Does Anxiety Mediate the Relationship between Sensory Hyperresponsiveness and Restricted, Repetitive Behaviors during Early Development?

Sensory hyperresponsiveness, anxiety, and restricted, repetitive behaviors are known to be associated with one another, especially in autistic youth, and may be important to the development and presentation of autism over time. Few studies, however, have studied the nature of this three-way relationship prospectively, or in young children at elevated likelihood for autism. The goals of the current study were to gain greater insight into the development of autism from a symptom level before a diagnosis can be made, and specifically, to examine the relationship between sensory hyperresponsiveness, anxiety, and restricted, repetitive behaviors across time during early development in children at elevated likelihood for autism. Extant longitudinal data for a group of children at elevated likelihood for autism (N = 147) were used to conduct path analyses for two mediation model configurations, which included measures of sensory hyperresponsiveness at baseline, and anxiety and restricted and repetitive behaviors at follow-up. Results did not indicate mediating effects for either model; however, higher levels of sensory hyperresponsiveness at baseline were significantly associated with higher levels of anxiety symptoms at follow-up (b = 0.09, SE = 0.04, β = 0.24, p = 0.005, 95% CIs [0.07, 0.40]). Findings suggest that sensory hyperresponsiveness during early development later predicts anxiety symptoms in children at elevated likelihood for autism, which is consistent with prior findings in both autistic (Green et al., 2012) and non-autistic children (Carpenter et al., 2019). Although we are unable to determine whether this is a unidirectional or bidirectional relationship in the current study given the lack of concurrent data on anxiety symptoms at baseline, this result adds to emerging research suggesting that sensory hyperresponsiveness may be a risk factor for later developing anxiety

Strategic Facilities Planning: A Focus On Health Care

Turbulent market conditions have forced the health care sector to re-examine its business and operational practices.  Health care has become increasingly complex as decisions and planning are reframed in light of the current lagging economy, an increased demand for services, new global competition, and impending legislation reform.  The stress is felt most keenly within the nation’s hospitals and consortia of health care facilities.  Facility planning decisions are no exception.  Hospital administrators are abandoning the once commonplace rules governing aging infrastructure renovations.  Instead, administrators are basing decisions within their respective strategic context and are attempting to align buildings, services, personnel, and technology to an overall plan that looks at markets, operations, and finances as resources for competitive advantage.  This paper reviews the strategic facilities planning literature and applies those best practices which support this organizational alignment for health care.  An application in the mid-Atlantic demonstrates that hospital facilities, by design, need to support the current and future needs of health care delivery systems, while dated structures impede industry advances.  Health care infrastructure improvements must proactively address technological, regulatory, and financial changes facing the sector

Single-Step Methylation of Chitosan Using Dimethyl Carbonate as a Green Methylating Agent

N,N,N-Trimethyl chitosan (TMC) is one chitosan derivative that, because of its improved solubility, has been studied for industrial and pharmaceutic applications. Conventional methods for the synthesis of TMC involve the use of highly toxic and harmful reagents, such as methyl iodide and dimethyl sulfate (DMS). Although the methylation of dimethylated chitosan to TMC by dimethyl carbonate (DMC, a green and benign methylating agent) was reported recently, it involved a formaldehyde-based procedure. In this paper we report the single-step synthesis of TMC from chitosan using DMC in an ionic liquid. The TMC synthesised was characterised by 1H NMR spectroscopy and a functionally meaningful degree of quaternisation of 9% was demonstrated after a 12-h reaction time

