Belligerent Mothers and the Power of Feminine Speech in _The Owl and the Nightingale_

The Middle English poem The Owl and the Nightingale famously records the dispute between a hostile Nightingale and a bellicose Owl. Within that dialogue the birds reproduce themselves in word and egg, in rhetoric and body. Their digressions on bodies and scatology and on childbearing and childrearing become fertilizer that expands maternal authority into public, intellectual discourse. In addition to calling forth their own communicative powers, both characters aggressively recount narratives best known from the work of Marie de France, a voice feminist scholars have successfully restored to the canon, to condemn their foe. In this light, I argue, The Owl and the Nightingale encourages feminist labor when it recounts a woman’s writing without acknowledging her authorship and material feminist analysis when it puts such an artful dispute in the voices of vividly embodied avian mothers

Emergency Preparedness Competencies Among Nurses in Northwest Arkansas

Despite years of training and experience, evidence suggests nurses report wide gaps in emergency competencies and disaster preparedness. Further, nurses report low levels of familiarity in competencies related to planning for disasters, implementing disaster guidelines, and assessing patients exposed to biological and chemical agents. This research sought to establish the self-reported level of emergency preparedness competencies of nurses in Northwest Arkansas, an area that faces a diverse set of potential disasters ranging from nuclear accidents to pandemic disease. Additionally, differences between of the level of preparedness by education level or work specialty were studied. The results are alarming in that the scores indicate a significant weakness in nurses’ emergency preparedness knowledge, regardless of education or work specialty. It is of great concern that nurses have low levels of familiarity with disaster response concepts. This research is congruent with extant literature demonstrating that nurses across the United States lack sufficient knowledge in the arena of emergency preparedness. In the event of a disaster, the community would be detrimentally impacted by this lack of vital knowledge, potentially degrading patient outcomes. The results of this survey, as well as previous research, demonstrate the need to improve the education of nurses so they may meet the demands of the population in the most urgent of situations

Length-length and weight-length relationships of seven deep-water fishes in the Gulf of Mexico

Regression coefficients for equations of the form Y = a + bX were estimated for total length (TL) and whole weight (W) as a function of standard length (SL) and fork length (FL) and vice versa for seven deep-water fishes. All lengths were measured in millimeters and all weights in grams. There was a significant correlation between weight and length and the types of length measurements for all species. However, the amount of variation explained by each regression varied among species. Weight-length regressions were less precise than length-length regression, as they generally are, because weights of small fish measured at sea are more inaccurate than those of large fish.Marine Scienc

Multidentate Sulfur-Containing Ligands

Novel sulfur-containing ligands for binding of heavy metals are disclosed. To read the remainder of this abstract, please download this patent

Habitat assessment and ecological restoration design for an unnamed tributary of Stone Dam Creek, Conway, Arkansas

Urbanization can lead to increased sedimentation, erosion, pollution, and runoff into streams. The United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) Rapid Bioassessment Protocols (RBPs) are sets of guidelines that can be used to assess a habitat’s sedimentology, hydrology, vegetation, and geomorphology to determine impairment. An unnamed tributary of Stone Dam Creek on the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) campus in Conway, Arkansas runs partially underground and through the urbanized UCA campus watershed. The stream was assessed using the USEPA’s RBPs to determine impairment of the stream, and received a RBP score of 71.2 out of 200 compared to 153.5 in a reference stream. An ecological restoration design was then prepared for a 2-year, 1-hour rainfall event to address areas of impairment. The goal was to increase the RBP score by increasing cross-sectional area of the stream as well as by improving stream morphology where possible. With the proposed design, modeled stream velocity was reduced throughout the stream by an average of 19.6%. It was assessed that as a result of the reduction in velocity and changes to morphology, RPB scores would increase throughout the stream reach