A UK-US investigation of early education practitioners’ opinions about child poverty and its prioritizing within their practice: final report

Introduction In many developed societies, children in poverty make up a significant minority across education sectors estimated to be 21% of children in the UK and 22% in the USA. Globally, ECEC has been prioritized as a key policy and practice lever to remediate child poverty by reducing the ‘outcomes gap’ in children’s learning and development. Experiencing poverty has a negative effect, particularly for children in the early years range, and children in poverty are disadvantaged in their learning and development by the age of five years. An evidence base suggests quality ECEC provision can address educational and social inequality by improving outcomes for children in poverty. But what constitutes quality early learning provision and environments for children and their families experiencing poverty remains highly contested. With such a significant minority of children experiencing disadvantage, though, for ECEC provision to have 'quality' it needs to be poverty sensitive. So provision should be characterized by poverty sensitivity and it should be poverty proofed i.e. ECEC practitioners’ delivery, practice and decision making will take poverty, social disadvantage and inequality into account in their everyday provision for children from disadvantaged families. Research, hough, which has considered early education practitioners’ opinions on child poverty is rare and recent small -scale qualitative research completed by members of this research team has suggested poverty sensitivity cannot be assumed (Simpson et al,2015). The research reported here built up on this previous work to provide a broad -scale and unique exploration of ECEC practitioners’ opinions about child poverty. Within the context described above, he central aim of the research was to develop knowledge of early education practitioners’ opinions about child poverty and the extent to which they prioritize it in their practice across several geographic locations in England and the USA. The proposed research hoped to move beyond the restrictions of a country by country sui generis approach, allowing for translocal and transnational connections to be made between early education practitioners’ opinions and engagement with child poverty and its remediation. There were good reasons for choosing to focus upon England and the USA to explore these issues. Increasingly there are parallels and points of tangency between the two countries in regard to child poverty and policies to remediate its impact in early childhood. For instance, as indicated above, there are currently high levels of child poverty in the UK and the USA in comparison with other developed nations. Convergence includes prioritizing ECEC as a social mechanism to address child poverty across both countries (Nandy and Minujin 2012). In England and the USA and many other countries, a dominant neoliberal political discourse emphasizing individualism and limited state involvement pervades this prioritizing. ECEC is delivered via a mixed market model including a significant amount of private for profit provision, the costs of which are relatively high in both countries and prohibitive for low income families. Within the US this has necessitated federal and state level programmes. Across England several national schemes can also be seen to cater for those that are excluded from the ECEC market. In meeting the aim mentioned above the following objectives were achieved. The first objective was to ascertain and contrast early education practitioners’ opinions about child poverty in a selection of geographic locations across England and the USA. The second objective was then to clarify the extent to which these ECEC practitioners engage with (or not) poverty sensitivity in their practice. The third objective was, through the research, to provide a mechanism for bringing practitioners’ opinions to current policy, practice and academic debates around the role of early education in remediating child poverty. A final objective was to draw out wider implications for early education policy and practice including the possible need for poverty proofing toolkits in the early years

‘Seen but not heard’. Practitioners work with poverty and the organising out of disadvantaged children’s voices and participation in the early years

Living in poverty disadvantages young children reducing school readiness. ‘Pedagogy of listening’ can potentially support resilience remediating against poverty’s negative effects. Little, though, is known about how early childhood education and care (ECEC) practitioners work with children in poverty and the attainment gap between such children and their peers remains significant within England and the US. This article reports research using a mixed methodology which explored these issues in localities across both these countries. We argue a dominant technocratic model of early years provision in these contexts creates normalisation and diversity reduction. This, and austerity measures, stymie pedagogical space and practice organising out listening to children in poverty. We suggest this may help explain why the attainment gap remains so stubbornly resistant to reduction across these countries

Talking heresy about ‘quality’ early childhood education and care for children in poverty

This paper considers the socially progressive function of a model of 'quality' early childhood education and care widely prescribed to address child poverty across England and the USA. Ubiquitous, it is imbued with a sense of objectivity, secureness and practicality. We question these foundations. Then using data from practitioners in both countries, we contrast expectations about this model of ECEC as an unmitigated good building resilience to 'break cycles of disadvantage', with the everyday experiences and frustrations of practitioners pursuing it. Their data suggest this model of 'quality' has limitations and some heresy is required about this policy orthodoxy

The circular economy in China: Achievements, challenges and potential implications for decarbonisation

China's wide-ranging circular economy (CE) efforts have been studied multiple times from a range of perspectives. Synthesizing the relevant literature, this paper provides a critical reflection on the transition to a CE in China. Key factors for China's success in shifting towards a CE are seen in multi-level indicators and upscaling niches. This paper makes a novel contribution on limitations to progress, based on emerging evidence on CE projects that fail to sustain. Enriched by experts feedback, this paper critically addresses future challenges to a deep transition resulting from implementation gaps between early majorities and mass markets and coordination challenges arising through regional and sectoral differences. In light of China's commitments to climate neutrality by 2060, such challenges are considered serious. Based on feasible policy learning, the paper however proposes synergies between the CE and decarbonisation driven by efficiency improvements, comprehensive core indicators, upscaling and urban policies as trigger for deeper transformations. Finally the paper undertakes broader reflections and an outlook on evidence-orientated policy learning for a CE and decarbonisation in China

Pan-Antarctic analysis aggregating spatial estimates of Adélie penguin abundance reveals robust dynamics despite stochastic noise

© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 832, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00890-0.Colonially-breeding seabirds have long served as indicator species for the health of the oceans on which they depend. Abundance and breeding data are repeatedly collected at fixed study sites in the hopes that changes in abundance and productivity may be useful for adaptive management of marine resources, but their suitability for this purpose is often unknown. To address this, we fit a Bayesian population dynamics model that includes process and observation error to all known Adélie penguin abundance data (1982–2015) in the Antarctic, covering >95% of their population globally. We find that process error exceeds observation error in this system, and that continent-wide “year effects” strongly influence population growth rates. Our findings have important implications for the use of Adélie penguins in Southern Ocean feedback management, and suggest that aggregating abundance across space provides the fastest reliable signal of true population change for species whose dynamics are driven by stochastic processes.H.J.L., C.C.-C., G.H., C.Y., and K.T.S. gratefully acknowledge funding provided by US National Aeronautics and Space Administration Award No. NNX14AC32G and U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs Award No. NSF/OPP-1255058. S.J., L.L., M.M.H., Y.L., and R.J. gratefully acknowledge funding provided by US National Aeronautics and Space Administration Award No. NNX14AH74G. H.J.L., C.Y., S.J., Y.L., and R.J. gratefully acknowledge funding provided by U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs Award No. NSF/PLR-1341548. S.J. gratefully acknowledges support from the Dalio Explore Fund

Multi-modal survey of Adélie penguin mega-colonies reveals the Danger Islands as a seabird hotspot

© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 8 (2018): 3926, doi:10.1038/s41598-018-22313-w.Despite concerted international effort to track and interpret shifts in the abundance and distribution of Adélie penguins, large populations continue to be identified. Here we report on a major hotspot of Adélie penguin abundance identified in the Danger Islands off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula (AP). We present the first complete census of Pygoscelis spp. penguins in the Danger Islands, estimated from a multi-modal survey consisting of direct ground counts and computer-automated counts of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery. Our survey reveals that the Danger Islands host 751,527 pairs of Adélie penguins, more than the rest of AP region combined, and include the third and fourth largest Adélie penguin colonies in the world. Our results validate the use of Landsat medium-resolution satellite imagery for the detection of new or unknown penguin colonies and highlight the utility of combining satellite imagery with ground and UAV surveys. The Danger Islands appear to have avoided recent declines documented on the Western AP and, because they are large and likely to remain an important hotspot for avian abundance under projected climate change, deserve special consideration in the negotiation and design of Marine Protected Areas in the region.We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Dalio Foundation, Inc. through the Dalio Explore Fund, which provided all the financing for the Danger Island Expedition. We would like to thank additional support for analysis from the National Science Foundation (NSF PLR&GSS 1255058 - H.J.L. and P.M.; NSF PLR 1443585 – M.J.P.) and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NNX14AC32G; H.J.L. and M.S.). Geospatial support for the analysis of high resolution satellite imagery provided by the Polar Geospatial Center under NSF PLR awards 1043681 & 1559691

The circular economy in China: achievements, challenges and potential implications for decarbonisation

China's wide-ranging circular economy (CE) efforts have been studied multiple times from a range of perspectives. Synthesizing the relevant literature, this paper provides a critical reflection on the transition to a CE in China. Key factors for China's success in shifting towards a CE are seen in multi-level indicators and upscaling niches. This paper makes a novel contribution on limitations to progress, based on emerging evidence on CE projects that fail to sustain. Enriched by experts feedback, this paper critically addresses future challenges to a deep transition resulting from implementation gaps between early majorities and mass markets and coordination challenges arising through regional and sectoral differences. In light of China's commitments to climate neutrality by 2060, such challenges are considered serious. Based on feasible policy learning, the paper however proposes synergies between the CE and decarbonisation driven by efficiency improvements, comprehensive core indicators, upscaling and urban policies as trigger for deeper transformations. Finally the paper undertakes broader reflections and an outlook on evidence-orientated policy learning for a CE and decarbonisation in China

Local perceptions of the relative contributions of enclave tourism and agritourism to community well-being: The case of Mauritius

To date, limited attention has been paid to the contribution of tourism to the well-being of island residents in general and to whether such well-being varies according to the nature of tourism development in particular. Specifically, island tourism is frequently manifested in resort-based enclave development, a form of tourism that is often criticised for its assumed limited benefits to the wider community. As a consequence, alternative approaches such as agritourism, are increasingly proposed as a means of enhancing community development and well-being yet the relative merits of enclave and agritourism have not been explored within an island tourism context. This paper addresses this notable gap in the literature. Drawing on a questionnaire-based survey in Mauritius, it considers and compares the perceptions of local people of the extent to which enclave tourism and agritourism contribute to their well-being. The results reveal that both types of tourism development contribute both positively and negatively to community well-being although enclave tourism is perceived to have fewer positive outcomes. On the one hand, enclave tourism provides valuable cultural opportunities but damages the environment, restricts entrepreneurship and favours local elites; on the other hand, agritourism, although not yet well-established in Mauritius, is perceived to positively enhance the cultural and social spheres of community life whilst supporting entrepreneurship

InterPro in 2011: new developments in the family and domain prediction database

InterPro (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/) is a database that integrates diverse information about protein families, domains and functional sites, and makes it freely available to the public via Web-based interfaces and services. Central to the database are diagnostic models, known as signatures, against which protein sequences can be searched to determine their potential function. InterPro has utility in the large-scale analysis of whole genomes and meta-genomes, as well as in characterizing individual protein sequences. Herein we give an overview of new developments in the database and its associated software since 2009, including updates to database content, curation processes and Web and programmatic interface

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead