Preconception Maternal and Paternal Exposure to Persistent Organic Pollutants and Birth Size: The LIFE Study

Background: Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are developmental toxicants, but the impact of both maternal and paternal exposures on offspring birth size is largely unexplored. Objective: We examined associations between maternal and paternal serum concentrations of 63 POPs, comprising five major classes of pollutants, with birth size measures. Methods: Parental serum concentrations of 9 organochlorine pesticides, 1 polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), 7 perfluoroalkyl chemicals (PFCs), 10 polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and 36 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were measured before conception for 234 couples. Differences in birth weight, length, head circumference, and ponderal index were estimated using multiple linear regression per 1-SD increase in natural log-transformed (ln-transformed) chemicals. Models were estimated separately for each parent and adjusted for maternal age, maternal prepregnancy body mass index (kilograms per meter squared) and other confounders, and all models included an interaction term between infant sex and each chemical. Results: Among girls (n = 117), birth weight was significantly lower (range, 84–195 g) in association with a 1-SD increase in ln-transformed maternal serum concentrations of DDT, PBDE congeners 28 and 183, and paternal serum concentrations of PBDE-183 and PCB-167. Among boys (n = 113), maternal (PCBs 138, 153, 167, 170, 195, and 209 and perfluorooctane sulfonamide) and paternal (PCBs 172 and 195) serum concentrations of several POPs were statistically associated with lower birth weight (range, 98–170 g), whereas paternal concentrations of PBDEs (66, 99) were associated with higher birth weight. Differences in offspring head circumference, length, and ponderal index were also associated with parental exposures. Conclusions: Preconceptional maternal and paternal concentrations of several POPs were associated with statistically significant differences in birth size among offsprin

Differences in Brain Function and Changes with Intervention in Children with Poor Spelling and Reading Abilities

Previous fMRI studies in English-speaking samples suggested that specific interventions may alter brain function in language-relevant networks in children with reading and spelling difficulties, but this research strongly focused on reading impaired individuals. Only few studies so far investigated characteristics of brain activation associated with poor spelling ability and whether a specific spelling intervention may also be associated with distinct changes in brain activity patterns. We here investigated such effects of a morpheme-based spelling intervention on brain function in 20 children with comparatively poor spelling and reading abilities using repeated fMRI. Relative to 10 matched controls, children with comparatively poor spelling and reading abilities showed increased activation in frontal medial and right hemispheric regions and decreased activation in left occipito-temporal regions prior to the intervention, during processing of a lexical decision task. After five weeks of intervention, spelling and reading comprehension significantly improved in the training group, along with increased activation in the left temporal, parahippocampal and hippocampal regions. Conversely, the waiting group showed increases in right posterior regions. Our findings could indicate an increased left temporal activation associated with the recollection of the new learnt morpheme-based strategy related to successful training

Cerebral lateralisation during signed and spoken language production in children born deaf

The effect of sensory experience on hemispheric specialisation for language production is not well understood. Children born deaf, including those who have cochlear implants, have drastically different perceptual experiences of language than their hearing peers. Using functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD), we measured lateralisation during language production in a heterogeneous group of 19 deaf children and in 19 hearing children, matched on language ability. In children born deaf, we observed significant left lateralisation during language production (British Sign Language, spoken English, or a combination of languages). There was no difference in the strength of lateralisation between deaf and hearing groups. Comparable proportions of children were categorised as left-, right-, or not significantly-lateralised in each group. Moreover, an exploratory subgroup analysis showed no significant difference in lateralisation between deaf children with cochlear implants and those without. These data suggest that the processes underpinning language production remain robustly left lateralised regardless of sensory language experience

Meta-analytic findings reveal lower means but higher variances in visuo-spatial ability in dyslexia

