A few days ago, my five-year-old daughter rushed home from school excitedly telling me about a volcano that had erupted for “the first time since mummy was little” in a “country called Aeee”. I was pretty thrown. But a quick Google search revealed there was lava spilling from the world’s largest volcano, Mauna Loa.

Now, many of you will know that Mauna Loa is located on the Big Island of the state of Hawaii, not “a country called Aeee”. But, as I say, she’s five. I was delighted she was so interested in what was happening. I was also thrilled then, when Conversation colleagues in the US published this piece explaining what is so unusual about this and other volcanoes in the Hawaii zone. It's author, Gabi Laske, is a geophysicist at the University of California-San Diego who led one of the first projects to map the deep plumbing that feeds the Hawaiian volcanoes.

So, my horizons have been expanded by my daughter. It’s a regular occurrence these days. But it seems my brain may have been altered by her very arrival, and the degree to which I have engaged with her since. This team of researchers in California and Spain found “several significant changes in the brains of fathers from prenatal to postpartum periods.

Elsewhere, check out our analysis of this week’s protests in China and the wider issue of the country’s relations with the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, a spectacular new gallery has opened in Sydney.