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Background: Play Streets are community-led initiatives that provide opportunities for outdoor play and recreation when parks or other facilities may not be easily accessible. This pragmatic evaluation aims to determine the feasibility and acceptability of a pilot Play Street in Inner West Sydney. Methods: We used a post-only mixed methods design. Brief intercept surveys with pilot Play Street visitors assessed their reasons for attending the event and perceptions thereof. Semi-structured interviews explored stakeholders’ experiences related to planning and implementing Play Streets. Results: Approximately 60 adults and children attended the pilot Play Street. The majority of survey respondents (n = 32) were female, aged 35–54, lived in the Play Street’s postcode, and visited in groups consisting of adults and children. Overall respondents rated the pilot positively in enjoyment (100%), safety (97%), and organisation (81%), although there were significant differences between certain demographic subgroups in the perception of organisation and the children’s enjoyment of the pilot Play Street. Stakeholder interviews (n = 2) highlighted the importance of community consultation and reaching compromises, noting concerns about safety and insurance costs, and emphasised the role of Council as a facilitator to help residents take ownership of Play Streets. Delays due to community concerns, poor air quality arising from bushfires, heavy rain on the event day, and COVID-19 lockdowns hindered pilot Play Street implementation and evaluation. Conclusion: This pilot demonstrated that Play Streets are a feasible and acceptable way to use streets as outdoor recreation spaces in Sydney’s Inner West. The evaluation highlights two elements for future sustainability: managing neighbourhood opposition and adapting to climate change.

BACKGROUND Research indicates that risky play benefits children’s risk assessment and risk management skills, and offers several positive health effects such as resilience, social skills, physical activity, well-being and involvement. There are also indications that the lack of risky play and autonomy increases the likelihood of anxiety. Despite its well-documented importance, and the willingness of children to engage in risky play, this type of play is increasingly restricted. Assessing long-term effects of risky play has been problematic because of ethical issues with conducting studies designed to allow or encourage children to take physical risks with the potential of injury. OBJECTIVE The Virtual Risk Management (ViRMa) project aims to examine children’s development of risk management skills through risky play. To accomplish this, the project aims to use and validate newly developed and ethically appropriate data collection tools such as virtual reality (VR), eye-tracking and motion capturing, and to provide insight into how children assess and handle risk situations, and how children’s past risky play experiences are associated with their risk management. METHODS We will recruit 500 7–10-year-old children and their parents from primary schools in Norway. Children’s risk management will be measured through data concerning their risk assessment, risk willingness and risk handling when completing a number of tasks in three categories of VR scenarios: street crossing, river crossing and playing on playground equipment. The children will move around physically in a large space while conducting the tasks and wear 17 motion capturing sensors that measure their movements in order to analyze motor skills. We will also collect data on children’s perceived motor competence and their sensation seeking personality. To obtain data on children’s risk experiences, parents will complete questionnaires on their parental style and risk tolerance, as well as information about the child’s practical risk experience. RESULTS Four schools have been recruited to participate in data collection. Recruitment of children and parents for this study started in December 2022, and as of April 2023, a total of 433 parents have consented for their children to participate. CONCLUSIONS The ViRMa project will increase our understanding of how children’s characteristics, upbringing, and previous experiences influence their learning and ability to handle challenges. Through development and use of cutting-edge technology and previously developed measures to describe aspects of the child’s past experiences, the current project addresses crucial topics related to children’s health and development. Such knowledge may guide pedagogical questions, development of educational, injury prevention, and other health-related interventions, and reveal essential areas for focus in future studies. It may also impact how risk is addressed in crucial societal institutions like the family, early childhood education and schools. CLINICALTRIAL

Recent research indicates that museums hold great potential for children’s engagement and learning. To date, most research has either focused on school-aged children or young children’s independent...

