Growing Environmental Activists: Developing Environmental Agency and Engagement Through Children’s Fiction.

We explore how story has the potential to encourage environmental engagement and a sense of agency provided that critical discussion takes place. We illuminate this with reference to the philosophies of John Macmurray on personal agency and social relations; of John Dewey on the primacy of experience for philosophy; and of Paul Ricoeur on hermeneutics, dialogue, dialectics and narrative. We view the use of fiction for environmental understanding as hermeneutic, a form of conceptualising place which interprets experience and perception. The four writers for young people discussed are Ernest Thompson Seton, Kenneth Grahame, Michelle Paver and Philip Pullman. We develop the concept of critical dialogue, and link this to Crick's demand for active democratic citizenship. We illustrate the educational potential for environmental discussions based on literature leading to deeper understanding of place and environment, encouraging the belief in young people that they can be and become agents for change. We develop from Zimbardo the key concept of heroic resister to encourage young people to overcome peer pressure. We conclude with a call to develop a greater awareness of the potential of fiction for learning, and for writers to produce more focused stories engaging with environmental responsibility and activism

The role of animal models in evaluating reasonable safety and efficacy for human trials of cell-based interventions for neurologic conditions

10.1038/jcbfm.2008.98Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism2911-9JCBM

Generalized Framework for Selectors with Applications in Optimal Group Testing

Group Testing refers to the situation in which one is given a set of objects O, an unknown subset P ` O, and the task is to determine P by asking queries of the type "does P intersect Q?", where Q is a subset of O. Group testing is a basic search paradigm that occurs in a variety of situations such as quality control in product testing, searching in storage systems, multiple access communications, and software testing, among the others

Unintended changes in cognition, mood, and behavior arising from cell-based interventions for neurological conditions: Ethical challenges

10.1080/15265160902788645American Journal of Bioethics9531-3

‘As good as chocolate’ and ‘better than ice cream’: how toddler, and older, breastfeeders experience breastfeeding

The breastfeeding experiences of 114 Australian children who were currently breastfeeding were explored via maternal observation and direct questioning of the children. Mothers commonly stated that their child breastfed for comfort and this opinion was validated by observations of when the children breastfed, which was often in the transition to sleep or when the child was upset. Children stated that they liked breastfeeding and that they felt happy, good or nice when they breastfed. Children expressed that they liked the taste of breastmilk and compared the flavour to a wide variety of foods. Conversations with the children revealed that they had learnt significant information about breastfeeding. Breastfeeding role‐play was often involved in this learning and it is proposed that this learning should be valued. This study is the first examination of breastfeeding from the viewpoint of children, who are the actual breastfeeders, and provides insight into their practices and motivations