Global rural health disparities in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias: State of the science.

INTRODUCTION: Individuals living in rural communities are at heightened risk for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD), which parallels other persistent place-based health disparities. Identifying multiple potentially modifiable risk factors specific to rural areas that contribute to ADRD is an essential first step in understanding the complex interplay between various barriers and facilitators. METHODS: An interdisciplinary, international group of ADRD researchers convened to address the overarching question of: "What can be done to begin minimizing the rural health disparities that contribute uniquely to ADRD?" In this state of the science appraisal, we explore what is known about the biological, behavioral, sociocultural, and environmental influences on ADRD disparities in rural settings. RESULTS: A range of individual, interpersonal, and community factors were identified, including strengths of rural residents in facilitating healthy aging lifestyle interventions. DISCUSSION: A location dynamics model and ADRD-focused future directions are offered for guiding rural practitioners, researchers, and policymakers in mitigating rural disparities. HIGHLIGHTS: Rural residents face heightened Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD) risks and burdens due to health disparities. Defining the unique rural barriers and facilitators to cognitive health yields insight. The strengths and resilience of rural residents can mitigate ADRD-related challenges. A novel "location dynamics" model guides assessment of rural-specific ADRD issues.

Students' perspective on higher educators: interpersonal relationship matters.

Students' perspective on the higher educators' performance matters because the ultimate goal of teaching is education quality and students' satisfaction. Student evaluations are important to university professors to improve their teaching quality and in many cases, secure their promotion and tenureship. Excellent teaching does not have a universal definition, and students often have different perspectives on effective and excellent teaching. In this study, we examined the factors contributing to excellent teaching as rated by students on the website ratemyprofessors.com, a popular website among students to rate their educators voluntarily. The information from this website can be valuable, despite all the critics it has received, given that students provide feedback on a volunteer basis to help their peers with selecting the best class. The website provides a forum for opinions that are not influenced by fear of possible consequences, such as a low grade or tension with faculty. Our study results show that the five top characteristics that are important to students include being caring, respectful, inspirational, as well as giving good feedback, and delivering "amazing" lectures. Further data analysis shows that subject content, in terms of manageable workload, reasonable content difficulty, and grading, can influence students' ratings. The findings indicate that students value interpersonal relationships and cherish individualized feedback and receiving personal support.

Aphasia therapy in the age of globalization: cross-linguistic therapy effects in bilingual aphasia.

INTRODUCTION: Globalization imposes challenges to the field of behavioural neurology, among which is an increase in the prevalence of bilingual aphasia. Thus, aphasiologists have increasingly focused on bilingual aphasia therapy and, more recently, on the identification of the most efficient procedures for triggering language recovery in bilinguals with aphasia. Therapy in both languages is often not available, and, thus, researchers have focused on the transfer of therapy effects from the treated language to the untreated one. AIM: This paper discusses the literature on bilingual aphasia therapy, with a focus on cross-linguistic therapy effects from the language in which therapy is provided to the untreated language. METHODS: Fifteen articles including two systematic reviews, providing details on pre- and posttherapy in the adult bilingual population with poststroke aphasia and anomia are discussed with regard to variables that can influence the presence or absence of cross-linguistic transfer of therapy effects. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: . The potential for CLT of therapy effects from the treated to the untreated language depends on the word type, the degree of structural overlap between languages, the type of therapy approach, the pre- and postmorbid language proficiency profiles, and the status of the cognitive control circuit.