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Last week's long-awaited Dearing report has urged the UK government to take immediate steps to remedy the underfunding of university research. But at a price: universities, it says, must agree to do things differently.
Taiwan has ambitious plans to achieve international stature in science, and is investing accordingly. It is pursuing long-term national goals for technology development and to boost support for its best scientists.
The strong showing of environmentalists in last month's elections in France has marked a turning point in the history of its nuclear power programme, and raised doubts over the future of French reprocessing.
The purposeful use of funds from the European Union has provided a much-needed fillip to the research enterprise in Portugal. But with progress comes a range of problems familiar elsewhere in Europe.
Patience is a virtue for the evolutionary biologist. Long-term experiments on populations of lizards introduced onto islands in the Bahamas show the forces of adaptation to environment at work.
A flood of initiatives promises to relieve some of the current difficulties experienced with the Internet, particularly slow international links. In the process, faith in public systems at communication has been confirmed.
Many scientists are looking forward to a likely change of government, as the UK's election campaign begins in earnest. But Labour in power would face similar pressures and constraints to the Conservatives.