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Introduction: Findings of experiences and impacts of stuttering on adult people who stutter (PWS) from previous qualitative studies may not be true for PWS in Vietnam, because of cultural, social, and environmental differences. Until now, there has been no study of stuttering in adult Vietnamese PWS, therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the experiences and impacts of stuttering in adult Vietnamese PWS across their lifespan and on different areas of their lives. Methods: This is a qualitative descriptive study. Participants were recruited via the social networking site of the Vietnamese stuttering community (ECHO Vietnam). Each person was screened for developmental stuttering by an experienced and independent speech language therapist. Semi-structured interview was used for data collection. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Results: Fear of stuttering, being teased by friends, unfavorable family reactions made PWS less confident, self-isolated, thereby having negative impacts on studying, working, and social relations. Beside negative experiences, a few showed empathy and support from teachers, relatives, and friends. PWS had low access to stuttering treatment because of lacking of official information on stuttering treatment. Self-help groups have played an active role in the treatment and emotional support for PWS. Conclusion: This study provided preliminary information about the experiences and impacts of stuttering in Vietnamese adult PWS. Further studies are needed to obtain deeper and more comprehensive information. It is necessary, through mass media, especially the internet, to provide information about treatment facilities, or organizations that PWS can join to get counseling about treatment.

Introduction: To date no study has investigated speech-related social anxiety for Vietnamese adults who stutter. To carry out such a study, a culturally and linguistically relevant assessment tool is required but is not yet available. The objectives of this study were to translate and adapt the UTBAS-6 scale into Vietnamese and evaluate the validity and reliability of the Vietnamese version of the scale for use with Vietnamese adults who stutter. Methods: The translation process included forward and backward translation, synthesis, and expert review. The final version was administered to 34 Vietnamese adults who stutter. Content validity was assessed by experts working in the field of speech and language therapy. Face validity was assessed by study participants. Convergent and divergent validities were used to determine the construct validity. Cronbach’s alpha was used to test the internal consistency and intraclass correlation coefficient to determine test-retest reliability. Results: S-CVIs of “Relevance” and “Clarity” of the scale were in the range of 0.83-1.00, showing a high consensus of the expert panel. All participants stated that the Vietnamese version was related to stuttering and was easy to understand. The convergent validity was at 88.9% of the items, and the divergent validity was at 61.1% of the items. Alpha coefficients of three subscales and total scale were greater than 0.7. The test-retest reliability of the scales was moderate. Conclusions: The results of the study provided preliminary information on the validity and reliability of the Vietnamese version of the UTBAS-6 scale. Further studies with a representative and larger sample size are needed to ensure the accuracy of the findings.

Burnout is a "normal" albeit concerning response to workplace stress, whereas Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a serious illness associated with impairment and suicide risk. Because of symptomatic overlap between the two conditions and MDD-associated stigma, individuals reporting work-related stress and depression often are "diagnosed" with burnout at the expense of recognizing and treating MDD. Our study aimed to leverage organizational implementation of the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention's Interactive Screening Program to elucidate relationships among burnout, depression, and other suicide risk factors.2281 of about 30,000 (~7.6 %) medical trainees, staff, and faculty responded to an anonymous online stress and depression questionnaire. Respondents were grouped into four cohorts: screened positive for burnout alone (n = 439, 19 %), depression alone (n = 268, 12 %), both conditions (n = 759, 33 %), or neither condition (n = 817, 36 %), and compared on multiple measures of distress and other suicide risk factors.Burnout alone and depression alone each predicted greater distress and suicide risk compared with neither condition. Depression was a stronger predictor than burnout and demonstrated a consistent association with other suicide risk factors regardless of whether burnout was present. In contrast, burnout was not consistently associated with other suicide risk factors when depression was present.The sample was limited to one state-supported academic medical center; to individuals who elected to take the online survey; and relied on a single item, non-validated measure of burnout.When emotional distress is reported by healthcare workers, attention should not stop at "burnout," as burnout frequently comingles with clinical depression, a serious and treatable mental health condition.

