Prosody in Swedish Children with Language Impairment. Perceptual, Acoustic and Interactional Aspects

The aim of this thesis was to explore prosodic problems in Swedish children with language impairment (LI). In the first study, 29 children with LI participated. They were assessed with an assessment procedure for prosody at the word, phrase and discourse levels, developed within this thesis. The results showed that 41% of the children had prosodic problems to some extent. In addition, reliability and validity of the newly developed assessment procedure were evaluated. The procedure was found to be sufficiently reliable and also a valid instrument to assess prosodic problems. In study II data from 25 children with LI in combination with prosodic problems as assessed by their clinician, were compared to data from 25 children with typically developing language matched to age, gender and regional dialect. Results from this study showed that the children with LI in combination with prosodic problems scored significantly lower on all aspects of prosody. Moreover, the results indicated that there were at least two subgroups of prosodic problems; one with prosodic problems related to linguistic/phonetic problems and the other with prosodic problems related to pragmatic problems. Contrast of tonal word accents was one of the most difficult prosodic features to acquire for children with LI in combination with prosodic problems. The ability to produce this contrast was investigated with perceptual as well as acoustic evaluations in study III. Both the perceptual and the acoustic evaluation verified that children with LI in combination with prosodic problems had significant problems in producing the contrasts of tonal word accents. The results also indicated that the problems are a lack of contrast rather than an overgeneralization of accent II, which has previously been suggested. Study IV is a case study of two children with prosodic problems at the discourse level. In this study it was shown that prosodic problems at the discourse level may be related to pragmatic problems. The results of this thesis have important clinical implications and implications for future research

Проблеми в системах живлення персональних комп’ютерів

In this paper the authors study if and how persons with dementia are orally positioned by others, and how they position themselves while participating in assessment meetings held in order to discuss access to supportive services. We analysed five assessment meetings where two older persons (one diagnosed with dementia and one without a dementia diagnosis) participated to investigate whether the person with dementia is positioned differently than the other old person. Interactional phenomena used to position the person with dementia were identified by interactional analysis. The paperidentifies six phenomena that positioned the person with dementia as an individual with less interactional competence than the other participants: ignoring the person with dementia; voicing the feelings, capacity or opinion of the person with dementia; posing questions implying lack of competence; others' use of diagnosis; self-(re)positioning; and elderspeak. Persons with dementia are often orally positioned as less competent, indicating that they suffer further from discrimination than other older persons. We suggest that this has an impact on the participation of people with dementia in negotiations regarding their future care. The results indicate that social workers should be made aware that negative positioning exists and how it may affect the ability of people with dementia to contribute to discussions about their everyday life. Social workers should be encouraged to find strategies to reduce negative positioning in interaction

Improved Pairwise Measurement-Based Surface Code

We devise a new realization of the surface code on a rectangular lattice of qubits utilizing single-qubit and nearest-neighbor two-qubit Pauli measurements and three auxiliary qubits per plaquette. This realization gains substantial advantages over prior pairwise measurement-based realizations of the surface code. It has a short operation period of 4 steps and our performance analysis for a standard circuit noise model yields a high fault-tolerance threshold of approximately $0.66\%$. The syndrome extraction circuits avoid bidirectional hook errors, so we can achieve full code distance by choosing appropriate boundary conditions. We also construct variants of the syndrome extraction circuits that entirely prevent hook errors, at the cost of larger circuit depth. This achieves full distance regardless of boundary conditions, with only a modest decrease in the threshold. Furthermore, we propose an efficient strategy for dealing with dead components (qubits and measurements) in our surface code realization, which can be adopted more generally for other surface code realizations. This new surface code realization is highly optimized for Majorana-based hardware, accounting for constraints imposed by layouts and the implementation of measurements, making it competitive with the recently proposed Floquet codes.Comment: 38 pages, 32 figure

