Can you learn to taste and smell the letter B?

Synaesthesia is a relatively rare condition that gives people extraordinary perceptual experiences from everyday normal sensory input. For example, someone with synaesthesia might be able to taste or hear colours.

Scientific studies have identified many different types of synaesthesia such as spatial associations for numbers, days, and months, or even colours experiences for different swimming styles. Although not all of these experiences have been scientifically validated, there exist about 60 different reported forms of synaesthesia including grapheme-colour synaesthesia, where a letter printed in black triggers a highly specific and consistent colour experience.

What is common to all the different forms of synaesthesia is that the experiences are involuntarily and automatically triggered by something, a so-called inducing stimulus or what is simply called an “inducer”.

Although idiosyncratic, synaesthetic experiences are consistent over time within the same individual. So while “A” may elicit a red colour experience for one synaesthete and a blue colour for another, it will always elicit the same colour experience for a specific individual. For most synaesthetic individuals, synaesthetic experiences have perceptual qualities. For instance, grapheme-colour synaesthesia entails the subjective experience of seeing colours.

Owww! The science of pain

Scientists are homing in on how and why people experience this vital sensation.

 

Imagine a life without pain. No throbbing headaches. No stinging sunburns. No aching joints. If you think that sounds great, think again.

Some people can’t feel pain. They’re born that way. They also tend to die young — unlike, say, people who cannot see or hear, notes Luda Diatchenko. “Pain is much more important for survival,” explains the pain researcher at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Pain protects us. When you touch a hot stove, you recoil in pain. That sensation helps you avoid getting a burn that could be dangerous — even deadly. The throbbing of a broken foot tells you to stay off it until it heals, so you don’t do more damage. Without those signals, we’d all be in trouble. Big trouble.

Pain from an injury — such as a broken hand — serves an important purpose. That pain warns us to protect the injured tissue from further damage.

Some pain is straightforward. Burn your skin, pull a muscle or break a bone, and you feel discomfort. This short-term effect is called acute pain. Other pain can last months or years. Called chronic pain, its cause often remains a mystery. In fact, “sometimes the nervous system can get it wrong,” says Steve Prescott. “You have pain that shouldn’t be there,” explains this pain researcher at the University of Toronto, Canada, and the local Hospital for Sick Children.

Scientists are still working out the different causes of pain, and the best treatment for each type. The biology of pain is complex. But the good news: Researchers are learning more about it every day.

Our dependence on digital devices may affect sleep and memory

As smartphones have become ubiquitous, parents and teachers have voiced concerns that a technology-rich lifestyle is doing youngsters harm. Research on this question is still in its infancy, but other branches of study can give us a clue to what we are likely to find. Studies on stress, sleep and memory suggest how modern technology might influence our brains and behaviour.

Need for speed

The speed of modern technology requires us to process more information in a given amount of time than before. This effect is enhanced when we use multiple devices at once. This intensity of stimulation, and the speed of information processing it requires, affect the nervous system in different ways.

Such stimulation activates the body’s stress response system in order to allow us to deal effectively with the situation. That response evolved in humans to deal with immediate stressors, such as being chased by a predator. It is beneficial when the stress, or intense stimulation, is short term. For an athlete about to compete, a student about to sit an exam, or a lawyer about to cross-examine a witness, the burst of adrenaline and focus that the stress response provides are useful to successfully completing the task at hand.

However, there is a growing body of evidence that chronic activation of this system can be damaging to our health. The stress response affects all sorts of body functions, from how we store energy to how our immune systems work, and continuous activation of this response may influence our susceptibility to eating disorders, autoimmune diseases, depression and addiction.

Astronomers Find Slow-Cooked Diamond the Size of Earth

About 900 light-years away, an ancient white dwarf star has cooled into a crystallized chunk of carbon — a diamond. But this isn’t just any old diamond hiding in space: It’s the size of Earth, and it’s 11 billion years old.

The diamond-star, described in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal, is among the coldest white dwarfs astronomers have found. In fact, it’s so cool and dim that it can’t even be seen — its feeble light isn’t nearly powerful enough to pierce the darkness of the cosmos, even from relatively nearby.

Instead, teams inferred the presence of the crystallized dwarf based on the way its gravity perturbs the normally steady radio pulses coming from a spinning companion star.

Yep, the system gets even cooler. The dwarf is orbiting a pulsar — a rapidly rotating neutron star — known by the charismatic moniker PSR J2222-0137. The system is similar to another that was described in 2011, with a crystallized white dwarf orbiting a pulsar — but this new diamond is bigger (there’s also a planet hypothesized to be somewhat diamond-like).

