Franklin Haltom O\u27Baugh: A Short Biography

On February 9, 1922, the O’Baugh family of Arkadelphia, Arkansas, welcomed their sixth (of eight) child: Franklin Haltom O’Baugh. The O’Baugh family has somewhat of a legacy in this small town: J.H. O’Baugh, paternal great-grandfather to Franklin, was Arkadelphia’s first mayor when the city was incorporated in 1857 as county seat for one of Arkansas’ five oldest counties. As a bricklayer, J.H. O’Baugh developed the city first by building Arkadelphia’s original courthouse and then would-be Confederate Governor of Arkansas Harris Flanagin’s law office, which still stands today across from the current courthouse. Later on, he served as County Judge during the Civil War

The Hard Decisions: A Qualitative Study of Marital Reconciliation

The topics of marriage and divorce have been studied extensively, especially in recent decades; however, the topic of marital reconciliation has been scarcely researched. Seven couples (N = 14) participated in a qualitative investigation of marital reconciliation. Each couple had filed a petition for divorce in the state of Louisiana between the years 2000-2010. Before the required 12 month period of living apart were complete, each couple decided to discontinue the divorce proceedings and reconcile their marriages, and have lived together continuously for a period of more than three years. A purposive, convenience sample was solicited due to the specific participation criteria of the study. Each husband and wife individually completed a semi-structured, open-ended interview, then an additional interview was conducted with the couple together. Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using grounded theory techniques. Three primary themes emerged from the analysis as factors in the decision making process to reconcile: (a) Support systems, (b) Outlook and attitude regarding marriage and divorce, and (c) The importance of hard work in marriage. Both scholarly and clinical implications are discussed, as well as suggestions for future research

Liveable for whom? Prospects of urban liveability to address health inequities

The aspiration of liveable cities, underpinned by the New Urban Agenda, is gaining popularity as a mechanism to enhance population health and wellbeing. However, less attention has been given to understanding how urban liveability may provide an opportunity to redress health inequities. Using an environmental justice lens, this paper investigates whether urban liveability poses an opportunity or threat to reducing health inequities and outlines a future research agenda. Selected urban liveability attributes, being: education; employment; food, alcohol, and tobacco; green space; housing; transport; and walkability, were investigated to understand how they can serve to widen or narrow inequities. Some domains showed consistent evidence, others suggested context-specific associations that made it difficult to draw general conclusions, and some showed a reverse patterning with the social gradient, but with poorer outcomes. This suggests urban liveability attributes have equigenic potential, but operate within a complex system. We conclude more disadvantaged neighbourhoods and their residents likely have additional policy and design considerations for optimising outcomes, especially as changes to the contextual environment may impact neighbourhood composition through displacement and/or pulling up effects. Future research needs to continue to explore downstream associations using longitudinal and natural experiments, and also seek to gain a deeper understanding of the urban liveability system, including interactions, feedback loops, and non-linear and linear responses. There is a need to monitor neighbourhood population changes over time to understand how liveability impacts the most vulnerable. Other areas worthy of further investigation include applying a life course approach and understanding liveability within the context of other adversities and contextual settings

A win-win for legume mixtures

The inter-relationship between food production and biodiversity is now well established. The ecosystem services provided by the organisms within the environment include, for example, nutrient cycling, pest regulation and pollination, to name but a few. However, perhaps the greatest challenge now facing agricultural production is to find ways of enhancing these ecosystem services, while at the same time increasing food production – particularly in light of food security issues. A range of farm and landscape management options include ‘setting aside’ land for wildlife. However, some proponents argue that such land should be used for food production. While the debate continues, there is no doubt that a large body of scientific evidence from the last three decades highlights the wildlife benefits of organic farming. This article will describe how the Legume LINK project has identified a win-win system for biodiversity conservation and increased productivity through legume-base fertility building. Although this project has focused on organic farming systems, it is of direct relevance to non-organic production, particularly with the increasing interest in legumes across the industry

Development of a Click Hydrogel Platform for Chemo-Optical Glucose Sensing

A need exists for the development of a continuous glucose monitoring system to improve the management and treatment of diabetes mellitus. Click hydrogels are a promising platform for an implantable, continuous glucose monitoring system because of their ease of fabrication, highly specific chemistry, tunable properties, and ability to incorporate sensing moieties. Recent research has demonstrated the ability to monitor glucose levels by immobilizing glucose sensing enzymes, specifically glucose oxidase (GOx), within a hydrogel network. When coupled with an oxygen sensitive phosphorescent dye, glucose levels can be quantified optically when interrogated with light. To advance this technology, this project builds on previous work in our lab that demonstrated the ability to create protein functionalized hydrogel microparticles utilizing sequential click reactions. By harnessing this powerful chemistry, the GOx enzyme can be modified with a tetrazine group in aqueous solution and then subsequently added in 8, 4, 2, 1, and 0.5 mg/mL GOx concentrations to hydrogel microparticles. This work will seek to demonstrate the ability of click hydrogel microparticles to serve as a promising chemo-optical glucose-sensing platform for continuous glucose level monitoring

Adiantum capillus-veneris (Maidenhair Fern) along the Vale of Glamorgan Coastline, South Wales, UK: a comparison of surveys over 30 years

