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Through the recognition of the qualities of plants that promote life, the study proposes these characteristics as necessary for the generation of living environments in education and research. Autopoietically, we identify relationships of sensitivity, collaboration, movement, travel, communication, memory and care. We value these qualities for the learning, change and transformation environments necessary in Education, which constitute dynamic, self-organized, changing and complex environments that are recognized as narrative environments. This work contributes to the understanding of life-research as an investigative and narrative experience, which from bioinspired research models, makes research possible as an experience of life itself that happens in its future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers what it means to give plants a voice as witnesses to nuclear events. It examines two texts that attempt to represent the nonverbal testimony of irradiated plants through a hybrid approach of text and image: Sugihara Rieko's Pilgrimage to the A-Bombed Trees (Hibakuju junrei, 2015) and Michael Marder and Anaïs Tondeur's The Chernobyl Herbarium: Fragments of an Exploded Consciousness (2016). Published a year apart, both texts focus on the afterlife of nuclear catastrophes: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. Sugihara's book is an account of the hibakujumoku – trees that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and continue to produce new growth to this day. Combining maps, photographs, interviews, and short essays, Pilgrimage to the A-Bombed Trees is intended as an immersive guidebook to the nearly 170 irradiated trees located within a two-kilometer radius around Hiroshima's ground zero. It presents these trees as "living witnesses" whose subsequent flourishing has provided human survivors with a conceptual figuration of destructive plasticity. Marder and Tondeur's The Chernobyl Herbarium formally resembles Sugihara's Pilgrimage to the A-Bombed Trees, and likewise combines text (a combination of short theoretical essays and personal remembrances of the Chernobyl meltdown) and images (Tondeur's photograms of plants grown in the exclusion zone) into a slim volume that calls for a rejection of language as the sole means of bearing witness. According to Marder, Tondeur's photograms "bring out the testimony of the plant," and yet the same procedure renders these plant witnesses "specimens," full of radioactivity but devoid of life (something Sugihara's book avoids through the medium of photography). The Chernobyl Herbarium is an attempt to capture, in fragmentary form, the limits of language in the conceptualization of plant life and in the proper conceptualization of the Chernobyl disaster. Ultimately, both texts are experiments to "think the unthinkable and represent the unrepresentable," to borrow Marder's words, through a deep, speculative engagement with the botanical realm. As wordless testimony is given voice through human–botanical intra-action, the plasticity of plant life (its capacity to adapt and change) is highlighted, and this allows us to locate moments of phytomorphism – the attribution of vegetal qualities to the human – in these two self-proclaimed "guidebooks." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world's southernmost tree has been documented along with the condition and growth pattern of the world's southernmost forest on Isla Hornos, Chile. The distribution of trees at broad scales is strongly influenced by the abiotic environment and determining the position and condition of tree limits around the world is an important way to monitor global change. This offers an ideal way to test the relationship between the biogeography of individual species and the effects of climate/climate change. The limits of trees, as all ecotones, are also useful communication points – easily understood signposts of ecosystems and their change through time. The southernmost trees in the world exist at soil temperatures that correspond to the low range of global treeline temperatures, with a climate analogous to equatorial treeline despite the high latitude (56° S). However, their fine‐scale distribution is strongly influenced by wind exposure rather than simply aspect and/or elevation, as one would expect if temperature were limiting the range. Recent establishment further south was found from core forest areas, however significant dieback along wind‐exposed edges of the contiguous forest was also noted. In contrast to the wide extension of land where boreal or subarctic forests grow in the Northern Hemisphere, in the Southern Hemisphere Isla Hornos represents a single point embedded in the ocean under much milder climatic conditions. Documented shifts in wind intensity and direction as result of larger‐scale climate change will likely continue to strongly shape the condition of these unique forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the deployment of flower missions, flower shows and window gardening in Victorian efforts to elevate the moral and material condition of London's working poor. It identifies three forms of botanical engagement – the moral, pedagogic and civic – that were key to understanding the use of flowers in this period. The construction of a 'moral botany' in the early nineteenth century popularised the notion that flowers could carry meaning beyond their ornamental value. This attribute was widely used by social reformers who employed flower shows as biopolitical and pedagogical instruments to discipline the desires, habits and behaviours of the working poor and their children; projects that were heavily gendered, placing responsibility for the moral defence of the family upon women. Floral reform movements at the civic level also worked within a racialised framing of 'civilisation' amidst late century fears of racial degeneration. This paper therefore argues for the political nature of plant life, drawing attention to the role of plants in the co-constitution of human worlds. • Considers plants as biopolitical subjects which co-constitute humans. • Demonstrates that flower culture boomed in the high Victorian city, across all classes. • Argues that flowers were heavily gendered and used as vehicles of moral teachings. • Demonstrates that working-class flower shows disciplined the home and the body. • Shows that the cultivation of flowers worked within a racialised frame of 'civilisation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the roots of philosophy go back to a reflection on physis, its metaphysical version that has become predominant in the Western