Maths: Should English schools opt Switzerland than Shanghai to inspire EDU Facts When it comes to education, how countries rank against each other in league tables has become a big influence on education policy. And one of the biggest rankings is the Programme for International Student Assessment- also known as PISA. This is a regular comparison of the performance of 15-years-olds in different countries, including in maths. Increasingly politicians want to see their countries rise up the league tables, which has led to attempts to import ways of teaching from overseas. In England, many schools have adopted East Asian methods in maths teaching to try to climb the league tables. This has come be to be called the "mastery maths" model. Singapore and Shanghai both do very in international PISA tests compared to England, but the way both places approach mastery is slightly different. The mastery method adopted has been modelled on Shanghai system. space science Israeli spacecraft shoots for Lunar Aiming to become the fourth country to make a soft landing on the Moon, Israel's non-profit SpaceIL has announced it will launch a spacecraft from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Thursday on board a Falcon 9 rocket. The unnamed craft, weighing 1,300 pounds and standing five feet tall, will then begin an about seven-week journey to the Moon, from where it will send back images of the rocky surface and conduct experiments on lunar magnetic field. The spacecraft is called "Beresheet" a reference to the first words of the Bible in Hebrew: "In the beginning". "The Lunar was the domain of the superpowers. The Soviet Union landed Luna 2 on Earth's nearest neighbour in 1959," reports said. Shark genome can give longevity underwater To many of us, the great white shark is a mysterious and scary creature from the deep but now it's a little less mysterious. A team of scientists gas sequenced the entire genome of the great white shark, revealing a few clues as to how these animals are so good at healing wounds and resisting cancer. Fascinating Sharks are fascinating creatures, sitting proudly at the top of the ocean food chain for million of years-in fact, they've remained virtually unchanged since long before the time of the dinosaurs. On top of that, they're particularity good at healing themselves and rarely get cancer, with some species even living to the ripe old age of 400. To help decode how the animals can manage these incredible feats, an international team led by scientists from Nova Southeastern University, Cornell University, Cornell University and Monterey Bay Aquarium have now sequenced the great white shark genome. The first thing to note is that the shark's genome is one and a half times larger than that of humans. Within that genetic code, the researchers found that natural selection had given a boost to genes involved in DNA repair, DNA damage response and DNA damage tolerance, which could be behind the animals resilience against cancer and other age- related diseases. FINE Tuning Not only were there a surprisingly high number of genome stability genes that contained these adaptive changes, but there was also an enrichment of several of these genes, highlighting the importance of this genetic fine-tuning in the white shark, says Mahmood Shivji, co-lead author of the study. The shark genome contained a high number of genes, known as LINEsm that do the opposite. After blanket ban in Pakistani artists, Salman Khan has decided to replace Atif Aslam in his next film. Salman to replace Atif Aslam in gis film! 1. Two Surya kiran aircraft crash during practice at Aero India in Bengaluru, one pilot dead. 2. 13 killed, 18 injuers as truck moves down baraat procession on Rahasthan's Jaipur highway 3. BJP leader Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha seek perjury action on the Rafale Deal Detail stories on www.catchnews.com