The impact of a night float system on operative experience in neurosurgery residency.

Objective: Since the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) implemented duty-hour restrictions in 2003, many residency programs have adopted a night float system to comply with time constraints. However, some surgical subspecialities have been concerned that use of a night float system deprives residents of operative experience. In this study, the authors describe their training program's transition to a night float system and its impact on resident operative experience.

A clinical and cost-effectiveness trial of a parent group intervention to manage challenging restricted and repetitive behaviours in young children with autism spectrum disorder: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Restricted and repetitive behaviours vary greatly across the autism spectrum, and although not all are problematic some can cause distress and interfere with learning and social opportunities. We have, alongside parents, developed a parent group based intervention for families of young children with autism, which aims to offer support to parents and carers; helping them to recognise, understand and learn how to respond to their child's challenging restricted repetitive behaviours.

Methods: The study is a clinical and cost-effectiveness, multi-site randomised controlled trial of the Managing Repetitive Behaviours (MRB) parent group intervention versus a psychoeducation parent group Learning About Autism (LAA) (n = 250; 125 intervention/125 psychoeducation; ~ 83/site) for parents of young children aged 3-9 years 11 months with a diagnosis of autism.

Refining the Behavioral Phenotype of Angelman Syndrome: Examining Differences in Motivation for Social Contact Between Genetic Subgroups.

Angelman syndrome (AS) is caused by loss of information from the 15q11.2-13 region on the maternal chromosome with striking phenotypic difference from Prader-Willi syndrome in which information is lost from the same region on the paternal chromosome. Motivation for social contact and sensory seeking behaviors are often noted as characteristics of the phenotype of AS and it has been argued that the strong drive for social contact supports a kinship theory interpretation of genomic imprinting.