Pathways From Spatial Skills to Mathematics: The Roles of Gender and Fluid Reasoning.

There are contentious and persistent gender differences reported in some measures of spatial skills, particularly mental rotation and, to a lesser extent, perspective-taking, which may have an impact on mathematics success. Furthermore, pathways between spatial skills and mathematics may be mediated by other cognitive factors, such as fluid reasoning. Participants (N = 320, age range 8-12 years) completed measures of mental rotation, perspective-taking, fluid reasoning, and mathematics.

Tracking informal fraction knowledge and its correlates across first grade.

Young children have informal knowledge of fractions before learning about fraction symbols in school. In the current study, we followed 103 children in the Mid-Atlantic United States from the fall to the spring of first grade to characterize the development of individual differences in early informal fraction knowledge, as well as its relation to other mathematical and cognitive skills. Most children in our sample showed some early fraction knowledge at the beginning of first grade, especially with nonsymbolic fractions and halving, and this knowledge improved over the school year without explicit instruction in fractions.

Gene Editing and Human iPSCs in Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases.

The incidence and the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD), coronary heart disease (CHD), type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and the metabolic syndrome are greatly increasing in our societies. Together, they account for 31% of all deaths worldwide. This chapter focuses on the role of two revolutionary discoveries that are changing the future of medicine, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and CRISPR/Cas9 technology, in the study, and the cure of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

Histone Variant macroH2A1.1 Enhances Nonhomologous End Joining-dependent DNA Double-strand-break Repair and Reprogramming Efficiency of Human iPSCs.

DNA damage repair (DDR) is a safeguard for genome integrity maintenance. Increasing DDR efficiency could increase the yield of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) upon reprogramming from somatic cells. The epigenetic mechanisms governing DDR during iPSC reprogramming are not completely understood.

Mesenchymal Stromal Cell-Derived Exosomes Affect mRNA Expression and Function of B-Lymphocytes.

Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (bmMSC) may play a role in the regulation of maturation, proliferation, and functional activation of lymphocytes, though the exact mechanisms are unknown. MSC-derived exosomes induce a regulatory response in the function of B, T, and monocyte-derived dendritic cells. Here, we evaluated the specific inhibition of human lymphocytes by bmMSC-derived exosomes and the effects on B-cell function.

Magnitude, numerosity, and development of number: Implications for mathematics disabilities.

Leibovich et al. challenge the prevailing view that non-symbolic number sense (e.g.

Parents' and Experts' Awareness of Learning Opportunities in Children's Museum Exhibits.

Informal learning outside of school are crucial for a child's development. Children's museums, in particular, are environments conducive to this sort of learning, especially when parents guide children's exploration. However, research suggests a gap between parents' and experts' perceptions of the value of informal learning.

Using analogy to learn about phenomena at scales outside human perception.

Understanding and reasoning about phenomena at scales outside human perception (for example, geologic time) is critical across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Thus, devising strong methods to support acquisition of reasoning at such scales is an important goal in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. In two experiments, we examine the use of analogical principles in learning about geologic time.

The Slavic NBN Founder Mutation: A Role for Reproductive Fitness?

The vast majority of patients with Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome (NBS) are of Slavic origin and carry a deleterious deletion (c.657del5; rs587776650) in the NBN gene on chromosome 8q21. This mutation is essentially confined to Slavic populations and may thus be considered a Slavic founder mutation.

Pathways to fraction learning: Numerical abilities mediate the relation between early cognitive competencies and later fraction knowledge.

The current study investigated the mediating role of number-related skills in the developmental relationship between early cognitive competencies and later fraction knowledge using structural equation modeling. Fifth-grade numerical skills (i.e.

Delaware Longitudinal Study of Fraction Learning: Implications for Helping Children With Mathematics Difficulties.

The goal of the present article is to synthesize findings to date from the Delaware Longitudinal Study of Fraction Learning. The study followed a large cohort of children ( N = 536) between Grades 3 and 6. The findings showed that many students, especially those with diagnosed learning disabilities, made minimal growth in fraction knowledge and that some showed only a basic grasp of the meaning of a fraction even after several years of instruction.

Dealing with Big Numbers: Representation and Understanding of Magnitudes Outside of Human Experience.

Being able to estimate quantity is important in everyday life and for success in the STEM disciplines. However, people have difficulty reasoning about magnitudes outside of human perception (e.g.

Active acute leukaemia: should transplant be offered to all patients?

The probability of achieving long term remission for patients with refractory acute leukaemia is very low. Allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) is offered to these patients in order to improve their dismal outcome. We retrospectively analyzed 361 acute leukaemia patients, who underwent allogeneic SCT in the Hadassah's bone marrow transplantation department between the years 2005 and 2012 and identified 84 patients with active leukaemia at transplantation.

Developmental growth trajectories in understanding of fraction magnitude from fourth through sixth grade.

Development of fraction number line estimation was assessed longitudinally over 5 time points between 4th and 6th grades. Although students showed positive linear growth overall, latent class growth analyses revealed 3 distinct growth trajectory classes: Students who were highly accurate from the start and became even more accurate (n = 154); students who started inaccurate but showed steep growth (n = 121); and students who started inaccurate and showed minimal growth (n = 197). Younger and minimal growth students typically estimated both proper and improper fractions as being less than 1, failing to base estimates on the relation between the numerator and denominator.

