While chaos mounted in southern Ukraine last week, with Russian forces overrunning Crimea and the region threatening to secede, a handful of science leaders huddled in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, plotting a revolution of their own. Their aim: reinvigorate a scientific community that has been adrift since Soviet times. Gathered in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, on 6 March, the luminaries reviewed draft legislation that would transform the nation's science and higher education system. The two bills would set up a competitive grant system, root out moribund institutions, give greater autonomy to universities, and make it easier to ship reagents and biological samples into and out of Ukraine. "We have a historic chance to revitalize science," says molecular biologist Nataliya Shulga, chief executive of the Ukrainian Science Club, a think tank in Kyiv.
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