Author: Ibrahim El Merehbi

Education and Neuroscience

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With new findings from neuroscience catching the headlines every day, surely we can tap into these results to improve our education system? The Education and Neuroscience Initiative hopes to address this question – this joint programme of work between the Wellcome Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) aims to: build research and expertise at the interface between neuroscience and education; support the responsible transfer of technologies, resources and practices based upon neuroscience into education; and help teachers to be able to make informed choices based upon the best available evidence. In this post we explain why we are embarking on this work, share some of the learning we’ve gained in the process, and we invite a wider conversation on this topic.

via ThInk : Education and Neuroscience.

Relevant: Education Endowment Foundation

Installing Some Basic R Packages in Ubuntu

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The following is how I configured my R workspace (and Rstudio) and this was first shared on a Coursera’s “Getting and Cleaning Data” course forums.

First make sure that R is version 3+. If not update it according to this stackoverflow question.

Java for rJava

Install Java (needed for rJava) first from a terminal:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre

which will install openjdk-6-jdk.
If this doesn’t work install all its packages:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-*

OR you might prefer openjdk-7-jdk

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-*

You should find that it is installed using this command:

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The latest earthquake that hit Lebanon [2014-09-01 @ 004136 & 012515]

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I have just found out that an earthquake has hit Lebanon. I did not feel it but 7 witnesses have reported the earthquake so far.
Details are as follows:

date: 2014-09-01 (July 06 2014)
time: 235011 / 205011 (Beirut / UTC)
depth: 20 km
epicenter: 41.14°N, 36.08°E (61 km NE of Beirut, 20 km NW of Baalbek)
(moment) magnitude Mw: 4.3

source: EMSC

Here’s an interactive map of the epicenter and the witnesses’ locations.
Source: EMSC

Visualized statistical history of the world (BBC Four & TED)

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Today I share two videos with you. The first is an episode of BBC Four’s “The Joy of Stats”. The other is a TED talk.
Both are presented by Hans Rosling.

In these videos Hans Rosling visually demonstrates statistical data on the world’s wealth, health, family size, & daily income among several others by continent and country. The demonstrations are amazing. Enjoy

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Video of laser flash on Martian rock (NASA)

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The sparks that appear on the baseball-sized rock (starting at :17) result from the laser of the ChemCam instrument on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover hitting the rock.

ChemCam’s laser zapping of this particular rock was the first time the team used Curiosity’s arm-mounted Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera to try and capture images of the spark generated by the laser hitting a rock on Mars. Their efforts were a success.

The video is compiled from single images from the MAHLI camera, taken during the 687th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s work on Mars (July 12, 2014).

Since Curiosity landed in Mars’ Gale Crater in August 2012, researchers have used ChemCam’s laser and spectrometers to examine more than 600 rock or soil targets. The laser itself has been fired more than 150,000 times. The process, called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, hits a target with pulses from the laser to generate sparks, whose spectra provide information about which chemical elements are in the target. Multiple laser shots are fired in sequence, each blasting away a thin layer of material so that the following shot examines a slightly deeper layer. In this case, “Nova” displayed an increasing concentration of aluminum as a series of laser shots from the rover penetrated through dust on the rock’s surface.

source: NASA Rover’s Images Show Laser Flash on Martian Rock