A University of Florida patent for a nutritional supplement to build muscles was found invalid by a federal appeals court because an ad for the product in the body-builder magazine Flex made public key information about the product, which undercut the university's ability to claim its invention was new and novel. The court ruling can be found here.

Canada should ramp up its marketing to attract foreign students and talented professionals, taking advantage of protectionist provisions of economic-stimulus legislation enacted this year by the United States, according to an annual report released this morning by the independent Ontario Task Force on Competitveness, Productivity, and Economic Progress. The report points out, for example, that because the new law excludes foreign-born professionals with H1-B visas, Bank of America had to withdraw job offers to foreign students who were graduating from American business schools. Some students may now have second thoughts about applying to study in a country where they may not be able to work after graduation. "This policy mistake -- driven by attitudes of fear -- can be Ontario's opportunity,"...

The Boston Globe has a nice feature today about a nonprofit organization, called Seeding Labs, that takes unneeded equipment from university and other laboratories in the United States and ships the material to academic labs in the developing world. Over the last six years, the group, led by a Harvard Medical School alumna named Nina Dudnik, has equipped 22 labs at universities in 13 African and Latin American countries. Next month the group, which has graduate-student chapters on five American campuses, will make its biggest shipment yet: $700,000 worth of gear for the chemistry and pharmacy departments at Kenyatta University, in Nairobi, Kenya.

Northeastern University is eliminating its football program because it doesn't want to spend money to improve the Division I team in the long run, The Boston Globe reported. Administrators and trustees said that bolstering the team, which has produced six consecutive losing seasons, would require spending millions of dollars on a new head coach, on recruiting, and on improving facilities. University officials, who insisted that the move was not connected to the recession, have not decided exactly how the program's annual $3-million budget will be used instead, the Globe reported, but they said players on scholarship would keep their student aid and would be helped to transfer, if they wanted.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which houses the Albert Einstein archive and owns the rights to his image, is being urged not to renew its $2.66-million contract with the Walt Disney Company's Baby Einstein series when it comes up for renewal, in 2010, according to Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an American group of educators, health experts, and parents, says the Baby Einstein series and other videos for toddlers are actually harmful. "Parents believe baby media is educational, an impression that was fostered by Baby Einstein's marketing," said Nancy-Carlsson-Paige, a professor of education at Lesley University, in Massachusetts. In 2003 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that children under two years of age not watch television.

To make sure its hiring process is legal, the governing board of the Utah College of Applied Technology plans to withdraw its decision to rehire a controversial past president, Robert O. Brems, as the institution's leader, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. The full board will interview Mr. Brems and another finalist at its next meeting and then make a new decision, its chairman told the newspaper. The chairman said that the board was taking those steps because of allegations that it had violated Utah's open-meetings law in its decision last month, and not because of backlash over Mr. Brems's past. He had stepped down as president two years ago after controversies over the use of a campus's money for a political parade float...

About 70 students who had been occupying an administrative building at the University of California at Santa Cruz since Thursday afternoon to protest a 32-percent tuition increase left the building this morning, but accounts differed on how the protest ended. The university reported that the students had left voluntarily following a demand from the campus police. Witnesses told the Santa Cruz Sentinel, however, that officers in riot gear had moved in and used their batons to forcibly push the students out. One faculty member who was observing the scene was injured after falling over a railing. No arrests were reported.

Phyllis Wise, provost of the University of Washington, has accepted a position on the board of directors of Nike, which last year signed a 10-year contract to provide the university's athletics department with all its footwear, apparel, and some equipment. The Associated Press reports that some students are not happy with Ms. Wise's decision. They have been urging the university to pressure Nike to stop its reported abuses of workers.

University of California at Berkeley students protesting a planned 32-percent increase in tuition ended their occupation of an academic building on Friday night, escorted out by county sheriffs, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The protesters will face misdemeanor trespassing charges. Protests at the University of California at Santa Cruz continued on Saturday, according to the Associated Press.

Andrew Knicely, chairman of Fairmont State University's Board of Governors, resigned Friday for having verbally harangued the university's head football coach after a game last month, The Charleston Gazette reports. Mr. Knicely had apologized for the incident, in which he yelled at the coach over his son's lack of playing time in the game.