The Environmental Health of the Autistic Student in the Public School Classroom

Professionals have found autism to be an enigmatic condition. While necessary biomedical research continues, a gap exists in the inclusion of parental opinions, knowledge, and experiences in educational planning for their autistic children. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to identify the factors that the parents felt contributed to the academic success of their autistic child in the public school classroom environment and ways in which their ideas might contribute to overall educational planning and classroom design in structure, curriculum development, and intervention strategies which might lead to reduced stress. Parental input was explored through semistructured personal interviews with 8 parents and the administration of a 32-question survey questionnaire to 109 parents of autistic children. A content analysis was done on the qualitative data, and an analysis of quantitative data reported the frequency and percentages of the participant responses. Findings from the data revealed multiple areas in need of improved educational services that include the classroom organization, educator training and knowledge about the autistic condition, educator support, effective communication, and behavioral management of the symptoms of autism. The social change impact from the study\u27s findings have the potential to inform educational planning, foster collaboration, increase educator participation in autism training methods, secure necessary funding for evidence based autism educational programs, promote further research, and provide awareness of existing empirically based approaches designed to meet the needs of a vulnerable population

Soziale Schäferei – Perspektiven für den Schäferberuf

The shepherd profession and modern society do not seem to fit together. At the same time, the ecological importance of sheep farming is increasingly (re)detected. In this study, the perspectives of social farming for the pastoral vocation are investigated. What are the prospects and development opportunities today for sheep farming? Could sheep farming and social farming complement each other? Two methods of qualitative research are used to answer these questions: Qualitative interviews and participant observation. A wide range of social work areas and structures of sheep-farms are existing. The size of livestock is between three and 700 sheep, the social activities range from weekly guided farm tours to daily support of social-emotional disadvantaged youngsters. The results show: Social farming can be seen as a realistic prospect for sheep farms and lead to a "win-win" situation for all participants involved

Resting - State EEG Indicates Unstable Microstates in Visual Snow Syndrome

Background: EEG microstates account for a significant amount of the variance in resting-state EEG activity and are considered the basic building blocks of human neurological processes. We analyzed the characteristics of EEG microstates in patients with visual snow syndrome (VSS) with and without migraine and compared these results with those of a matched control group. VSS is a syndrome characterized by a spectrum of visual symptoms, including photophobia, and enhanced entoptic phenomena. The main symptom of VSS is the perception of flickering dots throughout the visual field, described as looking through a snowy television screen. Cause and pathophysiology of VSS are still unknown. Method: Resting-state EEG recordings were selected from a cohort of 21 subjects with visual snow syndrome (VSSP, 8 females, 33 ± 9.56 years) and 21 control patients (8 females, 33 ± 11.1 years). Matching was based on diagnosed VSS, age, sex, and migraine status. A comparative analysis of microstate (MS) parameters between these two groups was performed. The calculation involved the four widely accepted canonical microstate classes, namely A (auditory & visual processing, arousal), B (visual processing), C (self-reflection, salience), and D (dorsal attention network). Results: We found significant differences between groups and between microstates in resting-state EEG in the life span and amplitude of microstates. VSSP showed an overall shorter duration and lower mean global field power (GFP) of microstates compared to controls. In addition, we found an aberrant syntax of microstate class A. Compared to controls, microstate A changed more often to class B and less frequently to microstate class C in VSSP. Conclusion: By examining resting-state EEG microstate features, we were able to investigate neurobiological mechanisms indicative of altered cortical excitability and aberrant shifts between neural networks in VSSP. Therefore, abnormalities in sensory and cognitive processing are suspected. However, to gain deeper insight into the pathophysiology of VSS, further studies with subjects with homogenous comorbidities are indicated

Modulating cortical responsiveness by tACS in visual snow syndrome - a case report

