One of the most mysterious and endangered fish in Europe is the European eel. Eels live long and complex lives and during their lifetime will travel thousands of miles, transforming themselves as they go. They can grow up to one metre long and have long, snake-like bodies with one pair of small fins at the sides. They are secretive creatures; most of their early life at sea is a mystery and when they come inland during their adult lives, they are nocturnal, living under stones and burrowing into mud during the day. They can live between seven and 85 years, with an average lifespan of 55 years, and much of this time is spent out of sight. The European eel is a ‘catadromous’ fish: it is born at sea and spawns or reproduces there; then it migrates to inland waters to eat and grow. European eels can be found from Russia and Finland to as far south as the coasts of Morocco, Egypt and the countries around the Black Sea. They spend most of their adult lives in freshwater rivers, streams and estuaries before returning to the open ocean to lay eggs. We know quite a lot about the eels’

A  We make decisions every minute of our lives, from large, life-changing ones about our careers or relationships to mundane, day-to-day ones, like which socks to wear or how to travel to work. But we often make decisions without considering what we are doing and sometimes our emotions get in the way of rational thought. Making good choices is a balance between reason and desire, knowing what has happened in the past and what you want in the future. Most people do this instinctively, without understanding the mental processes that influence our decisions, but what would happen if we understood these processes better? Researchers today are uncovering the hidden influences that direct us one way or the other when we make choices. B  ‘Everyone loves a winner’ is a common saying but surprisingly, people dislike losing more than they like winning and it actually takes a lot to tempt us to take a risk. Psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman from Princeton University found that people do not like to bet money in a 50:50 situation unless they can win twice the amount they could lose. So, for example, although the chance of winning or losing is the same, most people

The world’s coastlines are constantly being reshaped and reworked by the sea. Coastal erosion is one of the natural phenomena that contribute to the creation and destruction of our shores and one of the main processes that form beaches, dunes, mud flats, reefs and marshes along the coast. These different shoreline features have a wide range of functions: they provide habitats for wildlife, prevent flooding and protect freshwater resources inland, and, of course, they provide opportunities for leisure activities like sunbathing. As human activity along the coast continues to increase with the development of towns and industries, managing erosion is becoming a problem of growing importance. The risk of flooding due to rising sea levels, attributed to the effects of global warming, makes finding a solution to erosion a priority. As well as protecting natural habitats, coastal management involves saving homes and businesses from damage or destruction, and failing to do this can have severe consequences for society and the economy. Coastlines are changed by the sea in two ways: erosion and longshore drift. Erosion happens through different processes, but essentially the action of the sea wears down features of the coastal landscape such as cliffs, beaches and sand dunes

Change is inevitable in any sphere of life. Although the results of change can bring great benefits, the process of change can be intensely traumatic, involve loss of choice, power and status, and when change happens in the workplace, it can even lead to loss of jobs. Many businesses and organisations use a model called the Change Curve to understand and manage how people react to change and the stages they go through before they accept it. The concept of the Change Curve is based on work by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Her book On Death & Dying, published in 1969, dealt with the trauma and shock that people who are facing the end of life experience and how their families are also affected. Kübler-Ross proposed several stages of grief as a way of helping patients face death and their relatives deal with its effects. Kübler-Ross’s ideas were groundbreaking but have since become one of the bases of grief support and counselling. Moreover, because the ideas give a framework for dealing with personal trauma and change and for helping people adjust emotionally to significant life events, the model has been adopted by organisational theory and business management. It is worth noting

A The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes three stages of adolescence. These are early, middle, and late adolescence, and each has its own developmental tasks. Teenagers move through these tasks at their own speed depending on their physical development and hormone levels. Although these stages are common to all teenagers, each child will go through them in his or her own highly individual way. B During the early years, young people make the first attempts to leave the dependent, secure role of a child and to establish themselves as unique individuals, independent of their parents. Early adolescence is marked by rapid physical growth and maturation. The focus of adolescents’ self-concepts is thus often on their physical self and their evaluation of their physical acceptability. Early adolescence is also a period of intense conformity to peers. ‘Getting along,’ not being different, and being accepted seem somehow pressing to the early adolescent. The worst possibility, from the view of the early adolescent, is to be seen by peers as ‘different’. C Middle adolescence is marked by the emergence of new thinking skills. The intellectual world of the young person is suddenly greatly expanded. Their concerns about peers are more directed toward their

BECOMING AN EXPERT Expertise is commitment coupled with creativity. Specifically, it is the commitment of time, energy, and resources to a relatively narrow field of study, and the creative energy necessary to generate new knowledge in that field. It takes a considerable amount of time and regular exposure to a large number of cases to become an expert. An individual enters a field of study as a novice. The novice needs to learn the guiding principles and rules of a given task in order to perform that task. Concurrently, the novice must be exposed to specific cases, or instances, that test the boundaries of such principles. Generally, a novice will find a mentor to guide them through the process of acquiring new knowledge. A simple example would be someone learning to play chess. The novice chess player seeks a mentor to teach them the objective of the game, the number of spaces, the names of the pieces, the function of each piece, how each piece is moved, and the necessary conditions for winning or losing. In time, and with much practice, the novice begins to recognise patterns of behaviour within cases and, thus, becomes a journeyman. With more practice and