Children’s Learning from Touch Screens: A Dual Representation Perspective

Parents and educators often expect that children will learn from touch screen devices, such as during joint e-book reading. Therefore an essential question is whether young children understand that the touch screen can be a symbolic medium – that entities represented on the touch screen can refer to entities in the real world. Research on symbolic development suggests that symbolic understanding requires that children develop dual representational abilities, meaning children need to appreciate that a symbol is an object in itself (i.e., picture of a dog) while also being a representation of something else (i.e., the real dog). Drawing on classic research on symbols and new research on children’s learning from touch screens, we offer the perspective that children’s ability to learn from the touch screen as a symbolic medium depends on the effect of interactivity on children’s developing dual representational abilities. Although previous research on dual representation suggests the interactive nature of the touch screen might make it difficult for young children to use as a symbolic medium, the unique interactive affordances may help alleviate this difficulty. More research needs to investigate how the interactivity of the touch screen affects children’s ability to connect the symbols on the screen to the real world. Given the interactive nature of the touch screen, researchers and educators should consider both the affordances of the touch screen as well as young children’s cognitive abilities when assessing whether young children can learn from it as a symbolic medium

2008 Trademark Decisions of the Federal Circuit A Review of Recent Decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit: Area Summaries

In 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued eight trademark decisions and designated one of those eight decisions as precedential. These numbers are significantly lower than in recent years. The cases consist of appeals from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”), the United States Court of International Trade, and the United States Court of Federal Claims. Of the eight trademark decisions, four focused on substantive issues and four primarily involved procedural issues. The Federal Circuit generally adopted the findings of the lower tribunals, affirming all but one of the eight decisions on appeal. The majority of the decisions were resolved based on longstanding precedent. A few of the cases, however, addressed issues of first impression for the court. In Nasalok Coating Corp. v. Nylok Corp., for example, the Federal Circuit held that a claim for cancellation of a trademark registration is not a compulsory counterclaim for a party defending an infringement action in federal court. Significantly, TTAB procedure provides that such a counterclaim is compulsory in TTAB proceedings under the same circumstances. Thus, whether a party has waived its right to challenge a trademark registration after failing to seek cancellation of that registration in a prior proceeding will turn on whether that proceeding was a federal court case or a proceeding before the TTAB. Also of note, in Sakar International, Inc. v. United States, the Federal Circuit reversed the Court of International Trade’s finding that it had jurisdiction to consider a party’s challenge to a fine issued by the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection for importing counterfeit products. The Federal Circuit found that the restrictions on importing counterfeit products did not rise to the level of an “embargo,” and thus the challenge to the fines was not within the limited jurisdiction of the Court of International Trade. Each of the Federal Circuit’s 2008 trademark decisions is discussed in detail in this area summary

Bayesian joint modeling of chemical structure and dose response curves

Today there are approximately 85,000 chemicals regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act, with around 2,000 new chemicals introduced each year. It is impossible to screen all of these chemicals for potential toxic effects either via full organism in vivo studies or in vitro high-throughput screening (HTS) programs. Toxicologists face the challenge of choosing which chemicals to screen, and predicting the toxicity of as-yet-unscreened chemicals. Our goal is to describe how variation in chemical structure relates to variation in toxicological response to enable in silico toxicity characterization designed to meet both of these challenges. With our Bayesian partially Supervised Sparse and Smooth Factor Analysis (BS3FA) model, we learn a distance between chemicals targeted to toxicity, rather than one based on molecular structure alone. Our model also enables the prediction of chemical dose-response profiles based on chemical structure (that is, without in vivo or in vitro testing) by taking advantage of a large database of chemicals that have already been tested for toxicity in HTS programs. We show superior simulation performance in distance learning and modest to large gains in predictive ability compared to existing methods. Results from the high-throughput screening data application elucidate the relationship between chemical structure and a toxicity-relevant high-throughput assay. An R package for BS3FA is available online at https://github.com/kelrenmor/bs3fa

Substrate Scope Analysis of Biocatalytic Halogenation on Complex Substrates

Malbrancheamide is a fungal natural product with significant vasorelaxation effects and potential as a cardiovascular therapeutic. The dichlorination of the indole ring is key for its biological activity, and this transformation is performed by the flavin dependent halogenase MalA. This enzyme utilizes a proposed chloramine lysine intermediate to iteratively and selectively chlorinate its natural substrate premalbrancheamide. Halogenases can provide orthogonal selectivity to many chemical methods, making them useful for pharmaceutical applications, while providing selective methods for late-stage functionalization. This investigation focuses on the substrate scope of the halogenase on complex pharmaceutically relevant substrates in collaboration with the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. The bromination and chlorination reaction conditions were optimized, and the products were structurally characterized by NMR spectroscopy to gain further understanding of the versatility of the wild type enzyme and its mutants

Substrate Scope Analysis of Biocatalytic Halogenation on Complex Substrates

Malbrancheamide is a fungal natural product with significant vasorelaxation effects and potential as a cardiovascular therapeutic. The dichlorination of the indole ring is key for its biological activity, and this transformation is performed by the flavin dependent halogenase MalA. This enzyme utilizes a proposed chloramine lysine intermediate to iteratively and selectively chlorinate its natural substrate premalbrancheamide. Halogenases can provide orthogonal selectivity to many chemical methods, making them useful for pharmaceutical applications, while providing selective methods for late-stage functionalization. This investigation focuses on the substrate scope of the halogenase on complex pharmaceutically relevant substrates in collaboration with the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. The bromination and chlorination reaction conditions were optimized, and the products were structurally characterized by NMR spectroscopy to gain further understanding of the versatility of the wild type enzyme and its mutants

How do I sound to me? Perceived changes in communication in Parkinson's disease

Objective: To examine self and carer perceived changes in communication associated with Parkinson's disease and relate these to speech intelligibility, gender, age and other disease measures. Design: Cross-sectional survey of a hospital- and community-based sample of 176 people with Parkinson's disease and their carers using a questionnaire based on semantic differential techniques. Participants: One hundred and four people with Parkinson's disease with no history of communication difficulties prior to onset of their Parkinson's disease and 45 primary carers who returned completed questionnaires. Main outcome measures: Differences in ratings for `before' the onset of Parkinson's disease versus present status. Results: There was a strong perception of negative impact on communication between `before' and `now', irrespective of age and gender and largely independent of disease severity and duration, intelligibility and cognitive status. Activities of daily living (assessed by Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) II) and depression rating scale scores had the strongest association with change (adjusted R 2 0.27). There was a significant correlation between the rank order of perceived change in features examined in people with Parkinson's disease versus their carers, though in general carers rated change as having less impact. Conclusions: Parkinson's disease exercises a strong influence on communication even before apparent alterations to intelligibility or motor status