Publications by authors named "Esch L"

Parent-child interactions are important for children's emotional and behavioral development. In autism research, parent-child interactions are typically observed during free play. Yet, studies outside the autism field underscored the importance of observing parent-child interactions during other contexts, as parents' behaviors may depend on the context, and different contexts may reveal different relationships between parents' and children's behaviors.

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The molecular mechanisms underpinning the formation of the large, ellipsoidal starch granules of potato tuber are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate the distinct effects of PROTEIN TARGETING TO STARCH2b (PTST2b) and MYOSIN RESEMBLING CHLOROPLAST PROTEIN (MRC) on tuber starch granule morphology. A gene duplication event in the Solanaceae resulted in two PTST2 paralogs (PTST2a and PTST2b).

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Article Synopsis
  • * Findings indicated that engaging in more object play at 14 months helped link sensory seeking behaviors at 10 months to better language skills and fewer social communication challenges by 24 months.
  • * The results suggest that not all sensory processing behaviors negatively influence communication abilities and emphasize the importance of early object play in understanding and supporting communication development in young children at elevated risk for autism.
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Autism is increasingly viewed as an expression of neurodiversity deserving accommodation, rather than merely as a disorder in need of remediation or even prevention. This reconceptualization has inspired calls to broaden the ethical debate on early autism care beyond matters of efficient screenings and effective interventions. We conducted 14 in-depth interviews with 26 parents of infants at an increased likelihood for autism (siblings, preterms and children with persistent feeding difficulties) to understand which benefits and risks these parents see for the implementation of a systematic, early autism detection program in our region.

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The determination of starch granule morphology in plants is poorly understood. The amyloplasts of wheat endosperm contain large discoid A-type granules and small spherical B-type granules. To study the influence of amyloplast structure on these distinct morphological types, we isolated a mutant in durum wheat (Triticum turgidum) defective in the plastid division protein PARC6, which had giant plastids in both leaves and endosperm.

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Plastics are omnipresent in our daily life. Unfortunately, the produced plastics will partly end up in the environment including aquatic ecosystems. People often refer to littering or illegal waste dumping as sources of plastic emission to the environment.

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We aim to investigate early developmental trajectories of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) as indexed by the pupillary light reflex (PLR) in infants with (i.e. preterm birth, feeding difficulties, or siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder) and without (controls) increased likelihood for atypical ANS development.

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  • MonocotJRLs are two-domain proteins specific to the Poaceae family, consisting of a jacalin-related lectin and dirigent domain, which play roles in development and disease resistance.
  • Research showed that the OsJAC1 protein from rice enhances broad-spectrum disease resistance when expressed in transgenic plants, with both domains working together.
  • A study on Arabidopsis identified potential JRL and DIR proteins for pathogen resistance but found no direct correlation between the presence of specific proteins and resistance to the powdery mildew fungus, suggesting different mechanisms may exist in dicots compared to monocots.
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Debate persists over whether animals develop innovative solutions primarily in response to needs or conversely whether they innovate more when basic needs are covered and opportunity to develop novel behaviour is offered. We sourced 746 cases of "unusual" behaviour in equids by contacting equid owners and caretakers directly and via a website (https://innovative-behaviour.org), and by searching the internet platforms YouTube and Facebook for videos.

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Every animal species has particular environmental requirements that are essential for its welfare, and when these so-called "basic needs" are not fulfilled, the animals suffer. The basic needs of horses have been claimed to be social contact, social companionship, free movement and access to roughage. To assess whether horses suffer when one or more of the four proposed basic needs are restricted, we examined several studies ( = 38) that reported behavioural and physiological reactions to these restrictions.

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Little ethical recommendations on returning children's individual research findings are available for researchers in behavioral sciences, especially when compared to genetic research. Anecdotic evidence suggests that since parents are often interested in their child's individual research findings, researchers tend to offer this information as a form of compensation for research participation. Despite good intentions, these practices are not without potential harmful consequences for children.

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Anecdotal reports of horses opening fastened doors and gates are an intriguing way of exploring the possible scope of horses' problem-solving capacities. The species' natural environment has no analogues of the mechanisms involved. Scientific studies on the topic are missing, because the rate of occurrence is too low for exploration under controlled conditions.

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Domesticated horses are constantly confronted with novel tasks. A recent study on anecdotal data indicates that some are innovative in dealing with such tasks. However, innovative behavior in horses has not previously been investigated under experimental conditions.

