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A GH¢4 million Mathematics, Science and Technology Scholarship Scheme for students at the secondary level will be instituted at the start of the 2010/11 academic year.

The scheme is to stimulate students to take up programmes in the field of Math and Science and make Science and technology the critical drivers for the country’s socio-economic development.

The Minister for Environment, Science and Technology, Ms. Sherry Ayittey, announced this at a national forum on Ghana’s Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy in Accra yesterday.

The forum was on the theme, “Achieving a middle-income status through science, technology and innovation”, and it was meant to discuss the STI policy before it gets to the higher realms of the Executive arm of the government.

The goal of the STI policy is to harness the nation’s total science and technology capacity to achieve national objectives for poverty reduction, competitiveness of enterprises, sustainable environmental management and industrial growth. continue reading…

Biomedical scientists from the University of Central Florida and Louisiana State University have identified a way to block a “cell death signal” that they believe triggers brain damage during strokes.
Strokes, also known as cerebral ischemia, are caused by inadequate blood flow to the brain and are the third-leading cause of death in the United States.

The team’s work focused on a neurotransmitter that typically plays an important role in communication among nerve cells in the brain and fosters learning and memory. This glutamate neurotransmitter opens the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptors, allowing the entry of calcium into the nerve cells.

Under normal conditions, the activity of the NMDA receptors is tightly regulated to prevent nerve cells from becoming overloaded with calcium. During a stroke, however, that process of regulation breaks down. The excessive influx of calcium through NMDA receptors kills the nerve cells and can cause severe brain damage.
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Bright Career Opportunities In 3d Animation And Visual Effects:
There is an increase in demand for 3D Animation and Visual Effects professionals. The growth of the Entertainment and Gaming industry led to this demand. Animation and Visual Effects have been embraced by technical areas like automobile engineering, aerospace engineering, civil, pharmaceutical, medicine and architecture as well.

A career in Animation and Visual effects is for those who have a creative mind and a soaring imagination. Besides being creative, one needs a professional degree in 3D Animation and Visual Effects. Courses are available world wide to pursue masters in this.

Some of the disciplines in this profession are visual effects artist, texture artist, technical director, lighting artist, pre-visualisation artist, character animator and modeller. Whatever area one chooses to pursue, knowledge in traditional arts and animation skills on computer is the foundation. So, one begins with these courses.
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Let’s pick up where our last column left off. When we last left Rocky and President Obama (an old cartoon reference for you over-50 types… remember Rocky & Bullwinkle?), we were talking about the power of critical incidents as learning opportunities. At issue was whether the President and his team have forgotten to “turn around and see if anyone’s following” – a common leadership mistake (especially if you feel you’ve been given a mandate for change).

Seems to me what the President needs to do more of is “explain the why.” Explaining the why is one of the leader’s most valuable tools in the citizen or employee engagement game. Explaining the why pulls people in, creates a common understanding of the situation or crisis, and helps everyone absorb how the change relates to them. Sometimes there’s no real need to explain the why – it’s either plainly obvious why we all need to pitch in (disaster in Haiti) or the call to action is logical and produces a “of course we’re with you” type of response (creating a set of core values for the company).
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GRE

. The GRE is now only available as a computer-adaptive test. This is how it works: instead of having a pre-determined mixture of easy, medium, and hard questions, the computer will select questions for you based on how well you are doing. The first question will be of medium difficulty; if you get it right, the second question will be selected from a large group of questions that are a little harder; if you get the first question wrong, the second will be a little easier. The result is that the test automatically adjusts to your skill level. The Tough questions have more credit than easier ones.
.You can still earn a very high score even if you answer several questions incorrectly. Correct answers to Harder questions leads to large score as compared to easier questions. This means to Get large score more difficult questions has to be answered.
.Some (Very few) Universities may demand Subject GRE.
. After completing your exam you can send your scores (free!) to four Universities so be prepared.
. Your GRE scores are valid for 5 years.
.You may appear again in GRE after one month.
Total testing time is up to three hours, not including the research section. The directions at the beginning of each section specify the total number of questions in the section and the time allowed for the section.
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IELTS is an English Language Proficiency test that is required to be taken by non-native students for study in countries where the medium of instruction is English.

