Aphasia Couples Therapy: A Case Study of Conversational Coaching for a Man with Conduction Aphasia

The purpose of this study was to contribute to the understanding of the effects of aphasia couples therapy (ACT) in a person with conduction aphasia. ACT is a social therapeutic approach that involves facilitating conversations between the person with aphasia (PWA) and their spouse, or caregiver. The participants in this study involved one pair. The dependent variables included conveyance of main concepts, use of intentional gestures, reflections and summary statements per conversation. Miscellaneous measures were also counted and analyzed including the PWA’s frequency of paraphasias, fillers (e.g. um, uh), and disfluencies. Baseline sessions involved the PWA watching a video clip, and then providing a verbal summary of the main concept of the clip to his non-aphasic spouse within a 10-minute conversation. Therapy treatment sessions followed the same format as the baseline sessions, however, therapy sessions also included the aide of the researcher to coach the participants to use their pre-selected communication strategies to improve the balance in their conversations. The ability to accurately convey the main concept of a video clip in conversation served as the primary dependent variable in this study. Follow-up sessions were also conducted in similar fashion to baseline and probe sessions to determine maintenance and validity of results by dividing the total number of main concepts by the total number of utterances per conversation. Furthermore, ratings of the PWA’s quality of life and confidence in his ability to communicate were gathered and compared. The results of this study indicated that ACT yielded improved effects for the couple with regards to the communication of main concepts per conversation. A decrease in the use of all included miscellaneous measures were also observed. However, no significant changes were noted with regards to use of intentional gestures, reflections, and summary statements

Libyan Nurses and Their Training Needs: An Overview and Analysis of TNA as a Tool to Enhance Nurse Learning and Effectiveness

An overview of the concept of Training Needs Analysis (TNA), of existing research in related fields, and an examination of the current practice of TNA for nurses in Libya. The long-term goal is establishment of a research agenda to be implemented in HRM (Human Resource Management) policies for hospitals throughout Libya. TNA for nurses in Libya is as yet almost completely unexamined. Previous research which focused on nurse training in Libya did not focus on using a psychometrically valid tool to conduct TNA; follow-on research must also consider industry- and culture-specific factors which might affect the specific training needs of nurses or organizations

Attitudes of Senior Managers Towards Management Training and Development in Libyan Organizations

An examination of attitudes of senior managerstowards Management Training and Development within Libyanpublic sector organisations, and delineation of factors slowingtheir MTD progress. Looking specifically at the oil and bankingsectors, considered the most representative of public sectororganisations in Libya, a survey was conducted across ten oilorganisations and seven commercial banks. The data collectionmethods involved both face-to-face interviews (structured andsemi-structured) and a self-completion questionnaire

Service Quality And Customer Satisfaction Of Mobile Phone Provider Among Postgraduate Students Of University Utara Malaysia

This study was to find out whether there is a relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality. This study examined the relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality (reliability, tangibles, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) on mobile phone provider (Digi, Maxis And Celcom) in Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia. This study is designed to provide the benefit for marketing practitioners, especially for GSM provider in UUM areas. For marketing practitioners, the aim is to offer a holistic and in-depth overview of how customer forms, experience and exploit their satisfaction towards services that offered by the mobile phone provider

Lipstick in the Time of Corona: Psychosocial Musings

This article is a psycho-social musing regarding the importance of lipstick as an item of makeup at a time when its primary area of usage, the face, has been covered due to demands of health and safety as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Being a musing, the article does not follow any strict methodology and has been written based only on certain day-to-today observations. By looking at the continued sale of lipsticks on online platforms and the ideas regarding its importance and usage as explicated by online beauty personalities, this paper tries to understand the importance of lipstick as a tool of women’s self-esteem, body image, self-confidence, emancipation, beautification as well as a symbol of consumerism in the current times when it cannot be flaunted due to the face masks. By using theories of feminism, especially post-structural feminism, consumerism and psychological theories such as those related to self-esteem and defence mechanism, the article has tried to put forward a psychosocial explanation of the use of lipsticks in the pandemic times

Revision of the African Ants of the Bothroponera pumicosa Species Complex (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Ponerinae)

African ants are poorly known, especially Afrotropical ants of the subfamily Ponerinae, despite recent advances. The genus Bothroponera (Ponerinae) includes the pumicosa, talpa and sulcata species complexes. We here present a revision of members of the pumicosa species complex. These ants can be characterized by having coarsely foveolate sculpture and by having either a raised a “v” or “u” shaped anterior medial border of the clypeus (anteclypeus), with or without a carina. Members of this complex lack the metatibial gland on the anterior side of the lower metatibia. Species in the Bothroponera pumicosa species complex are mainly distributed in the southern part of Africa. They include: Bothroponera aspera Arnold, 1962 (stat. nov.), B. berthoudi (Forel, 1901) (= variolosa syn. nov.), B. cariosa Emery, 1895, B. cavernosa (Roger, 1860), B. granosa (Roger, 1860), B. laevissima (Arnold, 1915), B. montivaga Arnold, 1947 (stat. nov.), B. pumicosa (Roger, 1860), B. strigulosa Emery, 1895, and B. umgodikulula Joma and Mackay, 2013. A key to the workers with diagnoses and comparisons is provided, together with illustrations of each species and colored photographs of the species, as well as maps and the distributions of each species

Technologies Applied to Wood Heat Treatments, a Review: Tecnologías aplicadas a los tratamientos térmicos en madera, una revisión

Heat treatments are carried out on the wood to modify the hygroscopic properties and its dimensional stability. This allows low-grade wood to be used in exposed applications. This document provides a systematized bibliographic review related to the available technologies that allow heat treatment of wood. For this, scientific databases were consulted where previous studies with high temperature drying were found that served as the basis for the development of technologies that are used today. Patent databases were also consulted making the systematic use of the International Patent Classification (IPC) and Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), the most promising codes were selected according to the histogram analysis. Finally, a marked trend was observed in recent years in the study and development of heat treatments applied to different timber species.Los tratamientos térmicos se realizan a la madera con el fin de modificar las propiedades higroscópicas y su estabilidad dimensional. Esto permite que madera de baja calidad pueda ser usada en aplicaciones de libre exposición. Este documento proporciona una revisión bibliográfica sistematizada relacionada con las tecnologías disponibles que permiten realizar tratamientos térmicos en madera. Para esto se consultaron bases de datos científicas en donde se encontraron estudios previos con secado a alta temperatura que sirvió de base para el desarrollo de las tecnologías que se usan en la actualidad. También se consultaron bases de datos de patentes haciendo el uso sistematizado de la Clasificación Internacional de Patentes (CIP) y la Clasificación cooperativa de Patentes (CCP), se seleccionaron los códigos más prometedores de acuerdo con el análisis del histograma. Por último, se observó una tendencia marcada para los últimos años en el estudio y desarrollo de los tratamientos térmicos aplicados a diferentes especies maderables