EXAM JITTERS FOR SSC PUPILS

‘Science too vast for 60 marks’

Yogita Rao | TNN

Mumbai: Students appearing for the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams are unhappy that they have to study two papers of science for merely 60 marks and their worry does not end there: they fear that they will not be able to complete the two papers together within the allotted two-and-a-half hours.

In the past two years, students had to answer the two science sections separately and each paper carried 60 marks. This year, they have to answer both science-I and science-II papers together. Though the number of chapters has been reduced, students still feel that they have to study way too much for only 60 marks. “The paper might be simple,but there is so much to write. Also, we need to divide the two-and-a-half hours equally for the two sections,” a student of Canossa High School in Mahim said. “There will be two different answersheets for the two sections and we may lose time shuffling between them. Some questions may demand lengthy answers and that will also consume time.” Another student, Natasha R, also complained that the syllabus was way too vast for a 60-mark paper. “The time provided is ideally enough for a 60-mark paper. But while we can complete the first section in good time, most of us have to rush through the second part,” she added.

Even principal of Children’s Academy in Kandivli Rohan Bhatt is apparently not happy with the merging of the two sections. “Students are finding it difficult to finish the paper in time. When we saw their poor performance in the first semester exams, we asked the board to keep the papers separate. But we were told that it was not possible,” said Bhatt, according to whom, Std-X students are too young to manage time well.

But not all teachers share his views as Nazma Kazi, principal of Anjuman-i-Islam High School, does not think the new system would pose a problem. “This year, students have around 40 marks in internals, including practicals and orals. Students also have to compulsorily clear the written exams with 25%, which will come around to 15 marks. Students usually do not consider science to be a tough paper; the number of failures may also go down now.”

Milky Way’s black hole ‘eating’ asteroids

Washington: The supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way may be devouring asteroids on a daily basis, a new study based on findings by Nasa’s Chandra spacecraft has suggested. The Chandra X-ray Observatory, named in honour of Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, has been detecting Xray flares about once a day coming from our galaxy’s central black hole known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*)for several years. Now, researchers found that these flares may actually be caused by asteroids falling into the black hole’s maw. “People have had doubts about whether asteroids could form at all in the harsh environment near a supermassive black hole,” said lead study author Kastytis Zubovas of University of Leicester in the UK. “It’s exciting because our study suggests that a huge number of them are needed to produce these flares,” Zubovas said. The researchers suggested that a cloud around Sgr A* contains trillions of asteroids and comets that the black hole stripped from their parent stars. Asteroids passing within 160 million km of the black hole — roughly the distance between the Earth and the Sun — are likely torn to pieces by Sgr A*’s gravity, they said. These fragments would be vaporized by friction as they encounter the hot gas flowing onto the black hole, much as meteors are burned up by gases in Earth’s atmosphere. This vaporization, they said, likely spawns the X-ray flares, which last for a few hours and range in brightness from a few times to nearly 100 times that of black hole’s regular output. Sgr A* then swallows up what’s left of the close-flying asteroid, added the researchers who detailed their findings in the ‘Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society’. PTI STELLAR DELIGHT: A Nasa illustration shows a supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy consuming asteroids

WHITE AS SNOW

True colours: Milky Way is really milky

Houston: Milky way after all is milky in colour for sure! Scientists have revealed that our galaxy is aptly named Milky Way as it looks white, the colour of fresh snow in the early morning.
University of Pittsburgh astronomers said their finding is significant because we are located in the middle of the Milky Way, which had previously made it difficult to accurately determine the colour of the galaxy.

Colour is a key detail of galaxies, shedding light on its history of star formation. Since we are located well within our galaxy, clouds of gas and dust obscure all but the closest regions of the galaxy from view, keeping us from directly seeing what colour our galaxy is as a whole.

“We can really only see 1,000 to 2,000 light-years in any direction — the Milky Way is 100,000 light-years across,” said study co-author Jeffrey Newman at the University of Pittsburgh. “The problem is similar to determining the overall colour of the Earth when you’re only able to tell what Pennsylvania looks like.”

To sidestep this problem, astronomers decided to look at other galaxies’ colours to figure out the hue of our own. Galaxies whose other properties closely match the Milky Way’s can likely tell us what our galaxy’s colour is. The light from the Milky Way closely matches the colour of a standard incandescent light bulb. PTI

Battle bots slug it out at Techfest

Mahafreed Irani | TNN

On the last day of IIT’s Techfest, robots battled it out in the grand finales of various contests: Robowars, mini F1 and a maze-solving game.

