Autonomy falls prey to performance culture
Staff complain of 'insidious control-freakery' as Leeds Met moves to set standards for attitudes, commitment and behaviour. Phil Baty reports Leeds Metropolitan University has angered academics with...
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24/7 demand leaves staff besieged
Stress levels mount as demands on academics soar, writes Tony Tysome. Andrew Devlin has reached the end of his tether. So maddening is the constant barrage of inquiries, requests and demands from his...
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Welsh wind initiative
Aberystwyth University academics have developed computer technology they hope will lead to the fast-tracking of new wind farms. The 3-D software program, from staff in the university's Visualisation...
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A safe bet for bats
Radar could be used to stop bats colliding with wind turbines. Aberdeen University bat experts Paul Racey and Barry Nicholls have found that bats do not forage in areas where electromagnetic...
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Laugh loud, cough up
Psychologists at Kent and Liverpool universities have found that laughter increases altruism towards strangers, a finding that may have important implications for charities. The study, conducted by...
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Learn pig geography
A survey of pigs has prompted archaeologists at Durham and Oxford universities to reconsider both the origins of the first Pacific colonists and the routes taken by the first migrants to explore the...
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Facts behind the face
A flaw that has lain hidden for decades in classic experiments into how people recognise faces has been exposed by Bangor University neuroscientist Guillaume Thierry. The research, published in the...
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Stone dead together
New evidence of the brutish and short lives of Stone Age Britons has emerged thanks to work by academics from the University of Central Lancashire and Cardiff University. Carbon dating of human...
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Artwork with mite
Researchers at University College London have used their expertise in dust mites to help an artist highlight the hidden danger the bugs represent for people with asthma. Tadj Oreszczyn and Marcella...
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A life on the fiddle helped to make dream gig a reality
Irish folk music has always been close to Martin Dowling's heart, so much so that he married a flutist and honeymooned in Ireland on the proceeds of a couple of research grants. And now Dr Dowling,...
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Psychology A level joins the sciences
New status will boost university-level teaching, the British Psychological Society hears. Faisal al Yafai reports. Reclassifying A-level psychology as a science will benefit the teaching of the...
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The masters who married modernism with magic
On the 40th anniversary of One Hundred Years of Solitude , Roberto González Echevarría charts the extraordinary recent history of Latin American literature. Latin American literature specialists...
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Meet and veg: that's our society on a plate
Why are humans the only creatures to share food with strangers? Karen Gold ponders over a degustation of ancient dishes with an archaeologist. To the squeamish and the vegetarian: look away now. For...
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Pirates and the Middle Passage
Popular accounts of piracy tend to overlook its close links with slavery. Richard Sanders considers how one dark trade fostered another. In December last year, the Museum of Science and Industry in...
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Boom time for 'the poor man's air force'
From central Baghdad to America's heartland, the car bomb is now the terrorist's weapon of choice, an urban historian tells Huw Richards. Almost nightly, television news broadcasts, especially those...