Assessing Pre-Literacy Behaviors in Infants and Toddlers: Psychometric Evaluation of the Infant Toddler Literacy Assessment (ITLA-3)

Assessment of emerging literacy in young children is generally limited to either skill development in children over 3 years of age or the quality and context of young children’s early literacy experiences. Although there has been promotion of their early literacy experiences, assessment of emerging pre-literacy behaviors in children younger than 3 years has yet to be organized into a single tool. Preliminary work on the Infant Toddler Literacy Assessment (ITLA) has progressed through initial steps of scale development and shown promise as a criterionbased, standardized assessment for tracking children’s pre-literacy behaviors and guiding practitioners in supporting development of those behaviors in populations that might otherwise show delays later-on. Previous analyses of data on 450+ children provided statistical support of a developmental sequence of ITLA exemplar behaviors, from easiest or earliest learned to later developed skills. Results of the present study showed the ITLA-3 has moderate construct validity with the PPVT™-IV and demonstrates one overall construct of pre-literacy across its 15 exemplars and 105 behaviors. Evidence now exists to support use of ITLA-3 by early childhood teachers to assess and guide the advancement of pre-literacy behaviors in infants and toddlers. Ongoing development of the ITLA-3 is recommended for further standardization

An automated cell-counting algorithm for fluorescently-stained cells in migration assays

A cell-counting algorithm, developed in Matlab®, was created to efficiently count migrated fluorescently-stained cells on membranes from migration assays. At each concentration of cells used (10,000, and 100,000 cells), images were acquired at 2.5 ×, 5 ×, and 10 × objective magnifications. Automated cell counts strongly correlated to manual counts (r2 = 0.99, P < 0.0001 for a total of 47 images), with no difference in the measurements between methods under all conditions. We conclude that our automated method is accurate, more efficient, and void of variability and potential observer bias normally associated with manual counting

A novel HLA-B18 restricted CD8+ T cell epitope is efficiently cross-presented by dendritic cells from soluble tumor antigen

NY-ESO-1 has been a major target of many immunotherapy trials because it is expressed by various cancers and is highly immunogenic. In this study, we have identified a novel HLA-B*1801-restricted CD8&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;T cell epitope, NY-ESO-1&lt;sub&gt;88–96&lt;/sub&gt; (LEFYLAMPF) and compared its direct- and cross-presentation to that of the reported NY-ESO-1&lt;sub&gt;157–165&lt;/sub&gt; epitope restricted to HLA-A*0201. Although both epitopes were readily cross-presented by DCs exposed to various forms of full-length NY-ESO-1 antigen, remarkably NY-ESO-1&lt;sub&gt;88–96&lt;/sub&gt; is much more efficiently cross-presented from the soluble form, than NY-ESO-1&lt;sub&gt;157–165&lt;/sub&gt;. On the other hand, NY-ESO-1&lt;sub&gt;157–165&lt;/sub&gt; is efficiently presented by NY-ESO-1-expressing tumor cells and its presentation was not enhanced by IFN-γ treatment, which induced immunoproteasome as demonstrated by Western blots and functionally a decreased presentation of Melan A&lt;sub&gt;26–35&lt;/sub&gt;; whereas NY-ESO-1&lt;sub&gt;88–96&lt;/sub&gt; was very inefficiently presented by the same tumor cell lines, except for one that expressed high level of immunoproteasome. It was only presented when the tumor cells were first IFN-γ treated, followed by infection with recombinant vaccinia virus encoding NY-ESO-1, which dramatically increased NY-ESO-1 expression. These data indicate that the presentation of NY-ESO-1&lt;sub&gt;88–96&lt;/sub&gt; is immunoproteasome dependent. Furthermore, a survey was conducted on multiple samples collected from HLA-B18+ melanoma patients. Surprisingly, all the detectable responses to NY-ESO-1&lt;sub&gt;88–96&lt;/sub&gt; from patients, including those who received NY-ESO-1 ISCOMATRIX™ vaccine were induced spontaneously. Taken together, these results imply that some epitopes can be inefficiently presented by tumor cells although the corresponding CD8&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;T cell responses are efficiently primed in vivo by DCs cross-presenting these epitopes. The potential implications for cancer vaccine strategies are further discussed

Giant Actinomyces brain abscess in an immunocompetent child: A management strategy

