University World News 0128 - 14th June 2010

SPECIAL REPORT: Research and the World Cup

Hundreds of thousands of football fans from around the world descended on
South Africa last week to watch the 2010 FIFA World Cup which kicked off on Friday. The mega-event has gripped the imagination of the nation, including its students, academics and universities.

The World Cup has generated reams of research into the event and its multiple impacts. At the Second World Conference on Soccer and Science last week, academics presented studies into the 'beautiful game'. Universities are housing fans and staging events, and students are helping out as volunteers. There have been lectures, including a seven-part Extra Time series on soccer delivered by academics from South Africa and Germany, the 2006 World Cup host.

The following reports provide a snapshot of just some of the ways higher education is engaging with 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa.

South African universities and the 2010 world cup

Alison Moodie Football fever has swept across South Africa. While stadiums play host to jubilant fans and football superstars, through a variety of initiatives universities are bringing their expertise and resources to bear on the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Research projects, accommodation for teams and fans, access to sports facilities, exhibitions and soccer events have brought the monumental contest to campuses.
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World Cup research explores 'development and dreams'
Karen MacGregor
The 2010 FIFA world cup inspired one of the largest consolidated research exercises in South Africa in years. Culminating in a 2009 book, Development and Dreams, the research found that the economic benefits of the global tournament had been wildly over-stated but its infrastructure and social legacies would be considerable, said co-editor Dr Udesh Pillay.
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FIFA - Building a transnational football community
Karen MacGregor
World football's governing body FIFA is a powerful international development organisation with more country members than the United Nations and a key 'third party' role in mediating conflict in modern societies through reward-based competition. FIFA's rise was explored by Christiane Eisenberg, a professor of British history at Humboldt University, in a lecture series presented at South African universities by the German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD.
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University lab is the Cup dope-testing centre
Alison Moodie
Whether it is the Olympics or the Tour de France or the football World Cup, every time a major sporting event takes place a potential doping scandal lurks. The South African Doping Control Laboratory, SADoCoL, in the department of pharmacology at the University of the Free State, is the official dope-testing centre for the 2010 World Cup.
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The brains behind the 'beautiful game'
Debbie Derry
They dissected, debated and metaphorically dribbled and did exactly what FIFA President Sepp Blatter has warned against - over-analysed the game of football. But they are the brains behind the 'beautiful game', whose goal is to score big with science that will benefit the sport.
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Demands on players has made sport science critical
Debbie Derry
Extreme demands placed on modern footballers means the role of the sport scientist is more critical than ever - and yet there is an apparent reluctance to implement beneficial research, says one of soccer's leading sport scientists.
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High performance sport - all in the mind?
Debbie Derry
A leading South African sports scientist has turned the traditional study of exercise physiology on its head - literally. Speaking at the Second World Conference on Soccer and Science held in Port Elizabeth last week, Professor Tim Noakes disputed traditional research methods that failed to include the brain in physiology studies.
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The lost opportunities of local football
The from-the-couch conclusion of many South African football fans is that their top teams are not effective in converting opportunities into goals. And they are 100% correct, according to research by a masters student at Stellenbosch University.
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Australian Socceroos meet squatter camp kids
Geoff Maslen
"The smiles could have lit a stadium as Socceroo stars Mark Schwarzer, Brett Emerton and Luke Wilkshire kicked a few balls with kids from the squatter camps on the western outskirts of Johannesburg." The Australian football team was training township kids who benefit from a volunteer programme run by the South African campus of Melbourne's Monash University.
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SPECIAL FEATURE SECTION

THAILAND: Academic community silenced
As Bangkok's universities reopen after last month's government crackdown, Thai academic Giles Ji Ungpakorn, exiled to Britain in 2009 after being accused of lese-majesty, says the academic community has been forced to keep a low profile.
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GLOBAL: Seven recipes to become a top researcher
Jüri Allik*
The key to success in any field is a matter of practising a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. This rule holds true both for Mozart as well as for Bill Gates. It is easy to see that it therefore requires you to focus on your favourite activity for approximately three hours a day, including all Saturdays and Sundays, for 10 years in a row.
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US-IRAQ: Keys to a digital revolution
Brendan O'Malley
The Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has been given control of a US-developed digital library that is helping Iraqi scientists close the knowledge and contribution gap with the international science community.
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INDIA: Bureaucracy needs reform
India's present system of administration is unsatisfactory and needs reform, according to a survey by researchers Prem Lal Joshi and Rajesh Kumar at the University of Bahrain and the Institute of Management Technology in Dubai. The survey was conducted to ascertain public thinking and gauge opinion on the positive and negative aspects of India's bureaucracy. Among suggested changes were removing civil servants' tenure and recruiting technical experts from outside to improve professionalism.
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NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

