster that burns the day's weather forecast into each slice.

Scientists at the 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Illinois say they have developed a lie detector that cannot be fooled.

Daily Telegraph

Hornets are master builders who use the insect equivalent of a surveyor's spirit level to ensure that their nests are aligned correctly, scientists from Tel Aviv 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ, Israel, have found.

The Times

Scientists at the 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Queensland who have spent 70 years watching "solid" pitch drip through a funnel are tipped to win one of the Ig Nobel Prizes, awarded each year by scientists at Harvard 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ for "achievements that cannot, or should not, be reproduced".

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Miscellany

Head teachers have sent a letter to David Blunkett calling for an urgent inquiry into the "unreasonable demands" being put on pupils by the new sixth-form exams. ( Independent , Daily Mail , Daily Telegraph .)

Scientists have been wrong for decades about the type of potato blight that caused the Irish famine in the 1840s, DNA analysis at North Carolina State 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ has revealed.  ( Daily Telegraph , Times )

Researchers at Duke 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ in North Carolina say a 260-million-year-old reptile was the first animal to feed itself by chewing up living plants. ( Guardian , Daily Telegraph ; from Nature )