Philosophy as a way of life has been undergoing a revival in recent years. This essay explores how the central idea of the spiritual exercises can be used to develop an account of philosophy of religion as a way of life. It details some of the contemporary uses and trajectories of philosophy as a way of life. Through engaging the religiously inflected philosophies of Karl Jaspers and Simone Weil, this paper argues that their thought can present an account of philosophy of religion as a way of life that is both ethically and transcendentally oriented.

This study interrogates how beginning secondary mathematics teachers align their beliefs with their practice when they justify their pedagogical choices in the context of recent English mathematics education policy which is strongly influenced by approaches to mathematics teaching in Shanghai and Singapore currently referred to as ‘mastery’ approaches. It seeks to understand beginning teachers’ perceptions and understandings of these approaches and the extent to which they recognise aspects of ‘mastery’ in practice. In setting the context, pre-service teachers’ beliefs were surveyed and found to be congruent with constructivist approaches to learning. We then draw on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews secondary mathematics teachers in their first year post-qualification. The interviews were designed to interrogate and capture understanding of the features of mastery within their own classrooms. By using vignettes to capture participants’ beliefs, our aim was to present a ‘more nuanced understanding of the phenomena’ (Skilling and Stylianides in Int J Res Method Educ 43(5):541–556, 2019, 10.1080/1743727x.2019.1704243). The analytical framework developed draws on Guskey’s (In: Wright J (ed) International encyclopedia of the social & behavioural sciences, 2015, vol 14, 2nd edn, Elsevier, pp 752–759) interpretation of Bloom’s theory of mastery learning together with features of mastery learning in mathematics articulated by Drury (How to teach mathematics for mastery, 2018, Oxford University Press) and Boylan et al. (Edu Sci 8(4):202, 2018, 10.3390/educsci8040202). This posed a research design challenge given the variation in interpretation of mastery learning as it is understood in practice. The data exposes differences in the interpretation of mastery approaches in the settings where they learn to teach, as well as the tensions that arise between beginning teachers’ beliefs, practice, professional knowledge and agency in their developing classroom roles.

Throughout Europe, thousands of national cemeteries contain the bodies of soldiers killed in the two world wars, each carefully divided according to nationality. Yet, as this essay argues, determining the nationality of the dead was never so clear cut. Focusing on burials within Britain, it explores four categories of dead that demonstrate the fluidity of national belonging. The first group are the erroneously identified dead, who had been incorrectly identified during conflict. Second are the unwanted dead. These were the bodies of spies or people branded as traitors, who were stripped of their nationality post-war and barred from national cemeteries. Third are the contested dead; soldiers who died in the uniform of one army, but were later reclaimed by another country. Finally, there are the convenient dead, who were simply assigned a nationality in the wake of conflict. Military cemeteries, as the article concludes, were artificial creations, based not only on national identity, but also on post-war decision making.

The original online version of this article was revised: The co-author’s name was misspelled. The co-author's name was spelled Ziqiang Li but should have been Zhiqiang Li. The original version is corrected.

The research explores the legacies of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific writing (c. 1893), investigating the relevance of his work to contemporary readers in Sāmoa, Scotland and Hawai'i. This is a wordless graphic adaptation of Stevenson’s novella The Beach of Falesā, included as a chapter in an anthology of adaptations and creative responses to Stevenson’s Pacific writing by artists, scholar and artists/scholars Solomon Enos, Simon Grennan, Keao Nesmith, Lalovai Pesetā, Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard and Selina Tusitala Marsh.

The number of people choosing to study computing in higher education remains low. Previous research has developed a research instrument to identify factors underlying student participation grounded in Bourdieu’s sociocultural theory. This study replicates and extends the original study, which identified key social, cultural, and psychological factors linked to computing education participation in Sweden. Using the validated research instrument, we distributed a survey across 11 UK universities, gathering responses from 131 students. Through Confirmatory Factor Analysis, we assessed the robustness of the original study’s constructs — career interest, subject-specific interest, influence from family and friends, confidence, and sense of belonging — and their relationship to subject choice in computing. After model refinements, the replication confirmed and validated the factor structure, supporting the stability of these constructs and their relationship to computing subject choice across cultural contexts. In addition, the current study adds additional open-ended questions to the research instrument to help explain the quantitative results. A thematic analysis further explains the correlation between previous experience, social influence, confidence, and gender, and how that relates to participation in the field. By replicating and extending the original study’s methodology, this research evaluates the reliability and generalisability of its conclusions, contributing to the evidence base needed to design interventions that broaden participation in computing education.

Chemical plant strengtheners find increasing use in agriculture to enhance resistance against pathogens. In an earlier study, it was found that treatment with one such resistance elicitor, BTH (benzo-(1, 2, 3)-thiadiazole-7-carbothioic acid S-methyl ester), increases the attractiveness of maize plants to a parasitic wasp. This surprising additional benefit of treating plants with BTH prompted us to conduct a series of olfactometer tests to find out if BTH and another commercially available plant strengthener, Laminarin, increase the attractiveness of maize to three important parasitic wasps, Cotesia marginventris, Campoletis sonorensis, and Microplitis rufiventris. In each case, plants that were sprayed with the plant strengtheners and subsequently induced to release volatiles by real or mimicked attack by Spodoptera littoralis caterpillars became more attractive to the parasitoids than water treated plants. The elicitors alone or in combination with plants that were not induced by herbivory were not attractive to the wasps. Interestingly, plants treated with the plant strengtheners did not show any consistent increase in volatile emissions. On the contrary, treated plants released less herbivore-induced volatiles, most notably indole, which has been reported to interfere with parasitoid attraction. The emission of the sesquiterpenes (E)-β-caryophyllene, β-bergamotene, and (E)-β-farnesene was similarly reduced by the treatment. Expression profiles of marker genes showed that BTH and Laminarin induced several pathogenesis related (PR) genes. The results support the notion that, as yet undetectable and unidentified compounds, are of major importance for parasitoid attraction, and that these attractants may be masked by some of the major compounds in the volatile blends. This study confirms that elicitors of pathogen resistance are compatible with the biological control of insect pests and may even help to improve it.