Adiantum capillus-veneris (Maidenhair Fern), occurs on all continents except the Antarctic, and is considered stable worldwide (Lansdown & Bilz, 2013). In the UK the vascular plants red data list reports the status of A. capillusveneris as of ‘least concern’ (Cheffings et al., 2005). Native populations occur mainly in crevices or on tufa deposits, limited to a few scattered coastal localities (Stewart et al., 1994). Wales is home to about 25% of the UK’s native population (Dines, 2008) mainly concentrated along the Vale of Glamorgan Coastline and to a lesser extent in Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire. The earliest record (Llwyd, 1698), at Jacksons Bay, Barry Island suggest populations have been persistent for at least 300 years. Historical records for A. capillus- veneris can also be found for Porthkerry; 1838, Dunraven Bay; 1849, Aberthaw; 1862 and Font-y-Gary, 1927 and A. capillus-veneris is still present at all of the aforementioned sites. A. capillus-veneris’s natural habitat in South Wales is primarily restricted to active post glacial tufaceous cliff face seepages which are frequently, but not entirely, associated with the Jurassic Lias bedrock that defines the Vale of Glamorgan ‘Heritage Coast’. The interbedded nature of the Jurassic Lias rocks, with relatively impermeable, thinly interbedded limestones and calcareous mudstones (Wilson et al., 1990), favours the slow diffuse seepage of groundwater across large areas of cliff face supporting the formation of tufa. Tufa forms when groundwater, supersaturated with calcium carbonate dissolved from the bedrock aquifer, re-deposits the material on contact with the atmosphere. Three surveys across the Vale of Glamorgan coastline have been undertaken, the first by Peter S. Jones (1983-4) then Kate Pryor 1996 (reported in Pryor, 2001) and again in 2015 by the authors. Molecular studies of several populations along the coast (Pryor, 2001 & Pryor et al., 2001) provide insight into the genetics of satellite populations, however further discussion of this is outside of the scope of this note. The aim of this survey was to collate and compare the locations of populations recorded over the last 30 years. It is hoped that this will serve as a useful baseline for repeat surveys in the future

Seasonal wind patterns around the Western Australian coastline and their application in fisheries analysis

Monthly wind statistics have been derived for 23 weather stations along the Western Australian coast from Wyndham in the north-east of the state, down the west coast and around to Eucla in the south-east. The overall seasonal wind cycle at each site has been derived based on the 30-year period 1982 to 2011 (although a few stations had shorter records), and these show the major changes between the wind regimes along the Northwest Shelf, the west coast and the south coast

Corticomotor responses to attentionally demanding motor performance: a mini-review

Increased attentional demand has been shown to reduce motor performance, leading to increases in accidents, particularly in elderly populations. While these deficits have been well documented behaviorally, their cortical correlates are less well known. Increased attention has been shown to affect activity in prefrontal regions of the cortex. However there have been varying results within past research investigating corticomotor regions, mediating motor performance. This mini-review initially discusses past behavioral research, before moving to studies investigating corticomotor areas in response to changes in attention. Recent dual task studies have revealed a possible decline in the ability of older, but not younger, adults to activate inhibitory processes within the motor cortex, which may be correlated with poor motor performance, and thus accidents. A reduction in cortical inhibition may be caused by neurodegeneration within prefrontal regions of the cortex with age, rendering older adults less able to allocate attention to corticomotor regions

A participatory approach to variety trials for organic systems

A participatory research methodology was used to compare the performance of UK wheat varieties under organic conditions. Plots of three breadmaking winter wheat varieties (Hereward, Solstice and Xi19) and a mixture (1:1:1) of the varieties were grown at 19 UK farms in two seasons (2003/04 and 2004/05). Meas-urements were taken of growth habit, yield and grain quality. Grain yields in both seasons showed significant site by variety interactions, although the variation among sites was greater than among varieties in both instances. Wheat grown at Western sites was significantly shorter and higher-yielding than that grown at Eastern sites in 2003/04 but significantly taller in 2004/05. As with grain yield, greater variation among site than variety was found in the Hagberg Falling Number and protein concentra-tion results in both seasons. The results from the two years of trials illustrate the variability of organic systems and the difficulty in selecting a single variety suitable for organic farms

A visual study of computers on doctors' desks

Background General practice has rapidly computerised over the past ten years, thereby changing the nature of general practice rooms. Most general practice consulting rooms were designed and created in an era without computer hardware, establishing a pattern of work around maximising the doctor-patient relationship. General practitioners (GPs) and patients have had to integrate the computer into this environment. Methods Twenty GPs allowed access to their rooms and consultations as part of a larger study. The results are based on an analysis of still shots of the consulting rooms. Analysis used dramaturgical methodology; thus the room is described as though it is the setting for a play. Results First, several desk areas were identified: a shared or patient area, a working area, a clinical area and an administrative area. Then, within that framework, we were able to identify two broad categories of setting, one inclusive of the patient and one exclusive. Conclusion With the increasing significance of the computer in the three-way doctor_patient_computer relationship, an understanding of the social milieu in which the three players in the consultation interact (the staging) will inform further analysis of the interaction, and allow a framework for assessing the effects of different computer placements