New Remote Proctoring System Lets Students Take Exams at Home (Without ... It seems like so many technological advances these days are aimed at figuring out how to do absolutely everything -- from attending a staff meeting to hunting for terrorists in foreign lands -- without having to actually be there. Extending that luxury to college students, at least one UK university and a handful of American institutions are experimenting with telecommuting tech armed with anti-cheating software, allowing students to take important exams at home while at the same time keeping them honest. Packing a 360-degree webcam and a microphone, the setup ensures students are not receiving help from others during the exam. It also locks the computer down, restricting Internet and file access for the duration of the exam so the student cannot attempt to access information on the Web or on his or her hard drive. Let's just hope it's not a sign of a larger trend away from classroom learning and discussion. [Guardian]
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan wins Nobel prize for Chemistry- ET Cetera-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times LONDON: Tamil Nadu-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at the MRC Laborartory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 along with two others, the Nobel Committee announced today. Born in 1952 in Chidambaram, Ramakrishnan shares the Nobel prize with Thomas E Steitz (US) and Ada E Yonath (Israel) for their "studies of the structure and function of the ribosome". Ramakrishnan earned his B.Sc. in Physics (1971) from Baroda University and his Ph.D. in Physics (1976) from Ohio University. He moved into biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he took a year of classes, then conducted research with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist. This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry awards Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A Steitz and Ada E Yonath for having showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level," the Nobel committee said in its citation.
Facebook employees youngest, Google best paid - Trends News Boston: Employees at social networking site Facebook are the youngest, satisfied and yet the most stressed, among workers at major US technology companies, according to a new report that also said staffers at Google are best paid as compared to those at other tech companies. Seattle-based research firm PayScale said Facebook employees are the most satisfied and the Mark Zuckerberg-led company had the lowest median age - 26. It also had the highest portion of female workers at 33 per cent, among nine of the industry's top businesses. A typical worker at Facebook is only 26 years of age, compared with a typical age of 36 across the other companies. Employees at social networking site Facebook are the youngest, satisfied and yet the most stressed. Workers at Facebook are the most satisfied with their jobs, while those at Hewlett-Packard are the least satisfied. Similarly, IBM workers tend to be the oldest. Other findings indicated female employees are still a minority at the big tech firms.