Gregor Torkar

Fruit and vegetable playing cards: Utility of the game for nutrition education

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to measure the effectiveness of fruit and vegetable playing cards for teaching schoolchildren about fruits and vegetables, health, and nutrition.Design/methodology/approach – The participants come from two primary schools in Slovenia: 53 boys and 57 girls. Their average age is 10 (8, 11). The pre‐intervention questioning is completed two or three days before and post‐intervention questioning is completed a week after playing the card game. The participating children answer ten multiple‐choice questions and one open‐ended question. Each participant plays the game for two 45‐min lessons. The main goal of the research is to measure changes in their knowledge about fruits and vegetables, health, and nutrition.Findings – After the intervention more children understand why the human body needs dietary fiber, water, and vitamins. The majority of those questioned also understand why fruits and vegetables are important in nutrition. The children learn which fruits and vegetab...

Historical impacts of mercury mining and stocking of non-native fish on ichthyofauna in the Idrijca River Basin, Slovenia

Mercury mining in Idrija has profoundly changed environmental conditions in the Idrijca River basin. Impacts of mining-related activities on the river system and its ichthyofauna from circa 1490 until World War I were analysed. Literature and archival sources were both studied. Heavy water pollution with mercury and its components, the floating of wood using splash dams in order to create artificial flood waves, fishing and stocking of non-indigenous fish species were the factors identified contributing to major impacts on ichthyofauna. Fish statistics make clear that after four centuries of mercury production ichthyofauna in the Idrijca was by no means the most industrially affected one in Carniola and that there were huge differences among various sections of the Idrijca and its tributaries. We presented the history of fish hatcheries operating from 1876 onward in order to reduce the damage inflicted by mercury mining and related activities and reviewed its impacts on hybridization between marble and brown trout. Introduction of non-native fish was the major threat for the ichthyofauna in comparison to the other mentioned impacts of mercury mining, conducted over long periods but with comparably minor consequences for the survival of the native ichthyofauna.

Differentiation of frogs from two populations belonging to the Pelophylax esculentus complex by LC-MS/MS comparison of their skin peptidomes

AbstractLC-MS/MS was applied to establish the composition of the skin peptidome of a Slovenian green frog belonging to the Pelophylax esculentus complex. As this was similar to the peptidome of the Moscow population of Pelophylax ridibundus, it allowed us to identify the Slovenian frog from the Pelophylax esculentus complex as Pelophylax ridibundus. The sequences of six new peptides from the brevinin 2 family are reported for the first time on the basis of manual interpretation of their tandem mass spectra. The structural similarity of the brevinin 2 peptides from the Moscow and Slovenian populations of Pelophylax ridibundus enables peptides from this family to be utilized as biomarkers for Pelophylax ridibundus inter- and intraspecies differentiation, and the proposed approach can be used as an analytical tool for differentiating the corresponding species and populations. The potential biological activities of the novel peptides were estimated by 2D mass mapping. The results allowed us to classify all of the available peptides belonging to the brevinin 2 family. Graphical AbstractIntraspecies identification within the green frog complex

Science and Technology Education in Slovenian Compulsory Basic School: Possibilities for Gifted Education

The article presents an analytical overview of the science and technology curriculum from the viewpoint of the inclusive approach adopted toward gifted education in Slovenian basic education. The main research question concerns how the current curriculum fits the learning needs of gifted students. For the purposes of the study, 16 compulsory and elective syllabi of science and technology school subjects were identified and qualitatively analyzed, and the role of activity days was examined within the target framework. The results show a rather weak operationalization of recommendations for gifted education in defined learning objectives and standards in the syllabi. Moreover, it was found that elective school subjects in science and technology are poorly represented in students’ overall selection of elective school subjects. In addition, activity days offer numerous possibilities for the implementation of the general recommendations for teaching the gifted.

EThcD Discrimination of Isomeric Leucine/Isoleucine Residues in Sequencing of the Intact Skin Frog Peptides with Intramolecular Disulfide Bond

AbstractOur scientific interests involve de novo sequencing of non-tryptic natural amphibian skin peptides including those with intramolecular S–S bond by means of exclusively mass spectrometry. Reliable discrimination of the isomeric leucine/isoleucine residues during peptide sequencing by means of mass spectrometry represents a bottleneck in the workflow for complete automation of the primary structure elucidation of these compounds. MS3 is capable of solving the problem. Earlier we demonstrated the advanced efficiency of ETD-HCD method to discriminate Leu/Ile in individual peptides by consecutive application of ETD to the polyprotonated peptides followed by HCD applied to the manually selected primary z-ions with the targeted isomeric residues at their N-termini and registration of the characteristic w-ions. Later this approach was extended to deal with several (4–7) broad band mass ranges, without special isolation of the primary z-ions. The present paper demonstrates an advanced version of this method when EThcD is applied in the whole mass range to a complex mixture of natural non-tryptic peptides without their separation and intermediate isolation of the targeted z-ions. The proposed EThcD method showed over 81% efficiency for the large natural peptides with intact disulfide ring, while the interfering process of radical site migration is suppressed. Due to higher speed and sensitivity, the proposed EThcD approach facilitates the analytical procedure and allows for the automation of the entire experiment and data processing. Moreover, in some cases it gives a chance to establish the nature of the residues in the intact intramolecular disulfide loops. Graphical Abstractᅟ

Assessing students’ knowledge of owls from their drawings and written responses

Abstract Many children learn about and experience animals in the everyday environment where they live and attend school. One way to obtain information about children’s understanding of concepts or phenomena is by using their drawings in combination with written responses or interviews. This study assesses how much Slovenian students 10–15 years old (in sixth to ninth grade) know about owls by analysing their drawings and written responses. The study included 473 students. From assessing students’ drawings and written responses, it can be concluded that the respondents had some knowledge of owls’ appearance, their behaviours, diet and habitats. The differences between students in different grades regarding the representations of owls was not statistically significant. Some students had misconceptions about owls, such as the idea that owls can turn their heads 360 degrees, or they confused the long ear-tufts with external parts of the ears. The students’ written responses provided additional information on their ideas about owls; particularly about owls’ specific behaviours, diet, and conservational status. However, some information, such as depicting owls’ body parts and body proportions or their habitats, was more clearly depicted with drawings. One third of the students drew owls in trees and forests, which makes owls good candidates for promoting forest conservation.

Creating Meaningful Life for a Responsible and Sustainable Future

Major environmental problems at the present time can readily generate many unpleasant feelings in anyone digging into the roots of the current world situation. However, this paper tries to emphasize an alternative way. Humans are subject to determinism but retain a capacity to choose an attitude against their situation in life and themselves. The paper builds on Viktor Frankl’s existential analysis and logotherapy. Frankl states that life itself posses a question concerning the meaning of life and each of us has to individually answer to life by answering for life; he or she has to respond by being responsible. The study showed empirical evidence and theoretical explanations for a principal idea that by creating meaning of life each individual can perceive the chance for a responsible and sustainable existence. The results supported our assumption that experiencing a sense of meaning in daily life to higher degree leads to increased pro-environmental intentions and actual behaviours. Results showed that a meaning of life partly mediate the impact of pro-environmental intentions on pro-environmental behaviours. The study not only provided new important data for closing the value-action gap, but it also illuminated some possible pathways toward developing education for responsible and sustainable living.