By working with leading scientific institutions, we will collate data and catalogue life forms and unlock the wonders of the oceans still unknown to humankind or science.

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It has also been used to offer help and collate data on the dead, the injured and the missing - at a time when phone lines were often jammed.

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Professor Jones, who has stepped down from the unit pending an investigation, told MPs that the data was freely available, however he was criticised by MPs for not publishing full details of the methodology used to collate the data.

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The figures we collate are a mixture of hard data, such as salary and faculty qualifications, and the subjective marks given by the school's students, such as a rating of their school's facilities.

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