Of Mermen and monster: A slippery story of drama in education and related practices

The account of the evolution of a classroom teacher (me) that follows is suggestive of a degree of agency and creativity that is rarely acknowledged. Teachers are currently positioned in ways that underline their instrumental role – their duty to students, parents, school and government to ensure that students achieve. A lack of faith in teachers’ capacity to innovate on their own terms means that creative practice in schools is routinely overlooked or mistrusted. My own history serves to illustrate the complex ways in which teachers develop their practice, and the cultural and political influences that play their part in the process. This article ends with some comparison between my own experience and that of my student teachers as they embark on their teaching careers nearly 30 years later

Re-animation: multimodal discourse around text

This article offers a multimodal analysis of spontaneous, improvisatory interactions between pre-service teachers as they engage with a range of material resources connected to, or generated by, a literary text (in this case, the Old English poem Beowulf). We draw on an understanding of role as a form of frame, offering students a particular perspective on the material that they engage with and a heightened awareness of the signs that they make, and we consider the function of role in supporting learning. Using video evidence collected across a 2-day workshop, we select two key episodes for close analysis to illustrate the complex ways in which learners' spoken words, gestures and bodies combine in the processes of shared meaning-making, aspects of learning that tend to be ignored in official accounts of classroom literacy. In particular, we identify fleeting yet generative moments of role play that learners adopt while engaged in collaborative activities around images and a touchscreen, a form of embodied response we term ‘re-animation’

Media Production and disruptive innovation: exploring the interrelations between children, tablets, teachers and texts in subject English settings

This article concerns Key Stage 3 boys’ and student teachers’ responses to literature through the production of moving image, sound and photography in a formal context. The researchers’ interests centre on media making with iPads and the ways in which young people articulate textual understanding through production. Under the guidance of their tutors, PGCE students and pupils engage with digital tools to explore new forms of cultural expression, inviting creative practice and critical thinking. The article incorporates multiple perspectives from: the children, the student teachers, the English and Drama teachers, the teacher trainers / lecturers in English and Drama, and a doctoral researcher interested in the distinctive nature of making with digital media and associated ontological issues. A sociocultural overview contextualises the study before an exploration of the ways in which pedagogies and epistemological understandings, often associated with non-formal media making, constructively challenge traditional Secondary English classroom practices

Registration of amiloride in South Africa: Cutting the Gordian knot

Amiloride is an antagonist of the renal tubular epithelial sodium channel (ENaC). As such, it is a diuretic that is both potassium and magnesium sparing. It is used for the treatment of potassium depletion and hypertension, and is the specific therapy for hypertension due to overactivity of the ENaC (Liddle syndrome and several additional genetic causes of the Liddle phenotype - low renin and low aldosterone). It is listed as a World Health Organization essential drug, but has never been registered in South Africa (SA) and can therefore only be prescribed under a Section 21 application to the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) on a case-by-case basis. In SA, \u3e50% of patients treated for hypertension are not controlled. In the USA, the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study reported that African Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with hypertension, more likely to be treated, more likely to be treated intensively, and less likely to achieve blood pressure (BP) control. Although the reasons are complex, studies show that 10 - 20% of blacks may carry the Liddle phenotype. Observational data and a controlled clinical trial done in three African countries have shown that these patients respond to amiloride and not to conventional guideline-based antihypertensive treatment. The former is likely to result in a significant reduction in cardiovascular, stroke and kidney morbidity and mortality, because of improved BP control. Amiloride is very unlikely to ever be registered in SA, as it was first developed \u3e50 years ago, and SAHPRA regulations prevent widespread prescription of this essential drug. This is a classic Gordian knot that requires a novel approach from authorities to sever the knot and improve the health of many South Africans

Slx8 removes Pli1-dependent protein-SUMO conjugates including SUMOylated Topoisomerase I to promote genome stability

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The evolution of quantitative sensitivity

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Programme grant no. DGE-1419118 to S.E.K., and NSF 2000759 from the Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) to S.T.P., the Austrian Science Fund (FWF project no. P33928_B) to F.R., the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship grant no. 220020300 to J.F.C., National Institutes of Health grant no. R01 HD085996 to J.F.C. and S.T.P. and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.The ability to represent approximate quantities appears to be phylogenetically widespread, but the selective pressures and proximate mechanisms favouring this ability remain unknown. We analysed quantity discrimination data from 672 subjects across 33 bird and mammal species, using a novel Bayesian model that combined phylogenetic regression with a model of number psychophysics and random effect components. This allowed us to combine data from 49 studies and calculate the Weber fraction (a measure of quantity representation precision) for each species. We then examined which cognitive, socioecological and biological factors were related to variance in Weber fraction. We found contributions of phylogeny to quantity discrimination performance across taxa. Of the neural, socioecological and general cognitive factors we tested, cortical neuron density and domain-general cognition were the strongest predictors of Weber fraction, controlling for phylogeny. Our study is a new demonstration of evolutionary constraints on cognition, as well as of a relation between species-specific neuron density and a particular cognitive ability. This article is part of the theme issue 'Systems neuroscience through the lens of evolutionary theory'.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe