Researchers from the University of East Anglia have been flying into storms across the UK to help predict weather more accurately.

In a specially-adapted passenger jet, the group has measured the properties of high winds and rain which have hit the country in recent weeks.

The project aims to improve forecasting techniques.

The condensation and evaporation of water in storms is thought to influence how the weather develops and moves.

The research is led by the Natural Environment Research Council’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS).

Prof Ian Renfrew, from the University of East Anglia, said storm research from the flights is vital

Along with 16 aircrew, the scientists change flight direction as the storm builds.

Using specialised equipment, the teams analyse the winds, humidity, temperature and cloud properties.

The group flew into a storm over Scotland in early December, as well as high winds over the south west of England in November.

Prof Ian Renfrew, of UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, said: “The observations we can obtain from these research aircraft flights are vital for working out how these storms work and how we can simplify some of the crucial processes for inclusion in our forecast models.”

Certain issues were foreseeable for the president of the University of Texas at Austin, the state’s largest and arguably most prestigious public university. State lawmakers were heading into a legislative session with budget axes at the ready, and nationally there were questions about the value of higher education.

Then, in early February, when he should have been testifying at the Capitol about the university’s financial needs, Mr. Powers suffered a pulmonary embolism. He was in the hospital for a week.

It was the first struggle in a year marked by high-profile battles involving Mr. Powers — to some, the university’s very own Dumbledore; to others, a particularly large bee in the bonnet of higher education reformers.

“How you do in challenging times is more important than how you do in easy times,” Mr. Powers said Wednesday in an interview with The Texas Tribune, acknowledging that the last 12 months fell into the challenging category.

Most recently, on Dec. 8, Mr. Powers abruptly demanded — and received — the resignation of Lawrence Sager as dean of the School of Law. Mr. Powers, who had formerly held the post, said the move was necessary to quell unrest among a deeply divided faculty. “You can’t have a unit be productive, frankly, both on the teaching and on the research side, if there’s not a sense of common enterprise,” he said. “And for whatever reason, that has broken down.”

Mr. Powers and Stefanie A. Lindquist, the interim dean of the law school, are now trying to calm the waters. Mr. Sager’s abrupt departure put an uncomfortable spotlight on the strained personal relationship between the two men, and it has also drawn scrutiny of the role private foundations play in the university’s finances.

Tensions at the law school spiked following the distribution of 75 pages of documents requested from the university by three faculty members. The records, which have since been made public online, reveal complaints about gender equity at the school and detail the use of money from the University of Texas Law School Foundation, a separate nonprofit organization, to supplement faculty salaries — including a $500,000 “forgivable loan” made in 2009 to Mr. Sager.

A day after Mr. Sager stepped down, Francisco Cigarroa, chancellor of the University of Texas System, called for a review of how “funds flow to the law school from the foundation” and “how these decisions are made” in order to “enhance processes, procedures and controls for those transactions in the future.” Dr. Cigarroa said the review’s findings would help establish “clear and transparent guidelines” for all the university’s institutions and affiliated foundations.

The law school revelation has provided fodder for groups already critical of the university’s financial management. The fact that Mr. Powers’s and Mr. Sager’s accounts of who knew about the loan differ — Mr. Powers said he did not; Mr. Sager said it was his “clear understanding” that he did — is a “cause for concern” that highlights a need for greater transparency, said Thomas Lindsay, the director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Higher Education.

“In a time when there’s real questioning of the motives of large institutions, this sort of stuff doesn’t help,” said Mr. Lindsay, a recent hire by the center, which has close ties to Gov. Rick Perry and provided the fuel for the debate last spring over the public university’s productivity.

Not long after Mr. Powers was discharged from the hospital in February, Gene Powell, the new Perry-appointed chairman of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, hired Rick O’Donnell, a former director of Colorado’s department of higher education, as a special adviser. Mr. O’Donnell’s employment was terminated after 49 days.

But Mr. O’Donnell’s provocative questioning of the value of academic research and his ties to the Texas Public Policy Foundation — which had promoted a set of seven higher education proposals that many academics found misguided — prompted questions about the direction in which the system was headed and significant backlash from well-heeled alumni. So did the arrival of three new regents appointed by Mr. Perry, whose staff members referred to the group as their “kick-ass regents.”