If you were to look in the sky in the direction of the constellation Aquarius, you’d be looking in roughly the right direction to see the system, which is actually a pair of dead stars: The spinning neutron star is the extremely dense remnant of a formerly huge star that ended its life in a supernova. A white dwarf is all that remains of a formerly Sun-like star, contracted into a clump the size of Earth. Left on their own, dwarfs will slowly cool and fade to black over billions of years (but sometimes, with the help of a stellar companion, they can detonate and create dazzling supernovas the outshine entire galaxies).

The Amazon Women: Is There Any Truth Behind the Myth?

Strong and brave, the Amazons were a force to be reckoned with in Greek mythology—but did the fierce female warriors really exist?

I loved watching the “Wonder Woman” TV series when I was a girl. I never wanted to dress like her—the idea of wearing a gold lamé bustier and star-spangled blue underwear all day seemed problematic—but the Amazonian princess was strong and resourceful, with a rope trick for every problem. She seemed to be speaking directly to me, urging, “Go find your own inner Amazonian.” When I read the news that Wonder Woman was going to be resurrected for a blockbuster movie in 2016, Batman vs. Superman, it made me excited—and anxious. Would the producers give her a role as fierce as her origins—and maybe some shoulder straps—or would she just be cartoon eye candy?

The fact that she isn’t even getting billing in the title makes me suspicious. It wouldn’t have pleased Wonder Woman’s creator either. “Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world,” declared the psychologist and comic book writer William Moulton Marston, offering a proto-feminist vision that undoubtedly sounded quite radical in 1943. “Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are.”

Over the years, the writers at DC Comics softened Wonder Woman’s powers in ways that would have infuriated Marston. During the 1960s, she was hardly wondrous at all, less a heroic warrior than the tomboyish girl next-door. It was no longer clear whether she was meant to empower the girls or captivate the boys. But the core brand was still strong enough for Gloria Steinem to put her on the cover of the first newsstand issue of Ms. magazine in 1972—with the slogan “Wonder Woman for President.”

Pupils struggling with reading need early intervention, not a three-month summer school

Reading capability is vital for young people to be able to access and engage with the curriculum by the end of primary school and even more so at secondary school. But the data we have indicates that a substantial proportion of pupils have not reached a high enough level to succeed in their studies – with significant implications for their lives after they finish school.

In 2013, 75,000 children (about one in seven) did not achieve the minimum expected level on national assessments for reading by the end of primary school (Level 4). If these pupils perform in a similar way to those who did not achieve Level 4 in English in 2008, only one in ten of these pupils will achieve five grades at A*-C, including English and Maths, at GCSE.

That problem is only compounded by England’s unequal education system, which does a bad job serving disadvantaged children and young people: on average, struggling readers who are eligible for free school meals are less likely to achieve Level 4 than their peers. Those who are behind are likely to be even further behind than other struggling readers. In 2013, 27% of white British pupils eligible for free school meals did not achieve Level 4.

Our aim in producing “Reading at the Transition”, with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), was to review the effectiveness of different approaches to helping struggling readers catch up with their peers. It is based on the framework of the Sutton Trust/EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit, a comparative analysis of different research-based approaches to improving attainment, together with an overview of the costs, to help schools make decisions about how to allocate their funds (particularly the pupil premium).

European holidays are pushing wild plants towards extinction

Holidaying in Europe has never been more popular, with the increase in tourism driven by budget airline competition, rising incomes and relaxed visa requirements over the past 50 years. Last year Europe was the destination for more than half of all the world’s tourists. Tourism and recreation are big business, with Europe accounting for nearly 25% of the US$6.6 trillion that these industries contribute to global GDP.

Such success means many millions more people visiting the continent, more pollution and carbon emissions from air travel, transport, and construction, and more changing land use and habitat destruction. These are all threats to Europe’s biodiversity, which extends to more than 20,000 species of native plants, from dragon trees to carnivorous sundews, from bee orchids to wild kale.

Many are only found in Europe, and some are the original ancestors of today’s vital, staple crops. With the disappearance of traditional agriculture in many parts of the continent and rapid urbanisation, there has been a large decline in the populations of many native plant species, with 462 facing imminent extinction. The tourism industry in Europe, and everything that stems from it, is exacerbating the problem.

Monster collision in space

Four clusters of galaxies are smashing into each other.

BOSTON — A galactic pileup is underway 5 billion light-years from Earth. The colossal collision is spewing charged particles. And this fountain is huge. It’s jetting particles at nearly the speed of light some 2.5 million light-years into intergalactic space. One might think of the event as building a powerful particle accelerator — one up to a million times as strong as Earth’s mightiest (the Large Hadron Collider).

