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The use of school-university partnerships to address the theory-practice divide in teacher education has recently come to attention in international teacher education studies (e.g. Darling-Hammond, 2005; Jones & Ryan, in press). School-university partnerships are particularly important in primary science teacher education as a means to overcome limited opportunities primary pre-service teachers have to observe and practice science teaching during their Practicum. Their opportunities are limited due to a lack of practising teachers who include science in their classroom teaching or who do not feel sufficiently competent to act as science mentors. This is generally attributable to low teacher confidence and knowledge of how to teach science (Jones & Carter, 2007). This workshop will report on a study which is exploring existing approaches to school-university partnerships in science teacher education at 5 Australian universities. Utilising a multiple case study methodology (Yin, 2009), the project has examined the experiences of establishing, maintaining and developing these partnership and explored the benefits of the partnerships for pre-service teachers, practising teachers and schools. A key outcome of the project is the development of an “Interpretive Framework” in which partnership practices were exemplified, contextualized and summarized, documenting key phases in the development of partnership arrangements. The Framework is currently undergoing validation with Australian universities. In this paper, the authors present the Framework to an braoder audience for comment and seek to explore its relevance and transferability to school-university partnerships in an international context.

Urbanization is a global multidimensional process paired with increasing uncertainty due to climate change, migration of people, and changes in the capacity to sustain ecosystem services. This article lays a foundation for discussing transitions in urban governance, which enable cities to navigate change, build capacity to withstand shocks, and use experimentation and innovation in face of uncertainty. Using the three concrete case cities-New Orleans, Cape Town, and Phoenix-the article analyzes thresholds and cross-scale interactions, and expands the scale at which urban resilience has been discussed by integrating the idea from geography that cities form part of "system of cities" (i.e., they cannot be seen as single entities). Based on this, the article argues that urban governance need to harness social networks of urban innovation to sustain ecosystem services, while nurturing discourses that situate the city as part of regional ecosystems. The article broadens the discussion on urban resilience while challenging resilience theory when addressing human-dominated ecosystems. Practical examples of harnessing urban innovation are presented, paired with an agenda for research and policy., QC 20140924

This collection of historical accounts provides diverse perspectives on the structure and culture of the community of researchers who participate in activities of the Australasian Science Education Research Association (ASERA). It describes the formation of the Association, and identifies major changes and challenges for the ever growing and internationalisation of its membership.

For urban planning and management, it is essential that detailed and up-to-date information about the urban ecosystem, with its high level of pattern heterogeneity, is available. In urban areas the steadily increasing land requirements for housing, new areas zoned for economic activities, and new provision of infrastructure, all lead to a reduction of green and open spaces. Owing to their high dynamism, such changes call for the use of methods which allow not only the updating of the planning basis, but also the recording of the consequences (Spitzer 1998). Remote sensing data can provide essential information that is both inexpensive and up-to-date. Formerly, this was only possible with high-cost airborne data. Today, high-resolution satellite data such as IKONOS, with more spectral information and 1–4 m spatial resolution, as well as alternative classification methods based on object-oriented analyses, plays an important role in urban studies.

Understanding the history of how humans have interacted with the rest of nature can help clarify the options for managing our increasingly interconnected global system. Simple, deterministic relationships between environmental stress and social change are inadequate. Extreme drought, for instance, triggered both social collapse and ingenious management of water through irrigation. Human responses to change, in turn, feed into climate and ecological systems, producing a complex web of multidirectional connections in time and space. Integrated records of the co-evolving human-environment system over millennia are needed to provide a basis for a deeper understanding of the present and for forecasting the future. This requires the major task of assembling and integrating regional and global historical, archaeological, and paleoenvironmental records. Humans cannot predict the future. But, if we can adequately understand the past, we can use that understanding to influence our decisions and to create a better, more sustainable and desirable future.

Objective Syncytiotrophoblast membrane fragments (STBM) exist in the peripheral circulation in pregnant women and it has been shown that the level of circulating STBM is significantly increased with pre-eclampsia compared with uncomplicated pregnancies. STBM could be one of the factors which directly causes the endothelial cell dysfunction of pre-eclampsia. This study investigates the effect of STBM on endothelial cell gene expression. Design Human umbilical vein endothelial cells were cultured in the presence and absence of STBM. At specified time points, total RNA was purified from the cultures and analysed on microarrays. Setting A laboratory investigation using placentas obtained from a hospital delivery ward. Sample Placentas from nine healthy women were obtained. STBM vesicles were isolated from the placentas and umbilical vein endothelial cell cultures were established from the umbilical cords. Methods Gene expression was screened by Affymetrix GeneChips and confirmed with real-time polymerase chain reaction or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Main outcome measures Fold changes in gene expression levels between treated and control cultures were calculated from the microarray results. Results Overall, the results do not show any great changes in gene expression in endothelial cells after STBM treatment (28 genes changed two-fold or more out of approximately 10 000 genes examined by microarray). In general, the changes observed are consistent with inhibition of proliferation of endothelial cells by exposure to STBM. The unfolded protein response in particular may be involved. Conclusions STBM may influence endothelial cell function during pregnancy but STBM alone cannot account for the entire range of endothelial dysfunctions observed in pre-eclampsia.

land use, interdisciplinary research