The impact of COVID-19 on household energy consumption in England and Wales from April 2020 to March 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way people lived, worked, and studied around the world, with direct consequences for domestic energy use. This study assesses the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns in the first two years of the pandemic on household electricity and gas use in England and Wales. Using data for 508 (electricity) and 326 (gas) homes, elastic net regression, neural network and extreme gradient boosting predictive models were trained and tested on pre-pandemic data. The most accurate model for each household was used to create counterfactuals (predictions in the absence of COVID-19) against which observed pandemic energy use was compared. Median monthly model error (CV(RMSE)) was 3.86% (electricity) and 3.19% (gas) and bias (NMBE) was 0.21% (electricity) and −0.10% (gas). Our analysis showed that on average (electricity; gas) consumption increased by (7.8%; 5.7%) in year 1 of the pandemic and by (2.2%; 0.2%) in year 2. The greatest increases were in the winter lockdown (January – March 2021) by 11.6% and 9.0% for electricity and gas, respectively. At the start of 2022 electricity use remained 2.0% higher while gas use was around 1.9% lower than predicted. Households with children showed the greatest increase in electricity consumption during lockdowns, followed by those with adults in work. Wealthier households increased their electricity consumption by more than the less wealthy and continued to use more than predicted throughout the two-year period while the less wealthy returned to pre-pandemic or lower consumption from summer 2021. Low dwelling efficiency was associated with a greater increase in energy consumption during the pandemic. Additionally, this study shows the value of different machine learning techniques for counterfactual modelling at the individual-dwelling level, and our approach can be used to robustly estimate the impact of other events and interventions

Rosette-Disrupting Effect of an Anti-Plasmodial Compound for the Potential Treatment of Plasmodium falciparum Malaria Complications

The spread of artemisinin-resistant parasites could lead to higher incidence of patients with malaria complications. However, there are no current treatments that directly dislodge sequestered parasites from the microvasculature. We show that four common antiplasmodial drugs do not disperse rosettes (erythrocyte clusters formed by malaria parasites) and therefore develop a cell-based high-throughput assay to identify potential rosette-disrupting compounds. A pilot screen of 2693 compounds identified Malaria Box compound MMV006764 as a potential candidate. Although it reduced rosetting by a modest 20%, MMV006764 was validated to be similarly effective against both blood group O and A rosettes of three laboratory parasite lines. Coupled with its antiplasmodial activity and drug-likeness, MMV006764 represents the first small-molecule compound that disrupts rosetting and could potentially be used in a resource-limited setting to treat patients deteriorating rapidly from malaria complications. Such dual-action drugs that simultaneously restore microcirculation and reduce parasite load could significantly reduce malaria morbidity and mortality

Molecular phylogeny of the Pectinoidea (Bivalvia) indicates Propeamussiidae to be a non-monophyletic family with one clade sister to the scallops (Pectinidae)

Scallops (Pectinidae) are one of the most diverse families of bivalves and have been a model system in evolutionary biology. However, in order to understand phenotypic evolution, the Pectinidae needs to be placed in a deeper phylogenetic framework within the superfamily Pectinoidea. We reconstructed a molecular phylogeny for 60 species from four of the five extant families within the Pectinoidea using a five gene dataset (12S, 16S, 18S, 28S rRNAs and histone H3). Our analyses give consistent support for the non-monophyly of the Propeamussiidae, with a subset of species as the sister group to the Pectinidae, the Propeamussiidae type species as sister to the Spondylidae, and the majority of propeamussiid taxa sister to the Spondylidae + Pr. dalli. This topology represents a previously undescribed relationship of pectinoidean families. Our results suggest a single origin for eyes within the superfamily and likely multiple instances of loss for these characters. However, it is now evident that reconstructing the evolutionary relationships of Pectinoidea will require a more comprehensive taxonomic sampling of the Propeamussiidae sensu lato

Environmental consciousness and choice of bulb for lighting in a developing country

Background: Most countries in the world especially those in Asia and Africa have been undertaking policies meant to help promote science, technology and innovation towards meeting some provisions of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, there is still a sizable number of households who have not yet fully embraced energy-saving technologies. This study provides highlights on the economic and environmental benefits for investing in energy-saving light bulbs. Methods: Using a survey and a multistage random sampling approach, we administered questionnaires to 1650 households in Ghana. The relevant diagnostic tests associated with cross-sectional data were undertaken. We estimated a maximum-likelihood probit model with its associated marginal effects to find out how the choice of energy-saving light bulb (behaviour) is influenced by environmental consciousness (both local knowledge and global knowledge) and other demographic factors. Results: Our results are consistent with economic theory as well as what earlier empirical evidence found in literature. That is, environmental consciousness, education, income, etc. are very important in explaining the choice of buying energy-saving light bulbs in Ghana. Conclusions: Besides advocating for information that will make society more environmentally conscious, we further recommend the use of fiscal policies (i.e. subsidies) to support lower income brackets who are predominant in developing countries

