Art & History

Prehistoric Art

When we visit art galleries or learn about art in school, we tend to think of paintings on canvas, sculpture or photographs.  Often these will be clearly recognisable as people or objects like food and flowers, and we can relate to them as familiar in some way.
Art and pictures have been around ever since people first were recognised as human by historians, in pre-historic times.  Prehistoric simply means history which dates before written accounts are available to study.  The earliest humans did not have writing with which they could communicate and this means that art and pictures were even more important to them.

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Home, Health & Style

Living With Rosie – My Child Has Special Needs

Rosie wrote an article last week for Jump! Mag, telling us about her life on a farm. What you did not know when you read that piece, is that Rosie has special needs. Her mother explains how it is to live with a child with special needs.

 

I believe that you know immediately after giving birth that your child is different somehow.

As they grow, you notice that some milestones are different from the ones that your other children had and you silently chide yourself for comparing them.

Slower with walking, not speaking, unusual behaviour, unusual reactions to noise or red food.

You live with it every day and it becomes normal behaviour to you and your family, you adapt to the child’s needs and try to help them make sense of all that their jumbled up senses bring them.

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Popular, Science, Nature and Tech

What is Biotechnology?

Perhaps you have heard of the term biotechnology and wondered what it is. You may think you know already – after all, the parts that make up the word are very familiar: bio + technology. You have seen the first part of the word in biology, antibiotics, all sorts of words. It comes from Greek bios, which means ‘life’.

As for technology, it is not just about computers and smartphones. Technology is the practical use of knowledge to create useful things and solve problems. You might like to think of it as tech-knowledge-y. So, taking it one step further, biotechnology is about using biology in technology.

We talked to Alessandra Iscaro, a biotechnology researcher at the University of Florence, Italy, and she explained to us what it is all about.

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Travel

Adventure in Uganda

On my second day in Uganda, we went white water rafting on the Nile, near a town called Jinja. The rapids are just Screenshot 2013-10-14 at 10.50.13down river from Lake Victoria, which is where the Nile starts.

The rapids are caused by the force of the water as it crashes over rocks and around islands in the river. There used to be more rapids there, and the famous Bujugali Falls. However, a couple of years ago a dam was built across the river, which has made part of it more like a lake and has increased the water levels, wiping out lots of the rapids, including Bujugali. However, below the dam, the rapids are still just as scary! The rapids are a favourite for rafters and kayakers all over the world. 

The rapids are caused by the force of the water as it crashes over rocks and around islands in the river. There used to be more rapids there, and the famous Bujugali Falls. However, a couple of years ago a dam was built across the river, which has made part of it more like a lake and has increased the water levels, wiping out lots of the rapids, including Bujugali. However, below the dam, the rapids are still just as scary! The rapids are a favourite for rafters and kayakers all over the world. 

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Art & History

Who Was Maya Angelou?

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson, in St Louis, Missouri, in 1928. Her brother could not pronounce her name properly and called her Maya, the name that she came to be known by.
She had a difficult childhood – after suffering abuse when she was eight years old, she stopped talking for five years.  She later wrote her autobiography, describing overcoming her childhood trauma, and growing up in the segregated south of USA – when people of colour and white people were not allowed to mix. She was committed to the civil rights movement, which aimed to break the segregation and allow people to live freely.

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