ETH top, Uni Zürich flop
Auf der neusten Rangliste der weltbesten Universitäten ist die ETH in die Top 20 vorgerückt. Die Uni Zürich dagegen ist zurückgefallen - zum vierten Mal in Folge.
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€70 billion on the horizon for European researchers
The European Union's Horizon 2020 research program will offer researchers a generous source of funds for projects to resolve the challenges of today's society.
NSF invests $20 million in large projects to keep US cyberspace secure and trustworthy
NSF invests $20 million in large projects to keep the nation's cyberspace secure and trustworthy: Three large "Frontier" collaborative projects highlight efforts to tackle fundamental challenges in cybersecurity.
Ein Leben lang Feministin
Beate Schücking ist eine von sehr wenigen Frauen an der Spitze einer deutschen Universität. Sie wurde bekannt, als die Uni Leipzig beschloss, Hochschullehrer als "Professorin" zu bezeichnen.
South African universities 'racially skewed'?
Only one in 20 black South Africans succeeds in higher education, and more than half who enrol at university drop out before completing their degree, according to research published this week.
Les étudiants chinois moins nombreux à vouloir étudier aux Etats-Unis
La ruée vers les écoles américaines de tous les bons élèves du monde entier s'essouffle, d'après le Council of graduate schools. Sauf pour les Brésiliens et les Indiens, qui sont toujours plus nombreux à faire leur migration académique.
Latvian scientists look for the exit as funding situation worsens
A team leader at the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis in Riga is looking to leave Latvia in search of a paying job in science, trying to escape what he calls the 'catastrophic' situation in research.
Researchers at Asian universities attract more industry funding than American counterparts
Researchers at Asian universities attract more industry funding than American counterparts
The World Academic Summit Innovation Index finds that university scientific researchers from many Asian nations are attracting substantially more industry funding per researcher than their American counterparts.
Decline in government funding for science and technology in Canada
The amount of government funding for science and technology in Canada is expected to decline for another year.
Ivy League's huge debts revealed
Eleven of the most selective universities in the US have a combined $26 billion (£16.8 billion) in debt on the books, according to a new analysis.
Error and Discovery: Why Repeating Can Be New
The fascinating story of the discovery of nuclear fission began with an error that earned Enrico Fermi (see picture) a Nobel Prize for the apparent but incorrect discovery of the transuranic elements. Careful repetition and extension of the experiments finally led to the correct interpretation by Hahn, Meitner, Strassmann, Frisch, and Bohr as an effect from nuclear fission of the “small impurity” of (0.7 %) contained in natural uranium.
The death of American universities
As universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is being imposed by force. The following is an edited transcript (prepared by Robin J. Sowards) of remarks given by Noam Chomsky last month to a gathering of members and allies of the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, Penn.
In Academia, Women Collaborate Less With Their Same-Sex Juniors
Study of psychology departments finds that female full professors are less likely to co-author papers with lower ranking women
Our PhD employment problem, part I
Our PhD employment problem is very simply described: there's a mismatch between the number of graduate students earning doctorates each year and the number of tenure-track faculty positions available to them. There are too few tenure-track jobs for the PhD recipients who are qualified to compete for them.
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Twitter Offers Entire Data Pool, but Some Wary of Diving In
With the announcement of its new Data Grants program, Twitter is inviting academic researchers to propose experiments that take advantage of the full "firehose" of its 500 million daily tweets. But some researchers worry that the terms of the deal give Twitter ownership of their ideas.
Track and trace
Track and trace
More than half a million researchers have now signed up for an online science passport: a unique 16-digit identity number, with an accompanying online profile, from the Open Researcher and Contributor ID ( ORCID) project. There, researchers can maintain an up-to-date record of their professional pursuits.
Room for increased ambitions? Governing ‘breakthrough research’ in Norway 1990-2013
A newly released report recommends a simplified set of funding instruments at the Research Council of Norway, better strategic planning at the universities, and less detailed guiding principles from the ministries.
Computing a winner, fusion a loser in U.S. science budget
Follow our coverage of the 2015 budget request to Congress
Wellcome Trust launches mosaicscience.com, a longform science magazine under a Creative Commons license
Wellcome Trust launches mosaicscience.com, a longform science magazine under a Creative Commons license
The UK-based Wellcome Trust, the world's second-largest funder of medical research behind the Gates Foundation, has launched a free online magazine called Mosaic that is dedicated to longform science writing. The site will be run by former Times science editor Mark Henderson - who was involved with a monthly science magazine published by the Times...
How to level the playing field for women in science
The good news: Many more women than ever before are completing Ph.D.'s in the sciences. Back in 2000, when I was appointed the first female dean of the graduate division at the University of California at Berkeley, I was delighted to learn that about half of the incoming doctoral students in the biological sciences-and more than 30 percent in heavily male fields like chemistry and engineering-were women.
Japan adopts state secrets law
Academics fear secrecy will hinder research into the science behind policy decisions.
Are research sandpits a good way to allocate public funding to research?
The EPSRC allocates millions to fund research at residential workshops.
Pondering science publishing
Panelists and attendees at the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting considered the future of peer review and journal impact factors.
Geoghegan-Quinn surveys Europe's science horizon
On the eve of a new funding era, the European Union's research chief tells scientists what to expect
Global R&D funding 2014 forecast
Battelle and R&D Magazine jointly released the 2014 Global R&D Funding Forecast indicating that the combination of private and public global R&D spending was flat for 2013.
Tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact
Typically papers appearing in journals with large values of the IF receive a high weight in such evaluations. However, at the end of the day one is interested in assessing the impact of individuals, rather than papers. Here we introduce Author Impact Factor (AIF), which is the extension of the IF to authors.
How academia resembles a drug gang
The academic job market is structured in many respects like a drug gang, with an expanding mass of outsiders and a shrinking core of insiders.
Shigeaki Kato notches five more retractions, including one in Nature
An endocrinologist who resigned from the University of Tokyo in March 2012 amid an investigation that concluded 43 of his papers should be retracted, has retracted five more papers. The newest is in this week's Nature.
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