Academic Skills in High-Functioning and Low-Functioning Chinese Children with Autism

Early academic skills among Chinese speaking children with ASD were compared to age matched peers who were typically developing and with intellectual disabilities. In general, children with ASD do perform less well on reading comprehension, writing, and math skills. The purpose of the current study was to gather preliminary data on the early academic skills of Chinese children with ASD. The findings indicated that HFA and LFA had less difficulty in acquiring beginning basic-academic skills, but had more difficulty in acquiring advanced academic skills compared to their peers. Yet, the two groups of Chinese students with HFA and LFA performed remarkably alike across the academic skills

Effects of Field and Greenhouse Solarization on Soil Microbiota and Weed Seeds in the Northeast USA

Soil solarization using clear plastic is a promising weed management strategy for organic farms in the Northeast USA. Based on grower concerns that the practice might negatively affect beneficial soil microbiota, we conducted experiments to measure the effects of 2 and 4 weeks of solarization in a field and a closed greenhouse. Soil microbial communities were assayed by dilution plating on semi-selective agar media. Populations of general bacteria, general fungi, bacilli, and florescent pseudomonads were unaffected by field solarization, but fluorescent pseudomonads were reduced following greenhouse solarization. At plastic removal, soil biological activity was reduced non-significantly in the field and by 45% in the green- house. Soil biological activity fluctuated following field solarization, being significantly suppressed at 5 but not 14 days after plastic removal. In the greenhouse, biological activity remained suppressed up to 28 days after plastic removal. Solarization increased available nitrogen in the field and greenhouse. Four weeks of solarization reduced viability of buried weed seeds by 64% in the field and 98% in the greenhouse, indicating that the practice can cause substantial weed seed mortality. Maximum soil temperatures, measured at 10 cm depth under solarization, were 44◦ C in the field and 50◦ C in the greenhouse; temperatures were theoretically sufficient for the reduction of some soil borne pathogens. A subsequent experiment measured the effects of solarization and tarping (black plastic) on soil biological activity. During mulching, biological activity was unaffected by treatment, but 14 days after plastic removal, biological activity was reduced in the solarized treatment as compared with the control. Overall, these results suggest that solarization can deplete the weed seedbank. Although soil biological activity was reduced by solarization, it may bounce back after a period. Greenhouse solarization achieved higher temperatures and was more lethal to weed seeds and some microbiota than field solarization

Evaluating the Reproducibility of Physiological Stress Detection Models

Recent advances in wearable sensor technologies have led to a variety of approaches for detecting physiological stress. Even with over a decade of research in the domain, there still exist many significant challenges, including a near-total lack of reproducibility across studies. Researchers often use some physiological sensors (custom-made or off-the-shelf), conduct a study to collect data, and build machine-learning models to detect stress. There is little effort to test the applicability of the model with similar physiological data collected from different devices, or the efficacy of the model on data collected from different studies, populations, or demographics. This paper takes the first step towards testing reproducibility and validity of methods and machine-learning models for stress detection. To this end, we analyzed data from 90 participants, from four independent controlled studies, using two different types of sensors, with different study protocols and research goals. We started by evaluating the performance of models built using data from one study and tested on data from other studies. Next, we evaluated new methods to improve the performance of stress-detection models and found that our methods led to a consistent increase in performance across all studies, irrespective of the device type, sensor type, or the type of stressor. Finally, we developed and evaluated a clustering approach to determine the stressed/not-stressed classification when applying models on data from different studies, and found that our approach performed better than selecting a threshold based on training data. This paper\u27s thorough exploration of reproducibility in a controlled environment provides a critical foundation for deeper study of such methods, and is a prerequisite for tackling reproducibility in free-living conditions

