Fairy-tales for Modern Gifted Preschoolers: Developing Creativity, Moral Values and Coherent World Outlook

AbstractThe article gives the outline of a case study supported by Southern Federal University and conducted in a number of pre-school educational establishments in Rostov-on-Don, Rostov Oblast and Sochi (South of Russia) in 2010-2016. The research included several stages: detecting gifted preschoolers (by using inventories for kids and their parents) and providing pedagogical support for overall development of their world outlook and values. The authors describe a systematic approach to developing giftedness which includes use of fairy-tales, active gaming technologies and work with letters. The above techniques contribute to harmonious psychological and cognitive development of preschoolers

Axial distribution of myosin binding protein-C is unaffected by mutations in human cardiac and skeletal muscle

Myosin binding protein-C (MyBP-C), a major thick filament associated sarcomeric protein, plays an important functional and structural role in regulating sarcomere assembly and crossbridge formation. Missing or aberrant MyBP-C proteins (both cardiac and skeletal) have been shown to cause both cardiac and skeletal myopathies, thereby emphasising its importance for the normal functioning of the sarcomere. Mutations in cardiac MyBP-C are a major cause of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), while mutations in skeletal MyBP-C have been implicated in a disease of skeletal muscle—distal arthrogryposis type 1 (DA-1). Here we report the first detailed electron microscopy studies on human cardiac and skeletal tissues carrying MyBP-C gene mutations, using samples obtained from HCM and DA-1 patients. We have used established image averaging methods to identify and study the axial distribution of MyBP-C on the thick filament by averaging profile plots of the A-band of the sarcomere from electron micrographs of human cardiac and skeletal myopathy specimens. Due to the difficulty of obtaining normal human tissue, we compared the distribution to the A-band structure in normal frog skeletal, rat cardiac muscle and in cardiac muscle of MyBP-C-deficient mice. Very similar overall profile averages were obtained from the C-zones in cardiac HCM samples and skeletal DA-1 samples with MyBP-C gene mutations, suggesting that mutations in MyBP-C do not alter its mean axial distribution along the thick filament