A ceiling fan's blade came crashing down on a student writing his life's first board exam on Monday in a north Calcutta school that counts among its old boys, Rabindranath Tagore.

Shah Mohiuddin had just started reading the questions for Madhyamik's Urdu Paper I at Oriental Seminary, on Chitpore Road, 15 minutes before students are allowed to start writing, when he heard a cracking sound and got hit on the head by something.

His hand went to his head at once and there was blood on his hands.

The ceiling fan in Room No. 36 had fallen almost between two students, but grazed Mohiuddin's head on the way.

"Someone switched on the fan and it just came off. I was hit even before I realised what was happening and then there was acute pain," said the 15-year-old student of Mohammad Jan High School.

"There were two of us on the bench. The fan fell between us. Don't know what would have happened if the whole thing had landed on our heads. We were lucky," said the boy who wrote the remaining test with two stitches.

A local doctor dressed his gash and gave him painkillers. The school arranged for a glass of milk. "I was fine after that," said the braveheart, when he stepped out of the centre an hour after all his friends had left.

Tagore had studied at Oriental for a few months as a seven-year-old in 1868. Its fans are not that old but they are not very young or well-kept either. Decades of neglect was apparent in the ones still hanging from hooks with iron beams running along the high ceiling. The fan's bolts had apparently come loose.

Teacher-in-charge Dulal Mandal claimed that the fans and lights were thoroughly checked by a local electrician on Saturday. "I was called to repair the switchboard, not the fans," said electrician Swapan Das.

"After medical treatment, Mohiuddin was asked whether he wanted to go to a hospital or carry on with his Urdu Paper I. He wished to write and was allowed to do so for three hours from 1pm," said a teacher. Around 4.15pm, Mohiuddin was escorted out of the school by police personnel and guided into a taxi parked right outside the gate.

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Fan blade hits examinee head

Susan Snyder, Inquirer Staff Writer Posted: Monday, February 25, 2013, 3:01 AM

Universities nationally are grappling with ways to establish a global presence: Some are building campuses abroad. Some are opening centers for alumni interaction and faculty research. Others are fostering study-abroad programs and international enrollment. And some are trying a combination.

Over the last 17 months, Ezekiel Emanuel, the University of Pennsylvania's first vice provost for global initiatives, has been studying the landscape and plotting a coordinated, cohesive course for the Ivy League campus.

At a board of trustees meeting this week, Penn will announce a series of substantial financial gifts to launch its new vision, developed by Emanuel, an oncologist and bioethicist used to working in the global arena who was one of the principal architects of President Obama's health-care reform act.

The university plans to build a "world house" on campus in which to concentrate global activities. It will include a "global solutions program," in which world leaders and faculty experts will take on a new problem every year - such as access to clean water - and develop solutions. That house, location to be determined, will open in 2015.

The plan also calls for a center in China to be used for training, faculty research, interviews of prospective students, and other collaborations.

And Penn will bring on two global educators, one a professor and another to head the world house. Though the university has many experts in particular geographical areas, it needs more faculty with global expertise, Emanuel said.

"It's a pretty serious commitment out of the block," said Emanuel, who has traveled to Africa, India, and Singapore to meet with alumni, government officials, and others.

But one thing Penn does not plan to do is build a branch campus abroad.

"That's a crazy idea," Emanuel said during an interview in his office last week. "We're in the education business. We're not in the real estate business."

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University of Pennsylvania plans centers in Philadelphia and China

C. Everett Koop, who raised the profile of the surgeon general by riveting America's attention on the then-emerging disease known as AIDS and by railing against smoking, died Monday in New Hampshire. He was 96.

An assistant at Koop's Dartmouth institute, Susan Wills, said he died in Hanover, where he had a home. She didn't disclose the cause of his death.

Koop wielded the previously low-profile post of surgeon general as a bully pulpit for seven years during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

An evangelical Christian, he shocked his conservative supporters when he endorsed condoms and sex education to stop the spread of AIDS.

He carried out a crusade to end smoking in the United States his goal had been to do so by 2000. A former pipe smoker, he said cigarettes were as addictive as heroin and cocaine.

Koop's impact was great, although the surgeon general has no real authority to set government policy. He described himself as "the health conscience of the country."

"My only influence was through moral suasion," Koop said just before leaving office in 1989.

By then, his Amish-style silver beard and white braided uniform were instantly recognizable.

Out of office, he switched to business suits and bow ties but continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.

"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.

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C. Everett Koop, ex-surgeon general, dies in NH

BELLEVILLE - Thunder can be heard from miles away, an early warning that a storm is about to arrive. So, perhaps, it's only fitting that the name of Belleville Mennonite School's sports teams didn't sneak up on anyone.

