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.

YOUNG SCIENTISTS: Better than plywood

Two teens made a strong, waterproof building material out of things that are normally thrown away.

Nurul Roslan (left) and Hanis Zaini (right), both 17, invented a new material from a blend of recycled plastic and pineapple leaf fibers. It’s waterproof and stronger than plywood, according to tests by these teens from Melaka, Malaysia.

 

LOS ANGELES — A new material made from plant leaves could be replace plywood for many uses. The material is strong, waterproof, cheap and easy to make. Two teens invented it using a blend of pineapple waste and recycled plastics.
Those raw ingredients are abundant in Malaysia, where the girls live. The largest part of the new material is a type of plastic called high-density polyethylene. It is used to make many things, including milk jugs and shampoo bottles. Known as HDPE, this plastic is often recycled or thrown away, says Nurul Roslan, 17. She attends Mara Junior Science College Terendak in Melaka, Malaysia. But when treated like trash, the plastic doesn’t degrade quickly. Studies show that this plastic can take about 450 years to break down, she says.

The other ingredient in the new material is fiber from pineapple leaves. These leaves are tough because they contain a strong material called lignin. It doesn’t decompose quickly. Farmers often burn the leaves to dispose of them. That causes air pollution, says Nurul’s classmate Hanis Zaini, who is also 17. If farmers don’t burn the leaves, they send them to a landfill. There they join the discarded plastic.

How To Waste Time Properly

The right distractions can boost creativity.

Ever since Frederick Winslow Taylor timed the exact number of seconds that Bethlehem Steel workers took to push shovels into a load of iron ore and then draw them out, maximizing time efficiency has been a holy grail of the American workplace. But psychologists and neuroscientists are showing us the limits of this attitude: Wasting time, they say, can make you more creative. Even seemingly meaningless activities such as watching cat videos on YouTube may help you solve math problems.

Brent Coker, who studies online behavior at the University of Melbourne in Australia, found that people who engage in “workplace Internet leisure browsing” are about 9 percent more productive than those who don’t. Last year, Jonathan Schooler, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara published with his doctoral student Benjamin Baird a study called Inspired by Distraction. It concluded that “engaging in simple external tasks that allow the mind to wander may facilitate creative problem solving.”
Schooler gave participants a series of “unusual uses tasks” (UUTs), which asked them to invent as many different uses as they could for a mundane object. The more original the responses, the more creativity they were demonstrating. After performing a baseline test, participants were divided into groups and given different 12-minute “incubation” periods. These consisted of either a demanding memory task, an undemanding memory task that allowed for mind-wandering, or total rest. A fourth group had no incubation interval at all. Then all four groups were presented with more UUTs, which involved at least one object from the first round. The group that had been given a non-demanding incubation task showed the most-improved UUT scores.


People who engage in “workplace Internet leisure browsing” are about 9 percent more productive than those who don’t.

“The most surprising result of the study was that the non-demanding task was actually better than doing nothing,” Schooler says. Why this is so, however, is less clear. “My best guess is that if you’re engaged in a non-demanding task, it kind of prevents you from having long trains of thought,” Schooler posits. “It’s sort of churning things up, stirring the pot, so you’re not maintaining one thought for a particularly long time. There are a lot of different ideas going in and out, and that sort of associative process leads to creative incubation.”