A Systematic Review of Behaviour-Related Outcome Assessments for Children on the Autism Spectrum with Intellectual Disabilities in Education Settings

A systematic review was completed to identify assessments used with children with intellectual disabilities to assess adaptive behaviour, challenging behaviour and autism-related behaviour and consider their appropriateness for use by special education teachers with autistic pupils. The findings of this review led to the recommendation that the Pervasive Development Disorder Behavior Inventory, Aberrant Behavior Checklist, Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist and the Teacher Autism Progress Scale are currently the most appropriate assessments for these purposes, although some limitations of these assessments exist. Additional recommendations included teacher input during the development of robust assessments to show progress for autistic children with intellectual disabilities and further evaluation of commonly used assessments with an appropriate sample in a relevant education setting

An inclusive design perspective on automotive HMI trends

This paper looks at recent trends in automotive human machine interfaces, with a lens of evaluation from an inclusive design perspective. The goal of Inclusive Design is to ensure that the population of potential users for a product or service is maximised. Until relatively recently, automotive human machine interfaces (HMI’s) have excluded and caused difficulties for users due to visibility, reach and force required to operate controls. Over the last 15 or so years however, there has been a significant increase in control and display location, interface types and integration of functions, as well as dramatically increased potential functionality due to in-vehicle emergent technologies. It is suggested that this increase in interface unfamiliarity for a driver will cause significant difficulty and potential exclusion, due to the demands of learning and conflicts in expectation. The effects on this trend in the context of an ageing population and automated driving technologies are discussed.This work was carried out at the University of Cambridge’s Engineering Design Centre, within the Inclusive Design Group. Sponsor: Jaguar Land Rover.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40238-3_5

Contingent electric shock as a treatment for challenging behavior for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities : support for the IASSIDD policy statement opposing its use

Issues: The International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IASSIDD) is an international group of researchers, clinicians, students, parents, and self-advocates that promotes worldwide research and exchange of information on intellectual and developmental disabilities. IASSIDD recently developed a policy statement regarding their opposition to the use of contingent electric skin shock (CESS) with individuals with challenging behaviour and intellectual and developmental disabilities. To support the policy, the available literature was reviewed to evaluate the efficacy, side effects, generalization, and long-term effectiveness of the procedure as an intervention for challenging behaviour. Findings: The review provides a history that demonstrates that, although CESS can decrease the frequency of challenging behaviour, it comes at a cost in terms of physical and emotional side effects, and questions remain regarding the long-term effectiveness of the procedure. In addition, we raise several ethical and methodological issues that make the research on the use of CESS even more concerning. Conclusions: Although research continues in some countries, these studies are now rare. In fact, in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has just banned the use of such devices with individuals with self-injury and aggression (Federal Register, 2020). It is hoped that, because there are many other forms of treatment that have shown to be effective for severe challenging behaviour, we can completely avoid the use of CESS

Influence of inhomogeneity on mechanical properties of commercially pure titanium processed by HPT

Already for fifteen years many researchers have been trying to discover metallic materials with unusual combinations of strength and ductility: with high strength and enhanced ductility . This combination may be achieved through different ways: alloying, nanostructuring, etc. This report is an attempt to analyze the influence of inhomogeneity of different types (structural, phase and space) on mechanical properties of commercially pure ti tanium (bulk and powder) subjected to high- pressure torsion. Experimental results for HPT bulk and powder titanium have demonstrated that mechanical behavior of CP titanium strongly depends on phase inhomogeneity (alpha + omega phases), structural inhomoge neity (bimodal grain size distribution) and space inhomogeneity (retained porosity) in case of cold consolidated Ti powder. High strength in HPT bulk titanium due to the formation of hard omega phase during HPT processing at room temperature was detected. The strong omega phase transforms back to nanograined alpha phase domains during short annealing at elevated temperature. HPT consolidation of titanium powder leads to the formation of brittle specimens showing high strength but almost zero plasticityPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Pseudo-Random Streams for Distributed and Parallel Stochastic Simulations on GP-GPU

