Families First: Impact on Parent Knowledge, and Association between Program Quality and Child Symptom Severity

The Families First parenting workshops were developed for caregivers of children recently diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The primary site hosts inperson workshops, but webcasts the workshops to remote sites in different areas of the United States. The purpose of this study was to assess whether parents have an increase in knowledge after participating in Families First workshops at a remote site, and to assess whether program quality ratings and child symptom severity are associated with parent knowledge. The current study addressed the following research questions: 1. Do parents participating in the Families First workshops at a remote site experience an increase of knowledge from beginning to end of the workshops? 2. Are quality ratings of comfort, satisfaction, and facilitators associated with measures of knowledge and child symptom severity? 3. Is child symptom severity associated with measures of knowledge? Participants were primarily parents and caregivers of children diagnosed with ASD (N = 54) from rural and semi-rural Kentucky. A pre- and post-test design was used to assess content knowledge. Surveys for program quality and child symptom severity were also collected. Results indicated that caregivers consistently increased their content knowledge by the end of workshops. Further, the quality of perceived benefits was negatively associated with child symptom severity, whereas the quality of facilitators was positively associated with quality of satisfaction. In addition, the caregivers’ content knowledge was unrelated to child symptom severity. The current study provides some preliminary evidence of Families First benefits, as well as implications for caregivers of children recently diagnosed with ASD seeking preventative services

Depressive Rumination and the Mood-as-Input Hypothesis: The Role of Reverse Catastrophizing

The mood-as-input hypothesis (MAIH) has been consistently examined in relation to worry, but few studies have examined its role in depressive rumination. Fewer studies have examined congruency effects, such that conditions of mood and perseverative task are congruent (i.e., negative mood and negative preservative task vs. positive mood and positive perseverative task). The current study thus examines the MAIH’s applicability to depressive rumination, includes further investigation on mood congruency, and incorporates a newly constructed positive rumination task to further assess the impact of the valency of a ruminative task. Undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions based on the rumination interview type (positive vs. negative), mood (happy vs. sad), and stop-rule (as-many-as-can (AMA) and feel-like-stopping (FL)). It was hypothesized that participants would generate more perseverative steps in mood-congruent conditions, depending on the assigned stop-rules, and that they would default to that assigned stop-rule in mood-incongruent conditions. Results determined that, under mood-congruent conditions, participants generated more perseverative steps. In particular, they ruminated more if assigned to the AMA stop-rule while in the negative rumination interview and primed with sad mood, whereas more rumination also occurred for participants with the FL stop-rule while in the positive rumination interview and primed with happy mood. These findings are consistent with the MAIH. As hypothesized, participants also defaulted to the AMA stop-rule under mood-incongruent conditions. The current study’s findings show support for the body of research relating to the MAIH, but also provides additional findings in the limited studies regarding congruency and the lack of research surrounding positive rumination

The relationship between ADHD and emotion regulation and its effect on parenting stress.

This study examined the relationship between ADHD diagnostic status and child-reported emotion regulation and its relationship with parenting stress within three subscales – Parent Distress, Difficult Child, and Parent-Child Dysfunctional interaction. Two hundred children ages 7-13 were enrolled in the study, including 120 children with ADHD and 80 children without ADHD. Overall, it was found that ADHD diagnostic status was significantly associated with the Parent Distress subscale, both ADHD diagnostic status and emotion regulation difficulties were significantly associated with the Difficult Child subscale, and emotion regulation difficulties were significantly associated with the Parent-Child Dysfunctional interaction subscale. This study not only shows that there should be an emphasis on treating parenting stress, but the differences between subscales shows that the type of parenting stress discussed matters when implementing treatment as well

Artificial Intelligence in Criminal Justice Settings:: Where should be the limits of Artificial Intelligence in legal decision-making? Should an AI device make a decision about human justice?

The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems for high-stakes decision making is currently out for debate. In the Criminal Justice System, it can provide great benefits as well as aggravate systematic biases and introduce unprecedented ones. Hence, should artificial devices be involved in the decision-making process? And if the answer is affirmative, where should be the limits of that involvement? To answer these questions, this dissertation examines two popular risk assessment tools currently in use in the United States, LS and COMPAS, to discuss the differences between a traditional and an actuarial instrument that rely on computerized algorithms. Further analysis of the later is done in relation with the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics (FATE) perspective to be implemented in any technology involving AI. Although the future of AI is uncertain, the ignorance with respect to so many aspects of this kind of innovative methods demand further research on how to make the best use of the several opportunities that it brings

