The British Sleep Society position statement on Daylight Saving Time in the UK.

There is an ongoing debate in the United Kingdom and in other countries about whether twice-yearly changes into and out of Daylight Saving Time should be abolished. Opinions are divided about whether any abolition of Daylight Saving Time should result in permanent Standard Time, or year-long Daylight Saving Time. The British Sleep Society concludes from the available scientific evidence that circadian and sleep health are affected negatively by enforced changes of clock time (especially in a forward direction) and positively by the availability of natural daylight during the morning.

Testing the relationship between preferences for infant-directed speech and vocabulary development: A multi-lab study.

From early on, infants show a preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS), and exposure to IDS has been correlated with language outcome measures such as vocabulary. The present multi-laboratory study explores this issue by investigating whether there is a link between early preference for IDS and later vocabulary size. Infants' preference for IDS was tested as part of the ManyBabies 1 project, and follow-up CDI data were collected from a subsample of this dataset at 18 and 24 months.

Learning to generalise but not segment an artificial language at 17 months predicts children's language skills 3 years later.

We investigated whether learning an artificial language at 17 months was predictive of children's natural language vocabulary and grammar skills at 54 months. Children at 17 months listened to an artificial language containing non-adjacent dependencies, and were then tested on their learning to segment and to generalise the structure of the language. At 54 months, children were then tested on a range of standardised natural language tasks that assessed receptive and expressive vocabulary and grammar.

How executive functioning, sentence processing, and vocabulary are related at 3 years of age.

There is a wealth of evidence demonstrating that executive function (EF) abilities are positively associated with language development during the preschool years, such that children with good executive functions also have larger vocabularies. However, why this is the case remains to be discovered. In this study, we focused on the hypothesis that sentence processing abilities mediate the association between EF skills and receptive vocabulary knowledge, in that the speed of language acquisition is at least partially dependent on a child's processing ability, which is itself dependent on executive control.

A failure of sleep-dependent consolidation of visuoperceptual procedural learning in young adults with ADHD.

ADHD has been associated with cortico-striatal dysfunction that may lead to procedural memory abnormalities. Sleep plays a critical role in consolidating procedural memories, and sleep problems are an integral part of the psychopathology of ADHD. This raises the possibility that altered sleep processes characterizing those with ADHD could contribute to their skill-learning impairments.

Failure to consolidate statistical learning in developmental dyslexia.

Statistical learning (SL), the ability to pick up patterns in sensory input, serves as one of the building blocks of language acquisition. Although SL has been studied extensively in developmental dyslexia (DD), much less is known about the way SL evolves over time. The handful of studies examining this question were all limited to the acquisition of motor sequential knowledge or highly learned segmented linguistic units.

Diamond mirrors for high-power continuous-wave lasers.

High-power continuous-wave (CW) lasers are used in a variety of areas including industry, medicine, communications, and defense. Yet, conventional optics, which are based on multi-layer coatings, are damaged when illuminated by high-power CW laser light, primarily due to thermal loading. This hampers the effectiveness, restricts the scope and utility, and raises the cost and complexity of high-power CW laser applications.

The effect of slow-wave sleep and rapid eye-movement sleep interventions on glycaemic control: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.

Poor glycaemic control is found in diabetes, one of the most common, serious, non-communicable diseases worldwide. Trials suggest a relationship between glycaemic control and measures of sleep including duration and quality of sleep. Currently, the relationship between specific sleep stages (including slow-wave sleep (SWS), a sleep stage mainly found early in the night and linked to restorative functioning) and glycaemic control remains unclear.

Activity and outcomes of autologous stem cell transplantation in the private sector in Australia.

Background: Few Australasian autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) programmes perform ASCT in the private sector. Relatively little is known about ASCT outcomes in the private sector, which varies in care delivery models to the public system.

Aims: To investigate transplantation activity and survival outcomes at Icon Cancer Centre's Brisbane-based private clinical and laboratory ASCT programme over a 23-year period.

Lecture start time and sleep characteristics: Analysis of daily diaries of undergraduate students from the LoST-Sleep project.

Objectives: Emerging evidence shows that later high school start times are associated with increased sleep duration; however, little is known if this extends to the university setting. This study investigated associations of first lecture start times with sleep characteristics among university students.

Design: Daily diaries.

Music-based Intervention for Improving Sleep Quality of Adults without Sleep Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background: Listening to music is often used as a self-help intervention to improve sleep quality, but its efficacy among individuals without sleep disorder remains unclear.

