Defining turn taking in intervention for young children with autism: A review of the literature

Turn taking is a form of preverbal, dyadic, reciprocal communication that may support key areas of development, such as language and joint attention, and may serve different functions depending on each communicative partner’s intent. As such, it has been incorporated in interventions targeting various outcomes in young children with autism. However, there is inconsistency in how researchers define turn taking and explorations on how turn taking is defined across these interventions have not yet been reported in the current literature. Therefore, the purpose of this review was to investigate how turn taking is operationally defined based on communicative intent in the current literature on interventions for young children with autism and to explore additional intervention content to provide fuller context to how turn taking has been promoted. A search was conducted across databases to identify intervention studies for young children with autism that incorporated an embedded turn-taking component. Peer-reviewed articles were then coded based on turn-taking communicative intent, and additional intervention content was categorized. Findings across 14 studies indicate variability among turn-taking definitions both in communicative function and form. The results also reveal that turn taking has been promoted through different intervention approaches that incorporate diverse agents, settings, and methodology. Researchers and practitioners should consider specificity and clarity when defining turn taking to most optimally meet the developmental needs of young children with autism in future interventions

Inverted Race Tube Assay for Circadian Clock Studies of the Neurospora Accessions

Although the Neurospora crassa circadian clock has been studied for forty years, population studies of natural accessions have been limited by technical difficulties associated with the conventional race tube assay (CRTA) that is used to measure asexual development (conidiation). Due to the buildup of CO2 in the CRTA that represses banding, a mutant strain band (bd) has been utilized for increased visualization of the banding phenotype. In order to study the circadian clock in natural accessions of Neurospora multiple techniques have been explored. One such technique, the rubidium chloride-supplemented race tube assay (RRTA) has been used successfully. Here we present a new technique, the Inverted Race Tube Assay (IRTA) that is a simple modification of the CRTA. We analyzed 5 natural accessions of Neurospora using CRTA, IRTA and RRTA and discuss the advantages of the IRTA in natural variation studies in Neurospora

A reliable microplate assay for determination of B-galactosidase activity in Neurospora crassa strains bearing lacZ fusions

We have been using lacZ as a reporter gene in N. crassa. The standard -galactosidase assay can be labor intensive and time consuming when large numbers of strains are assayed simultaneously. We sought a technique to simplify the pipetting steps involved in assay preparation and in optical density reading. High reproducibility and rapid processing was obtained by adapting the standard test tube method to a microassay performed in a 96-well microplate

One-pot Enzymatic Synthesis of Deoxy-thymidine-diphosphate (TDP)-2-deoxy-∝-d-glucose Using Phosphomannomutase

Production of deoxy-thymidine-diphosphate (TDP)-sugars as substrates of glycosyltransferases, has been one of main hurdles for combinatorial antibiotic biosynthesis, which combines sugar moiety with aglycon of various antibiotics. Here, we report the one-pot enzymatic synthesis of TDP-2-deoxy-glucose employing high efficient TMP kinase (TMK; E.C. 2.7.2.12), acetate kinase (ACK; E.C. 2.7.1.21), and TDP-glucose synthase (TGS; E.C. 2.7.7.24) with phosphomannomutase (PMM; E.C. 5.4.2.8). In this study, replacing phosphoglucomutase (PGM; E.C. 5.4.2) by PMM from Escherichia coli gave four times higher specific activity on 2-deoxy-6-phosphate glucose, suggesting that the activity on 2-deoxy-glucose-6-phosphate was mainly affected by PMM activity, not PGM activity. Using an in vitro system starting from TMP and 2-deoxy-glucose-6-phosphate glucose, TDP-2-deoxy-glucose (63% yield) was successfully synthesized. Considering low productivity of NDP-sugars from cheap starting materials, this paper showed how production of NDP-sugars could be enhanced by controlling mutase activity

A Compact Wideband Crossover Coupler with Lumped Elements

A compact wideband crossover coupler with fully lumped elements is presented. To achieve a wideband operation, a three-section branch-line structure is employed for the crossover coupler. The size is significantly minimized by replacing transmission lines with lumped elements. The measurement shows that the insertion loss, isolation, and return loss are 1.7 dB, 24 dB, and 14.5 dB, respectively, at 2 GHz. The fractional bandwidth of 20-dB isolation and 3-dB insertion loss is 27%. The size of the crossover coupler is 11 mm × 9 mm, which corresponds to 0.07λ × 0.06λ at 2 GHz. This is significantly smaller than a conventional three-section branch-line crossover coupler by 95%

Simple sequence repeats in Neurospora crassa: distribution, polymorphism and evolutionary inference

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) have been successfully used for various genetic and evolutionary studies in eukaryotic systems. The eukaryotic model organism <it>Neurospora crassa </it>is an excellent system to study evolution and biological function of SSRs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We identified and characterized 2749 SSRs of 963 SSR types in the genome of <it>N. crassa</it>. The distribution of tri-nucleotide (nt) SSRs, the most common SSRs in <it>N. crassa</it>, was significantly biased in exons. We further characterized the distribution of 19 abundant SSR types (AST), which account for 71% of total SSRs in the <it>N. crassa </it>genome, using a Poisson log-linear model. We also characterized the size variation of SSRs among natural accessions using Polymorphic Index Content (PIC) and ANOVA analyses and found that there are genome-wide, chromosome-dependent and local-specific variations. Using polymorphic SSRs, we have built linkage maps from three line-cross populations.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Taking our computational, statistical and experimental data together, we conclude that 1) the distributions of the SSRs in the sequenced N. crassa genome differ systematically between chromosomes as well as between SSR types, 2) the size variation of tri-nt SSRs in exons might be an important mechanism in generating functional variation of proteins in <it>N. crassa</it>, 3) there are different levels of evolutionary forces in variation of amino acid repeats, and 4) SSRs are stable molecular markers for genetic studies in <it>N. crassa</it>.</p