Princeton University to reinstate early admission program

cs — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 23:55:53 +0000

Princeton University will reinstate an early admission program, beginning next year with the class that will enter Princeton in September 2012. The single-choice early action program will require applicants to apply early only to Princeton, but will not require them to decide whether to accept Princeton’s offer until the end of the regular admission process.

Messing with our planet

cs — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:21:40 +0000

IN 1975 scientists expert in a new and potentially world-changing technology, genetic engineering, gathered at Asilomar, on the Monterey peninsula in California, to ponder the ethics and safety of the course they were embarking on. The year before, they had imposed on themselves a voluntary moratorium on experiments which involved the transfer of genes from [...]

Rewriting Macroeconomics Curriculum

cs — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:12:28 +0000

IN MORE than 30 years of teaching introductory macroeconomics, says Alan Blinder of Princeton University, he has never seen interest as high as it was last year. At Harvard, says David Laibson, students in his undergraduate macroeconomics course are “chomping at the bit”.

At elite American universities, where endowments have shrivelled and hiring is down, increased [...]

Brown 2014

cs — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:17:51 +0000

PROVIDENCE – Brown University said Thursday it admitted just 9.3 percent of those who applied to join its Class of 2014, making this the most selective year in the school’s history.

Brown received a record 30,136 undergraduate applications this year, the most in its history and an increase of 21 percent from last year.

The 2,804 applicants [...]

Princeton 2014

cs — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:58:52 +0000

In the most selective admission process in the University’s history, Princeton has offered admission to 2,148, or 8.18 percent, of the record 26,247 applicants for the class of 2014. This compares to an admission rate of 9.79 percent at this time last year, and 9.25 percent the previous year.

The number of applicants for the incoming [...]

MIT 2014

cs — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:13:00 +0000

As MIT students celebrated π day this Sunday, 10,948 high school seniors waited nervously by their computers for the Class of 2014 admissions decisions. Only 1,021, or 9.3 percent, of those students received offers of admissions. Including the early action admissions round on December 16, the overall acceptance rate for this year’s admissions cycle is 9.7 [...]

Harvard 2014

cs — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:09:19 +0000

A record-low 6.9 percent of applicants have been accepted to the Harvard College Class of 2014.

The coveted fat envelopes will be mailed tomorrow to 2,110 students, the Office of Admissions announced earlier this evening. Applicants will also receive their decisions via e-mail after 5 p.m. tomorrow.

Applications increased by about 5 percent this year, topping 30,000 [...]

Yale 2014

cs — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:06:36 +0000

Yale College admitted 7.5 percent of its applicants to the class of 2014, equaling last year’s record low rate. The College made a total of 1,940 offers of admission to the 25,869 applicants in the early and regular decision pools, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeff Brenzel said Thursday. An additional 932 students have been waitlisted. “Once again, [...]

Small island for sale

cs — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:42:46 +0000

The takeover of Cadbury by Kraft seems to symbolise a hollowing-out of corporate Britain. The truth is rather more complicated. THE Thames Valley provides two contrasting examples of what happens when foreign companies buy British ones. Any day now the Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) brewery beside the M4 motorway at Reading will brew its last [...]

Coming up empty

cs — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:37:06 +0000

THE renewable-fuel standard released in February by America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) paints an ambitious picture of biofuels’ future. It wants the amount of the stuff used as transport fuel to climb from 13 billion gallons (49 billion litres) in 2010 to 36 billion gallons in 2022, requiring by far the largest part of that [...]

Stanford 2014

cs — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:32:38 +0000

Admission decisions will, in fact, be released sometime after 3pm (Pacific Time) today, March 26, six days ahead of schedule.

The Office of Undergraduate [...]

Single Molecule Transistor

cs — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:59:05 +0000

MANHASSET, NY — Researchers from Yale University and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea have successfully created a transistor made from a single molecule. The researchers showed that a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts could behave just like a silicon transistor.

They were able to manipulate the molecule’s different energy [...]

Rubber from Dandelions

cs — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:58:51 +0000

The tyres of the future may be made from dandelions. OTHER than being an ingredient of the more recherché sorts of salad, herbal tea or wine, dandelions are pretty useless plants. Or, at least, they were. But one species, a Russian variety called Taraxacum kok-saghyz (TKS), may yet make the big time. It produces molecules [...]

Native Flu Fighting Proteins

cs — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:07:42 +0000

A team led by Harvard researchers has discovered a family of naturally occurring proteins in human cells that protect against influenza and other illnesses—a finding that may lead to methods to speed up vaccine production and to new flu prevention drugs for humans.