The furor reached such heights that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and the House speaker, Joe Straus, both Republicans, created a new joint oversight committee focused on higher education governance and transparency.

At a recent hearing of the committee, Senator Judith Zaffirini, Democrat of Laredo and the co-chairwoman, asked Mr. Powell if he had any intention of firing Mr. Powers — something Mr. Powers said was “not something I spend much time worrying about.” (Mr. Powell said he did not intend to fire Mr. Powers.)

In August, Dr. Cigarroa unveiled a new framework for the University of Texas System that was embraced by both sides, and tempers cooled. But in September, Mr. Powers still referred to the higher education community as “a house divided” in his State of the University address. He said this week that “divisions remain over what’s the right direction to go” across the state and the nation.

On the campus, support for Mr. Powers is far-reaching. A performance review prepared by University of Texas System staff members for Dr. Cigarroa and the board in late spring noted: “There is a tangible pride in what is being achieved, shared by all, and campus-wide appreciation and support of President Powers. Such universal support is rare on a campus, but suffice to say that at U.T. Austin, Bill Powers has earned it through his exemplary leadership.”

But the University of Texas does not exist in a vacuum, and sometimes other campuses can create problems. In addition to Mr. Powers’s other dramas, the football team played what could be its very last Thanksgiving Day matchup against its longtime rival Texas A&M after the Aggies’ move to the Southeastern Conference. “There has not been a meeting that says, ‘O.K., that question has been decided,’ ” Mr. Powers said, adding, “We try to deal with issues that we’ve got to deal with now.”

Perhaps in another year — one without continuing upheaval over the nature of public higher education or legislative budget cuts or an unpleasant regime change at the law school — such a significant break from tradition might rank higher.

“Would I have guessed there would be all of those in one year? That’s my job,” Mr. Powers said. “Hopefully, I won’t have a pulmonary embolism next year.”

Via NYTimes

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated that they are “passionate about providing all of our children with an education that will enable them to succeed in a globally competitive economy where knowledge and innovation are more important than ever,” in a press release found on ED.gov, the Education Department’s website.

Most of the activities listed for the week involved information sessions on international internships and education abroad programs. The University’s Honor Program held an event concerning the CUA Oxford Program on Thursday for honor students on campus who are considering the program.

Some events that were held on campus include an Education Abroad Social that took place on Wednesday by the CUA Global Ambassadors and the CUA Cultural Thanksgiving Potluck on Thursday hosted by Campus Activities, Campus Ministry and the Center for Global Education.

The number of University students who have decided to go abroad next spring has increased around 13.4% since last spring. The University “is sending 144 students to study overseas this coming spring,” said Tanith Fowler Corsi, Assistant Vice President for Global Education at the University.

There are also many international students who have enrolled in the University this year. “This fall, we have approximately 440 international students (both undergrad and grad), which represents an increase of approximately 4.5% in the past year,” said Fowler Corsi.

Fowler Corsi also said that, “the University’s participation in International Education Week showcases our efforts to promote programs that prepare American students for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study and learn in the United States,” according to a University press release.

At the University of Missouri, a leaked classroom video that went viral in the spring and triggered an uproar on conservative media has prompted what may be the first restrictions on students recording lectures since the advent of portable tape recorders more than 50 years ago. Under the new policy, students must first obtain written permission from their professors and classmates.

Administrators say they want to make sure that students and faculty don’t discover their conversations posted online or become afraid to talk openly. The new policy “protects the sanctity of the classroom for our students so they can freely discuss their thoughts and opinions,” said Steve Graham, senior associate vice president for academic affairs for the four-campus Missouri system.

But some Missouri professors are crying foul. They say the restrictions are impractical and contradict the public university’s goal of promoting shared knowledge.

“…We are public, taxpayer-funded faculty, and so we should think long and hard about any sort of restrictions on the rights of our students to record us as we work,” said Charles Davis, a journalism professor and former executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

The proposal, which awaits approval by campus attorneys, is a response to a video of a labor studies lecture by University of Missouri-Kansas City professor Judy Ancel. Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website obtained a leaked copy and edited hours of classroom lectures to suggest that she and a classroom colleague advocated union violence.

While the school stood behind Ancel, director of the university’s Institute for Labor Studies, a former union business manager who helped teach the class at the university system’s St. Louis campus offered to resign amid the uproar. He has since been asked to return to his adjunct professor post, Ancel said.

The proposed policy, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press upon request, notes that “unauthorized distribution of such materials is a violation of academic standards and may violate copyright and/or privacy rights.” Students and professors who violate the policy could face university disciplinary sanctions.

Ancel has previously said that her comment about union violence was a paraphrased remark of a statement made in a documentary shown in class about the 1968 Memphis garbage workers’ strike and Martin Luther King’s assassination. The recordings were obtained from a university website available only to students enrolled in the class.
But the problem was not the recording but the “twisted interpretations by others of the content,” Davis said. “No policy could deal with what others do with content.”

Faculty objections led to a clarification that students would still be able to record lectures unless someone objects. But the gist of the restrictions remains.

Student government leader Zach Toombs called the proposal “confusing, vague and (one that) prohibits students from taking advantage of studying and note-taking methods that have been used for a long, long time.” The Missouri Students Association had asked school officials to distinguish between classmates sharing notes and unauthorized public distribution on the Internet.

Journalism professor David Herzog said the restrictions send a “mixed message” at a time when Missouri and other universities are aggressively promoting open access and technology.

“If we want to innovate, we need to break down barriers to information and conversation, not erect new ones,” he said.

The debate in Missouri raises broader questions about the use and ownership of what are known as “captured lectures,” said Kenneth Green, who directs The Campus Computing Project, a southern California-based research group that studies the role of information technology in American higher education.

A 2009 national survey by the group found that just 56 percent of campuses had “formal policies regarding the ownership of web-based curriculum resources and intellectual property developed by faculty.”

Though universities have not restricted recording, he said, a modern “gotcha” culture attuned to circulating everyday missteps and misstatements increases the impact of the practice.

“The technology to do it has gotten much better,” Green said. “And the stakes have gotten much higher.”

For Ancel, the proposed policy doesn’t go far enough. She cited a classroom conversation in which one student who appeared in the Big Government video worried that her liberal views would create problems at the workplace with a conservative boss.

“I don’t want to have to think about what I said in class because my boss might see it,” the student told Ancel.

There wasn’t a large celebration when the rocket blasted off.

Instead, there was a sense of fulfillment in the lab and an acknowledgment that the work wasn’t over – the satellites would soon be deployed in space and need monitoring.

U-M put two satellites into space this morning – M-Cubed and RAX. They hitched a ride on a NASA rocket and satellite. U-M was one of three universities across the nation to send satellites into space on this rocket.

M-cubed, which about the size of a square tissue box, – 10 cm by 10 cm by 10 cm – is designed for taking pictures of Earth. But more importantly, it is also flying a prototype of a specialized computer that private industry is testing for future space flights. RAX, which is about three times the size of M-Cubed, will be conducting a variety of experiments and measurements of the atmosphere.

U-M has a long tradition of being involved in the space program. It currently has one satellite in orbit. It has funding for two more missions.

It’s taken four years to build M-Cubed. Ken Gmerek, now a senior and the project manager, joined the team the second week of his freshmen year.

“I’m excited and a little nervous,” he said about 5:40 a.m. this morning, eight minutes before the launch. “I’m also a little relieved to get to this point. It’s been a long time coming.”

Students Ken Gmerek, Jessica Schwartz and Jake Peyser await the launch of the satellites.

Much of the material to build the M-Cubed satellite came from materials purchased in local hardware stores, Gmerek said.

Having students build satellites that are actually launched into space is a great combination of teaching them how to do research, the engineering skills needed and also how to work with industry, said James Cutler, an aerospace engineering professor at U-M who has been guiding the students.

Many of the students that have been involved in the program and graduated have gone to work directly for a variety of space-related companies.

Some of those former students were in California near the launch site this morning to watch the launch and called the lab a couple of times to celebrate.

