Physical education and health: moving forwards or ‘going round in circles’?

Alfrey, Cale and Webb (2012a) conducted research to explore and also try to explain physical education teachers’ experiences, views and understandings of health within physical education, inclusive of their professional development. This article provides a summary of this study and draws on and reports selected findings from this initial paper, as well as wider literature, to debate the role, contribution and effectiveness of physical education and physical education teachers in the delivery of health. A number of observations and issues are highlighted and these are used to address the question: is physical education making progress and moving forwards in this area

Provision for students with learning difficulties in general colleges of further education - have we been going round in circles?

This is a PDF version of an article published in British journal of special education© 2006. The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com.This article discusses the current situation for students with severe learning difficulties in general colleges of further education. Findings are presented from a critical review of the literature and a small-scale preliminary investigation which set out to explore the idea that, despite radical changes to the special school sector and to the structure and organisation of further education, provision in colleges of further education for these students is poorly focused. Students with severe learning difficulties experience provision that is, at best, circuitous and repetitive and that, at worst, leads individuals back into dependence, unemployment and social segregation. Using the outcomes of interviews and the scrutiny of inspection reports, a searching critique of current practice and an interesting set of recommendations for ways in which the situation could be radically reviewed and improved is provided

Going Round in Circles with N -> S Acyl Transfer

It is not highly sophisticated, yet the N→S acyl transfer reaction of a native peptide sequence potentially fills an important technology gap. While several routes to synthetic peptide thioesters exist, only one is routinely applicable for biologically derived samples. Using the naturally occurring amino acid cysteine as the sole activator for N→S acyl transfer we have demonstrated transformation of synthetic and biologically derived precursors into thioesters for use in Native Chemical Ligation, providing a viable alternative for biological samples. Further refinement will be key to realising the full potential of this intriguing process, and increase the number of applications in peptide engineering and therapeutics

Going Round in Circles with a Multisystemic Disease: A Unique Case of Parasitic Aortitis

Aortitis results from aortic inflammation, frequent causes being infections and rheumatological disorders. The authors report the case of a 33-year-old black male with recent arterial hypertension, who presented with recurrent abdominal pain, jaundice, anorexia, weight loss and diarrhoea. Laboratory work-up was compatible with inflammatory anaemia and obstructive jaundice, while abdominal imaging revealed a dilated biliary tract, no visible gallstones, cephalic pancreatic globosity and aortic thickening. Pancreatic aspirate was negative for malignant cells, bacteria and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The jaundice spontaneously subsided and the pancreatic globosity improved over time. Following positive PPD and IGRA, isoniazid was started. However, follow-up investigations revealed a severe bulbar stenosis with intense eosinophilic infiltrate, multiple non-necrotizing granulomas, and thoracic and abdominal aortitis not previously recognized. Immunological profile (ECA, ANCA and IgG4), eggs and parasites in stool samples were negative. The multisystemic disease, with an insidious and migrating behaviour, gastrointestinal and vascular involvement, granulomatous inflammatory response and tissue eosinophilia, raised the suspicion of a parasitic infestation (despite negative screening) or vasculitis. After 7 days of empirical treatment with albendazole and ivermectin, the patient passed a specimen of Ascaris lumbricoides in the stool and improved clinically

Brexit and the voice of the people: but which people? The UACES Blog [weblog article, 5 February 2019]

Brexit has been debated and unpicked to exhaustion. Writing in February 2019, Brexit is beginning to feel like a bad soap opera whose scriptwriter has run out of ideas. The plot is going round in circles. And yet, most discussions revert one way or another to sovereignty, migration and economy – all with clear nationalistic and imperialistic overtones. Debates about people or ‘the people’ seem to be at the core of these discussion, especially when it comes to migration. All such debates are implicitly or explicitly about ‘us’ and ‘them’. This binary(ies) need challenging. What is also needed is a recognition of the multiple further intersections and subgroups within these binaries of groups of people

Broken Lefschetz fibrations and smooth structures on 4–manifolds

The broken genera are orientation preserving diffeomorphism invariants of closed oriented 4-manifolds, defined via broken Lefschetz fibrations. We study the properties of the broken genera invariants, and calculate them for various 4-manifolds, while showing that the invariants are sensitive to exotic smooth structures.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure

Fat handles and phase portraits of Non Singular Morse-Smale flows on S^3 with unknotted saddle orbits

In this paper we build Non-singular Morse-Smale flows on S^3 with unknotted and unlinked saddle orbits by identifying fat round handles along their boundaries. This way of building the flows enables to get their phase portraits. We also show that the presence of heteroclinic trajectories imposes an order in the round handle decomposition of these flows; this order is total for NMS flows composed of one repulsive, one attractive and n unknotted saddle orbits, for n >1.Comment: 15 page