The involvement of long-term serial-order memory in reading development : A longitudinal study

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Louisa Bogaerts, Arnaud Szmalec, Marjolijn De Maeyer, Mike P.A. Page, Wouter Duyck, “The involvement of long-term serial-order memory in reading development: A longitudinal study”, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Vol. 145: 139-156, May 2016. This Manuscript version is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Recent findings suggest that Hebb repetition learning-a paradigmatic example of long-term serial-order learning-is impaired in adults with dyslexia. The current study further investigated the link between serial-order learning and reading using a longitudinal developmental design. With this aim, verbal and visual Hebb repetition learning performance and reading skills were assessed in 96 Dutch-speaking children who we followed from first through second grade of primary school. We observed a positive association between order learning capacities and reading ability as well as weaker Hebb learning performance in early readers with poor reading skills even at the onset of reading instruction. Hebb learning further predicted individual differences in later (nonword) reading skills. Finally, Hebb learning was shown to explain a significant part of the variance in reading performance above and beyond phonological awareness. These findings highlight the role of serial-order memory in reading ability.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Linking memory and language : Evidence for a serial-order learning impairment in dyslexia

The present study investigated long-term serial-order learning impairments, operationalized as reduced Hebb repetition learning (HRL), in people with dyslexia. In a first multi-session experiment, we investigated both the persistence of a serial-order learning impairment as well as the long-term retention of serial-order representations, both in a group of Dutch-speaking adults with developmental dyslexia and in a matched control group. In a second experiment, we relied on the assumption that HRL mimics naturalistic word-form acquisition and we investigated the lexicalization of novel word-forms acquired through HRL. First, our results demonstrate that adults with dyslexia are fundamentally impaired in the long-term acquisition of serial-order information. Second, dyslexic and control participants show comparable retention of the long-term serial-order representations in memory over a period of one month. Third, the data suggest weaker lexicalization of newly acquired word-forms in the dyslexic group. We discuss the integration of these findings into current theoretical views of dyslexia.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Impact of dietary incorporation of Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis) and exogenous enzymes on broiler performance, carcass traits and meat quality

This study assessed the effect of Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis), individually and in combination with exogenous enzymes, on growth performance, carcass traits, and meat quality of broiler chickens. One hundred and twenty Ross 308 male chickens were allocated into 40 battery brooders, with 3 birds per cage, and fed ad libitum a corn-based diet during the first 21 D of the trial. The experimental period lasted from day 21 to 35, during which birds were fed 4 different diets: a corn-soybean basal diet, taken as the control group, a basal diet containing 15% Spirulina (MA), a basal diet containing 15% Spirulina plus 0.005% Rovabio Excel AP (MAR), and a basal diet containing 15% Spirulina plus 0.01% lysozyme (MAL). Body weight gain (P , 0.001) and feed conversion rate (P , 0.001) were improved in control chickens, when compared with those fed with Spirulina. In addition, Spirulina increased the length of duodenum plus jejunum in relation to the other treatment (P , 0.01). Chickens on the MAL diet showed a considerable increase in digesta viscosity (P , 0.05) compared with the control group. Breast and thigh meats from chickens fed with Spirulina, with or without the addition of exogenous enzymes, had higher values of yellowness (b*) (P , 0.001), total carotenoids (P , 0.001), and saturated fatty acids (P , 0.001), whereas n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (P , 0.01) and a-tocopherol (P , 0.001) decreased, when compared with the control. In conclusion, the incorporation of 15% Spirulina in broiler diets, individually or combined with exogenous enzymes, reduced birds’ performance through a higher digesta viscosity, which is likely associated with the gelation of microalga indigestible proteins. In addition, cell wall of Spirulina was successfully broken by the addition of lysozyme, but not by Rovabio Excel AP. Therefore, we anticipate that the combination of lysozyme with an exogenous specific peptidase could improve the digestibility of proteins from this microalga and avoid their detrimental gelationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Deranged coagulation profile secondary to cefazolin use: Case report

10.3390/IDR13010021Infectious Disease Reports131187-19

Neutralizing anti-interferon-gamma autoantibody levels may not correlate with clinical course of disease

10.1093/cid/ciw351Clinical Infectious Diseases634572 - 573CIDI

Heart Transplant Outcomes for Patients with Myocarditis

Myocarditis is a known etiology of both acute fulminant heart failure and chronic dilated cardiomyopathy requiring heart transplantation. We sought to evaluate the long-term post-transplant outcomes of pts with myocarditis. We evaluated the UNOS registry for all heart transplant (HT) recipients from 1987 to 2019. Comparisons between pt characteristics of HT recipients with myocarditis (N=649) and HT recipients without a diagnosis of myocarditis (N=62,493) are reported using standard statistical methods including Cox proportional hazards regression for survival analysis. Myocarditis HT recipients were younger (29.6 ± 20.7 vs. 46.8 ± 19.1, p<0.001) and more likely to be female (44.1% vs. 26.0%, p<0.001). Myocarditis HT recipients were less likely to be DM (6.6% vs. 20.7%, p<0.001) and to have undergone prior cardiac surgery (7.6% vs. 18.4%, p<0.001). In terms of transplant related factors, myocarditis HT recipients were likely to receive a younger donor (23.3 ± 15.0 vs. 28.3 ± 13.9, p<0.001) and have shorter ischemic times (p<0.001). Prior to transplant, the myocarditis HT recipients were a sicker cohort and more likely to require ECMO [6.0% vs. 1.0%, p<0.001), VAD support (34.4% vs. 25.0%, p<0.001), and MV (13.4% vs. 4.2%, p<0.001). Median (interquartile range) time on the wait list was significantly shorter for myocarditis HT recipients [37.0 (12.0, 100.0) days vs. 83.0 (26.0, 231.0) days, p<0.001]. There was a lower overall post-transplant mortality in the myocarditis HT recipients (26.0% vs. 34.2%, p<0.001). Myocarditis HT recipients tend to be a younger population with less underlying co-morbidities such as DM and prior cardiac surgery, but they are more likely to be more acutely sick at the time of heart transplantation requiring mechanical ventilation, ECMO, or VAD support. Myocarditis HT recipients have shorter organ wait times and have more favorable transplant related factors, and ultimately have a lower overall mortality compared to recipients without myocarditis

Yars2: A federated repository for querying graph structured data from the web

Abstract. We present the architecture of an end-to-end semantic search engine that uses a graph data model to enable interactive query answering over structured and interlinked data collected from many disparate sources on the Web. In particular, we study distributed indexing methods for graph-structured data and parallel query evaluation methods on a cluster of computers. We evaluate the system on a dataset with 430 million statements collected from the Web, and provide scale-up experiments on 7 billion synthetically generated statements.

An umbrella review of systematic reviews of the impact of wearables on health outcomes

This is an umbrella review of systematic review