March 2007 Archives

Students Sue Anti-Cheating Service

Anti-plagiarism software use is becoming commonplace to ensure that students do not submit other people's work as part of their own. The method of storing submitted essays and comparing with essays submitted in the future poses a potential legal problem.

The Washington Post reports that "Two McLean High School students have launched a court challenge against a California company hired by their school to catch cheaters, claiming the anti-plagiarism service violates copyright laws."

"The lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, seeks $900,000 in damages from the for-profit service known as Turnitin. The service seeks to root out cheaters by comparing student term papers and essays against a database of more than 22 million student papers as well as online sources and electronic archives of journals. In the process, the student papers are added to the database.

"Turnitin is used by 6,000 institutions in 90 countries, including Harvard and Georgetown universities, company officials have said."

"According to the lawsuit, each of the students obtained a copyright registration for papers they submitted to Turnitin."

Full article link.

Originally seen on Slashdot.

Froggy Recovered

I deduced where Jack must have left him!

Where's Froggy?

Jack and Kim popped in to work to see me last week. Shortly after this photo was taken Froggy vanished. Again. He must be around here somewhere.

Tired boy

The early morning sun has been waking Jack up too early. He's tired, we're tired. Hopefully we'll get some later starts with the clocks springing forward to British Summer Time this weekend.

Some women may see 100 million colors, thanks to their genes

Here's a fascinating article about how we see colour. In particular, thanks to extra colour-detecting cones, some women are able to see millions more shades and colours than other people. This would explain a few things in my household.

Article link. (This was linked from slashdot).

Nurses leave NHS for Oz

Although I wrote, "leave NHS", many are unable to start work in the UK after qualifying as nurses because jobs are no longer there.

"According to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) 3,200 nurses of the 8,000 registering to work abroad want to work Down Under."

BBC article.

At the park

Anatomy Teaching: the cruellest cut of all

Some of the GEP students might be interested to see who we saw in London at an anatomy meeting yesterday. They like his DVDs very much.

Guess Who

It's a fire engine. Guess who's driving.

Mother's Day

Horse riding on top of a windy, snowy hill in March.

Lack of bodies for medic training

"A shortage of donor bodies is putting medical teaching at risk, the Royal College of Surgeons has warned."

BBC article.

At home and at play

I've put up some photos from the weekend into a new album on the photos page. I was just mucking about with Apple's Aperture software.

Podcasts

I'm getting behind with the embryology podcast series. This is mostly because of all the other tasks that I have to prioritise above it, but be encouraged that I've been drawing some images specifically for enhanced versions of future podcasts. They take a while to conceive and draw, and I'm going to have to record audio material almost specifically for them so I have to wait until they're done before I can move on. I think they're quite nice though:

Very, very simple. I've been testing them out on a video iPod and they're legible, but it's tricky to decide what information to include and what to omit. I see this as a long running project likely to take me 12 months or more, so the current batch of first year students should get them all by the time they revise for their IntMB exams.

Round the clock

This is the photo that took my camera to its 10,000 image. The counter reset to 0001. Not a great picture, very flat, but it's a milestone for the Nikon.

Degree applicants 'copy from web'

A BBC article claims "Thousands of prospective university students are using the internet to cheat in their applications, analysis by admissions service Ucas reveals."

Importantly UCAS say, "There's a difference between copying, and using the web to get advice on how to write the best personal statement - there's nothing wrong with that."

Spring?

Spring is on the way. I can tell because after cycling to work this morning the roof of my mouth is lined with gnats.

Morning

Moving Mum & Dad

Mum and dad moved house over the last few days, so we have a new family home. They've moved into a really nice house not far from the previous one, and the move itself went smoothly (thanks to family and friends as a whole, but particularly thanks to my brother the professional removals man). My next job is to install wireless internet connectivity later this month and get them an Apple laptop. It should make online life a lot easier and more flexible for mum, and we should be able to share stuff over the internet more easily too. Wish me luck.

It was particularly tricky to move all the animals. The dogs have settled in now, but it might be a few more days before the cats get used to the new house.