IBERO-AMERICA: The Guadalajara Declaration
Sarah King Head
More than 1,100 university presidents from 21 Ibero-American countries held a two-day meeting in Mexico on 31 May-1 June. In a declaration released at the end of the meeting, the presidents called for the creation of exchange programmes similar to the European Erasmus scheme as well as for greater student mobility and more convergence and uniformity in their studies.
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CHINA: Stress of the entrance examination
Sakshi Lee
Silence. That was the first sign of something unusual at the prestigious Shanghai No 54 Middle School last Monday morning. No assembly in the sports field, no Chinese national anthem over the loudspeakers, no usual morning exercises to limber up young bodies and minds. Instead, it was the start of a gruelling three-day college entrance examination.
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EUROPE: Foundations laid for doctoral education
Development of a European knowledge society is likely to drive demand in all sectors of the workforce for PhD holders with the creative and intellectual skills to work in a wide variety of roles - going well beyond research and development. More than 200 stakeholders meeting at the Freie Universität Berlin for the annual meeting of the EUA Council for Doctoral Education discussed how universities should develop strong, research-based doctoral programmes.
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EUROPE: French are Erasmus mobility champions
Jane Marshall
The French are the new 'champions' of student mobility under the European Union's flagship Erasmus programme. More than 28,000 students left France with the scheme last year for higher education studies abroad - an increase of 9%. They dislodged the Germans who had formed the biggest Erasmus contingent since 2003-04.
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GERMANY: Solar-tech for developing countries
Michael Gardner
The German Academic Exchange Service has brought together alumni from developing countries who graduated from German universities for a meeting on 'Renewables'. Included was a visit to the Intersolar Europe solar industry trade fair.
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NEWS BRIEFS

EUROPE: High-level panel on innovation
Jan Petter Myklebust
European Commissioner for Research and Innovation, Máire Geoghegan Quinn, has appointed a high-level panel of leading business innovators and economists to advise on producing an indicator to measure Europe's progress towards a more innovative economy.
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FINLAND: World's largest technology prize
Ian Dobson
Professor Michael Grätzel of the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne, Switzerland is the 2010 winner of Finland's Millennium Technology Prize. The winner's purse is -800,000, a sum certainly worth having. Grätzel was selected from among the three Laureates for 2010 who were named at a function held in April.
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ARAB WORLD: Network of networks for collaboration
Wagdy Sawahel
Egypt-based Bibliotheca Alexandrina has launched a 'Network of Networks' for science and technology in the 22 Arab states. The network will act as a platform for international and regional scientific collaboration among universities.
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SWEDEN: University chancellor resigns
Jan Petter Myklebust
Sweden's University Chancellor Anders Flodström has resigned following his disagreement with the government over a new system of evaluating and rewarding Swedish universities based on student performance. The Swedish parliament has now approved the government's proposals.
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BUSINESS

EUROPE: Collaborating for economic development
Cayley Dobie
Universities and colleges in seven regions across the European Union have joined a new project to discuss how higher education can generate wealth in economically struggling areas, through collaboration with regional and local governments plus industry.
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CANADA-INDIA: Closer ties to benefit higher education
Alyshah Hasham
Drumming up business abroad is always tough for universities. But with the right groundwork, valuable student recruitment and joint research projects can follow, a conference on boosting higher education links between India and Canada was told.
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EUROPE: New technology = faster communication
Cayley Dobie
European research institutes have developed a new telecommunication system that will allow for transmitting and receiving of information at a higher speed and more efficient cost.
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UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories

US: Life on Saturn moon? Maybe
Could Saturn's cold, cloud-covered moon Titan host an exotic form of primitive life based on methane, in sharp contrast to the water-based life of Earth? asks Doug Isbell in the The Tuscan Sentinel. That's one amazing possibility implied by two new related scientific studies based on data from NASA's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft.
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SWEDEN: Higher education may delay dementia onset
Swedish researchers have discovered that education not only delays the early symptoms of dementia, but can also slow down the development of the disease - a finding that could result in faster diagnosis and treatment, writes Dr John M Grohol for Psych Central.
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ARMENIA: World's oldest leather shoe discovered
Think of it as a kind of prehistoric Prada: archaeologists have discovered what they say is the world's oldest known leather shoe, writes Pam Belluck for The New York Times. Perfectly preserved under layers of sheep dung the shoe, made of cowhide and tanned with oil from a plant or vegetable, is about 5,500 years old, older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, scientists say.
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WORLD ROUND-UP