Astronomers reported the intergalactic fireworks at the American Astronomical Society meeting, here, on June 3. They observed the smashup in new images compiled by two telescopes. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, a satellite system, eyed the event from an altitude of 139,000 kilometers (86,500 miles) above Earth’s surface. A radio telescope, the Very Large Array, homed in on the collision from the ground. Its 27 antennas are splayed out across the New Mexico desert.

And the source of all the commotion? Four clusters of galaxies are crashing into each other. Together, they involve a mass equal to 3 million billion suns.
Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the universe that are linked by gravity, notes Reinout van Weeren. He works at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. Large clusters can house thousands of galaxies. Astronomers think these built up over billions of years as smaller clusters merged.

‘Wannabe scientists’ write about real science

High school students put together their own science writing space.

Brexton Pham, 18, has had a love of science for as long as he can remember. “I find myself reading science articles just for fun,” he says. “There’s nothing I’m more passionate about.” But Brexton, who just graduated from Kennesaw Mountain High School in Georgia, admits that a lot of science concepts are complex. In fact, he notes “I don’t always ‘get’ the material.”

When he went hunting for explanations, he found a lot of science already being written for non-scientists. But he was still disappointed. “The people who write the science literature are professionals targeting higher-education, science-enthused audiences,” he says. “But shouldn’t we be targeting the youth the most — the ones who will be deciding whether or not to pursue a career in STEM? I wanted to expose more of the masses to the awesome world of science.” (Too bad he didn’t check out Science News for Students!)

The teen saw a problem. One bored evening this past January, he decided to solve it. With the help of a few friends, he launched The Wannabe Scientist. This website explores scientific topics that range from cell phones and Stonehenge to the machinery of the heart. What’s behind the name? “I wanted to pick a name that conveyed the sense that, although all of us don’t know much, we’re all here because we genuinely want to learn about science,” Brexton explains.

Its articles are for students, and written by them. The site already gets around 6,000 hits per month and its writers keep a tough schedule. They add new posts roughly twice each day. Editor and fellow Kennesaw student Corey Fog, 18, emails out a weekly assignment. Writers respond, sending their work to editors. Once the pieces are in final form, those editors post them to the site.

One in eight primary school pupils taught in classes officially too big

Statutory limit of 30 infants in one-teacher classrooms breached in nearly 3,000 cases, finds annual census.

 

One in eight pupils in primary schools in England are being taught in classes that are bigger than the government's statutory maximum size, official figures published have revealed.

The annual school census shows that 12.5% of primary school pupils attend classes which have more than 30 children. There are more than four million primary school pupils in the UK.

The steady rise in classroom overcrowding in recent years is attributed mainly to the rising birth rate.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "The rise in the number of primary age pupils has been known about for a long time. The government has simply not done enough to look at where those school places are going to be needed and to provide the resources and spaces for them." He said that schools were prevented from planning ahead "by a fragmented system".

The London borough of Harrow is rated the worst off for overcrowding. While the average size of a primary school class is 27.4 pupils, a slight increase from 2013, Harrow has an average of 30.2 pupils for each class. A fifth of all the above-maximum classes are in London.

The statistics gathered from all of England's schools show that nearly 30% of pupils at primaries and a quarter of pupils at secondary schools are from ethnic minority family backgrounds, with 60% of the increase in primary pupil numbers attributed to ethnic minority pupils.

Teachers remain divided on performance-related pay

A new survey has found teachers remain divided over proposals to link their pay increases to the performance of pupils in their class. A small majority – 53% of 1,163 primary and secondary school teachers polled – supports the idea.

The government is extending performance related pay to teachers in the first five years of their career from September 2014. Similar steps were brought in by the Labour government for more senior teachers in 2000.

It will be up to each school to make a decision on how to set its pay arrangements, which can be linked to pupil’s progress, classroom behaviour and a teacher’s wider contribution to the school.

The new poll was commissioned by the Sutton Trust from the National Foundation for Educational Research as part of its Teacher Voice omnibus survey in March 2014.

The Sutton Trust said the results showed “just over half of teachers” backed payment by results. “It suggests that there is a beginning of a cultural change there,” said Conor Ryan, research and communications director at the Sutton Trust. He added the results show the opposition to performance-related pay by teaching unions may not reflect the views of all teachers.

School days should be longer to help poorer students, suggests MPs

New report says swift action is needed to help poor white pupils and encourage good teachers to work in disadvantaged schools.

