Institutions that have adopted a retake “ban” include the medical school at University College London (UCL) and Bath University’s architecture course, one of the most respected in the country.

Critics argue that the methods used to weed out candidates are becoming so complex and change so frequently that they are unfair on pupils and schools.

Other universities are making increasing use of the A* grade at A-level, which will be awarded for the first time this summer.

Churchill College, Cambridge, which has published admissions requirements for 2011, will require candidates wanting to study law to obtain two A*s, the toughest standard offer in the country.

Many pupils are entered for A-level exams in January of their final year at school, allowing them to retake the paper in the summer if they think they can get a better result.No figures are collected centrally, but government research has suggested that 30%-50% of pupils retake some papers.

UCL’s medical school includes high-profile London teaching hospitals such as University College hospital and the Royal Free.

It argues that the newly published policy is simply making explicit an approach it has long adopted and is trying to “minimise the attrition rate” for a course that includes a large number of exams.

The policy says: “We find that students who need to resit exams to achieve the required grades at AS or A-level tend to struggle subsequently on our programme. For this reason, we will not consider any resit grades at A-level.”

In addition, UCL says almost all exams must be sat in the summer, rather than being staggered “to ensure students can cope with a large exam load”.

Stephen Borthwick, headmaster of Epsom college in Surrey, said he may now advise pupils against applying to study medicine at UCL.

He said several potential candidates were halfway through an A-level course that was structured to include possible resits and January exams and that they could not be expected to reconfigure their course to suit one university.

“To do this across the board is very brutal as many schools choose to take particular combinations of exams to maximise opportunities for their youngsters,” said Borthwick. “To be told this midway through your course is very difficult.”

Universities are having to sort through growing numbers of pupils with straight A grades at A-level. This year, 27% of grades are forecast to be As and about one in eight pupils to score at least three As.

The new A*, introduced to help universities pick the best candidates, are expected to be awarded in about 7% of papers.

To gain an A*, candidates must score an average of 80% for their whole A-level and 90% in exams in the second year of their course.

Only a few universities now use the A* in offers, including Imperial College London and Cambridge, where one A* is the standard offer. Others, including Durham, are considering introducing it next year.

None, however, has gone as far as Churchill College’s law policy. “We are a very data-focused college for admissions,” said Colm Caulfield, one of Churchill’s admissions tutors. “Our law director of studies has an exceptional record for [his students’] academic performance. He believes it is very important to have people with a very high level of academic achievement.”

Caroline Aspinwall, principal admissions officer at UCL medical school, said: “Analysis of the performance of current students revealed that some were struggling academically and with stress, and/or failing medical school examinations, despite having top grades at A-level.

“Some of these students are accustomed to being able to resit exams.”

Katherine Lloyd Clark, head of admissions at Bath, said the policy had been followed for several years, adding: “This approach reflects the exceptionally high demand for our limited number of architecture places.”

Not all schools are opposed to the ban on retakes for university admission. Jackie Cahalin, headmistress of Lancaster Girls’ Grammar school, said: “I can quite understand why they say they will only take you on your first go.

The College designed its Continuing Education program for learners of all ages, whether they want to update their professional skills, earn a certificate to help launch a new career, or just enjoy the chance to explore something exciting and new. From website design to wedding planning, from income tax preparation to positive parenting, there’s a class for every interest.

“Our online courses open doors to personal, professional, and civic growth,” says CCDC Continuing Education Director Neil Richardson. “We’ve placed special emphasis on skills for work in the region’s hottest industries, but we cover the full range of subjects for both personal and professional development.”The Continuing Education program is just one component of CCDC’s focus on educational opportunities tailored to the needs of D.C. residents. The College’s entire curriculum is the product of Washington’s collective vision for delivering access to high-quality, affordable postsecondary education, including pathways to an associate’s or bachelor’s degree, workforce development programs, and enrichment courses for lifelong learning.

