Dearth of teachers :

Many schools operate with only one teacher

by Rohana JAYALAL

The dearth of teachers is hampering the education process and the Ministry of Education is looking at ways to bring redress to students affected by the lack of teachers and facilities in their schools.

According to Education Ministry sources records show that there are about ninety schools throughout the country with only a single teacher while 168 schools had to make do with just two teachers. In the nothern Province alone there were fifty eight schools with one teacher.

Three such schools also exist in the western province,nine in the Central Province,one in the Southern Province,nine in the Eastern province province,two in the North western Province,three in the North Central, two in the Uva province and five in the Sabaragamuwa Province. Meanwhile, it has also been found that 48 schools in the North are managed with only two teachers.Twenty-nine such schools also exist in the Central Province.

In addition,according to the statistics released by the Ministry's Planning Division,254 schools operate with only three teachers,while 375 schools operate with only four teachers.

Statistics show that out of the 9,790 schools presently functioning in the country,1,552 schools have fewer than 50 students each.

Additionally,it was revealed that only 187 schools have a student population of more than 2,500.

Milky Way's black hole devours asteroids

Some of you who keep track of the latest developments in astronomy may be aware of the existence of a giant black hole in the centre of our Milky Way. For several years X ray flares from the black hole which has been named as Sagitarius A* or Sgr A* for short, have been detected once a day by the the Chandra X ray Observatory which is part of NASA's fleet of "great observatories. According to latest observations the frequent flares could be due to the giant black hole vaporizing and devouring asteroids.

Astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory say that even though there were doubts as to whether asteroids could form at all in the harsh environments found near a supermassive black hole, studies of the recent data from Chandra suggest otherwise.

"It's exciting because our study suggests that a huge number of them are needed to produce these flares, " says Kastytis Zubovas of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, and lead author of the report appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Zubovas and his colleagues suggest there is a cloud around Sgr A* containing trillions of asteroids and comets, stripped from their parent stars. Asteroids passing within about 100 million miles of the black hole, roughly the distance between Earth and the sun, would be torn into pieces by the tidal forces from the black hole.

These fragments then would be vaporized by friction as they pass through the hot, thin gas flowing onto Sgr A*, similar to a meteor heating up and glowing as it falls through Earth's atmosphere. A flare is produced and the remains of the asteroid are swallowed eventually by the black hole.

"An asteroid's orbit can change if it ventures too close to a star or planet near Sgr A*," said co-author Sergei Nayakshin, also of the University of Leicester. "If it's thrown toward the black hole, it's doomed." The authors estimate that it would take asteroids larger than about six miles in radius to generate the flares observed by Chandra. Meanwhile, Sgr A* also may be consuming smaller asteroids, but these would be difficult to spot because the flares they generate would be fainter.

Very long observations of Sgr A* will be made with Chandra later in 2012 that will give valuable new information about the frequency and brightness of flares. -Science Daily

Winners of "A Heart for Life" Essay Competition-2011

Winners with Outreach Officer, U. S. Embassy Colombo, Hector Gonzalez. Standing L-R (1st row): Bilaal Marikar,Chris Branden De Rose, Sithara Madurangi Weerasinghe, Azha Ahlam. Standing L-R (2nd row):Portia Merlyn Kemps, Shenuka Jayatilaka, Maryam Azhar, Vaishnave Lavaneswaran and Janaka D. Wimalaweera.