IELTS is accepted by universities in UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. It has become a mandatory test for study in Australia.

You cannot be granted an Australian student visa without an IELTS score, TOEFL is not accepted.

All other study destinations either require you to take the TOEFL or IELTS. IELTS is however not accepted by most universities in USA. In many Canadian Universities either of IELETS/TOEFL would work.

IELTS is accepted by most Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand academic institutions. American academic institutions are increasingly accepting IELTS for admissions purposes.

. IELTS assesses your English language ability. A good score (usually 6.0 and above) is an entry requirement for many colleges and universities worldwide.
.You can repeat the test as often as you like, but only at intervals of at least 90 days between test dates.

What is the format of the test?
The test has four parts:
Listening ? 30 minutes
Reading ? 1 hour
Writing ? 1 hour
Speaking ? 13 ? 15 minutes

TOEFL iBT was introduced in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Puerto Rico in 2005. The second phase of the rollout began on March 25, 2006, when test centers in selected cities in Africa, the Americas, Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, and North Africa offered TOEFL iBT for the first time.

A list of cities where TOEFL iBT is being introduced is posted in the Learners and Test Takers section of this Web site. This list is updated every week.

TOEFL iBT introduction dates have not yet been set for some countries (PDF). When these countries are ready to implement TOEFL iBT, a message will be posted on this Web site. To provide continued access for TOEFL and TSE test takers in these areas, ETS will offer the paper-based TOEFL test and the TSE test until TOEFL iBT can be delivered.

What Is Happening To The Current TOEFL Tests? The computer- and paper-based (CBT, PBT) versions of the TOEFL test will be given at a particular location until the Internet-based version is implemented.
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S.No University/College
1 Massachusetts Inst of Technology
2 Stanford University
3 University of California-Berkeley
4 California Institute Technology
5 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
6 Georgia Institute of Technology
7 University of Michigan
8 Cornell University
9 Carnegie Mellon University
10 University of Texas at Austin
11 Purdue University
12 University of California- San Diego continue reading…

The complete asexuality of a widespread fungus-gardening ant, the only ant species in the world known to have dispensed with males entirely, has been confirmed by a team of Texas and Brazilian researchers.
Most social insects—the wasps, ants and bees—are relatively used to daily life without males. Their colonies are well run by swarms of sterile sisters lorded over by an egg-laying queen. But, eventually, all social insect species have the ability to produce a crop of males who go forth in the world to fertilize new queens and propagate.

Queens of the ant Mycocepurus smithii reproduce without fertilization and males appear to be completely absent, report Christian Rabeling, Ulrich Mueller and their Brazilian colleagues in PLoS ONE this week.

“Animals that are completely asexual are relatively rare, which makes this is a very interesting ant,” says Rabeling, an ecology, evolution and behavior graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin. “Asexual species don’t mix their genes through recombination, so you expect harmful mutations to accumulate over time and for the species to go extinct more quickly than others. They don’t generally persist for very long over evolutionary time.”
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Bacteria can swim, propelling themselves through fluids using a whip-like extension called a flaggella. They can also walk, strolling along solid surfaces using little fibrous legs called pili. It is this motility that enable some pathogenic bacteria to establish the infections such as meningitis that cause their human hosts to get sick or even die.
Now researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered that a single atom — a calcium, in fact can control how bacteria walk. By resolving the structure of a protein involved in the movement of the opportunitistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the scientists identified a spot on the bacteria, that when blocked, can stop it in its tracks. The finding identifies a key step in the process by which bacteria infect their hosts, and could one day lead to new drug targets to prevent infection.
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