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Teenagers should be awarded GCSE scores rather than grades, the international exams group Cambridge Assessment says.

CA, which runs three exam boards, including GCSE provider OCR, says the eight-point scale of A*-G produces "arbitrary categories".

Instead, pupils should be given a score that would show how they ranked in comparison with other candidates.

CA says this would "future-proof" exams, removing the need for additional grades such as A**.

GCSE scores, CA argues, would avoid the situation where two people can have scores some distance apart, yet receive the same grade, while two other people can have scores very close together, but receive different grades because they are either side of a grade boundary.

It would also mean that any unavoidable measurement error has a similar impact along the whole spectrum of marks, rather than being concentrated around grade boundaries.

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The blueprint used to produce a 3D-printed plastic gun has been downloaded about 100,000 times since going online earlier this week, according to Forbes.

Defense Distributed told the news site it was surprised by the amount of interest its Liberator gun had generated.

Earlier in the week, the company demonstrated the firearm being fired

But even before any more guns come off the DIY printing presses, there are moves afoot to ban it.

Californian senator Leland Yee said he wanted a law passed to stop the manufacture of 3D-printed guns.

"I plan to introduce legislation that will ensure public safety and stop the manufacturing of guns that are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check," he said in a statement.

According to Defense Distributed, most of the 100,000 downloads have been in the US, followed by Spain, Brazil, Germany and the UK.

The blueprint has also been uploaded to file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, where it has become the most popular file in the site's 3D-printing category.

It took Defense Distributed eight months to produce the firearm, which was assembled from separate components produced on an $8,000 (£5,000) 3D printer bought from auction site eBay.

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