The fiercest looking automatons were undoubtedly the battle bots of Robowars. The arena saw metal clash with metal as robots of different shapes and sizes, equipped with choppers, blades, hammers and flippers, clashed. The contest’s winners, a team from Government Engineering College, Aurangabad, designed their robot for two years. “We won because of our sleek design. The flipper helped us fling the opponent, turning it upside down,” said Hemant Chambhare, who named the robot One-Shot Killer. “We spent about Rs 70,000 to build it.”

Jayvis Gonsalves won ‘the most innovative robot’ prize for his Bluetooth-controlled creation. “My robot, Blitzkrieg, is wireless. I didn’t have to worry about any wires getting entangled,” Gonsalves, a student of Dikshit Junior College, Vile Parle, said.

While the robots were locked in battle, nearby, remote-controlled mini cars were racing on an off-road dirt track full of obstacles. Two participants from Chennai, Sharadh Uday and Riten Satra, built their car in just four days. “It is powered by an internal combustion engine and made of aluminium,” said Uday.
One of the attractions at Techfest, that drew large numbers of Mumbaikars, and not just students, was a couple of vehicles designed by students of Adelaide University. Called Micycle and Diwheel, their makers called them environment friendly modes of transport. While Micycle is a stylish self-balancing electric unicycle (a cycle with one wheel), Diwheel, as the name suggests, has two giant wheels, with the rider’s seat in between. It has a joystick for navigating and uses regenerative braking to recoup some of the energy lost during the process of stopping. In another hall, Hakon Wium Lie, the chief technical officer of Opera (the browser) and inventor of the language CSS, used to design websites, spoke to a packed audience about his days at CERN, the laboratory that is at present engaged in the search of the Higgs boson, and how the web was created there. Emphasizing the importance of open, or free, data, he said: “In the early days, we Norwegians would have to pay the government to get access to the laws of the country. So one day, we uploaded all the laws on the CERN server, making it freely available to all.”

In the convocation hall, autonomous robots were trying to figure out a complex maze. This made the International Robotics Challenge perhaps the most complex contest of them all. Participants watched as the robots found their way in the maze, transporting blocks. The winners were a group of engineering students from Sri Lanka. “We love robotics and were kicked about the contest as soon as we got the invite,” said Nipuna Illangarathne of the group.

EXTREME MACHINES: Electric vehicles Micycle (bottom left) and Diwheel (bottom right). The Sri Lankan team (above left) that won the International Robotics Challenge. Cars (above right) at the starting point of the mini F1 racing contest

IIT-B students set up society to study Mars

Srinivas Laxman TNN

Mumbai: A group of IIT Bombay students have embarked on a different type of stellar mission—to “launch” Indian students and others to Mars. Towards this end, they have formed The Mars Society, dedicated to the study of the red planet.

This comes at a time when the Indian space community has proposed 10 experiments related mainly to the Martian atmosphere during an Indian mission to Mars. This muchawaited expedition is now awaiting the formal ‘go’ from Isro, the space commission and the Union cabinet.

Dhruv Joshi, a final-year chemistry student at IIT-B who initiated the move to set up the society, said that when he was in Switzerland last year, he saw a presentation about the local chapter of The Mars Society. “I then decided to form a similar society in India as well,” he told TOI.

As a first step, a conference will be held at IIT-B about Mars. “Whomever I have spoken to about this society at IIT seems extremely excited and thrilled, especially the freshers,” Joshi added.

“The primary aim of the society is to encourage human exploration and colonization of Mars. We hope to recruit university students from technical and scientific disciplines, making use of their passion and creativity to develop a strong team of pioneers,” he said.

Jhonny Santosh Jha, a key player in IIT-B’s Pratham satellite project, explained that the India chapter of the society is now in the process of getting affiliated to the international chapter. “We just have a few members now, but are expanding,” he said, adding that the society will be organizing several Mars-related programmes in the days to come.

Many scientists at Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, an affiliate of Isro, are of the view that an Indian mission to Mars should be accorded precedence over the second lunar mission as India has already launched a successful mission to the moon.