Conflicting empirical and theoretical accounts suggest that dyslexia is associated with either average, enhanced, or impoverished high level visuo-spatial processing relative to controls. Such heterogeneous results could be due to the presence of wider variability in dyslexic samples, which is unlikely to be identified at the single study level, due to lack of power. To address this, the current study reports a meta-analysis of means and variances in high-level visuo-spatial ability in 909 non-dyslexic and 956 dyslexic individuals. The findings suggest that dyslexia is associated not only with a lower mean performance on visuo-spatial tasks, but also with greater variability in performance. Through novel meta analytic techniques, we demonstrate a negative effect size for mean differences (-.457), but a positive effect size for SD differences (+.118; SD ratio = 1.107). In doing so, this is the first study to demonstrate impoverished visuospatial processing of the majority of individuals with dyslexia in addition to greater variance in performance in this group. The findings advocate for further consideration of both the presence of, and reasons for, increased variance in perception, attention and memory across neurodevelopmental disorders

D.M. Consunji, Inc.: strategy proposal

This study focused on D.M. Consunji, Inc., a subsidiary of DMCI Holdings, Inc.. Its current business is in construction contracting, where the company offers services to construct infrastructures mainly in the area of buildings and civil works. Established in 1954, DMCI has now become the largest construction company in terms of revenue in the Philippines, having completed over 450 diverse projects. For the years 1993, 1994 & 1995, DMCI was the top grosser in revenue, among the leading contractor in the Philippines. Its long-term objectives are to be a world class construction company and a market leader in its targeted market segments. Externally, the company is facing the prospects of an expanding construction market as well as fierce competition. There were 583 more contractors registered in 1994, a 9% increase to 6, 997 from 6, 414 in 1993. Accounting for more than 5% of the industry gross domestic products (GDP), the construction industry is the major beneficiary of the rapid industrialization in the Philippines. Statistics from the Construction Industry Authority of the Philippines (CIAP) reveal that construction activities have grown by an average of 6.05% from 1991 to 1993. CIAP expects this growth to continue with the industry growing by an average of 7.44% during the next four years. While private investments are expected to grow by 5.78%, government spending is projected to grow by a higher annual rate of 9.52%. Internally, it is faced with an increase of gross profit margins, for the past three years with its position as a market share leader (from 14% in 1993 to 17% and 19% in 1994-95). Its GP rate of 19% is above the industry standard that is just below 16%. The company has a capacity to construct 60 high-rise building at one time. At present, DMCI is busy with approximately 40 high-rise construction projects. It uses its own pool of equipment for all of its projects. DMCI is reputed to have the largest equipment pool of all the Philippine construction companies, valued at market value of P 899 million. Shown by the table below, most of DMCIs equipment is of younger age than that of the industry average under class AAA category. We are looking for a corporate strategy that can further improve the companys performance in the next two years. The external environment of the industry and the internal conditions of the company determine the strategy. From the analysis of these two factors namely industry analysis and company analysis we will come up with SWOT profile of the company that will be used as a basis for strategy

The representation of objects in the human occipital and temporal cortex

Recently, we identified, using fMRI, three bilateral regions in the ventral temporal cortex that responded preferentially to faces, houses, and chairs [Ishai, A., Ungerleider, L. G., Martin, A., Schouten, J. L., & Haxby, J. V. (1999). Distributed representation of objects in the human ventral visual pathway. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., 96, 9379--9384]. Here, we report differential patterns of activation, similar to those seen in the ventral temporal cortex, in bilateral regions of the ventral occipital cortex. We also found category-related responses in the dorsal occipital cortex and in the superior temporal sulcus. Moreover, rather than activating discrete, segregated areas, each category was associated with its own differential pattern of response across a broad expanse of cortex. The distributed patterns of response were similar across tasks (passive viewing, delayed matching) and presentation formats (photographs, line drawings). We propose that the representation of objects in the ventral visual pathway, including both occipital and temporal regions, is not restricted to small, highly selective patches of cortex but, instead, is a distributed representation of information about object form. Within this distributed system, the representation of faces appears to be less extensive as compared to the representations of nonface objects