Examines the nature of mother-child bonding from the prenatal stage through early infancy, discussing how the mother's actions, even before birth, stimulate her child's senses. Explains the crucial role that physical contact, breastfeeding, and visual stimuli have on mother-child bonding in human and animal newborns. (MDM)

Describes a humane Education program designed to build upon itself in each of the elementary grades. It involves seven years of exposure to humane education. Students receive a personal library of 14 animal stories by the time they complete grade 6. Teachers receive training at the local level. (Author/MDH)

Presents the transcript of a telephone conference between Patty Finch of the National Association for Humane and Environmental Education and Dr. Frank Ascione of Utah State University. (MDH)

Provides a history of animal-facilitated counseling (AFC) and offers insights on the use of AFC for assessing and treating children. Gives details on starting an AFC program: choosing an animal, characteristics of a good therapy dog, requirements for counselors who use AFC, and what happens when an animal dies. (RJM)

Discusses the question of whether nonhuman species, such as apes, possess rudimentary language, focusing on the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Noam Chomsky in regard to the development of oral language in young children and apes. (51 references) (MDM)

Two longitudinal studies involving 29 raters concerning the construct validity, temporal stability, and interrater reliability of the latent common factors underlying subjective assessments by human raters of personality traits in the stumptail macaque and the zebra finch illustrate the use of generalizability analysis to test prespecified…

Interviewed 99 first and second graders in the fall and spring. Results indicated that children needed to understand the concepts of either the irreversibility or inevitability of death before understanding the concepts of cessation of life functions and causes of death. Children's understanding of human and animal death developed differently. (BC)

Presents arguments against lab dissection in the science classroom. Author discusses adult negative memories associated with earlier school dissections. Asserts that, for the early adolescent, dissection may be mingled with messages pertaining to sex, excretion, identity, and privacy. Suggests that dissection arouses a feeling of "defilement": a…

A procedure for purifying DNA using either bacteria or rat liver is presented. Directions for doing a qualitative DNA assay using diphenylamine and a quantitative DNA assay using spectroscopy are included. (KR)

Described is the author's decision to help a student find alternatives to performing several terminal experiments on animals in a college physiology class. Replacement exercises used for studying the properties of muscle types are described. Details about the difficulties and successes of the entire experience are reported. (KR)

This article explains how animals are used in research in an effort to counteract animal rights literature. Reveals how medical professionals and others trained in scholarship have misquoted the scientific literature to bolster their claims against the utility of animal research. (PR)

Describes what can be learned from animal dissections and asserts that models and videos cannot substitute for dissections. (PR)

Describes symbiosis and its significance in the day-to-day lives of plants and animals. Gives specific examples of mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism in the relationships among fungus and plant roots, animals and bacteria, birds and animals, fish, and predator and prey. (MDH)

This activity explains fisheries resource management to seven-year olds. First-grade students learn concepts such as offspring viability, life expectancy, and distribution of species, which help to determine when, where, and how people fish and the importance of fishing responsibly. Lists materials, procedures, and extensions. (SJR)

This theme issue on anomalies includes Web sites, CD-ROMs and software, videos, books, and additional resources for elementary and junior high school students. Pertinent activities are suggested, and sidebars discuss UFOs, animal anomalies, and anomalies from nature; and resources covering unexplained phenonmenas like crop circles, Easter Island,…