Socio-Epidemiological Aspects of Suicide in Sarajevo from 1992-1995

The project investigated the phenomenon of suicide in war-encircled Sarajevo, where the population was uninterruptedly exposed for four years to direct danger of life from constant shelling and sniper fire, as well as from the lack of essential food items, energy sources and water. It showed that in the pre-war peacetime year of 1991 the suicide rate was 8.36, which was almost 100% less than that in the first post-war peacetime year of 1996, when 16.13 suicides were recorded per 100,000 citizens. The first wartime year, 1992, was characterised by a fall in the number of suicides by almost 40% of the 1991 figure. It is indicative that not a single suicide was registered during the six months from May to October of that first wartime year. In 1993 there was 96.29% increase on 1992, with a total of 53 suicides, showing that the initial shock of danger to one's life from others had passed and that statistics on suicide had returned to "normal". In the following year, 1994, 47 suicides were recorded, and in 1995 the figure was 49. Data from the first post-war peacetime year clearly shows that the human tragedy of taking one's own life has continued, with the number of suicides increasing steadily, especially among demobilised soldiers ranging in age from 30 to 40. Most of them ended their lives by activating a bomb or other explosive device, choosing the place carefully so as to avoid any possible risk to other lives during the act of taking their own.

Phonetic Aspects of Speech Communication

Nadeina set out to develop methods of speech development in Russian as a mother tongue, focusing on improving diction, training in voice quality control, intonation control, the removal of dialect, and speech etiquette. She began with training in the receptive skills of language, i.e. reading and listening, since the interpretation of someone else's language plays an important role in language production. Her studies of students' reading speed of students showed that it varies between 40 and 120 words per minute, which is normally considered very slow. She discovered a strong correlation between speed of reading and speaking skills: the slower a person reads the worse is their ability to speak and has designed exercises to improve reading skills. Nadeina also believes that listening to other people's speech is very important, both to analyse its content and in some cases as an example, so listening skills need to be developed. Many people have poor pronunciation habits acquired as children. On the basis of speech samples from young Russians (male and female, aged 17-22), Nadeina analysed the commonest speech faults - nasalisation, hesitation and hemming at the end of sense-groups, etc. Using a group of twenty listeners, she looked for a correlation between how voice quality is perceived and certain voice quality parameters, e.g. pitch range, tremulousness, fluency, whispering, harshness, sonority, tension and audible breath. She found that the less non-linguistic segment variations in speech appeared, the more attractive the speech was rated. The results are included in a textbook aimed at helping people to improve their oral skills and to communicate ideas to an audience. She believes this will assist Russian officials in their attempts to communicate their ideas to different social spheres, and also foreigners learning Russian.