Random reflections on the study of history in South Africa : inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University

Inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes UniversityRhodes University Libraries (Digitisation

“You don’t immediately stick a label on them”: a qualitative study of influences on general practitioners’ recording of anxiety disorders

Objectives: Anxiety is a common condition usually managed in general practice (GP) in the UK. GP patient records can be used for epidemiological studies of anxiety as well as clinical audit and service planning. However it is not clear how General Practitioners (GPs) conceptualise, diagnose and document anxiety in these records. We sought to understand these factors through an interview study with GPs. Setting: United Kingdom (UK) NHS General Practice (England and Wales) Participants: 17 UK GPs Primary and Secondary Outcome Measures: Semi-structured interviews used vignettes to explore the process of diagnosing anxiety in primary care and investigate influences on recording. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: GPs chose 12 different codes for recording anxiety in the two vignettes, and reported that history, symptoms and management would be recorded in free text. GPs reported on four themes representing influences on recording of anxiety: “anxiety or a normal response”, “granularity of diagnosis”, “giving patients a label”, and “time as a tool”; and three themes about recording in general: “justifying the choice of code”, “usefulness of coding” and “practice specific pressures”. GPs reported using only a regular selection of codes in patient records to help standardise records within the practice and as a time saving measure. Conclusions: We have identified a coding culture where GPs feel confident recognising anxiety symptoms, however due to clinical uncertainty, a long term perspective and a focus on management they are reluctant to code firm diagnoses in the initial stages. Researchers using GP patient records should be aware that GPs may prefer free text, symptom codes and other general codes rather than firm diagnostic codes for anxiety

Interviews with Charley King, Barbara Hall Maricle, Vern Kear, Sherry Smith, Elizabeth Stoskopt, Martha Margheim, Verna Schneider, Edith M. Hill, Master John Sackett, Rose Arnold, Olga Elizabeth Luschen Dennis, and Clarence Loredstsch

Interviews with Charley King, Barbara Hall Maricle, Vern Kear, Sherry Smith, Elizabeth Stoskopt, Martha Margheim, Verna Schneider, Edith M. Hill, Master John Sackett, Rose Arnold, Olga Elizabeth Luschen Dennis, and Clarence Loredstsch The first tape is missing. Content begins with the partial interview of Olga Elizabeth Luschen Dennis. 00:00:00 - Family in Russell County (partial) 00:01:02 - Meeting her husband for the first time 00:02:32 - Girlhood experiences and reminiscences 00:03:50 - Pre-recorded History of Fort Larned 00:07:04 - Unknown speaker, Kit Carson\u27s killing of a mule he mistook for an Indigenous American 00:10:46 - Buffalo Bill Cody 00:13:03 - Stories about the Kiowa 00:16:06 - Woodland Tribe in Pawnee County, KS 00:18:24 - Quivira Tribe in Pawnee County, KS 00:21:46 - Exhuming Indigenous remains in 1958 00:23:16 - Woodland Tribe pottery 00:27:32 - Dog skeleton 00:33:57 - Woodland Tribe weapons 00:35:42 - Woodland Tribe ornamentation 00:39:05 - Introduction to interview with Clarence Loredstsch by Louise Maxwell. This portion of the recording is muffled and difficult to understand. 00:39:43 - Fort Fletcher 00:45:30 - Graves and landmarkshttps://scholars.fhsu.edu/sackett/1054/thumbnail.jp

Large-Area, High Spatial Resolution Land Cover Mapping Using Random Forests, GEOBIA, and NAIP Orthophotography: Findings and Recommendations

Despite the need for quality land cover information, large-area, high spatial resolution land cover mapping has proven to be a difficult task for a variety of reasons including large data volumes, complexity of developing training and validation datasets, data availability, and heterogeneity in data and landscape conditions. We investigate the use of geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA), random forest (RF) machine learning, and National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) orthophotography for mapping general land cover across the entire state of West Virginia, USA, an area of roughly 62,000 km2. We obtained an overall accuracy of 96.7% and a Kappa statistic of 0.886 using a combination of NAIP orthophotography and ancillary data. Despite the high overall classification accuracy, some classes were difficult to differentiate, as highlight by the low user’s and producer’s accuracies for the barren, impervious, and mixed developed classes. In contrast, forest, low vegetation, and water were generally mapped with accuracy. The inclusion of ancillary data and first- and second-order textural measures generally improved classification accuracy whereas band indices and object geometric measures were less valuable. Including super-object attributes improved the classification slightly; however, this increased the computational time and complexity. From the findings of this research and previous studies, recommendations are provided for mapping large spatial extents

Diversidade de Coccinellidae (Coleoptera) em plantas aromáticas (Apiaceae) como sítios de sobrevivência e reprodução em sistema agroecológico.