The satellites were expected to start broadcasting signals mid-morning. U-M has set up a couple of tracking stations on campus to get those signals.

Watch video of the rocket launch from NASA:

Researchers at CU’s Biofrontiers Institute have discovered three key fatty acids in python blood that, when reproduced, have the same positive effect on mammal heart growth as that observed in pythons.

A day after a Burmese python feeds, the mass of the snake’s heart increases by 40 per cent and the triglycerides in its bloodstream grow 50 times beyond normal levels. Since triglycerides are the main component in natural fats and oils, this results in massive amounts of fatty acids circulating through the python’s bloodstream.

“Fats in blood is usually associated with bad things in humans,” lead researcher Leslie Leinwand said. “We wanted to find out how the python manages to not have something toxic happen to it.”

The researchers discovered no evidence that the fats in the python’s blood deposited in the reptile’s heart. In fact, they found an increase in activity of a key enzyme that protects the heart from damage.

The research team was able to identify the three key fatty acids that could be used to mimic the chemical makeup of a python’s post-feeding blood.

They injected one sample of lab mice with blood plasma taken from recently fed pythons and injected a different sample with a “mimicking’’ mixture of the three fatty acids. In both cases, the mice showed increased heart growth, as well as other indicators of heart health.

“What is surprising about this study is that we were able to transfer that activity into a mammalian heart,” said Leinwand.

There is good heart growth and bad heart growth. Good human-heart growth can come from physical exercise. For example, elite athletes Michael Phelps and Lance Armstrong have huge hearts. Bad human-heart growth can come from chronic high blood pressure.

“Unfortunately, some people can’t exercise enough to achieve that good result,” Leinwand said.

The researchers’ next step is to test this fatty-acid combination in a mouse that has heart disease.

“The idea is that you could give it to a mouse before getting heart disease, while it might be developing it or after getting heart disease to see if it would prevent, slow down or decrease the disease,” said Leinwand, an expert in genetic heart diseases such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the leading cause of sudden death in young athletes.

Pythons are not typical lab animals, but Leinwand hopes these findings will open researchers’ minds for further study on more types of animals.

“My biggest caution is to take what we’ve found and think it can be applied to humans,” Leinwand said. “That’s a big leap. A lot more has to be done before we can say that.”

The study, which took 5 ½ years, appears in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. The research authors include a CU professor, two postdoctoral researchers, a graduate student and a CU undergraduate.

Teachers and their supporters gathered near the White House on Saturday afternoon to chant, cheer, and march for a variety of changes they hope to see in public schools—most notably, a 180-degree shift away from standards- and testing-based accountability.

Aside from that message, those who attended the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action in the scalding sun preached everything from boosting support for teachers’ unions, to booting U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, to getting more federal money for low-income schoolchildren. Student poverty was repeatedly cited as the most pressing problem in public schools.

The more than two hours of speeches and hourlong march, along with other related events, were organized by teachers and teacher-educators who say they are fed up with test-driven accountability for schools—and, increasingly, for teachers. Speakers ranged from such prominent education authors as Jonathan Kozol and Diane Ravitch to the actor Matt Damon.

Organizers estimated the size of the crowd at 5,000, but a rough count by Education Week put it closer to 3,000. Before the event, organizers had said they were expecting 5,000 to 10,000 people.

The gathering, according to the organizers, was aimed at sending a message to national and state policymakers about its participants’ disgust with those policies and to highlight their own principles for improving public education. Members have created a series of position papers outlining the loosely organized group’s views on high-stakes testing, equitable school funding, unions and collective bargaining, and changes to curriculum.

For the most part, those aren’t formal policy prescriptions, and no stronger positions emerged from the rally Saturday. However, policy proposals aren’t necessarily among the organizers’ goals.

“What we’re talking about is creating the right conditions, not prescriptive policies,” said Sabrina Stevens Shupe, a former teacher in Denver who has turned full-time activist and was one of the event’s leaders. “There’s no one silver bullet that’s going to save anything,” she added, referring to attempts to craft education reforms over the past 30 years.

Patrick McCarthy, an 11th grade English teacher from Woodstock, Va., said he is tired of devoting weeks of the school year to preparing students for standardized tests. If he had his way, students would instead spend that time writing more, and improving their writing and critical-thinking skills.