Three months after the school's plan to change its nickname first surfaced, BMS officials announced Friday afternoon that the school's athletic teams formerly known as the Trojans would compete as the Thunder starting in the fall.

"The students have been curious about what the new athletic name is," said Valerie Reed, who serves as the development director at BMS. "The excitement leading up to this (unveiling) has been very positive."

Sentinel photo by BRADLEY KREITZER Third grade teacher Jared Byler, right, and student Kyle Derstein unveil Belleville Mennonite Schools new athletics nickname and logo during a special assembly Friday afternoon at the school in Belleville. The school had a kiss-the-cow contest, sumo wrestling, karaoke and a pie-eating contest leading up to the unveiling as well as several other special activities afterward.

Friday's announcement came with great fanfare as the school held "Mascot Mania." Events included duct taping third-grade teacher Jared Byler to the wall; throwing pies at Superintendent Kevin Dellape and fund-raising efforts that led to a BMS senior kissing a cow. The events were organized by the high school student senate, led by Brittany Yoder, a guidance counselor and senate adviser at BMS.

All proceeds from the events benefit Hershey Medical Center's Pediatric Cancer Center. The school will also host a mini-THON in May, modeled after the annual event held at Penn State.

Murals painted by art teacher Tami Peachey also were unveiled in the school gym and cafeteria. The cafeteria is now called "Thunder Cafe." BMS students also received T-shirts sporting the Thunder logo.

Selecting a new mascot is the first step in what Reed called a new athletic branding for the Belleville school. Now that the school's sports teams have a new mascot and logo, work will begin on revamping the school's logo and website.

"We are here to provide an excellent, Christ-centered education to children in our community," Reed said. "Education and faith in Christ are first and foremost. As the school continues to grow and thrive, it's important to continually be evaluating all areas of how we present ourselves.

"We are hoping that this new mascot and logo will enhance our overall brand and image, but this only a small piece of what the public sees of Belleville Mennonite School," she added. "The main image that we want to portray is a growing, thriving community of students and faculty working together to develop minds and build faith."

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Belleville Mennonite School teams to be known as 'Thunder'

What can an elite music conservatory gain by offering access to its courses to the masses?

Rebecca J. Rosen

The most selective college in the country -- the hardest school to get into -- isn't in the Ivy League or West Point, NY. It's not an engineering college or a medical school. It's the Curtis Institute of Music, a tiny conservatory of classical music in Philadelphia which can boast, according to US News and World Report, an admission rate of 3.2 percent.

And which, starting soon, will offer courses on Coursera.

That's kind of a big deal. Curtis counts among its alumni some of the most famous musicians of the last century (Leonard Bernstein went there) and some of the most successful musicians of the current one (like Alan Gilbert, current music director of the New York Philharmonic). The school only enrolls enough students to fill an orchestra and an opera company (that's 166, at the moment), and all students attend for free.

So the low admission rate makes sense.

Curtis has long been known as an elite place, but it will offer two courses through Coursera next year. What will they be like, and what does that mean?

"So much of Curtis's work is one-on-one," David Ludwig, the school's chair of Performance Studies, told me Thursday. As a conservatory, the work of the school mostly happens in private lessons and small seminars. "One of our unofficial mottos here is 'Learn by Doing,'" said Ludwig.

Now, neither of the two courses Curtis will offer soon (the start date for both is TBA) will teach students how to play an instrument or write music. They're both music appreciation classes. The first, taught by Ludwig and another Curtis professor, Jonathan Coopersmith, is "A History of Western Music through Performance." The second, taught by Curtis faculty member and pianist Jonathan Biss, will examine Beethoven through his piano sonatas.

Both focus on performance -- the doing of music -- but no one quite knows yet how much students will "do." Ludwig said he and all the MOOC instructors hoped that Curtis's classes would involve some "interaction," though he said, "What will that look like specifically? We're not sure yet. But abig part of Coursera is that it's not just a do-it yourself video service." The Curtis faculty knows, he said, that the intimate, intense Curtis curriculum won't and can't scale, so it hopes to work with Coursera to find something that will.

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You Can Now Take Classes From the Most Selective College in the Country on Coursera

Public release date: 21-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Amy Pullan a.l.pullan@sheffield.ac.uk 01-142-229-859 University of Sheffield

The walls of the human heart are a disorganised jumble of tissue until relatively late in pregnancy, despite having the shape of a fully functioning heart, according to a pioneering study.

Experts from the University of Sheffield's Medical School collaborated on research to create the first comprehensive model of human heart development using observations of living foetal hearts. The results showed surprising differences from existing animal models.

Although scientists saw four clearly defined chambers in the foetal heart from the eighth week of pregnancy, they did not find organised muscle tissue until the 20th week -much later than expected.

