From today's UK papers

Guardian

Nasa is preparing a $200m (£120m) robot spacecraft which will catch a piece of the sun and bring it back to Earth. Genesis will collect pristine 'building material', providing scientists with information about how it all started.

Financial Times

London's stranglehold on the nation's brain-power is creating a "deep geographical divide" in knowledge-based economic activity.

The expectations and values of MBA students in different parts of the world appear to differ sharply, according to a global survey.

Independent

In a new campaign the British National Temperance League is trying to persuade students to sign pledges of abstinence from alcohol.

An archaeologist and a historian have shown how the prim sections of post-medieval and Victorian society succeeded in expunging most of Britain's lewd street names.

Scientists at Newcastle University have devised a computer-designed haven to protect the biggest colony of red squirrels in England. Without it, the squirrels could die out by 2012.

The Millennium Dome may be turned into a biomedical research centre under £300m plans from the Wellcome Trust.

A court case that involved police gaining access to confidential medical records threatens to undermine a £20m national database to study the role of genes in disease, senior government advisers have been told.

Police searching for a female professor who was last seen leaving Reading university library on Thursday have described her disappearance as "very worrying".

Daily Telegraph

The American painter James McNeill Whistler has been exposed as an international arms smuggler. Glasgow University's centre for Whistler studies uncovered the painter's exploits while compiling 10,000 documents about him, to be published electronically in 2003 to commemorate the centenary of his death.

Giles Freeman Covington, a notorious murderer whose body was given to Oxford anatomy students for dissection more than 200 years ago, may soon be allowed to rest in peace.

Global average temperatures could rise by between 1.4C and 5.8C over the next century, according to the most authoritive report yet produced by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Smokers need to drink more than non-smokers before they start to feel relaxed, merry or drunk, a study by Texas A & M University shows.

Miscellany

Starting salaries for graduates are expected to reach nearly £20,000 in the coming year, despite uncertainty over the state of the economy. ( Financial Times , Independent )