Autism: A Function of Neurodiversity?

In a culture filled with changes and challenges, there is a need to support groups of people with differences. Neurodiversity is a concept where neurological differences are to be recognized and respected as any other human variation. It is truly a “brain thang”. This “brain thang” means that there are differences in the brain that cause a student to behave, respond, or react differently than a student who appears to function normally. Education should not be compartments in which one has only a mindset of “these are special education students” and “these are not special education students”. The mindset must be changed to “all students” and that they are all “our students”. The information presented in this paper will point to the fact that general education preservice educators need the concept of neurodiversity and its relationship with Autism. These preservice teachers are very likely to have students with special needs in their classrooms. They must be made aware of how to help them be successful. Indeed, oftentimes with minor modifications or adjustments, students with neurological differences can be successful in the general education classroom. It is incumbent upon the general education teacher to be knowledgeable of these strategies and willing to implement them

LODE: Linking Digital Humanities Content to the Web of Data

Numerous digital humanities projects maintain their data collections in the form of text, images, and metadata. While data may be stored in many formats, from plain text to XML to relational databases, the use of the resource description framework (RDF) as a standardized representation has gained considerable traction during the last five years. Almost every digital humanities meeting has at least one session concerned with the topic of digital humanities, RDF, and linked data. While most existing work in linked data has focused on improving algorithms for entity matching, the aim of the LinkedHumanities project is to build digital humanities tools that work "out of the box," enabling their use by humanities scholars, computer scientists, librarians, and information scientists alike. With this paper, we report on the Linked Open Data Enhancer (LODE) framework developed as part of the LinkedHumanities project. With LODE we support non-technical users to enrich a local RDF repository with high-quality data from the Linked Open Data cloud. LODE links and enhances the local RDF repository without compromising the quality of the data. In particular, LODE supports the user in the enhancement and linking process by providing intuitive user-interfaces and by suggesting high-quality linking candidates using tailored matching algorithms. We hope that the LODE framework will be useful to digital humanities scholars complementing other digital humanities tools

Conceptualizing Hoarding Behavior Among Elderly Women: A Mixed-Methods Approach

Hoarding in the community involves substantial cluttering and impaired functioning, often exposing the hoarder to extensive health and safety risks. This research, based on Functionalism social theory, explores the three elements of hoardingrelentless acquisition, intense possessiveness of objects, and a reluctance to discard possessionsas a sociocultural phenomenon. The mixed methods methodology entailed a quantitative study involving a survey completed by 134 adult protective services workers throughout Virginia and a qualitative study of five randomly-selected adult protective services workers who volunteered for in-depth interviews.Findings revealed that adult protective services workers come in contact with very severe cases of hoarding, with over two-thirds of the cases cited having extremely hazardous, unsafe, and cluttered living conditions. Similar to other research studies, hoarding was most prevalent among elderly women and the most common objects hoarded included printed materials such as newspapers, magazines, and junk mail. Factor analyses resulted in three factors with high loadings and correlations, particularly the factor that associates hoarding with a relentless need or desire to acquire more possessions. Content analyses of the qualitative data found that workers recognized several ways in which hoarding was functional, including emotional attachment to possessions, reducing stress, and providing meaning and identity. The mixed methods approach demonstrated that adult protective services workers tend to ascribe mental illness explanations to many hoarding cases, often equating hoarding to an addiction, although other published research finds only a nebulous connection between mental illness and hoarding behavior.This research corroborates other studies that find that belief systems underlie hoarding behaviors, particularly how hoarders\u27 possessions provide comfort and security; possessions are considered functional, valuable, and irreplaceable; and that the owner is responsible for maintaining control over possessions. The findings of this study have implications for social work practice and treatment models

Response Selection in Visual Search: The Influence of Response Compatibility of Nontargets.

this article should be addressed to Peter A. Starreveld, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, the Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] Journal of Experimental Psychology: Copyright 2004 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. Human Perception and Performance 2004, Vol. 30, No. 1, 56 --78 0096-1523/04/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0096-1523.30.1.56 56 As discussed previously, flat slopes of search functions are interpreted as evidence showing that distractor elements in the corresponding experiments were only preattentively processed. Because identification of a display element involves attentive processing, two-stage theories of visual search predict that the identities of distractors should not affect the search time for a target in any search task in which flat search slopes are obtained. In the present study, this prediction was put to the tes

Annual cycle of the legume pod borer Maruca vitrata Fabricius (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) in southwestern Burkina Faso

Maruca vitrata is an economically significant insect pest of cowpea in sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding the seasonal population patterns of M. vitrata is essential for the establishment of effective pest management strategies. M. vitrata larval populations on cultivated cowpea and adult flying activities were monitored in addition to scouting for host plants and parasitoids during 2 consecutive years in 2010 and 2011 in southwestern Burkina Faso. Our data suggest that M. vitrata populations overlapped on cultivated cowpea and alternate host plants during the rainy season. During the cowpea off-season, M. vitrata maintained a permanent population on the wild host plants Mucuna poggei and Daniella oliveri. The parasitoid fauna include three species, Phanerotoma leucobasis Kri., Braunsia kriegeri End. and Bracon sp. Implications of these finding for pest management strategies are discussed

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

An assessment of the risk of Bt-cowpea to non-target organisms in West Africa

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata Walp.) is the most economically important legume crop in arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Cowpea is grown primarily by subsistence farmers who consume the leaves, pods and grain on farm or sell grain in local markets. Processed cowpea foods such as akara (a deep-fat fried fritter) are popular in the rapidly expanding urban areas. Demand far exceeds production due, in part, to a variety of insect pests including, in particular, the lepidopteran legume pod borer (LPB) Maruca vitrata. Genetically engineered Bt-cowpea, based on cry1Ab (Event 709) and cry2Ab transgenes, is being developed for use in sub-Saharan Africa to address losses from the LBP. Before environmental release of transgenic cowpeas, the Bt Cry proteins they express need to be assessed for potential effects on non-target organisms, particularly arthropods. Presented here is an assessment of the potential effects of those Cry proteins expressed in cowpea for control of LPB. Based on the history of safe use of Bt proteins, as well as the fauna associated with cultivated and wild cowpea in sub-Saharan Africa results indicate negligible effects on non-target organisms