Seeing Like a Geologist: Bayesian Use of Expert Categories in Location Memory.

Memory for spatial location is typically biased, with errors trending toward the center of a surrounding region. According to the category adjustment model (CAM), this bias reflects the optimal, Bayesian combination of fine-grained and categorical representations of a location. However, there is disagreement about whether categories are malleable.

G-CSF-primed BM for allogeneic SCT: revisited.

G-SCF-mobilized PBSC (GPB) grafts have a higher cell dose and somewhat more committed progenitor cells than steady-state BM (SBM), resulting in faster engraftment and faster immunological reconstitution. On the other hand, transplant related mortality (TRM), disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) are similar both for PB and for BM. In contrast to SBM, G-CSF-primed BM (GBM) grafts stimulate HSC proliferation, increasing cell dose and thus resulting in faster engraftment because of higher cell dose infused, or because of treatment with G-CSF.

Incidence and risk factors for moderate-to-severe veno-occlusive disease of the liver after allogeneic stem cell transplantation using a reduced intensity conditioning regimen.

The incidence and outcome of moderate-to-severe veno-occlusive (VOD) disease was analyzed in 271 consecutive patients with hematological malignancies who underwent allogeneic SCT (allo-SCT) using the same reduced intensity regimen (RIC). RIC consisted of fludarabine, BU and antithymocyte globulin (ATG). Twenty-four out of 271 patients (8.

Irradiated mononuclear cells express significant in vitro cytotoxic activity: promise for in vivo clinical efficacy of irradiated mismatched donor lymphocytes infusion.

Background: Relapse of the original disease remains the most common cause of treatment failure after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-SCT). Patients who relapse post-allo-SCT can achieve prolonged remission after donor lymphocyte infusion. Donor lymphocyte infusion as well as other immunotherapeutic strategies are usually complicated by severe graft versus host disease.

Reduced-intensity conditioning and HLA-matched haemopoietic stem-cell transplantation in patients with chronic granulomatous disease: a prospective multicentre study.

Background: In chronic granulomatous disease allogeneic haemopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) in adolescents and young adults and patients with high-risk disease is complicated by graft-failure, graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), and transplant-related mortality. We examined the effect of a reduced-intensity conditioning regimen designed to enhance myeloid engraftment and reduce organ toxicity in these patients.

Methods: This prospective study was done at 16 centres in ten countries worldwide.

Treatment of severe steroid resistant acute GVHD with mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC).

Background: Several studies revealed that MSC from human bone marrow can downregulate graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) after allogeneic HSCT.

Methods: Herein we present 50 patients with acute GVHD who got 74 (1-4) MSC infusions for 54 separate episodes of aGVHD.

Results: aGVHD was defined as steroid resistant grade IV aGVHD in 42 cases.

High rate of cytomegalovirus drug resistance among patients receiving preemptive antiviral treatment after haploidentical stem cell transplantation.

We examined the rate, clinical impact, and risk factors of cytomegalovirus (CMV) drug resistance in 561 patients who underwent 616 hematopoietic stem cell transplantations (HSCTs) over 5 years. Drug resistance was exclusively identified in haploidentical (haplo)-HSCT recipients receiving preemptive therapy, among whom the rate was 14.5%.

Colistin is relatively safe in hematological malignancies and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation patients.

Purpose: Colistin is increasingly used as the last-resort treatment option against infections caused by multidrug-resistant (MDR) Gram-negative pathogens, but its nephrotoxicity is of concern, especially in severely ill patients. The aim of this study was to analyze the toxicity of colistin therapy in adults and children with hematological malignancies (HM) and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) recipients.

Methods: Data on HSCT recipients and HM patients, treated with intravenous colistin (2.

Autologous transplant in multiple myeloma with an augmented conditioning protocol.

We compared the tolerability and anti-myeloma effect of two conditioning regimens for autologous stem cell transplant (auto-SCT) in consecutive groups of patients. Protocol 1 was the earlier, and consisted of the combination of three agents in a sequential manner, including etoposide, thiotepa and melphalan (n = 29), while protocol 2 employed melphalan alone (n = 34). The two groups were comparable (other than younger age in protocol 1).

Breaking new ground in the mind: an initial study of mental brittle transformation and mental rigid rotation in science experts.

The current study examines the spatial skills employed in different spatial reasoning tasks, by asking how science experts who are practiced in different types of visualizations perform on different spatial tasks. Specifically, the current study examines the varieties of mental transformations. We hypothesize that there may be two broad classes of mental transformations: rigid body mental transformations and non-rigid mental transformations.

The effect of cyclosporine initiation time on the outcome of matched allogeneic stem-cell transplantation following fludarabine-based conditioning.

Cyclosporine (CSA) is the most commonly used medication for GVHD prophylaxis. The initiation time varies from day -4 to day 0. Initially, we gave CSA starting on day -1.