The Prevalence of Self-injurious Behaviour in Autism: A Meta-analytic Study.

Self-injurious behaviour is purportedly common in autism, but prevalence rates have not yet been synthesised meta-analytically. In the present study, data from 14,379 participants in thirty-seven papers were analysed to generate a pooled prevalence estimate of self-injury in autism of 42% (confidence intervals 0.38-0.47). Hand-hitting topography was the most common form of self-injury (23%), self-cutting topography the least common (3%). Sub-group analyses revealed no association between study quality, participant intellectual disability or age and overall prevalence rate of self-injury. However, females obtained higher prevalence rates than males (p = .013) and hair pulling and self-scratching were associated with intellectual disability (p = .008 and p = .002, respectively). The results confirm very high rates of self-injury in autism and highlight within group risk-markers.

Sleep duration and sleep quality in people with and without intellectual disability: A meta-analysis.

This study provides the first meta-analysis of the purported differences in sleep time and sleep quality between people with and without intellectual disabilities. Twenty-one papers were identified that compared sleep time and/or sleep quality in people with and without intellectual disabilities. The meta-analysis of sleep time revealed that people with an intellectual disability slept for 18 min less, on average, than people without an intellectual disability. This significant difference was limited to those studies that tested groups of people with an identified genetic syndrome or developmental disorder. The analysis of sleep quality also concluded that people with intellectual disabilities experienced poorer sleep: In 93% of comparisons between groups, sleep was found to be of poorer quality in the group of people with intellectual disabilities. There were no differences found between studies that measured sleep objectively and those that used diary or questionnaire measures. Notably, most samples were drawn from populations of people with specified genetic syndromes or developmental disorders, rather than intellectual disability of heterogeneous origin. Similarly, most studies investigated sleep in children, although there was no evidence that the differences between the groups reduced during adulthood. Most studies used highly-regarded objective measures of sleep, such as polysomnography or actigraphy, although methodological flaws were evident in the identification of samples and the measurement of intellectual disability.

Estimating the Burden of Cost in Chronic Graft-versus-Host Disease: A Human Capital Approach.

With advances in organ matching and preventing acute graft-versus-host-disease (aGvHD), chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGvHD) following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has become a focus of transplant-related morbidity and mortality. Given that cGvHD often presents years following a transplant, our objective was to estimate its burden of cost resulting from allogeneic HSCT based on published estimates of incidence, morbidity, the value of lost work time and survivorship. Our choice of a ten-year time horizon is novel to the field of rare disease and was determined to be meaningful after consultations with present co-authors, including five physicians, one of whom is a transplant surgeon. A total of 44 450 cGvHD patients in the United States were estimated to require treatment over the next decade (from 2015 to 2025). This estimate is based on the last 5 years of trends reported in the transplant registries. What is not reported in any registry is that these patients will accrue a total of 605 631 years of lost wages, a collective lost productivity that will cost society over $27 Billion in the decade ahead: more than five times ($27B vs. $5.2B) the estimated ten-year cost of treating the condition.

Vaporous Marketing: Uncovering Pervasive Electronic Cigarette Advertisements on Twitter.

BACKGROUND: Twitter has become the "wild-west" of marketing and promotional strategies for advertisement agencies. Electronic cigarettes have been heavily marketed across Twitter feeds, offering discounts, "kid-friendly" flavors, algorithmically generated false testimonials, and free samples. METHODS: All electronic cigarette keyword related tweets from a 10% sample of Twitter spanning January 2012 through December 2014 (approximately 850,000 total tweets) were identified and categorized as Automated or Organic by combining a keyword classification and a machine trained Human Detection algorithm. A sentiment analysis using Hedonometrics was performed on Organic tweets to quantify the change in consumer sentiments over time. Commercialized tweets were topically categorized with key phrasal pattern matching. RESULTS: The overwhelming majority (80%) of tweets were classified as automated or promotional in nature. The majority of these tweets were coded as commercialized (83.65% in 2013), up to 33% of which offered discounts or free samples and appeared on over a billion twitter feeds as impressions. The positivity of Organic (human) classified tweets has decreased over time (5.84 in 2013 to 5.77 in 2014) due to a relative increase in the negative words 'ban', 'tobacco', 'doesn't', 'drug', 'against', 'poison', 'tax' and a relative decrease in the positive words like 'haha', 'good', 'cool'. Automated tweets are more positive than organic (6.17 versus 5.84) due to a relative increase in the marketing words like 'best', 'win', 'buy', 'sale', 'health', 'discount' and a relative decrease in negative words like 'bad', 'hate', 'stupid', 'don't'. CONCLUSIONS: Due to the youth presence on Twitter and the clinical uncertainty of the long term health complications of electronic cigarette consumption, the protection of public health warrants scrutiny and potential regulation of social media marketing.

Generation of magnetic fields by large-scale vortices in rotating convection.

