Background: In 2016, global records documented around 1 billion child abuse cases, with higher rates among children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD), and most recorded offenses not proceeding to court. Accurate eyewitness testimony is vital for the justice system. Yet, while children with IDD are known to be influenced by verbal misinformation, the effect of gestures on their testimony is still unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe know little about the ability to explore and navigate large-scale space for people with intellectual disability (ID). In this cross-syndrome study, individuals with Down syndrome (DS), individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) and typically developing children (TD; aged 5-11 years) explored virtual environments with the goal of learning where everything was within the environment (Experiment 1) or to find six stars (Experiment 2). There was little difference between the WS and DS groups when the goal was simply to learn about the environment with no specific destination to be reached (Experiment 1); both groups performed at a level akin to a subset of TD children of a similar level of non-verbal ability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe almost-two-centuries history of spectrochemical analysis has generated a body of literature so vast that it has become nearly intractable for experts, much less for those wishing to enter the field. Authoritative, focused reviews help to address this problem but become so granular that the overall directions of the field are lost. This broader perspective can be provided partially by general overviews but then the thinking, experimental details, theoretical underpinnings and instrumental innovations of the original work must be sacrificed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCats with a distinctive white hair pattern of unknown molecular cause have been discovered in the Finnish domestic cat population. Based on the unique appearance of these cats, we have named this phenotype salmiak ("salty licorice"). The use of a commercially available panel test to genotype four salmiak-colored cats revealed the absence of all known variants associated with white-haired phenotypic loci: full White (W), Spotting (W) and the Birman white Gloves associated (w) allele of the KIT proto-oncogene (KIT) gene.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpectroscopic peak parameters are important since they provide information about the analyte under study. Besides obtaining these parameters, peak fitting also resolves overlapped peaks. Thus, the obtained parameters should permit the construction of a higher-resolution version of the original spectrum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRaman spectroscopy enables the label-free assessment of cellular composition. While live cell analysis is the most accurate approach for cellular Raman spectroscopy, the analysis of fixed cells has proved to be very useful, particularly in collaborative projects where samples need to be serially examined by different laboratories or stored and reanalyzed at a later date. However, many chemicals that are widely used for cell fixation directly affect cellular biomolecules, yielding Raman spectra with missing or altered information.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe accuracy of eyewitness interviews has legal and clinical implications within the criminal justice system. Leading verbal suggestions have been shown to give rise to false memories and inaccurate testimonies in children, but only a small body of research exists regarding non-verbal communication. The present study examined whether 5- to 8-year-olds in the UK could be misled about their memory of an event through exposure to leading gestural information, which suggested an incorrect response, using a variety of question and gesture types.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHundreds of genetic variants implicated in Mendelian disease have been characterized in dogs and commercial screening is being offered for most of them worldwide. There is typically limited information available regarding the broader population frequency of variants and uncertainty regarding their functional and clinical impact in ancestry backgrounds beyond the discovery breed. Genetic panel screening of disease-associated variants, commercially offered directly to the consumer or via a veterinary clinician, provides an opportunity to establish large-scale cohorts with phenotype data available to address open questions related to variant prevalence and relevance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2D-COS) is a technique that permits the examination of synchronous and asynchronous changes present in hyperspectral data. It produces two-dimensional correlation coefficient maps that represent the mutually correlated changes occurring at all Raman wavenumbers during an implemented perturbation. To focus our analysis on clusters of wavenumbers that tend to change together, we apply a -means clustering to the wavenumber profiles in the perturbation domain decomposition of the two-dimensional correlation coefficient map.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCryptorchidism is the most common congenital sex development disorder in dogs. Despite this, little progress has been made in understanding its genetic background. Extensive genetic testing of dogs through consumer and veterinary channels using a high-density SNP genotyping microarray coupled with links to clinical records presents the opportunity for a large-scale genome-wide association study to elucidate the molecular risk factors associated with cryptorchidism in dogs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc
August 2022
In this work we employ Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy (SORS) to non-invasively identify storage-related changes in red blood cell concentrate (RCC) in-situ within standard plastic transfusion bags. To validate the measurements, we set up a parallel study comparing both bioanalytical data (obtained by blood-gas analysis, hematology analysis and spectrophotometric assays), and Raman spectrometry data from the same blood samples. We then employ Multisource Correlation Analysis (MuSCA) to correlate the different types of data in RCC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndividuals with Down Syndrome (DS) and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) present with poor navigation and elevated anxiety. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between these two characteristics. Parent report questionnaires measured navigation abilities and anxiety in WS (N = 55) and DS (N = 42) as follows.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Issues Personal Psychol
March 2022
Background: The current study aimed to understand the role of callousness, affective dissonance, and two subtypes of sensation seeking personality traits - 1) disinhibition and 2) thrill and adventure seeking - in physically aggressive and non-aggressive antisocial behaviours (ASB) among educated youth and to explore the gender differences in them.
