Dr. Çetiner’s Blogs (Dr. Beytullah Gültekin Çetiner)

Interesting Facts about Human-Being
Here are some interesting facts about human being that we might not even know.

* Blinking helps to wash tears over our eyeballs. That keeps them clean and moist. Also, if something is about to hit our eye, we will blink automatically.
* Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression than men in the United States.
* The human brain has about 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons.

* From all the oxygen that a human breathes, twenty percent goes to the brain.
* People who ride on roller coasters have a higher chance of having a blood clot in the brain.
* Once a human reaches the age of 35, he/she will start losing approximately 7,000 brain cells a day. The cells will never be replaced.
* It is not possible to tickle yourself. The cerebellum, a part of the brain, warns the rest of the brain that you are about to tickle yourself. Since your brain knows this, it ignores the resulting sensation.
* A women from Berlin Germany has had 3,110 gallstones taken out of her gall bladder.
* In America, the most common mental illness is Anxiety Disorders.
* Your brain is 80% water.
* Your brain is move active and thinks more at night than during the day.
* The shark cornea has been used in eye surgery, since its cornea is similar to a human cornea.
* The number one cause of blindness in adults in the United States is diabetes.
* The eye of a human can distinguish 500 shades of the gray.
* The cornea is the only living tissue in the human body that does not contain any blood vessels.
* People generally read 25% slower from a computer screen compared to paper.

Taken from Rumeysa Cetiner

Quiz on Europe in Turkey
There has been a recent project with the title “Quiz on Europe in Turkish high schools”.
Quiz on Europe in Turkish high schools
The 2008 edition of the quiz on Europe, recently launched in Turkey, is going to be a success. The quiz involved more than 400 high schools.

The 2008 edition of the quiz on Europe, recently launched in Turkey, is going to be a success.

The quiz involved more than 400 high schools in Beyoglu (26), Umraniye (25), Pendik (23), Bahcelievler (23) and Kadikoy (22).

The students’ competition, which will last for two months, has the purpose to stimulate study and research on the issues which concern the European Union.

The finals will be held in Ankara in May.

“After the success of the 2007 edition, we have extended the contest to 15 cities, reaching also Van, with the support of the Education Ministry and the Info Network of the EU”, the director of the European information centre Aybige Tanriover said.

The schools of Istanbul started the preparation stage of the quiz at the beginning of March.

The European quiz is organised by the Education Ministry, delegation of the EU in Turkey, and the European information centres spread throughout the country including Adana, Antalya, Bursa, Denizli, Diyarbakir, Edirne, Gaziantep, Izmir, Kayseri, Mersin, Samsun and Van.

The winning class will go on a trip to Brussels and Berlin in June 2008.

AA

Youngest Professor of the World
Girl, 19, whose name is Alia Sabur, becomes youngest professor of the world.

Iranian but US citizen Alia Sabur, 19, has been announced the world’s youngest full-time professor in history by the Guinness Book of World Records, media reported.

The former child prodigy, clarinet maestro, black belt martial artist and budding scientist has been named the world’s youngest professor.

Miss Sabur will begin teaching physics at Korea’s Konkuk University next month, breaking a record set by Scottish mathmetician Colin Maclaurin three centuries ago, reports the Times.

However, the achievement will come as little surprise to her friends and family. Miss Sabur has been exceeding expectations since infanthood.

She gained a university graduate by 10, a masters at 17 and managed to squeeze in becoming a concert clarinetist with the Rockland Symphony Orchestra - aged 11.

Miss Sabur says her secret is curiosity.

“I just wanted to know how things worked,” she told the paper.

“My parents encouraged me in anything I wanted to do.”

But her gift is not without its drawbacks. By five she had outgrown her friends and moved on to secondary school, where her intellect singled her out as a misfit.

When she went to Stony Brook University in New York aged 10, she took her teddy bears to physics classes.

The Daily Telegraph

Boys cost more to raise than girls
Boys cost thousands of dollars more to bring up than girls. A research, carried out in Britain among 2000 families, has revealed that raising boys is more expensive than raising girls.

Perhaps, many would thing the reverse meaning that girls’ expenses are more than boys. The following research reveals that this is not true.

Bringing up a son costs about $15,000 more than raising a girl, a study has found.

Parents are forced to pay out more than $65,780 through a boy’s school years - around 23 per cent more than it costs to fund a girl’s upbringing.

The London study found parents will splash out $4407 each year on their sons for clothes, gadgets and hobbies.

Daughters cost $3354 a year - or $50,858 in total.
The study, which examined the spending habits of 2000 parents, was done by GE Money.

A company spokesman said starting and raising a family was exciting and enjoyable but it could stretch finances.

The study revealed most of the money was spent on clothes, with $8087 splashed out on a boy’s childhood and $6524 on a girl’s.

Another $5357 went on buying and replacing a boy’s school uniform, compared with the $3397 for a girl. Parents then have to spend $5350 on their son’s leisure activities, such as football, basketball and cricket, while daughters generally will ask for just $2080 towards their hobbies.

Technology-loving boys also receive more when it comes to buying gadgets and are treated to $6223 worth during their childhood. Girls will have just $3088 of gadgets bought for them.

Mother of two Heather Lambert at first was surprised at the survey results.

“I would have thought that it would cost a lot more to raise a girl when you consider that you have to buy the hair straightener and the hair dryer but, when you think about it, boys do like the expensive gadgets like computer games,'’ she said.

P.S. In our belief, Educational aspects regarding different genders should have also been thoroughly examined in the study which seems to be lacking currently.

Spoonfeeding
First let us describe spoonfeeding. The following are the definitions of spoonfeeding in dictionary.

What is SpoonFeeding (Spoon Feeding)?
Spoonfeeding as a noun
1. Spoonfeeding is simply feeding someone from a spoon by treating him/her as a baby
2. spoonfeeding (teaching in an overly simplified way that discourages independent thought)

Spoonfeed as a Verb
1. Spoonfeed (feed with a spoon)
2. spoonfeed (teach without challenging the students) “This professor spoonfeeds his students”

What is wrong with Spoonfeeding?

Nothing is wrong in spoonfeeding if one of the situations applies to you (see below). However, in education, things are different.

Spoonfeeding in Engineering Education
Spoonfeeding is the greatest harm to an engineering student. An engineer is expected to be innovative, creative in his/her career. How could someone expect these challenging task from an engineer in the real life if he/she was spoonfed during the engineering education?

An environment where an instructor simply rattles down information to be memorized and recalled during exams will kill creativity and reward a lack of critical thinking. A more ‘Socratic’ enviroment where the student is lead to ‘discover’ principles will assuredly lead to better understanding, retention, creativity, fun, ease of use, ability to apply in unfamiliar situations, etc…

By supplying readily available resources to engineering students in the classroom and solving some easy-to-digest problems in the classroom later to ask them in a similar fashion in exams by just changing some numbers may be seeming very attractive to students since they can easily pass the exams and obtain a good grade.

This kind of teaching can provide at most a second level of learning in Bloom taxonomy what we call as comprehension and in many cases memorization level only which is the first level of learning.