Floating treatment wetlands are an innovative wetland design to passively improve water quality and remove pollutants from reservoirs with limited infrastructure modification or construction as compared to traditional treatment wetlands. However, design recommendations remain limited. Therefore, the objectives of this study were: 1. Determine nitrate-N removal rates in two floating treatment wetland vegetation designs entering a second growing season and 2. Evaluate nitrate-N removal performance in floating treatment wetland designs following the addition of two carbon amendments during the growing season. Three floating treatment wetland mesocosm experiments were conducted during the summer of 2019, where nitrate-N removal was evaluated. Two floating treatment wetland plant designs (Rush species and Diverse species) and three carbon conditions (no amendment, spent coffee grounds, and barley straw) were assessed in replicates of three. Floating treatment wetland vegetation design (Rush versus Diverse) was found to have significant (P

This chapter examines the significant benefits of engaging in risky play and the environments that support this type of play. In the context of children’s play, the focus on the potential adverse outcomes associated with injury risk has had a detrimental impact on the provision and quality of outdoor play linked to the regulation of playspaces. The outdoor environment is inherently a dynamic, constantly changing space in response to the weather, the seasons, the time of day and the interaction of humans and the environment. As a consequence, it is unpredictable and typically involves some element of risk. Risky play can be described as a form of play that involves physically challenging activities where there is potential for injury. The chapter concludes by examining how educators can provide challenging physical outdoor play for children by taking a risk–benefit approach to managing risk in play.

L. S. Lowry was a modern British artist celebrated for his depictions of Salford and Manchester. As well as making portraits, landscapes, and seascapes, he is best known for painting what the artist called ‘the industrial scene’, by which he meant the physical fabric of Britain’s industrial north, its distinctive sense of place and accompanying phenomenon of working-class culture. Often populated with crowds of people set amidst a backdrop of terraced streets, mills, and factories, Lowry’s urban scenes speak to the region’s identity as pioneer of the Industrial Revolution as well as the radical social, economic, and environmental upheaval of the early twentieth century.

The notion of ‘belonging’ is a core component of many early childhood curriculum frameworks and recognises the importance of children’s sociocultural context for their self-identity and well-being. Children’s risk-taking in play has also been the focus of contemporary research in examining its beneficial role for children’s physical, social and emotional development. This study applies diverse disciplinary and theoretical lenses, including Hedegaard’s cultural-historical model and Gibson’s affordance theory, to present a critical and multi-perspective understanding of children’s experience of ‘belonging’ and risky play. The study involved naturalistic observations of 18–26-month-old children’s outdoor play in an environment designed to provide affordances for risky play. The findings suggest that children’s engagement in risky play also supports their sense of belonging through their shared engagement in risky-play experiences.

This article presents data from a survey of Early Childhood Education and Care services in Australia. The study investigated outdoor play provision in terms of space, resources and planning for risk-taking in play. Overall, the results indicate that the participating centres are well-resourced to promote physical play, but vary in terms of opportunities for risk-taking in play. Although the majority of respondents believed their centres’ environments supported risk-taking in play, there were diverse perspectives among the teachers as to behaviours that constituted risky play. Regulatory restrictions relating to heights, arrangement of gross motor equipment and having insufficient space were also identified as factors limiting opportunities for challenging play. Furthermore, inconsistency in the way regulations were interpreted and applied arose as a key factor in the diversity of experiences reported by the respondents. The findings from this study have implications for pre- and in-service training for teachers in understanding how children’s risk-taking in outdoor play might be supported and managed.

Many international studies have highlighted reduced opportunities for young children’s risk-taking and associated physical activity in home, neighbourhood, and early childhood education contexts. At the same time parents and educators express positive attitudes towards children’s engagement in challenging, physically active play. In the early childhood education context, the mismatch between expressed intentions of educators and what happens in the outdoor environment is attributable to a number of factors, including the difficulties that educators experience in theorising about the outdoors. In this chapter we examine the current status of physically active play in Early Childhood Education settings. We then consider contemporary approaches to affordance theory, with a particular emphasis on the contributions of E.J. Gibson, J.J. Gibson, Heft and Kytta. We argue that affordance theory provides an important approach for active play research and pedagogy.

Melissa Little is a Senior Principal Research Fellow at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Her lab has studied kidney development and regeneration for over 20 years, recently making notable advances in the generation of kidney organoids from human iPSCs. We chatted with Melissa about her career, her thoughts on the potential of the organoid and stem cell fields, and what she hopes to achieve during her guest editorship with Development.

