There are times when I wish my family’s life revolved a little less around Andy Murray. Two words, "Andy’s playing", are sufficient reason for outings to be delayed or abandoned; invitations turned down; even holiday dates tweaked.

“I AM an Asian Tiger Mum, for whom education is the only way to success for my children, and excellence in music, sport and ballet is a prerequisite to living any sort of life at all.”

EUGENE Cairns (Herald Letters, May 6) feels that a fitting tribute to our NHS heroes would be to name hospitals and wards after those who have died in our service during the pandemic crisis.

FROM the nation's fascination with Elon Musk's Starlink satellites passing overhead to fevered speculation about military aircraft being spotted soaring above our rooftops, it suddenly seems like many of us are gazing towards the heavens.

Stand-up Romesh Ranganathan is back with a second series of topical comedy show The Ranganation. He talks to Sherna Noah about filming the show in lockdown, the place of comedy in a crisis, and spending so much time with his family.

What's the story?

RIGHT now, Tori Amos says, the big thing is to resist despondency. “That is an illness,” she tells me near the end of our conversation. “That is cancerous. And it can spread through your whole being and you don’t even realise. You’re in a mental war and you don’t know how to get out of it, and you do have to have words with yourself.”

SOMETIMES, for a giggle, I like to imagine what Scotland would have been like had we kept the oil for ourselves. Like Saudi Arabia without the weather and executions, maybe? Or more like canny Norway, investing the cash in a big brolly for some future rainy day?

School-based health centers can powerfully expand health-care access and support academic achievement, argue John Jackson and John Schlitt.

It is true, as the Education Secretary John Swinney said this week, that it “takes time” to implement reforms in education, and natural that, since the effects must be seen as a cohort of students moves through the various stages, any improvement will take a while to evaluate.

THE Government’s ambition to reach a daily target of 100,000 tests across the UK by the end of the month will, as Matt Hancock admitted, require a “huge amount of work”.

The money is better spent on sincere and hardworking teachers.

Social networks are calling themselves platforms rather than publishers to skirt around legal issues, and it has to stop.

I'm amazed at how reliant this younger generation is on their smartphones. I think it's weird, but you can use that generation's screen addiction to your benefit.

Poor feedback, ineffective guidance and instructions, and lack of adaptivity are some of the key shortcomings identified by researchers in a study of 171 popular mobile learning apps for 3-5 year olds.

A textbook is no longer enough in many classrooms, writes Dan McDowell, but finding the right OER materials can be tricky.

The move to middle school can be a rougher adjustment for students who were high achievers at their elementary schools, finds a new study.

Chris Knutson, an 8th grade history teacher at Horning Middle School in Waukesha, Wis., shares how he incorporates learning conferences into his lessons.

For me, art galleries have always provided shelter from the storm. The tempest in question might be a literal one, such as Storm Dennis, who buffeted us all from on high last weekend, or it could simply be a sudden squall in the mind. Art in all forms can take us out of ourselves – even if it's for a split-second – and recalibrate the mind.

For three decades now, the artist and playwright John Byrne has been sitting regularly for photographer David Eustace, the Glasgow-born photographer who left school at 16 and joined first the navy and then the prison service before settling on a career behind a camera.

The Herald, in proud partnership with Royal Bank of Scotland, is inviting the country's photographers to enter their most accomplished work in a new competition which celebrates the launch of a stunning new £20 banknote design.

OF course, it’s a ridiculous idea. The 10 best Scottish paintings. As if anyone could choose. But if you take the folly of it as read, well, then, why not? See it as a game. A declaration of taste and bias, prejudice and ignorance and, more than likely, stupidity. Something to argue with at the very least. A list to incite your own counterblast.

By John-Paul Holden

THE most recent onslaught on Scotland’s farmed salmon industry has come from The Sustainable Inshore Fisheries Trust, who commissioned a report from Salmon & Trout Conservation Scotland claiming that the value of farmed salmon to the Scottish economy, and the number of people it employs, are both massively overestimated by a staggering 251%. The success of Scotland’s aquaculture industry and its employment of large numbers in remote, rural parts, has always rankled with the industry’s crit

GLUMNESS settles on a large part of the nation whenever the subject of comedy comes up now. The lockdown has led to a more frenetic search for entertainment, and the current state of humour hasn’t wanted for critics. This week, Royle Family star Ricky Tomlinson, 80, said it was dire, and listed several comedians, adding: “They should be done under the Trade Description Act.”

The first season of the Netflix political potboiler was rich with education-policy plotlines, and we're hoping for more of the same.