PUERTO RICO: Student strike paralyses university
A showdown is looming in the student strike that has paralyzed all 11 campuses of the University of Puerto Rico for more than six weeks, writes Juan Gonzalez for the Daily News. On Tuesday, protest leaders rejected a 16h00 deadline from university President José Ramón de la Torre to cease campus occupations and end the strike, which has kept 65,000 students out of classes since 21 April.
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MALAYSIA: Ministry deregisters 45 private colleges
Malaysia's Higher Education Ministry has deregistered 45 private colleges for flouting the Private Higher Education Institution Act last year, said Deputy Minister Dr Hou Kok Chung, reports Tan Shiow Chin for The Star. Another 38 avoided deregistration but other forms of action were taken against them for infringing the Act.
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PAKISTAN: Clash over academic research requirements
A dispute has erupted between the Higher Education Commission and the Federation of All-Pakistan Universities Academic Associations, FAPUSA, over the appointment of professors and associate professors and the research article requirements for these posts, writes Adnan Lodhi for the Daily Times.
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IRELAND: Plan to double PhD graduates slips off track
A government policy drawn up four years ago to double the output of PhD students in Ireland is midway through its term, reports The Post. But now there are questions about whether the plan is on the right track and if it still has the merit it once had.
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IRELAND: Funding crisis to hit new students hard
New students in Ireland face packed lecture halls when they get to university, fewer tutorials, reductions in library facilities and the introduction of waiting lists for counselling services, writes John Walshe for the Irish Independent. A confidential working paper drawn up by the Irish Universities Association warns that specific courses will have to be axed and says the government's national research strategy for the 'Smart Economy' is in danger of collapsing.
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UK: Universities minister hints at higher fees
Britain's universities minister has given his clearest indication yet that students could soon be forced to pay higher tuition fees, writes Jessica Shepherd. Interviewed by The Guardian last week last week, David Willetts warned that the cost of hundreds of thousands of students' degree courses was a "burden on the taxpayer that had to be tackled".
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UK: Science advisers allowed to disagree with state
Expert advisers in Britain are being given the right to disagree with the government in a bid to repair relations with scientists, reports the Daily Mail. David Willetts, the Science and Universities Minister, said last week it was of the utmost importance that independent scientific advice is respected by the government.
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ECUADOR: President's push to improve higher education
Rafael Correa, Ecuador's self-styled 'soc ialist revolutionary' president, is known for grand gestures, writes Marion Lloyd for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Since taking office in 2007, he has temporarily reneged on his country's foreign debt, threatened to go to war with Colombia and pushed through a new constitution to incorporate the cosmology of Ecuador's indigenous minority. Now he has turned his attention to overhauling the country's troubled higher-education system.
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CHINA: Academic corruption undermining universities
Even at China's best universities plagiarism and falsified data are preventing the country from developing advanced science, says a world-renowned mathematics professor, writes Guo Jiaxue for China Daily.
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CHINA: More than 100,000 graduates apply to join army
More than 100,000 Chinese college graduates had applied to join the People's Liberation Army as of Friday since this year's military pre-recruitment campaign was launched in mid-April, according to the Ministry of Education, reports the official Xinhau news agency.
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US: Job outlook brightens for new graduates - but barely
To get a sense of the job market new college graduates face, consider the latest crop of nurses from Santa Rosa Junior College. Just eight of 55 students are leaving with job offers - and that's considered good news - writes Eric Gorski for Associated Press. Last year no graduates of the community college's associate degree nursing programme had a job in hand.
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US: Personalising medical practitioner training
A hundred years after the release of the Flexner Report, which set many of the standards that still guide North American medical education, a report published last week aims to stimulate reforms to reshape medical schools and residency programmes for the next century, writes Jennifer Epstein for Inside Higher Ed.
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US: Burning out and fading away
College faculty aren't any more burned out than the rest of the US workforce on average, but the struggles of the untenured on the tenure track are the most pronounced, according to a survey presented at an American Association of University Professors conference in Washington last Wednesday, writes Jack Stripling for Inside Higher Ed.
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CANADA: Christian universities fight back
Under attack for allegedly violating academic freedom, Christian universities in Canada are fighting back in a decidedly academic way, writes Carson Jerema for Macleans. They are planning to hold a conference.
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