The importance of stimulating and challenging outdoor play for the health and development of children, as this Chapter describes, is now the topic of copious research. Play provision has, however, been set on a different trajectory in recent decades; one which has been more preoccupied with the creation of injury free or 'safe’ environments and is in part driven by the fear of litigation. An unintended consequence has been the curtailment of essential childhood developmental opportunities. The workplace model of zero tolerance to accidents and associated risk exposure is inappropriate in the context of children and play. It is proposed that a more balanced approach to play provision is needed which recognizes that risk exposure is not entirely bad and that children benefit from and require risk-taking opportunities. This has implications at all levels of play provision, from policy formulation to play practice.

Motor competence and physical activity (PA) patterns are established during the early childhood years. Early childhood education (ECE) settings are an important context for children’s engagement in physically active play. This paper reports the findings from an online survey examining resources, spaces and affordances for PA and risk-taking in outdoor play provision at 245 ECE centres across Australia. Centres were generally well resourced to promote physical play and provide a diverse range of experiences that support PA and motor development, although varied in terms of opportunities for risk-taking in play. Most respondents believed the environment at their centres supported children’s engagement in moderate to vigorous PA, however, regulatory restrictions relating to recommended height limits on climbing apparatus and having insufficient space were identified as factors limiting opportunities for challenging, physically active play. Outdoor space and teacher support are identified as important factors in childhood settings to promote PA and risk-taking. The emphasis on outdoor environments as a mediator of physically active play should be beneficial in directing limited resources to the provision of environments that are most likely to produce positive PA outcomes.

Changes to social and environmental contexts impact on children’s opportunities for and the nature of outdoor play in many ways. A number of studies over the past decade have noted a trend towards over-protective parenting practices that restrict children’s activities and limit children’s independent mobility and engagement with their neighbourhoods. Through semi-structured interviews with mothers of four-year-old to five-year-old children, this study examined beliefs about children’s outdoor play opportunities and exposure to and management of potential risks in outdoor environments. Whilst the mothers overwhelmingly acknowledged the benefits of risky outdoor play, tension existed between their desire to provide opportunities for their children to safely engage in such play and overcoming their own fears and concerns about their children’s safety. The study has implications for examining ways in which children gain access to outdoor play and the role that early childhood settings may have in providing ac...

In this paper, we contrast the early childhood education and care aims and curriculum in Norway and Australia and the theoretical underpinnings of Norwegian and Australian pedagogy in an attempt to partially explain the different approaches to (risky) outdoor play in these two countries. We argue that Norwegian pedagogical approaches may allow teachers to theorize more about, and place greater emphasis on, physical and motor development than teachers in countries such as Australia. Evidence includes reference to theories typically used in Norwegian and Australian writing. Additionally, we examine interview data from teachers, which reveals that both groups of teachers share similar understandings of the importance of risk-taking in play, but there is more consistency between belief and practice for Norwegian than Australian teachers. We argue that the differences in alignment of belief and practice in the two countries are partly attributable to the differing theoretical bases of teachers' pedagogical app...

Many children naturally seek challenging physically active play which may involve injury‐risk. Prior studies have attempted to describe the characteristics of risky play but to date none have considered factors that impact on opportunities for risky play or the likely resultant outcomes. Using semi‐structured interviews and naturalistic observations, this study aimed to investigate adult attitudes towards risk‐taking and whether children's experiences of risky play differ according to the contexts in which the play takes place. Although the children's mothers and Early Childhood practitioners believed risky play was an important aspect of learning and development and encouraged this type of play, observations of children's play at a local playground and their Early Childhood centre revealed that these contexts provided limited opportunities for risky play. Regulatory factors and requirements for playground safety were identified as having a detrimental impact on the quality of play in these setti...

Child characteristics including age, gender, risk-taking behaviour and sensation seeking are thought to influence children's ability to appraise risks. The present study investigated children's risk perceptions and appraisals in the context of common outdoor physical play activities. Risk perceptions and appraisal of four- and five-year olds were assessed using a pictorial risk appraisal measure and through individual semi-structured interviews examining children's decision-making. Sensation seeking and risk-taking behaviour were assessed using self- and parent-report measures. Results revealed that the children were able to identify injury risk behaviours however differentiating the severity of the potential injury was less accurate. Furthermore, the children appeared to use these judgements in their play to inform their behaviour whilst using playground equipment. Whilst they actively sought out those activities that offered challenge and excitement, they were aware of their abilities and showe...

