The government’s new diploma for 14-19 year-olds, due to be launched next year, has been slated by an Oxford University professor.

The Nuffield Review – which was led by Richard Pring, a professor at Oxford’s department of education – said that the introduction of the diplomas had been rushed and badly researched.

The new qualification, which is the brainchild of Schools Secretary Ed Balls, is aimed at narrowing the gap between vocational and academic learning, but the report dismissed this notion.

It said, “Such middle-track qualifications have in the past been regarded as an alternative for the less academically able and the review predicts that teachers will view diplomas in the same way — with A levels and GCSEs remaining the more prestigious qualifications.”

I spent a relatively normal day in Brussels, eating chicken, breaking into duck ponds and other such  leisurely activities. A friend took me to the train station, I waited for half an hour and hopped on a train  that was clearly marked "Liege". The porter had told me it was quite a slow train so I listened to Lou Reed  and read for a while. An hour and a half had passed, I was beginning to get suspicious. Getting to Brussels had only taken  me an hour.I was restless. A PVC ball with a tennis ball inside rolled towards me so I stood up and  asked the whole carriage if it was theirs. I spoke in French, no-one responded. So I sat back down and  tried to extract the tennis ball from the PVC ball surrounding it. A gang of grannies to my left were  giggling at me so I said in French, would you like to try? They didn't understand me, one of them spoke  to me in English, twist it, she said. I handed her the ball and they didn't succeed. It was getting dark outside. I thought it was a good idea to check that the train was indeed going to  Liege. I stood at the end of the corridor and got chatting in English to a man who looked stereotypically sleazy (leather jacket, gelled hair, gold necklace). He explained that we were in (Dutch-speaking)  Flanders, that the train had split a while ago and this part was not going to Liege. That gave some  explanation for why no-one could understand me, and also made me see that half of the Belgian  population cannot communicate with the other half. It's as if the Welsh couldn't understand the English.  Absolute madness. I asked Mr. Sleaze what he thought the best route was for me to get back to Liege. He said to get off at  the next stop, then he paused and said "but we can go get a drink, then I can drive you. It is nicer in a  car." "No, no," I replied. "Why you say no? You scared?" "Well, it is a bit dangerous don't you think? I  mean I don't know you." I hopped off the train and Mr Sleaze said, "quick, quick, there is a train to Liege on platform three," and  I ran and I caught it. It delivered me home safely.

Join Leon Harrington and Connie Han for a roundup of science news, features and events.This week: Supermouse, PS3 for science?, IVM babies, HapMap moves forward, Queen opens Diamond Light Source.Events: 'Perspectives' @ Science Oxford, Book of Imaginary Science & Small Worlds @ History of Science Museum.Download the podcast here
Related Links:Supermouse VideoFolding@homeHapMap
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US human rights activist Rev Jesse Jackson is heading up a campaign to encourage more black students to apply to Oxford.The project, which will be headed under the title of 'Aspire', is being pushed by Regent's Park College, Canterbury Christ Church University and the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) racial justice team. The programme will focus on establishing and adding to mentoring schemes around Britain, in an attempt to identify problem areas faced by those thinking of applying to universities.Of the applications made to Oxford last year, only 151 of the applicants were black. Of that number, 26 were offered places. Myra Blythe, chaplain of Regent's Park, said: "We are tapping into what is a nationwide issue but looking at it from the Oxford perspective." "It is a major problem, not only in this country, but as Jessee Jackson is highlighting, in the United States too." 

by Griselda Murray Brown
The Ashmolean’s latest exhibition will not satisfy the Sunday afternoon escapist’s desire for a display of Oriental beauty or delicate depictions of distant Chinese rice fields. After wandering past the Renaissance frieze compositions, past the winking jewels in glass cases, the exhibition of late twentieth century and contemporary Chinese prints feels immediately ‘modern’, uncomfortably relevant. The prints are political: each image responds, overtly or obliquely, to the massive economic and cultural upheavals experienced by the Chinese people from the outset of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

 Chinese artisans began practicing print-making over a millennium ago – the output of printed books and illustrations being particularly high during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) – and continue to choose this medium to express today’s issues. There is a continuity of basic ‘effect’ then, but not of content.  Religious images have been replaced by exercises in Communist propaganda, portraits of revolutionary female campaigners, and supposedly apolitical townscapes, to cite just a few from this collection.

