In 2005, state fish and wildlife agency wanted to examine how one of its conservation education programs was providing science-based understanding and outdoor experiences by evaluating students' knowledge, skills, attitudes and intended behavioral outcomes related to fish, fishing and aquatic habitats in Montana. A key factor in this study was the…

The paper analyzes a grass-roots campaign to limit the expansion of Danish-owned industrial hog operator Saerimner in Lithuania. The industrialization of livestock production as well as local responses to the restructuring of meat production are interpreted within the broader context of the incorporation of peripheral regions into global agro-food…

Female offenders' mental health needs have consistently been shown to exceed those of male offenders. Incarcerated women report higher rates of violent victimization, major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, mood disorders, substance use disorders, and personality disorders. For years, researchers have examined the human-animal…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate if an educational package used for animal welfare teaching would have significant effects on the knowledge of first grade children in a rural area of Mexico. The research was conducted with 276 students in six public schools. In the experimental group, 177 children participated in a 10 week-long animal…

This article reviews evidence from basic and translational research with pigeons and humans suggesting that the persistence of operant behavior depends on the contingency between stimuli and reinforcers, and considers some implications for clinical interventions. (Contains 4 figures.)

In this paper we suggest that learning about natural history experientially can be thought of as a type of reading, where understanding is developed by using particular skills, processes and content. In our experience, teaching and learning natural history involves the generation of knowledge and understanding through relating direct personal…

This article draws on Bakhtin and other cultural studies theorists to understand the role of the grotesque as a libratory moment in biology education. Four examples of texts and moments are analyzed: Sylvia Branzei's "Grossology" series of children's books about the grotesque, observations of a pig heart dissection, a standard high school…

This article shares the story of Lucy Bryson, who was hooked on crack cocaine and heroin when she was 17, and was working the streets to fund her addiction. Her future looked bleak when she was imprisoned four years ago but a project that builds trust and responsibility in young people by teaching them to work with animals has transformed her…

An awareness of the extensive diversity of living organisms is an essential component of a complete biology education. It is important for students to explore the spectacular variety of living things as well as to understand the many solutions to the challenges of living on Earth that have evolved in different organisms. The "National Science…

This study investigated the characteristics students use in attributing value to and classifying the living things; the relational construction of the life concepts and the living things and the place of human in this construction. Participants were first-year high school students from seven schools in Izmir (a large western city in Turkey). An…

Rural and development sociology studies have tended to credit globalization with low-wage, extractive, environmentally destructive outcomes. Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have been treated as a local manifestation of the destructive tendencies of globalization. However, recent scholarship on globalization suggests that…

The capacity to imitate facial gestures is highly variable in rhesus macaques and this variability may be related to differences in specific neurobehavioral patterns of development. This study evaluated the differential neonatal imitative response of 41 macaques in relation to the development of sensory, motor, and cognitive skills throughout the…

The perirhinal and entorhinal cortices are critical components of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) declarative memory system. Study of their specific functions using blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), however, has suffered from severe magnetic susceptibility signal dropout resulting in poor…

Normal aging disrupts hippocampal neuroplasticity and learning and memory. Aging deficits were exposed in a subset (30%) of middle-aged mice that performed below criterion on a hippocampal-dependent contextual fear conditioning task. Basal neuronal excitability was comparable in middle-aged and young mice, but learning-related modulation of the…

Pattern completion is the ability to retrieve complete information on the basis of incomplete retrieval cues. Although it has been demonstrated that this cognitive capacity depends on the NMDA receptors (NMDA-Rs) of the hippocampal CA3 region, the role played by these glutamatergic receptors in the pattern completion process has not yet been…