Longer school days could help boost the results of poorer children by giving them somewhere to do their homework, a cross-party group of MPs has suggested.

The report by the Commons education select committee says new guidance is needed on how extended school days can help youngsters from disadvantaged communities.

It also calls for the government to examine which incentives would encourage good teachers to work in disadvantaged schools, arguing that schools serving poor white communities "need a better chance of winning".

The report by the committee on the underachievement of white working-class children warns that these youngsters are falling far behind their classmates and their potential will be left "unlocked" if swift action is not taken.

Figures show that just under one-third (32%) of poor white British children got at least five C grades at GCSE last year, including English and maths, compared with 61.5% of poor children from an Indian background and 76.8% of poor children from a Chinese background.
At the same time, the gap in results between poor white children and their richer classmates has hardly changed in the last seven years, the report says, and the attainment of poor children from other ethnic backgrounds is improving faster than that of poor white children.

The committee also found that white British students from disadvantaged families spend fewer evenings per week doing their homework, and have a higher absence rate from school than many other ethnic groups.

X-rays shine light on atoms at work in a chemical reaction

For more than 100 years, scientists have “peered” at atoms in a crystal by analysing the way they scatter X-rays. This process, known as crystallography, reveals the chemical structure of compounds in the crystal and has applications so wide-ranging – from drugs to new materials – that it has become central to how science is done.

But almost all of these advances have depended on revealing the chemical structure of unchanging compounds. However, if Makoto Fujita at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues are proved correct, this may all change. For they have developed a method to capture “images” as chemical reactions happen. The difference is in someways as big as that when cameras went from capturing still images to shooting film.

Dark magic

At this very moment, there are billions of chemical reactions taking place in your body. And yet each of these chemical reaction is special, because for it to occur two or more molecules have come in close contact under the right conditions. These “right conditions” are mostly dependent on the energy available in the system. Without enough energy, the necessary movement of electrons will not occur and the reaction will fail.

In nature, the required amount of energy has always been a tricky thing to achieve. To overcome this situation, many biological reactions make use of a catalyst, which does not react with the substances but accelerates the reaction. For instance, your body contains small amounts of manganese, zinc, and copper that are all required as catalysts for key reactions in the body.

The well-read teenager: brilliant classics for young adult readers

Love Twilight? Gothic romances have got your name written all over them! There are so many classic books that are perfect reads for teenagers, but a lot of them look unfortunately boring or daunting. Read this list and venture outside the YA bubble.

Go to a typical bookstore and have a look at the children's classics area. More often than not, there won't be much more than a few babyish fairy tales, maybe some Austen and a Dumas squeezed in.

But you shouldn't be afraid of venturing into the "adult" classics fiction; yes it may be stuffy-looking and the covers can be ugly, but there is a lot of fun, romance and sword-waggling to be had in classics. And think about it: a lot of the books you love and re-read were written thanks to the inspiration found in some of these books.

Don't let school reading put you off trying these fantastic authors:

If you like Skulduggery Pleasant, Andy Lane or the Rangers Apprentice series…

… give these classic adventure stories a go!

 

If you love fast-paced stories with a bit of mystery – like Skulduggery Pleasant or the Young Sherlock Holmes series – try the Sherlock Holmes books by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, or The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. The language may be classic, but there are jokes, romances and action bursting from the margins of all these.

How technology is set to transform India's fragmented education system

India has no strategy for technology in the classroom, but entrepreneurs and nonprofits are braving the odds in the sector.

In 2012, engineer Raghav Gajula moved to an east Delhi slum to work as a teacher at a private school for low-income families. Most of his students’ parents are labourers in local factories but have paid 300 Indian rupees a month, about £3, for their kids to attend a school with busy staff and no computer resources. Gajula, who found the teaching position through a Teach For India fellowship, spotted an opportunity. He lent the kids his laptop and started setting up mentoring sessions for them with his friends, via Skype.

Many of the slum kids come from the Bhagwanpur Khera neighborhood where one of the main landmarks is a toxic sewage drain. Yet Gajula's idea meant they were soon scheduling their own Skype sessions with their mentors, and talking about their ambitions in the arts and sports. Gajula now works with two activists on setting up a local after-school centre with the aim of expanding the mentoring programme. They have 25 students and five donated laptops, though they aren’t sure how the nonprofit centre is going to survive financially.

Gajula’s innovation could be transformative for India's fragmented education system, but there is no overarching strategy for how to incorporate these kinds of projects into the sprawling Indian school system. According to government estimates, there are about 254 million pupils in primary and secondary schools both in the private and public sector, but there’s no overall technology policy for schools. Internet penetration is around 12%, and average connection speeds are slow. 

