Schools 4 Online

It’s a normal weekday afternoon, and my house – also, unfortunately, my workspace – is crammed with teenagers. Some of them are in their usual pose – lying on the sofa, TV zapper in hand, surrounded by the debris of several meals – and one has just made a large lunch, leaving the kitchen looking like a scene from a horror movie.

In the good old days my daughters – Rosie is taking A-levels, and Elinor GCSEs – would be out at school between 8am and 4.30pm, so during office hours our home would be a haven of peace. No longer: the dreaded “study leave” has now kicked in, and the only reason they go to school is to sit an exam. There is no alternative but to hunker down and get used to this new world in which the doorbell rings constantly (“It’s just Janine/Hetty/Molly/Charlotte/Freddie/Tom coming to help me revise”), the fridge is always empty, and the shower is in constant use. So how can a parent help? Here are the results of my straw poll, conducted above the din (loud music is essential to prolonged study):

1 “Buy revision food. That’s stuff like dried fruit, fruit juice, french bread, pasta, pesto. Chocolate biscuits. Cereal bars. Ice cream. More ice cream. Even more ice cream.”

2 “Don’t constantly tell me to work, mum. When I’m working ALL THE TIME.” continue reading…

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…

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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Researchers have found four new genetic variants that increase the risk of contracting one of the major forms of leukemia, confirming that risk factors for the fatal blood cancer can be inherited.

The findings mean scientists now know of 10 genetic variants associated with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), scientists at Europe’s Institute of Cancer Research who conducted the study said.

The four new genetic factors are all common in European populations and each factor contributes to an increase in the risk of the disease.

CLL is the most common type of leukemia in adults, accounting for around 30 to 40 percent of all forms of leukemia in Western countries. Most of those diagnosed are over the age of 55, and while the incidence of CLL is broadly equal in black and white populations, the disease is rare among Asians.

Richard Houlston, who led the study, said it confirmed the inherited risk of CLL, and showed it was not due to a single gene due to the cumulative effect of many genetic changes.

Each person may carry any number, from a few of the identified risk factors to all of them, he said in research published in the journal Nature Genetics. And the more genetic factors carried, the higher their risk of developing CLL.
“People who have more than 13 risk factors are seven times more likely than the general population to develop CLL,” Houlston added in a statement about the study.

The risk factors were identified using a genetic analysis technique that scientists have used previously to find risk genes in breast, prostate, testes, brain and colon cancer and childhood leukemia.

The researchers scanned the genes of 2,503 CLL patients and compared them to 5,789 healthy people, looking for differences in DNA between the two groups.

In previous studies, Houlston’s team found that genetic factors could make people more susceptible to CLL, identifying six genetic factors more common among sufferers.

The four new factors add to those findings and the study also found that 87 percent of people with CLL would have at least one of these genetic risks.

David Grant, scientific director of the Leukemia Research charity which funded the study, said it confirmed some long-held suspicions that this form of leukemia may run in families.

“This research is providing the genetic evidence that an increased risk of developing CLL can be inherited,” he said in a statement.

“However it is clearly a complex picture and we need to study more families before we can be certain of the particular genetic traits that are most important.”

Going to school out of state can be cheaper than staying near home

The hype about colleges’ heightened admissions standards and skyrocketing tuition in crowded and financially troubled states such as California may be drowning out the surprising reality that many affordable public colleges in less populated areas are eager for students and are willing to cut good deals. Some schools are even willing to extend their generosity to less-than-stellar students.
Click here to find out more!

U.S. News has identified several public universities that waive out-of-state surcharges for many or, in some cases, all qualified out-of-state students.

At some of these colleges, the in-state tuition is so low that the total annual cost of attendance, including extra travel expenses for out-of-staters, is below $15,000. That means it can be cheaper for some students to attend schools out of state. Many public universities in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California, for example, have total sticker prices in excess of $20,000 for local residents. Many of the bargain schools also award extra scholarships to better-qualified students, bringing their costs down even further.

Of course, there are reasons these colleges are trying to attract out-of-staters. They are usually in states such as North Dakota, Kansas, and Louisiana that are seeing declines in the numbers of local teenagers. Often, they are in rural, remote areas such as northwest Oklahoma or eastern Oregon. And generally, these colleges rank poorly compared with more in-demand, and thus more expensive, colleges.
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