Commonwealth universities news in brief
Number 10 stands firm on Commonwealth scholarship cut
Downing Street is standing firm on a decision to axe Foreign Office funding for the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan, which enables students from the developed Commonwealth to study for doctorates in the UK.
It has responded to an online petition protesting at the decision by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to end its contribution.
Almost 2,000 people signed the petition in protest at the decision announced by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretry, to end FCO support. It means that Commonwealth scholarships for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Malta, Cyprus, Brunei and the Bahamas will end, and that reciprocal arrangements will be at risk.
Downing Street's response says that the decision does not in any way reflect a negative view of the CSFP.
"On the contrary, the government regards the CSFP as a good and well-run programme. The fact that overall British government funding to the plan is increasing over the next three years – from £16.98m in 2007-08 to £17.98m in 2008-09, about £18m in 2009-10 and over £17.5m in 2010-11 - is evidence of our regard for its work.
"But the FCO is tightening the focus of its scholarship programmes around building relationships with leaders of the future. The FCO assess that their own scheme, the Chevening programme, is therefore a better vehicle for FCO funding. The Chevening programme is more tightly focused on future leaders and connects scholars and alumni much more directly to our network of diplomatic missions.
"It is better value for money, student for student. And through Chevening the FCO can direct resources globally in a way that more accurately reflects the UK's international priorities. Chevening remains a global scheme and through it the FCO will continue to provide scholarships to future leaders from developed Commonwealth countries."
Dwindling Atlantic salmon tracked off Canadian coast
Scientists working with Canada's Ocean Tracking Network, based at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, are tracking Atlantic salmon in the open ocean.
This summer 100 salmon tagged with tiny acoustic transmitters crossed a 13 mile line of acoustic receivers deployed by the OTN in the waters off of Halifax.
The fish, which originated in the Penobscot River in Maine, sent signals to the receivers, and information about their passage was then downloaded from the receivers to a research vessel.
The information has shown that while some salmon may die before reaching Halifax, many still survive.
Mike Stokesbury, director of research for OTN, said: "In Maine, traditional methods of restoring Atlantic salmon by stocking fish have not been very successful, with only 0.68% returning.
"With the tagged salmon we can track more fish further into the ocean than ever before and get meaningful results."
Words for numbers not needed for maths – study
A study by University College London and the University of Melbourne of Aboriginal children from two communities that lack words or gestures for numbers has found that they are nevertheless able to copy and perform number-related tasks.
Findings, published in the journal PNAS, suggest that humans possess an innate mechanism for counting, which may develop differently in children with difficulty in understanding and learning maths.
Professor Brian Butterworth, lead author from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, says: "Recently, an extreme form of linguistic determinism has been revived which claims that counting words are needed for children to develop concepts of numbers above three. That is, to possess the concept of 'five' you need a word for five. Evidence from children in numerate societies, but also from Amazonian adults whose language does not contain counting words, has been used to support this claim.
"However, our study of Aboriginal children suggests that we have an innate system for recognising and representing the number of objects in a set and that the lack of a number vocabulary should not prevent us from doing numerical tasks that do not require number words."
The study worked with children aged four to seven from two indigenous communities: one on the edge of the Tanami Desert about 400 km north west of Alice Springs where Warlpiri is spoken; the other on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria, where the local language is Anindilyakwa.
Both have words for one, two, few and many. In Anindilyakwa there are ritual words for numbers to 20, but children will not know these. The team also worked with an English-speaking indigenous group in Melbourne.