‘Golden Sea’ (1972), by Zhao Xicomo, portrays a group of school graduates sent to the countryside to work the land during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), under Mao’s call to ‘receive re-education from the poor and lower middle peasants’. The group of young labourers smile, somewhat exaggeratedly, as they work. It is disturbingly reminiscent of an unsophisticated, 1950s toothpaste advertisement. According to the curators’ blurb, ‘schematic smiling is a typical symbol of that period’; ‘schematic’ says it all. Xicomo was one of the graduates sent out, though his portrayal is an idealised, propagandist one.  Such labourers’ terrible hardship (there was widespread rural famine) is more accurately portrayed in Chao Mei’s ‘First Track of Footprints’, an image of the labourers in the snow, walking against a bitter wind.

 Another of Chao Mei’s prints, ‘September in the North’ (1963), depicts agricultural labourers harvesting the sorghum, during Mao’s so-called Great Leap Forward (1958-63). Two thirds of the print are composed of long sorghum stalks in the foreground, and the tiny figures bending round the bottom of the stalks provide a sense of their scale. The print is dominated by a striking red, with occasional blocks of yellow; primary colours are in keeping with the simple definition of the woodcut print.

 The period after the Cultural Revolution has been described as the ‘spring of arts and literature’. Li Xiu’s ‘The Return of the Graduate’ (1977) shows the influences of the Cultural Revolution (most noticeably, the ‘schematic’ smiling), yet has a fresh sense of hope. Three students alight from the train looking expectantly at figures beyond us, extending the pictorial space. Li Xiu was one of a tiny minority of female printmakers, and her print was one of the most published in 1970s China.
The most striking twenty-first century print in the exhibition is Hong Tao’s ‘Galloping Rhythm’ (2000). It depicts a modern train travelling at high speed, its shapes and colours blurred into horizontal streaks of colour. The effect is one of vibrant dynamism, suggestive of China’s rapid economic growth.
The exhibition, though small, showcases a variety of printing techniques, from fine etching to bolder woodblock methods. It shows the print in its simplest monochrome form, as well as its most exuberant. In terms of content, the prints are genuinely thought-provoking. The exhibition comes in two installments, the next one next term: watch this space…

  Part 1: until 9 December 2007

  Part 2: 18 December – 24 January 2008

by James Taylor

Bella (Harry Creelman) is celebrating her twenty-ninth birthday with a group of friends who are intricately connected in a web of sexual relationships and desire, whilst her father (Charlie Holt) lies in hospital dying of a brain tumour. Gradually the fairly charged, but superficially trivial, conversation probes deeper into the real problems that concern the play: feminine identity in the modern world and how a woman can participate in institutions such as marriage without surrendering to the oppression on which they were founded.

The plot of the play is interrupted continually by Bella’s memories of her and her father, a masculine authority figure who seems to have shown little respect for her mother. It is significant that the play’s name should be his pet name for her, since this articulates how Bella rebels throughout the play against masculine dominance.  She does this mainly by having control in her relationships and yet fails to find a new identity for herself outside of his definition of her as Rabbit.

The occupation with the sensual and the immediate runs throughout the play: Richard (Jonathon Rhodes) is chastised at one point by Sandy (Emerald Fennel) with the words, “You dislike looking at something, you have to turn it into something else, love, romance…,” which emphasises the feminine characters’ rejection of the masculine categories of meaning.  The realisation comes late in the play that “you need light and dark”, that you need some categories of meaning or binaries to have a meaningful existence. The question it leaves is how feminism might redefine the masculine categories that it has so far failed to do.

Though the thematic aspects of the play deserve due respect, it often fails to deliver in form and style: the father’s scenes often fail to seem relevant or make their meaning clear and thus appear as intrusions. The play sometimes fails to keep the balance in creating colloquial and natural conversation between stylistic exaggeration and clichéd caricature.

However, the cast manages to conceal this most of the time: the dialogue throughout the play has vast amounts energy, especially the dialogue between Jonathan Rhodes, Harry Creelman and Emerald Fennell, which injects life and authenticity into the play. Alex Bowles (Tom) and Jenny Ross (Emily), though playing less acerbic and domineering characters, inhabit their characters excellently, recreating a more genuine social atmosphere in their responses to the other characters’ violent outbursts. Charlie Holt had the hardest task in this play in handling the intrusive father scenes in a role that would have suited an older man, but often manages to salvage them through the sheer intensity of his performance. Seeing Rabbit is not a matter of life and death, but it certainly asks some interesting questions about feminism, though its style is at times clichéd, and even at its low points the actors provide an energy and intensity that makes it an engaging play.

