Jobs, Cats, Bats, & Robotic Monsters of the Deep: The Friday Round-Up (17/07/2009)

Notable stories appearing on the HE Scotland Twitter feed in the last seven days included:

In policy and funding news:

• The results of the annual Business & Community Interaction Survey were released with related commentary from the SFC, HEFCE and an interesting summary of Scottish HEIs' performance from the Scottish Government. HE Scotland's blog post on the results comments on the Scottish sector's strong relative performance and the backdrop of expected changes to SFC knowledge exchange funding
• UCU claimed job cuts at Stirling and Strathclyde universities threatened the Scottish HE sector's "proud reputation as a global leader in higher education." Responding in a BBC report, the Scottish Government pointed to its "£5.24bn investment in universities and colleges over three years"
• Exhortations calling for the UK higher education sector to model itself more closely on the US and develop an equivalent of the Ivy League featured in The Herald and the THE
• Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an announcement of additional places for University entry in 2009, but did not provide figures, nor clarify whether this would be a UK-wide measure. UCU gave a qualified welcome to the news - expect further developments and commentary on what this may mean for Scotland as details emerge over the coming days

In student news:

• HESA published performance indicators relating to graduate employment which indicated a rise in the number unemployed six months after graduation. UCU and the Russell Group commented on the figures in an article in The Times, whilst a piece in The Scotsman looked to the positive, noting that the employment figures for several Scottish universities were better than Oxbridge
• A former welsh youth international footballer made an immediate impact at Stirling, whilst one-time University of Edinburgh midfielder, Jamie Redman, turned professional with Arbroath and a Heriot-Watt graduate took her first UK title winning the 5,000 metres at the Aviva World Trials and UK Championships
• Abertay University launched ten new bursaries to commemorate its fifteenth anniversary
• In what was surely the headline writer's gift of the last seven days, students in Heriot-Watt's "Team Nessie" recorded a sub-aquatic robotic triumph at 'SAUC-E 2009'

In research news:

There were significant medical breakthroughs reported in relation to e-coli genetics (University of Dundee), a link between a low IQ and heart disease (Glasgow & Edinburgh universities), the relationship between obesity and complications during pregnancy (University of Edinburgh) and the DNA 'Swiss army knife' (University of Dundee).

When it wasn't the medics, it was the vets, with animals featuring prominently. More specifically, cats and bats both featured in research stories with Scottish links:

• A University of Edinburgh graduate's research into cats' plaintive appeals to their owners' parental instincts made national headlines
• News of two Aberdeen University researchers' experiments with radar to prevent bats meeting an unhappy ending on the blades of wind turbines was released on Thursday

Finally, the inaugural HE Scotland award for the best sector media release title of the last seven days saw a dead heat between the University of Glasgow and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama:

• Glasgow academics organise medieval roundtable event (Glasgow)
• T Time for Professor Phil (RSAMD)

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