In addition to Continuing Education, the College offers 23 degree programs, from automotive technology to health care professions; certificate-driven programs that qualify students for careers in high-growth fields such as nursing and HVAC technology; and a Workforce Development and Lifelong Learning program to hone knowledge and skills in administrative technology, construction trades, health care, hospitality, office technology and green (environmental) technology.

General program areas in the Continuing Education program include accounting, business, healthcare and fitness, hospitality and gaming, green building and sustainability, green/renewable energy, media and design, and skilled trades and industrial. CCDC also plans to add new courses and areas of study based on community interest. For students planning to apply to college or graduate school, CCDC also offers classes to prepare for the SAT/ACT, GRE, GMAT, and LSAT exams.

CCDC works with respected partners in online education to bring the D.C. community the most valuable and interesting classes offered anywhere. Intensive career and professional development classes help hone skills in areas such as computers and technology or writing and publishing. Courses with an emphasis on green industries provide valuable certifications in cutting-edge professions. And students in short-term legal studies courses can develop a specialization in the legal field—from alternative dispute resolution to victim advocacy.

The latest Continuing Education addition is the EdCafe, a virtual and real “third place” where visitors can link to an exciting array of D.C. cultural, educational, and research institutions that offer cutting-edge lectures, workshops, and events. EdCafe visitors discover great ways to explore their interests all over town, whether it’s attending a special tour of a Smithsonian exhibition or joining in a literary discussion at a neighborhood bookstore.

Continuing Education soon will be offering instructor-led classes in a variety of fields, including public service and nonprofit management, languages, liberal arts, website development, and project management training.

Best of all, CCDC’s online courses are affordable, convenient, and accessible any time of day or night. Students can choose from comprehensive, certificate-driven courses lasting 6 to 12 months, or opt for an intensive, short-term course of just six to eight weeks.

A General Body meeting took place on Wednesday which was attended by around 350 teachers of DU from various science departments such as Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Zoology, Electronics and Computer Science. It was unanimously decided by them to reject the new course.

The Academic Council had met on May 13 and decided that the semester system would be implement in all science courses except B.Sc.(H) Mathematics and B.Sc.(H) Chemical Sciences.

The General Body of Science rejected the semester system as they claimed that Vice Chancellor Deepak Pental had passed the system illegally and without prior consultation from the concerned departments. The science faculty also decided that they would not be teaching any courses that are under the semester system.

Secretary of the General Body of Science, Vinay Kumar Singh, said that all teachers wanted the courses to be taught in the usual annual format and retaining the old syllabus for the course.

Another move by the Academic Council that was protested against by the teachers was the scrapping of the B.Sc. Applied Physical Sciences courses like Computer Sciences and Electronics and merging them with the B.Sc. Physical Science course.

The Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) was also approached by the General Body of Science, urging them to decide unanimously to oppose the semester system being implemented for undergraduate courses without discussion or debate.

The General Body also asked DUTA to discontinue its involvement with the DU admission procedure that is set to begin this Friday.

“We are rapidly entering a time when nearly anyone can have his or her genome sequenced,” said Michael Snyder, PhD, professor and chair of genetics at Stanford. “However, the bulk of the differences among individuals are not found in the genes themselves, but in regions we know relatively little about. Now we see that these differences profoundly impact protein binding and gene expression.”

Snyder is the senior author of two papers — one in Science Express and one in Nature — exploring these protein-binding differences in humans, chimpanzees and yeast. Snyder, the Stanford W. Ascherman, MD, FACS, Professor in Genetics, came to Stanford in July 2009 from Yale, where much of the work was conducted.

Genes, which carry the specific instructions necessary to make proteins do the work of the cell, vary by only about 0.025 percent across all humans. Scientists have spent decades trying to understand how these tiny differences affect who we are and what we become. In contrast, non-coding regions of the genome, which account for approximately 98 percent of our DNA, vary in their sequence by about 1 to 4 percent. But until recently, scientists had little, if any, idea what these regions do and how they contribute to the “special sauce” that makes me, me, and you, you.