Participants And Procedure: An online survey was sent to a large sample of students at a UK university. Initially, a sample of = 539 participants was collected but after screening out the data, = 429 participants were included for analyses based on the sampling criteria.
Overlapping peaks in Raman spectra complicate the presentation, interpretation, and analyses of complex samples. This is particularly problematic for methods dependent on sparsity such as multivariate curve resolution and other spectral demixing as well as for two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2D-COS), multisource correlation analysis, and principal component analysis. Though software-based resolution enhancement methods can be used to counter such problems, their performances often differ, thereby rendering some more suitable than others for specific tasks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe detrimental impact of currently disproportionate amounts of digital food advertising for processed foods high in sugar, salt, and fat (HSSF) on children's food intake and dietary health is well-documented. The potential of digital healthy food advertising to encourage healthy eating in children is much less researched. A pre-test post-test control group design was used to compare the effect of specifically designed, television-style advertisements for healthy food versus toys on 172 three-to seven-year-old children's exclusively healthy food intake (vegetable, fruit, whole-grain) in five nurseries in Germany.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The current best practices allow for the red blood cells (RBCs) to be stored for prolonged periods in blood banks worldwide. However, due to the individual-related variability in donated blood and RBCs continual degradation within transfusion bags, the quality of stored blood varies considerably. There is currently no method for assessing the blood product quality without compromising the sterility of the unit.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHere, we present an augmented form of two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy, that integrates in a single format data from spectroscopic and multiple non-spectroscopic sources for analysis. The integration is affected by augmenting every spectrum in a hyperspectral data set with relevant non-spectroscopic data to permit two-dimensional correlation analysis of the ensemble of augmented spectra. A -means clustering is then applied to the results of the perturbation domain decomposition to determine which Raman peaks cluster with any of the non-spectroscopic data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHost persistence of bacteria is facilitated by mutational and recombinatorial processes that counteract loss of genetic variation during transmission and selection from evolving host responses. Genetic variation was investigated during persistent asymptomatic carriage of Interrogation of whole-genome sequences for paired isolates from 25 carriers showed that mutations were infrequent, while horizontal gene transfer occurred in 16% of carriers. Examination of multiple isolates per time point enabled separation of sporadic and transient allelic variation from directional variation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCorrection for 'Applications of Raman spectroscopy in the development of cell therapies: state of the art and future perspectives' by Shreyas Rangan et al., Analyst, 2020, DOI: 10.1039/c9an01811e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTherapies based on injecting living cells into patients offer a huge potential to cure many degenerative and deadly diseases, with hundreds of clinical trials ongoing. Due to their complex nature, a basic understanding of their biochemical and functional characteristics, how to manufacture them for safe and efficacious therapy, and how to effectively implement them in clinical settings are very challenging. Raman spectroscopy could provide an information-rich, non-invasive, non-destructive analytical method to complement the use of conventional sample-based, infrequent and destructive biochemical assays typically employed to analyze and validate the quality of therapeutic cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada is implementing a competency-by-design (CBD) curriculum for residency training across Canada. Although praise and criticism have been published regarding competency-based residency training, little has been published from the resident perspective. The University of Calgary obstetrics and gynaecology residents were surveyed to gather information on their viewpoints and allow their expectations and concerns to be incorporated into the design and implementation process for the curriculum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this study, we show how defocused spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) can be employed to recover chemical information from media of biomedical significance within sealed plastic transfusion and culture bags using a commercial SORS instrument. We demonstrate a simple approach to recover subsurface spectral information through a transparent barrier by optimizing the spatial offset of the defocused beam. The efficiency of the measurements is assessed in terms of the SORS ratio and signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) through a simple manual approach and an ordinary least squares model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrecambrian hydrocarbons and their corresponding source rocks are distinctly different from their Phanerozoic counterparts, having been deposited in persistently anoxic environments in ecosystems dominated by bacteria. Here, we show that cyclic enrichment of organic matter in the world's oldest hydrocarbon play (ca. 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ability to describe routes was assessed in participants with intellectual disability (ID) and participants without ID matched on chronological age (CA) or on mental age (MA). In two experiments, participants learned a route through a virtual environment until they reached a learning criterion. They were then asked to externalize their spatial knowledge in a verbal description task, a landmark recognition task, or a map completion task.
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