Methods: A search was performed on five databases to identify for studies that examined the use of music-based intervention to improve sleep quality among individuals without sleep disorder. Random-effects meta-analysis was performed, and the certainty of evidence was evaluated using GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation).

A phase 3 double-blind study of the addition of tocilizumab vs placebo to cyclosporin/methotrexate GVHD prophylaxis.

We determined the efficacy of tocilizumab (TCZ) in preventing grade 2-4 acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) in patients with acute leukemia or myelodysplasia undergoing matched sibling donor (MSD) or volunteer unrelated donor (VUD) allogeneic stem cell transplantation after myeloablative or reduced-intensity conditioning across 5 Australian centers. A total of 145 patients (50 MSD, 95 VUD) were randomly assigned to placebo or TCZ on day -1. All patients received T-cell-replete peripheral blood stem cell grafts and graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis with cyclosporin/methotrexate.

A multi-lab study of bilingual infants: Exploring the preference for infant-directed speech.

From the earliest months of life, infants prefer listening to and learn better from infant-directed speech (IDS) than adult-directed speech (ADS). Yet, IDS differs within communities, across languages, and across cultures, both in form and in prevalence. This large-scale, multi-site study used the diversity of bilingual infant experiences to explore the impact of different types of linguistic experience on infants' IDS preference.

Effects of cognitive behavioural therapy on insomnia in adults with tinnitus: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.

Insomnia is common in patients with tinnitus and negatively affects tinnitus symptoms and quality of life. This systematic review aimed to synthesise evidence of the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) based interventions on insomnia in adults with tinnitus. We conducted a comprehensive database search (MEDLINE, CINAHL, Web of Science, CENTRAL, ClinicalTrials.

The development of gaze following in monolingual and bilingual infants: A multi-laboratory study.

Determining the meanings of words requires language learners to attend to what other people say. However, it behooves a young language learner to simultaneously encode relevant non-verbal cues, for example, by following the direction of their eye gaze. Sensitivity to cues such as eye gaze might be particularly important for bilingual infants, as they encounter less consistency between words and objects than monolingual infants, and do not always have access to the same word-learning heuristics (e.

Impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on sleep.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant changes in daily routines and lifestyle worldwide and mental health issues have emerged as a consequence. We aimed to assess the presence of sleep disturbances during the lockdown in the general population.

Methods: Cross-sectional, online survey-based study on adults living through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Non-adjacent dependency learning in infancy, and its link to language development.

To acquire language, infants must learn how to identify words and linguistic structure in speech. Statistical learning has been suggested to assist both of these tasks. However, infants' capacity to use statistics to discover words and structure together remains unclear.

Long-term efficacy and safety of ruxolitinib versus best available therapy in polycythaemia vera (RESPONSE): 5-year follow up of a phase 3 study.

Background: Polycythaemia vera is a myeloproliferative neoplasm characterised by excessive proliferation of erythroid, myeloid, and megakaryocytic components in the bone marrow due to mutations in the Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) gene. Ruxolitinib, a JAK 1 and JAK 2 inhibitor, showed superiority over best available therapy in a phase 2 study in patients with polycythaemia vera who were resistant to or intolerant of hydroxyurea. We aimed to compare the long-term safety and efficacy of ruxolitinib with best available therapy in patients with polycythaemia vera who were resistant to or intolerant of hydroxyurea.

Pegylated interferon-2α invokes graft-versus-leukemia effects in patients relapsing after allogeneic stem cell transplantation.

Allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) is a curative therapy for patients with hematological malignancies related largely to an immunological graft-versus-leukemia (GVL) effect mediated by donor T cells and natural killer cells. Relapse of disease after SCT represents failure of GVL and is now the major cause of treatment failure. We sought to augment GVL effects in patients (n = 29) relapsing after SCT in a prospective phase I/II clinical trial of dose-escalated pegylated interferon-2α (peg-IFNα).

Does speed of processing or vocabulary size predict later language growth in toddlers?

It is becoming increasingly clear that the way that children acquire cognitive representations depends critically on how their processing system is developing. In particular, recent studies suggest that individual differences in language processing speed play an important role in explaining the speed with which children acquire language. Inconsistencies across studies, however, mean that it is not clear whether this relationship is causal or correlational, whether it is present right across development, or whether it extends beyond word learning to affect other aspects of language learning, like syntax acquisition.