From age 17, Ana Maria prayed to serve God in Switzerland. While she waited, she became a dance instructor with no idea dance would become her ministry.

Youth and grassroots football was the focus on Tuesday as UEFA President Michel Platini attended the finals of a grassroots programme and a new maxi-pitch was opened in Bucharest.

On Wednesday, the third annual UEFA Grassroots Day will be celebrated across Europe with grassroots-based activities and events arranged to take place in Munich and beyond.

The 2012 UEFA Grassroots Day Awards have been revealed, with the best leaders, clubs and projects from around Europe recognised for their achievements in the grassroots game.

UEFA Grassroots Day has been marked in Munich and all over Europe with a series of especially arranged activities promoting the message that football is open to everyone.

Youngsters in Northern Ireland celebrated UEFA EURO 2012 with a specially-themed event for UEFA Grassroots Day, one of several activities arranged across the country.

UEFA partner, the Homeless World Cup, added its support for UEFA Grassroots Day in May with the organisation of 41 events in countries from Europe and around the world.

The grassroots programme of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Football Federation has been given special recognition during an ceremony hosted by the Bosnian Olympic Committee.

Youth and grassroots football was the focus as UEFA President Michel Platini attended the finals of a grassroots programme and a new maxi-pitch was opened in Amsterdam.

The UEFA Europa League takes centre stage in Turin this week but the grassroots are never forgotten, with events held at a famous city square and a juvenile detention centre.

A pastor and OM couple start a new church in Tonami, Japan, a rural town of 50,000.

Nagasaki, Japan :: Crewmembers serve with a local group of volunteers who provide food for the few homeless in Nagasaki.

Two OMers were asked to help a church network deliver relief supplies to churches in Kumamoto after two large earthquakes had struck the area.

Source: The Irish Times - Harold Kingston, who runs a dairy farm in Courtmacsharry, Co Cork, with 160 cattle, is typical of the new generation of smart farmers, who have adjusted how they work in response to climate change.

With more than 130,000 black ELLs in public schools, White House and U.S. Department of Education officials will develop tools for educators.

Californians are expected to reinstate bilingual education. The vote is likely to be a milestone in the rise of Latino voting power. Bad news for Donald Trump; worse news for the GOP.

The ballot measure essentially repeals Proposition 227, the 1998 law that made it tougher for districts to offer bilingual education.

In California, nearly 1 in every 4 children don't speak English fluently. On Election Day, the state's voters will decide whether to overturn a longstanding policy of teaching these children in English-only classrooms, or whether to embrace bilingual forms of teaching.

Little is known about the pharmacokinetics and required dosage of metronidazole in preterm neonates.

In this study the pharmacokinetics of metronidazole in preterm neonates was investigated by measurement of the drug in dried blood-spot samples. A dosage regimen is proposed that should result in more appropriate, less frequent dosing in the most preterm neonates. (Read the full article)

Several qualitative studies have revealed that caregivers use infant fussing as a cue for beginning complementary feeding (CF). Despite a higher prevalence of early CF among black infants, few studies have quantitatively examined the role of maternal perception of infant fussiness.

Results of this study show that in a cohort of low-income, black, first-time mothers, early CF was highly prevalent and that maternal perception of infant temperament, breastfeeding, and maternal obesity and depression were important factors related to early CF. (Read the full article)

Approximately 27% of children with rotavirus in the hospital acquire it while hospitalized for another condition. Pediatric rotavirus vaccination greatly decreased the number of children hospitalized with rotavirus from 2007 to 2008.

Routine community-based rotavirus infant vaccination protects hospitalized children from acquiring rotavirus. Thus, community-based vaccination efforts should be encouraged as a strategy to decrease hospital-acquired rotavirus. (Read the full article)

Most childhood HIV is acquired through perinatal transmission, some of which is preventable. Practitioners need to understand what proportion of perinatally acquired HIV infections are attributable to missed prevention opportunities.

Missed prevention opportunities include lack of early HIV testing for pregnant women; suboptimal use of antiretroviral medications during pregnancy, labor, or delivery or for the neonate; breastfeeding; and vaginal delivery when maternal viral load was ≥1000 copies/mL. (Read the full article)

Children with sickle cell disease are at high risk of complications from influenza infection and have been recommended to receive annual influenza vaccine since the 1970s. Few safety studies, however, have examined the safety of influenza vaccine in this population.

This large cohort study did not find an association between influenza vaccination and hospitalization for sickle cell crises in children with sickle cell anemia. (Read the full article)