Electrifying equations
Maths. Enough to send shivers of dread down any child?s spine. Fear not, there may soon be a way to get rid of those nightmares. And no, the cure isn?t labouring through pages and pages of word problems, differentiation and integration. Apparently, ?getting fried? is the solution, researchers at Oxford and University College London have discovered. Before you pull out your stash, the method involves attaching tiny electrodes to the parietal lobes (next to the ears), which are known to be involved in sensory, perceptual and numerical processing. The study found that the electrical stimulation helped improve mathematical ability (absent in the control group), which was measured by the test group?s ability to learn and line the values of a new group of unknown symbols in order of ascending value. The rationale behind not using real numbers was that it would test already-learned skills as opposed to their ability to learn maths functions anew. To this end, novel mathematical symbols help mimic the process of learning basic numerical concepts.
The effects of this new-found numeracy was found to last six months and could be a potentially useful tool (after further testing for side effects; none have been found thus far) in aiding people with dyscalculia (akin to dyslexia)?a fancy term for a learning disability that involves difficulty in learning and comprehending mathematics. Even simple functions such as counting change and adding single digit numbers can be challenging to people with the disability. If proven to be non-toxic, this would be every maths-hater?s dream come true. Given how central maths skills are to everyday life and also to pursuing an education?even if you want to apply for a PhD in psychoanalysis, you need to take the GRE (50% of the exam is quantitative)?this electrical boost could help change maths problems to solutions.
Demand-Supply
On the subject of PhDs, Nature found that the number of science doctorates grew nearly 40% between 1998 and 2008 in the OECD and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. However, most of these proud PhDs may never be able to take full advantage of their qualifications. For instance, while India races to increase the number of doctoral candidates it churns out?up from 5,900 science, technology and engineering PhDs to 8,900 at present?the academic opportunities for them are limited. Add to this the better-paid industry jobs competing for talent, students intent on pursuing a doctoral degree prefer to go abroad. Therefore, the Indian government?s aim to raise the output to 20,000 by 2020 may be quite an uphill task, given that only around 1% of undergraduates (9.95 million) even consider a PhD.
While India battles to fend industry off, the US faces an embarrassment of riches?the proportion of people with science PhDs who got tenured positions in academic institutions has shrunk from 55% in 1973 to 15% in 2006. So they?re structuring their PhD programmes to be more industry-friendly to improve absortion rates. In contrast, China seems to be having no trouble at either producing or absorbing PhDs, having handed out 50,000 PhDs in 2009 across all disciplines. Quality control, however, remains questionable, given the length of the programme (3 years), supervisors are under-qualified and the mechanism for weeding out poor students undefined.
