Don't look north through rose tinted spectacles: tensions, struggles and guiding lights in Scotland - a reflection

‘Scotland has been developing a remarkable adult literacy and numeracy strategy….[it is]…..one of the most dynamic and exciting places in the world right now to be an adult literacy or numeracy practitioner’ (‘Why England should look North for inspiration’. Merrifield, J. 2005, pp 21 and 22). Juliet’s and three other articles in the Reflect journal, October 2005, collectively paint a wonderfully rosy picture of policy, strategy and provision north of the border though Juliet herself recognises the ‘frustration, confusion, dissatisfaction and resistance’ (p 22) that inevitably accompany radical change on the scale that Scotland is striving to implement. Whilst not intending to counter the key tenets of these articles, nor to deny the innovative work that is undoubtedly happening, I want to talk about the flip side of this ‘remarkable’ coin; to balance the hype a little and to offer what I see as a more grounded perspective of ALN in the country. I do this because I believe that whilst we justifiably celebrate the ‘moment of opportunity’ (Hamilton, Macrae and Tett, 2001. p 39) we are presented with, if we cannot publicly debate the tensions, contradictions and shortcomings that we encounter in our literacies’ work, we may be in danger of losing the direction, the ideals and ultimately the opportunities that currently excite and spur us forward

Totally geodesic surfaces with arbitrarily many compressions

A closed totally geodesic surface in the figure eight knot complement remains incompressible in all but finitely many Dehn fillings. In this paper, we show that there is no universal upper bound on the number of such fillings, independent of the surface. This answers a question of Ying-Qing Wu

Cardiac evaluation of young athletes: Time for a risk-based approach?

Pre-participation cardiovascular screening (PPCS) is recommended by several scientific and sporting organizations on the premise that early detection of cardiac disease provides a platform for individualized risk assessment and management; which has been proven to lower mortality rates for certain conditions associated with sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and sudden cardiac death (SCD). What constitutes the most effective strategy for PPCS of young athletes remains a topic of considerable debate. The addition of the electrocardiogram (ECG) to the medical history and physical examination undoubtedly enhances early detection of disease, which meets the primary objective of PPCS. The benefit of enhanced sensitivity must be carefully balanced against the risk of potential harm through increased false-positive findings, costly downstream investigations, and unnecessary restriction/disqualification from competitive sports. To mitigate this risk, it is essential that ECG-based PPCS programs are implemented by institutions with a strong infrastructure and by physicians appropriately trained in modern ECG standards with adequate cardiology resources to guide downstream investigations. While PPCS is compulsory for most competitive athletes, the current debate surrounding ECG-based programs exists in a binary form; whereby ECG screening is mandated for all competitive athletes or none at all. This polarized approach fails to consider individualized patient risk and the available sports cardiology resources. The limitations of a uniform approach are highlighted by evolving data, which suggest that athletes display a differential risk profile for SCA/SCD, which is influenced by age, sex, ethnicity, sporting discipline, and standard of play. Evaluation of the etiology of SCA/SCD within high-risk populations reveals a disproportionately higher prevalence of ECG-detectable conditions. Selective ECG screening using a risk-based approach may, therefore, offer a more cost-effective and feasible approach to PPCS in the setting of limited sports cardiology resources, although this approach is not without important ethical considerations

Factors behind the rise and fall of farmland prices: a preliminary assessment

Agricultural prices