International audienceRandom number generation is a key element of stochastic simulations. It has been widely studied for sequential applications purposes, enabling us to reliably use pseudo-random numbers in this case. Unfortunately, we cannot be so enthusiastic when dealing with parallel stochastic simulations. Many applications still neglect random stream parallelization, leading to potentially biased results. In particular parallel execution platforms, such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), add their constraints to those of Pseudo-Random Number Generators (PRNGs) used in parallel. This results in a situation where potential biases can be combined with performance drops when parallelization of random streams has not been carried out rigorously. Here, we propose criteria guiding the design of good GPU-enabled PRNGs. We enhance our comments with a study of the techniques aiming to parallelize random streams correctly, in the context of GPU-enabled stochastic simulations

Growth, yield and Fusarium wilt resistance of six FHIA tetraploid bananas (Musa spp.) grown in the Australian subtropics

Six tetraploid hybrids from Fundación Hondureña de Investigación Agrícola (FHIA) were evaluated in Australia over a five year period. They included three AAAA hybrids (FHIA-02, FHIA-17 and FHIA-23) and three AAAB hybrids (FHIA-01, FHIA-18 and SH-3640.10) and they were compared with industry standards, ‘Williams’ (AAA, Cavendish subgroup) and ‘Lady Finger’ (AAB, Pome subgroup). They were screened for their resistance to Fusarium wilt race 1 and subtropical race 4 caused by the pathogen Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense and they were also grown for several cycles on farms not infested with Fusarium wilt to record their agronomic characteristics. The AAAB hybrids, all derived from female parent ‘Prata Anã’ (AAB, Pome subgroup) were the most resistant to both races of Fusarium wilt and were very productive in the subtropics. They were significantly more productive than ‘Lady Finger’, which was susceptible to both races of Fusarium wilt. The AAAA hybrids, with the exception of FHIA-02 which was very susceptible to Fusarium wilt and displayed the poorest agronomic traits of the six hybrids, produced bunch weights as good as Cavendish but were significantly slower to cycle. FHIA-17 and FHIA-23, both derived from the female parent ‘Highgate’ (AAA, Gros Michel subgroup), were also significantly more resistant to Fusarium wilt than ‘Gros Michel’, while FHIA-17 demonstrated a level of resistance similar to ‘Williams’ and FHIA-23 was intermediate between ‘Lady Finger’ and ‘Williams

Manipulating the Phenolic Acid Content and Digestibility of Forage Grasses by Targeted Expression of Fungal Cell Wall Degrading Enzymes

Grass cell walls constitute 30-80% of forage dry matter, representing a major source of energy for ruminants. Ferulic acid (4-hydroxy-3-methoxy-cinnamic acid) and other hydroxycinnamic acids are ester linked to arabinosyl residues in arabinoxylans of grass cell walls and undergo oxidative coupling reactions resulting in the formation of a variety of dehydrodiferulate dimers which cross-link cell wall polymers. Although such cross-links have a number of important roles in the cell wall, they also hinder the rate and extent of cell wall degradation by ruminant microbial and fungal enzymes. We have shown previously the expression of a ferulic acid esterase gene from Aspergillus niger in Festuca arundinacea and the potential of the expressed FAE to break phenolic cross-links and release monomeric and dimeric ferulic acids on cell death in vacuole targeted FAE plants. This was enhanced several fold by the addition of exogenous recombinant xylanase (Buanafina et al., 2002). We propose to decrease the level of phenolic cross-linking of cell wall carbohydrate by inducible expression of FAE to the apoplast, ER and golgi and by co-expressing FAE and endo-ß-1,4-xylanase from Trichoderma reesei to the apoplast and vacuole

Modelling ambitious climate mitigation pathways for Australia's built environment

Achieving net zero operational and embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the built environment is recognised in Australia and globally as a key strategy to address climate change and achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, gaps in knowledge remain regarding potential national pathways to achieve this outcome in Australia. This study further extends and applies a national-scale integrated macroeconomic simulation model to explore coherent pathways to net zero emissions in the built environment sector by 2050. The scope of the study includes residential and commercial buildings and both operational and embodied emissions. It applies scenario analysis incorporating different levels of climate ambition, including a shift to renewable energy, electrifying buildings, improving energy efficiency and replacing carbon-intensive materials. We find that a high ambition scenario (Scenario 2) delivers a 94% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050 when compared against business-as-usual, placing a net-zero target within reach. Improvements on Australia's SDGs performance are also attained. Through subsequent pathways analysis we find that achieving net zero or even net negative operational and embodied emissions is feasible with more ambitious action in key areas, including increasing the share of mass-timber buildings and reducing end-of-life losses in sequestered carbon