An international perspective. A survey of clinician views and practices from 16 countries

Objective: To gain an insight into speech and language therapists’ perspectives and practices on quality of life in aphasia. Participants and Methods: The International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics Aphasia Committee developed a survey questionnaire, which was delivered on-line, anonymously, through SurveyMonkey (November 2012 – April 2013) to clinicians working with people with aphasia in 16 countries across the world. Results: A large number of speech and language therapists responded to the survey, with 19/21 questions answered by 385 – 579 participants. Clinicians were well informed on what constitutes quality of life and viewed it as a complex construct influenced by health, participation, in/dependence, communication, personal factors, and environmental factors. In their clinical practice, they considered quality of life as important, used informal approaches to explore it and aimed to address quality of life goals; yet the majority did not evaluate quality of life in a systematic way. Conclusion: There is a need for training on quality of life to facilitate speech and language therapists to incorporate quality of life outcome measures in their interventions. There is also a need for further research on what interventions improve quality of life in aphasia

Reaction of silver(I) and (II) fluorides with C-60: thermodynamic control over fluorination level

Silver(I) fluoride is shown to be a weak fluorinating agent (FA) for C-60 and gives mainly C60F18. Fluorination with silver(II) fluoride yields C60F44, a new compound, as the predominant product (> 80% in the crude). Fluorination degree of fullerenes in reaction with binary metal fluorides is found to be mainly thermodynamically controlled. The correlation between the level of C-60 fluorination and oxidising fluorinating strength of the metal fluorides used for fluorofullerene preparations is discussed, permitting development of a self-consistent quantitative scale for inorganic FAs

39K NMR and EPR study of multiferroic K3Fe5F15

39K NMR spectra and relaxation times of polycrystalline K3Fe5F15 have been used as a microscopic detector of the local magnetic fields at the magnetic transition at TN = 123 K. The NMR lineshape widens abruptly upon crossing TN due to the onset of internal magnetic fields, while we find no significant lineshift. The paraelectric to ferroelectric transition at Tc = 490 K and the magnetic transition at TN have also been studied using X-band EPR (electron paramagnetic resonance). An increase and subsequent decrease in the EPR susceptibilities is observed on approaching TN from above. There is also a significant increase in the linewidth. At the same time the g-factor first decreases and then increases with decreasing temperature. The local magnetic field is different at different K sites and is much smaller than the magnetic field around the Fe sites. This seems to be consistent with the behaviour of a weak ferrimagnet. The ferrimagnetism does not seem to be due to spin canting as the lattice is disordered, but may arise from thermal blocking of superparamagnetic percolation clusters. The ferroelectric transition at Tc shows no electronic anomaly, demonstrating that we are dealing with a classical phonon anomaly as found in conventional oxides rather than an electronic transition

Hormesis enables cells to handle accumulating toxic metabolites during increased energy flux.

Energy production is inevitably linked to the generation of toxic metabolites, such as reactive oxygen and carbonyl species, known as major contributors to ageing and degenerative diseases. It remains unclear how cells can adapt to elevated energy flux accompanied by accumulating harmful by-products without taking any damage. Therefore, effects of a sudden rise in glucose concentrations were studied in yeast cells. This revealed a feedback mechanism initiated by the reactive dicarbonyl methylglyoxal, which is formed non-enzymatically during glycolysis. Low levels of methylglyoxal activate a multi-layered defence response against toxic metabolites composed of prevention, detoxification and damage remission. The latter is mediated by the protein quality control system and requires inducible Hsp70 and Btn2, the aggregase that sequesters misfolded proteins. This glycohormetic mechanism enables cells to pre-adapt to rising energy flux and directly links metabolic to proteotoxic stress. Further data suggest the existence of a similar response in endothelial cells