Google has long had a reputation for being a place that’s near impossible to get a job if you aren’t a Stanford or MIT grad. They not only asked you for your college GPA, they even asked you what you made on your SAT as a pimple-faced high schooler.
Recently, that’s all changed.
Google’s…
What learning means.
This is a real image taken by the robotic spacecraft Cassini of Saturn eclipsing the sun (via).
Amazing. There is a little blue dot on the left side of the image just above the bright main rings. That is Earth, approximately a billion miles away.
Not psychology related, just an incredible image. Click for high resolution to see Earth.
Neutrinos: Everything You Need To Know
cwnl:
Neutrinos: Everything You Need To Know
What exactly are they?
With a neutral charge and nearly zero mass, neutrinos are the shadiest of particles, rarely interacting with ordinary matter and slipping through our bodies, buildings and the Earth at a rate of trillions per second.
First predicted in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli, who won a Nobel prize for this work in 1945, they are produced in various nuclear reactions: fusion, which powers the sun; fission, harnessed by humans to make weapons and energy; and during natural radioactive decay inside the Earth.
If they are so stealthy, how do we know they are there at all?
Wily neutrinos usually avoid contact with matter, but every so often, they crash into an atom to produce a signal that allows us to observe them. Fredrick Reines first detected them in 1956, garnering himself a Nobel prize in 1995.
Most commonly, experiments use large pools of water or oil. When neutrinos interact with electrons or nuclei of those water or oil molecules, they give off a flash of light that sensors can detect.
Where are these experiments found?
These days, a lot of expense and extreme engineering go into detectors that are sunk into the ground to shield them from extraneous particles that might interfere with them. For instance, OPERA, which detected the apparently faster-than-light neutrinos beamed from CERN, lies inside the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy. This works because neutrinos shoot straight through such shields.
Other detectors pick up naturally-produced neutrinos. One such detector – ANTARES – is miles under the Mediterranean Sea, while another, IceCube, is buried under Antarctic ice.
What’s cool about neutrinos?
Their stealth belies their potential importance. Take extra dimensions. Most particles come in two varieties: ones that spin clockwise and ones that spin anticlockwise. Neutrinos are the only particles that seem to just spin anticlockwise. Some theorists say this is evidence for extra dimensions, which could host the “missing”, right-handed neutrinos.
Anything else?
Unseen right-handed neutrinos may also account for mysterious dark matter. This is thought to make up 80 per cent of all matter in the universe and to stop galaxies from flying apart. The idea is that right-handed neutrinos might be much heavier than left-handed ones and so could provide the requisite gravity.
EDUCATION is the most powerful weapon - agree with this
educating yourself is the most powerful tool you can ever possess.
Some points:
- Many schools are small enough so that teachers know every student. If one method fails, teachers consult with colleagues to try something else
- Finland’s schools are publicly funded. The people in the government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are educators, not business people, military leaders or career politicians.
- Teachers in Finland spend fewer hours at school each day and spend less time in classrooms than American teachers. Teachers use the extra time to build curriculums and assess their students. Children spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter. Homework is minimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7. “We have no hurry,” said Louhivuori. “Children learn better when they are ready. Why stress them out?”
- Teachers from all over the nation contributed to a national curriculum that provided guidelines, not prescriptions.
- To be sure, it was only in the past decade that Finland’s international science scores rose. In fact, the country’s earliest efforts could be called somewhat Stalinistic. The first national curriculum, developed in the early ’70s, weighed in at 700 stultifying pages. Timo Heikkinen, who began teaching in Finland’s public schools in 1980 and is now principal of Kallahti Comprehensive School in eastern Helsinki, remembers when most of his high-school teachers sat at their desks dictating to the open notebooks of compliant children.
Malaysia, we have a long way to go.
p/s: The article mentions “positive discrimination” more than once. LOL, socialism eh.
Education system :D
(Source: tpil85kglifter)
A great post by Seth especially for libraries and librarians.
Others said cheating, often in collaboration with test graders, is rampant. Deepak Sharma, 26, failed several exams when he was enrolled at a top engineering college outside of Delhi, until he finally figured out the trick: Writing his mobile number on the exam paper.
I hope Malaysian can learn from this, we are not at this level yet but seems that we’re heading that way :(
