Early Play Behaviors of Infants at Elevated Likelihood for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Importance: Although research has examined early identification of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), few studies have found behavioral markers during midinfancy associated with later ASD diagnosis.

Objective: To examine infants' play behaviors and atypical positions at age 6 mo and later outcome classification among infants at elevated likelihood (EL) and typical likelihood (TL) for ASD. Atypical positions refer to movement patterns indicative of motor delays or deviations, including atypical extension and flexion, poor weight shift and rotation, hypertonicity or hypotonicity, and the presence of primitive reflex patterns.

Early Indicators of Autism in Infants: Development of the IMES Screening Tool.

We developed the Infant, Motor, and Engagement Scale (IMES) to address the public health goal of early identification of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The IMES is a screening tool that assesses quality of infants' interaction with people and objects during early play. We aimed to examine the IMES' preliminary psychometric properties and its value in discriminating between infants later diagnosed with ASD and typically developing infants.

Education on the consequences of traumatic brain injury for children and adolescents with TBI and families/caregivers: a systematic scoping review.

Objective(s): To examine the breadth of education or training on the consequences of traumatic brain injury (TBI) for children and adolescents with TBI and their families/caregivers.

Methods: Systematic scoping review of literature published through July 2018 using eight databases and education, training, instruction, and pediatric search terms. Only studies including pediatric participants (age <18) with TBI or their families/caregivers were included.

Early Identification of Sensory Processing Difficulties in High-Risk Infants.

Objective: Our objective was to determine the extent to which young children at high risk for sensory processing difficulties differed from those who were at low risk.

Method: We compared high- versus low-risk young children using standardized measures. High-risk participants had older siblings identified as having sensory processing difficulties after a comprehensive occupational therapy evaluation (n = 13); low-risk participants (n = 16) had typically developing siblings and no family history of sensory or other neurological disorders.

Flourishing in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Flourishing is an indicator of positive mental health and is important for children's development and well-being. We used variables from the National Survey of Children's Health 2016 as indicators of flourishing (difficulty making friends, is bullied, bullies others, shares ideas with family, argues, finishes tasks, does all homework, shows curiosity, stays calm, and cares about doing well in school) to compare differences in parent perceptions of their children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We anticipate that these findings will help identify intervention targets to support the well-being of individuals with ASD.

Determination of 2D poloidal maps of the intrinsic W density for transport studies in JET-ILW.

The experimental method developed at ASDEX Upgrade for the determination of the intrinsic tungsten (W) density profile coupling data from the soft X-ray (SXR) diagnostic and vacuum-ultra-violet (VUV) spectroscopy has been upgraded for application to JET plasmas. The strong poloidal asymmetries in the SXR emission are modeled assuming a distribution, where is the flux coordinate, is the major radius, and is the fit parameter. The W density is calculated from the resulting 2D SXR emissivity maps accounting for contributions from a low-Z impurity (typically beryllium) and main ion with the assumption that their contributions are poloidally symmetric.

Head lag in infants at risk for autism: a preliminary study.

OBJECTIVE.Poor postural control during pull-to-sit is a predictor of developmental disruption in cerebral palsy and preterm populations but has not been examined in infants at risk for autism. We examined the association between head lag during pull-to-sit at age 6 mo and autism risk status.

The effect of periodicity on the defect modes of large mode area microstructured fibers.

It is well known that periodic variations in refractive index can be used to create guidance in an optical fiber via photonic bandgap effects. It has also been shown that periodic structure in index-guiding microstructured fibers can lead to the guidance of additional leaky higher-order modes due to bandgap effects. Here we demonstrate that this additional guidance mechanism can have important practical implications in large mode area silica microstructured fibers.

Single-mode tellurite glass holey fiber with extremely large mode area for infrared nonlinear applications.

We report the fabrication of a large mode area tellurite holey fiber from an extruded preform, with a mode area of 3000microm(2). Robust single-mode guidance at 1.55microm was confirmed by both optical measurement and numerical simulation.

Microstructured fibers for broadband wavefront filtering in the mid-IR.

The European Space Agency's space-based Darwin mission aims to directly detect extrasolar Earth-like planets using nulling interferometry. However, in order to accomplish this using current optical technology, the interferometer input beams must be filtered to remove local wavefront errors. Although short lengths of single-mode fiber are ideal wavefront filters, Darwin's operating wavelength range of 4 - 20 microm presents real challenges for optical fiber technology.

Square core jacketed air-clad fiber.

We report the fabrication of a highly multi-mode square core jacketed air-clad fiber with a top-hat near-field intensity profile. Using this fiber to deliver Q-switched pulses at 1 mum we have successfully produced square shaped ablation marks in indium tin oxide (ITO) without the use of complex beam shaping optics.