In the last century, decreases in infant and child mortality, urbanization and increases in healthcare efficacy have reduced children's personal exposure to death and dying. So how do children acquire accurate conceptions of death in this context? In this paper, we discuss three sources of children's learning about death and dying, namely, direct experience of death, parental communication about death and portrayals of death in the media and the arts. We conclude with recommendations about how best to teach modern children about this aspect of life.This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead on the living in humans and other animals'.

A simple, versatile approach for the roughening of polymer microparticles surfaces via a deformation technique in the presence of an inorganic matrix is presented here. The process consists of straightforward steps: (1) preparation of a bicomposite colloidal sol, that is polymer particles and inorganic particles, dispersed in a liquid, (2) drying of the mixture onto a suitable hard substrate, (3) heating the dried film above the glass transition temperature of the polymer, and (4) re-dispersion and chemical etching of the inorganic medium. The primary driver is capillary imbibition of the polymer melt into the inorganic colloidal template. In addition, 2D particle tracking experiments of dispersed rough particles in water were performed to probe the diffusional behaviour of the roughened objects in comparison with their smooth precursors. We show that, despite large scale roughness (up to 10% asperity size with respect to particle diameter), Stokes law is obeyed and the particle motion can be modelled simply with the Stokes-Einstein-Sutherland relation.

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