Learning how to respond appropriately in risk situations comes not only from the child’s direct experiences but also through the guidance of those around them. The role of parent practices in guiding children’s decision-making in risky situations has mainly been investigated in experimental contexts. The present study examined children’s risk-taking behaviour and parent responses in everyday outdoor play settings. Parents’ own risk-taking beliefs and behaviours were assessed using the Attitudes Towards Risk Questionnaire (ATR). Interviews explored parents’ attitudes towards children’s risk-taking and parents (11 mothers, one father) were observed as they supervised their four- to five-year-old children on playground equipment at a park. Parents’ ATR scores were predictive of children’s risk-taking behaviour. Parents mainly supervised their child’s play and provided encouragement and support to foster children’s engagement in challenging use of the equipment. Parents rarely intervened to prevent children’s risky play but provided advice on how to complete the activity safely. Parents emphasized that their responses to children’s risk-taking are context dependent.

Objectives To identify service users' views and attitudes to access, physiotherapy and patient-autonomous health-seeking behaviours. Study design Mixed qualitative and quantitative questionnaire. Setting Twenty-six locations representing a range of socio-economic and geographical settings throughout Scotland. Participants Three thousand and ten patients over 16 years of age. Methods Postal questionnaires containing a mix of open and closed questions, attitude statements and free text for comments were sent to all consenting patients 4 weeks after discharge from physiotherapy. Responses were analysed by referral group: self-referred patients; patients referred by their general practitioner (GP); and patients referred at the suggestion of their GP. Results A response rate of 72% (2177/3010) was achieved. Males, females and all age groups were represented. Strong support for the effectiveness of physiotherapy was reported by all groups (>90%). Despite more than 80% of respondents claiming that they were able to confidently predict when they needed physiotherapy, less than 23% reported being knowledgeable or very knowledgeable about physiotherapy, with no significant association between level of knowledge and referral group ( P =0.129). Self-referred patients were more satisfied ( P Conclusions Physiotherapy was regarded positively by all referral groups, particularly by self-referred patients, despite there being a distinct lack of knowledge about the profession. There is a clear need to raise awareness and knowledge of physiotherapy if autonomous health-seeking behaviours are to be encouraged and self-referral schemes progressed appropriately.

The safety of children as they learn and develop is of prime concern for parents, teachers and legislators alike. Legislation governing the provision of early childhood services provides guidelines and procedures for reducing the likelihood of children being exposed to injuries and unsafe environments. Such strategies, however, only take account of aspects of the physical environment that can be manipulated to ensure the safety of children and do not consider those aspects of the individual child’s behaviour that may contribute to unintentional injury. One such factor is children’s risk‐taking behaviour. The paper presents a critical review of current risk‐taking literature. Components of risk taking, including sensation seeking and optimism bias, and contributory factors such as gender, temperament, and parent socialization practices are examined in light of the current legislative and accountability documents relating to the provision of early childhood services in the Australian state of New South Wale...

Bessel beams are propagation invariant light fields. It has very recently been shown that they may be created with temporally incoherent (white) light. Such fields may have applications in low coherence interferometric imaging for biomedicine and optical micromanipulation. White light Bessel beams may be deemed at first glance to generate a white focal line of light at the beam centre due to the absence of chromatic aberration. We investigate the spectral characteristics of the reformation or self-healing of this light field in the presence of a circular obstruction and reveal that the spectral characteristics of the beam generation and reformation results in a dispersive focal line at the beam centre which is 'white' only over a certain region.

In many countries playground design is driven more by safety than developmental benefits. As risk minimisation strategies become more stringent, many researchers and practitioners are questioning whether young children are able to take sufficient risks in play in order for their play experiences to be interesting and developmentally challenging. This study examined the outdoor play choices and risk-taking behaviour of 38 children (25 boys, 13 girls) aged between 48 and 64 months from Sydney, Australia. Semi-structured interviews examined children's play preferences and playground equipment usage. Observations of play explored engagement in risk-taking behaviour. Selection of equipment indicated a strong preference for challenge and excitement. However, the dominant observed play behaviours involved little risk suggesting equipment at these parks provided few opportunities to practice mastery of skills already in their behavioural repertoire, learning new skills or building on current capabilities. The findings have implications for play provision and playground design. © 2010 EECERA.

