Barriers and Enablers to Planning Initiatives for Active Living and Health

The response of local government (LG) to issues of rising rates of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) is an important one given their roles as place managers. This article explores the experiences of LG built environment and community health practitioners to identify barriers and enablers to the implementation of healthy planning and associated active living promotion efforts. The role of Australian LG in community health is presented, followed by findings from practitioner surveys and policy analysis undertaken, with subsequent discussion of the barriers and enablers. Six key enablers and barriers to successful project implementation were identified: (1) internal LG functioning, (2) the promotion of co-benefits, (3) partnerships, (4) the value of recognition and good news, (5) placing a mandate for action on LG and (6) funding and resourcin

Hashtagging depression on Instagram: Towards a more inclusive mental health research methodology

Heavily used hashtags on Instagram and other platforms can indicate extensive public engagement with issues, events, or collective experiences. This paper extends existing research methods to paint a fuller picture of how people engage collectively with public issues online. Focusing on Instagram content often deemed 'problematic', we develop and test what we call a 'hashtag practice' approach. This approach targets the hashtag #depressed, but also moves beyond it to: a) incorporate the posts immediately preceding and following a root post, b) more inclusively sample content associated with the hashtag to combat filtering bias, c) consider collocated hashtags, and d) draw on contextual cues in the interplay between posts' visual content, captions and profile management. The method shows the prevalence and significance of aesthetic and memetic practices, and caution in embodiment in mental health posts, revealing more diverse forms of engagement with mental health on Instagram than previous research suggests

Policies, politics, and paradigms: Healthy planning in Australian Local Government

Local government in Australia is critically positioned to provide built environment initiatives that respond to the increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCD), climate change, and various other human and ecological health considerations. However, action on the ground has not been as widespread as might be expected, particularly in improving community health. This research explores the barriers to and enablers of the implementation of healthy planning and active living initiatives through in-depth interviews with healthy planning and active living advocates. Advocates are seen to promote healthy planning in relatively weak policy settings, where politicised, largely reactive decisions by individual politicians or practitioners are the main determinants of project success. The most important factor affecting project uptake and implementation is how the 'problem' of healthy planning, or what might be considered a healthy planning paradigm, is presented. Such a paradigm includes a strong reliance on the co-benefits of projects; it is also subject to the way that healthy planning is communicated and framed. Potential problems around such a setting are subsequently examined, identifying the potential reasons for the slow delivery of healthy planning

The Oombulgurri Project Clancy Committee report

In early August the Oombulgurri community requested assistance in the following terms. On behalf of the Oombulgurri Community, we invite assistance in developing the grain and pasture cropping at Oombulgurri. We have experimented with peanuts, sorghum, and many varieties of vegetables. This has tested the reality of hopes to expand acreage and varieties to become self-sufficient in stock feed. The Farm and Garden Guild now needs the expertise of your services to plan a four-year programme. vie need assistance in choosing from the many options, opinions and advices available from Australia and elsewhere, for grain production, pastures, methods appropriate to our geography, and machinery, to minimise expenditure and produce food for the stock expansion necessary to be self-sufficient in locally produced food for the town. Our concerns so far have been to start poultry, pigs, goats and horses stocking to provide useful work for everyone and food „ ually increase production and decrease imports with the appropriate use of manpower, water and other resources. We believe we can produce stock feed locally and grad- We attach our initial estimates of need which includes an estimate of projected stocking and machinery needs as well as a list of what is on hand

Experiences of being exposed to intimate partner violence during pregnancy

In this study a phenomenological approach was used in order to enter deeply into the experience of living with violence during pregnancy. The aim of the study was to gain a deeper understanding of women's experiences of being exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy. The data were collected through in-depth interviews with five Norwegian women; two during pregnancy and three after the birth. The women were between the age of 20 and 38 years. All women had received support from a professional research and treatment centre. The essential structure shows that IPV during pregnancy is characterized by difficult existential choices related to ambivalence. Existential choices mean questioning one's existence, the meaning of life as well as one's responsibility for oneself and others. Five constituents further explain the essential structure: Living in unpredictability, the violence is living in the body, losing oneself, feeling lonely and being pregnant leads to change. Future life with the child is experienced as a possibility for existential change. It is important for health professionals to recognize and support pregnant women who are exposed to violence as well as treating their bodies with care and respect

A ‘living fossil’ eel (Anguilliformes: Protanguillidae, fam. nov.) from an undersea cave in Palau

We report the discovery of an enigmatic, small eel-like fish from a 35 m-deep fringing-reef cave in the western Pacific Ocean Republic of Palau that exhibits an unusual suite of morphological characters. Many of these uniquely characterize the Recent members of the 19 families comprising the elopomorph order Anguilliformes, the true eels. Others are found among anguilliforms only in the Cretaceous fossils, and still others are primitive with respect to both Recent and fossil eels. Thus, morphological evidence explicitly places it as the most basal lineage (i.e. the sister group of extant anguilliforms). Phylogenetic analysis and divergence time estimation based on whole mitogenome sequences from various actinopterygians, including representatives of all eel families, demonstrate that this fish represents one of the most basal, independent lineages of the true eels, with a long evolutionary history comparable to that of the entire Anguilliformes (approx. 200 Myr). Such a long, independent evolutionary history dating back to the early Mesozoic and a retention of primitive morphological features (e.g. the presence of a premaxilla, metapterygoid, free symplectic, gill rakers, pseudobranch and distinct caudal fin rays) warrant recognition of this species as a ‘living fossil’ of the true eels, herein described as Protanguilla palau genus et species nov. in the new family Protanguillidae