Occurrence of ADHD in parents of ADHD children in a clinical sample

Starck M, Grünwald J, Schlarb A. Occurrence of ADHD in parents of ADHD children in a clinical sample. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment. 2016;12:581-588.Background: Despite the fact that there is a large amount of research on childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) treatment and an increasing amount of research on adult ADHD, little is known about the prevalence and influence of parental ADHD. Therefore, this study examined the frequency of parental ADHD in a clinical sample of German children suffering from ADHD. We also tried to find different levels of symptom severity for prognostic relevance. Furthermore, the association between subtypes of ADHD in children and their parents was investigated. Method: In this study, parents of 79 ADHD children were screened for ADHD according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition and International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition. The Wender Utah Rating Scale and the ADHS-Self-Report were given to 75 mothers and 49 fathers for retrospective and current symptoms. Frequency of ADHD symptoms and severity groups was calculated and relationship between parental and children’s ADHD was tested. Results: ADHD occurrence for mothers of children with ADHD was 41.3%, for fathers 51.0%. About 16.0% of the mothers had a mixed type, 9.3% had a hyperactive-impulsive subtype, and 16.0% had an inattentive subtype. Of the fathers, 18.4% had a mixed type, 10.2% had a hyperactive-impulsive subtype, and 22.4% had an inattentive subtype; 61% of the mothers and 46.9% of the fathers had low symptom severity. Medium symptom severity was reported by 37.7% mothers and 46.9% fathers, while 1.3% of the mothers and 6.2% of the fathers showed severe symptoms. No significant correlation between parental and child diagnoses was observed. Conclusion: As nearly half of the parents suffered from ADHD, these results are a matter of concern in families with ADHD children. Besides parent–child interactions, parental ADHD symptoms might influence parental education style and also effects parent training as well as the child’s therapy outcome. In the future, parents should be screened for ADHD symptoms if they or their child receive treatment and to adjust processes and design of treatment to the symptoms

Comparative analysis of lanthanide excited state quenching by electronic energy and electron transfer processes

The relative sensitivities of structurally related Eu(III) complexes to quenching by electron and energy transfer processes have been compared. In two sets of 9-coordinate complexes based on 1,4,7-triazacyclononane, the Eu emission lifetime decreased as the number of conjugated sensitising groups and the number of unbound ligand N atoms increased, consistent with photoinduced electron transfer to the excited Eu(III) ion that is suppressed by N-protonation. Quenching of the Eu 5D0 excited state may also occur by electronic energy transfer, and the quenching of a variety of 9-coordinate complexes by a cyanine dye with optimal spectral overlap occurs by an efficient FRET process, defined by a Förster radius (R0) value of 68 Å and characterised by second rate constants in the order of 109 M−1 s−1; these values were insensitive to changes in the ligand structure and to the overall complex hydrophilicity. Quenching of the Eu and Tb excited states by energy transfer to Mn(II) and Cu(II) aqua ions occurred over much shorter distances, with rate constants of around 106 M−1 s−1, owing to the much lower spectral overlap integral. The calculated R0 values were estimated to be between 2.5 to 4 Å in the former case, suggesting the presence of a Dexter energy transfer mechanism that requires much closer contact, consistent with the enhanced sensitivity of the rate of quenching to the degree of steric shielding of the lanthanide ion provided by the ligand

Proceedings of the second "international Traveling Workshop on Interactions between Sparse models and Technology" (iTWIST'14)

The implicit objective of the biennial "international - Traveling Workshop on Interactions between Sparse models and Technology" (iTWIST) is to foster collaboration between international scientific teams by disseminating ideas through both specific oral/poster presentations and free discussions. For its second edition, the iTWIST workshop took place in the medieval and picturesque town of Namur in Belgium, from Wednesday August 27th till Friday August 29th, 2014. The workshop was conveniently located in "The Arsenal" building within walking distance of both hotels and town center. iTWIST'14 has gathered about 70 international participants and has featured 9 invited talks, 10 oral presentations, and 14 posters on the following themes, all related to the theory, application and generalization of the "sparsity paradigm": Sparsity-driven data sensing and processing; Union of low dimensional subspaces; Beyond linear and convex inverse problem; Matrix/manifold/graph sensing/processing; Blind inverse problems and dictionary learning; Sparsity and computational neuroscience; Information theory, geometry and randomness; Complexity/accuracy tradeoffs in numerical methods; Sparsity? What's next?; Sparse machine learning and inference.Comment: 69 pages, 24 extended abstracts, iTWIST'14 website: http://sites.google.com/site/itwist1

KVT bei Störungen des Sozialverhaltens

Starck M, Schlarb A. KVT bei Störungen des Sozialverhaltens. In: Schlarb A, ed. Praxisbuch KVT mit Kindern und Jugendlichen. Störungsspezifische Strategien und Leitfäden. Weinheim: Beltz-Verlag; 2012: 101-140