Two men were contaminated with chemical powder earlier this week, after a drum of waste products began to leak behind a shop in Oxfordshire. The incident took place in Banbury on Wednesday morning, after the cleaners came into contact with waste products from the Specsavers Optician branch on Bridge Street. The men began vomiting, itching and broke out in blisters, and emergency services were called to the scene at around 9:15am.The incident is being investigated by Cherwell District Council and the Oxfordshire fire service.Deputy Chief Fire Officer Mike Smythe commented: "We just had two of our specialist officers in gas-tight suits enter the area, they've made tests of the substance. "We are confident, at the moment, that the substance is in fact inert but we do need to finish off those tests results." Officials have not released details of the results of the testing, but it is believed that the waste products in question were the plastic shavings of spectacle lenses, which created a white powder, created after opticians resized the lenses to fit inside the frames. The two men involved were taken to Horton Hospital, after they were washed down with warm water in a decontamination tent and dressed in sterile white paper suits. The clothing has been taken away for forensic examinations.

Today marks 18 years since the Berlin Wall fell, and the national debate — are things better for it? — rolls absurdly on. As reported by Welt, one in five Germans wants the wall back, surely a symptom of a disastrous case of ignorance plaguing the German youth. According to a study by the Freie Universität in Berlin, they think the wall was build by the Allies, the Stasi was just like any normal secret service, East Germany wasn’t a dictatorship and their most famous statesman was none other than Helmut Kohl, (West) German Chancellor from 1982 to 1998.

But maybe the only good news coming out of the “Ostalgie” debate is that the quaint Trabant may be making a return. I’m not convinced by that report though — just look at this giveaway sentence, hidden right at the end:

The company is looking for a producer to make a first run of 200 models.

In the same way that Michael Knighton once looked for ?20m to buy Manchester United, I presume.

For some British coverage, try Timothy Garton Ash’s take on the anniversary in yesterday’s Guardian.

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Sara-Christine Gemson looks ta the troubles befalling Oxfprd's small businesses 
Coming back from the summer vacation, you may have noticed the addition of the Gourmet Burger Kitchen and Wagamama to the culinary offerings of central Oxford. A stroll down Cowley Road reveals the arrival of a Costa Coffee and the opening of a new G&D’s. Little Clarendon Street, which formally appeared to be a bastion of indie charm (if in appearance only) recently added Strada to the chains to which it plays host. What’s happening to Oxford? Despite its unique architecture that attracts tourists from all over the world, are its commercial offerings becoming increasingly homogenous? And if so, is this something of concern?

On this question, the City Council abdicates responsibility for any major role in the nature of shops and restaurants available in Oxford. John Kulasek, the Acting Assets Manager for commercial rents at the city council, while hesitating to give an exact figure, said that the town council owned at most five percent of the commercial spaces in Oxford. On Cowley Road in particular, the town council has very little control over the commercial spaces available: “I’ve not actually counted them but I imagine there must be a couple of hundred shops on Cowley Road. The City council owns six. So our influence there is very slight.” However, he admits that the council does have a bigger influence in the center of town, where it owns entire streets such as George Street or stretches of Broad Street as well as the Covered Market. For the property that it does own, the council has a policy to try to maximise local opportunities. Everything else being equal, the council would favour a local business over a chain: “In terms of commercial shops and restaurants we would look at all offers received and, wherever possible, try to use a local company.” So how does he explain the Gourmet Burger Kitchen replacing the independently owned lebanese restaurant Tarboush on George Street? In that case, the owner signed over his claim to the property to GBK and the council didn’t actively seek out a chain. More generally though, Mr. Kulasek asserts “Sometimes you can’t hold the tide back” so the council tries to concentrate the chains in one area rather than have them scattered all over the city. In the three and a half years that he’s been in his position he has noted a change “I’ve noticed an acceleration of chains trying to get into the city.”

