Changes Coming to Frankfurt Book Fair

Over the years, the Frankfurt Book Fair has evolved in various ways to update its program, including the addition of new conferences like ConTec, and StoryDrive. But, for the first time in nearly 15 years, the fair will introduce a series of major changes, including the relocation of English-language and American exhibitors.

Set to begin in 2015, English-language and American exhibitors will move from their longtime home in Hall 8.0, closer to, as organizers put it, "the heart of the action" in Halls 6.0 and 4.0. Additionally, the Literary Agents & Scouts Centre will be moved to Hall 6.3.

Frankfurt officials say the changes reflect the growth of the international book market, industry consolidation, and a desire to optimize “traffic flow.” The changes, it is also hoped, will generate new opportunities for exhibitors to to "interact with fellow fair-goers."

Frankfurt Book Fair director Juergen Boos told PW that the coming changes have been under discussion for the past few years, as disruption has rippled through the international publishing industry.

In the past the American publishers were largely rights sellers, and were satisfied to be somewhat isolated in Hall 8.0, Boos said. Now, American houses are more interested in buying international rights as well. Thus, putting the American and English language publishers in the middle of the fair made increasing sense.

Top 10 novels inspired by Shakespeare

It's the end of Shakespeare's birthday week, but the playwright has provided year-round inspiration for writers from Herman Melville to Patricia Highsmith.

Shakespeare famously customised existing plots when writing his plays, and added to them an acute perception of human experience which gave them universal significance. Thwarted love, ambition, greed, jealousy, fear – if you want to write a story about a fundamental predicament, there is a Shakespeare play to fit the bill. So it's not surprising that he has inspired so many writers, from Herman Melville to Angela Carter.

He dealt in archetypes before anyone knew such things existed, and his ability to take an emotion or a situation and push it to the limit helped create a cadre of plays that have been endlessly staged – and copied. Apart from the examples below, Romeo and Juliet inspired Malorie Blackman's Noughts & Crosses, there are references to Hamlet in Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis and The Tempest was the cue for The Magus by John Fowles.

But Macbeth is my favourite – a preference I apparently share with Jo Nesbo, who recently announced that his new noir crime novel would be based on the Scottish play. Its sinister magic is also the inspiration behind my historical novel Dark Aemilia.

In Jacobean times, the occult was accepted as part of everyday life, and witchcraft was both feared and sought out as a useful resource. I tried to channel some of this, and recreate the psychology of a fearful, superstitious age.

The Bald Cartoons Campaign

The Bald Cartoons Campaign Shows Snoopy, Garfield, and Others Shaving Their Heads for Kids Cancer.

 

 

Snoopy, Garfield and several other beloved animated characters are undergoing a major makeover for a good cause. In a moving new campaign to raise cancer awareness, the cartoon characters are shaving their heads in solidarity with kids who have lost their hair to chemotherapy.
Brazilian cancer advocacy group GRAACC created The Bald Cartoons Campaign in order to prove that “a child with cancer deserves to be seen just like any other child.” The ad starts off with kids talking about how hard it was for them to lose their hair while undergoing treatment. But things change once they are shown images of the bald cartoon characters on a screen. As they watch, their faces light up and several of them break into big grins.

“I thought that if I took my hat off at school people would laugh, but now I don’t feel that anymore,” one boy says.

The campaign first started last November with a handful of characters, but has since expanded to include 40 more cartoons, including Olive Oyl and characters from Adventure Time and Rio 2 in time for the country’s Cancer Awareness Week.

How we all could benefit from synaesthesia

Developing the mysterious condition in the 96% of people who do not have it may help to improve learning skills, aid recovery from brain injury and guard against mental decline in old age.

Illustration by Jamie Cullen

Sitting in a small, computer-lined room trying to remember a succession of different-coloured words scrolling past on a screen doesn't sound like the cutting edge of scientific research. However, academics at the University of East London are using word tests to assess the impact synaesthesia can have on memory – and the potential it might have to ward off the decline in cognitive function that can affect the elderly.