“I’m so tired of hearing teachers are the bad guys,” said Mr. McCarthy, who will start his 17th year as a teacher later this year.

The July 30 event appeared to foster a feeling of solidarity among teachers from across the country who say they have felt under attack. Teachers from Central Falls, R.I., where a move for wholesale replacement of the district high school’s staff drew headlines last year, and from Wisconsin, where a new state law curbed collective bargaining rights for most public employees, made a point of attending. However, not everyone present could pretend to be likeminded on every issue.

Raquel Maya, a graduate student studying elementary education at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, said she understands the arguments against merit pay for teachers—a policy measure that many teachers oppose. Her mother is a longtime elementary school teacher who Ms. Maya said has lost some of her passion.

“But you do need accountability” for student achievement, and testing provides that, she said.

The four-day Save Our Schools gathering also attracted hundreds of teachers and parents to American University on July 28-29 for a series of workshops and seminars about fostering activism and engaging parents, among other topics.

Some of the organizers’ methods during their stay in Washington have been unorthodox. On Wednesday, for example, they created an art installation of 50 dolls, each inside its own cardboard box to represent teachers’ feeling of being boxed in, and placed it outside the U.S. Department of Education headquarters. The move earned them an invitation to speak with Secretary Duncan and members of his staff.

However, the organizers rebuffed an overture from the White House. Although they have denounced the No Child Left Behind Act and the Obama administration’s continued emphasis on high-stakes testing, organizers declined an invitation to meet on Friday with Roberto Rodriguez, a White House education adviser. Organizers cited a busy schedule and instead urged members of the administration to observe and join the march.

Kelle Stewart, a 1st grade teacher from Portsmouth, Va., said she attended in part because five years of teaching exclusively in Title I schools had led her to believe the money spent on testing could be put to better use. In addition, she said that not enough teachers and parents are a part of the debate about education reform, and that the Save Our Schools movement is an opportunity to correct that.

“As teachers, this is a chance for us to model appropriate behavior and how to disagree with each other respectfully,” she said. “We want to encourage healthy debate—it only makes for a richer discussion. That’s a democratic guiding principle, and we have a chance to reiterate that to our students.”

She said had it been her choice, the event organizers would have taken up the White House on its meeting invitation.

“We have to compromise,” she said. “We have to work together.”

The movement has also been the subject of criticism, most notably from the Center for Education Reform, a Washington-based advocacy group for charter schools and other forms of school choice. The center took issue with the SOS group’s call for additional federal money for schools but less prescriptive accountability and testing requirements.

The SOS coalition “advocates for the status quo, and reform to them is about money, control, and no high-stakes tests or accountability,” Jeanne Allen, the center’s president, said in a statement. “SOS is about deforming education, not reforming it. They put up the guise that this is for the families and students, but in truth, these groups want to restrict and remove any power parents have in their child’s education.”

Testing Targeted
On Saturday, another art installation set up at the rally involved several tombstones, each inscribed with a message noting the deaths of imagination, creativity, joy, freedom, and critical thinking, among others. The cause of death for all of them? They were killed by high-stakes testing, in the opinion of the organizers.

Mr. Damon, the actor and Academy Award-winning screenwriter, told the crowd that his strengths and talents couldn’t be measured by any test, and that his mother, an early-education professor, had made sure he didn’t take any standardized exams.

“My mom went to the principal and said: ‘It’s stupid. It won’t tell you anything. It will just make him nervous,’ ” he told the star-struck audience. His imagination and love of acting came from the way he was taught, he said.

“None of these qualities that make me who I am can be tested,” Mr. Damon said, then went on to pay tribute to the crowd.

“There are millions of us behind you. Our appreciation for you is deeply felt,” he said. “We love you, and we will always have your back.”

The event also drew the endorsements of others in the entertainment world, including the actor Richard Dreyfuss and the comedian Jon Stewart. Mr. Stewart, who recorded a video aired during Saturday’s rally, joked that he couldn’t attend in person because a dog ate his car.