The predatory bug Orius albidipennis (Reuter) (Hemiptera: Anthocoridae) has tremendous potential as a biological control agent, especially in its native range around the Mediterranean Basin and East Africa. The need to exploit native biological control agents is growing in importance as concerns over the introduction of non-native species continue to increase. However, little is known of the effects of different prey on development and reproduction of O. albidipennis compared with other species of Orius. Therefore, we compared the development, survival, reproductive biology, and prey consumption of O. albidipennis when fed eggs of Ephestia kuehniella Zeller, Tetranychus urticae Koch, and Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood), and larvae of Gynaikothrips ficorum (Marchal), under laboratory of 26 ± 1°C, 60 ± 10% RH and 16L:8D photoperiod. Individuals were reared from the neonate stage until death on one of the four prey types. The type of prey had profound effects on all measured performance traits. The highest survival rate was recorded for nymphs that were fed on E. kuehniella eggs, while the lowest survival rate was observed for those fed on T. vaporariorum eggs. The shortest nymphal period was recorded for nymphs fed on E. kuehniella eggs, while the longest was measured for those fed on T. urticae eggs. During the nymphal period, O. albidipennis consumed significantly more eggs of T. urticae than other prey types, whereas the lowest number of consumed prey were eggs of E. kuehniella. Adult females and males consumed significantly more T. urticae eggs than other types of prey. However, Orius albidipennis females showed the highest fecundity when fed on E. kuehniella eggs, and the lowest when fed on T. vaporariorum eggs. Adult females and males that fed on G. ficorum larvae had significantly longer life spans compared with those fed other prey. Because of their relatively rapid development and high fecundity, O. albidipennis fed E. kuehniella eggs had a significantly higher net reproductive rate (Ro) and intrinsic rate of increase (rm) than O. albidipennis fed other prey types. Overall, eggs of E. kuehniella were the most suitable diet for nymphs and adults of O. albidipennis. Although less suitable, O. albidipennis could survive and reproduce on the other prey types, which is a favourable attribute in biological control agents. These results on the effect of different prey types on development and reproduction of O. albidipennis will also contribute to the development of mass rearing programs for biological control agents in developing countries, such as Egypt.

Determining links between plant defence strategies is important to understand plant evolution and to optimize crop breeding strategies. Although several examples of synergies and trade-offs between defence traits are known for plants that are under attack by multiple organisms, few studies have attempted to measure correlations of defensive strategies using specific single attackers. Such links are hard to detect in natural populations because they are inherently confounded by the evolutionary history of different ecotypes. We therefore used a range of 20 maize inbred lines with considerable differences in resistance traits to determine if correlations exist between leaf and root resistance against pathogens and insects. Aboveground resistance against insects was positively correlated with the plant's capacity to produce volatiles in response to insect attack. Resistance to herbivores and resistance to a pathogen, on the other hand, were negatively correlated. Our results also give first insights into the intraspecific variability of root volatiles release in maize and its positive correlation with leaf volatile production. We show that the breeding history of the different genotypes (dent versus flint) has influenced several defensive parameters. Taken together, our study demonstrates the importance of genetically determined synergies and trade-offs for plant resistance against insects and pathogens.

Blaptostethus pallescens Poppius (Hemiptera: Anthocoridae) is an abundant native predator in mango orchards and other cropping systems in Egypt. To determine suitable mass-rearing conditions for this little-studied species, we assessed some of its biological characteristics. Testing its thermal response at three constant temperatures (20, 25, 30 °C), showed that immature development time and adult longevity decreased with increasing temperature. Reproductive success of individual females was greatest when reared at 25 °C (84.3 ± 3.1 eggs) rather than at 20 °C (46.6 ± 2.0 eggs) or 30 °C (65.2 ± 2.5 eggs). Although B. pallescens reared at 25 °C had a significantly higher net reproductive rate (R0), which may be attributed to their relatively rapid development and high fecundity, we argue that 30 °C seems to be more convenient for rearing B. pallescens, as mean generation time (T) and doubling time (DT) are clearly shorter, thus more individuals could be reared per unit of time at 30 °C. Mating significantly reduced male and female longevity, as unmated adults lived 25–45 % longer than mated individuals did. Unmated females did not lay eggs, suggesting that mating is a prerequisite for egg maturation. Adult males and females performed best, in terms of longevity, when fed Ephestia kuehniella Zeller (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) eggs instead of non-prey diets. However, diets of plant sap or pollen could sustain adults in times of limited egg availability. Because its biology is similar to that of other subtropical anthocorids already reared for augmentative releases, B. pallescens may be amenable to mass-rearing using already established techniques. Therefore, B. pallescens could be used to improve augmentative biological control in crops such as mango or maize in Egypt where it already naturally occurs, and therefore would not engender concerns over non-target effects that an exotic, generalist biological control agent would.