Factors influencing the efficacy of delayed auditory feedback in treating dysarthria associated with Parkinson\u27s disease

Parkinson\u27s disease patients exhibit a high prevalence of speech deficits including excessive speech rate, reduced intelligibility, and disfluencies. The present study examined the effects of delayed auditory feedback (DAF) as a rate control intervention for dysarthric speakers with Parkinson\u27s disease. Adverse reactions to relatively long delay intervals are commonly observed during clinical use of DAF, and seem to result from improper matching of the delayed signal. To facilitate optimal use of DAF, therefore, clinicians must provide instruction, modeling, and feedback. Clinician instruction is frequently used in speech-language therapy, but has not been evaluated during use of DAF-based interventions. Therefore, the primary purpose of the present study was to evaluate the impact of clinician instruction on the effectiveness of DAF in treating speech deficits. A related purpose was to compare the effects of different delay intervals on speech behaviors. An A-B-A-B single-subject design was utilized. The A phases consisted of a sentence reading task using DAF, while the B phases incorporated clinician instruction into the DAF protocol. During each of the 16 experimental sessions, speakers read with four different delay intervals (0 ms, 50 ms, 100 ms, and 150 ms). During the B phases, the experimenter provided verbal feedback and modeling pertaining to how precisely the speaker matched the delayed signal. Dependent variables measured were speech rate, percent intelligible syllables, and percent disfluencies. Three males with Parkinson\u27s disease and an associated dysarthria participated in the study. Results revealed that for all three speakers, DAF significantly reduced reading rate and produced significant improvements in either intelligibility (for Speaker 3) or fluency (for Speakers 1 and 2). A delay interval of 150 ms produced the greatest reductions in reading rates for all three speakers, although any of the DAF settings used was sufficient to produce significant improvements in either intelligibility or fluency. In addition, supplementing the DAF intervention with clinician instruction resulted in significantly greater gains achieved with DAF. These findings confirmed the effectiveness of various intervals of DAF in improving speech deficits in Parkinson\u27s disease speakers, particular when patients are provided with instruction and modeling from the clinician

Notices sur quelques tissus antiques et du haut moyen age : jusqu'au XVe siecle

Obra amb una tirada de 150 exemplars numeratsA portada: avec reproduction héliographiquesLàmines impresses per Fillon & HeuseLàmines identificades amb números romans, fins al número XXXI. Les làmines XII, XIII, XIV, XXI, XXIII i XXVI duplicades, un exemplar en b/n i l'altre en colo

Effect of Polyelectrolytes on Color and Turbidity Removal

Sanitary and Public Health Engineerin

Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

Health, Ageing, Survey Methodology, International Comparisons

What is marine biodiversity? Towards common concepts and their implications for assessing biodiversity status

Biodiversity' is one of the most common keywords used in environmental sciences, spanning from research to management, nature conservation, and consultancy. Despite this, our understanding of the underlying concepts varies greatly, between and within disciplines as well as among the scientists themselves. Biodiversity can refer to descriptions or assessments of the status and condition of all or selected groups of organisms, from the genetic variability, to the species, populations, communities, and ecosystems. However, a concept of biodiversity also must encompass understanding the interactions and functions on all levels from individuals up to the whole ecosystem, including changes related to natural and anthropogenic environmental pressures. While biodiversity as such is an abstract and relative concept rooted in the spatial domain, it is central to most international, European, and national governance initiatives aimed at protecting the marine environment. These rely on status assessments of biodiversity which typically require numerical targets and specific reference values, to allow comparison in space and/or time, often in association with some external structuring factors such as physical and biogeochemical conditions. Given that our ability to apply and interpret such assessments requires a solid conceptual understanding of marine biodiversity, here we define this and show how the abstract concept can and needs to be interpreted and subsequently applied in biodiversity assessments

Canadian children from food insecure households experience low self-esteem and self-efficacy for healthy lifestyle choices