FEMINIST READINGS OF EVANGELICALISM: VIEWS ON GENDER AND SEXUALITY FROM EVANGELICAL PERSPECTIVES

There are approximately over 10,000 distinct religious practices in the world, some of these religions are either a variation of each other or very different. Historically and presently, certain religions are positioned in popular discourse as not fit for our times or too conservative for example, evangelicalism and Islam have often been two religions that are viewed as ‘too traditional’ and in need of modernization of their ‘extreme’ beliefs. This typically gets reduced to specific ideologies and viewpoints revolving around feminism and LGBTQIA+ identity. Ideologies regarding the treatment and place of women have been backed up by ‘evidence’ presented in the Bible placing religious beliefs in a negative light. The history of religion and LGBTQIA+ issues is not a new or unknown one. There are many court cases depicting the fight between justice and religion. However, these views are not so black and white as depicted in popular media. Instead of criticizing these religions, this project uses semi-structured interviews to understand how believers of evangelicalism express their views on gender and sexuality. For example, what does it mean to be a part of the LGBTQIA+ community and still uphold religious beliefs and practices? What might these interviews reveal about the fluidity of religious practice? And finally, how can these narratives disrupt reductive two-dimensional definitions of religion presented to the world? With the use of interviews, surveys, and secondary literature this project centers on the stories and experiences of evangelical women and LGBTQIA+ to analyze how their stories complicate the perception of evangelical religions as rigid and strict

Editorial: Amino Acid Transport and Metabolism During Homeostasis and Inflammation.

DC is supported by grant from Ayudas Fundación BBVA a Equipos de Investigación Cientıfí ca (BIOMEDICINA-2018) and “La Caixa” Banking Foundation (HR17-00016). MP is supported by the Spanish Science, Innovation and University Ministry (RT2018—094211-B-100-FEDER), La Caixa Foundation (LCF/ PR/HR20/52400017) and La Marató-TV3.S

Darwin's "Abominable Mystery": the role of RNA interference in the evolution of flowering plants

Darwin was famously concerned that the sudden appearance and rapid diversification of flowering plants in the mid-Cretaceous could not have occurred by gradual change. Here, we review our attempts to resolve the relationships among the major seed plant groups, i.e., cycads, ginkgo, conifers, gnetophytes, and flowering plants, and to provide a pipeline in which these relationships can be used as a platform for identifying genes of functional importance in plant diversification. Using complete gene sets and unigenes from 16 plant species, genes with positive partitioned Bremer support at major nodes were used to identify overrepresented gene ontology (GO) terms. Posttranscriptional silencing via RNA interference (RNAi) was overrepresented at several major nodes, including between monocots and dicots during early angiosperm divergence. One of these genes, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase 6, is required for the biogenesis of trans-acting small interfering RNA (tasiRNA), confers heteroblasty and organ polarity, and restricts maternal specification of the germline. Processing of small RNA and transfer between neighboring cells underlies these roles and may have contributed to distinct mutant phenotypes in plants, and in particular in the early split of the monocots and eudicots

Feel and Touch: A Haptic Mobile Game to Assess Tactile Processing

Haptic interfaces have great potential for assessing the tactile processing of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), an area that has been under-explored due to the lack of tools to assess it. Until now, haptic interfaces for children have mostly been used as a teaching or therapeutic tool, so there are still open questions about how they could be used to assess tactile processing of children with ASD. This article presents the design process that led to the development of Feel and Touch, a mobile game augmented with vibrotactile stimuli to assess tactile processing. Our feasibility evaluation, with 5 children from 3 to 6 years old, shows that children accept vibrations and are able to use the proposed vibrotactile patterns. However, it is still necessary to work on the instructions to make the game dynamic clearer and rewards to keep the attention of children. We close this article by discussing future work and conclusions

Circus in Motion: A Multimodal Exergame Supporting Vestibular Therapy for Children with Autism

Exergames are serious games that involve physical exertion and are thought of as a form of exercise by using novel input models. Exergames are promising in improving the vestibular differences of children with autism but often lack of adaptation mechanisms that adjust the difficulty level of the exergame. In this paper, we present the design and development of Circus in Motion, a multimodal exergame supporting children with autism with the practice of non-locomotor movements. We describe how the data from a 3D depth camera enables the tracking of non-locomotor movements allowing children to naturally interact with the exergame . A controlled experiment with 12 children with autism shows Circus in Motion excels traditional vestibular therapies in increasing physical activation and the number of movements repetitions. We show how data from real-time usage of Circus in Motion could be used to feed a fuzzy logic model that can adjust the difficulty level of the exergame according to each childs motor performance. We close discussing open challenges and opportunities of multimodal exergames to support motor therapeutic interventions for children with autism in the long-term

Catalysis study for space shuttle vehicle thermal protection systems

Experimental results on the problem of reducing aerodynamic heating on space shuttle orbiter surfaces are presented. Data include: (1) development of a laboratory flow reactor technique for measuring gamma sub O and gamma sub N on candidate materials at surfaces, T sub w, in the nominal range 1000 to 2000, (2) measurements of gamma sub O and gamma sub N above 1000 K for both the glass coating of a reusable surface insulation material and the siliconized surface of a reinforced pyrolyzed plastic material, (3) measurement of the ablation behavior of the coated RPP material at T sub w is greater than or equal to 2150 K, (4) X-ray photoelectron spectral studies of the chemical constituents on these surfaces before and after dissociated gas exposure, (5) scanning electron micrograph examination of as-received and reacted specimens, and (6) development and exploitation of a method of predicting the aerodynamic heating consquences of these gamma sub O(T sub w) and gamma sub N(T sub w) measurements for critical locations on a radiation cooled orbiter vehicle