Literature circles, gender and reading for enjoyment

The research was commissioned through Information and Analytical Services Division, which is responsible for providing analytical services within the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED). Their work is part of a multidisciplinary unit (consisting of researchers, economists and statistics staff) and the staff undertakes and funds economic analysis and social research in the fields of: school education; children, young people and social work: architecture; and tourism, culture and sport

'The Work of Teacher Education' : Final Research Report

Partnership teacher education – in which schools work with universities and colleges to train teachers – works and there is abundant existing evidence in support of this fact. But our small-scale study across England and Scotland shows that it is the higher education tutor who seems to make it work, often at the cost of research-informed teaching and research. The most time-intensive activity for the higher education tutors in our sample was maintaining relationships with schools and between schools and individual trainee teachers. The need to maintain relationships to such a degree is caused in part by the creation of a marketplace of ‘providers’ of teacher education who compete for funding on the basis of inspection and quality assurance data and also by the very early school placements that characterise the English model of initial teacher education in comparison to other European models such as that of Finland

Deserts as laboratories of evolution

The original publication is available at http://www.sajs.co.za/For most of us the appeal of deserts lies in the barren, bleak, monotonous landscapes that characterise them. What we sometimes forget though, is that the harsh abiotic environment, and the resulting spatial and temporal variability in severely limiting resources, necessitates a suite of fascinating, and even bizarre, adaptations in the life forms which occupy them. David Ward uses this notion of deserts as evolutionary laboratories as the thread that ties together the wide range of topics he covers in his book, The biology of deserts. The book is part of The Biology of Habitats series from Oxford University Press, which endeavours to provide integrated overviews of many of the globe’s habitats, focusing on the ecology and adaptations of the organisms which inhabit them. Ward’s contribution achieves these objectives, presenting a broad overview of the (often underappreciated) desert habitat, and the fascinating strategies of the plants and animals that manage to survive there.Publishers' versio

The ecology, biogeography, history and future of two globally important weeds : Cardiospermum halicacabum Linn. and C. grandiflorum Sw.

Members of the balloon vine genus, Cardiospermum, have been extensively moved around the globe as medicinal and horticultural species, two of which are now widespread invasive species; C. grandiflorum and C. halicacabum. A third species, C. corindum, may also have significant invasion potential. However, in some regions the native status of these species is not clear, hampering management. For example, in South Africa it is unknown whether C. halicacabum and C. corindum are native, and this is a major constraint to on-going biological control programmes against invasive C. grandiflorum. We review the geography, biology and ecology of selected members of the genus with an emphasis on the two most widespread invaders, C. halicacabum and C. grandiflorum. Specifically, we use molecular data to reconstruct a phylogeny of the group in order to shed light on the native ranges of C. halicacabum and C. corindum in southern Africa. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that southern African accessions of these species are closely related to South American taxa indicating human-mediated introduction and/or natural long distance dispersal. Then, on a global scale we use species distribution modelling to predict potential suitable climate regions where these species are currently absent. Native range data were used to test the accuracy with which bioclimatic modelling can identify the known invasive ranges of these species. Results show that Cardiospermum species have potential to spread further in already invaded or introduced regions in Australia, Africa and Asia, underlining the importance of resolving taxonomic uncertainties for future management efforts. Bioclimatic modelling predicts Australia to have highly favourable environmental conditions for C. corindum and therefore vigilance against this species should be high. Species distribution modelling showed that native range data over fit predicted suitable ranges, and that factors other than climate influence establishment potential. This review opens the door to better understand the global biogeography of the genus Cardiospermum, with direct implications for management, while also highlighting gaps in current research

Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the question: is it worth the effort

Decellularized grass as a sustainable scaffold for skeletal muscle tissue engineering

Scaffold materials suitable for the scale-up and subsequent commercialization of tissue engineered products should ideally be cost effective and accessible. For the in vitro culture of certain adherent cells, synthetic fabrication techniques are often employed to produce micro- or nano-patterned substrates to influence cell attachment, morphology, and alignment via the mechanism of contact guidance. Here we present a natural scaffold, in the form of decellularized amenity grass, which retains its natural striated topography and supports the attachment, proliferation, alignment and differentiation of murine C2C12 myoblasts, without the need for additional functionalization. This presents an inexpensive, sustainable scaffold material and structure for tissue engineering applications capable of influencing cell alignment, a desired property for the culture of skeletal muscle and other anisotropic tissues.The raw and processed quantitative data required to reproduce these findings are available to download from http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/5mgnz3zrmv.

Academic work and proletarianisation : a study of higher education-based teacher educators

This article reports on a one year, mixed methods study of 13 teacher educators at work in English and Scottish higher education institutions. Framed by cultural-historical activity theory, itself a development of a Marxian analysis of political economy, the research shows how, under conditions of academic capitalism, these teacher educators were denied opportunities to accumulate capital (e.g. research publications, grants) and were proletarianised. The reasons for this stratification were complex but two factors were significant: first, the importance of maintaining relationships with schools in the name of ‘partnership’ teacher education; and, second, the historical cultures of teacher education in HE

Prospective life cycle assessment of a bioprocess design for cultured meat production in hollow fiber bioreactors

The aim of cellular agriculture is to use cell-culturing technologies to produce alternatives to agricultural products. Cul-tured meat is an example of a cellular agriculture product, made by using tissue engineering methods. This study aims to improve the understanding of the potential environmental impacts of cultured meat production by comparing be-tween different bioprocess design scenarios. This was done by carrying out a life cycle assessment (LCA) for a bioprocess system using hollow fiber bioreactors, and utilizing bench-scale experimental data for C2C12 cell prolifer-ation, differentiation and media metabolism. Scenario and sensitivity analyses were used to test the impact of changes in the system design, data sources, and LCA methods on the results to support process design decision making. We com-pared alternative scenarios to a baseline of C2C12 cells cultured in hollow fiber bioreactors using media consisting of DMEM with serum, for a 16-day proliferation stage and 7-day differentiation stage. The baseline LCA used the average UK electricity mix as the energy source, and heat treatment for wastewater sterilization. The greatest reduction in en-vironmental impacts were achieved with the scenarios using CHO cell metabolism instead of C2C12 cell metabolisim (64-67 % reduction); achieving 128 % cell biomass increase during differentiation instead of no increase (42-56 % reduction); using wind electricity instead of average UK electricity (6-39 % reduction); and adjusting the amino acid use based on experimental data (16-27 % reduction). The use of chemical wastewater treatment instead of heat treatment increased all environmental impacts, except energy demand, by 1-16 %. This study provides valuable insights for the cultured meat field to understand the effects of different process design scenarios on environmental impacts, and therefore provides a framework for deciding where to focus development efforts for improving the envi-ronmental performance of the production system.Peer reviewe