The People Learning Urban Science (PLUS) program creates partnerships and coordinates efforts involving a local zoo, university, and school district, seeking to instill within students a sense of the natural environment. Even though the majority of students live among concrete and metal structures, their eyes and ears can be trained to make…

Background: The motivation for this work is built upon the premise that there is a need for research-based materials for design-based science instruction. In this paper, a small portion of our work investigating the impact of a LEGO[TM] engineering unit on fourth grade students' preconceptions and understanding of animals is presented. Purpose:…

The "Green Classroom" in the Botanical Garden of the University of Ulm is a learning forum outdoor school that is used by about 2500 school students annually. Its educational concept is based on experiential learning and is geared towards expanding students' biological knowledge and developing positive attitudes towards small animals and…

Is sniffing at the front door of a private home by a trained narcotics detection dog a Fourth Amendment search requiring probable cause? Is a "drug dog" somehow like a manmade technology, such as a thermal imaging device? These were a couple of the questions recently presented to the U.S. Supreme Court during arguments in "Florida v. Jardines."…

Previous findings indicate that the acquisition and consolidation of recognition memory involves dopaminergic activity. Although dopamine deregulation has been observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, the dysfunction of this neurotransmitter has not been investigated in animal models of AD. The aim of this study was to assess, by in vivo…

Positive and negative aspects of animal therapy using are discussed. Research of 30 case studies is displayed that pet therapy is a good therapeutic tool in approximately 60% of cases. To diagnose possible problems in families which have got a dog as a "therapist" for the child suffering from some or other form of dysontogenesis, the…

The overwhelming majority of play research concerns juveniles. However, a full understanding of the phenomenon requires knowledge of play and playfulness across the life spans of those animals, including humans, who play in adulthood. The authors investigate a theory of play based on Darwin's concept of sexual selection that may account for the…

This article presents an eye-tracking study using a novel combination of visual saliency maps and "area-of-interest" analyses to explore online feature extraction during category learning in infants. Category learning in 12-month-olds (N = 22) involved a transition from looking at high-saliency image regions to looking at more…

Presents a short biography of one of the winners of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. The 2012 winner is Angela J. Grippo for her creative contributions in investigating the association between depression and cardiovascular disease in preclinical animal models.…

Bedbugs are a growing problem in schools today. Bedbugs are often confused with other insects, and their signs are hard to recognize. School officials should work with an experienced pest control company to confirm whether the insects are bed bugs and, if they are not, to identify them so they can be treated effectively. Education and vigilance…

Heterotrimeric G(o) is an abundant brain protein required for negatively reinforced short-term associative olfactory memory in "Drosophila". G(o) is the only known substrate of the S1 subunit of pertussis toxin (PTX) in fly, and acute expression of PTX within the mushroom body neurons (MB) induces a reversible deficit in associative olfactory…

Influential theories have claimed that the ability for recursion forms the computational core of human language faculty distinguishing our communication system from that of other animals (Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002). In the present study, we consider an alternative view on recursion by studying the contribution of associative and working…

Learning and memory dysfunction is the most common neuropsychological effect of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, and because the underlying neurobiology is poorly understood, there are no pharmacological strategies to help restore memory function in these patients. We have demonstrated impairments in the acquisition of an allocentric spatial task,…

Behavioral flexibility is a cognitive process depending on prefrontal areas allowing adaptive responses to environmental changes. Serotonin transporter knockout (5-HTT[superscript -/-]) rodents show improved reversal learning in addition to orbitofrontal cortex changes. Another form of behavioral flexibility, extradimensional strategy set-shifting…

Kv4 channels regulate the backpropagation of action potentials (b-AP) and have been implicated in the modulation of long-term potentiation (LTP). Here we showed that blockade of Kv4 channels by the scorpion toxin AmmTX3 impaired reference memory in a radial maze task. In vivo, AmmTX3 intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) infusion increased and…