Synaesthesia, the neurological condition that causes a blending of the senses – colours can be connected to letters and numbers, smells and tastes to music or touch to vision – has long been linked to creativity: famous synaesthetes include Sibelius and more recently Pharrell Williams and Lady Gaga.
But among the wider population it has remained a mysterious condition, although it is known to affect at least 4.4% of adults across its many forms.

For instance, a grapheme-colour synaesthete might "see" the days of the week, letters and numbers as particular colours; a lexical-gustatory synaesthete will experience a particular taste in their mouth when they hear a given word; and an odour-visual/spatial synaesthete will see shapes, movement and colours when they detect certain smells.

Comic of the week

Tales of the unexpected 

 Controversial classification

 Ros Asquith

 

http://www.theguardian.com/education/cartoon/2014/apr/21/religiousstudiesandtheology-schools 

Firstborn children really do excel, reveals groundbreaking study

If you want a daughter in No10 or a son on the moon, place your bets on the eldest…

Firstborn… and high-flying: Christine Lagarde, IMF chief. Photograph: Xinhua /Landov / Barcroft Media

 

What do Angela Merkel, Hillary Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg, JK Rowling and Beyoncé have in common? Other than riding high in Forbes list of the world's most powerful women, they are also all firstborn children in their families.
Turn to British science and one finds Dame Jane Goodall, Dr Susan Greenfield and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, also firstborn children.

Now such anecdotal evidence of firstborn high achievement has been borne out by research. A groundbreaking study, by Feifei Bu at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, appears to show that, if you are the eldest child and female, you are statistically more likely to be the most ambitious and well-qualified of all your family.

Next in line for success come firstborn boys – all 12 men to have walked on the moon were either eldest or only children.

The study also found that parents could strive to have children more likely to become high achievers by leaving a gap of at least four years between each child; the wider the gap, the greater the chances of higher qualifications.

Leaving out families with only children or with just twins, the research looked at the impact of sibling structures on aspirations. Previous studies, particularly in Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, revealed that the firstborn are more likely to win higher qualifications, but the ISER research found that this could be partly explained by the fact they are likely to be more ambitious than younger brothers and sisters.

Are we focusing too much on examining practical science?

Science evokes images of Bunsen burners, coloured liquids, vapours rising from flasks, white coats and safety goggles. But are we making too much of the rigid assessment of the practical parts of science in our school curriculum?

Ofqual, the examination regulatory body, has announced that practical work will no longer count towards the final examination grade in A levels. This has happened despite intense opposition from science teachers and learned scientific bodies, represented by SCORE. How can we say that a student has achieved any level of competence in a subject if a key skill is not being assessed, they argue?

The reason for the removal of the practical work from the final grade is based mainly on two issues. First, what was examined at GCSE and A level had become a joke. The set list of practical activities that constituted independent skills assessments and controlled assessments at A level were as relevant to real science as a banana is to a fish.

They were regularly abused and students routinely scored high marks as the system was exploited to bump up grades. As yet, no decision has been made on how, or even if, practical skills will be a part of the overall GCSE grade.

A new grant for young inventors

Inventing something is a great way to learn. Building a wind machine can teach you about engineering. Designing a coffee maker forces you to consider aspects of chemistry. As students try to solve a problem, they begin to understand variables, engineering and design.

The Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams Initiative provides grants of up to $10,000 to help high-school student groups invent. InvenTeams go on to work with scientists at local universities, to patent their devices and to make national news for their developments. But while juniors and seniors in high school might take quickly to inventing, younger students may need to get their feet wet before they feel comfortable tackling their own inventions. That’s why the InvenTeams initiative has launched a Junior Varsity division for students in 9th and 10th grades. The program will provide training for groups to come up with their own ideas and, hopefully, later apply for its “varsity” InvenTeam grants.