For Ian Pavier, the manager of Hedges, one of the butchers in the Covered Market, the current trend dates much further back. The Covered Market wasn’t always filled with souvenir shops and cafes catering to tourists: “In the last fifteen years the butchers and fishmongers have all dwindled away.” Supermarkets like Sainbury’s and Tesco, with their centrally located “local” or “metro” branches can capture a major share of the grocery business even in a town like Oxford, where the majority of students don’t have cars and can’t drive to the big supermarkets on the outskirts. There has been an outcry in the press and in recent books published on the supermarket industry in the UK on how big supermarkets are even encroaching on small city center shops with their smaller “convenience” shops. Conversely, the “Market Investigation into the Supply of Groceries in the UK” report published by the Competition Commission on 31 October concluded: “Concerns have also been raised regarding Sainsbury’s and Tesco’s expansion in convenience store retailing. We do not find any adverse effect on competition arising from these issues. We consider that those convenience store operators that provide consumers with a strong retail offer will continue to survive and prosper, and the evidence suggests that current developments in convenience store retailing reflect consumer preferences.” This reflects Mr. Pavier’s experience when Sainbury’s first opened in the center of town. While they initially experienced a drop in business, it didn’t last: “People like Sainbury’s and Tesco’s don’t really know what butchery is so people go there once or twice but can’t find what they want so they go back to the butchers.”

So is Oxford no worse off for having lost a few independent restaurants and shops in exchange for chain restaurants and the big supermarkets? It depends what you are looking for. Wanting to ensure a uniform, quality experience and avoid any variation that might tarnish the company reputation, head offices make sure that franchises provide a certain level of service, quality of food and maintenance of venue. Aneta Wetlsha, the assistant manager at GBK on George Street explains that people from the central office visit regularly to make sure that the franchise is abiding by company rules. In some cases, customers are quite happy with the result. “I don’t see it as a big loss, given that there are three other similar restaurants left” says Farid Boussaid, a student, of Tarboush being replaced by GBK. “The service [at Tarboush] was not always great and the burgers [at GBK] are excellent!”  Similarly, John and Ann Priest who’ve been living in Oxfordshire since 1988 have noticed that Oxford has become more commercial but didn’t seem too concerned about the trend. In fact, many customers actively seek out chains for the familiarity they offer. Seth Anziska regularly studies in coffee shops and chooses his venue based on the type of work he’s doing: “For uninterrupted writing, I prefer Starbucks on Cornmarket, which has outlets, long hours and no accessible wireless. Sometimes not being able to get online is a must to avoid distraction. The familiar ritual of Starbucks means I could be anywhere, which helps to keep me grounded.”

On the other hand, it’s precisely that uniformity that can be off-putting. Independent businesses tend to be a more integral part of the community and make an effort to offer a more personalised service. Jan Rasmussen is the owner of Green’s Cafe on St Giles: “What we try to offer here is to be part of the local community. I’ve been here for two years now and I know pretty much all the regulars. People know me, we have a chat.” Because it’s their own business and it’s usually “one of one”, owners of such independent businesses are often far more actively involved in the daily operations. As Mr. Rasmussen puts it, “Places like Starbuck’s and Costa do very well, but when you go in, you don’t normally meet Mr. Costa.” This doesn’t go unnoticed. Customers such as Aleksandra Gadzala note the difference in the service offerings in independent places likes Green’s: “The independent coffee shops have more character, often friendlier staff and a greater variety in terms of food.” Indeed there is often a certain flexibility in the offerings of independent restaurants that chains can’t accommodate. At Green’s, you can ask for something off the menu and they will be happy to satisfy your special request.

This attention to individual and local needs is what distinguishes the independent shops from the chains. Green’s flexibility stands in contrast to Wagamama, where any special request would need to be sent to London for approval: “The customers should experience the same service everywhere they go […]. They [the franchises] can also create their own seasonal specials but all these need approval from the UK Wagamama head office team. We obtain our food from our central depot which supplies all our restaurant so that we can have a standard uniformity throughout the group and achieve high quality and standards in all our restaurants, so that the food consumed in Oxford is of the same quality as the food served in any of our other branch’s.”