BACKGROUND: Recruitment and retention of skilled health workers into rural areas is a major challenge to achieving equity in health between rural and urban populations. OBJECTIVE: This study explored the impact of rurally-based tertiary education in promoting the recruitment and retention of speech and language therapists (SLTs) in non-metropolitan areas and intention to remain in the profession. METHODS: Participants in this cohort study were 133 graduates from a rurally-based speech and language therapy course in Australia who completed the course between 1998 and 2018. Data were collected via an online survey. Data were analysed using inferential statistics, ArcGIS mapping software and content analysis in NVivo12. RESULTS: 65.0% of the graduates practiced in rural or remote areas with just 21.1% practicing in major cities. Most participants’ ideal work location was in a rural area. Benefits of rural practice included seeing a mixed caseload, living near family, work/life balance and loving their location. Challenges of rural practice included limited opportunities for specialist caseloads and career progression. In total, 93.2% of the rural graduates intended to remain in the speech and language therapy profession for the next 5 years. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates that SLTs who are trained in rural areas with a focus on servicing rural populations are highly likely to enter and remain in rural practice, consistent with the rural pipeline model.

With increasingly multicultural and linguistically diverse societies, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are being challenged with the task of working with clients who speak foreign languages. How...

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) ability to measure stuttering reliably has been of interest over time. However, speech samples used in stuttering measurement research have varied in d...

The canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL) is a zoonosis extremely important for public health, of worldwide relevance, with 90% of the cases registered in Brazil. It´s caused by the protozoan from the genus Leishmania and its main host is the domestic dog. For the successful transmission, it must have the presence of the vector, a hematophagous mosquito from genus Lutyzomia. The diagnostic from the disease is extremely difficult, seen that 60% to 80% of the seropositive animals are asymptomatic and the clinical manifestations are very nonspecific. After changes made by the Health Ministry, it actually is permitted to realize the treatment of the positive animals to CVL, in which the most accepted medicament is Miltefosine. Yet, independent of the treatment, the best method against CVL is prevention. In the present job was produced a questionnaire through the platform Google Forms with 14 questions encompassing the Leishmaniasis. Were collected 65 answers veterinarians of different ages and states of Brazil. 80% of vets said to indicate the treatment of the animal in cases of leishmaniasis confirmed, while 3.08% still indicate euthanasia. Although not recommended, the use of amphotericin B and pentavalent antimonials is still seen in the treatment protocols, however, the majority (75.4%) opts for the use of Miltefosina, recommended. Vaccination, although accepted by most veterinarians (95.38%), is still a little-used practice due to the low product availability in clinics, just 47.69% have in the veterinary clinic. Among veterinarians, 95.4% indicate the use of 4% deltamethrin collars as prevention. A good performance by the veterinarian is of paramount importance for the control effect of VL.

The canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL) is a zoonosis extremely important for public health, of worldwide relevance, with 90% of the cases registered in Brazil. It´s caused by the protozoan from the genus Leishmania and its main host is the domestic dog. For the successful transmission, it must have the presence of the vector, a hematophagous mosquito from genus Lutyzomia. The diagnostic from the disease is extremely difficult, seen that 60% to 80% of the seropositive animals are asymptomatic and the clinical manifestations are very nonspecific. After changes made by the Health Ministry, it actually is permitted to realize the treatment of the positive animals to CVL, in which the most accepted medicament is Miltefosine. Yet, independent of the treatment, the best method against CVL is prevention. In the present job was produced a questionnaire through the platform Google Forms with 14 questions encompassing the Leishmaniasis. Were collected 65 answers veterinarians of different ages and states of Brazil. 80% of vets said to indicate the treatment of the animal in cases of leishmaniasis confirmed, while 3.08% still indicate euthanasia. Although not recommended, the use of amphotericin B and pentavalent antimonials is still seen in the treatment protocols, however, the majority (75.4%) opts for the use of Miltefosina, recommended. Vaccination, although accepted by most veterinarians (95.38%), is still a little-used practice due to the low product availability in clinics, just 47.69% have in the veterinary clinic. Among veterinarians, 95.4% indicate the use of 4% deltamethrin collars as prevention. A good performance by the veterinarian is of paramount importance for the control effect of VL.

Speech therapy is an emerging profession in Vietnam, and there is an estimated 910 000 Vietnamese people who stutter. No research to date has examined Vietnamese speech therapists’ reliability when measuring severity of stuttering in their native language (Vietnamese) and other languages (e.g. English, a common second language). Twenty-five Vietnamese speech therapists rated 20 speech samples (10 Vietnamese, 10 English) of adults who stutter using a 9-point severity rating (SR) scale on two occasions. Approximately half of the judges were able to measure severity of stuttering reliably in Vietnamese. Judges’ performance in English was poorer than in their native language. Irrespective of language, judges showed greater variability of their use of the scale in the moderate range. Results highlight the need for judges to develop intra- and interjudge agreement when using the scale to measure stuttering in their native and other languages. Research into the development and evaluation of practice and/...