“We have 10 years of experience with InvenTeams, and even though the program is designed for all high school grades, we found most tended to be juniors and seniors” observes Leigh Estabrooks. She is the invention-education officer for Lemelson-MIT, in Cambridge, Mass. Estabrooks said that when her group looked into why younger grades were not participating, it found that “they were interested but less confident in their abilities to be inventive.”

Researchers say Neanderthals were no strangers to good parenting

Archaeologists at the University of York are challenging the traditional view that Neanderthal childhood was difficult, short and dangerous.

A research team from PALAEO (Centre for Human Palaeoecology and Evolutionary Origins) and the Department of Archaeology at York offer a new and distinctive perspective which suggests that Neanderthal children experienced strong emotional attachments with their immediate social group, used play to develop skills and played a significant role in their society.

The traditional perception of the toughness of Neanderthal childhood is based largely on biological evidence, but the archaeologists, led by Dr Penny Spikins, also studied cultural and social evidence to explore the experience of Neanderthal children.In research published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, they found that Neanderthal childhood experience was subtly different from that of their modern human counterparts in that it had a greater focus on social relationships within their group. Investigation of Neanderthal burials suggests that children played a particularly significant role in their society, particularly in symbolic expression.

How do homing pigeons navigate?

Pigeons have extraordinary navigational abilities. Take a pigeon from its loft and let it go somewhere it has never been before and it will, after circling in the sky for while, head home. This remarkable capacity extends to places tens even hundreds of kilometres from its home and is all the more remarkable to humans because we are apparently incapable of it ourselves.

But we have long made use of the pigeon’s homing ability, principally for carrying messages in the past. And for several decades now the pigeon has played centre stage in scientists’ attempts to understand the map and compass mechanisms fundamental to bird navigation.

So what have we learnt?

Out of direct contact with home, and out of the landscape to which birds have become familiar, there must nonetheless be large-scale cues available to the navigating bird with which it can estimate its position relative to home. Many theories have waxed and waned, from reading the sun’s arc to the detection of long-distance infra-sounds. But there is little support for these.

Magnetic misgivings

Most attractive and persistent has been the idea that pigeons can use the predictable gradients of intensity and dip-angle in the earth’s magnetic field to map their position relative to known values at home. The magnetic map hypothesis is attractive and persistent, but largely without support after decades of experimental research. It is also probably false.

Autism research isn’t helping people live with daily reality

In the summer of 2010 as England was being knocked out of the World Cup in South Africa, something all together more hopeful was happening in London. A group of scientists, social researchers, parents and autistic people got together to join a discussion at the Institute of Education on research into autism.

The enthusiasm for the chance to debate and discuss complicated and emotionally charged issues like the “cure” and “prevention” of autism versus notions of autistic differences and what some call “neurodiversity” was astonishing – despite, and perhaps even because of, widely opposing views.

It led colleagues and me at the Centre for Research in Autism and Education to consider the need to find out what people with autism and their families thought about the current direction of research.

In a project called A Future Made Together, funded by the charity Research Autism, we conducted the most comprehensive review of UK research into autism ever undertaken.

We consulted with more than 1,700 autistic people, their families, practitioners and researchers to understand what they thought of current autism research in the UK and where the funds towards autism research should be prioritised.

After 450 years, we still don’t know the true value of Shakespeare

The extent of Shakespeare’s legacy 450 years on from his birth is incalculable. But this, of course, does not stop some from trying. To many the crown of Britain’s cultural output, Shakespeare is integral to our very language, widely celebrated, studied, acted, seen. So sourcing hard evidence on the cultural value of Shakespeare is a fool’s game, if a fun one.

To start with, both the words in the concept of “cultural value” are so overloaded, so controversial, that real figures for either of them are impossible to find. Are we talking about the anthropological or the aesthetic version of culture? Are we in the realm of economic use, exchange, symbolic or discursive value? And Shakespeare? Are we referencing the texts, the editions, the amateur and professional productions, or the stories, the adaptations, the movies?

