Gestalt principle use in college students, children with autism, toddlers (Homo sapiens), and cotton top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus).

The use of Gestalt principles of proximity, similarity, and closure to recognize objects by configural superiority was examined in college students, low- and high-functioning children with autism, toddlers, and adult cotton top tamarin monkeys. At issue was whether the monkeys showed differences from humans in perceptual processing and whether they showed any similarities with clinical or developmental groups. The method required a pointing response to discriminate an odd item in a 4-item visual display.

Evaluating postgraduate public health and biomedical training program outcomes: : lost opportunities and renewed interest.

To identify recent studies in the scientific literature that evaluated structured postgraduate public health and biomedical training programs and reported career outcomes among individual trainees, a comprehensive search of several databases was conducted to identify published studies in English between January 1995 and January 2012. Studies of interest included those that evaluated career outcomes for trainees completing full-time public health or biomedical training programs of at least 12 months duration, with structured training offered on-site. Of the over 600 articles identified, only 13 met the inclusion criteria.

Clinician attitudes, social norms and intentions to use a computer-assisted intervention.

The National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) works to bridge the gap between research and practice and tested a Web-delivered psychosocial intervention (the Therapeutic Education System, TES) in 10 community treatment centers. Computer-assisted therapies, such as Web-delivered interventions, may improve the consistency and efficiency of treatment for alcohol and drug use disorders. Prior to the start of the study, we surveyed counselors (N=96) in participating treatment centers and assessed counselor attitudes, perceived social norms and intentions to use a Web-delivered intervention.

Second generation complementary and alternative medicine physiologic data collection and monitoring research platform.

Progress on our second generation portable system specifically designed to collect 24 hour ambulatory physiologic data from human subjects is reported. The upgraded system has more sensor flexibility and better performance and is smaller, lighter, and simpler to use than our previous version. The new system continues to support a wide variety of sensors found useful for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) research and has been designed using a modular approach for future expansion of capabilities.