An ambitious effort to develop Spanish universities into campuses that are among Europe’s best has stoked some long-standing regional rivalries.
On 26 November, the government announced which universities would benefit from the inaugural round of an annual programme called the Campus of International Excellence, administered jointly by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Ministry of Education. The €150-million (US$226-million) scheme is designed to steer resources, in the form of government seed money and loans, to the strategic infrastructure projects with the most potential to aid teaching and research.
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The blueprint of a small organism’s cellular machinery has been unveiled, offering the most comprehensive view yet of the molecular essentials of life. But the research also shows just how far biologists have to go before they understand the complete biochemical basis of even the simplest of creatures.
Grabbing one of the three laptops in her office at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, Jasmin Fisher flips open the lid and starts to describe how she and her collaborators used an approach from computer science to make a discovery in molecular biology. Fisher glances across her desk to where her collaborator, Nir Piterman of Imperial College London, is watching restlessly. “I know you could do this faster,” she says to Piterman, who is also her husband. “But you are a computer scientist and I am a biologist and we must be patient.”
This past July, the European Commission released estimates that if generic drugs were to enter markets immediately after patents expire—instead of the present average of seven months later—EU patients and national health services might save €3 billion ($4.5 billion) annually. But regulators acknowledge that costly and time-consuming patent disputes, and possible anticompetitive practices in the pharmaceutical industry, mean that such savings remain elusive.