Shedding greater light on the human body’s first-line defense against the flu virus, [...]

Wireless Electricity

cs — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:27:24 +0000

Marin Soljacic couldn’t sleep. The problem was his wife’s Nokia cell phone. The tyrannical device beeped on the bedside table when it needed to be plugged in. It could not be disabled.

Instead of taking a hammer to the phone, Soljacic marveled at the fact that this device, and billions of others like it, was sitting [...]

News vs Newspaper

cs — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:09:53 +0000

How a new communications technology disrupted America’s newspaper industry — in 1845. CHANGE is in the air. A new communications technology threatens a dramatic upheaval in America’s newspaper industry, overturning the status quo and disrupting the business model that has served the industry for years. This “great revolution”, warns one editor, will mean that some [...]

Foundations of Economic Analysis

cs — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:41:29 +0000

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94.

His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Mr. Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centers of graduate education in [...]

Birds and Aviation Fuel Efficiency

cs — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 06:10:28 +0000

Copying Birds may save aircraft fuel.

Source: The Economist. Photo: Corbis

BOTH Boeing and Airbus have trumpeted the efficiency of their newest aircraft, the 787 and A350 respectively. Their clever designs and lightweight composites certainly make a difference. But a group of researchers at Stanford University, led by Ilan Kroo, has suggested that airlines could take a [...]

Elephant Camps

cs — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:50:39 +0000

All elephants living in Indian zoos and circuses will be moved to wildlife parks and game sanctuaries where the animals can graze more freely, officials said Friday. The decision affects around 140 elephants in 26 zoos and 16 circuses in the country, said B.K. Gupta, an officer at India’s Central Zoo Authority.

The order followed complaints [...]

Giant Crack in Africa

cs — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:22:33 +0000

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm. The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied.

A new study [...]

Diatoms

cs — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:54:16 +0000

PORTLAND, Ore. — Diatoms–single-celled phytoplankton (algae)–are one of the most plentiful life forms on Earth, accounting for 20 percent of the carbon dioxide removed from the environment each year. The mechanism they use–encasing themselves in patterned silicon dioxide shells as they fall to the bottom of oceans and lakes worldwide–removes as much carbon dioxide from [...]

Car fuel from water

cs — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:50:48 +0000

PORTLAND, Ore. — The hydrogen economy is getting a shot in the arm from a start-up that says its nanoparticle coatings could make hydrogen easy to produce at home from distilled water, and ultimately bring the cost of hydrogen fuel cells in line with that of fossil fuels. QuantumSphere Inc. says it has perfected the [...]

Bismuth Antimony Telluride

cs — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:41:43 +0000

PORTLAND, Ore. — Thermoelectric coolers and power generators were handed a 40-percent boost in performance recently by a nanotechnological reconstruction of a classic bulk material. The technique is suitable for mass production, according to its inventors at Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

This makes it of use in both industrial and consumer [...]

Road Coloring Problem

cs — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:38:08 +0000

After 38 years, Israeli solves math code. A mathematical puzzle that baffled the top minds in the esoteric field of symbolic dynamics for nearly four decades has been cracked — by a 63-year-old immigrant who once had to work as a security guard. Avraham Trahtman, a mathematician who also toiled as a laborer after moving [...]

Nanodots

cs — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:54:16 +0000

Nanodots could yield denser memories, ceramic engine

PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at North Carolina State University said they were able to read and write bits at room temperature using magnetic nanodots that delivered 1 terabit of memory per centimeter2.The ferromagnetic film on which the nanodots were based could lead to ultra-dense memory chips that store bits [...]

Man vs God

cs — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:37:04 +0000

Wall Street Journal | September 12, 2009

Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence. Richard Dawkins argues that evolution leaves God with nothing to do!

Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence

Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect. Evolution [...]

FinFETs

cs — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:35:13 +0000

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y. — Gaze into the electron microscope display in Frances Ross’s laboratory here and it is possible to persuade yourself that Dr. Ross, a 21st-century materials scientist, is actually a farmer in some Lilliputian silicon world.

Dr. Ross, an I.B.M. researcher, is growing [...]

Doomsday Seed Vault

cs — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:06:37 +0000

UN chief Ban Ki-moon visited Wednesday a vault carved into the Arctic permafrost, filled with samples of the world’s most important seeds in case food crops are wiped out by a catastrophe.

