Characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Sotos Syndrome

Sotos syndrome is a congenital overgrowth disorder with an incidence of approximately 1 in 14,000. This study investigated behavioural characteristics of ASD within a large cohort of individuals with Sotos syndrome (n=78). As measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale, second edition (SRS-2), 65 participants (83.33%) met clinical cut-off (T-score ≥60). There was no significant gender difference in symptom severity. There was a significant effect of age, with lower scores observed in early childhood and adulthood, compared to childhood. Furthermore, individuals with Sotos syndrome appear to display a trait profile that is similar to that identified in ASD. Overall, these findings indicate that the majority of individuals with Sotos syndrome display clinically significant behavioural symptomatology associated with ASD

Frontal theta band oscillations predict error correction and posterror slowing in typing

Performance errors are associated with robust behavioral and electroencephalography (EEG) effects. However, there is a debate about the nature of the relationship between these effects and implicit versus explicit error awareness. Our aim was to study the relationship between error related electrophysiological effects, such as spectral perturbations in fronto-medial theta band oscillations (FMT), and error awareness in typing. Typing has an advantage as an experimental paradigm in that detected errors are quickly and habitually signaled by the participant using backspace, allowing separation of detected from undetected errors without interruption in behavior. Typing is thought to be controlled hierarchically via inner and outer loops, which rely on different sources for error detection. Touch-typist participants were asked to copy-type 100 sentences as EEG was recorded in the absence of visual feedback. Continuous EEG data were analyzed using independent component analysis (ICA). Time-frequency and ERP analyses were applied to emergent independent components. The results show that single-trial FMT parameters and error related negativity (ERN) amplitude predict overt, adaptive posterror actions such as error correction via backspace; and, posterror slowing, reflecting implicit error awareness. In addition, we found that those uncorrected errors which were slowed down the most were also the ones associated with a high level of FMT activity. Our results as a whole show that FMT are related to neural mechanisms involved in explicit awareness of errors, and input from inner loop is sufficient for error correction in typing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved

Summation and transformation formulas for elliptic hypergeometric series

Using matrix inversion and determinant evaluation techniques we prove several summation and transformation formulas for terminating, balanced, very-well-poised, elliptic hypergeometric series.Comment: 21 pages, AMS-LaTe

North and South addressing the English health divide

The North South divide in England has been a popular trope from the mid-19th century novels of Charles Dickens (Hard Times, 1854) and Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South, 1855) through to TV and radio documentaries of 2014.1,2 These often focus on culture and the economy, but it is also well known that there are large and longstanding geographical inequalities in health in England.3 Between 2009 and 2011 people in Manchester were more than twice as likely to die early (455 deaths per 100 000) as people living in Wokingham (200 deaths per 100 000).3 This sort of finding is not new; for the past four decades, the North of England (commonly defined as the North East, North West and Yorkshire and Humber regions) has persistently had higher all-cause mortality rates than the South of England, and the gap has widened over time.4 This dates back to at least the early 19th century when, for example, Chadwick5 found that life expectancy for all social classes was higher in Bath than in Liverpool. The extent of the current spatial health divide in England is extreme by contemporary comparative standards. England has some of the largest regional inequalities in health in Europe (Fig. 1). The scale of the divide is such that the life expectancy gap for women between the poorest English regions—the North East (NE) and North West (NW)—and the richest—London and the South East—was similar to the gap between the former West Germany and post-communist East Germany in the mid-1990s (Fig. 2). What the history of German reunification shows is that these regional differences can be addressed. After reunification in 1990, life expectancy for women in East Germany caught up with that of women in West Germany in little more than a decade, whereas the gap between the North of England and London has persisted for women. East German women now have a higher life expectancy than NE English women. The German spatial life expectancy gap for men is now smaller than the English one

Late Light Curves of Normal Type Ia Supernovae

We present late-epoch optical photometry (BVRI) of seven normal/super-luminous Type Ia supernovae: SN 2000E, SN 2000ce, SN 2000cx, SN 2001C, SN 2001V, SN 2001bg, SN 2001dp. The photometry of these objects was obtained using a template subtraction method to eliminate galaxy light contamination during aperture photometry. We show the optical light curves of these supernovae out to epochs of up to ~640 days after the explosion of the supernova. We show a linear decline in these data during the epoch of 200-500 days after explosion with the decline rate in the B,V,& R bands equal to about 1.4 mag/100 days, but the decline rate of the I-band is much shallower at 0.94 mag/100 days.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

Self-management Interventions for People With Parkinson Disease: Scoping Review

\ua9 2022 Journal of Medical Internet Research. All rights reserved. Background: Parkinson disease can impose substantial distress and costs on patients, their families and caregivers, and health care systems. To address these burdens for families and health care systems, there is a need to better support patient self-management. To achieve this, an overview of the current state of the literature on self-management is needed to identify what is being done, how well it is working, and what might be missing. Objective: The aim of this scoping review was to provide an overview of the current body of research on self-management interventions for people with Parkinson disease and identify any knowledge gaps. Methods: The PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) and Population, Intervention, Comparator, Outcome, and Study type frameworks were used to structure the methodology of the review. Due to time and resource constraints, 1 reviewer systematically searched 4 databases (PubMed, Ovid, Scopus, and Web of Science) for the evaluations of self-management interventions for Parkinson disease published in English. The references were screened using the EndNote X9 citation management software, titles and abstracts were manually reviewed, and studies were selected for inclusion based on the eligibility criteria. Data were extracted into a pre-established form and synthesized in a descriptive analysis. Results: There was variation among the studies on study design, sample size, intervention type, and outcomes measured. The randomized controlled trials had the strongest evidence of effectiveness: 5 out of 8 randomized controlled trials found a significant difference between groups favoring the intervention on their primary outcome, and the remaining 3 had significant effects on at least some of the secondary outcomes. The 2 interventions included in the review that targeted mental health outcomes both found significant changes over time, and the 3 algorithms evaluated performed well. The remaining studies examined patient perceptions, acceptability, and cost-effectiveness and found generally positive results. Conclusions: This scoping review identified a wide variety of interventions designed to support various aspects of self-management for people with Parkinson disease. The studies all generally reported positive results, and although the strength of the evidence varied, it suggests that self-management interventions are promising for improving the care and outcomes of people with Parkinson disease. However, the research tended to focus on the motor aspects of Parkinson disease, with few nonmotor or holistic interventions, and there was a lack of evaluation of cost-effectiveness. This research will be important to providing self-management interventions that meet the varied and diverse needs of people with Parkinson disease and determining which interventions are worth promoting for widespread adoption