Cool Competition for kids in Mumbai :)

SCHOOLING INTERRUPTED

Education is one of the most important aspects of childhood. But, increasingly, many children are feeling a reluctance to attend school. The reasons are serious and psychological, say psychiatrists, who add that with the right guidance and a touch of compassion the child can be coaxed back into the classroom

Shreya Bhandary | TNN

Eight-year-old Sonia Pradhan was a normal student who loved extra-curricular activities as well as studying. However, Sonia gradually began to make excuses to not attend school. Her excuses became more frequent over time and her mother realized something was wrong.
“Everyday she would complain of headaches, stomach aches, body ache, fever and so on. She would excuse herself from going to school. We visited many neurosurgeons to understand what the problem was and they all told us that the problem was psychological,” said Sonia’s mother, Manisha.
Five years after the excuses first began cropping up, Sonia has begun attending school again, but she still finds it difficult to attend regularly.
Psychiatrists diagnose her problem as ‘school phobia’ or ‘separation anxiety’. Separation anxiety occurs when a child becomes anxious as he or she has become separated from the primary caregiver, usually the mother. Psychiatrists say they have been dealing with an increasing number of school phobia and separation anxiety cases.
“The reasons for school phobia could be anything from eve teasing at school to a strict teacher to problems at home that affect the child’s emotions and psychology. An increasing number of parents have been coming to us with such problems now,” said Dr Harish Shetty, a psychiatrist.
Sonia has been attending regular counselling sessions with a psychiatrist for the past five years after much deliberation by her family. “This is not mental instability but psychological instability and I knew my daughter needed help. But I had a tough time convincing my family,” said Manisha, who is part of a joint family.
Similar problems had to be tackled by the Malhotras after 11-year-old Puneet began displaying such behaviour. A sudden attack of asthma hit his mother while Puneet was at home and he then became filled with the fear that he might lose her forever. “He thought that he might lose his mother if he wasn’t around her all the time. He would cry all the time or suddenly start coughing to the extent that he would throw up and still keep coughing,” said Neelu Malhotra, Punnet’s aunt.
As in Sonia’s case, the Malhotras needed convincing to get professional help. “We knew the problem was psychological, but my brother-in-law was dead set against visiting a psychiatrist,” said Neelu.
While in class, Puneet would suddenly walk out as he felt “suffocated”. Soon, he began returning home from school after one or two lectures. After detailed discussions between the doctor, parents and school representatives, it was decided that Punnet could skip classes till he was ready to return to school. “My nephew didn’t attend school for an entire year when he was in Class VII. All that time he attended regular sessions with a psychiatrist and his parents kept consoling him to ward off his panic,” said Neelu.
Sonia, meanwhile, showed stronger signs of refusal. “She would throw things at us to keep us away,” said the girl’s mother. “Once, she locked herself in the room and tied a cloth around her neck. We were too shocked to react.” That was when her family finally decided to approach a psychiatrist.
Dr Shetty stresses that there is no quick-fix cure in such cases. “Schools as well as families need to understand that the healing is a very slow process,” he said.
While in both of the above cases, separation anxiety was termed as the sole cause of the behaviour, city psychiatrists say a number of school phobia cases have also been reaching their clinics.
In many cases, it is children with a very high IQ who are slowly opting to not attend school. “I am currently treating a child who hasn’t gone to school for three weeks,” said Dr Shubhangi Parkar, head of the psychiatry ward, KEM Hospital. “She was yelled at by a teacher and when she shared this with her mother she was again yelled at for being mischievous. The child then completely stopped sharing her feelings with anybody.” Parkar added that while such problems arise partly at schools, the major contributors to such fears come from immediate friends and relatives.
With the help of psychiatrists, both Sonia and Puneet gradually began attending lectures again. “Puneet would get fully dressed for school but only go up to the school gate for some days. A few weeks later he started walking into the school premises and then began attending one lecture a day,” said Neelu. She added that school authorities were very helpful and supportive throughout.
It took more than six months for Sonia to start going to class again, but the problem is far from solved. “I still wake up with the fear that my daughter will suddenly announce that she will not go to school,” said Manisha, who has started taking math tuitions herself. “Since she’s not attending school, at least I need to be up to date with her portion.”
(Names of students and their relatives have been changed.)
GOING
BACK TO SCHOOL
School phobia and separation anxiety are the result of psychological, and not mental, instability
Children coming from overly protective families and single children (those without siblings) are more prone to be affected
Children with a higher IQ are also likely to opt out of school
Returning from a long vacation can have its effects too, with children deciding they don’t want to return to a classroom
School phobia can result from excessive scolding at school and/or home , though maintaining discipline at home is important so that an institutional environment with rules and regulations does not seem alien
Sexual harassment or abuse can also bring on school phobia. Such cases have to be dealt with even more sensitively
Along with the affected child, the parents can also undergo counselling to better understand the problem
The healing process in such situations is slow. It could take months, sometimes years. Patience plays a key role
Always involve the school authorities in the process. In fact, the student, parents and school should work together. Seek the help of psychiatrists