I have been at a Tree of Life meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia this week.  It is funded (indeed, my travel and accomodation and food is funded by The Leverhulme Trust). Larry Moran is blogging about the meeting on the SandWalk blog.

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I deal a lot with the notion of a knowledge economy.  A knowledge economy is where we have a well educated bunch of people, that are pretty familiar with, and unafraid of technology, that can see technology opportunities and have a good chance of exploiting them.
In a knowledge economy, we would not be overly-reliant on […]

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There is a new Irish website called collab.ie that is doing a really interesting thing.  It is providing people with a place to go with an idea and look for other people that might have complementary skills to make the idea really fly.  This post is a really good example.  I think this needs to […]

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For the past decade when things were going well, the government provided support to Science Foundation Ireland, who dispense research grant funding to Irish third-level institutes.  This has resulted in an increase in the numbers of PhD graduates and has provided for the training of post-doctoral research scientists and has provided places in third-level institutes […]

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I have identified three areas where there is need for structural reform in order for Ireland to prosper in the future - electoral reform, educational reform and entrepreneurial reform.  These are my thoughts on these issues. 

1. Reform the system of election.  There should be at least 10% of the elected officials (Senate and Dail) without […]

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1-minute video

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In an email to all staff members, Dr. John Hughes has just revealed that NUI Maynooth is The Sunday Times university of the year.
From the email:
The award is based on an analysis of all 22 third level universities and institutes in the Republic and across 26 criteria including, grades, retention, research, student services, access for […]

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I have been thinking about the Irish educational system and in particular the leaving certificate.  The figures came out last week and it seems that 70% of our students are getting private education as well as public education.  This means that in the evenings and weekends, 70% of the students are going to private tutors […]

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So, last week outside the window of my lab, there was this car being revved up and started up and shut down and moved about.  Looking out the window, it looked like a bunch of ne’er-do-well students mucking about with their crap car that they bought on eBay for a fiver.
Well, it turns out that […]

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I have written about this before, but just to clear up what has happened in the Irish Universities in the way they are funded.

In 1994, I think, Gemma Hussey abandoned the direct funding of the universities by those who go to college.  The universities now no longer get funded in this way.  So, how do […]

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