A New Approach for Heparin Standardization: Combination of Scanning UV Spectroscopy, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Principal Component Analysis

The year 2007 was marked by widespread adverse clinical responses to heparin use, leading to a global recall of potentially affected heparin batches in 2008. Several analytical methods have since been developed to detect impurities in heparin preparations; however, many are costly and dependent on instrumentation with only limited accessibility. A method based on a simple UV-scanning assay, combined with principal component analysis (PCA), was developed to detect impurities, such as glycosaminoglycans, other complex polysaccharides and aromatic compounds, in heparin preparations. Results were confirmed by NMR spectroscopy. This approach provides an additional, sensitive tool to determine heparin purity and safety, even when NMR spectroscopy failed, requiring only standard laboratory equipment and computing facilities

ICAR: endoscopic skull‐base surgery

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Siblings of children with autism:The Siblings Embedded Systems Framework

Purpose of review: a range of interacting factors/mechanisms at the individual, family, and wider systems levels influences siblings living in families where one sibling has autism. We introduce the Sibling Embedded Systems Framework which aims to contextualise siblings’ experience and characterise the multiple and interacting factors influencing family and, in particular, sibling outcomes.Recent findings: findings from studies that have reported outcomes for siblings of children with autism are equivocal, ranging from negative impact, no difference, to positive experience. This is likely due to the complex nature of understanding the sibling experience. We focus on particular elements of the framework and review recent novel literature to help guide future directions for research and practice including the influence of culture, methodological considerations, and wider participatory methods.Summary: the Siblings Embedded System Framework can be used to understand interactive factors that affect sibling adjustment and to develop clinically, educationally and empirically based work that aims to enhance and support sibling adjustment, relationships, and well-being in families of children with autism.<br/

Social cognition in children with Down's syndrome: challenges to research and theory building.

Characterising how socio-cognitive abilities develop has been crucial to understanding the wider development of typically developing children. It is equally central to understanding developmental pathways in children with intellectual disabilities such as Down's syndrome. While the process of acquisition of socio-cognitive abilities in typical development and in autism has received considerable attention, socio-cognitive development in Down's syndrome has received far less scrutiny. Initial work in the 1970s and 1980s provided important insights into the emergence of socio-cognitive abilities in the children's early years, and recently there has been a marked revival of interest in this area, with research focusing both on a broader range of abilities and on a wider age range. This annotation reviews some of these more recent findings, identifies outstanding gaps in current understanding, and stresses the importance of the development of theory in advancing research and knowledge in this field. Barriers to theory building are discussed and the potential utility of adopting a transactional approach to theory building illustrated with reference to a model of early socio-cognitive development in Down's syndrome. The need for a more extensive model of social cognition is emphasised, as is the need for larger-scale, finer-grained, longitudinal work which recognises the within-individual and within-group variability which characterises this population. The value of drawing on new technologies and of adapting innovative research paradigms from other areas of typical and atypical child psychology is also highlighted

Social cognition in children with Down's syndrome: challenges to research and theory building.

Characterising how socio-cognitive abilities develop has been crucial to understanding the wider development of typically developing children. It is equally central to understanding developmental pathways in children with intellectual disabilities such as Down's syndrome. While the process of acquisition of socio-cognitive abilities in typical development and in autism has received considerable attention, socio-cognitive development in Down's syndrome has received far less scrutiny. Initial work in the 1970s and 1980s provided important insights into the emergence of socio-cognitive abilities in the children's early years, and recently there has been a marked revival of interest in this area, with research focusing both on a broader range of abilities and on a wider age range. This annotation reviews some of these more recent findings, identifies outstanding gaps in current understanding, and stresses the importance of the development of theory in advancing research and knowledge in this field. Barriers to theory building are discussed and the potential utility of adopting a transactional approach to theory building illustrated with reference to a model of early socio-cognitive development in Down's syndrome. The need for a more extensive model of social cognition is emphasised, as is the need for larger-scale, finer-grained, longitudinal work which recognises the within-individual and within-group variability which characterises this population. The value of drawing on new technologies and of adapting innovative research paradigms from other areas of typical and atypical child psychology is also highlighted

Social knowledge and social reasoning abilities in a neurotypical population and in children with Down syndrome.

Social knowledge refers to the ability to analyze and reason about social situations in relation to social rules which are essential to the development of social skills and social behavior. The present research aimed to assess these abilities with the "Social resolution task" in a neurotypical population of 351 children (4 to 12 years) and 39 young adults, and in 20 participants (10 to 18 years) with Down syndrome. Results showed that young children aged 4 to 6 were well able to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate social behavior but they had significantly more difficulties in judging and identifying social cues for the transgression of conventional rules than for moral ones. Between age 4 and 8, their social reasoning was mainly based on factual answers, while older children showed significantly more social awareness, making more reference to emotional and social consequences for the "victims". The representation of a more universal applicability of social rules seemed to develop later in childhood, as of age 8. In contrast, participants with Down syndrome exhibited significantly more difficulties in judging, identifying and reasoning about transgression of social rules without social awareness. In conclusion, the results have shown that social reasoning abilities develop throughout childhood. Social awareness seems to have a long developmental course, which includes a sensibility about welfare and intersubjectivity, critical for the development of prosocial behavior. The clinical population with difficulties in social interaction and socio-emotional behavior could benefit from an early assessment and from learning social reasoning abilities to improve social skills