First Impressions
This week's competition, in which you have to identify a book from its opening sentence, is from a love story twice adapted for the opera: "I must begin by taking my reader back to the time in my...
This week's competition, in which you have to identify a book from its opening sentence, is from a love story twice adapted for the opera: "I must begin by taking my reader back to the time in my...
The Psychology of Good and Evil

How could conscious experiences affect brains? The simple answer is that they could not and do not. Yet we feel as though they do. This clash between the way things seem and the way they rationally...
Multiple-choice question. Is this book: (a) "witty and ingenious"; (b) "ecstatically playful"; (c) too clever by half? Going for the third option puts me firmly into the philistine camp, opposed to...
How Children Develop - An Introduction to Developmental Psychology
The History of Psychology
"The QAA intends to introduce a code of practice to ensure that PhD examining is standardised" - The Times Higher , March 19 Thank you, Gillian. That concludes your viva. If you wait in the Inquiries...
The National Union of Students holds its annual conference next week with top-up fees naturally uppermost among the concerns of delegates. There will even be a day's break in the proceedings while...
When even the prime minister acknowledges an £8 billion funding gap in higher education, it may seem craven to celebrate a budget that guarantees no more than a standstill in state funding per...
Assessing student performance in examinations based on the content of lectures should be straightforward, but if universities adjust marks when things go wrong, a lack of transparency can leave...
Rawaa ("Animal tests 'upsetting but important'", March 19) is a young scientist who believes her experiments on rats are relevant to humans. As she progresses, however, she will discover that an...
Using a photograph of an attractive female undergraduate of African origin to expound the importance of animal testing is more of an infomercial than real news. Rawaa participates in a video made by...
Surely two weeks is long enough to pen two pages ("Scientists given 2 weeks to plan 10-year vision", March 19)? Any scientist who has not been thinking about this for ages, and cannot write it in two...
Laurie Taylor's view of York University sociology department is misleading ("Farewell to 'cuddly' ethos of yesteryear", March 19). Taylor implies that younger staff are on fixed-term contracts and...