From today's UK papers

GUARDIAN

Former maths teacher - and teaching union head - John Dunford responds to a survey in which children depicted maths teachers as lonely, bald and unstylish.

INDEPENDENT

An economist at St. Andrews University has won support from more than 1,000 scholars for a challenge to the dominance of some of the world's largest academic publishers.

The venom of the tarantula spider is being used by a team at the University of New York, Buffalo, to develop a drug to combat heart flutter.

DAILY TELEGRAPH

A former beach bum has been given £5,000 by the Millennium Commission to teach sand sculpting.

Urban smog damages the lungs of children and could cause asthma, say researchers at the University of California, Davis, confirming a widely suspected but never proven link between pollution and breathing problems.

MISCELLANY

Britain will face the annual scourge of deaths and serious illness caused by meninigitis for at least another five years despite the success of a £20m vaccination campaign which has all but eliminated one strain of the disease, officials admitted yesterday ( Independent , Daily Telegraph ).

Royal Geographical Society conference: Alps may crumble as permafrost melts; Italian wolves develop a taste for French lamb;  Prescott beats Tories on completing road schemes ( Guardian , Daily Telegraph , Times ).