Background: Studies have shown that migraineurs have an enhanced photic-drive response when exposed to a visual chirp compared to healthy controls. Visual Snow Syndrome (VSS) is associated with migraines, but patients have continuous visual symptoms indicating dysfunction in visual processing. For this reason, we want to determine whether VSS patients show a similar reaction as migraineurs when exposed to visual chirp stimulation. Additionally, we want to see whether t-ACS stimulation lowers their reaction significantly. Method: One VSS patient (female, 37) with comorbid migraines was exposed to visual chirp stimulation (5.55 – 60 Hz) in a dimly lit room in front of a PC monitor (50 cm). There were 66 flashes per trial, totaling 792 flashes. A 64-electrode EEG grid was used for the measurement, with the occipital electrodes used for analysis. Power spectral density was calculated for stimulus responses and corrected for baseline. A wavelet transformation was applied before averaging the data. The patient received a total of 9 t-ACS stimulations over a period of 5 days between measurements. Results: The VSS patient showed a high occipital response to visual chirp stimulation pre-t-ACS stimulation and a lower occipital response to visual chirp stimulation post-t-ACS stimulation across all frequencies. Conclusion: This study shows that visual chirps could serve as a potential biomarker for VSS and that t-ACS stimulation over an extended period of time might be able to lower the photic-drive response, which could represent a novel treatment approach for VSS

Natural course of visual snow syndrome: a long-term follow-up study.

Visual snow syndrome is characterized by a continuous visual disturbance resembling a badly tuned analogue television and additional visual and non-visual symptoms causing significant disability. The natural course of visual snow syndrome has not hitherto been studied. In this prospective longitudinal study, 78 patients with the diagnosis of visual snow syndrome made in 2011 were re-contacted in 2019 to assess symptom evolution using a semi-structured questionnaire. Forty patients (51% of 78) were interviewed after 84 ± 5 months (mean ± SD). In all patients, symptoms had persisted. Visual snow itself was less frequently rated as the most disturbing symptom (72 versus 42%, P = 0.007), whereas a higher proportion of patients suffered primarily from entopic phenomena (2 versus 17%, P = 0.024). New treatment was commenced in 14 (35%) patients, of whom in seven, visual snow syndrome was ameliorated somewhat. Three (7%) experienced new visual migraine aura without headache, and one (2%) had new migraine headache. There were no differences in the levels of anxiety and depression measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire 8 and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale 7. Thirty-eight patients (49%) were lost to follow-up. In visual snow syndrome, symptoms can persist over 8 years without spontaneous resolution, although visual snow itself might become less bothersome

Urinary peptidomics analysis reveals proteases involved in diabetic nephropathy

Mechanisms underlying the onset and progression of nephropathy in diabetic patients are not fully elucidated. Deregulation of proteolytic systems is a known path leading to disease manifestation, therefore we hypothesized that proteases aberrantly expressed in diabetic nephropathy (DN) may be involved in the generation of DN-associated peptides in urine. We compared urinary peptide profiles of DN patients (macroalbuminuric, n = 121) to diabetic patients with no evidence of DN (normoalbuminuric, n = 118). 302 sequenced, differentially expressed peptides (adjusted p-value < 0.05) were analysed with the Proteasix tool predicting proteases potentially involved in their generation. Activity change was estimated based on the change in abundance of the investigated peptides. Predictions were correlated with transcriptomics (Nephroseq) and relevant protein expression data from the literature. This analysis yielded seventeen proteases, including multiple forms of MMPs, cathepsin D and K, kallikrein 4 and proprotein convertases. The activity of MMP-2 and MMP-9, predicted to be decreased in DN, was investigated using zymography in a DN mouse model confirming the predictions. Collectively, this proof-of-concept study links urine peptidomics to molecular changes at the tissue level, building hypotheses for further investigation in DN and providing a workflow with potential applications to other diseases

Third-order Els\"asser moments in axisymmetric MHD turbulence

Incompressible MHD turbulence is investigated under the presence of a uniform magnetic field \bb0. Such a situation is described in the correlation space by a divergence relation which expresses the statistical conservation of the Els\"asser energy flux through the inertial range. The ansatz is made that the development of anisotropy, observed when $B_0$ is strong enough, implies a foliation of space correlation. A direct consequence is the possibility to derive a vectorial law for third-order Els\"asser moments which is parametrized by the intensity of anisotropy. We use the so-called critical balance assumption to fix this parameter and find a unique expression.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, will appea