Speech perception abilities of adults with dyslexia: is there any evidence for a true deficit?

PURPOSE: This study investigated whether adults with dyslexia show evidence of a consistent speech perception deficit by testing phoneme categorization and word perception in noise. METHOD: Seventeen adults with dyslexia and 20 average readers underwent a test battery including standardized reading, language and phonological awareness tests, and tests of speech perception. Categorization of a pea/bee voicing contrast was evaluated using adaptive identification and discrimination tasks, presented in quiet and in noise, and a fixed-step discrimination task. Two further tests of word perception in noise were presented. RESULTS: There were no significant group differences for categorization in quiet or noise, across- and within-category discrimination as measured adaptively, or word perception, but average readers showed better across- and within-category discrimination in the fixed-step discrimination task. Individuals did not show consistent poor performance across related tasks. CONCLUSIONS: The small number of group differences, and lack of consistent poor individual performance, suggests weak support for a speech perception deficit in dyslexia. It seems likely that at least some poor performances are attributable to nonsensory factors like attention. It may also be that some individuals with dyslexia have speech perceptual acuity that is at the lower end of the normal range and exacerbated by nonsensory factors

Vanggewassen leveren bijdrage aan vermindering stikstofuitspoeling

Door de verscherpte mestwetgeving is het steeds belangrijker geworden om efficiënt met metststoffen om te springen. Daarnaast noodzaakt de Kaderrichtlijn Water de sector tot maatregelen om tot een betere waterkwaliteit te komen. Uit PPO-onderzoek is gebleken dat met wintergroene vanggewassen de uitspoeling van stikstof tijdens de wintermaanden behoorlijk te beperken is

Mechanische onkruidbestrijding in de boomteelt

In de boomkwekerij groeit de belangstelling voor mechanische onkruidbestrijding. Telen met toekomst werkt in verschillende gewasgroepen, waaronder laanbomen en vruchtbomen, aan het verbeteren van die mechanische onkruidbestrijding. Bedrijven spelen hierop in met de ontwikkeling van nieuwe apparatuur

Doctrina perpetua: brokering change, promoting innovation and transforming marginalisation in university learning and teaching [Editors introduction]

Doctrina perpetua—translated variously as “forever learning” (Cryle, 1992, p. 27), “lifelong learning” and “lifelong education”—is the Latin motto of Central Queensland University (CQU), an Australian regional university with campuses in Central Queensland and the metropolitan and provincial cities of Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney and with centres in China, Fiji, Hong Kong and Singapore. During its early development the institution was small and regional; in many ways it was an institution at the margins of higher education. For only a third of its 40-year life has it been recognised as a university. However, the vision of both its founders and its continuing staff has been that of an institution that actively brokers change, promotes innovation and seeks to transform marginalisation— for students, for its community and for itself. Its short life on the edge of the universe of higher education has promoted a culture of innovation and an acceptance that change is a necessary and positive aspect of life on the edge. Embracing change, CQU has become a complex institution, a notion well expressed in a speech in August 1999 by former Vice-Chancellor Lauchlan Chipman on Visioning Our Future: I have often remarked that I do not see CQU as “the last university of the old millennium” but rather as “the first university of the new millennium”. One of our greatest strengths in making the transition is our relative immaturity as a university. The more mature a university, especially if it is successful, the less agile it is when it comes to the need to change. So far as the future of universities and change is concerned, my position is unequivocally Heraclitean: change is the only thing that is permanent. Applying to itself the motto “doctrina perpetua” over its short life, the agile University has become a “complex and diverse organisation” (Danaher, Harreveld, Luck & Nouwens, 2004, p. 13). This overview of CQU seeks to provide readers with a short description of the current state of the institution and the story of its development to provide a context for understanding the chapters that follow, and to assist readers to reflect on how these developments at CQU relate to higher education generally, and to the universities with which they are more familiar

Analysis of Slow Convergence Regions in Adaptive Systems

We examine convergence properties of errors in a class of adaptive systems that corresponds to adaptive control of linear time-invariant plants with state variables accessible. We demonstrate the existence of a sticking region in the error space where the state errors move with a finite velocity independent of their magnitude. We show that these properties are also exhibited by adaptive systems with closed-loop reference models which have been demonstrated to exhibit improved transient performance as well as those that include an integral control in the inner-loop. Simulation and numerical studies are included to illustrate the size of this sticking region and its dependence on various system parametersthe Boeing University Strategic Initiativ

Impossible Asks: Can the Transparency and Consent Framework Ever Authorise Real-Time Bidding After the Belgian DPA Decision?

On 2 February 2022, the Belgian Data Protection Authority handed down a decision concerning IAB Europe and its Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), a system designed to facilitate compliance of real-time bidding (RTB), a widespread online advertising approach, with the GDPR. Here, we summarise and analyse this large, complex case. We argue that by characterising IAB Europe as a joint controller with RTB actors, this important decision gives DPAs an agreed-upon blueprint to deal with a structurally difficult enforcement challenge. Furthermore, under the DPA’s simple-looking remedial orders are deep technical and organisational tensions. We analyse these “impossible asks”, concluding that absent a fundamental change to RTB, IAB Europe will be unable to adapt the TCF to bring RTB into compliance with the decision

Stikstof-vanggewassen in de laanboomteelt : Resultaten van demonstraties op een zestal laanboombedrijven op klei en op zand

Het doel van het project is om de toepassing van vanggewassen op praktijkbedrijven te demonstreren. Hiertoe zijn een zestal grootschalige demonstraties op praktijkpercelen in regio Opheusden (rivierengebied) en omgeving Haaren (Noord-Brabant) uitgevoerd. Door de verscherpte mestwetgeving wordt het voor de boomteler steeds belangrijker om efficiënt met meststoffen om te gaan. Verlies door uitspoeling naar grond- en oppervlakte water moet tot een minimum beperkt worden. Het project bestaat uit twee deelprojecten. De demonstraties op klei zijn gefinancierd door Provincie Gelderland, Productschap Tuinbouw en Waterschap Rivierenland. De demonstraties op zand zijn gefinancierd door Productschap Tuinbouw, Waterschap De Dommel en LNV