HNF1B variants associate with promoter methylation and regulate gene networks activated in prostate and ovarian cancer

Two independent regions within HNF1B are consistently identified in prostate and ovarian cancer genome-wide association studies (GWAS); their functional roles are unclear. We link prostate cancer (PC) risk SNPs rs11649743 and rs3760511 with elevated HNF1B gene expression and allele-specific epigenetic silencing, and outline a mechanism by which common risk variants could effect functional changes that increase disease risk: functional assays suggest that HNF1B is a pro-differentiation factor that suppresses epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in unmethylated, healthy tissues. This tumor-suppressor activity is lost when HNF1B is silenced by promoter methylation in the progression to PC. Epigenetic inactivation of HNF1B in ovarian cancer also associates with known risk SNPs, with a similar impact on EMT. This represents one of the first comprehensive studies into the pleiotropic role of a GWAS-associated transcription factor across distinct cancer types, and is the first to describe a conserved role for a multi-cancer genetic risk factor

The Naturalized Gender Order Of Rock and Roll

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66933/2/10.1177_019685999501900104.pd

Determinants of diagnostic investigation sensitivities across the clinical spectrum of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

To validate the provisional findings of a number of smaller studies and explore additional determinants of characteristic diagnostic investigation results across the entire clinical spectrum of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), an international collaborative study was undertaken comprising 2451 pathologically confirmed (definite) patients. We assessed the influence of age at disease onset, illness duration, prion protein gene (PRNP) codon 129 polymorphism (either methionine or valine) and molecular sub-type on the diagnostic sensitivity of EEG, cerebral MRI and the CSF 14-3-3 immunoassay. For EEG and CSF 14-3-3 protein detection, we also assessed the influence of the time point in a patient's illness at which the investigation was performed on the likelihood of a typical or positive result. Analysis included a large subset of patients (n = 743) in whom molecular sub-typing had been performed using a combination of the PRNP codon 129 polymorphism and the form of protease resistant prion protein [type 1 or 2 according to Parchi et al. (Parchi P, Giese A, Capellari S, Brown P, Schulz-Schaeffer W, Windl O, Zerr I, Budka H, Kopp N, Piccardo P, Poser S, Rojiani A, Streichemberger N, Julien J, Vital C, Ghetti B, Gambetti P, Kretzschmar H. Classification of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease based on molecular and phenotypic analysis of 300 subjects. Ann Neurol 1999; 46: 224-233.)] present in the brain. Findings for the whole group paralleled the subset with molecular sub-typing data available, showing that age at disease onset and disease duration were independent determinants of typical changes on EEG, while illness duration significantly influenced positive CSF 14-3-3 protein detection; changes on brain MRI were not influenced by either of these clinical parameters, but overall, imaging data were less complete and consequently conclusions are more tentative. In addition to age at disease onset and illness duration, molecular sub-type was re-affirmed as an important independent determinant of investigation results. In multivariate analyses that included molecular sub-type, time point of the investigation during a patient's illness was found not to influence the occurrence of a typical or positive EEG or CSF 14-3-3 protein result. A typical EEG was most often seen in MM1 patients and was significantly less likely in the MV1, MV2 and VV2 sub-types, whereas VV2 patients had an increased likelihood of a typical brain MRI. Overall, the CSF 14-3-3 immunoassay was the most frequently positive investigation (88.1%) but performed significantly less well in the very uncommon MV2 and MM2 sub-types. Our findings confirm a number of determinants of principal investigation results in sporadic CJD and underscore the importance of recognizing these pre-test limitations before accepting the diagnosis excluded or confirmed. Combinations of investigations offer the best chance of detection, especially for the less common molecular sub-types such as MV2 and MM2