This video illustrates the large-scale experiment of the L2TOR project that will be presented at the HRI 2019 conference. The experiment aimed to investigate how 192 Dutch 5-year-old children could learn 34 English words from a NAO robot in 7 lessons. The experiment compared 4 conditions: 1) robot using iconic gestures, 2) robot without iconic gestures, 3) tablet only, and 4) a control group. The results revealed that children could learn more English words in all experimental conditions compared to the control group. The three experimental conditions did not show any significant differences regarding the learning outcomes.

A challenge in addressing climate risk in developing countries is that many regions have extremely limited formal data sets, so for these regions, people must rely on technologies like remote sensing for solutions. However, this means the necessary formal weather data to design and validate remote sensing solutions do not exist. Therefore, many projects use farmers’ reported perceptions and recollections of climate risk events, such as drought. However, if these are used to design risk management interventions such as insurance, there may be biases and limitations which could potentially lead to a problematic product. To better understand the value and validity of farmer perceptions, this paper explores two related questions: (1) Is there evidence that farmers reporting data have any information about actual drought events, and (2) is there evidence that it is valuable to address recollection and perception issues when using farmer-reported data? We investigated these questions by analyzing index insurance, in which remote sensing products trigger payments to farmers during loss years. Our case study is perhaps the largest participatory farmer remote sensing insurance project in Ethiopia. We tested the cross-consistency of farmer-reported seasonal vulnerabilities against the years reported as droughts by independent satellite data sources. We found evidence that farmer-reported events are independently reflected in multiple remote sensing datasets, suggesting that there is legitimate information in farmer reporting. Repeated community-based meetings over time and aggregating independent village reports over space lead to improved predictions, suggesting that it may be important to utilize methods to address potential biases.

With increasing multiculturalism, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are likely to work with stuttering clients from linguistic backgrounds that differ from their own. No research to date has estimated SLPs' reliability when measuring severity of stuttering in an unfamiliar language. Therefore, this study was undertaken to estimate the reliability of SLPs' use of a 9-point severity rating (SR) scale, to measure severity of stuttering in a language that was different from their own. Twenty-six Australian SLPs rated 20 speech samples (10 Australian English [AE] and 10 Mandarin) of adults who stutter using a 9-point SR scale on two separate occasions. Judges showed poor agreement when using the scale to measure stuttering in Mandarin samples. Results also indicated that 50% of individual judges were unable to reliably measure the severity of stuttering in AE. The results highlight the need for (a) SLPs to develop intra- and inter-judge agreement when using the 9-point SR scale to measure severity of stuttering in their native language (in this case AE) and in unfamiliar languages; and (b) research into the development and evaluation of practice and/or training packages to assist SLPs to do so.

cDNAs encoding 2 Ancylostoma-secreted proteins (ASPs), Ancylostoma ceylanicum (Ay)-ASP-1 and Ay-ASP-2, were cloned from infective third-stage larvae (L3) of the hookworm A. ceylanicum and were expressed as soluble recombinant fusion proteins secreted by the yeast Pichia pastoris. The recombinant fusion proteins were purified, adjuvant formulated, and injected intramuscularly into hamsters. Hamsters vaccinated either by oral vaccination with irradiated L3 (irL3) or by injections of the adjuvants alone served as positive and negative controls, respectively. Anti-ASP-1 and anti-ASP-2 antibody titers exceeded 1 : 100000. Each vaccinated hamster was challenged orally with 100 L3. Two groups of vaccinated hamsters (i.e., those vaccinated with either irL3 or ASP-2 formulated with Quil A) exhibited significant reductions in adult hookworm burdens, compared with control hamsters. The hookworms recovered from the hamsters vaccinated with ASP-2 plus Quil A were reduced in length. Splenomegaly, which was observed in control hamsters, was not seen in hamsters vaccinated with either irL3 or ASP-2 formulated with Quil A. These results indicate that ASP-2 is a promising molecule for the development of a hookworm vaccine.

This study determined the sequence of airway permeability and inflammatory changes in rats exposed to ozone O3 concentrations comparable to those encountered in the smog. Rats were exposed for a 3-h period to 0.15, 0.3, or 0.5 ppm O3. Since the results from other studies suggest that the times for the onset and peak of O3 effects are dependent on both the exposure concentration and the type of measured response, sets of rats were studied at 4-h intervals up to 24 h after exposure. An exposure to 0.5 ppm O3 did not produce a change in the protein and albumin levels in the bronchoalveolar lavage BAL immediately after exposure, but an increase in both of these measures occurred at 4 h after the end of exposure. Both protein and albumin levels peaked at the 8-h time point and then declined, but their overall concentrations remained higher than the control levels up to 24 h postexposure. In contrast to the protein and albumin levels in the BAL, polymorphonuclear leukocyte PMN number increased immediately poste...