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Introduction: To reduce the risk of local recurrence after rectal cancer surgery, neoadjuvant radiotherapy (RT) can be applied. However, as this causes morbidity and increases mortality, new Dutch guidelines withhold RT in low-risk patients. The aim of this study is to investigate if early local recurrence and one-year mortality in rectal cancer patients has changed since this more restricting indication for neoadjuvant RT was introduced in 2014.

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Unlabelled: A number of studies have concluded that parents of children with ASD experience high levels of parenting stress. However, little is known about their parenting behaviors. Especially few studies investigated parenting in adolescence, although this period is associated with additional challenges for both adolescents and their parents.

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Background: Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and Electroencephalography (EEG) are noninvasive techniques to study the electrophysiological activity of the human brain. Thus, they are well suited for real-time monitoring and analysis of neuronal activity. Real-time MEG/EEG data processing allows adjustment of the stimuli to the subject's responses for optimizing the acquired information especially by providing dynamically changing displays to enable neurofeedback.

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Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography provide a high temporal resolution, which allows estimation of the detailed time courses of neuronal activity. However, in real-time analysis of these data two major challenges must be handled: the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the limited time available for computations. In this work, we present real-time clustered multiple signal classification (RTC-MUSIC) a real-time source localization algorithm, which can handle low SNRs and can reduce the computational effort.

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Plant lectins are proteins that reversibly bind carbohydrates and are assumed to play an important role in plant development and resistance. Through the binding of carbohydrate ligands, lectins are involved in the perception of environmental signals and their translation into phenotypical responses. These processes require down-stream signaling cascades, often mediated by interacting proteins.

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Versatile controllers for accurate, fast, and real-time synchronized acquisition of large-scale data are useful in many areas of science, engineering, and technology. Here, we describe the development of a controller software based on a technique called queued state machine for controlling the data acquisition (DAQ) hardware, continuously acquiring a large amount of data synchronized across a large number of channels (>400) at a fast rate (up to 20 kHz/channel) in real time, and interfacing with applications for real-time data analysis and display of electrophysiological data. This DAQ controller was developed specifically for a 384-channel pediatric whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) system, but its architecture is useful for wide applications.

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Objective:  To compare the effectiveness of the oxytocin receptor antagonist atosiban with the beta mimetic fenoterol as uterine relaxants in women undergoing external cephalic version (ECV) for breech presentation.

Design:  Multicentre, open label, randomised controlled trial.

Setting:  Eight hospitals in the Netherlands, August 2009 to May 2014.

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Objectives: To evaluate, in a prospective study, the effectiveness of computed tomography (CT)-matched 11C-acetate (AC) positron-emission tomography (PET) in patients with prostate cancer (PCa) who had prostate-specific antigen (PSA) relapse after radical prostatectomy (RP) or radiotherapy (RT).

Patients And Methods: In 103 relapsing patients after RP (n = 97) or RT (n = 6) AC-PET images and CT scans were obtained. In patients with AC-PET-positive results with localized PCa recurrence, detected lesions were resected and histologically verified or, after local RT, followed-up by PSA testing.

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We developed a 375-channel, whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) system ("BabyMEG") for studying the electrophysiological development of human brain during the first years of life. The helmet accommodates heads up to 95% of 36-month old boys in the USA. The unique two-layer sensor array consists of: (1) 270 magnetometers (10 mm diameter, ∼15 mm coil-to-coil spacing) in the inner layer, (2) thirty-five three-axis magnetometers (20 mm × 20 mm) in the outer layer 4 cm away from the inner layer.

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Previous research has shown that rating words for their relevance to a future scenario enhances memory for those words. The current study investigated the effect of future thinking on false memory using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) procedure. In Experiment 1, participants rated words from 6 DRM lists for relevance to a past or future event (with or without planning) or in terms of pleasantness.

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Ewing sarcoma is the second most common primary bone tumor seen in children and adolescents, typically presenting between 10 and 20 years of age. Extraosseous sarcomas of the Ewing family in adults are rare. We report a manifestation of this tumor entity in the periprostatic tissue of a 33-year-old male and discuss our treatment approach.

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Modular proteins are an evolutionary answer to optimize performance of proteins that physically interact with each other for functionality. Using a combination of genetic and biochemical experiments, we characterized the rice protein OsJAC1, which consists of a jacalin-related lectin (JRL) domain predicted to bind mannose-containing oligosaccharides, and a dirigent domain which might function in stereoselective coupling of monolignols. Transgenic overexpression of OsJAC1 in rice resulted in quantitative broad-spectrum resistance against different pathogens including bacteria, oomycetes, and fungi.

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