“The world faces many daunting challenges today, one of the greatest of which is how to feed a growing population in the context of [...]

Youngest circumnavigator

cs — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:35:30 +0000

LONDON (Reuters) – A 17-year-old Briton became the youngest person to sail round the globe single-handed on Thursday after nine months at sea.

Mike Perham suffered knockdowns and damage to his yacht during the 24,000-mile (38,700-km) trip and the teenager from Hertfordshire, southern England, said he was now looking forward to a “good meal and [...]

Biomimicry

cs — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:03:08 +0000

An adhesive made by worms inspires a new treatment for broken bones.

Torn flesh is easy to put back together with stitches, but when bone breaks, repairs are nowhere near as simple. Fractures that run in a straight line can often be placed back in their proper alignment and set in a cast for a period [...]

Telescope turning 400

cs — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:47:31 +0000

Celebrating 400th anniversary of Galileo’s Telescope.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14213985

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

Elephant Crossing

cs — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:03:58 +0000

Wild elephants cross a road at the Kerala – Karnataka state border (Bandipur forest) in India. Photo by K. K. Mustafa | The Hindu | 19 August 2009

University Predating Harvard and Oxford

cs — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:01:59 +0000

Built in 427 AD, world’s first university predating Harvard and Oxford.

At a summit meeting of leaders next week in the Philippines, senior officials from India, Singapore, Japan and perhaps other countries [...]

Bhuvan challenging Google Earth

cs — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:20:56 +0000

Google Earth’s got some competition now — from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which today unveiled its beta version of Bhuvan (meaning earth in Sanskrit).

A web-based tool like Google Earth, Bhuvan promises to give better 3-D satellite imagery of India than is currently being offered by the US-based software giant plus a host [...]

Mapping the world

cs — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:22:23 +0000

Between GPS devices on your car’s dashboard and digital maps of almost any locale in the world on your smartphone or laptop, it’s hard to get lost these days.

We may take these 21st-century services for granted. But someone still [...]

Flying Frogs

cs — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:46:04 +0000

A flying frog, the world’s smallest deer and the first new monkey to be found in over a century are among 350 new species discovered in the eastern Himalayas in the past decade, the WWF said Monday.

But the environmental group said the vital habitats of the mountain range were facing growing pressures from unsustainable development [...]

1 million mph

cs — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:30:50 +0000

Stars in a distant galaxy move at stunning speeds — greater than 1 million mph, astronomers have revealed.

These hyperactive stars move at about twice the speed of our sun through the Milky Way, because their host galaxy is very massive, yet strangely compact. The scene, which has theorists baffled, is 11 billion light-years away. It [...]

World’s Hottest Chili

cs — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:20:05 +0000

BANGALORE – Red-hot chili peppers could soon come to India’s defense. The country’s defense scientists are working on using the world’s hottest chilies in hand grenades for use in counter-insurgency operations and riot control.

An important ingredient in Indian cooking, hitherto chilies have been confined to kitchens. They seem poised now to [...]

Diamond in the Sky

cs — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:34:25 +0000

Solar Eclipse July 22, 2009 | New Delhi, India

Sailing solo around the world

cs — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:02:58 +0000

Zac Sunderland completes solo sail around the world.

The 17-year-old from Thousand Oaks is the youngest sailor to complete the feat. The journey lasted 13 months. Zac Sunderland, who left Marina del Rey 13 months ago with a bold ambition to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone, returned to complete that quest [...]

Largest English Newspaper

cs — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:51:32 +0000

The Times of India Online has emerged as the world’s No.1 English newspaper website in terms of page views. According to the latest figures from internet marketing research company ComScore, timesofindia.com with 159 million page views in May 2009 was way ahead of the New York Times, Sun, Washington Post, Daily Mail and USA Today [...]

Lessons from Versailles

cs — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:05:36 +0000

Henry Kissinger on Obama’s Opportunity to Forge a Peaceful U.S. Foreign Policy SPIEGEL: Dr. Kissinger, 90 years ago, at the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Is that an event of the past only of interest to historians or does it still shape contemporary politics?

Henry Kissinger: The treaty has a special [...]

World’s Largest Database

cs — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:23:30 +0000

Financial Times | Jonathan Leahy | June 26 2009

India plans ID cards for citizens

India’s government has launched one of the biggest bureaucratic exercises in the country’s history – the issue of a single identity card for each of its 1.1bn citizens.

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Yale Class of 2015

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Harvard Announces Return of Early Action Admissions Program