The only evidence we have is about the life, writing and social relationships of the writer. And this cannot hope to explain the crazy variety of ideas and objects that shelter under the most famous name in history.

Shakespeare’s plays came to dominate the cultural production of later times by providing free content for the new theatres that opened after the theatrical lock-down of the English civil war. In their printed version, they became a point of reference for those who claimed the supremacy of English writing in contests with classical literature. They also provided useful, out of copyright, texts for the hugely expanded literature market created by universal education.

Nasa Kepler telescope discovers planet believed to be most Earth-like yet found

Kepler-186f is 10% bigger and occupies its star's 'habitable zone' where temperatures would allow liquid surface water.

A newly discovered planet may be the most Earth-like yet found in another solar system, scientists believe.

Kepler-186f is almost the same size as the Earth and occupies its star's "habitable zone" where temperatures are mild enough to allow liquid surface water.

If the planet has lakes or oceans, it would increase the chances of life evolving there.

But anything living on the world may have to withstand extra large doses of radiation from its active sun, Kepler-186.

The find is described in the journal Science as "a landmark on the road to discovering habitable planets".

Smaller and cooler than our sun, Kepler-186 is classified as an M-dwarf star, is 795 light years away and is orbited by five known planets.

Kepler-186f, the latest to be discovered, is the outermost plant in the system.

The planet was found by astronomers scouring the Milky Way galaxy for potentially habitable worlds

Teachers may boycott tests for four-year-olds

National Union of Teachers conference backs moves to oppose baseline assessment saying it will put pressure on pupils.

 

 

Teachers have denounced plans to introduce a national assessment for four- and five-year-olds at the start of formal schooling claiming that it would damage pupils, force schools into competition and distort teaching at a crucial stage.

The National Union of Teachers annual conference resoundingly backed moves to oppose the baseline assessment that the Department for Education is proposing for children in England at the start of reception year.

The motion on early years and primary assessment argued that the tests were "devised to entrench a system of league tables that sets schools in competition with each other", while an amendment called for "the possibility of a mass campaign of principled non-compliance" in response.

Speakers argued that children in early years education – from the ages of three until seven – learn better through the use of informal play and would be harmed by the early imposition of formal teaching.

Stephane Bernard, a teacher from of Lambeth, told the conference that she was "shocked, outraged, horrified and angry" to hear about the plans for more testing.

"What our four- and five-year-olds need is not another barrage of tests but emphasis on the child's personal, social and emotional development, communication and language skills. They need nurturing and their physical skills developing. All these things are key," Bernard said.

Comic of the week

http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1699

Believe your eyes: young children can be better at solving problems than adults

Are adults superior problem solvers to children? Most people would say yes. From buttoning a jacket to operating a projector to multiplying complex numbers, our abilities exceed those of children.

And why shouldn’t this be the case? Our brains are more developed, we have more control over our bodies and we know more about the world. We have a lifetime of experience to help us reason about new situations and make judgements quickly. But could it be that sometimes our accumulated knowledge might bias our judgements and make us less sensitive to what we observe?

Our expectations should lead us in the right direction when events are consistent with our past experience. But in unusual situations, these same expectations could lead us astray. In these cases, might children, who likely have weaker (or perhaps different) expectations about what tends to be true, be the better problem solvers?

The project

I was recently involved in a research project where we found that in certain situations, children do indeed appear to be better or at least more open-minded learners than adults.

UK students taking languages degrees at record low

Number of undergraduates on full-time modern foreign language courses at lowest point in a decade, new report concludes.

The number of students taking a language degree is at the lowest level in a decade. A report released today from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) found the number of students being accepted onto full-time modern foreign language (MFL) courses dropped by nearly a quarter (22%) between the academic years 2010-11 and 2012-13.

