Search Results (4)

Reactions to the Wright brothers’ achievement of the first sustained, controlled powered flight in December 1903 ranged from complete indifference to voluble celebration and evolved into convictions that ranged from a belief that war would be rendered impossible to confident predictions of invasion and widespread destruction. The policies and perceptions of institutions, governments and individuals were subject to constant revision and often abrupt reversal. When war came, the aeroplane, which began as an instrument of reconnaissance, rapidly became one more hazard among many for those at the front and a further point of division between combatants and civilians, for whom airships and air raids tended to loom larger. The first dynamic phase in the story of the aeroplane overlaps with the major early modernist period. This essay seeks to map, within that wider context, the experiences and responses of Ford Madox Ford. He began, like many others, with images of beauty and the natural world in that early stage when a functioning range of descriptive or comparative terms had yet to emerge. He encountered them next in the theatre of war during his service in France. His ambivalence towards aeroplanes was both similar to and different from his earlier responses to trains, cars and telephones. Their relative rarity, as well as their both physical and metaphorical distance, and Ford’s own apparent immunity to the glamour and dynamism of aviation enabled him to view them retrospectively and employ them in anecdote, autobiography and fiction as both threat and saviour. Full article

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of aural-oral habilitation (AO) over the traditional speech-language therapy, based on the number of vocalization-volubility of a deaf child with late-mapping bilateral cochlear implants using sequential measurements. Methods: The spontaneous productions during child interactions were analyzed. The child (CY, 7;0 years old) with a mean unaided pure-tone average (PTA) hearing loss >80 dB HL was assessed by using an assessment battery. Study design consisted of two phases: (a) baseline (end of speech therapy) and (b) end of AO treatment. Protophones were analyzed via acoustical analysis using PRAAT software. Results: One-way repeated-measure ANOVAs were conducted within and between phases. The analyses revealed significant differences between the ‘phase’ and the vocalization outcome (F = 9.4, df = 1, p = 0.035). Post hoc analyses revealed the significant difference between the mean number of disyllable vocalizations of AO approach (p = 0.05). The mean number of vocalizations was calculated for each protophone type, but no other significant difference was measured. Conclusions: AO approach proved effective as measured through volubility. The outcome of this study is indicative and is a starting point for broader research. Full article

Despite their potential significance for later linguistic outcomes, early aspects of vocalization had been seriously undervalued in the past, and thus, minimally investigated until relatively recently. The present article sets out to critically examine existing evidence to: i) ascertain whether vocalization frequency (volubility) posits a plausible marker of cochlear implantation success in infancy, and ii) determine the clinical usefulness of post-implementation vocalization frequency data in predicting later language development. Only recent peer-reviewed articles with substantial impact on vocalization growth during the first year of life, examining sound production characteristics of normally hearing (NH) and hearing impaired infants fitted with cochlear implantation (CI) were mentioned. Recorded differences in linguistic performance among NH and CI infants are typically attributed to auditory deprivation. Infants who have undergone late CI, produce fewer syllables (low volubility) and exhibit late-onset babbling, especially those who received their CIs at the age of 12 months or thereafter. Contrarily, early recipients (before the 12-month of age) exhibit higher volubility (more vocalizations), triggered from CI-initiated auditory feedback. In other words, early CI provides infants with early auditory access to speech sounds, leading to advanced forms of babbling and increased post-implementation vocalization frequency. Current findings suggest vocalization frequency as a plausible criterion of the success of early CI. It is argued that vocalization frequency predicts language development and affects habilitation therapy. Full article

Low-grade metabolic acidosis is a condition characterized by a slight decrease in blood pH, within the range considered normal, and feeding is one of the main factors that may influence the occurrence of such a condition. The excessive consumption of acid precursor foods (sources of phosphorus and proteins), to the detriment of those precursors of bases (sources of potassium, calcium, and magnesium), leads to acid-base balance volubility. If this condition occurs in a prolonged, chronic way, low-grade metabolic acidosis can become significant and predispose to metabolic imbalances such as kidney stone formation, increased bone resorption, reduced bone mineral density, and the loss of muscle mass, as well as the increased risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and non-alcoholic hepatic steatosis. Considering the increase in the number of studies investigating the influence of diet-induced metabolic acidosis on clinical outcomes, this review gathers the available evidence evaluating the association of this disturbance and metabolic imbalances, as well as related mechanisms. It is necessary to look at the western dietary pattern of most countries and the increasing incidence of non-comunicable diseases for the balance between fruit and vegetable intake and the appropriate supply of protein, mainly from animal sources, so that it does not exceed the daily recommendations. Full article