Background: Intraparenchymal brain abscess is a collection of microbes caused by inoculation through direct extension or hematogenous spread. Although rare, intraparenchymal abscesses are potentially fatal and can be detected when patients are symptomatic due to local mass effect on adjacent neural tissue. Brain abscess treatment includes medical management with appropriate antibiotics alone or medical management in combination with surgical debridement. Treatment strategies depend on the size and location of disease, as well as the virulence of the microorganism. Similar to medical management strategies, surgical strategies among providers are not uniform, with variation in approaches from complete extirpation of the abscess, including the abscess wall, to minimally invasive stereotactic needle aspiration. In particular, for children, there are no guidelines for therapy. Case description: We report a case of giant Actinomycosis right frontal brain abscess in an immunocompetent child without risk factors. A review of the literature for the treatment of brain abscess caused very rarely by Actinomyces in children is performed. Conclusion: Successful treatment of brain access depends on organism and location. The even more uncommon giant intraparenchymal abscesses can be managed with minimal access and prolonged antibiosis, especially when slow-growing organisms are identified. Long-term follow-up should be employed to mitigate missed late failures

Stored Grain Volume Measurement Using a Low Density Point Cloud

This technical note presents the development of a new apparatus and data processing method to accurately estimate the volume of stored grain in a bin. Specifically, it was developed to account for the variability in surface topography that can occur in large diameter bins when partially unloaded. This was accomplished using a laser distance meter to create a low density point cloud, from which a surface was interpolated using ArcMap geoprocessing tools. The manually controlled and portable system was designed to hold the laser distance meter and provided a common reference point. The data from the laser distance meter was transmitted to a tablet PC via Bluetooth. Measurement of an empty hopper bottom bin (4.6 m in diameter and 6.5 m tall) demonstrated that the system was able to measure a known volume within 0.02%, and repeated measures of an empty flat bottom bin (1.8 m in diameter, and 5.7 m tall) were within 0.29% of the known volume. Two applications are presented which highlight the system‘s ability to capture complex surfaces, as well as limitations that result from fill scenarios where the field of view was limited

The Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization: 8 Station Results

We are developing the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER) to detect 21cm emission from the early Universe, when the first stars and galaxies were forming. We describe the overall experiment strategy and architecture and summarize two PAPER deployments: a 4-antenna array in the low-RFI environment of Western Australia and an 8-antenna array at our prototyping site in Green Bank, WV. From these activities we report on system performance, including primary beam model verification, dependence of system gain on ambient temperature, measurements of receiver and overall system temperatures, and characterization of the RFI environment at each deployment site. We present an all-sky map synthesized between 139 MHz and 174 MHz using data from both arrays that reaches down to 80 mJy (4.9 K, for a beam size of 2.15e-5 steradians at 154 MHz), with a 10 mJy (620 mK) thermal noise level that indicates what would be achievable with better foreground subtraction. We calculate angular power spectra ($C_\ell$) in a cold patch and determine them to be dominated by point sources, but with contributions from galactic synchrotron emission at lower radio frequencies and angular wavemodes. Although the cosmic variance of foregrounds dominates errors in these power spectra, we measure a thermal noise level of 310 mK at $\ell=100$ for a 1.46-MHz band centered at 164.5 MHz. This sensitivity level is approximately three orders of magnitude in temperature above the level of the fluctuations in 21cm emission associated with reionization.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, submitted to AJ. Revision 2 corrects a scaling error in the x axis of Fig. 12 that lowers the calculated power spectrum temperatur

The Human Disease Ontology 2022 update.

The Human Disease Ontology (DO) (www.disease-ontology.org) database, has significantly expanded the disease content and enhanced our userbase and website since the DO\u27s 2018 Nucleic Acids Research DATABASE issue paper. Conservatively, based on available resource statistics, terms from the DO have been annotated to over 1.5 million biomedical data elements and citations, a 10× increase in the past 5 years. The DO, funded as a NHGRI Genomic Resource, plays a key role in disease knowledge organization, representation, and standardization, serving as a reference framework for multiscale biomedical data integration and analysis across thousands of clinical, biomedical and computational research projects and genomic resources around the world. This update reports on the addition of 1,793 new disease terms, a 14% increase of textual definitions and the integration of 22 137 new SubClassOf axioms defining disease to disease connections representing the DO\u27s complex disease classification. The DO\u27s updated website provides multifaceted etiology searching, enhanced documentation and educational resources

Comparison of 3 Infrared Thermal Detection Systems and Self-Report for Mass Fever Screening

In a hospital setting, the systems had reasonable utility for fever detection