science wire

Building the future with BRICs
A major conference examining how the emergence of Brazil, Russia, India and China as leading world powers should be accommodated by the international community will take place at Cambridge University later this month.

Sussex celebrates 50 years in India

New President of the British Sociological Association
Professor John Holmwood from The University of Nottingham has been appointed President of the British Sociological Association (BSA).

China in perspective
Professor David Goodman, Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Sydney, will speak about Chinese perspectives on globalisation at Leeds on 1 February 2012.

Guantánamo ten years on - necessity or troublesome legacy?
Guantánamo ten years on - necessity or troublesome legacy? In 2002, the United States of America opened a detention camp at a military base on a part of Cuba.

Violence Prevention
A successful violence prevention model developed at Cardiff University is set to be implemented in the Dutch capital Amsterdam.

Anticipating public disorder
Current police intelligence practices could miss community tension and large scale criminality, according to analysis by the Universities' Police Science Institute.

Extreme sleepover: the importance of being there
Tomorrow we launch a series of 12 articles by Cambridge researchers who tell us about the unfamiliar places where they've spent the night in the course of their work.

Human skull study causes evolutionary headache
20 Dec 2011 Scientists studying a unique collection of human skulls have shown that changes to the skull shape thought to have occurred independently through separate evolutionary events may have actually precipitated each other. Researchers at the Universities of Manchester and Barcelona examined 390 skulls from the Austrian town of Hallstatt and found evidence that the human skull is highly integrated, meaning variation in one part of the skull is linked to changes throughout the skull.

Financial help for social work training at Nottingham
PA 391/11 People who apply for professional social work courses at The University of Nottingham are being urged to take advantage of bursaries which have been protected from government cuts for the next academic year.

Social media ‘not to blame’ for inciting rioters
08 Dec 2011 A study of 2.4 million Twitter messages from the time of the riots has found that politicians and other commentators were wrong to claim the website played an important role in inciting and organising the disturbances.

Island language in a sea of change
Norman languages spoken in the Channel Islands for a thousand years are now severely endangered. Cambridge linguist Mari Jones has been analysing the languages and tracing why they have declined.

Recreating ‘The Great Escape’
First it was the Dambusters raid, now Cambridge University's Hugh Hunt has helped to recreate 'The Great Escape' from Germany's infamous Stalag Luft III.

New guidance for longer-term management of self-harm issued
The healthcare guidance body NICE has today published a new clinical guideline on the longer-term care of adults, children and young people who self-harm.

University of Nottingham extends science collaborations in China
The University of Nottingham has signed a collaboration agreement with the China Guanghua Science and Technology Foundation, based in Beijing.

Communication Power in the Network Society
The world-renowned sociologist, Professor Manuel Castells, is to be the second Humanitas Visiting Professor in Media at the University of Cambridge, from 16 to 21 November 2011.

Degree education ’more equal’ than league tables claim
A new study suggests a competitive market for university students which uses standardised information about courses to highlight differences in ‘quality' is misleading.

Bristol archaeologist publishes book on the gold of Ancient Panama
A lavishly-illustrated book on the pre-Columbian goldwork of Panama has been published by Nicholas Saunders, lecturer in the University of Bristol's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Half of British workforce ill-treated in past two years
One million Britons experienced workplace violence in the last two years, while millions more were subjected to intimidation, humiliation and rudeness, new research has shown. Surprisingly, managers and professionals in well-paid full-time jobs are among the groups most at risk. The study by Plymouth and Cardiff Universities also shows that conventional employment policies are failing to deal with workplace ill-treatment.

Maps illustrate world population changes
31 October 2011 Maps illustrate world population changes A series of maps demonstrating the distribution and changing trends of the world´s population have been created at the University of Sheffield. The three maps were developed by Benjamin Hennig and Professor Danny Dorling from the University of Sheffield´s Department of Geography as part of a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Target exploitative employers says forced labour report
An increased focus by government on tackling exploitative employers and bridging visas for victims are two of the key recommendations of a newly-published paper into forced labour.

Understanding mid-life suicide
Mid life is the peak time for committed relationships, parenthood and work responsibilities. While there is widespread concern about suicide by young people, UK suicide rates are in fact highest in the 40-44 age group.

Concern over accuracy of suicide rates in England and Wales
07 Oct 2011 The increasing use of “narrative verdicts” by coroners in England and Wales may be leading to greater underestimation of suicide rates, warn experts.

Palestinian Christians to speak at University
PA 299/11 A group of Palestinian Christians will share their experiences of the Arab Israeli conflict and what it is like to live among the small and declining Christian population in the Middle East at an event at The University of Nottingham next week.

Glasgow debaters head for China
Debaters from Glasgow University Union are heading to Beijing after qualifying to be part of a European team that will pit their skills against China on 24-29th September.

Nottingham to lead new Sino-UK research venture
A pioneering new centre will train the researchers of the future — and help to deepen links between the UK and China.

GPs divided on targets system
Government rewards for meeting targets have divided GPs, with some saying that they lead to doctors being too concerned with box-ticking to tackle fully patients' problems, new research says.

Professor Ruth Pearson’s work celebrated
The work and achievements of two of the UK's leading feminist intellectuals will be celebrated at a special event at the university this week.

Ten years on from 9/11, research calls for counter-terrorist policing to be held accountable
A decade after the global tragedy of 9/11, a groundbreaking pan-European research project led by the University of Birmingham is calling for increased accountability and tougher legal restrictions on surveillance and detection technologies.

New scoring system can better predict life expectancy in cancer patients
University of Manchester researchers have developed a new scoring system that can better predict how long patients with advanced cancer are likely to survive than current prognosis methods. The study, carried out with colleagues at St George's, University of London, and published on the British Medical Journal's website, will provide clinicians with extra tools to predict how long patients have to live.