tradition is much more attached to the world of animals. It is likely that this preponderance of the animal in metaphysics, which situates it above the vegetal, has been responsible for the opposition of traditional philosophy to physis-natura, strictly tied to the world of plants. Vegetal life, in which we humans also participate, demands in its turn that we take it into account and attend to a peculiar way, in which the material and the psychic are intertwined in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing activities are believed to be a useful methodology to gain insight into young children’s thoughts and ideas related to a diverse range of research topics. In this respect, the study of drawings has proven to be a valuable procedure with a view to unravelling how the natural world is conceptualised in early childhood. The present study examines the content of the drawings that 328 Spanish children aged between of 4 and 7 carried out in their bid to express their understanding of plant life and the data collected is related to the potential for connecting with nature which may be offered by the location of their educational centres. The results show slight but significant differences between the depictions undertaken by the children attending schools in rural environments, and those made by their peer group in urban centres. The evidence and conclusions of the study are coherent with the assumption that as early as kindergarten age, children are well involved in attempting to give meaning to their nature-based experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the drawings that elementary grade school children make on the subject of plant life. More specifically, the pictorial elements drawn by children are analysed together with their colour choices and the size of coloured surfaces. Furthermore, the results are put into perspective with the age of the children in the sample. The results indicate that there are significant differences in terms of both the content of the drawings and how colours are used. These findings are linked to the process of the comprehension of the plant world that, according to several studies, initially begins in elementary education. The conclusions highlight the convenience of considering the study of young children’s drawings and colour choices in order to achieve a clearer picture regarding the initial steps of the process of the understanding of biological phenomena in early childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the drawings of a sample of 118 children aged between 4 and 7 years old on the topic of plant life and relates the content to their knowledge of the concept of living things. The research project uses two types of tests: a task to analyse the level of understanding of the concept of living things and a free drawing activity. The data presented indicates that children with the most accurate knowledge concerning what living things are, more frequently draw key aspects of plant life such as the sun, rainfall and clouds and also tend to draw more types of plants. These conclusions point to the use of examining young children’s depictions in order to study how the concept of living things is developed in early childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The environment surrounding the iron and steel industry has changed greatly. This paper describes the technology adopted by the Japanese iron and steel industry to cope with changes in global demand, changes in the availability of coal and iron ore resources, correspondence to the extension of plant life, and energy conservation. In addition, efforts to reduce the amount of exhausted CO due to environmental concerns are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 23rd Indian Antarctic Expedition (IAE) in the summer 2003 at Schirmacher Oasis, Antarctica, it was observed that some plants changed their colour as an adaptation strategy to prevent bleaching of the chlorophyll molecule due to high intensity of UV light. The molecular basis of cold adaptation and the transduction of thermal-quanta signals in Antarctic plants is still a matter of debate. Life forms of Antarctica have a unique survival and functioning mechanism in the extremes of environment. This fragile continent has been burdened with increasing human pressure in the form of scientific expeditions and tourism activities adversely impacting the biodiversity of Antarctica. This article explores the life strategies displayed in algae, mosses and lichens as a result of adaptation to harsh climatic conditions with a focus on ozone depletion and its effects on these plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The aim of this systematic review of single case studies of patients showing a category-specific disorder was to evaluate the influence of gender and lesion location on category-specific disorders for biological versus artefact categories and, within the former, for animals versus plant life categories. Two complementary studies were made, taking into account all the available single case reports of category-specific disorders found in the literature. The first study consisted of an overall statistical evaluation of the influence that gender and lesion location can have upon naming scores obtained with these different categories in patients selected only because they showed some kind of category-specific disorder. The second study assessed the influence of these variables on more selected groups of patients, contrasting those showing a categorical impairment for living things versus artefacts and, respectively, for animals versus plant life categories. Results of these studies consistently showed that: (a) Lesion location has a strong influence on the distinction between biological and artefacts categories, but not on that between animals and plant life domains. In patients with a prevalent impairment either for animals or for plant life items, lesions usually encroach upon the anterior or the posterior parts of the ventral stream of visual processing, whereas in patients with a prevalent impairment for artefacts they are located elsewhere (usually on more dorsal structures of the brain). (b) Gender, on the contrary, does not influence the distinction between living and non-living things, but, within the living entities, has a strong influence on the distinction between animals and plant life. Consistent with data obtained in normal people, which show that men are more familiar with animals and women with fruit and vegetables, men were, indeed, more impaired with plant life categories, whereas women were more impaired with animals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]