Ucas data in the report shows the fall in applications to MFL courses in 2013-14 were reflected in the acceptances, which are now at their lowest point in the last 10 years. Acceptances to non-European languages fell by 14% compared to the previous academic year (2012-13) and by 6% for European languages.

"A worrying fact is that the data has seen a fall in applications to foreign modern languages in 2013-14 cycle. Ucas data is for applications, not enrollment, but it indicates there may be a continuation of what we've seen last year," says Janet Ilieva, co-author of the report.

One of the key findings of the report is that the fall in language undergraduate degrees has shifted from an issue concentrated among part-time students, to a problem now among full-time students. Until 2012-13, the long term decline in entry to MFL courses was primarily affecting part-time programmes. Data for the most recent academic year shows a 22% decline in full-time undergraduate study.

Green or white? Planted or painted roofs can cool buildings

It’s getting hot in the city, and our overheated cities are only going to get hotter still as more people pile in and development and energy use intensifies. But planting away the problem could be a surprisingly low-cost solution to create cool roofs that will reduce office temperatures and improve working conditions for millions.

As more people move into urban areas and the effects of climate change steadily increase, it’s not surprising that urban warming is projected to worsen in the future.

One means to counteract this heat and cool things down is through planting various types of vegetation to form a green roof. Another option is to paint roof surfaces white, as is common in the Mediterranean, known as a cool roofs.

These simple measures can help reduce the urban heat island effect, where built-up areas experience higher air temperatures than rural areas due to higher-density buildings that trap heat. As you’d expect, this leads to more overheating and energy use (from use of air conditioning) within buildings during the summer, and less energy needed for heating during winter.

Number of students studying Stem courses in UK at record high

New figures show a 12% increase in those studying computer science – the highest total in a decade.

 

 

More students than ever have been accepted on to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) courses, according to new figures published by the Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce).

In 2013-14, 98,000 students were accepted on to Stem undergraduate courses, the highest level ever recorded.

This is an 8% rise on last academic year, and an 18% rise since 2002-03.

Acceptances on to engineering and technology courses "bounced back" by 6% after a decline, returning to the peak levels of 2010-11. Acceptances to computer science courses increased by 12% compared with the previous year, and are now at their highest point since 2003-04.

In addition to the numbers of students accepted on to courses, Hefce also looks at the figures for those applying. It finds applications for Stem courses are similarly buoyant. The biggest increase in applications has been in computer sciences, at 13%, but applications in engineering and technology also rose by 11% compared to the previous cycle.

Yvonne Baker, director of the National Science Learning Centre, which is run by a consortium of universities and provides continuing professional development (CPD) for science teachers, welcomes the news: "This shows that students are taking seriously the messages about high-value qualifications and also that the emphasis put on supporting Stem by employers, charities and government through initiatives like Project Enthuse, which supports teacher CPD, is having real impact."

Playing with protons in primary

Soon after her return to Athens, Greece, from the Greek Teachers Programme at CERN last summer, primary-school-physics teacher Tina Nantsou started working on a science education project, Playing with Protons, for her students at Hill Primary School, the oldest operating primary school in Greece. "The aim was to inspire my students about the magic of particle physics the same way I was inspired during my time at CERN," says Nantsou.

For years Hill School has introduced pupils from the age of eight to the world of science, technology and mathematics. "Students become familiar with big ideas and the latest discoveries in science through hands-on experimentation with simple materials. The pedagogical approach promotes inquiry, creativity and collaborative learning," says Minnie Karra, member of the board of directors of Hill School. Nantsou blogs about her work at Science Experiments for Kids, which over the last few years has become a point of reference for an ever-increasing number of primary but also secondary science educators in Greece and beyond.

How to teach … healthy eating

New research suggests that five portions of fruit and vegetables a day isn't enough. Here's a collection of lesson resources to help you teach students about balanced diets.

 

Five portions of fruit and vegetables a day may no longer be enough, according to new research from scientists at University College London.