Schools aren't using equipment
Recognising the increasing importance of technology in education and employment, the Indian government has a scheme that grants every public school district, regardless of the number of schools it contains, of Rs. 5m [£49,700] every year to invest in educational technology. Districts have to submit a proposal in order to be granted the funds. The government estimates that 22% of primary schools have a computer, but the reality is that many schools aren't using the equipment they have.

Mosquitoes, be gone!

Two teens find an extract from common seeds can kill mosquito larvae and also may repel the biting adult insects.

 

LOS ANGELES — Extracts from the seeds of a common plant can kill mosquito larvae, report two teen researchers. Smoke from a candle made with wax that includes the extracts also repels adult mosquitoes. The natural chemicals therefore show promise as an alternative to synthetic pesticides, the young scientists say.
The teens reported their findings here last week, at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, or Intel ISEF. The competition was created by Society for Science & the Public (which publishes Science News for Students) and is sponsored by Intel. Each year, Intel ISEF showcases some of the best high school science projects from around the globe.
Bixa orellana is a small tree or shrub found in many tropical regions in the Americas. Its bright red seeds already have many uses, says Ester Castro, 17. She’s an 11th-grader at Asuncion Rodriguez de Sala in Guayanilla, Puerto Rico. Extracts from the seeds are a popular food coloring, she notes. Powdered seeds also are part of spice mixtures used in cooking.

Ester and classmate Keren Galarza, 16, wanted to see if chemicals in the seeds might repel mosquitoes. The seeds contain many compounds. Some of the chemicals are smelly, oily substances that float on water. These are called “volatile oils” because they contain aromatic substances that evaporate easily. Others compounds are part of a thick, sticky substance called resin. The red substance used as a food coloring is called bixin, after the plant. The liquid that’s left behind when all of these substances are removed contains a yellow coloring, called orellina.

Phonics education technique shown to have positive impact on literacy

New study is a vindication of the technique which teaches children to read using phonetic sounds rather than letters.

Children taught to read using phonics techniques have achieved "very high" results, according to new research, which cited the example of a seven-year-old boy able to read and spell to the level of a 13-year-old.

The results of the study, by the educational psychologist Marlynne Grant, are a vindication of the widespread introduction of synthetic or blended phonics in schools in England since 2010. The method teaches children to read by identifying and pronouncing sounds rather than individual letters.
The publication of the research comes as 500,000 year one children in state primary schools in England take the phonics screening check this week, a brief test to measure progress.

Teachers and unions initially resisted the use of the check, which followed the coalition's introduction of compulsory synthetic phonics to teach literacy in state schools. But since then, more teachers have embraced the method, which is supported by research in the UK and abroad.

The new study followed a group of 30 children who were taught using phonics for the first time in reception, and tracked their progress for three years, to the end of year two in primary school.

Top 10 desert island books for science fans

Some books require a lot of uninterrupted concentration. As I wrote recently in a review of Leonard Susskind’s Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum, it would be an ideal book to take along if you were banished to a desert island. After a few years of careful reading, and re-reading, you’d be a master of quantum mathematics. It would make you a better person.

But suppose you had already mastered quantum mechanics before being banished (or perhaps knowing quantum mechanics was why you got banished). You would want to pack a different difficult book. Not all books that demand serious sustained attention are worth the effort, of course, so you would need to choose carefully. Or pack more books. (Ideally, you could just load them on an e-reader, once Amazon starts selling a solar-powered version.)

In any event, I’ve compiled my list of favorites for desert island reading. They’re not necessarily the best books I’ve ever read, but they all offer substantial intellectual reward if you give them your undivided attention without competition from television or Twitter.

10. The Joy of x (Strogatz, 2012)

Not hard to read at all, but the best survey of the basic ideas of mathematics, and an excellent preparation for reading the more technical stuff. 306 pages.

9. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Newton, 1687)

This one’s one of the hardest books in history to read, but you have to remember that it probably wasn’t very easy to write, either. Having never been banished to a desert island, I have so far just read passages here and there. Even if you can’t get through the whole thing, though, you should be sure to read the “rules for reasoning in philosophy” in Book III. 626 pages.

Picasso and Einstein Got the Picture

Breakthroughs in science and art begin with an image.

Most of the big steps forward in science are made possible by visualization. Albert Einstein said he visualized the theory of relativity before he worked out the formula. Previous explanations of the universe made no aesthetic sense to him. He was mathematically and physically oriented. But he was driven by aesthetics.

