Male and female emirati medical clerks’ perceptions of the impact of gender and mobility on their professional careers

Background: Medicine has undergone profound changes in terms of the number of women entering the profession with postulated implications of this ‘feminization’ for the profession. The present phenomenological study sought to gain insight into the experiences of final year male and female Emirati medical students (clerks) in terms of the impact of gender on their careers. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 of the 27 clerks. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed thematically. Findings: There was consensus that the gender profile of medicine in the United Arab Emirates was changing as opportunities emerged for Emirati women to branch into different medical specialties. These opportunities were, however, local or regional due largely to travel restrictions on women. Females would thus receive a less highly regarded board certification than males who were encouraged to specialize abroad. On their return, males would be appointed as consultants or as high-ranking administrators. Participants also acknowledged that like their roles in their society, some medical specialties were ‘gendered’, e.g., surgery (male) and pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology (female). Conclusion: Although religious and cultural traditions around gender and mobility will influence the professional careers of male and female Emirati medical graduates, the situation is, however, changing

Good internal communication increases productivity

Internal communication has become an important factor in today's business world. The increased use of electronic media can, despite their obvious advantages, cause communication problems, i.e. information overload. By avoiding communication problems, the productivity of a company can be increased. The relation between internal communication and productivity has been subject of a number of surveys. Although different survey approaches have been used, all found that there is a positive impact of communication on productivity. Since different communication dimensions have a different impact on an employee's perceived productivity, effective and efficient internal communication has to be managed, therefore, in accordance with the situation of each company and its employees. -- In der heutigen Geschäftswelt gewinnt interne Kommunikation als Wettbewerbsfaktor eine zunehmende Bedeutung. Die vermehrte Anwendung von elektronischen Medien kann jedoch trotz ihrer Vorteile auch zu Kommunikationsproblemen, speziell zu Informationsflut, führen. Indem Kommunikationsprobleme vermieden werden, ist es möglich im Unternehmen die Produktivität zu erhöhen. Dieser Zusammenhang ist Gegenstand verschiedenster Studien, die trotz unterschiedlicher Ansätze alle einen positiven Einfluss von Kommunikation auf die Produktivität herausstellten. Aufgrund verschiedener Stellencharaktere und der damit verbundenen Nutzen bestimmter Informationen, beeinflussen vielfache Arten von Kommunikation die Produktivität von Angestellten unterschiedlich. Ebenso sind Unterschiede zwischen den Angestellten und verschiedenen Unternehmenstypologien zu verzeichnen. Folglich ist das Management von interner Kommunikation auf das spezielle Unternehmen und seine Mitarbeiter zuzuschneiden.Productivity,Internal Communication,Communication Methods,Communication Problems,Information Overload,Produktivität,Interne Kommunikation,Kommunikationsmethode,Kommunikationsprobleme,Informationsflut

Does it really matter? Separating the effects of musical training on syntax acquisition

The possible transfer of musical expertise to the acquisition of syntactical structures in first and second language has emerged recently as an intriguing topic in the research of cognitive processes. However, it is unlikely that the benefits of musical training extend equally to the acquisition of all syntactical structures. As cognitive transfer presumably requires overlapping processing components and brain regions involved in these processing components, one can surmise that transfer between musical ability and syntax acquisition would be limited to structural elements that are shared between the two. We propose that musical expertise transfers only to the processing of recursive long-distance dependencies inherent in hierarchical syntactic structures. In this study, we taught fifty-six participants with widely varying degrees of musical expertise the artificial language BROCANTO, which allows the direct comparison of long-distance and local dependencies. We found that the quantity of musical training (measured in accumulated hours of practice and instruction) explained unique variance in performance in the long-distance dependency condition only. These data suggest that musical training facilitates the acquisition specifically of hierarchical syntactic structures

The influence of distraction on speech processing: How selective is selective attention?

-* indicates shared first authorship - The present study investigated the effects of selective attention on the processing of morphosyntactic errors in unattended parts of speech. Two groups of German native (L1) speakers participated in the present study. Participants listened to sentences in which irregular verbs were manipulated in three different conditions (correct, incorrect but attested ablaut pattern, incorrect and crosslinguistically unattested ablaut pattern). In order to track fast dynamic neural reactions to the stimuli, electroencephalography was used. After each sentence, participants in Experiment 1 performed a semantic judgement task, which deliberately distracted the participants from the syntactic manipulations and directed their attention to the semantic content of the sentence. In Experiment 2, participants carried out a syntactic judgement task, which put their attention on the critical stimuli. The use of two different attentional tasks allowed for investigating the impact of selective attention on speech processing and whether morphosyntactic processing steps are performed automatically. In Experiment 2, the incorrect attested condition elicited a larger N400 component compared to the correct condition, whereas in Experiment 1 no differences between conditions were found. These results suggest that the processing of morphosyntactic violations in irregular verbs is not entirely automatic but seems to be strongly affected by selective attention