Studies show that Apiaceae may provide concentrated vital resources for predator insects,stimulating their abundance, diversity and persistence in agricultural systems, thereby increasing their effi ciency as biological control agents. Among the predatory insects, Coccinellidae (Coleoptera) on many different species both as larvae and adults, complementing their diet with pollen and/or nectar. This study aimed to determine the diversity and relative abundance of Coccinellidae species visiting plants of Anethum graveolens (dill), Coriandrum sativum (coriander) and Foeniculum vulgare (sweet fennel) (all Apiaceae), particularly in their blooming seasons, and to evaluate the potential of these aromatic species for providing the resources for survivorship and reproduction of coccinelids. Coccinellids were collected by removal of samplings from September to October, 2007. Besides one unidentifi ed species of Chilocorinae, five species of Coccinellinae were collected: Coleomegilla maculata DeGeer, Coleomegilla quadrifasciata (Schönherr), Cycloneda sanguinea (L.), Eriopis connexa (Germar) and Hippodamia convergens Guérin-Meneville. Dill provided a signifi cant increase in the abundance of coccinellids as compared to coriander and sweet fennel. These aromatic species were used by coccinellids as survival and reproduction sites, providing food resources (pollen and/or prey), shelter for larvae, pupae and adults, and mating and oviposition sites as well

Legume fertilizers as alternative sources of nitrogen for organic lettuce production

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o potencial de dois fertilizantes de leguminosas – produtos derivados do corte, desidratação e moagem da biomassa aérea das leguminosas mucuna-cinza (Mucuna pruriens) e gliricídia (Gliricidia sepium) – como fontes alternativas de nitrogênio (N) para a produção orgânica de alface (Lactuca sativa cv. Vera), e a influência dessas adubações sobre a vida útil pós-colheita da hortaliça, em condições de laboratório. Esses fertilizantes foram empregados em cobertura e comparados com cama-de-aviário industrial, assegurando-se doses equivalentes de N total. O delineamento experimental foi o de blocos ao acaso, com cinco tratamentos e quatro repetições: T1: adubação pré-plantio, com termofosfato sílico-magnesiano + sulfato de potássio; T2: T1 + esterco bovino, em pré-plantio; T3: T2 + fertilizante de mucuna-cinza, em cobertura; T4: T2 + fertilizante de gliricídia, em cobertura; T5: T2 + cama-de-aviário em cobertura. Não houve diferença entre os fertilizantes de ambas as espécies de leguminosas e a cama-de-aviário, quanto à produtividade, teor de N, padrão comercial e período de vida útil pós-colheita das alfaces, o que indica potencial de uso desses fertilizantes como fontes de N para sistemas orgânicos de produção de hortaliças.The objective of this work was to evaluate the potential use of two legume fertilizers – products derived from cutting, dehydration and milling of the aerial biomass of legume plants, velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens) and gliricidia (Gliricidia sepium) – as alternative sources of N for organic production of lettuce (Lactuca sativa cv. Vera); and to evaluate the influence of soil fertilization on lettuce shelf life at laboratory bench condition. These fertilizers were applied on soil surface and compared to factory poultry-bed manure at equivalent total N doses. The experimental design consisted of randomized blocks with five treatments and four replications, as following: T1: pre-planting fertilization with magnesium thermophosphate + potassium sulphate; T2: T1 + cattle manure in pre-planting; T3: T2 + velvet bean fertilizer in covering; T4: T2 + gliricidia fertilizer in covering; and T5: T2 + poultry-bed manure in covering. Fertilizers of both legume species were not statistically different of poultry-bed manure, regarding productivity, N content, commercial standard and shelf life of lettuce, which indicates promising potential for their use in organic horticultural production systems

A comprehensive gene-environment interaction analysis in Ovarian Cancer using genome-wide significant common variants.

