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The purpose of this paper is to present an evaluation of a programme of training and support provided to staff, which aimed to encourage supported communication environments for people with learning disabilities.

Training, monitoring and support for communication, specifically augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) strategies, was provided by speech and language therapy staff to two residential services over 46 weeks. Staff and service user communications were observed pre- and post-intervention.

In one provision there was an increase in service user initiations and the use of some AAC strategies by support staff. In the other provision there was no change in service user initiations and a decrease in the range of AAC strategies used. It appears that some forms for AAC remain challenging for staff to implement.

This evaluation explores ways of using specialist support services to improve communication environments for people with learning difficulties. Possible reasons for differences in the outcome of the intervention are discussed. Future research into the types of communication interactions experienced by people with learning disabilities across the range of communication styles may be useful so that support staff can be better helped to provide sustained and enriched communication environments.

The referendum debate in Ireland on whether voting in favour of the Lisbon Treaty has filled the pages of newspapers and the online media. Several anti-EU campaigns have emerged and politicians have shown their own attitudes towards the ratification process. Being our first contact with reality newspapers enable potential readers to better understand their lives and socio-political events (Van Dijk, 1991; Richardson, 2007). It has been argued that newspapers construe public identities for individuals and social groups through specific textual strategies and contribute to our understanding of belonging to a community (Fairclough, 1995a). Some scholars have proved that, in reporting on European matters, British newspapers are mainly Eurosceptic and tend to depict EU leaders in a negative light (Musolff, 2004; Nasti, 2012). It has also been demonstrated that when reporting on European integration newspapers tend to define what it means to be a European citizen by construing their own images of Europe. By doing so, newspapers have the power to support or subvert the feeling of European belonging by showing desired or unwanted scenarios. In his analysis of newspaper discourse, Fowler (1991) points out how transitivity is of great interest in newspaper analysis as it is a potential tool to investigate the same event in different ways, thus providing different views on the social and political events reported.

Against this framework, the present chapter aims to analyse, by combining a quantitative and a qualitative approach, how newspapers construct professional, social and private identity of the European politicians involved in the Lisbon Treaty debate following the features introduced by Fairclough (1995b) and Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) transitivity model. This study also investigates what qualities and features are attributed to EU leaders and to what extent the stereotyped roles of previous studies are also revealed through the analysis of material, mental and verbal processes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of key word sign by staff in organisations working with children and adults who have intellectual disabilities.

This commentary provides an overview of both historical and recent research in this area.

After a dearth of research on signing, new studies are emerging, but appear to identify the same issues – and many of the same solutions – as those from 40 years ago.

Sign needs to be seen as a cultural intervention necessitating attitude change and policy development.

Paradigm shifts in the field of intervention and in AAC are needed to address these issues.

APPLICATION of the so‐called high energy liquid fuels and high energy liquid oxidizers to power plants based on the jet propulsion principle is receiving the increasing interest and attention of rocket propellant chemists and power plant engineers universally. The aspect of substantially increased—as much as 50 per cent— energy per pound of propellant load or per cubic foot of propellant tankage over today's propellants has whetted scientific appetites and justified probing the field of high energy chemicals to determine, as logically and as practically as we can at the present time, the gains, problems, limitations and applications of these higher energy chemicals. The object of this paper is, in a general way, to discuss the subject of chemical rocket propellants in such a way that the following five questions will be, in part at least, answered or recalled to the minds of this audience for additional deliberation.

Here is the long‐awaited fourth edition of Ralph De Sola's classic Abbreviations Dictionary. This updated edition of a work first published in 1958 is the largest, most complete compilation of its kind — a reference book far surpassing all others in the field. Mr. De Sola has expanded his work to include more than 130,000 definitions and entries — over 77,000 definitions, over 54,000 entries. The current edition offers abbreviations, acronyms, anonyms, contradictions, initials and nicknames, short forms and slang shortcuts, and signs and symbols covering disciplines which range from the arts to the advanced sciences and embrace all areas of human knowledge and activity.