Optical guiding of microscopic particles is studied and compared for femtosecond and continuous wave Bessel light beams. We confirm that optical guiding is an average power effect and observe no difference in the guiding velocities for non-fluorescing polymer microspheres. Additionally, we observe second harmonic generation of guided KTP particles. This observation opens up the prospect for optical identification of guided cells for sorting purposes.

We demonstrate the use of supercontinuum radiation to provide enhanced guiding distances of microscopic particles compared to the standard continuous wave or femtosecond lasers. Our technique relies on the chromatic aberration of the lens used to form an elongated focal region within which guiding takes place. The resulting beam profile has been modelled and shows that for a Gaussian input beam, the intensity profile after the lens can be considered as a sum of Gaussians, one for each wavelength but with varying focal position due to dispersion. Our experimental investigations compare radiation from continuous wave (bandwidth 100nm) lasers as well as supercontinuum radiation (bandwidth > 450nm) and show good agreement with theory.

Optical guiding of microscopic particles in femtosecond and continuous wave Bessel light beams is studied and compared. We confirm that optical guiding is an average power effect and observe no difference in the guiding velocities of non-fluorescing polymer spheres. Furthermore, we observe second harmonic generation of guided KTP crystallites in femtosecond Bessel light beams. This observation opens up the prospect of using multi-photon effects in optical manipulation for applications such as optical identification of guided cells for sorting purposes.

Recent studies have realized optical micromanipulation of extended two- and three-dimensional structures and optical binding. In many recent experiments the optical interaction between particles and their light scattering has played a key role. We use fluorescein dye within the sample medium and a femtosecond laser for optical micromanipulation. By the process of two-photon excitation we can directly observe how the light behaves during refraction and reflection within a sample of optically guided microspheres. We directly visualize the reconstruction of the Bessel light beam by excitation of two-photon fluorescence when used as an optical guide for microscopic particles dispersed within this dyed medium. This technique may assist in the visualization of optical scattering and refraction in micromanipulation and the creation of large optically bound matter crystals.

S100A8 (also known as CP10 or MRP8) was the first member of the S100 family of calcium-binding proteins shown to be chemotactic for myeloid cells. The gene is expressed together with its dimerization partner S100A9 during myelopoiesis in the fetal liver and in adult bone marrow as well as in mature granulocytes. In this paper we show that S100A8 mRNA is expressed without S100A9 mRNA between 6.5 and 8.5 days postcoitum within fetal cells infiltrating the deciduum in the vicinity of the ectoplacental cone. Targeted disruption of the S100A8 gene caused rapid and synchronous embryo resorption by day 9.5 of development in 100% of homozygous null embryos. Until this point there was no evidence of developmental delay in S100A8−/− embryos and decidualization was normal. The results of PCR genotyping around 7.5–8.5 days postcoitum suggest that the null embryos are infiltrated with maternal cells before overt signs of resorption. This work is the first evidence for nonredundant function of a member of the S100 gene family and implies a role in prevention of maternal rejection of the implanting embryo. The S100A8 null provides a new model for studying fetal-maternal interactions during implantation.

ALTHOUGH THE TERM ‘RISK-TAKING’ often has negative connotations, the reality is that the willingness to engage in some risky activities provides opportunities to learn new skills, try new behaviours and ultimately reach our potential. Challenge and risk, in particular during outdoor play, allows children to test the limits of their physical, intellectual and social development. This paper examines the current status of outdoor play in urbanised, Western societies such as Australia and provides a critical analysis of the literature to present an argument for the inclusion of positive risk-taking experiences in children's outdoor play, principally in the context of early childhood education. The increasingly restrictive regulation of early childhood services is considered in terms of the impact of risk avoidance in outdoor play for children's optimal growth and development. Finally, a model of possible developmental outcomes resulting from the minimisation of risk-taking in early childhood contexts is proposed.