From today's UK papers

Financial Times
Patti Waldmeir argues that a limited abuse of copyright can be a spur to scholarship, innovation and democracy.

Hank McKinnell, chief executive of Pfizer, argues that cheaper drugs would mean less money to spend on research and innovation.

Australia's national science agency has come up with a way of inspecting powerlines from the air to ensure trees and other vegetation are clear of the lines and so avoid the risk of bushfires.

The Guardian
The government should stop "sneering" at Britain's elite universities and concentrate instead on tackling the broader social problems that created an educational divide, Anthony Smith, president of Magdalen College and the Oxford don at the centre of the Laura Spence affair, has said.

The Independent
Alan Ryan, warden of New College, Oxford, writes that in quality assurance, counting counts only when we have learnt how to count what counts.

If big business increasingly pays the bills for university scientific research, what happens when they do not like what they pay for ?

The Times
Scientists at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich and at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, have found that tea helps to protect our DNA. 

Oxford academics are "working themselves to death" with 70-hour weeks, Anthony Smith, the president of Magdalen College, has said. 

Dark skin probably evolved not as protection against sunlight but as a defence against infectious diseases, according to research by James Mackintosh, an independent biologist in Sydney.

Miscellany
Four independent teams of scientists have failed to find any evidence to support the theory that the global Aids epidemic was ignited by a contaminated batch of polio vaccine distributed in Africa 40 years ago. ( Independent , Daily Telegraph; from Nature and Science )

The first complete fossil of a feathered dinosaur has been found in China, providing strong evidence that birds evolved from the ancient reptiles. ( Daily Telegraph , Times , Daily Mail , Guardian , Independent; from Nature )