In the research, having at least seven portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day was associated with a 42% lower risk of death from all causes. There was also a 25% lower risk of cancer and a 31% lower risk of heart disease or a stroke. Vegetables seemed to offer more protection against disease than eating fruit.

At a time when the World Health Organisation is warning that child obesity "is in danger of becoming the new norm", teaching about healthy eating and exercise in schools is absolutely essential. Here's our collection of lesson resources to help your students develop habits that will last a lifetime.

The Great Grub Club is a resource from the World Cancer Research Fund that contains a wealth of ideas for teaching primary students about healthy eating. These include an assembly with teacher's notes, and a fact sheet about the importance of eating five-a-day. There are also child-friendly recipes including funny face pizzas and pirate party food.

Differentiation for SEN students: tips for boosting attainment

Special educational needs experts present three common scenarios where a learning difficulty could be stifling progress – and explain how you can adjust classwork.

 

Over recent years there have been plenty of innovations aimed at addressing the needs of Special Educational Needs (SEN) students: among them is the radical shift from "sage on the stage" to "guide on the side".

Rather than having a one-size-fits-all approach, where a teacher simply imparts knowledge, schools have become more focused on differentiated teaching, which focuses on addressing the individual needs of students.
The New Code of Practice for SEN, for example, states that schools must teach students of all abilities in a mainstream setting by personalising and carefully structuring lessons. Under the code, both tutors and subject teachers will be expected to work alongside the special educational needs co-ordinator (Senco). Previously, the Senco might have identified students with learning difficulties and then, with other SEN staff and outside agencies, provided strategies for teachers to follow in order to help particular students access the curriculum. But now teachers will need to regularly assess and develop students' progress and identify the point at which they should receive additional support.

Given these new requirements, how can teachers improve their lesson personalisation? The key to excellent differentiation lies in observation. Here are three easily identifiable characteristics that may suggest a need for further investigation:

London Book Fair: the quest for digital innovation

The search for the next publishing sensation, and digital business model, dominated the agenda at the opening day of the annual London Book Fair on Tuesday.

The head of the industry trade body warned that simply "turning a book into a PDF" was not innovative enough to capture readers' imaginations and sales. "In any sector, in any industry, stagnation is death. If you stand still, you are probably in danger because someone will come along and take your consumers from you," said Richard Mollet, chief executive of the Publishers Association.

The fair brings together publishers and agents hoping to cut deals, as well as hopeful authors lured by seminars including "How to write a prize-winning book".

But innovation remains a preoccupation for an industry grappling with how to maintain sales in an age of iPads and the internet – a challenge underscored by the arrival of the UK games industry for the first time at the fair.

Girls are kept out of science jobs by unhelpful stereotypes

The number of girls taking A-level physics has remained stagnant for the past 20 years or more, and the UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers in the EU. Progress on gender equality in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) is frustratingly slow.

And what’s even more worrying is that when questioned, Brits can’t think of current women scientists as role models. A recent YouGov poll of 3,000 people done for ScienceGrrl, a not-for-profit of which I am a director that advocates for more women in science careers, found one in ten named Isambard Kingdom Brunel – a male engineer – when asked to think of a famous women scientist. Only about half could actually name a female scientist and of those that did, 68% named Marie Curie, who died in 1934.

In a new report called Through Both Eyes also by ScienceGrrl, we set out the case for looking at the issue in light of the society we live in, and the legacy of inequalities between men and women.

Lack of progress isn’t due to a lack of attention or awareness. The Institute of Physics has compiled a series of comprehensive reports since 2004 and government frequently makes the economic case for diversity in science, technology, maths and engineering (STEM).

The Countries Where Kids Are Terrified of Math

A new study shows Tunisian teenagers are the world's most anxious regarding the subject. 

 

Tunisia, Argentina, Brazil and Thailand are home to some of the world’s most math-phobic 15-year-olds.

