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UCAS figures show that university applications are up by more than 20 000 this year, fuelled by rising demand from foreign students, creating more competition for places.
About 634 600 people applied for degree courses by the end of May - an increase of four per cent in a year and the second highest number on record, with overseas applications up by more than six per cent.
This brings applications close to levels seen in 2011 when record numbers of students applied just before a near tripling of tuition fees.
30 000 additional places for British and EU undergraduates are being funded this year before controls limiting the number of students each institution can recruit are abolished altogether in 2015, but many universities are reluctant to expand - prioritising quality over quantity.
4 June 2014
A University of Edinburgh study suggests that learning a second language can have a positive effect on the brain, even if it is taken up in adulthood.
Researchers found that reading, verbal fluency and intelligence were improved in a study of 262 people tested either aged 11 or in their seventies. A previous study suggested that being bilingual could delay the onset of dementia by several years.
However, the question that has to be asked is whether learning a new language improved cognition or whether individuals with better cognitive abilities were more likely to become bilingual. To overcome this problem, the study compared data from intelligence tests on 262 Edinburgh-born individuals at the age of 11 - how their cognitive abilities had changed when they were tested again in their seventies.
The findings indicate that those who spoke two or more languages had significantly better cognitive abilities compared to what would have been expected from their baseline test. The strongest effects were seen in general intelligence and reading.
Source
3 June 2014
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has announced that it has selected 37 research universities to receive $60 million in grants to improve how science is taught.
The initiative enables the schools to focus on significant and sustained improvement in retaining students in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
31 May 2014
Tue 20 June, Summer Solstice 17:12 UT
Thu 23 June, Corpus Christi
28 April 2014
Children are spending an increasing fraction of their formative years online and there is concern that this could get out of control and even become an addiction.
A recent study suggests that excessive time online can result in brain structure changes, which can contribute to chronic dysfunction in people with internet addiction disorder (IAD).
The study, published in PLoS ONE, suggests self-assessed Internet addiction, primarily through online multiplayer games, rewires structures deep in the brain. Also, surface-level brain matter appears to shrink in step with the duration of online addiction.
More from PLoS ONE
28 April 2014
The Payments Council has announced that cheques will continue for as long as customers need them.
The target for possible closure of the cheque clearing system in 2018 has been cancelled.
The Payments Council Board has stated that they will continue to focus on security, efficiency and encouraging innovation in all types of payments.
Source
28 April 2014
This scam is more convincing than most so I thought it worth warning you all about it.
One of the things that makes this scam more believable is that you receive an email that looks as if it is from someone that you know:
?Learning,
We don?t speak enough. We could both be lots better off if we would. I?ll begin by letting you in on this. I?m certainly nowhere close to as bright as you yet I?m making a lot more working something like five hours per week from my home. You can see what I?m talking about once you do this a couple of days. msnbcnewstoday.net Whenever I read through this article I could not stop wanting to give it a try. Finally I just bit the bullet and now I couldn?t get more pleased. Get a picture of the first check as soon as you have it. You will definitely be very impressed at how much you?re going to be earning only one month afterwards. I really hope you?re gonna try this out. I?ve never tried a single thing like this before but the money keeps on flowing. Remember who told you!?
It looks as if they hijack the email account of someone you know and then send a version of this email to people in his or her address book.
Apart from the promise of making thousands of dollars a month, I was suspicious of this email because:
- My first name isn?t Learning.
- The person that this is email is supposed to be from has a better command of English than is demonstrated in this email.
- I had previously received other scam emails from this hijacked account.
The link given in the email takes you to a pretty good fake of a CNBC web page with a featured article about ?How A single Mom from Buckingham unlocked a gold mine and is turning huge profits from home?. Interestingly, this same stay-at-home mum came from Biggleswade yesterday. The web page?s URL - msnbcnewstoday.net - is actually registered to a company in the Ukraine.
Beware, CNBC isn?t the only website that?s been faked: other news sites and entrepreneur?s sites have been cloned.
The article says that you too can learn how to make thousands of dollars by signing up for a course with Profit Vault.
If you do a Google search for ?Profit Vault? you?ll turn up a lot of fake reviews which are designed to refute the claim that Profit Vault is a scam. Many of the reviews have ?scam? included in the title - not something a genuine positive review would usually do, but it does help these fakes appear in searches carried out by cautious punters.
Look a little harder and you?ll also find reports of people who gave their credit card details for a low-cost, five-day trial only to find it almost impossible to stop the high-cost, monthly charges which follow the trial.
More worrying are reports of people who bought health products online and found that without their knowledge they had been signed up for Profit Vault and had an additional charge made on their credit card.
28 April 2014
New Apple users are having problems because the instruction booklet does not make it clear where the Option key is. There is one reference to its location tucked away on page 53.
The Option key is, in fact, the ?alt? key.
The problem probably arose because older Macs have the word OPTION printed on the key which makes it considerably easier to find than squashed, stylised, mirror-image ?J? symbol which is to be found on newer Macs but not in the 'Hello.' instruction booklet supplied with them!
28 April 2014
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