Developing an accurate, computerised simulation of the foetal heart is critical to understanding normal heart development in the womb and, eventually, to opening new ways of detecting and dealing with some functional abnormalities early in pregnancy.

Studies of early heart development have previously been largely based on other mammals such as mice or pigs, adult hearts and dead human samples. The research team, led by scientists at the University of Leeds is using scans of healthy foetuses in the womb, including one mother who volunteered to have detailed weekly ECG (electrocardiography) scans from 18 weeks until just before delivery.

This functional data is incorporated into a 3D computerised model built up using information about the structure, shape and size of the different components of the heart from two types of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans of foetuses' hearts.

Martyn Paley, Professor of BioMedical Imaging at the University of Sheffield's Department of Cardiovascular Science, said: "We used our extensive expertise in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) physics and engineering to optimise the acquisition of very high spatial resolution isotropic 3D images of the foetal heart at later gestational ages using rapid FLASH sequences.

"This allowed the morphology of the foetal heart to be studied with unprecedented detail in collaboration with the University of Leeds and the other centres."

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Human heart development slower than other mammals

PSG & Sons Charities, in association with the alumni of the PSG Institutions, will host a series of events to commemorate the birth centenary of Founder-Principal of PSG College of Technology G.R. Damodaran (GRD).

The year-long activities will begin on Wednesday, the birth anniversary of GRD, said L. Gopalakrishnan, Managing Trustee of PSG & Sons Charities, here on Tuesday.

Laying foundation for a GRD Science and Technology Museum at Neelambur, launching of GRD Alumni Health Service Scheme, and an exhibition for students to exhibit their talents will form the major part of celebrations.

The museum costing Rs. 5 crore would focus on science and technology and space with live models, and interactive screens. Alumni working in IT-related fields would contribute to the setting up of the museum. It would be developed in five years, he said. Governor K. Rosaiah would lay its foundation at the inaugural of the centenary celebrations.

The Health Service Scheme would be beneficial for all former staff of the PSG Institutions and its alumni. Under the scheme, those above 60 years would be eligible to avail themselves of concessions for diagnosis and treatment at PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research. They would be given preference during seeking appointments with doctors. Those unable to travel to the hospital could seek house-visit facilities.

The exhibition, I Innovation, Invention and Ideas, for students and young entrepreneurs from Tamil Nadu, would be held at Codissia Trade Fair Complex from August 3 to 5. They could display their best models and projects. Selected projects / models would get prizes.

A joint programme by professional organisations in Coimbatore most of which founded by GRD would also be held during the year. The GRD Talent Test conducted by the Alumni Association for school students of Coimbatore for the last several years, would be extended to all schools in Tamil Nadu. A meeting would be organised to felicitate those who were associated with GRD during his tenure as principal of the college, Mr. Gopalakrishnan said.

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Year-long fete to mark birth centenary of G.R. Damodaran

Stanford University has set a new record for college fundraising, becoming the first school to collect more than $1 billion in a single year, according to a report released Wednesday.

For the eighth straight year, Stanford ranked first in the Council for Aid to Education's annual college fundraising survey, which shows that elite institutions continue to grab a disproportionate share of donor dollars.

In the 2012 fiscal year, roughly 3,500 U.S. colleges and universities raised $31 billion, 2.3 percent more than the previous year. The record was set in 2008 when schools took in $31.6 billion before fundraising dropped during the height of the financial crisis.

"We're climbing out of the doldrums," said survey director Ann Kaplan. "We haven't returned to the high point of 2008, but we're approaching it. I think you can say that about a lot of industries."

Topping the list was Stanford at $1.035 billion, followed by Harvard University at $650 million, Yale University at $544 million, the University of Southern California at $492 million and Columbia University at $490 million.

The top 10 fundraising colleges collected $5.3 billion, or 17 percent, of the $31 billion, even though they represent only 0.3 percent of the 3,500 accredited, nonprofit schools included in the survey.

Stanford benefited from a surge in donations at the end of its multi-year Stanford Challenge fundraising campaign, which netted $6.2 billion. It also benefited from the successful launch of a $1 billion campaign for its medical school and hospitals.

The 10-campus University of California system raised $1.56 billion, which doesn't include money collected by its individual campuses. UC Berkeley was the leading fundraiser among all public universities, taking in $405 million.

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford's alumni list includes the founders of major tech companies like Yahoo Inc. who have given to the school in recent years.

Stanford raised 46 percent more in its 2012 fiscal year than the $709 million it collected in 2011 and surpassed its previous record of $911 million set in 2006. The $1.035 billion haul is equal to nearly $56,000 for each of its roughly 18,500 undergraduate and graduate students, though much of the money will be used for research and construction.

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Stanford University is first college to raise $1B in a year