Levels of “mathematics anxiety” in those countries were the highest among the nations tracked by the OECD as part of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests that the organization coordinates.

The chart below shows Tunisian teenagers are most anxious about math among those tested, and the Netherlands as the least, with the Czechs and Slovaks closest to the OECD average.

Neil Gaiman tells ghost stories late in the night at TED2014

If you walked up the twisting mahogany staircase of the Vancouver Club on Tuesday, past an ominous portrait of a man in a kilt and an empty ballroom with its curtains dancing in the wind, you’d happen upon a dimly lit room filled with TED2014 attendees. Here, about 100 gathered to hear Neil Gaiman read ghost stories at midnight. Lit by candles and the glow of his iPad, Gaiman invited the audience to gather around him on the floor.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” he says. “It may have been a little while since anyone told you a story.”

But this being TED, Gaiman took a few minutes first to chew on the question: Why do we tell scary stories? He sees them as filling a vital role in our lives.

“Ghost stories are a very peculiar tradition. They’re one of the three different kinds of stories that human beings tell each other that you find out if it’s working physiologically. If your flesh is creeping and you’re starting to feel uncomfortable, the story is working,” says Gaiman. “As long as human beings have been telling each other stories, they’ve been telling each other really scary stories. They’d be sitting there in the cave with the fire burning, and they’d tell each other about the things that were even more scary than the things they normally encountered out there.”

Wearable electronic skin delivers drugs and stores data

Average life expectancy has nearly doubled since 1800, thanks to progress in medicine. Most of that was made by developing drugs and improving public health services. The medical revolution of the 21st century is going to be different. With greater understanding of our genes, we will need treatments that are more personalised.

In pursuit of that goal, researchers have developed a wearable patch that can monitor your health, store and transmit data, and deliver drugs when needed. Such a device has instant applications for those suffering from diabetes or heart diseases. In the future it could be used more generally, to keep track of health.

This device, developed by Donghee Son of South Korea’s Institute for Basic Science and his colleagues, is not the first “electronic skin” device, but it is the first to be able store data and deliver drugs. The report on the device is published in Nature Nanotechnology.

The device is composed of titanium-gold particles that are smaller than a billionth of a metre. The materials are printed on the bottom side of an elastic skin patch. The heat and temperature sensors are placed on the top side of the patch and the drug delivering particles are on the lower side.

Byzantine monastery and mosaic floor discovered

An impressive monastery and mosaic dating to the Byzantine period was discovered at the entrance to Hura in the northern Negev during the course of an IAA salvage excavation for the purpose of building a highway interchange.

The structure, measuring 20 × 35 meters, is divided into halls built along an east–west axis, the most outstanding of which are the prayer hall and dining room due to the breathtaking mosaic carpets revealed in them.

The prayer hall is paved with a mosaic on which a pattern of leaves is vibrantly portrayed in blue, red, yellow and green colors. The dining room floor is a colorful mosaic pavement depicting floral motifs, geometric decorations, amphorae, baskets and even a pair of birds.


According to Daniel Varga, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “It seems that this monastery, located near the Byzantine settlement of Horbat Hur, is one monastery in a series of monasteries situated alongside a road that linked Transjordan with the Be’er Sheva‘ Valley”.

The mosaic carpets also include four Greek dedicatory inscriptions denoting the names of the monastery’s abbots: Eliyahu, Nonus, Solomon and Ilrion, and the dates when the pavements were constructed in the different halls. These inscriptions also aided archaeologists in dating the monastery to the second half of the sixth century CE.

Why 21st century children need to excel at problem solving

It’s no longer enough for children just to be able to read, count or multiply. With computers now doing many mundane repetitive tasks for us, many jobs in today’s world require analytical skills and the ability to solve unexpected problems.

For the first time, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has attempted to measure countries' progress at teaching children how to do this.

The OECD hosts one of the major large-scale assessments of student competencies in the world, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). More than half a million 15-year-old students from across the globe are evaluated every three years on their performance in classical domains of education, such as reading, mathematics, and science literacy.