The objectives of this cross-sectional study were to: (i) determine whether there are differences in self-esteem and self-efficacy for healthy lifestyle choices between children living in food secure and food insecure households; and (ii) determine whether the association between household food insecurity (HFI), self-esteem and self-efficacy differs by gender. Survey responses of 5281 fifth-grade students (10 and 11 years of age) participating in the Canadian Children\u27s Lifestyle and School Performance Study II were analyzed using logistic and linear regression. HFI status was determined by the six-item short-form Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM). Students from food insecure households had significantly higher odds of low self-esteem, and significantly lower scores for global self-efficacy to make healthy choices, compared to students from food secure households. These associations were stronger for girls than for boys and appeared independent of parental educational attainment. Household income appeared to be the essential underlying determinant of the associations of food insecurity with self-esteem and self-efficacy. Upstream social policies such as improving the household income of low-income residents will reduce food insecurity and potentially improve self-esteem and self-efficacy for healthy choices among children. This may improve health and learning, and in the long term, job opportunities and household earnings

Overexploitation, Recovery, and Warming of the Barents Sea Ecosystem During 1950–2013

The Barents Sea (BS) is a high-latitude shelf ecosystem with important fisheries, high and historically variable harvesting pressure, and ongoing high variability in climatic conditions. To quantify carbon flow pathways and assess if changes in harvesting intensity and climate variability have affected the BS ecosystem, we modeled the ecosystem for the period 1950–2013 using a highly trophically resolved mass-balanced food web model (Ecopath with Ecosim). Ecosim models were fitted to time series of biomasses and catches, and were forced by environmental variables and fisheries mortality. The effects on ecosystem dynamics by the drivers fishing mortality, primary production proxies related to open-water area and capelin-larvae mortality proxy, were evaluated. During the period 1970–1990, the ecosystem was in a phase of overexploitation with low top-predators’ biomasses and some trophic cascade effects and increases in prey stocks. Despite heavy exploitation of some groups, the basic ecosystem structure seems to have been preserved. After 1990, when the harvesting pressure was relaxed, most exploited boreal groups recovered with increased biomass, well-captured by the fitted Ecosim model. These biomass increases were likely driven by an increase in primary production resulting from warming and a decrease in ice-coverage. During the warm period that started about 1995, some unexploited Arctic groups decreased whereas krill and jellyfish groups increased. Only the latter trend was successfully predicted by the Ecosim model. The krill flow pathway was identified as especially important as it supplied both medium and high trophic level compartments, and this pathway became even more important after ca. 2000. The modeling results revealed complex interplay between fishery and variability of lower trophic level groups that differs between the boreal and arctic functional groups and has importance for ecosystem management

The use of an air bubble curtain to reduce the received sound levels for harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena)

In December 2005 construction work was started to replace a harbor wall in Kerteminde harbor, Denmark. A total of 175 wooden piles were piled into the ground at the waters edge over a period of 3 months. During the same period three harbor porpoises were housed in a marine mammal facility on the opposite side of the harbor. All animals showed strong avoidance reactions after the start of the piling activities. As a measure to reduce the sound exposure for the animals an air bubble curtain was constructed and operated in a direct path between the piling site and the opening of the animals' semi-natural pool. The sound attenuation effect achieved with this system was determined by quantitative comparison of pile driving impulses simultaneously measured in front of and behind the active air bubble curtain. Mean levels of sound attenuation over a sequence of 95 consecutive pile strikes were 14 dB (standard deviation (s.d.) 3.4 dB) for peak to peak values and 13 dB (s.d. 2.5 dB) for SEL values. As soon as the air bubble curtain was installed and operated, no further avoidance reactions of the animals to the piling activities were apparent

Testing the acoustic tolerance of harbour porpoise hearing for impulsive sounds

The planned construction of offshore wind turbines in the North and Baltic Seas involves the emission of high numbers of intense impulsive sounds when turbine foundations are driven into the ground by pile driving. Based on knowledge about other odontocete cetaceans (Finneran et al. 2002), it can be assumed that the source levels, which will on average exceed 225 dB re 1 μPa at 1 m, bear a risk at least for temporary threshold shift (TTS) in the auditory system of harbour porpoises Phocoena phocoena that inhabit these waters. In order to base the definition of noise-exposure criteria on information on the acoustic tolerance of this species to single impulses, an auditory study was conducted