A comparison of the sampling distribution of the 2,262 obituaries from the Sunday edition of The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, for the year 1993, was made with the actual mortality patterns of Arkansans, as reported by the state health department. The two distributions were found to be nearly identical on gender and age. This is a significant methodological improvement over previous methods used in obituary analysis that relied on using the-ratio of obituaries to death notices as an indicator of mortality experience and then using that as a basis for evaluating the likelihood of obituary discrimination.

A state wide proportionate systematic telephone survey of 400 Arkansans was conducted in the summer of 1984 to ascertain the population's attitudes toward suicide and suicidal behaviors. Weighting of the sample to conform to the 1980 distribution of the population by sex resulted in a final sample size of 491. An analysis of the results by sex, race, age, and educational level was performed. Sixty-nine percent of the respondents do not believe that a person has the right to commit suicide. Seventy-one percent believe that a normal person would not commit suicide. More than half of the sample know someone who has committed or tried to commit suicide. Attitudes and experiences with suicide and suicidal people were found to be differentially distributed by age, sex, race, and educational level.

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Patterns of erosion and deposition are difficult to identify and measure at catchment and regional scale but it may be possible to infer their distribution from remote sensing using easily measured surrogate variables. Airborne geophysical surveys provide data on gamma ray emissions from surface and near-surface material and allow estimation of K, Th and U content. Gamma ray signatures are largely determined by lithology but also change with weathering and with erosion and deposition, and may be used as a partial surrogate for those processes. Comparison of gamma ray signatures with topographic characteristics closely related to sediment transport capacity, downstream sorting of sediments, and the extent of erosion and deposition shows strong linkages. Studies in four small catchments in southeastern Australia indicate that K consistently increases as slopes become steeper while Th and U may either increase or decrease. This suggests the presence of fresh rock rather than weathered material and implies removal of material by erosion, although some patterns may result from systematic changes in lithology across catchments. Analysis by lithology confirms the increase in K with slope in granites, metamorphosed sediments and basalt, and also shows a tendency for U to decrease with slope in the granites and basalt. Gamma ray emissions vary only slightly with catchment area (a surrogate measure of water discharge) suggesting that water erosion is limited or that discharge is not closely related to area. Gamma radiometric profiles down hillslopes, averaged across the full range of gradients, show that, in most cases, radioelements initially decrease, probably reflecting increased weathering, but then increase close to valley floors because of accumulation of fine sediments. Analysis by lithology confirms the increase in radioelements close to valley floors in granites and metamorphosed sediments but the trend is less clear in basalt. Gamma ray profiles down floodplains are variable and indicate the amount of deposition and accumulation of weathered material in valley openings and exposure of bedrock in valley constrictions. Simple erosion and deposition models, based on the conservation of mass equation, and applied to the four catchments, show that all radioelements increase as the potential for deposition increases. They reach a low point in zones of no net erosion or deposition and subsequently increase as erosion becomes more intense and weathered material is lost from slopes. Analysis by lithology largely confirms this pattern. The usefulness of airborne geophysical survey data is limited by flight line spacing with most data being flown at a 200±400 m spacing in Australia. However, general trends in erosion and deposition can still be distinguished and there is capacity for calibrating long-term erosion and deposition models once better approaches to interpretation of gamma ray data have been developed.