CompMoby: Comparative MobyDick for detection of cis-regulatory motifs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The regulation of gene expression is complex and occurs at many levels, including transcriptional and post-transcriptional, in metazoans. Transcriptional regulation is mainly determined by sequence elements within the promoter regions of genes while sequence elements within the 3' untranslated regions of mRNAs play important roles in post-transcriptional regulation such as mRNA stability and translation efficiency. Identifying cis-regulatory elements, or motifs, in multicellular eukaryotes is more difficult compared to unicellular eukaryotes due to the larger intergenic sequence space and the increased complexity in regulation. Experimental techniques for discovering functional elements are often time consuming and not easily applied on a genome level. Consequently, computational methods are advantageous for genome-wide cis-regulatory motif detection. To decrease the search space in metazoans, many algorithms use cross-species alignment, although studies have demonstrated that a large portion of the binding sites for the same trans-acting factor do not reside in alignable regions. Therefore, a computational algorithm should account for both conserved and nonconserved cis-regulatory elements in metazoans.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We present CompMoby (Comparative MobyDick), software developed to identify cis-regulatory binding sites at both the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels in metazoans without prior knowledge of the trans-acting factors. The CompMoby algorithm was previously shown to identify cis-regulatory binding sites in upstream regions of genes co-regulated in embryonic stem cells. In this paper, we extend the software to identify putative cis-regulatory motifs in 3' UTR sequences and verify our results using experimentally validated data sets in mouse and human. We also detail the implementation of CompMoby into a user-friendly tool that includes a web interface to a streamlined analysis. Our software allows detection of motifs in the following three categories: one, those that are alignable and conserved; two, those that are conserved but not alignable; three, those that are species specific. One of the output files from CompMoby gives the user the option to decide what category of cis-regulatory element to experimentally pursue based on their biological problem. Using experimentally validated biological datasets, we demonstrate that CompMoby is successful in detecting cis-regulatory target sites of known and novel trans-acting factors at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>CompMoby is a powerful software tool for systematic <it>de novo </it>discovery of evolutionarily conserved and nonconserved cis-regulatory sequences involved in transcriptional or post-transcriptional regulation in metazoans. This software is freely available to users at <url>http://genome.ucsf.edu/compmoby/</url>.</p

Brief Amici Curiae of Prescription Policy Choices, Professors of Law, and Professors of Health Policy in Support of Petitioners on the Minimum Coverage Provision in Department of Health & Human Services v. State of Florida

One purpose of the individual mandate is to eliminate the market for self-insured healthcare transactions. It is well-established in this Court’s precedent that the elimination of an interstate commercial market is a constitutionally legitimate end for Congress to pursue under the Commerce Clause. Under the Necessary and Proper Clause, Congress may use any reasonably adapted means to accomplish constitutionally legitimate ends. The individual mandate is not only reasonably adapted but is quite elegant as a means of eliminating the market for self-insured healthcare transactions. The provision effectively encourages individuals to shift from the inefficient market for self-insured care to its more efficient substitute market for fully-insured care. The question presented is whether the minimum coverage provision is a valid exercise of Congress’s powers under Article I of the Constitution

Surface rupture of the Hundalee fault during the 2016 Mw 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake

The Hundalee fault is one of at least 20 faults that ruptured during the 2016 M w Mw 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake in the northeast of the South Island of New Zealand. Here, we document a 12‐km onshore section of the Hundalee fault that exhibited surface rupture from this event. To the northeast of our observations, the fault crosses the coast, and independent seabed surveys show that the 2016 rupture continued at least 2 km offshore. No surface rupture was observed across the southwestern section of the Hundalee fault, which crosses hilly vegetated terrain and poorly consolidated valley‐floor sediment. However, previous Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) analyses suggest that a 9‐km‐long section of the fault did rupture. Hence, the minimum length of the 2016 rupture along the Hundalee fault is 23 km. Field measurements indicate oblique dextral‐reverse slip along northeast‐trending Hundalee fault sections and reverse‐sinistral slip along north to north‐northeast‐trending sections. This is consistent with the regional principal horizontal shortening direction. Maximum vertical and horizontal offset measurements are 2.5±0.5 2.5±0.5 and 3.7±0.5  m 3.7±0.5  m , respectively. The discontinuous and irregular surface ruptures we observed are characteristic of a structurally immature fault, yet previous geological mapping indicates that the Hundalee fault is a regionally significant fault with >1‐km >1‐km late Cenozoic throw. Furthermore, a 60‐m‐wide sequence of fault rocks exposed by the rupture indicates that slip has localized into <10‐cm‐thick <10‐cm‐thick gouge zones, as anticipated for a mature fault. Therefore, a discrepancy exists between geological evidence of the Hundalee fault being a structurally mature fault and the characteristics of the 2016 rupture. We speculate that this signifies that the 2016 rupture was imposed on the Hundalee fault by movement across an inefficient multifault network rather than independent rupture of the Hundalee fault itself

Selective strategy for solid sorbent replacement in CCS

An innovative method for sorbent replacement in the looping of a generic solid sorbent for post-combustion carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is introduced. First, the standard replacement method is revisited with some original results presented. A new strategy is then modeled, aimed at selectively replacing the material as it degrades. This method exploits the density difference, after adsorption, between relatively fresh, CO2-laden sorbent and relatively degraded material, with small residual adsorption capacity. The model is then applied to values of degradation rate within the experimental range available in scientific literature for silica-supported amines (SSA). The selective removal strategy ideally allows a saving of 37% of the sorbent with respect to the standard, undifferentiated replacement considered in first place, while keeping the same adsorptive capacity of the system