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A newly-discovered manuscript may represent Edward Gibbon's earliest experiment in the irony for which he would become famous, an Oxford University English academic has found. Professor David Womersley of Oxford University's English Faculty discovered the manuscript written by the 19-year old Edward Gibbon, which had been left in the attic of a house in Lausanne for many years.

Using a traditional Chinese board game and artificial intelligence, researchers at the University of Sydney and Charles Sturt University have gained new insight into how expertise develops. The findings, published this month in Nature's scientific reports , will improve our understanding of how we think and help to develop more flexible artificial intelligences.

AUSTIN, Texas — The School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin received a $500,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to educate doctoral graduate students about the evolving occupations of information professionals. As future faculty and scholars, these students will advance the study of information work in the nation's information schools.

The US presidential election dominates the global media every four years, with news articles, which are carefully analysed by commentators and campaign strategists, playing a major role in shaping voter opinion. Academics at the University of Bristol's Intelligent Systems Laboratory have developed an online tool, Election Watch, which analyses the content of news about the US election by the international media.

Mindy Kornhaber, associate professor of educational theory and policy at Penn State, recently had a unique opportunity in television. Kornhaber served as a consultant to "Canada's Smartest Person," a two-hour prime-time television show on the Canadian national network CBC. The show aired nationally in Canada on March 18.

The fascinating story behind a 1,200-year-old book unearthed by a mechanical digger operator six years ago in an Irish bog is to be told by the man who is supervising its conservation. John Gillis, a Senior Conservator of books and manuscripts at Trinity College Library, Ireland, will speak at The John Rylands Library on March 22 in an event jointly organised by the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies (MANCASS), based at The University of Manchester, and Manchester Medieval Society.

A research team, led by Jane Stuart-Smith of the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow has been awarded £235,000 by the Leverhulme Trust to study the evolution of speech in the city over the course of the past century. The project is now asking members of the public to come forward with their own examples of audio recordings, particularly from before 1980 and especially involving teenagers and women.

14 newly-discovered letters by Francois Voltaire have allowed an Oxford University team to shed light on his brief but important time in England. Two of the new letters shed new light on the extent of the author's interactions with the English aristocracy and in one letter he even signs his name 'Francis Voltaire' - something he has never before been recorded as doing.

Are you someone who easily recognises everyone you've ever met? Or maybe you struggle, even with familiar faces? It is already known that we are better at recognising faces from our own race but researchers have only recently questioned how we assimilate the information we use to recognise people. New research by the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus has shown that when it comes to recognising people the Malaysian Chinese have adapted their facial recognition techniques to cope with living in a multicultural environment.

In a study that investigates the challenges of disseminating clinical research findings in peer-reviewed biomedical journals, Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that fewer than half of a sample of trials primarily or partially funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were published within 30 months of completing the clinical trial.

Whether you are playing poker or haggling over a deal you might think that you can hide your true emotions. But telltale signs can reveal that you are concealing something, and now researchers at Oxford University and Oulu University are developing software that can recognise these 'micro-expressions' - which could be bad news for liars.

Scientists are developing a computer that can read vast amounts of scientific literature, make connections between facts and develop hypotheses. Ask any biomedical scientist whether they manage to keep on top of reading all of the publications in their field, let alone an adjacent field, and few will say yes.

A new analysis from the Center on Reinventing Public Education, at UW Bothell, shows evidence that charter elementary schools outperform traditional public schools in math and reading, and that charter middle schools excel in math as well. Economists Julian Betts and Emily Tang reviewed 40 high-quality studies of charter school achievement and analyzed the results.

Scientific equipment belonging to an Enlightenment figure has been found in an archaeological dig at the University. The eighteenth-century items, including laboratory apparatus and brightly coloured chemicals, almost certainly were the property of Joseph Black. Black was Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh and is best known for his discovery of carbon dioxide gas.

An historical study of the development of irregular verbs in the hundreds of Romance languages including French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan has revealed how these structures survive. Experts have also examined why they are learned by successive generations despite 'making no sense' or, apparently, having any function in the language.

A major literary discovery has been made in Sir Walter Scott's library at Abbotsford House. The Grotesquiad was recently uncovered by the Faculty of Advocates during efforts to catalogue Sir Walter's collection. Gerard Carruthers and Rhona Brown of the University's College of Arts have identified the author as James Beattie (1735-1803), who is known to have written a poem of this title, long thought to be lost.

PASADENA, Calif.—Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have conducted experiments confirming which of three possible mechanisms is responsible for the spontaneous formation of three-dimensional (3-D) pillar arrays in nanofilms (polymer films that are billionths of a meter thick).

Citations matter for authors. Being cited by one's peers is the chief indicator of an article's quality and worth. In the sciences, citations fuel a reward system of promotion, tenure, grants and editorial board positions. And if prestige is measured in an economy of citations, why not publish in open-access journals with broader readerships? Free online access to academic journals increases readership, according to a new study, but it produces no more citations, undermining a key claim of the open access movement.

Cutting down a virtual redwood with a virtual chainsaw may lead you to save trees by recycling more paper. That finding is an example of how real-world behavior can be changed by immersing people in virtual reality environments - a notion that is at the heart of work under way in Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab.

Launched as a reaction to the lack of outlets for challenging contemporary writing, a Cambridge-based journal is finding favour in the very places it aims to be the antidote for. One year on from its birth and with the fifth issue soon to be released, the Cambridge Literary Review continues to gain prominence, with a strong write up in the Times Literary Supplement and copies on sale in the Tate Modern bookshop amongst others.