From today's UK papers

Financial Times

The new Learning and Skills Councils will be dominated by educationalists and other "vested interests" unless business is given more influence, business leaders have told the government.

The United Nations has launched a four-year effort by 1,500 leading scientists to map the world's ecosystems and produce what was termed "the first global report card on our environment" in a project called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

Mark Vernon writes that content quality, combined with strong instructional design, should be the hallmarks of the best e-learning systems.

John Lamb writes that the trend is towards a mix of online e-learning, along with tried-and-tested classroom techniques.

Rod Newing predicts that the next few years will see the emergence of large e-learning companies.

Joia Shillingford writes that short learning guides, via mobile devices, can provide useful reinforcement for people in training, as well as being a handy reference tool on the job.

The Guardian

Johnjoe McFadden, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey, writes that the human genome was only the beginning: the proteome project will unlock the secrets of life.

The Independent

Teachers' union leaders are demanding a rethink of the crucial maths tests for trainee teachers after students were penalised because of a computer error.

Robin Southgate, a product design graduate of Brunel University, has developed a toaster that dials a freephone number to get the weather forecast when you slot your bread in, and then burns the result into your bread while you wait.

The crippling bone disease osteoporosis is six times more likely to affect the siblings of sufferers, researchers at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary and Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre have found.

Daily Mail

In what must rank as one of the longest-running - and dullest- experiments of all time, scientists at the University of Queensland in Brisbane have spent more than 70 years monitoring a jar full of tar slowly dripping into a dish; eight drops have so far been recorded, although no one has managed actually to see a drop fall.

Scientists at the University of Illinois have come up with proof that too much thinking can be exhausting.

Daily Telegraph

John Clare says that schools are in crisis and that the government bars new teachers with an unnecessary test.

Miscellany   

Meat intended for human consumption is in danger of BSE contamination because of poor standards of sterilisation in slaughterhouses, Professor Brian Heap, the vice-president of the Royal Society, has warned. ( Independent , Daily Mail , Times )