Now Snyder and his colleagues have found that the unique, specific changes among individuals in the sequence of DNA affect the ability of “control proteins” called transcription factors to bind to the regions that control gene expression. As a result, the subsequent expression of nearby genes can vary significantly.

“People have done a lot of work over the years to characterize differences in gene expression among individuals,” said Snyder. “We’re the first to look at differences in transcription-factor binding from person to person.” What’s more, by selectively breeding, or crossing, yeast strains, Snyder and his colleagues found that many, but not all, of these differences in binding and expression levels are heritable.

In the Science Express paper, which will be published online March 18, Snyder and his colleagues compared the binding patterns of two transcription factors in 10 people and one chimpanzee. They identified more than 15,000 binding sites across the genome for the transcription factor called NF-kB and more than 19,000 sites for another factor called RNA PolII. They then looked to see if every site was bound equally strongly by the proteins, or if there were variations among individuals.

They found that about 25 percent of the PolII sites and 7.5 percent of the NF-kB sites exhibited significant binding differences among individuals — in some cases greater than two orders of magnitude from one person to another. (For comparison, the binding differences between the humans and the chimpanzee were about 32 percent.) Many of these binding differences could be traced to differences in sequences or structure in the protein binding sites, and several were directly correlated to changes in gene expression levels.

“These binding regions, or chunks, vary among individuals,” said Snyder, “and they have a profound impact on gene expression.” In particular, the researchers found that several of the variable binding regions were near genes involved in such diseases as type-1 diabetes, lupus, leukemia and schizophrenia.

The researchers confirmed and extended their findings in the Nature paper, which will be published online March 17. In this study, they used yeast to determine that many of the binding differences and variations in gene expression levels in individuals are passed from parent to progeny, and they identify several control proteins that vary — a study that would have been impossible to perform in humans.

“We conducted the two studies in parallel,” said Snyder, “and found the same thing. Many of the binding sites differed. When we mapped the areas of difference, we found that they were associated with key regulators of variation in the population. Together these two studies tell us a lot about the so-called regulatory code that controls variation among individuals.”

The research in the Science Express study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Medical Fellows Program. The research in the Nature study was supported by the National Institutes of Health. In addition to Snyder, other Stanford researchers involved in the two studies include postdoctoral scholars Fabian Grubert, PhD; Minyi Shi, PhD; and Manoj Hariharan, PhD; and graduate student Konrad Karczewski.

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.

Striving to prevent such calcium overloads, the research team discovered that an enzyme, DAPK1 (Death-Associated Protein Kinase 1), binds to a portion of the NMDA receptor and acts as a “cell death signal” during strokes.

Researchers hypothesized that by preventing DAPK1 from binding with the NMDA receptors, they could prevent the calcium overloads and cell deaths. They developed a potent compound to test their theory and found that the compound blocked DAPK1, protecting brain cells against stroke injury, and did not affect the beneficial physiological functions of the receptors.

The findings appear in the Jan. 22 issue of Cell, one of the leading journals in the field.

“It is conceivable that this study not only provides new insights into the cellular and molecular basis responsible for stroke damage, but also provides a therapeutic target for stroke therapy,” said Youming Lu, the LSU professor who led the team of scientists.

The findings also may have significant implications for developing therapeutic drugs to treat other neurodegenerative diseases, said UCF Assistant Professor Sic Chan, a study collaborator who has done extensive research on the role of calcium in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

“Anytime we gain an increased understanding of the molecular mechanism of neurodegeneration, that enhances our ability to make better drugs,” he said.

To date, all stroke clinical trials targeting glutamate receptors have failed, largely because of their side effects, an inefficient delivery of compounds from the blood to the brain or the length of time it takes for the drugs to work effectively.