Self-perceived psychological stress and ischemic stroke: a case-control study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A growing body of evidence suggests that psychological stress contributes to coronary artery disease. However, associations between stress and stroke are less clear. In this study, we investigated the possible association between ischemic stroke and self-perceived psychological stress, as measured by a single-item questionnaire, previously reported to be associated with myocardial infarction.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In the Sahlgrenska Academy Study on Ischemic Stroke (SAHLSIS), 600 consecutive patients with acute ischemic stroke (aged 18 to 69 years) and 600 age-matched and sex-matched population controls were recruited. Ischemic stroke subtype was determined according to Trial of Org 10172 in Acute Stroke Treatment (TOAST) criteria. Self-perceived psychological stress preceding stroke was assessed retrospectively using a single-item questionnaire.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Permanent self-perceived psychological stress during the last year or longer was independently associated with overall ischemic stroke (multivariate adjusted odds ratio (OR) 3.49, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.06 to 5.93). Analyses by stroke subtype showed that this association was present for large vessel disease (OR 3.91, 95% CI 1.58 to 9.67), small vessel disease (OR 3.20, 95% CI 1.64 to 6.24), and cryptogenic stroke (OR 4.03, 95% CI 2.34 to 6.95), but not for cardioembolic stroke (OR 1.48, 95% CI 0.64 to 3.39).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In this case-control study, we found an independent association between self-perceived psychological stress and ischemic stroke. A novel finding was that this association differed by ischemic stroke subtype. Our results emphasize the need for further prospective studies addressing the potential role for psychological stress as a risk factor for ischemic stroke. In such studies ischemic stroke subtypes should be taken into consideration.</p

INLIFE - independent living support functions for the elderly : technology and pilot overview

In this paper, we present the European H2020 project INLIFE (INdependent LIving support Functions for the Elderly). The project brought together 20 partners from nine countries with the goal of integrating into a common ICT platform a range of technologies intended to assist community-dwelling older people with cognitive impairment. The majority of technologies existed prior to INLIFE and a key goal was to bring them together in one place along with a number of new applications to provide a comprehensive set of services. The range of INLIFE services fell into four broad areas: Independent Living Support, Travel Support, Socialization and Communication Support and Caregiver Support. These included security applications, services to facilitate interactions with formal and informal caregivers, multilingual conversation support, web-based physical exercises, teleconsultations, and support for transport navigation. In total, over 2900 people participated in the project; they included elderly adults with cognitive impairment, informal caregivers, healthcare professionals, and other stakeholders. The aim of the study was to assess whether there was improvement/stabilization of cognitive/emotional/physical functioning, as well as overall well-being and quality of life of those using the INLIFE services, and to assess user acceptance of the platform and individual services. The results confirm there is a huge interest and appetite for technological services to support older adults living with cognitive impairment in the community. Different services attracted different amounts of use and evaluation with some proving extremely popular while others less so. The findings provide useful information on the ways in which older adults and their families, health and social care services and other stakeholders wish to access technological services, what sort of services they are seeking, what sort of support they need to access services, and how these services might be funded

Effect of obesity on biodistribution of nanoparticles

[EN] Nanoparticles have specific features (lipophilicity, surface charge, composition and size). Studies regarding the biological behavior of nanoparticles in diseases such diabetics and obesity are scarce. Here, we evaluated two nanoparticles: magnetic core mesoporous silica (MSN) (58 nm) and polycaprolactone (PCL) nanoparticle (280 nm) in obese mice. Changes in the biodistribution were observed, especially considering the mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS), and the visceral fat tissue. Nonetheless, our data corroborates the influence of size in the biodistribution in obese animals, supporting that smaller nanoparticles, may show a higher tissue deposition at spleen, due the associated splenomegaly and the complications arising from this state. Finally, our study demonstrated that, in obesity, probably due the low-grade inflammatory state associated with metabolic syndrome a difference in accumulation of nanoparticles was found, with profound impact in the tissue deposition of nanoparticles.The authors would like to thank the National Scientific and Technological Research Council (CNPQ) - no. 400018/2016-0 and the Rio de Janeiro State Research Foundation (FAPERJ) - E-26/102.940/2012 for funding. Authors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Project MAT2012-38429-C04-01) and the Generalitat Valenciana (project PROMETEO/2009/016) for support.Felismino, CDJ.; Helal-Neto, E.; Portilho, F.; Rocha Pinto, S.; Sancenón Galarza, F.; Martínez-Máñez, R.; Ferreira, ADA.... (2018). Effect of obesity on biodistribution of nanoparticles. Journal of Controlled Release. 281:11-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jconrel.2018.05.003S111828