“After Lunch We Offer Quiet Time and Meditation” : Early Learning Environments in Australia and Finland Through the Lenses of Educators

Modern societies organize ECEC services from their own cultural, social and political contexts, which is also reflected in the steering documents of the country and further in the work of teachers (Garvis, et al., 2018). In many of the countries children’s access to preschool has broadened and the benefits of high quality ECEC have been recognized. In Australia and Finland, concepts of play based learning, child initiated play or free play have been highlighted as founding pillars of the early learning environments. In this paper we take a closer look at ECEC environments in Australia and Finland through the lenses of 26 educators. They described in an online questionnaire children’s daily activities as well as they indicated the amount of free play related to these activities.Peer reviewe

Anaerobic animals from an ancient, anoxic ecological niche

Tiny marine animals that complete their life cycle in the total absence of light and oxygen are reported by Roberto Danovaro and colleagues in this issue of BMC Biology. These fascinating animals are new members of the phylum Loricifera and possess mitochondria that in electron micrographs look very much like hydrogenosomes, the H2-producing mitochondria found among several unicellular eukaryotic lineages. The discovery of metazoan life in a permanently anoxic and sulphidic environment provides a glimpse of what a good part of Earth's past ecology might have been like in 'Canfield oceans', before the rise of deep marine oxygen levels and the appearance of the first large animals in the fossil record roughly 550-600 million years ago. The findings underscore the evolutionary significance of anaerobic deep sea environments and the anaerobic lifestyle among mitochondrion-bearing cells. They also testify that a fuller understanding of eukaryotic and metazoan evolution will come from the study of modern anoxic and hypoxic habitats

The professional knowledge that counts in Australian contemporary early childhood teacher education

Australia is typical of many western countries where the provision of quality early childhood services has become a government priority. The government initiatives in Australia include repeated demands for 'well-qualified' early childhood educators. As a result of these demands the preservice preparation of early childhood educators is under intense scrutiny. This scrutiny raises many questions regarding the knowledge base considered to be essential for early childhood educators and leads to further questions about who has the authority to produce this knowledge. This article explores these questions by firstly examining some of the ways Australian early childhood teacher education is situated within the current knowledge environment. This is followed by a discussion regarding the debates about what early childhood educators 'need to know'. The third section of the article traces some of the historical features of Australian early childhood teacher education, for the author argues that contemporary questions about 'which' knowledge is to be included in early childhood teacher education are best understood alongside their historical precedents. The article concludes by considering the implications of the debates for contemporary early childhood teacher education and suggests that a way forward involves reconsidering the traditional binary between theory and practical knowledge

Playing in the dark with online games for girls

Pregnant Rapunzel Emergency is part of a series of online free games aimed at young girls (forhergames.com or babygirlgames.com), where dozens of characters from fairy tales, children’s toys and media feature in recovery settings, such as ‘Barbie flu’. The range of games available to choose from includes not only dressing, varnishing nails or tidying messy rooms, but also rather more troubling options such as extreme makeovers, losing weight, or a plethora of baby showers, cravings, hospital pregnancy checks, births (including caesarean), postnatal ironing, washing and baby care. Taking the online game Pregnant Rapunzel Emergency as an exemplar of a current digital trend, the authors explore the workings of ‘dark digital play’ from a number of perspectives – one by each named author. The game selected has (what may appear to adults) several disturbing features in that the player is invited to treat wounds of the kind of harm that might usually be associated with domestic violence towards women

Quantification of Retrograde Axonal Transport in the Rat Optic Nerve by Fluorogold Spectrometry

PURPOSE: Disturbed axonal transport is an important pathogenic factor in many neurodegenerative diseases, such as glaucoma, an eye disease characterised by progressive atrophy of the optic nerve. Quantification of retrograde axonal transport in the optic nerve usually requires labour intensive histochemical techniques or expensive equipment for in vivo imaging. Here, we report on a robust alternative method using Fluorogold (FG) as tracer, which is spectrometrically quantified in retinal tissue lysate. METHODS: To determine parameters reflecting the relative FG content of a sample FG was dissolved in retinal lysates at different concentrations and spectra were obtained. For validation in vivo FG was injected uni- or bilaterally into the superior colliculus (SC) of Sprague Dawley rats. The retinal lysate was analysed after 3, 5 and 7 days to determine the time course of FG accumulation in the retina (n = 15). In subsequent experiments axona transport was impaired by optic nerve crush (n = 3), laser-induced ocular hypertension (n = 5) or colchicine treatment to the SC (n = 10). RESULTS: Spectrometry at 370 nm excitation revealed two emission peaks at 430 and 610 nm. We devised a formula to calculate the relative FG content (c(FG)), from the emission spectrum. c(FG) is proportional to the real FG concentration as it corrects for variations of retinal protein concentration in the lysate. After SC injection, c(FG) monotonously increases with time (p = 0.002). Optic nerve axonal damage caused a significant decrease of c(FG) (crush p = 0.029; hypertension p = 0.025; colchicine p = 0.006). Lysates are amenable to subsequent protein analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Spectrometrical FG detection in retinal lysates allows for quantitative assessment of retrograde axonal transport using standard laboratory equipment. It is faster than histochemical techniques and may also complement morphological in vivo analyses

Histone Methylation by NUE, a Novel Nuclear Effector of the Intracellular Pathogen Chlamydia trachomatis

Sequence analysis of the genome of the strict intracellular pathogen Chlamydia trachomatis revealed the presence of a SET domain containing protein, proteins that primarily function as histone methyltransferases. In these studies, we demonstrated secretion of this protein via a type III secretion mechanism. During infection, the protein is translocated to the host cell nucleus and associates with chromatin. We therefore named the protein nuclear effector (NUE). Expression of NUE in mammalian cells by transfection reconstituted nuclear targeting and chromatin association. In vitro methylation assays confirmed NUE is a histone methyltransferase that targets histones H2B, H3 and H4 and itself (automethylation). Mutants deficient in automethylation demonstrated diminished activity towards histones suggesting automethylation functions to enhance enzymatic activity. Thus, NUE is secreted by Chlamydia, translocates to the host cell nucleus and has enzymatic activity towards eukaryotic substrates. This work is the first description of a bacterial effector that directly targets mammalian histones