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]
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.
Read the entire news story on Nature.com [html] or here [pdf]
I spent a summer crossing the Pyrenees and the Picos de Europa in northern Spain, sacrificing sleep and stripping my rental car’s clutch all in the name of improving Let’s Go’s travel guidebooks.
It was a summer of pastoral mountain scenery, hitchhiking with hippies and undercover police, and yes, the Sanfermines in Pamplona.
I didn’t know it then, but my summer jobs researching and writing budget travel guidebooks would morph into my full-time career as a freelance writer.
