Mutuality and intimacy in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and normal boys\u27 friendship relations

The present study explored both the frequency and patterns of affective expression, play duration, and communicative exchange among dyads of boys diagnosed with ADHD with their friend. As expected, few significant differences between the two groups were revealed through frequency analyses, but interesting findings resulted from the examination of the patterns of behaviors (through sequential analyses). Overall, the results supported the hypothesis of less mutuality and intimacy in the friendships of boys diagnosed with ADHD. The boys in the ADHD/friend dyads were found to spend more time in nonassociative play during free-play and to be less likely to return to positive interaction after a shift to nonassociative play. In addition, the communicative exchange of the children in the AD HD/friend dyads was marked by marginally more conflict than was the communication between the normal/friend dyads. The patterns of communicative exchange revealed fewer shifts to reinforcement and personal information exchange by the ADHD children in their dyads, as well as overall fewer friend responses and more consecutive attention-directing shifts in the ADHD/friend dyads. Thus, as evidenced by these behaviors, it appears that the friendships of boys diagnosed with ADHD may be characterized by less mutuality and less intimacy than the friendships of normal control boys

Profiling risk factors for chronic uveitis in juvenile idiopathic arthritis: a new model for EHR-based research.

BackgroundJuvenile idiopathic arthritis is the most common rheumatic disease in children. Chronic uveitis is a common and serious comorbid condition of juvenile idiopathic arthritis, with insidious presentation and potential to cause blindness. Knowledge of clinical associations will improve risk stratification. Based on clinical observation, we hypothesized that allergic conditions are associated with chronic uveitis in juvenile idiopathic arthritis patients.MethodsThis study is a retrospective cohort study using Stanford's clinical data warehouse containing data from Lucile Packard Children's Hospital from 2000-2011 to analyze patient characteristics associated with chronic uveitis in a large juvenile idiopathic arthritis cohort. Clinical notes in patients under 16 years of age were processed via a validated text analytics pipeline. Bivariate-associated variables were used in a multivariate logistic regression adjusted for age, gender, and race. Previously reported associations were evaluated to validate our methods. The main outcome measure was presence of terms indicating allergy or allergy medications use overrepresented in juvenile idiopathic arthritis patients with chronic uveitis. Residual text features were then used in unsupervised hierarchical clustering to compare clinical text similarity between patients with and without uveitis.ResultsPreviously reported associations with uveitis in juvenile idiopathic arthritis patients (earlier age at arthritis diagnosis, oligoarticular-onset disease, antinuclear antibody status, history of psoriasis) were reproduced in our study. Use of allergy medications and terms describing allergic conditions were independently associated with chronic uveitis. The association with allergy drugs when adjusted for known associations remained significant (OR 2.54, 95% CI 1.22-5.4).ConclusionsThis study shows the potential of using a validated text analytics pipeline on clinical data warehouses to examine practice-based evidence for evaluating hypotheses formed during patient care. Our study reproduces four known associations with uveitis development in juvenile idiopathic arthritis patients, and reports a new association between allergic conditions and chronic uveitis in juvenile idiopathic arthritis patients

Flourishing Through Contemplative Practices

Our project involves outlining walking, running, and biking routes inside and around Farmville that people can use to not only get more active physically but mentally as well. How this might work is that people can pick up a brochure at the gym, along with possibly a bike, and then choose a route and a contemplative prompt to think about while going along that route. Additionally, we plan to mark good places to stop along the routes to read or just to take a break and continue contemplating the prompt. We will also encourage people to try to do this without their devices so that they are free of distractions and can focus their attention on contemplation. Our goal in doing this is to contribute to the individual flourishing of people within the Farmville community which might cause Farmville as a whole to flourish just a bit more

Forecasting GDP Growth using Disaggregated GDP Revisions

This paper investigates the informational content of regular revisions to real GDP growth and its components. We perform a real-time forecasting exercise for the advance estimate of real GDP growth using dynamic regression models that include revisions to GDP and its components. Echoing other work in the literature, we find little evidence that including aggregate GDP growth revisions improves forecast accuracy relative to an AR(1) baseline model; however, models that include revisions to components of GDP improve forecast accuracy. The first revision to consumption is particularly relevant in that every model that includes the revision outperforms the baseline model. Measured by root mean squared forecasting error (RMSFE), improvements are quite sizable, with many models increasing forecasting performance by 5% or more, and with top-performing models forecasting 0.24 percentage points closer to the advance estimate of growth. We use Bayesian model averaging to underscore that our results are driven by the informational content of revisions. The posterior probability of models with the first revision to consumption is significantly higher than our baseline model, despite strong priors that the latter should be the preferred forecasting model

Genetic Interactions Affect Lung Function in Patients with Systemic Sclerosis.

Scleroderma, or systemic sclerosis (SSc), is an autoimmune disease characterized by progressive fibrosis of the skin and internal organs. The most common cause of death in people with SSc is lung disease, but the pathogenesis of lung disease in SSc is insufficiently understood to devise specific treatment strategies. Developing targeted treatments requires not only the identification of molecular processes involved in SSc-associated lung disease, but also understanding of how these processes interact to drive pathology. One potentially powerful approach is to identify alleles that interact genetically to influence lung outcomes in patients with SSc. Analysis of interactions, rather than individual allele effects, has the potential to delineate molecular interactions that are important in SSc-related lung pathology. However, detecting genetic interactions, or epistasis, in human cohorts is challenging. Large numbers of variants with low minor allele frequencies, paired with heterogeneous disease presentation, reduce power to detect epistasis. Here we present an analysis that increases power to detect epistasis in human genome-wide association studies (GWAS). We tested for genetic interactions influencing lung function and autoantibody status in a cohort of 416 SSc patients. Using Matrix Epistasis to filter SNPs followed by the Combined Analysis of Pleiotropy and Epistasis (CAPE), we identified a network of interacting alleles influencing lung function in patients with SSc. In particular, we identified a three-gene network comprising WNT5A, RBMS3, and MSI2, which in combination influenced multiple pulmonary pathology measures. The associations of these genes with lung outcomes in SSc are novel and high-confidence. Furthermore, gene coexpression analysis suggested that the interactions we identified are tissue-specific, thus differentiating SSc-related pathogenic processes in lung from those in skin