Elementary: While Chemistry and Physics have relatively high failure rates, those with an aptitude for these subjects can score high grades Over the past three years, the numbers taking higher level maths have risen significantly, with students drawn by the carrot of 25 bonus CAO points for an honours grade. These extra points can make all the difference in securing the right college place although the effect of bonus points has been to drive up CAO points for the majority of courses. Progress has been made since 2013. This year, 14,326 students (27 per cent) sat the higher level maths paper, a proportionate rise of 1 per cent from last year. The overall honours rate has stayed reasonably steady, dipping from 72.9 per cent in 2013 to 72.6 per cent this year. In total, 13,660 students who secured an A, B, C or D will receive 25 bonus points today, which may in turn lead to a further rise in CAO points. Chemistry and Physics also have relatively high failure rates, at 10 and 8.3 per cent respectively. On the plus side, however, students who have an aptitude for these subjects can receive their just reward: 20.5 per cent of … Continue reading →

Researchers using a new radio-telescope array high in Chile's Atacama Desert have made the most detailed maps yet of simple organic molecules in the halos of two comets. The 3D maps not only reveal the molecules present, but where in the halo, or coma, they appear. Their distribution offers clues about their origins either coming from the nucleus as it heats and the ices it harbors morph straight from ice to gas to form the coma and tail, or produced through chemical reactions in the coma itself. Such comet chemistry is of keen interest for researchers trying to uncover the conditions in the early solar system some 4.5 billion years ago, as the planets formed. Comets, especially those coming from a distant, extended reservoir of objects known as the Oort Cloud, are thought to harbor evidence of these early conditions in the dust, rock, and ice that make up their cores. Moreover, comets are thought to have delivered water as well as molecular building blocks for compounds important for the emergence of life on Earth. The observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) presented fresh insights on two levels, say the researchers involved in the study. "We wanted to … Continue reading →