Daily Archives: October 16, 2012

Astronomy

Planet Hunters find a planet with four suns

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Volunteers taking part in the Planet Hunters citizen science project have discovered a planet with four suns [1]. This is the first of its kind discovered. The two discovers are Kian Jek of San Francisco and Robert Gagliano from Cottonwood, Arizona.

The planet is located just under 5,000 light-years away and has been named PH1 after the Planet Hunters. It is thought that PH1 is a gas giant, with a radius more than six times the radius of the Earth.

Reference

[1] Megan E. Schwamb et.al. (2012) Planet Hunters: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System. arXiv:1210.3612v1 [astro-ph.EP]. Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.

Links

Planet Hunters website

General

Substandard work from overseas students

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There are pieces of work here which do not appear to be anywhere near the sort of level that a Masters qualification would require.

Prof Nick Bourne Former law lecturer and ex-leader, Welsh Conservatives

There was a total of 48,580 overseas undergraduates studying in the UK, which equates to about 11% of the total undergraduate population. However, they generated 32% of universities’ fee income.

Clearly, overseas students are a great source of revenue for universities, but the worry is that the financial gains will out weigh the need for strict academic standards. I am not the only one worried about this: informal conversations with people, who shall remain anonymous, also indicate a fear.

In the news

A BBC Wales News investigation has looked into the anecdotal stories of standards at Welsh universities to find the truth.

Dissertations that are badly written will lose some marks but we’re primarily interested in the analytical content of those dissertations.

Prof John Thornton Bangor University Business School

Link

BBC Wales News