Temporal characteristics of speech: The effect of age and speech style

Aging affects temporal characteristics of speech. It is still a question how these changes occur in different speech styles which require various cognitive skills. In this paper speech rate, articulation rate, and pauses of 20 young and 20 old speakers are analyzed in four speech tyles: spontaneous narrative, narrative recalls, a three-participant conversation, and reading aloud. Results show that age has a significant effect only on speech rate, articulation rate, and frequency of pauses. Speech style has a higher effect on temporal parameters than speakers’ age

A common terminology for the external anatomy of centipedes (Chilopoda)

A common terminology for the external morphological characters of centipedes (Chilopoda) is proposed. Terms are selected from the alternatives used in the English literature, preferring those most frequently used or those that have been introduced explicitly. A total of 330 terms are defi ned and illustrated, and another ca. 500 alternatives are listed.Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse

What happens when 55% of acute psychiatric beds are closed in six days: an unexpected naturalistic observational study.

OBJECTIVE: The sudden closure of 30 out of 54 acute psychiatric beds in Cornwall presented a stressful challenge to staff but also a natural experiment on how a service dealt with this situation. We aimed to evaluate the outcomes of patients needing to leave the closed ward, how bed occupancy rates were affected and the impact on admission rates. DESIGN: A service evaluation of the impact of the ward closure. SETTING: A comprehensive secondary NHS mental health service in Cornwall serving 550,000 population. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The destination of the patients needing to leave the acute unit, the effect of the closure on bed occupancy, admission rates and serious untoward incidents. RESULTS: Of 26 patients needing to be moved from the acute ward, only 10 needed an acute psychiatric bed. None of the seven patients who had been on the ward longer than nine weeks needed an acute unit. Admission rates fell over the subsequent three months. There was no increase in serious incidents due to the closure. CONCLUSIONS: This naturalistic event suggests that many patients on acute units could be cared for elsewhere, especially recovery/rehabilitation care environments, if political and financial urgency is present. Admission rates are responsive to the pressure on beds

Automatic memory processes in normal ageing and Alzheimer’s disease

This study examined the contribution of automatic and controlled uses of memory to stem completion in young, middle-aged and older adults, and compared these data with a study involving patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) who performed the same task (Hudson and Robertson, 2007). In an inclusion task participants aimed to complete three-letter word stems with a previously studied word, in an exclusion task the aim was to avoid using studied words to complete stems. Performances under inclusion and exclusion conditions were contrasted to obtain estimates of controlled and automatic memory processes using process-dissociation calculations (Jacoby, 1991). An age-related decline, evident from middle age was observed for the estimate of controlled processing, whereas the estimate of automatic processing remained invariant across the age groups. This pattern stands in contrast to what is observed in AD, where both controlled and automatic processes have been shown to be impaired. Therefore, the impairment in memory processing on stem completion that is found in AD is qualitatively different from that observed in normal ageing

Are language production problems apparent in adults who no longer meet diagnostic criteria for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder?

In this study, we examined sentence production in a sample of adults (N = 21) who had had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as children, but as adults no longer met DSM-IV diagnostic criteria (APA, 2000). This “remitted” group was assessed on a sentence production task. On each trial, participants saw two objects and a verb. Their task was to construct a sentence using the objects as arguments of the verb. Results showed more ungrammatical and disfluent utterances with one particular type of verb (i.e., participle). In a second set of analyses, we compared the remitted group to both control participants and a “persistent” group, who had ADHD as children and as adults. Results showed that remitters were more likely to produce ungrammatical utterances and to make repair disfluencies compared to controls, and they patterned more similarly to ADHD participants. Conclusions focus on language output in remitted ADHD, and the role of executive functions in language production

A new vetulicolian from Australia and its bearing on the chordate affinities of an enigmatic Cambrian group

BACKGROUND: Vetulicolians are one of the most problematic and controversial Cambrian fossil groups, having been considered as arthropods, chordates, kinorhynchs, or their own phylum. Mounting evidence suggests that vetulicolians are deuterostomes, but affinities to crown-group phyla are unresolved. RESULTS: A new vetulicolian from the Emu Bay Shale Konservat-Lagerstätte, South Australia, Nesonektris aldridgei gen. et sp. nov., preserves an axial, rod-like structure in the posterior body region that resembles a notochord in its morphology and taphonomy, with notable similarity to early decay stages of the notochord of extant cephalochordates and vertebrates. Some of its features are also consistent with other structures, such as a gut or a coelomic cavity. CONCLUSIONS: Phylogenetic analyses resolve a monophyletic Vetulicolia as sister-group to tunicates (Urochordata) within crown Chordata, and this holds even if they are scored as unknown for all notochord characters. The hypothesis that the free-swimming vetulicolians are the nearest relatives of tunicates suggests that a perpetual free-living life cycle was primitive for tunicates. Characters of the common ancestor of Vetulicolia + Tunicata include distinct anterior and posterior body regions - the former being non-fusiform and used for filter feeding and the latter originally segmented - plus a terminal mouth, absence of pharyngeal bars, the notochord restricted to the posterior body region, and the gut extending to the end of the tail.Diego C García-Bellido, Michael S Y Lee, Gregory D Edgecombe, James B Jago, James G Gehling, and John R Paterso

Early Cambrian Arthropods from the Emu Bay Shale Lagerstatte, South Australia

© Instituto Geológico y Minero de España. The document attached has been archived with permission from the publisher.John R. Paterson, James B. Jago, James G. Gehling, Diego C. García-Bellido, Gregory D. Edgecombe and Michael S.Y. Le

A new fireworm (Amphinomidae) from the Cretaceous of Lebanon identified from three-dimensionally preserved myoanatomy

© 2015 Parry et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. The attached file is the published version of the article

A comparison of the content of memory rehabilitation groups for patients with neurological disabilities

The aim of the study was to compare the fidelity of manualised group memory rehabilitation programmes for participants with neurological disabilities. A sample of 11 neurological patients with memory problems, enrolled in a ran¬domised controlled trial comparing compensation, restitution and self-help treatments, were observed during group sessions. Time-sampling was used to record the activity of the participants and the content of the discussion at one minute intervals. There was a significant difference between groups in the amount of time the group leader and participants spent talking (p < .001). Par¬ticipants in the compensation and restitution groups spent significantly more time in memory rehabilitation discussion than participants in the self-help group (p < .001). There was also a significant difference between the amount of time spent discussing internal and external memory aids in the com¬pensation and restitution groups (p < .001). These results support the fidelity of the interventions provided. This study also highlights the usefulness of time-sampling as a method to record the content and activity in rehabilitation groups