Patient navigator programs were established to mitigate barriers to cancer care, especially among underserved populations in 3 community hospitals in western Pennsylvania. This study was designed to determine and compare the time spent to enroll patients recently diagnosed with any type of cancer, the characteristics of enrolled patients, the types of barriers to treatment and the time it took patient navigators to address barriers. At enrollment, 253 (85%) of 299 enrollees reported barriers, most frequently problems with insurance and out-of-pocket expenses (31.5%) and transportation (24.6%). Navigators spent an average of 2.5 hours per patient. They spent significantly more time helping uninsured than insured patients and helping patients at the inner-city site. The most time was spent on financial problems (169 minutes), transportation problems (74 minutes), end-of-life issues (65 minutes), arrangement for dependent care (60 minutes), scheduling of appointments (34 minutes) and assistance with activities of daily living (24 minutes). Overall, financial barriers were the most often reported and the most time consuming. Patient navigators assisting cancer patients, especially the poor and underserved, will require significant time to address patients' financial and other barriers to care. This information will be helpful in the allocation of staff time and case loads for future programs.

We present the case of a 46 year old woman with a giant, 23-centimeter, atypical carcinoid of the liver. A primary site for this neoplasm could not be identified despite multiple radiographic imaging studies, including a somatostatin scan, and a thorough inspection of the bowel during surgical resection of the lesion. Histologically, the tumor displayed mild cytologic atypia, abundant necrosis, and intravascular metastases, the last feature of which was identified by immunohistochemical markers for chromogranin and synaptophysin. Also described is the unusual sinusoidal infiltration, or "spillage," of tumor cells into the surrounding liver parenchyma, a feature that has not been described as far as we are aware but may suggest an aggressive clinical course. Even though an exact definition of atypia for these lesions apparently does not exist at this point, the multiple atypical features in this case strongly suggest the diagnosis of atypical carcinoid of the liver, thus far an altogether rare and vaguely reported entity. As more cases arise in the medical literature, it may be worthwhile to establish a set of guidelines to define atypical hepatic carcinoids and other gastrointestinal carcinoids, although survivorship data thus far indicates no significant difference in the prognosis between typical versus atypical variants.

Results (cont.) Conclusions When possible, specific tests from each CAB were extracted and grouped into domains of neuropsychological function (attention, visual spatial reasoning, nonverbal memory, executive function etc.). Analyses were conducted using Comprehensive MetaAnalysis, Version 2.0. In order to standardize medication effects on cognitive performance, an effect size (Cohen’s d) was calculated by calculating the mean difference in pre/post cognitive scores after pharmacologic treatment or challenge in schizophrenic patients and dividing this value by the pooled standard deviation. In order to assess homogeneity across studies for each cognitive domain, the Cochran Q-statistic was utilized. A random effects model was used to calculate effect sizes if the Q-statistic revealed significant within-group heterogeneity. In cases where significant heterogeneity was not indicated, fixed effects models were used. In domains with significant heterogeneity, possible effect size moderators were examined based on the Q-statistic. Continuous moderators were examined with metaregression techniques. Analysis of medication effects on cognitive functioning across different medication types, revealed an overall moderate effect size (d = 0.523) for all CABs which was significantly heterogeneous (p .19). However, CogLab and ANAM had significantly higher ESs than CANTAB and MINDSTREAMS (p =.029, p

We present a large-scale study of a series of seven lessons designed to help young children learn english vocabulary as a foreign language using a social robot. The experiment was designed to investigate 1) the effectiveness of a social robot teaching children new words over the course of multiple interactions (supported by a tablet), 2) the added benefit of a robot's iconic gestures on word learning and retention, and 3) the effect of learning from a robot tutor accompanied by a tablet versus learning from a tablet application alone. For reasons of transparency, the research questions, hypotheses and methods were preregistered. With a sample size of 194 children, our study was statistically well-powered. Our findings demonstrate that children are able to acquire and retain English vocabulary words taught by a robot tutor to a similar extent as when they are taught by a tablet application. In addition, we found no beneficial effect of a robot's iconic gestures on learning gains., European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme; European Union (European Union); Horizon 2020