Education & Reference Questions & Answers

Infoganda – a portmanteau of information and propaganda – has found currency to describe a news item or a literary piece of work that is informative and also has an underlying agenda. Infoganda is often used by governments and religious bodies to promote a certain message. The word has a negative slant to it.

A take-off from moonlighting – which means taking up a second job in the evening – sunlighting means taking time off from one’s day job to fit in other work and be paid for it. Sunlighting has a slightly adverse meaning: a person takes up a second job, and it begins interfering with the first job. Sometimes, moonlighting stretches into …

Children who are hooked to the television show an inability to concentrate in class during an in-depth lesson, say some teachers. They blame it on ‘soundbite TV’ – the fast pace of television. Fed a diet of sound and visuals, these children display very short attention spans and struggle to focus in class. Teachers also complain that such children are …

Scarlet day is the term used in the University of Cambridge to designate those days on which doctors are required to wear the festal form of academic dress. It is so called because of the scarlet elements in the gowns and hoods of the festal full dress worn by doctors as opposed to the everyday black gowns. On these days, …

Pink noise, also known as 1/f noise, is a sound that has equal energy in all octaves. It primarily consists of low frequency sounds. Due to practical constraints, pink noise can be produced only over a certain range of frequencies and occurs naturally. Astronauts listening to electromagnetic radiation in outer space have noted it being emitted from certain stars. In …

Neurolaw is a new discipline that studies the effect of neuroscientific evidence on law and legal cases. It also sets standards as to how nueroscience should be used in relation to the legal system. It is believed that neurolaw could play a more decisive role in cases involving rape and murder, where detection of the truth becomes imperative. Proponents of …

An extremely short literary work, no more than 25 words, that hints at a longer, more complex story. An extremely short story is called hint fiction as all it does is give a reader a hint. It does not provide any concrete background, setting or character, and instead leaves the blanks for the reader to fill in. Often, the biggest …

First Information Report (FIR) is a written document prepared by the police when they receive information about the commission of a cognizable offence. It is a report of information that reaches the police first in point of time and that is why it is called the First Information Report. It is generally a complaint lodged with the police by the …

It is an education reform movement in which traditional methods of teaching are set aside for a self-study approach, involving online technology – through virtual classrooms, downloadable tools and free learning material – as the favoured mode for education People taking to edupunk believe in a do-it-yourself approach and many are driven to this sort of low-cost, even free education, …

This theory says the universe will one day stop expanding. Then, as gravity pulls on matter, the universe will begin to contract, falling inward until it has collapsed into a super hot, super-dense singularity. The universe is like a giant souffle. It starts out small, expands as it heats up, and eventually, as the souffle cools, begins to collapse. Big …