Does teaching children about human rights, encourage them to practice, protect and promote the rights of others?

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Rights Respecting Schools Award makes positive contributions to children’s lives and experiences at school. Within the overall context of education as a right, the Award supports children to learn about their rights and the rights of others. By learning through a rights-based framework, children experience a rights-based approach to education and start to become active rights thinkers and rights holders. This article presents findings regarding the lived experiences of children participating in a rights education programme from a primary school in England. The results are consistent with previous rights education research and confirm that teaching and supporting the human rights of children to children, through a rights education programme, encourages children to practice, protect and promote the rights of others within their school

The language of the human rights of children : a critical discourse analysis

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is an international treaty addressing the human rights of children. The Convention can be seen as the language of the human rights of children. Children are becoming more engaged and participating in the actual implementation of the Convention. This is a welcome move, but at the same time, we need to ensure the understanding and use of the language of the human rights of children is effectively and accurately available to them.This study examines the use of the Convention, the language of the human rights of children, by schools in England who have achieved the Rights Respecting Schools Award (RRSA). This is done by applying Norman Fairclough’s three phases of Critical Discourse Analysis. Schools who are working towards the RRSA are required to embed the Convention into the school ethos and teaching and learning approaches.Based on the analysis of the language of the human rights of children incorporated into the RRSA and presented on school websites, this study identified two key findings. First, there is a lack of understanding of the human rights of children, and this is clear from the misunderstandings or recontextualisation of the language of the Convention. Second, there is a lack of evidence regarding the reality of what is in the ‘best interest of the child’ (Article, 3) and the views of the child being taken into consideration and being given due weight (Article 12), when developing reciprocally respectful adult and child relationships in schools. This study has identified that more needs to be done to reduce or stop the recontextualisation of the Convention and the language of the human rights of children as this is distorting the discourse

Meta-Analysis of the Secondary Transfer of DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is complex molecule present in nearly every cell of the human body that contains all of an individual’s genetic material. Trace DNA has allowed DNA to be detected on everyday objects such as door handles, tables and chairs. Currently, the idea of the secondary transfer of DNA has arisen, involving the transfer of genetic profiles from an individual through a vector and then to final individual or object. This has become a reoccurring term in the court system, as individuals standing trial use this argument for the presence of their DNA. It is therefore hypothesized that through the exploration of literature and completion of a meta-analysis that an appropriate and concise guide will be produced to determine the chances of a secondary transfer event occurring and what conditions are required, to aid Biologists in expert testimony. Database searches were conducted to gain resources in the topic, followed by a number of screens to determine the suitability of articles for the meta-analysis. With the resultant 38 articles, data extraction was additionally carried. However, due to the lack of quantitative variables and results, a meta-analysis was not able to be conducted. It is suggested that in the future, studies publish their results in a more scientifically rigorous manner or allow the access of raw results for external interpretation purposes

Efficient radiative transfer techniques in hydrodynamic simulations

Radiative transfer is an important component of hydrodynamic simulations as it determines the thermal properties of a physical system. It is especially important in cases where heating and cooling regulate sig- nificant processes, such as in the collapse of molecular clouds, the development of gravitational instabilities in protostellar discs, disc-planet interactions, and planet migration. We compare two approximate radiative transfer methods which indirectly estimate optical depths within hydrodynamic simulations using two dif- ferent metrics: (i) the gravitational potential and density of the gas (Stamatellos et al.), and (ii) the pressure scale-height (Lombardi et al.). We find that both methods are accurate for spherical configurations e.g. in collapsing molecular clouds and within clumps that form in protostellar discs. However, the pressure scale- height approach is more accurate in protostellar discs (low and high-mass discs, discs with spiral features, discs with embedded planets). We also investigate the β-cooling approximation which is commonly used when simulating protostellar discs, and in which the cooling time is proportional to the orbital period of the gas. We demonstrate that the use of a constant β cannot capture the wide range of spatial and temporal vari- ations of cooling in protostellar discs, which may affect the development of gravitational instabilities, planet migration, planet mass growth, and the orbital properties of planets

The fossil record of ichthyosaurs, completeness metrics and sampling biases

Ichthyosaurs were highly successful marine reptiles with an abundant and well-studied fossil record. However, their occurrences through geological time and space are sporadic, and it is important to understand whether times of apparent species richness and rarity are real or the result of sampling bias. Here, we explore the skeletal completeness of 351 dated and identified ichthyosaur specimens, belonging to all 102 species, the first time that such a study has been carried out on vertebrates from the marine realm. No correlations were found between time series of different skeletal metrics and ichthyosaur diversity. There is a significant geographical variation in completeness, with the well-studied northern hemisphere producing fossils of much higher quality than the southern hemisphere. Medium-sized ichthyosaurs are significantly more complete than small or large taxa: the incompleteness of small specimens was expected, but it was a surprise that larger specimens were also relatively incomplete. Completeness varies greatly between facies, with fine-grained, siliciclastic sediments preserving the most complete specimens. These findings may explain why the ichthyosaur diversity record is low at times, corresponding to facies of poor preservation potential, such as in the Early Cretaceous. Unexpectedly, we find a strong negative correlation between skeletal completeness and sea level, meaning the most complete specimens occurred at times of global low sea level, and vice versa. Completeness metrics, however, do not replicate the sampling signal and have limited use as a global-scale sampling proxy

Assessing sampling of the fossil record in a geographically and stratigraphically constrained dataset: the Chalk Group of Hampshire, southern UK

Taphonomic, geological and sampling processes have been cited as biasing richness measurements in the fossil record, and sampling proxies have been widely used to assess this. However, the link between sampling and taxonomic richness is poorly understood, and there has been much debate over the equivalence and relevance of proxies. We approach this question by combining both historical and novel data: a historical fossil occurrence dataset with uniquely high spatial resolution from the Upper Cretaceous Chalk Group of Hampshire, UK, and a newly-compiled 3D geological model which maps subsurface extent. The geological model provides rock volumes, and these are compared with exposure and outcrop area, sampling proxies that have often been conflated in previous studies. The extent to which exposure area (true rock availability) has changed over research time is also tested. We find a trend of low Cenomanian to high Turonian to Campanian raw richness, which correlates with, and is possibly driven by the number of specimens found. After sampling standardisation, an unexpected mid-Turonian peak diversity is recovered, and sampling-standardised genus richness is best predicted by rock volume, suggesting a species-area (or, a “genus-area”) effect. Additionally, total exposure area has changed over time, but relative exposure remains the same