Humans have an underlying desire to have things be aesthetically pleasing. We don’t like crummy figures. We have a built-in sense for proportion, for symmetry, for what feels right. As a scientist, there is a real feeling of joy when your vision is borne out by your research.

In that way scientists are like artists. There was a time when people talked about the “two cultures” of science and art. Don’t believe the demarcation for a minute. The two fields have one general principle: to interpret the world and reflect it. Scientists and artists have different buildings blocks. Artists use musical notes or paint and scientists rely on logic and measurements. But both have the same driving force: creativity. And the seed of that creativity is the visual image.

To consider how art and science interact, we should be aware of what happens in the brain when we perceive an image. Visual perception begins with the retina, a layer of brain tissue that lines the inner eye. The retina receives light and generates nerve signals within photoreceptor cells. These cells, divided into rods and cones and specialized for night and day vision, convert light into electrochemical signals through the action of light-sensitive molecules called photopigments. Different cone cells respond to red, green, and blue light, and enable us to perceive colors.

Air conditioning raising night-time temperatures in the US

Heat from cooling systems now raises some urban temperatures by more than 1C at night, reports Climate News Network.

Researchers in the US have identified a way in which city-dwellers are inadvertently stoking up the heat of the night – by installing air conditioners.

Because the cities are getting hotter as the climate changes, residents are increasingly investing in aircon systems − which discharge heat from offices and apartment blocks straight into the city air. And the vicious circle effect is that cities get still warmer, making air conditioning all the more attractive to residents.

According to scientists at Arizona State University, the air conditioning system is now having a measurable effect. During the days, the systems emit waste heat, but because the days are hot anyway, the difference is negligible. At night, heat from air conditioning systems now raises some urban temperatures by more than 1C, they report in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres.

The team focused on the role of air conditioning systems in the metropolitan area of the city of Phoenix, which is in the Sonora desert in Arizona, and conditions in the summertime are harsh there anyway.

Ancient Roman Sanctuary Discovered in France

In Northern France’s Picardy region about 35 kilometers north of Paris in the city of Pont-Sainte-Maxence, archeologists have uncovered an ancient Roman sanctuary dating back to the second century, which has no equivalent in Roman Gaul.

 This sanctuary, which measures 70 meters by 105 meters, has two small pavilions in the back, of which only the foundations remain. In the center, the Cella, visitors could access a dramatic masonry platform via a front staircase.

Here in the heart of the sanctuary, the ancient Romans would have erected the statue of a deity. Archaeologists have discovered many elements of the artwork inside the sanctuary, including clashed spears and marble veneer.

The entrance to the sanctuary was a monumental façade measuring 10 meters high and 70 meters long, which made it an exceptional structure in Roman Gaul. This façade consists of thirteen to seventeen arches, above which the Romans surmounted an entablature and, exceptionally, a frieze that should include a dedication in bronze letters.

Why Dinosaurs Were Like Tuna, Great Whites, and Echidnas

Fifty years ago, dinosaurs lumbered across our screens like the slow-moving, shambling oafs they were thought to be. Now, they stride and sprint. They’re portrayed as active animals, often lithe and agile.

This popular makeover was inspired by a scientific one. Scientists used to believe that dinosaurs, like modern-day reptiles, were cold-blooded ectotherms. That doesn’t mean their blood was literally cold, but that they relied on the environment to heat their bodies. Many lines of evidence challenged this view, suggesting instead that some dinosaurs were warm-blooded endotherms like mammals and birds: they generated body heat by burning energy at a much greater rate than most reptiles.

This debate about dinosaur metabolism—were they ectotherms, endotherms or something in between?—is one of the longest-running in palaeontology. (“It feels like almost everyone working in dino palaeontology has weighed in on it at some point in their career,” says John Hutchinson.) Scientists have tried to address the issue by looking at the structure of their bones, the shape of their legs, the inferred anatomy of their lungs, the presence of insulating feathers, and the ratios of predators to prey. And some have tried to work out how quickly they grew.

Digital lighting goes organic

Research reveals a bright future for a new lighting technology.

 

Flick on a light at home and chances are a glass bulb or tube will start to glow. The two most common types of electric lights — incandescent and fluorescent — have worked pretty well for a long time. Make that too long: Both types are so last century.

Incandescent bulbs waste most of their energy. Regular and compact fluorescent tubes are more efficient. However, they contain toxic mercury. Now lighting engineers want us to imagine electric lighting beyond the bulb.
Picture sheets of electric lights that can bend or twist. Your bedroom could have glowing sculptures instead of lamps. A living room window might be transparent by day, then light up at night. The whole kitchen ceiling might glow. And whole walls could be covered with programmable lighting. A few taps on a control panel might change its brightness, color or pattern.

