Learning environmental concepts in primary school for sustainable development

This paper explores environmental education research in primary school. The longitudinal study started in 2003, with 29 children nine years of age, in a city in southern Sweden. The teacher works with projects in science and technology to stimulate the pupils’ interest and participation in environmental education. Semi-structured interviews with the young pupils have been carried out. In order to analyse the classroom communication between the teacher and the children and also among the children, videotaped sequences from the lessons are collected, in which the Socratic dialogue is practiced. Stimulated recall as a method is also used to find out the teacher’s reactions during the lessons. In order to catch environmental details as well as a holistic perspective, the Earth’s system model is used in the analysis, e.g. the lithosphere, the atmosphere and the hydrosphere as well as the biosphere and the technosphere. It was observed that the children are able to argue about possibilities to change different daily routines in different ways, which reduce disturbances to the environment. Some pupils can see the connection between the increasing greenhouse effect and pollution from the cars. Others can see relations between increasing temperature and melting polar caps. In stimulated recall the teacher points out possible connections in the Earth system and in environmental learning. This material is one part of an ongoing longitudinal doctoral study and the videotaped sequences have been caught from year 2003 to 2006. The interviews with the children have been taped every spring from year 2003 to 2006

Cloning and sequencing of the Bet v 1-homologous allergen Fra a 1 in strawberry (Fragaria ananassa) shows the presence of an intron and little variability in amino acid sequence

The Fra a I allergen in strawberry (Fragaria ananassa) is homologous to the major birch pollen allergen Bet v 1, which has numerous isoforms differing in terms of amino acid sequence and immunological impact. To map the extent of sequence differences in the Fra a I allergen, PCR cloning and sequencing was applied. Several genomic sequences of Fra a 1, with a length of either 584, 591 or 594 nucleotides, were obtained from three different strawberry varieties. All contained one intron, with the length of either 10 1 or 110 nucleotides. By sequencing 30 different clones, eight different DNA sequences were obtained, giving in total five potential Fra a I protein isoforms, with high sequence similarity (> 97% sequence identity) and only seven positions of amino acid variability, which were largely confirmed by mass spectrometry of expressed proteins. We conclude that the sequence variability in the strawberry allergen Fra a I is small, within and between strawberry varieties, and that multiple spots, previously detected in 2DE, are presumably due to differences in post-translational modification rather than differences in amino acid sequence. The most abundant Fra a I isoform sequence, recombinantly expressed in Escherichia coli after removal of the intron, was recognized by IgE from strawberry allergic patients. It cross-reacted with antibodies to Bet v I and the homologous apple allergen Mal d 1 (61 and 78% sequence identity, respectively), and will be used in further analyses of variation in Fra a 1-expression. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved