Half Of Harvard Class 'Cheated' On Exam

Students walk through Harvard University's main campus in Cambridge, Mass. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it's one of the most exclusive universities in the world, but Harvard is investigating 125 of its students for alleged plagiarism.



Students walk through Harvard's main campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts

As many as 125 students at America's prestigious Harvard University are being investigated for allegedly cheating in their final exam, administrators have revealed.
The official university site reported that a large number of undergraduates "may have inappropriately collaborated on answers, or plagiarised classmates' responses, on the final exam for the course".
An initial investigation by the Harvard College Administration Board of more than 250 final exams resulted in cases of alleged cheating involving "nearly half the students for the course".
The Ivy League college has not identified the course, or the students allegedly involved in the scandal - one of the largest to affect Harvard.
But student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, said it was Government 1310: "Introduction to Congress" course.
The allegations arose when a faculty member noticed "similarities between a number of exams".
Anyone found to have cheated could face punishments, including a one-year suspension from the college.
Michael Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said: "We take academic integrity very seriously because it goes to the heart of our educational mission.
"Academic dishonesty cannot and will not be tolerated at Harvard.
"These allegations, if proven, represent totally unacceptable behaviour that betrays the trust upon which intellectual inquiry at Harvard depends."
Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of the most exclusive universities in the world, with students paying around £40,000 a year to attend.
Source:news.sky.com

Gaza 'will not be liveable by 2020' - UN report

Palestinian men transport bags of cement through tunnels used for smuggling goods on 23 August
Tunnels under the Egyptian border have been a lifeline for Gaza in recent years.
The Gaza Strip will not be "a liveable place" by 2020 unless action is taken to improve basic services in the territory, according to a UN report.
Basic infrastructure in water, health, education and sanitation "is struggling to keep pace with a growing population", according to the report.
It estimates Gaza's population will rise from 1.6m to 2.1m by 2020.
Israel tightened a blockade on Gaza after the Islamist movement Hamas came to power in the territory in 2007.
Israel says the blockade, which is policed with Egyptian co-operation and has never been fully lifted, is necessary to prevent weapons reaching Hamas.
The UN report estimates Gaza will need double the number of schools and 800 more hospital beds by 2020, and says the territory is already suffering from a housing shortage.
The report also says the coastal aquifer, the territory's only natural source of fresh water, may become unusable by 2016.
Disconnected territory UN officials point to the difficulty of improving the situation given "the closure of the Gaza Strip, violent conflict, and the pressing need for Palestinian reconciliation".
"An urban area cannot survive without being connected," said Maxwell Gaylard, the UN's humanitarian chief in Gaza.
Gaza has no air or sea ports, and the economy is heavily dependent on outside funding and smuggling through tunnels under the Egyptian border.
Even though Gaza has experienced some economic growth in recent years, the report says it "does not seem to be sustainable" and finds that Gazans are worse off now than in the 1990s.
Unemployment was at 29% in 2011 and has risen since then, particularly affecting women and young people.
Traffic through the cross-border tunnels was hit in recent weeks by violence between Egyptian security forces and militants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, which borders Israel and Gaza.

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Source:BBC

Earth Is Running Out of Helium


Bears not attracted to menstruating women

Despite campfire fears dating back to at least 1967, black bears and grizzly bears are not attracted to the odors of menstruation, according to a recent Yellowstone National Park report.
Polar bears may be interested in the smell of menstrual blood, the report found, but bears that roam in North America are not. Food is a much more important temptation for bears, according to the findings.
The idea that bears might preferentially attack menstruating women is not new. In 1967, a night of infamous grizzly bear attacks in Glacier National Park in Montana left two women dead. One woman was having her period, and the other was carrying tampons.
The attacks led to speculation that the women's menstrual odors might have "triggered" the attacks. The Park Service and other agencies even began warning women that bears might be attracted to the smell of menstrual blood, despite no scientific evidence to back up those warnings. 
Since 1992, the Forest Services' Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee has tried to debunk this myth, but it has been difficult to dislodge. The new Yellowstone report, released in February, draws on a series of old studies to set the record straight.
[ 7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe ]
In one of these studies, conducted in 1991, researches exposed black bears, the most common kind of bear in the United States, to used tampons and to four menstruating women. They found no interest among any of the bears to the scents. Nor have researchers found any examples of black bears attacking menstruating women. Nor are grizzly bears interested in women having their periods. A 1985 analysis of hundreds of grizzly bear attacks on humans found no evidence linking any of the attacks to menstruation — including the infamous "Night of the Grizzlies" attacks in Glacier. The two bears involved in those attacks were what biologists called "food conditioned," according to "Backcountry Bear Basics: The Definitive Guide to Avoiding Unpleasant Encounters" (Mountaineers Books, 2006) by Dave Smith. These bears were used to eating garbage and had begun to associate humans with food.
The one exception to bears' disinterest in menstrual blood was the polar bear, the Yellowstone report finds. A 1983 study found that four captive polar bears exposed to a series of scents responded strongly only to seal smells and used tampons.
But as Smith points out in his book, the tests were limited to four bears and only 12 encounters with live, menstruating women. The bears were also much less interested in menstrual blood than any sort of food scent, eating used tampons half of the time they smelled them compared with 100 percent of the time for seafood and 92 percent of the time for seal oil. Even alcohol was more palatable to the polar bears than used tampons. They guzzled down beer 66 percent of the time. (They also ate unused tampons 13 percent of the time.)
At Yellowstone Park, the report concludes, there is no evidence of a link between bear attacks and menstruation. Nevertheless, the Park Service recommends using tampons instead of external pads and unscented menstrual products to keep potentially appealing odors down.   
Credits:@livescience

If you live until 2045, you may never have to fear death

If you have enough cash, a Russian man may be able to help you live forever
Immortality is something all of us have thought of, but nobody really takes seriously. A 31-year-old Russian man named Dmitry Itskov wants you to seriously consider the possibility of living forever, and perhaps even plan on being able to do so by 2045. His plan, called simply "The 2045 Initiative," will sound familiar if you've seen the James Camera blockbuster "Avatar" — and he just needs a few billion dollars to make it a reality.
Itskov's project has several phases, with each step bringing mankind closer to the ultimate goal living forever. The first step in the project is to create robotic humans that can be controlled remotely. He plans on crossing this hurdle by 2020 at the latest. Then, by 2025, a human brain will be transferred into a robotic skeleton to continue life after death. By 2035, the avatar's brain will be constructed separately, and your own personality will simply be "transferred" into it when you are ready to end your human existence. And finally, by the year 2045, humans will be able to walk around in holographic avatars for eternity, never fearing death.
Not surprisingly, the Avatar project is extremely expensive, and Itskov needs some serious financial help if he's to pull it off. So, naturally, he's asking the world's richest people to help fund the movement. In return, he's pledging to help each donor on his or her own immortality quest. You know, because you just can't spend $50 billion in one lifetime.
This article was written by Mike Wehner and originally appeared on Tecca
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