 

It’s all possible with organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. They are a new type of digital — or solid-state — lighting. Made from solid materials, they don’t require the vacuum now found in an incandescent bulb or the gas that’s encased within fluorescent tubes.

Half Male, Half Female, Total Animal

Mixed-sex animals teach us about our own multifarious nature.

As they often do after a rainstorm, butterflies had gathered around puddles on Pigeon Mountain in northwest Georgia. Nets in hand, James Adams and his friend Irving Finkelstein watched the insects lapping up salts and proteins dissolved in the muddy water, their folded wings yawning apart now and then. There were silvery-blue Celastrinas and Skippers the color of cinnamon and ash. Largest of all were the Tiger Swallowtails—pastel lemon males with black dagger-like stripes and midnight-dark females with a dusting of evening cerulean.

Suddenly a very odd creature flitted past Adams and Finkelstein—a swallowtail unlike any they had ever seen. Its left half was yellow; its right, black. It was as though someone had sliced up two different insects and seamlessly sewn them back together. Finkelstein yelped and took a swipe at the bizarre beauty, missing by quite a bit. Suppressing his excitement, lest it misguide his hand, Adams chased the butterfly a few steps, swung, and netted it. He could see immediately that he had caught a gynandromorph—an animal that was half-male and half-female.

Butterfly collectors love gynandromorphs for their rarity as much as their peculiarity. They are unpredictable hiccups in nature’s symphony of symmetry. The creatures tantalize scientists, too, because they offer a unique opportunity: the chance to study typically male and female genes and anatomy in the same body.

Learning through play ideas: top 10 activities

From building a memorial garden for a selfish giant to deciding whether to release the big bad wolf, here are some exciting activities for engaging pupils with play.

What would you do if you captured the big bag wolf? Here are 10 ways to teach your students using play. Photograph: Jim Schulz/A

 The use of play for developing children's learning is a well established feature of most early years settings. Visit a nursery, reception or many year one classrooms and you will find ample opportunities for children to play.

Unfortunately, as children move through school the pressures on teaching the formal aspects of the curriculum take over and play is pushed to the margins. Resource, space and activities for learning through play decline until they almost disappear by the time children reach the end of key stage 2.

While the medium of play for learning isn't disappearing in every school, where it does, there are fewer opportunities for teachers to plan effective lessons, and fewer chances for students to study in diverse and meaningful ways.

The following list of activities are focused on using play as a medium for learning – particularly through drama and imaginative inquiry. Each lesson idea is focused on a particular aspect of learning and links to a planning unit on the Imaginative Inquiry website.

Albanian and Bulgarian Saturday schools get a mixed reaction from students

For many children from Eastern European families, the 3pm school bell on a Friday isn’t the last they’ll see of a classroom until Monday. Many attend complementary schools, voluntary community-led programmes that focus on teaching students about language and heritage and delivering the core curriculum support.

While some of these schools – also known as “supplementary” and “mother tongue” schools – were set up in the UK after World War II by Baltic, Polish and Ukrainian immigrant communities, many more have appeared in the last decade in the context of the European Union’s enlargement.

According to the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education there are between 3,000 and 5,000 such schools in England. The Polish community alone runs more than 120 Saturday schools.

Our recent research has focused on complementary schools for the Albanian and Bulgarian communities and the views of the children attending them. What we found has highlighted the need for complementary schools to work more closely with the mainstream system. Many wanted the chance to do language qualifications in Albanian or Bulgarian.

Scientists achieve quantum teleportation breakthrough that could prove Einstein wrong

Scientists in the Netherlands have achieved a breakthrough in quantum teleportation that could quash Albert Einstein’s objection to the notion of quantum entanglement, which he famously labelled “spooky action at a distance”.

Publishing their results in the journal Science this Thursday, physicists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University say they managed to reliably teleport quantum information between two bits of diamond located three metres apart.

Although this is not the same process as teleportation as imagined in science fiction, one of the lead authors of the paper Professor Ronald Hanson, said that it was possible that Star Trek-style “beaming up” would become a reality in the future.

“What we are teleporting is the state of a particle,'' said Professor Hanson. ''If you believe we are nothing more than a collection of atoms strung together in a particular way, then in principle it should be possible to teleport ourselves from one place to another.”

“In practice it's extremely unlikely, but to say it can never work is very dangerous," Professor Hanson added. "I would not rule it out because there's no fundamental law of physics preventing it. If it ever does happen it will be far in the future.”

Obesity rates climbing worldwide, most comprehensive global study to date shows

Worldwide, there has been a startling increase in rates of obesity and overweight in both adults (28% increase) and children (up by 47%) in the past 33 years, with the number of overweight and obese people rising from 857 million in 1980 to 2.1 billion in 2013, according to a major new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013, published in The Lancet.

However, the rates vary widely throughout the world with more than half of the world's 671 million obese individuals living in just ten countries -- the USA (more than 13%), China and India (15% combined), Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Germany , Pakistan, and Indonesia.

Over the past three decades, the highest rises in obesity levels among women have been in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Honduras and Bahrain, and among men in New Zealand, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the USA.

In high-income countries, some of the highest increases in adult obesity prevalence have been in the USA (where roughly a third of the adult population are obese), Australia (where 28% of men and 30% of women are obese), and the UK (where around a quarter of the adult population are obese).

The findings come from a comprehensive new analysis of the global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in adults aged 20 years and older and children and adolescents aged 2-19 years between 1980 and 2013.

Autistic boys exposed to higher levels of hormones in womb, study finds

Study of amniotic fluid shows boys with autism had raised levels of testosterone, cortisol and other hormones in the womb.

Research on children in Denmark has found that boys with autism were more likely to have been exposed to higher levels of hormones in their mother's wombs than those who developed normally.

Boys diagnosed with autism and related disorders had, on average, raised levels of testosterone, cortisol and other hormones in the womb, according to analyses of amniotic fluid that was stored after their mothers had medical tests during pregnancy.

The findings add to a growing body of evidence that the biological foundations of autism are laid down well before birth and involve factors that go beyond the child's genetic make-up.

The results may help scientists to unravel some of the underlying causes of autism and explain why boys are four to five times more likely to be diagnosed with the condition, which affects around one percent of the population.

Amniotic fluid surrounds babies in the womb and contains hormones and other substances that they have passed through their urine. The liquid is collected for testing when some women have an amniocentesis around four months into their pregnancy.

How to encourage students to read for pleasure: teachers share their top tips

While students might trudge through set texts in lessons, how can teachers inspire them to open a book when they get home?

 

 

The big challenge for teachers is not simply getting students to read – it's getting them to enjoy it too. It's one thing for students to trudge through set texts in a lesson, but will they open another book when they get home at the end of the day?

The National Literacy Trust has noted that becoming a lifetime reader is based on developing a deep love of reading.

"Research has repeatedly shown that motivation to read decreases with age, especially if pupils' attitudes towards reading become less positive," it said. "If children do not enjoy reading when they are young, then they are unlikely to do so when they get older."
For younger readers in particular, their home environment is critically important.

"Home is a massive influence," says Eleanor Webster, a primary school teacher in Nottinghamshire. "Supportive and understanding parents are key to developing their child's reading."

But if a pupil doesn't see people reading at home, it may be harder to instil the idea of reading for pleasure. So what can teachers do to encourage it? Here are some of the best ideas, initiatives and projects that teachers have developed to motivate children and help them develop a love for reading:

How to teach ... the World Cup 2014

As the 20th Fifa World Cup kicks off next week, these lesson ideas and resources will help teachers use football to tackle learning across a range of subjects.

 

Football fever is about to sweep the nation as the 20th Fifa World Cup kicks off on Thursday 12 June. The international spotlight will be on Brazil as 32 countries from around the globe compete for footballing glory.

While PE teachers will be in their natural habitat, it's a topical event that can get young people excited about their learning across the curriculum. So with just over a week to go until the tournament starts, check out our selection of World Cup-themed lesson resources.

The National Literacy Trust has worked with children's football fiction author, Tom Palmer, on a fabulous set of reading resources. These include Foul Play: Brazil, a 26-episode adventure that Palmer will write over the course of the World Cup, responding to events as they happen. The first chapter – the length of a five to 10 minute classroom read – is available now, and a new chapter will be published before 8am every weekday from Wednesday 11 June. The chapters will be accompanied by 26 short writing activities that will be published on the National Literacy Trust website.

Palmer has also written a World Cup themed reading toolkit that encourages young people to read for pleasure. It includes a range of practical ideas and activities, such as creating a reading display in the shape of a goal. Pupils can write book reviews on ball-shaped pieces of paper then place them in the back of the net if they liked the book, on the goal frame if they thought it was okay and high or wide of the goal if they didn't like it. The resource also features a message from Chelsea and England midfielder Frank Lampard.