What do children who stutter and their parents expect from therapy and are their hopes aligned?

Currently there are few published reports exploring what it is that children and their parents wish to see change or happen as part of therapy. A process of eliciting hopes or expectations for therapy using Solution Focused Brief Therapy (de Shazer, 1985) is routinely used at the Michael Palin Centre (MPC) with children who stutter and their parents. This qualitative study aimed to explore what children who stutter and their parents expect from therapy and whether their hopes are aligned

Addressing space charge issues in aeronautical DC cables

International audienceThe aircraft of the future will be more electrical and all electrical. Technological evolutions foresee an increase of the DC voltage up to 3 kV or 6 kV with keeping the thickness of insulations to the minimum. This results in a strong increase of the electric field in the insulations and space charge can become an issue for the reliability of the systems. Indeed, space charge accumulation is at the origin of a residual field that modifies the electric field and may lead to a premature aging of the dielectric. Besides, the field distribution in complex structures like multilayers cannot be anticipated under DC as easily as under AC because conductivity is trickier to estimate and varies much more than permittivity. To measure these effects, we propose to develop a test bench adapted to aeronautical cables based on the PEA (Pulsed Electro Acoustic) method. The final aim is to assess the capabilities of current cables to be used for DC voltages in future aircrafts

Addressing space charge issues in aeronautical DC cables

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Perspectives on Therapeutic Progress: 11-14 Year-Olds’ Reflections

AbstractPurposeThis qualitative analysis aimed to understand therapy outcomes from the viewpoint of children who have completed an intensive ten-day stuttering therapy program. There have been reports of quantitative outcomes of stuttering therapy (e.g., changes in stuttering frequency, changes in OASES scores), but there is a gap in the literature regarding children's views on therapeutic progress when provided with open-ended prompts.MethodsSeven children who stutter (mean age = 12;1, range 11;10-14;3), 6 males and 1 female, were prompted to answer the questions “what is going well?” and “what are small signs of progress?”. These questions were answered on the first day of therapy and the last day of therapy (day 10) during individual face-to-face Solution Focused Brief Therapy (de Shazer, 1985) interviews with a skilled clinician. The responses were then phenomenologically analysed to uncover primary categories and subcategories.ResultsPhenomenological analysis revealed that communication abilities, adaptive affective/cognitive status, and adequate social support were the three primary categories that children attributed to “what is going well” at both day 1 and day 10. Changes in communication, adaptive affective/cognitive status, and relaxed bodily state were the three primary categories related to “what are small signs of progress” at both day 1 and day 10.ConclusionsThis insight into how children view their own competency and understand the steps needed to make positive changes is meaningful for clinicians working with children in this age group who stutter in order to inform clinical decision making and guide therapeutic activities. The results implicate the importance of helping children 1) realize positive aspects of the situation and 2) provide specific, detailed accounts of their goals so that goal-directed therapeutic progress can take place

Space Charge Distributions in Insulating Polymers: A New Non-Contacting Way of Measurement

International audienceA new technique for the determination of space charge profiles in insulating polymers is proposed. Based on the evolution of an existing thermal wave technique called Focused Laser Intensity Modulation Method ((F)LIMM), it allows non-contact measurements on thin films exhibiting an internal charge to be studied. An electrostatic model taking into account the new sample-cell geometry proposed was first developed. It has been shown, in particular, that it was theoretically possible to calculate the internal charge from experimental measurements while allowing an evaluation of the air layer appearing between the sample and the electrode when non-contact measurements are performed. These predictions were confirmed by an experimental implementation for two thin polymer samples (25 μm-polyvinylidenefluoride and 50 μm-polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)) used as tests. In these cases, minimum air-layer thickness was determined with an accuracy of 3% and 20%, respectively, depending on the signal-to-noise ratio during the experimental procedure. In order to illustrate the reachable possibilities of this technique, 2D and 3D cartographies of a negative space charge implanted by electron beam within the PTFE test sample were depicted: like in conventional (F)LIMM, a multidimensional representation of a selectively implanted charge remains possible at a few microns depth, but using a non-contacting way of measurement

FLIMM and TSM: Two Thermal Methods for Space Charges Investigation

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