Today's news

Law is most popular course
Law this year received the most applications from students at 74,617, followed by computer science (68,557) and psychology (66,919), in the third instalment of the four-part Good University Guide.
(The Times) 

British Museum gives Iraq a cultural lifeline
The British Museum is to assist Iraq in recreating antiquities from one of the earliest libraries of the ancient world. However, the move will need approval by the UN’s sanctions committee in New York.
(The Times, The Independent)

Should doctors diagnose according to race?
When making a diagnosis, should a doctor take into account a patient’s race? Yes, says Sally Satel, a lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine, and author of PC, MD: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine.
(The Guardian)

Oscar Wilde ring stolen
A friendship ring given by Oscar Wilde to a fellow undergraduate engraved with a secret message of love has been stolen from Magdalen College, Oxford. The ring, valued at £35,000, was taken during a break-in at a study room at Magdalen, where Wilde was a student in the late 1870s.
(The Times, The Guardian)

When to kick out the manager
A Cambridge academic has devised a mathematical formula to solve one of football’s toughest problems: when to sack the manager. Chris Hope, a senior lecturer at Cambridge’s Judge Institute of Management, has calculated that a manager would keep his job if he maintained a career average exceeding 0.74 points per game.
(Daily Telegraph, The Times)

Fans are right: refs do favour home teams
Moaning football fans do have a point: referees really do tend to be harsh on the visiting team, a study at the University of Wolverhampton has found.
(The Times)

Inner ear offers clue to when whales first swam
A study of what makes whales dizzy has revealed that their ancestors first took to the water between 50 and 40 million years ago.
(Daily Telegraph, The Times)

Stalin had Britain’s Ace of Spies killed
The true story of how Stalin’s secret police killed Sydney Reilly, the “Ace of Spies”, has been released to the Public Record Office in Kew.
(Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror)

Soil DNA will help to fight superbugs
A genetic “recipe book” that will allow the creation of thousands of new antibiotics has been completed by scientists at the John Innes Centre in Norwich and the Sanger Institute in Cambridge. The genome of nature’s most potent medicine factory – a type of soil bacteria that produces two-thirds of all known antibiotics – has been mapped for the first time. Details of the genome sequence are published today in Nature.
(The Times, Financial Times)

How Kaiser Bill planned to invade the United States
Driven by a desire for world domination. Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German emperor, drew up plans to send an amphibious force of 100,000 troops to attack New York and Boston at the end of the 19th century, according to a military archive.
(Daily Telegraph, The Times, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror)

Bletchley Park mathematician dies
Bill Tutte, who was responsible for one of Bletchley Park’s greatest codebreaking achievements during the second world war, has died aged 84. Professor Tutte cracked the teleprinter cipher, known as Tunny, which Hitler used to communicate with his generals.
(Daily Telegraph, The Independent)

Trees at the root of US clean-up
Poplar trees are being used to clean up the environment in the US. Scientists at the University of Missouri-Rolla have proved that the trees can remove harmful contaminants from the soil and water through their extensive root systems.
(Financial Times)

British-Italian laser sandwich
Scientists from Cambridge, Pisa and Turin have developed a laser that could find uses in medical imaging, chemical and genetic analysis and telecommunications. The laser is the first to operate at terahertz frequencies, the researchers say in Nature.
(Financial Times)

Viruses help in nano-building
Researchers in the US have used viruses to create three-dimensional nano-structures. By genetically engineering viruses, they persuaded them to bind to tiny structures made of zinc sulphide, report the scientists from the University of Texas, Austin, in the journal Science.
(Financial Times)

Meter reads light more accurately
A meter developed in the US allows researchers to accurately measure the amount of light reaching the rod cells in the eyes. Most light meters calculate only the amount of light reaching the cone cells. The meter is described in the UK’s Institute of Physics journal Measurement Science and Technology.
(Financial Times)

Who is well read?
Don Quixote was yesterday voted the number one book by the world’s leading authors, who have compiled a list of the top 100 books of all time. But who has actually read Cervantes’ classic? And what about the other 99? Bookish types, including John Sutherland, professor of English at University College London, come clean.
(The Guardian)

Universities link with business
Thirteen London university institutions have got together on a website that aims to forge better links with business
www.knowledgebridge.co.uk
(Financial Times)