By Cathy Davidson. Today, as I was waiting to cross a very busy intersection, a man jaywalked through. He was probably indigent, maybe homeless, mentally disabled, muttering loudly to himself. He was a bit out of control but clearly harmless. He was wearing high tops with both shoe laces untied. He kept tripping over them, almost falling. A man standing next to me saw this and leapt forward, shouting, "Hey buddy!" in the nicest tone of voice, and he gently took the man's arm and guided him to a bench by the bus stop. More...

Von Bernd Kramer. Wer sich vergeblich beworben hat, für den ist diese Zahl ein Schlag ins Gesicht: Mindestens 14.579 Studienplätze sind nach Recherchen von SPIEGEL ONLINE im laufenden Wintersemester unbesetzt geblieben; nicht etwa in Nischendisziplinen, für die es wenige Interessenten gibt, sondern in den in den besonders begehrten Fächern, die einer Zulassungsbeschränkung unterliegen. Mehr...

UNESCO and SciELO have published an anniversary publication to follow up the 15th anniversary of SciELO.
SciELO (The Scientific Electronic Library Online) had its origins in Brazil at around 1997 and has since been expanded to 16 additional countries, most in Latin America, the Caribbean, but also including Portugal, South Africa and Spain. In their model, authors do not need to pay or pay very little, being subsidized by public funds. Open access expert Jean-Claude Guédon argued in an article in Nature that with respect to open access this was “one of the more exciting projects not only from emergent countries, but also in the whole world”. More...

The Commission’s rechanneling of funds from its research programme Horizon 2020 to the Juncker plan sends out the wrong message and will harm the research community, according to Lesley Wilson
Lesley Wilson is the secretary-general of the European University Association ​The European University Association shares the European Commission’s belief that investment in Europe’s competitiveness is vital to our future success and supports efforts to address the investment gap. Such efforts, however, must not come at the expense of university research. Indeed, EUA is keen to convey the concerns of the university community in relation to the European Fund for Strategic Investments proposal as it stands, both with regard to the means and the processes. More...

At the Neth-ER conference ‘European Challenges, Dutch Contributions’ on January 26th, the president of Neth-ER, Frans van Vught presented Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sports, and Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, with the position paper ‘Neth-ER and the EU knowledge and innovation agenda to 2020’. The paper outlines the joint multiannual strategic priorities of Neth-ER members. More...