From today's UK papers

Higher education spin-offs push Britain up entrepreneurial league
Spin-off companies created from higher education institutions have risen sharply in number, challenging the view that British universities are less entrepreneurial than North American ones. A government-sponsored survey published today will show that 199 enterprises were established in 1999-2000 to exploit knowledge from academic research, compared with an average of fewer than 70 annually over the previous five years. Financial Times

Labour softens stance on grammar schools
The Labour government will finally embrace grammar schools today when it announces a project to invest in partnerships with local comprehensives to raise standards. Times , Financial Times

Chinese to outrank English on internet
Chinese will outrank English as the most-used language on the worldwide web by 2007, according to forecasts cited yesterday at a United Nations symposium on multilingual internet addresses. Financial Times

Enzyme menace pinpointed in apple-shaped people
Scientists from Edinburgh University and Harvard Medical School have solved one of the great mysteries of metabolic medicine: why apple-shaped people, who put on weight around the waist, are more prone to heart disease and diabetes than their pear-shaped counterparts, whose fat is packed around their hips. The culprit turns out to be an obscure enzyme that makes cortisol, a steroid hormone, inside fat cells. Financial Times

Bacteria defeated by nasal spray
A nasal spray with the potential to prevent a wide range of bacterial infections is to begin human trials soon following a breakthrough by American scientists at Rockefeller University. Times , Daily Mail

British vaccine fights malaria scourge
A revolutionary vaccine against malaria has successfully completed its first set of human trials in Africa, raising the prospect of an effective means of preventing a disease that kills more than 1 million people every year, the British Medical Research Council Laboratories has announced. Times

Schizophrenia link to lack of ethnic community
Levels of schizophrenia among black people may depend on the size of the ethnic minority communities in which they live, according to a study published by the Institute of Psychiatry today. Guardian

Babies more at risk when born at end of shifts
Babies born at night and at the start of the working day when hospital staff change shifts are less likely to survive than babies born later in the day, a survey of more than 2million births has found. Independent

DNA tests clear Boston Strangler convict
The real Boston Strangler is almost certainly still at large, it was announced yesterday, after DNA tests on one of the victims cleared Albert DeSalvo, the man accused of killing 13 women in the 1960s. Guardian

Viagra dose to help tigers breed
Chinese zoos will give Viagra to South China tigers with no sex drive in a last-ditch effort to raise the numbers of the highly endangered species. Independent

Walter the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was named as the painter Walter Sickert yesterday by crime writer Patricia Cornwall. She declared that the impressionist artist, whose works are displayed in museums around the world, was the man who killed and mutilated five prostitutes. Daily Mail