In 2012, the OECD extended its PISA test to include a section on creative problem-solving. Students across the globe were asked to apply their skills to problems not found within their everyday textbooks. You can have a go at the sample questions on the OECD site.

Brain in gear

The OECD creative problem solving test used a range of so-called “microproblems”: small computer simulations of problems that require the active exploration of the situation and the application of knowledge gained that way. Compared to the multiple-choice tests commonly used in large-scale assessments, they require the active acquisition of knowledge within a new situation and the subsequent application of that knowledge to a complex problem.

Why students should set and mark their own homework

Teacher Mark Creasy has turned the traditional concept of homework on it's head by tasking his students with the administration and assessment. Here's how it works.

 

Over the past 10 years as a teacher, I have come to view homework as a Goldilocks issue. For some parents, there's always too much, for others not enough and for the rest it's just right.
For me, though, the bigger issue is the inverse relationship between the time and effort taken over setting, completing and marking homework and the benefit for the learner. Traditionally-set homework – involving worksheets, workbooks, research, answering and memorising – does not and cannot meet the needs of every learner individually. Furthermore, the well-intentioned ideal behind homework – to prepare learners for the future – is impossible as children have no influence over the work, except for those who decide not to complete it.

As the parent of a nine-year-old, I view homework as something which I need to support the school in getting my daughter to complete, but I also see the way it affects how much time she has for other activities which often have as much – or more – educational benefit: baking, making, playing, and so on. Having been taught to think for herself she can frequently find better learning opportunities. I've written notes to teachers explaining why she hasn't completed the set homework and stating what she has done instead – complicated, as I work at her school too.

Paper vs digital reading is an exhausted debate

Tim Waterstone's claim that ebooks are in decline isn't persuasive – and there are far more urgent matters for readers to discuss.

 

The digital revolution is going into a decline, Tim Waterstone told the Oxford literary festival. Well, it's an attention-grabbing statement, ideally suited to our culture of assertive headlines, but it's probably not true. That's not to say that the rapid growth of digital will necessarily continue, either, certainly not in markets that are already saturated with handheld devices.

Why? Because the future is – as William Gibson told us quite a long time ago now – not evenly distributed. In fact, if one thing is ubiquitous these days it would seem to be liminality. Everywhere is an in-between place. For example, even in fairly remote bits of Kenya an SMS-based information service called iCow provides farmers with veterinary advice tailored to each of their animals, including reproductive calendar reminders, feeding schedules and market information. There are fewer and fewer venues where digital technology has made no impact – and where there's a digital device, there are ebooks, at least in potential. They need not be anyone's primary method of consuming literature, but in some situations they will be the best one. Rather than circling the wagons as other media industries did (to no good outcome, it has to be acknowleged) publishers need to learn the more recent lessons from music and film and consider, for example, providing digital copies as standard with hardback editions.

The world's biggest e-waste site

Think your television is recycled when you get rid of it? This is where it is likely to end up... dumping grounds such as this one, dubbed the world's biggest e-waste site.

Once a fertile wetland, this scarred corner of Ghana is now dominated by black plumes of smoke and the acrid smell of burning plastic after becoming the world's largest e-waste dumping ground, littered with unwanted televisions and electronic devices from across the globe.

While most people would expect their electrical goods to be recycled properly, the toxic chemicals inside can make it expensive to do so, making illegal dumping a lucrative business.

Traders from across Europe, the U.S., China and India have therefore reportedly been sending containers of 'Development Aid' or 'Second-Hand Products' to Tema Harbour, the contents of which end up being dumped 20 miles east in Agbogbloshie.

Photographer Kevin McElvaney has now documented how boys and young men make their living by salvaging metals and burning cables to get to the copper inside.

Such dangerous work among toxic chemicals however leads to a range of injuries including lung problems, untreated wounds, headaches and insomnia.