An international perspective. A survey of clinician views and practices from 16 countries

Objective: To gain an insight into speech and language therapists’ perspectives and practices on quality of life in aphasia. Participants and Methods: The International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics Aphasia Committee developed a survey questionnaire, which was delivered on-line, anonymously, through SurveyMonkey (November 2012 – April 2013) to clinicians working with people with aphasia in 16 countries across the world. Results: A large number of speech and language therapists responded to the survey, with 19/21 questions answered by 385 – 579 participants. Clinicians were well informed on what constitutes quality of life and viewed it as a complex construct influenced by health, participation, in/dependence, communication, personal factors, and environmental factors. In their clinical practice, they considered quality of life as important, used informal approaches to explore it and aimed to address quality of life goals; yet the majority did not evaluate quality of life in a systematic way. Conclusion: There is a need for training on quality of life to facilitate speech and language therapists to incorporate quality of life outcome measures in their interventions. There is also a need for further research on what interventions improve quality of life in aphasia

39K NMR and EPR study of multiferroic K3Fe5F15

39K NMR spectra and relaxation times of polycrystalline K3Fe5F15 have been used as a microscopic detector of the local magnetic fields at the magnetic transition at TN = 123 K. The NMR lineshape widens abruptly upon crossing TN due to the onset of internal magnetic fields, while we find no significant lineshift. The paraelectric to ferroelectric transition at Tc = 490 K and the magnetic transition at TN have also been studied using X-band EPR (electron paramagnetic resonance). An increase and subsequent decrease in the EPR susceptibilities is observed on approaching TN from above. There is also a significant increase in the linewidth. At the same time the g-factor first decreases and then increases with decreasing temperature. The local magnetic field is different at different K sites and is much smaller than the magnetic field around the Fe sites. This seems to be consistent with the behaviour of a weak ferrimagnet. The ferrimagnetism does not seem to be due to spin canting as the lattice is disordered, but may arise from thermal blocking of superparamagnetic percolation clusters. The ferroelectric transition at Tc shows no electronic anomaly, demonstrating that we are dealing with a classical phonon anomaly as found in conventional oxides rather than an electronic transition

Magnetic properties of multiferroic K3Cr2Fe3F15

The local electronic and structural as well as the macroscopic magnetic properties of K3Cr2Fe3F15 have been studied between room temperature and 4 K. The system has been found to be isostructural with ferroelectric and weakly ferrimagnetic K3Fe5F15 above the ferroelectric transition temperature T-c. The X-band and 216 GHz Cr3+ electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectra as well as the magnetic susceptibility and Moumlssbauer data show the existence of two magnetic relaxor type transitions around 37 and 17 K. The K-39 magic angle sample spinning NMR, EPR, and the Moumlssbauer data further demonstrate the existence of two nonequivalent Fe, Cr, and K sites in the unit cell as well as the presence of rapid exchange at higher temperatures. The observation of the Fe2+ EPR and Moumlssbauer spectra shows that the Fe2+ ion is in a high spin state