Tag Archives: Spain

Crested dinosaur pushes back dawn of feathers

A predatory dinosaur with bony bumps on its arms and a strange hump on its back provides evidence that feathers began to appear earlier than researchers thought, according to a report in Nature today.

The new species, named Concavenator corcovatus, was about 4 metres long from nose to tail and lived during the Early Cretaceous period, about 130 million years ago.

Read the rest of this news story on Nature News [html] or here [pdf].

This story got a mention on the Knight Science Journalism Tracker: here.

Solar incentives cut

Spain is the latest European government to reduce state incentives for solar power, after its industry ministry on 1 August confirmed cuts to feed-in tariffs — the price an electricity utility must pay to generators of solar energy. A draft law, now under review with the national energy regulator CNE, would cut subsidies by 45% for new large, ground-based photovoltaic plants, and by 25% and 5% for large or small roof-top panels, respectively. Existing plants might also have their subsidies cut, once the law’s details are clarified later this year. Germany and Italy have also announced solar subsidy cuts this year.

See this news briefing in Nature [html] [pdf]

Spanish science spending lockdown

Acoustic physicist Luis Goméz Ullate is having a hard time finding a job. Goméz, a tenured investigator with Spain’s national research council (CSIC) in Madrid, isn’t looking for himself — he’s helping out one of his graduate students facing the country’s increasingly difficult science labour market. “The options are tighter than usual,” he says.

Read the rest of this news story on Nature News [html] or here: [pdf].

This story has also gotten some attention on madrimasd.org (in Spanish): [html]

Spanish awards rekindle old rivalries

nature_cover_091203An 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.

Read the entire news story on Nature.com [html] or here [pdf]