Similarly, the big supermarkets arrive with their established selection of products that don’t necessarily reflect local tastes, needs or products. At Hedges all the pork and lamb is from the Cotswolds area and they actively try to sell as much local product as possible. The big supermarkets are now starting to offer local products, but these new offerings seem to be a marketing ploy as opposed to an organic way of doing business. This can be seen in Tesco’s official line on the local products it sells: “Tesco is British farming’s biggest customer and our own customers tell us they want us to do even more to find and stock great local products. This year we have opened up seven regional offices all of which are making great progress in this area, and have introduced 600 new lines. It’s something we’re committed to.” (More generally, when trying to find out about service offerings and their relationship to Oxford, managers and owners of independent shops and restaurants were available and happy to talk while I had to go through press offices based in London for chains such as Wagamama and Tesco.
Even though both chains and independent stores can offer quality products and services, the concern in Oxford is that independents are being pushed out because they can’t afford increasingly exorbitant rents. Max Mason is the owner of the Big Bang, a restaurant on Walton Street in Jericho that offers gourmet bangers and mash. He expresses serious concerns about the changing nature of the commercial offerings in Oxford: “Oxford is a place of international interest, a place people visit wanting to see oldie Britain. They want to see them cobbles, they want to see the Covered Market, they want to see independent places.” Yet such places are being pushed out because “Oxford is so expensive that only the big chains can afford the rent.”

So what does the future hold for the independent shops and restaurants of Oxford?  There is hope, though success depends on a lucky combination of good business sense and hard work. When he opened Green’s two years ago, Mr. Rasmussen was both tactical and pragmatic. He couldn’t open in a more prime location because of the competition and the expensive rents. But he found a promising location on St Giles: “We had to choose our location very carefully. We are lucky, we are in an independent area. St Giles is not the main shopping area and there aren’t many commercial properties here so there can’t be a Starbucks or something next door, which is something we definitely considered.” Mr. Mason also highlights the importance of intelligent appraisal: “You need to really work hard on what you are, what your special slant is on the market, how you are different from your competitors and then work out if it’s financially viable. It’s a tricky balancing act.” Fortunately, there’s a critical mass in Oxford that’s interested in keeping independent places open and that ensures that restaurants like the Big Bang do well: “There’s a massive intelligent, affluent market. There are people who will pay the Covered Market prices. The populace of Oxford is keen to keep the town an interesting place.” There is also the strong possibility that niche business models like the Big Bang, which only serves food and drink produced in a twenty mile radius, may be the only viable business model in the future. As Mr. Mason explains: “In three or four years time, when petrol is ridiculously expensive, all restaurants will have to source everything locally because it’s not going to be viable to source things from nine or eleven hundred miles away.” Until then, you can choose between a bowl of noodles, a burger or bangers and mash next time you go out for dinner.

Ten percent of adults suffer from a phobia – that is, “an uncontrollable, irrational and persistent fear of a specific object, situation or activity”. This is hardly surprising given the extensive and eclectic number of phobias on offer. These range from the fear of enclosed spaces (claustrophobia) to fear of bald people (peladophobia) to fear of long words (hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia – certainly long enough to give anyone a fright). Indeed, any Oxford student has a good chance of developing ergophobia, the fear of work, or at the very least, bibliophobia, the fear of books.

The question of why we have phobias has frustrated psychologists for centuries. Freudians detect a causal link between a child’s relationship with his parents and his behaviour in his later years. For example, adult agoraphobics (those who fear open spaces) may have once feared abandonment by a cold and unaffectionate mother, which has led to a fear of rejection or helplessness in adulthood. Alternatively, agoraphobia may develop in people seeking to avoid situations they have found painful or embarrassing in the past.
Others posit the theory that phobias are socially transmittable. Research suggests that half of all people with phobias have never had a painful experience with the object of their fears. It is therefore possible that, having heard of an injury inflicted on another person by a specific thing,  for this reason, someone has developed a vicarious fear of that  thing.

But do phobias develop over time or are they within us innately, from time immemorial? It is suggested that humans have acquired fears of certain animals and situations that, in our evolutionary history, threatened our survival, thereby explaining why snakes and spiders are the top two creature phobias. Our ancestors spent much time on the savannas in Africa, the women gathering food on their knees with their infants close by. Whereas lions could be seen from a distance and therefore avoided, spiders and snakes were concealed and so posed a more threatening ‘invisible’ danger.

Another factor to consider is whether or not phobias are culture-specific. Agoraphobia for example, is much more common in the US and Europe than in other areas of the world, while a phobia common in Japan, but almost nonexistent in the West, is taijin kyofusho, an incapacitating fear of offending others through one's own awkward social behaviour. Since modesty and a sensitive regard for others is strongly entrenched in Japanese society, tajin kyofusho can be seen as a product of Japan’s distinctive value system.