exams

Screen yourself for skin cancer with this free iOS app

Got a new mole? A bad sunburn? A family member with a skin cancer diagnosis?

UMSkinCheck, a free new app for iPhone and iPad developed at the University of Michigan, includes a risk calculator that will help you determine your individual risk. If you have any concern at all, it guides you through taking a series of 23 photos that cover your entire body to develop a baseline for future photo comparisons.

"Whole body photography is a well-established resource for following patients at risk for melanoma," Michael Sabel, lead physician in app development and associate professor of surgery … Read more

Active phone signals give away exam cheats

I don't know whether working for the Taiwanese government is a coveted position.

Perhaps there are many unseen perks, such as, well, job security. However, the Taiwanese government certainly seems to believe that if you work for it, you must be not merely intelligent, but honest.

That is why the Taiwanese police decided to use spectrum analyzers to see who might be cheating in the government employment exams, a decision that seems to have exposed rotten fruit trying to infiltrate government branches.

PCWorld tells me that the Taiwanese National Communications Commission had a chat with the German firm of … Read more

Eye exams using a mobile phone

Researchers at the school for really smart people, MIT, have come up with a novel way to conduct eye exams--looking into your mobile phone screen. With some custom software and a small plastic device, this can be done very inexpensively, making it possible for people in poverty-stricken countries to get prescriptions quickly.

According to MIT News, the system could be implemented like this:

In its simplest form, the test can be carried out using a small, plastic device clipped onto the front of a cell phone's screen.

The patient looks into a small lens, and presses the phone's … Read more

Instructional algebra program

AlgeBasics is an educational tool that helps users learn basic algebra. Although the program has a teaching component, we're not sure that users who are not already familiar with the basics of algebra will get much out of it.

The program's interface isn't the most intuitive thing we've ever seen, but it's fairly easy to understand. AlgeBasics covers four main topics: algebraic expressions, algebraic fractions, indices (positive only), and indices with negatives. For each of these topics users can either view a tutorial or work a set of practice problems. We found the tutorials to … Read more

Disappointing study helper

Secret Guide 2: How to Pass the Real Estate Exam offers some brief common sense explanations for taking the test, but not much useful information. Anyone studying for this test should be able to find better information out there.

We were immediately disappointed by this program's interface, not because it was only a PDF document, but because it was only nine pages long. We didn't think this was long enough to give in-depth assistance for such an important test. Unfortunately, we were right. The bulk of the study tips and test-taking advice are things most people will know … Read more

ExamDiff

This program displays two files side by side, highlighting the differences. ExamDiff's handy interface offers several navigation schemes: buttons taking you to the previous or next change, a drop-down list of lines, or mouse functionality going directly to any line. It lets you scroll files in tandem or separately. You can customize the colors the program uses to mark added, deleted, and changed lines. When running a comparison, you can ignore white spaces and case differences. It outputs results as standard Unix DIFF files. Unfortunately, no manual is available. This free tool is mainly useful for developers.