Abstract The main purpose of this study was to examine the phonological skills among children with reading disabilities of the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language, where each phoneme is represented by a grapheme following a certain phonemic principle. The sample consists of 15 children with reading disabilities and 15 children without reading disabilities, where "The diagnostic set for examination of the speech, language, reading and writing abilities among children" was used for examination of their phonological capacity. Phonological skills in children are very important for reading and writing acquisition. The results of the study showed that children with reading disabilities achieved poorer results in all tasks examining the phonological skills, compared to children without reading difficulties. The results of our study comply with results of studies conducted for other languages. The study highlights the importance of the mentioned skills for acquiring reading skills in the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language and the significance of deficient phonological abilities for the etiology of reading disabilities. Based on the conducted study, it can be concluded that phonological skills are very important for acquiring reading and writing abilities. Key words: reading disabilities, phonological skills, phonemic synthesis and analysis 1. Introduction Phonology deals with the system of sounds that exist within a specific language, whereas phonetics deals with the physical reality of the speech sounds, independently of their meaning and function (1). Phonological skills involve the manipulation of phonological constituents of the spoken words in tasks such as blending, segmenting and rhyming. Different researchers reported that children who learn to read well can rhyme at the age of four and they can blend and segment orally presented words and sounds by the end of first grade (2). A number of longitudinal studies found that children who show poor phonological awareness before they have learned to read are at risk of developing a reading disability (3). Reading accuracy is well predicted by early phonological and language skills (4). The relationship between phonemic awareness and learning to read is a two-way process: phonemic awareness is a precondition for learning to read and learning to read facilitates further progress of phonemic awareness (5). Results of different studies showed that phonemic awareness does not develop itself spontaneously, but it partly depends on the literacy (6). When the child learns to read, he/she must be able to detect phonemes that make up spoken words in order to understand that these separate sound units can be represented by letters or group of letters, that is, graphemes in the written language. If the child has not mastered phoneme segmenting, it will be very difficult for him/her to achieve reading and writing fluency (7). In the past 15 years, it has been considered that deficient phonological processing represents the main cause of reading and writing difficulties (8). Most cases of reading disabilities arise because of difficulties in the process of word recognition. These difficulties occur due to deficiencies in the processes of phonological coding, where letter patterns are transformed into phonological codes (9). Dyslexia involves deficiency within the language system, especially at the level of a phonological module. Children with dyslexia need more time to retrieve appropriate phonemes and sometimes while speaking these children retrieve a phoneme that sounds similar to the one they intended to pronounce. The children with dyslexia lack phonemic awareness and they experience difficulty noticing basic sounds - phonemes that make up all spoken and written words (10). The majority of studies about phonological skills among children with dyslexia have been conducted in English speaking countries. The Bosnian language is characterized with a phonemic alphabet, where each letter conesponds to one sound. …

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess patient's satisfaction with retention, aesthetics, chewing, speech and comfort of wearing removable partial de...

The article deals with the connection between nationality and democracy and explores the role Switzerland plays in the scholarly debate on this question. It identifies three main theses – the liberal-nationalist, the liberal-multinationalist and the liberal-postnationalist one – and shows that each of them uses the Swiss case to claim empirical support. It then analyses the connections between nationality and democracy in Switzerland and demonstrates that the country is neither multinational nor postnational but is best characterised as a mononational state. These findings expose the fallacy of using Switzerland to claim support for either the multinational or the postnational thesis and call for a re-consideration of them. Additionally, they show that ‘civic nationalism’ and ‘civic republicanism’ can be conflated and that a predominantly civic nation is viable and sustainable and is not necessarily an ethnic nation in disguise. The Swiss case thus provides qualified empirical support for the liberal-nationalist thesis.

The production of halophilic thermostable protease by Haloferax lucentensis VKMM 007 was optimized using a statistical approach. In accordance with factorial design, soluble starch, gelatin, KCl and MgSO4 were selected among 27 variables tested. Next, a second-order quadratic model was estimated and optimal medium concentrations were determined based on quadratic regression equation generated by model. These were 5.14 g L-1 of KCl, 6.57 g L-1of MgSO4, 9.05 g L-1of gelatin and 5.27 g L-1of soluble starch in high salts media supplemented with 0.5% (w/v) of beef extract and peptone, respectively. In these optimal conditions, the obtained protease concentration of 6.80 U mL-1 was in agreement with the predicted protease concentration and was further improved to 7.02 U mL-1 by increasing the concentration of NaCl in the medium to 25% (w/v). An overall 4.0-fold increase in protease production was achieved in the optimized medium compared to activity obtained in initial medium.

Ketoprofen (KP) is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, which during UV irradiation rapidly transforms into benzophenone derivatives. Such transformation products may occur after topical application of KP, which is then exposed to sunlight resulting in a photo-allergic reaction. These reactions are mediated by the benzophenone moiety independently of the amount of allergen. The same reactions will also occur during wastewater or drinking water treatment albeit their effect in the aqueous environment is yet to be ascertained. In addition, only a few such transformation products have been recognised. To enable the detection and structural elucidation of the widest range of KP transformation products, this study applies complementary chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques including gas chromatography coupled to single quadrupole or ion trap mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography hyphenated with quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Based on structural information gained in tandem and multiple MS experiments, and on highly accurate molecular mass measurements, chemical structures of 22 transformation products are proposed and used to construct an overall breakdown pathway. Among the identified transformation products all but two compounds retained the benzophenone moiety--a result, which raises important issues concerning the possible toxic synergistic effects of KP and its transformation products. These findings trigger further research into water treatment technologies that would limit their entrance into environmental or drinking waters.

Apresentar um livro, neste caso, A educacao infantil como projeto da comunidade: criancas, educadores e pais nos novos servicos para a infância e a familia: a experiencia de San Miniato, e “da-lo a ler, da-lo como um presente, compartilha- lo” (Larrosa, 2004, p. 7). E isto que nos faz Aldo Fortunati, psicopedagogo, pesquisador da infância, presidente do Centro de Pesquisa e de Documentacao sobre a infância La Bottega di Geppetto, da prefeitura de San Miniato, e vicepresidente do Gruppo Nacionale Nindi-infanzia. Ele nos presenteia com esta obra, publicada originalmente sob o titulo L’Educazione dei bambini come progetto della comunita, em 2006, ano em que se comemoraram os vinte e cinco anos da rede de creche publica municipal de San Miniato