Events around the country were organized in state capitals to coincide with the march in Washington for those who supported the cause but couldn’t travel so far. Still, marchers in person Saturday included teachers and supporters from at least as far away as California, Idaho, and Texas.

The marchers sported megaphones and signs as they stopped traffic, at one point drawing cheers from protestors who were denouncing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The SOS crowd carried a collection of signs that read “Wisconsin is the canary in the coal mine,” “Build Schools Not Bombs,” and “A Charter School is Not Superman”—the last a dig at the 2010 documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman,’ ” which many educators have criticized as denigrating regular public schools.

“High-stakes has got to go! Hey-hey! Ho-ho!” some of the crowd chanted.

Support From Unions
The Save Our Schools movement began with a small group of teachers, including former Connecticut teacher Jesse Turner, now the director of the Literacy Center at Central Connecticut State University, who walked from Connecticut to the nation’s capital last August to protest the No Child Left Behind law and the Race to the Top, the Obama administration’s signature school improvement competition.

The Save Our Schools efforts predated actions by state legislatures across the country this spring to curb teachers’ collective bargaining powers and tenure, said Bess Altwerger, a member of the movement’s organizing committee, who hosted a reception for Mr. Turner last summer. The attacks on unions and collective bargaining further galvanized the group, however, and eventually both national teachers’ unions threw their support behind the Save Our Schools effort.

The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have donated about $25,000 each to the effort, although most of the rest of the donations have come from one-time gifts provided through the Save Our Schools website, according to organizers. Conference organizers estimated that they’d raised over $125,000 in all. After this weekend, they will have to begin fundraising efforts anew to keep their work going.

Another large donation came from Ms. Ravitch, the education historian, who said she contributed $20,000 she won for the 2011 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize. Ms. Ravitch, who co-writes an opinion blog for Education Week; Mr. Kozol, a former teacher who has written extensively about educational inequities; and the educator and school reformer Deborah Meier, who blogs with Ms. Ravitch, were among those who spoke at the July 30 rally as well as during the conference at American University.

The SOS group will wrap up its gathering with a closed-door meeting Sunday, at which participants will try to determine how to keep the momentum from the rally going. Movement organizers haven’t disclosed the meeting’s location, and it is not open to the press.

Elaine Mulligan, a former special education teacher who is now working on a federally funded technical-assistance project in special education, attended even though she is unsure whether the event will have any long-term effect.

But it’s a start, she said, noting that she brought a friend who doesn’t pay attention to education issues.

“I don’t think it will work. I think it’s incremental, and I have to do what I can,” she said. “Maybe [my friend] will tell someone, and maybe they’ll tell someone. I hope that everybody does the same thing.” Via

A senior academic at Abertay University may be one of the first to test the laws surrounding the abolition of forced retirement, after he rejected claims by his employer that he had retired.

Professor Bernard King, principal of Abertay University, denied he had retired after an e-mail was sent to staff announcing the news.

The university said that King had been notified of his impending retirement in December last year, after his 65th birthday, well ahead of the 6 April 2011 deadline for forced retirements. Abertay insist that King’s retirement was due to start on 1st July.

However, the professor, who was suspended earlier this year after a row about whether to extend his employment contract, has alleged his employer discriminated against him because of his age.

In a statement from his solicitors, King said he had “not accepted” the email referring to his retirement and that he has started employment tribunal proceedings.

The statement said: “His position is that he has not retired and he remains in dispute with the university over the terms of an extension of contract agreed with the university last year.

“The principal’s claims of age discrimination and whistle-blowing in relation to actions taken to address allegations of bullying and intimidation of members of staff remain the subject of employment tribunal proceedings which will take place later this year.”

The solicitors handling the case have advised him that the university’s current actions were “both unfair and unlawful”.

However, Geoffrey Mead, partner at law firm Eversheds, told PM: “If the employer issued the dismissal notice before the April 6 deadline and the person has reached the age of 65 by the September deadline this year then that dismissal is not unlawful.

“Compulsory retirement of employees [before the abolition deadline], if employers follow the correct procedures, is lawful and the forced retirement would still stand. If he is simply saying that this is age discrimination I can’t see how he will succeed.”

