NUS debates reform
Scottish and Welsh students may have more power devolved to them under plans to reform the National Union of Students. Reform will be one of the main motions being discussed at the union's annual...
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We support a BHEC
The story declaring that opposition from the Standing Conference of Principals has scuppered the formation of an over-arching British Higher Education Council is not based on any position held by...
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Variations on the same meme
Whether memetics ("The forget meme not theory", THES, February 26) is a serious academic discipline or only an intellectual contagion can be debated. What is certain is that it was only the word "...
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Variations on the same meme
As a non-expert, the idea of memes seems essentially sterile - it does not tell us anything that is not obvious to start with. In fact, the BIDS Institute for Scientific Information science citation...
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Variations on the same meme
The notion that ideas concatenate into neat parcels that are "transmitted" in the "frighteningly simple" way Susan Blackmore describes is absurd. It is bizarre to think that "tunes, ideas, catch-...
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Variations on the same meme
I would support Robert Aunger's call for evidence for the meme hypothesis - except that even this seems a category mistake. Meme theory seems at best an analogy, which, of course, cannot be proved or...
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Variations on the same meme
If, as Susan Blackmore says, ideas survive by natural selection as "memes", is the theory of memes itself also a meme? If it is, it cannot be a scientific one because it would in that case be...
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League games
You were obviously annoyed by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service denying you easy access to information that UCAS stakeholders (as represented on the board) have declared as...
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New life in e-books
Academics cannot get their books published. Is electronic publishing the answer? asks Robert Darnton Are scholarly monographs -learned treatises on specific subjects - in danger of extinction,...
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Water war against hormones
Ulster University researchers are using a harmless, cheap white pigment found in toothpaste in a revolutionary technique for removing the female sex hormone oestrogen from the water supply. Oestrogen...
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Drop in homicide rate probed
Historians at York University are trawling 200 years of court records to understand the decline in homicide rates in the 17th century. According to Jim Sharpe, professor of history at York, homicide...
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Bid to stop suicides
Universities and colleges need to be more open about the risk of student suicide and self-harm to overcome the stigma attached to seeking help. The advice is in a report presented this week to the...
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Ion mountain
(Photograph) - Ion mountain: spectacularly rendered by Glasgow printmaker Murray Robertson, this 3D computer plot of ionisation energies is part of Visual Elements, an art-science collaboration...
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Net speeds to next level
The high-speed internet moved a stage closer last week with the demonstration in the United States of virtual surgery, broadcast-quality video and terabyte-size data library transfers over a national...
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Copy deal embraces scanning
Lecturers creating electronic course packs will be able to clear copyright on material scanned in from printed books and journals, under a licensing scheme launched last week by the Copyright...