As a follow-up to genome-wide association analysis of common variants associated with ovarian carcinoma (cancer), our study considers seven well-known ovarian cancer risk factors and their interactions with 28 genome-wide significant common genetic variants. The interaction analyses were based on data from 9971 ovarian cancer cases and 15,566 controls from 17 case-control studies. Likelihood ratio and Wald tests for multiplicative interaction and for relative excess risk due to additive interaction were used. The top multiplicative interaction was noted between oral contraceptive pill (OCP) use (ever vs. never) and rs13255292 (p value = 3.48 × 10-4 ). Among women with the TT genotype for this variant, the odds ratio for OCP use was 0.53 (95% CI = 0.46-0.60) compared to 0.71 (95%CI = 0.66-0.77) for women with the CC genotype. When stratified by duration of OCP use, women with 1-5 years of OCP use exhibited differential protective benefit across genotypes. However, no interaction on either the multiplicative or additive scale was found to be statistically significant after multiple testing correction. The results suggest that OCP use may offer increased benefit for women who are carriers of the T allele in rs13255292. On the other hand, for women carrying the C allele in this variant, longer (5+ years) use of OCP may reduce the impact of carrying the risk allele of this SNP. Replication of this finding is needed. The study presents a comprehensive analytic framework for conducting gene-environment analysis in ovarian cancer

Base-pair resolution analysis of the effect of supercoiling on DNA flexibility and major groove recognition by triplex-forming oligonucleotides.

In the cell, DNA is arranged into highly-organised and topologically-constrained (supercoiled) structures. It remains unclear how this supercoiling affects the detailed double-helical structure of DNA, largely because of limitations in spatial resolution of the available biophysical tools. Here, we overcome these limitations, by a combination of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, to resolve structures of negatively-supercoiled DNA minicircles at base-pair resolution. We observe that negative superhelical stress induces local variation in the canonical B-form DNA structure by introducing kinks and defects that affect global minicircle structure and flexibility. We probe how these local and global conformational changes affect DNA interactions through the binding of triplex-forming oligonucleotides to DNA minicircles. We show that the energetics of triplex formation is governed by a delicate balance between electrostatics and bonding interactions. Our results provide mechanistic insight into how DNA supercoiling can affect molecular recognition, that may have broader implications for DNA interactions with other molecular species

Characterising illness stages and recovery trajectories of eating disorders in young people via remote measurement technology (STORY):A multi-centre prospective cohort study protocol

Background: Eating disorders (EDs) are serious, often chronic, conditions associated with pronounced morbidity, mortality, and dysfunction increasingly affecting young people worldwide. Illness progression, stages and recovery trajectories of EDs are still poorly characterised. The STORY study dynamically and longitudinally assesses young people with different EDs (restricting; bingeing/bulimic presentations) and illness durations (earlier; later stages) compared to healthy controls. Remote measurement technology (RMT) with active and passive sensing is used to advance understanding of the heterogeneity of earlier and more progressed clinical presentations and predictors of recovery or relapse. Methods: STORY follows 720 young people aged 16–25 with EDs and 120 healthy controls for 12 months. Online self-report questionnaires regularly assess ED symptoms, psychiatric comorbidities, quality of life, and socioeconomic environment. Additional ongoing monitoring using multi-parametric RMT via smartphones and wearable smart rings (‘Ōura ring’) unobtrusively measures individuals’ daily behaviour and physiology (e.g., Bluetooth connections, sleep, autonomic arousal). A subgroup of participants completes additional in-person cognitive and neuroimaging assessments at study-baseline and after 12 months. Discussion: By leveraging these large-scale longitudinal data from participants across ED diagnoses and illness durations, the STORY study seeks to elucidate potential biopsychosocial predictors of outcome, their interplay with developmental and socioemotional changes, and barriers and facilitators of recovery. STORY holds the promise of providing actionable findings that can be translated into clinical practice by informing the development of both early intervention and personalised treatment that is tailored to illness stage and individual circumstances, ultimately disrupting the long-term burden of EDs on individuals and their families.</p