From today's UK papers

Financial Times

Oxford University is to open the world's first internet institute in an effort to put Britain at the centre of global e-research after Dame Steve Shirley, founder of FI Group and one of Britain's richest women, donated £10m towards its creation.

Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal , is asking his readers to decide whether he should resign his part-time lectureship at Nottingham University, in protest at the university's acceptance of £3.8 million from British American Tobacco to fund an international centre for the study of corporate responsibility.

The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution has said that if the level of extremely fine soot particles produced by diesel and other fuels was cut by 5 per cent for the lifetime of the current British population, a total of 200,000 to 500,000 years of life would be gained.

Daily Telegraph

The ancient world's most foremost centre of higher learning, the Biblioteca Alexandrina, rebuilt in modern splendour, has opened in an effort to restore Egypt's reputation amid controversy in the country over a strict censorship regime against works deemed offensive to Islam.

The University of Abertay Dundee has announced the first honours degree in golf tourism, fuelling the row over the dumbing down of academic standards in higher education.

The Times

Mobile phones and text messaging are helping to make children aged seven to 11 the fattest generation ever to grow up in Britain, a study from the Leeds Metropolitan University shows.

Miscellany

Professor Al Gore has finished his stint as a teacher of journalism and received a decidedly mixed end-of-term report from his students. ( Independent , Guardian , Times )

Heading a football has been given a clean bill of health by American medical experts after new research that firmly rejects claims that it carries a significant risk of brain damage. ( Financial Times , Times )   

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