Today's news

April 27, 2004


Students will need ID cards to get loans, says Clarke
Charles Clarke is expected to tell MPs today that students will be required to carry ID cards before they can obtain loans for university. The education secretary will back a controversial draft bill unveiled yesterday by home office minister David Blunkett which could make it compulsory for everyone in Britain aged 16 and over - except the Queen - to carry a biometric ID card by 2013.
( Independent, Financial Times, Times )

Tracy + Hepburn = best screen pairing, say chemists
In an effort to show how science applies to elements of everyday life, the Royal Society of Chemistry has investigated chemistry on the silver screen, with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn topping the bill. Like any chemical reaction, screen chemistry apparently requires two sets of very different ingredients that form a compound mixture containing all the right elements. In almost every successful partnership one side had qualities the other lacked. Some couples with admirable individual qualities produce a negative reaction when combined, just as they might in chemistry.
( Times )

Catapult stunt led to Oxford student's death
An Oxford University student who died in November 2002 after being hurled through the air by a catapult was the victim of "gross negligence", a court heard yesterday. Dino Yankov, 19, a first-year biochemistry student from Bulgaria and member of the Oxford Stunt Factory, fell short of the safety net and landed on the ground, Bristol Crown Court was told. The operators of the device deny the charge of manslaughter. The trial continues.
( Guardian, Daily Telegraph )

Cancer treatments will be tailored to patients' genes
Scientists at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, US, have analysed genetic differences between breast cancer patients so that treatments can be tailored towards a person's genetic make-up. The results of the study, published in the online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , show that high-risk cancer patients were identified with 80 per cent accuracy.
( Independent )

Creative university is sum of its arts
As the University of the Arts London prepares for its launch, opinions differ as to what the amalgamated institution should teach. A survey this week shows colleges and university arts departments in Britain agree on very little when it comes to the curriculum for future artists, except, bizarrely, black and white photography and silkscreen printing.
( Guardian )

Worried of Newport
Interview with James Lusty, vice-chancellor, University of Wales Newport and president of Higher Education Wales, the Welsh wing of Universities UK, from August.
( Guardian )

Letter: Study wiring, not media
Richard Horrocks of Bolton Institute suggests that parents counsel their children to choose a study route that gives rise to a career that enables debt repayment and property purchases. ( Daily Telegraph )

Squeezing a quart into a pint pot
Comment on the admissions difficulties that universities are facing.
( Evening Standard , April 26)

Q & A with Mandy Telford
Outgoing NUS president Mandy Telford answers questions on opposition to top-up fees and the funding of higher education.
( Evening Standard , April 26)

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