Broca's area in the human brain is involved in the selection of grammatical gender for language production: Evidence from event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging

The neural correlates of the selection of grammatical gender during overt picture naming were investigated by event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging in the left hemisphere. Relative to simply naming a picture, the production of the definite determiner of the picture name (requiring gender selection) resulted exclusively in pronounced activation of a single region in the superior portion of Broca's area. This activation was not present in contrasts reflecting lexical access (naming a picture vs. saying “jaja” to a smiley) or articulation (saying “jaja” vs. rest). Rather, lexical access activated other inferior frontal regions, insula, fusiform and inferior temporal gyrus. Articulation involved insula, Rolandic operculum, motor and premotor cortex and superior temporal gyrus. The results are discussed with respect to data from studies investigating gender processing during language comprehension

Distributed cortical networks for syntax processing: Broca's area as the common denominator

Different types of syntactic information (word category, grammatical gender) are processed at different times during word recognition. However, it is an open issue which brain systems support these processes. In the present event-related fMRI study, subjects performed either a syntactic gender decision task on German nouns (GEN), a word category decision task (WC, nouns vs. prepositions), or a physical baseline task (BASE). Reaction times in WC were faster than in GEN, supporting earlier electrophysiological results. Relative to BASE, both syntactic tasks activated the inferior tip of BA 44. In addition, BA 45 showed activation in GEN, whereas BA 47 was activated in WC. The imaging data indicate that the inferior portion of BA 44 together with type-specific prefrontal areas supports both initial word category related and later syntactic processes

Signatures of Interchange Reconnection: STEREO, ACE and Hinode Observations Combined

Combining STEREO, ACE and Hinode observations has presented an opportunity to follow a filament eruption and coronal mass ejection (CME) on the 17th of October 2007 from an active region (AR) inside a coronal hole (CH) into the heliosphere. This particular combination of `open' and closed magnetic topologies provides an ideal scenario for interchange reconnection to take place. With Hinode and STEREO data we were able to identify the emergence time and type of structure seen in the in-situ data four days later. On the 21st, ACE observed in-situ the passage of an ICME with `open' magnetic topology. The magnetic field configuration of the source, a mature AR located inside an equatorial CH, has important implications for the solar and interplanetary signatures of the eruption. We interpret the formation of an `anemone' structure of the erupting AR and the passage in-situ of the ICME being disconnected at one leg, as manifested by uni-directional suprathermal electron flux in the ICME, to be a direct result of interchange reconnection between closed loops of the CME originating from the AR and `open' field lines of the surrounding CH.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, accepted Annales Geophysica

Phonological processing during language production: fMRI evidence for a shared production-comprehension network

Studies of phonological processes during language comprehension consistently report activation of the superior portion of Broca’s area. In the domain of language production, however, there is no unequivocal evidence for the contribution of Broca’s area to phonological processing. The present event-related fMRI study investigated the existence of a common neural network for phonological decisions in comprehension and production by using production tasks most comparable to those previously used in comprehension. Subjects performed two decision tasks on the initial phoneme of German picture names (/b/ or not? Vowel or not?). A semantic decision task served as a baseline for both phonological tasks. The contrasts between each phonological task and the semantic task were calculated, and a conjunction analysis was performed. There was significant activation in the superior portion of Broca’s area (Brodmann’s area (BA) 44) in the conjunction analysis, also present in each single contrast. In addition, further left frontal (BA 45/46) and temporal (posterior superior temporal gyrus) areas known to support phonological processing in both production and comprehension were activated. The results suggest the existence of a shared fronto-temporal neural network engaged in the processing of phonological information in both perception and production

Using airborne LiDAR Survey to explore historic-era archaeological landscapes of Montserrat in the eastern Caribbean

This article describes what appears to be the first archaeological application of airborne LiDAR survey to historic-era landscapes in the Caribbean archipelago, on the island of Montserrat. LiDAR is proving invaluable in extending the reach of traditional pedestrian survey into less favorable areas, such as those covered by dense neotropical forest and by ashfall from the past two decades of active eruptions by the Soufrière Hills volcano, and to sites in localities that are inaccessible on account of volcanic dangers. Emphasis is placed on two aspects of the research: first, the importance of ongoing, real-time interaction between the LiDAR analyst and the archaeological team in the field; and second, the advantages of exploiting the full potential of the three-dimensional LiDAR point cloud data for purposes of the visualization of archaeological sites and features