It’s that time of the week again good people when we dive head first into the vast ocean of internet space and pluck out some fresh catches or quick bites to keep you mentally nourished. In our latest release we travel across the Irish Sea to Northern Ireland where the Open University have been on a promotional offensive this week. Also the Open University Business School tackle the problem of old sexists who keep putting their feet into it and we also draw an article from The Conversation which asks whether our attention spans have been shortened by technology.

The importance of higher education to the Northern Ireland economy has been highlighted at the launch of the first ever ‘open week’ organised by the Open University. A promotional week has been planned at the OU’s Belfast headquarters this week and coincides with Adult Learners Week, a UK-wide celebration of study for those who have long since left the classroom.

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What to do with ageing sexists? So, unless you’ve been under a rock this week, the chances are that you’ve heard the comments made by Sir Tim Hunt, at a conference in South Korea. They are reported here on the BBC website under the rubric of ‘the trouble with girls‘ as “Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry.”

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If you’ve ever found it hard to concentrate on one thing without stopping to check your emails or post to social media, you’re not alone. The average human attention span – how long we can concentrate effectively on a single task – was recently reported by Microsoft to have dropped below the level attributed to goldfish.

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