Mead explained that King can “only make a request to stay on” after a compulsory retirement notice, which the employer can still refuse.

An Abertay University spokesman said: “Our position remains that Professor King’s retirement took effect on Friday 1 July and that we will not comment on current unresolved issues relating to his former employment.

“However, we would like to make it clear that Professor King was first given notice of his retirement date in early December, and the university has sent further correspondence since that date about various aspects of his retirement.

“The latest statement – which we only heard about through the media – is the first intimation we have had of Professor King’s clarification of his position relative to his retirement. We welcome the commitment made by his lawyers to the desirability of continued negotiation so as to avoid further legal proceedings.”

排名指标体系
由于历史的原因，两岸四地的高等教育体制差异较大，因此，只能选择那些共同适用于两岸四地大学实际情况、具有跨地区可比性的指标。根据我们从事国际性大学比较与排名的经验和对国内外主流大学排名所采用的指标的研究和分析，我们在世界大学学术排名（超级链接）所采用的指标体系的基础上，又增加了数个同时适用于两岸四地教育状况的指标，形成了包括人才培养、科学研究、师资质量和学校资源4大类13项指标的指标体系。为了更好地体现大学的水平和质量，我们对所有与规模有关的指标都同时使用了绝对数和相对值。在指标权重的安排上我们遵循了《高等教育机构排名的柏林原则》（超级链接）中要求优先考虑产出指标的原则，对于7项产出指标各分配10%的权重，对于另外6项投入和过程指标各分配5%的权重。计算单项指标得分时，令表现最好的大学的该项指标为100分，其它按其与最高值得比例得分，一所大学的总得分由各单项指标加权得出。

Using brain scans, a team of UC San Francisco researchers have discovered that people over age 60 are less agile in switching from one neural network to another — which means that brief attention-grabbing interruptions can undermine their ability to recall the original task.

“A lot of us feel the need to respond really rapidly to an email or text message,” said Dr. Adam Gazzaley, director of the UCSF Neuroscience Imaging Center and senior author of the study, which was published in Monday’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If we stop what we’re doing to send a reply, Gazzaley says, “there may be a price to be paid.”

While others have observed that aging adults experience difficulty completing a task after a distraction, no one had explored neurological science to learn why.

The problem is central to daily life as increasing numbers of digital distractions — such as electronic messages, alerts and feeds — demand our attention, interrupting the process of retaining information from deep learning.

The topic has growing relevance “especially as older adults stay in the workplace later “… and the societal expectations increase about how quickly we should respond” to interruptions, Gazzaley said.

In the study, the UCSF team compared two groups of healthy people, one averaging 24.5 years in age and the other averaging 69 years. Using “functional magnetic resonance imaging,” which reveals the activity of different neural networks, the team tracked and compared the blood flow in the participants’ brains.

Both groups were asked to view a natural scene, and hold it in mind for 14 seconds. But in the middle, an interruption occurred: a face popped onto the screen, and participants were asked to identify its sex and age. Then they were asked to recall the original scene.

Older people had more difficulty than younger people in maintaining the memory of the original image.

The brain scans showed why: Younger subjects could quickly disengage from the original image, respond to the interruption and then refocus their memory back onto the original scene. But older adults failed both to disengage from the interruption and re-establish the memory of the original scene. They continued to process the interrupted — and irrelevant — information, rather than suppress or forget it.

What’s to blame is not merely the memory, a problem familiar to many older adults, said Gazzaley.

Rather, it’s an impairment of the ability to shift between two neural networks: one for attention, and the other for memory.

“The impact of distractions and interruptions reveals the fragility of ‘working memory,’ ” he said.

Scientists speculate that the prefrontal cortex, which shrinks in volume as we age, may hinder the ability of the brain to “switch tracks” with agility.

It’s known that the brain retains a certain amount of plasticity in life — that is, it can be trained to respond to a faster pace. So there may be generational differences in our ability to multitask simply because younger people have more practice in handling interruptions, Gazzaley said. If so, perhaps older adults could be trained to better handle distractions, he said.

“We think that multitasking is a good thing, because it makes us more efficient,” he said.

“But this data suggests that performance declines when engaging in more than one thing at a time.”