Tom Spurling Named FASTS President-elect to Serve as President-elect for One Year and Become President for 2006-7.    (30/11/04)  [More]

Peer Review and the US Presidential Election.    (25/11/04)  [More]

A Local Assessment of The International Standing of Australian Universities.    (24/11/04)

    Following the second annual release this past August of Shanghai Jiao Tong University's listing of the world's top 500 research universities and last month's assessment of the world's top 200 universities by The Times Higher Eduction Supplement, the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research of the University of Melbourne today released its twenty-seven page study. [More]

Melbourne University's Incoming Vice-Chancellor Drops the Other Shoe.    (23/11/04)

    A couple weeks ago TFW reported on an opinion piece written by Glyn Davis, currently v-c of Griffith University and The University of Melbourne's vice-chancellor to be come January, suggesting that Australia's university sector was in for radical change. And we alluded to an address he was scheduled to give to Melbourne's Department of Politics, "Where Next for Universities in Australia?" [More]

US National Academies Tell President Bush How They See It... So What?    (19/11/04)

    It won't come as news that the Bush Administration's practice of asking some appointees to scientific advisory panels about their political affiliations, voting records, and stance on issues within the panel's purview has been roundly questioned by critics. [More]

Google Gives a Nod to its Origins.    (19/11/04)

    Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University in the mid-1990s and developed a new system of internet search engine. Now they have introduced Google Scholar. [More]

CSIRO Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place.    (18/11/04)

    In July 2002 Australasian Science published an opinion piece by former CSIRO Chief Max Whitten decrying the organisation's decay. Now Peter Pockley writes, "Buried in the security policy of the Coalition [is] confirmation of the government’s push to reverse CSIRO’s once-treasured and statutory responsibility as a purely civil agency of science." [More]

University of Turin Scientists Employ Squeegees to Protest Berlusconi Governmental Reforms.    (18/11/04)  [More]

Minister Announces Allocation of $381 Million Over Five years to 1,387 New Research Projects from 2005.    (17/11/04)

     The Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, today announced that the Australian Research Council (ARC) has awarded nearly 1,400 grants for new Discovery Projects, Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development, Linkage Projects, Linkage International and Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities grants. [More]

UNSW's Levon Khachigian  Awarded 2004 Australasian Science Prize.    (17/11/04)

    Professor Levon Khachigian, a Senior Principal NHMRC Research Fellow and Head of the Transcription and Gene Targeting Laboratory of the Centre for Vascular Research at the University of NSW was yesterday the recipient of the Magazine Australasian Science's 2004 Prize. [More]

It's a Success, but it Won't Work.    (16/11/04)

    To be mounted on a specially modified Boeing 747 the infrared laser produces a beam the diameter of a basketball. with the intensity of 10,000 domestic light bulbs. [More]

Is the Comeuppance for the Wine Snob at Hand?    (15/11/04)

    When WS Gilbert's Lord High Executioner, Ko Ko sings: As some day it may happen that a victim must be found / I've got a little list--I've got a little list the wine snob isn't mentioned, but he should have been. Now Koen G. C. Weel... [More]

Bryan Gaensler, 1999 Young Australian of the Year, Talks About Working at Harvard's Department of Astronomy.    (13/11/04)

    In four days it will be exactly five years that Bryan Gaensler gave his Telstra Address to Australia's National Press Club luncheon in Canberra. [More]

Presidential Science Advisor, John Marburger Warns US Researchers Who Publicly Opposed George W. Bush's Re-election -- Wrong Message, Wrong Audience, Wrong Candidate.    (12/11/04)

    Science's Jeffrey Mervis, assisted by reporters Jocelyn Kaiser, Andrew Lawler, and David Malakoff, got an earful from 63-year-old applied physicist John Marburger III,  a former university president and head of Brookhaven National Laboratory, and since 2002 President Bush's science advisor. [More]

Griffith University VC (Soon to be Melbourne's) Airs His Views on University Reform.    (10/11/04)

    Before Glyn Davis became Vice-Chancellor of Queensland's Griffith University in 2002 he was Director-General of the Queensland Department of Premier and Cabinet under Peter Beattie. [More]

Grenoble Hosts 900 French Scientists Thrashing Out Approaches to French Science Policy Reform.    (09/11/04)

    The two-day meeting followed on last year's showdown between more than 2000 government lab directors and research team leaders and the French government when the scientists quit their administrative duties to protest funding and staffing cutbacks. [More]

On 26 November 2004 the European Council of Ministers, Representing the 25 Member States of the European Union, Will Discuss Whether and How the EU Will Support Basic Research.    (09/11/04)

    For the second time in three months the journal Science has asked the chair of the European Research Advisory Board and director of the Society in Science program at ETH Zürich, Helga Nowotny, to contribute its editorial -- this time with Wilhelm Krull, secretary general of the Volkswagenstiftung. [More]

Harvard Faculty to Expand.    (09/11/04) [More]

Over 700 New Zealand Scientists Protest Their Government's Research Policy.    (08/11/04)

    More than 700 of New Zealand's scientists have signed an open letter to the NZ Minister of  Science, Research and Technology expressing concern that New Zealand's core research capability is being jeopardised by current research structures and funding strategies. [More]

A Good Place to Work for Scientists.    (08/11/04)

    Theresa Tamkins writing in Today's The Scientist writes, "Best Places to Work | Oh, Canada!  Piece by piece, Canada is building a science-friendly infrastructure, and researchers are taking note." [More]

The Times Higher Education Supplement Ranks Six Australian Universities in World's Top 50.    (05/11/04)

    The sixteen page supplement lists what it considers to be the world's 200 best institutions of higher education and while many of those appearing appear in Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Institute of Higher Education ranking of the world's top 500 universities the order in places is very different. [More]

US President George W Bush Wins Second Term with a Popular Majority of 3.5 Million Votes (3%).    (04/11/04)

Rural America had little doubt as to whom it wanted to entrust the US Presidency and George W Bush won resounding margins in the small towns and rural areas. [More]

Just When You Thought Nobody Cared, Comes the Babbitt in Hobnailed Boots Back to the Garden.    (02/11/04)

    It's not unlikely that the re-elected Prime Minister, John Howard, had a word into the ear of reinstalled Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, regarding what he should do with and about Australia's Universities. [More]

Sydney University Opens its 3^rd Return Awards for Expatriate Researchers. [More]   (02/11/04)