We propose a self-consistent dynamo mechanism for the generation of large-scale magnetic fields in natural objects. Recent computational studies have described the formation of large-scale vortices in rotating turbulent convection. Here we demonstrate that for magnetic Reynolds numbers below the threshold for small-scale dynamo action, such turbulent flows can sustain large-scale magnetic fields, i.e., fields with a significant component on the scale of the system.

An investigation into the validity of effort tests in a working age dementia population.

OBJECTIVES: Performance on neuropsychological tests can be influenced by non-cognitive factors, including deliberate underperformance, stress, the need to fulfil a sick role, depression, un-cooperativeness, fatigue and unhappiness with the evaluative situation. Tests to detect suboptimal effort are becoming widely used in clinical practice and are based on their reported insensitivity to cognitive dysfunction. A diagnosis of dementia has life-changing implications for an individual of working age. It is therefore crucial that clinicians can be confident they have obtained a valid estimate of current cognitive functioning. This study aimed to establish whether mood or cognitive functioning adversely influenced performance on symptom validity tests (SVTs) in individuals with working age dementia, who were judged to be using full effort. METHOD: Forty-two participants with dementia diagnosed before the age of 65 completed measures of emotional and cognitive functioning and six SVTs. RESULTS: There were no significant correlations between emotional functioning and measures of effort. However, cognitive functioning, in particular new learning, was significantly related to SVT performance. Participants with mild dementia performed significantly better on all six SVTs than those with moderate/severe dementia. The results also suggest that the SVTs are not equally sensitive to cognitive dysfunction. Rey's Dot Counting Test (DCT) (times criterion) achieved 100% specificity, and was the only test passed by every participant. CONCLUSION: Rey's DCT is the only SVT that can be recommended for use in those under 65 years with possible dementia at this time until further validation studies are undertaken.

T cell cytokine gene polymorphisms in canine diabetes mellitus.

Insulin-deficiency diabetes in dogs shares some similarities with human latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (LADA). Canine diabetes is likely to have a complex pathogenesis with multiple genes contributing to overall susceptibility and/or disease progression. An association has previously been shown between canine diabetes and MHC class II genes, although other genes are also likely to contribute to the genetic risk. Potential diabetes susceptibility genes include immuno-regulatory TH1/TH2 cytokines such as IFNgamma, IL-12, IL-4 and IL-10. We screened these candidate genes for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a range of different dog breeds using dHPLC analysis and DNA sequencing. Thirty-eight of the SNPs were genotyped in crossbreed dogs and seven other breed groups (Labrador Retriever, West Highland White Terrier, Collie, Schnauzer, Cairn Terrier, Samoyed and Cavalier King Charles Spaniel), which demonstrated substantial intra-breed differences in allele frequencies. When SNPs were examined for an association with diabetes by case:control analysis significant associations were observed for IL-4 in three breeds, the Collie, Cairn Terrier and Schnauzer and for IL-10 in the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. These results suggest that canine cytokine genes regulating the TH1/TH2 immune balance might play a contributory role in determining susceptibility to diabetes in some breeds.

Gene discovery and microarray analysis of cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) varieties.

The cacao bean harvest from the relatively under developed tropical tree cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) is subject to high losses in potential production due to pests and diseases. To discover and understand the stability of putative natural resistance mechanisms in this commodity crop, essential for chocolate production, we undertook a gene-discovery program and demonstrated its use in gene-expression arrays. Sequencing and assembling bean and leaf cDNA library inserts produced a unique contig set of 1,380 members. High-quality annotation of this gene set using Blast and MetaFam produced annotation for 75% of the contigs and allowed us to identify the types of gene expressed in cacao beans and leaves. Microarrays were constructed using amplified inserts of the uni-gene set and challenged with bean and leaf RNA from five cacao varieties. The microarray performed well across the five randomly chosen cacao genotypes and did not show a bias towards either leaf or bean tissues. This demonstrates that the gene sequences are useful for microarray analysis across cacao genotypes and tissue types. The array results, when compared with real-time PCR results for selected genes, showed a correlation with differential gene-expression patterns. We intend that the resultant DNA sequences and molecular microarray platform will help the cacao community to understand the basis, likely stability and pathotype resistance range of candidate cacao plants.

Rotating convection-driven dynamos at low Ekman number.

We present a fully 3D self-consistent convection-driven dynamo model with reference to the geodynamo. A relatively low Ekman number regime is reached, with the aim of investigating the dynamical behavior at low viscosity. This regime is computationally very demanding, which has prompted us to adopt a plane layer model with an inclined rotation vector, and to make use of efficiently parallelized code. No hyperdiffusion is used, all diffusive operators are in the classical form. Our model has infinite Prandtl number, a Rayleigh number that scales as E(-1/3) (E being the Ekman number), and a constant Roberts number. The optimized model allows us to study dynamos with Ekman numbers in the range [10(-5),10(-4)]. In this regime we find strong-field dynamos where the induced magnetic fields satisfy Taylor's constraint to good accuracy. The solutions are characterized by (i) a MAC balance within the bulk, i.e., Coriolis, pressure, Lorentz, and buoyancy forces are of comparable magnitude, while viscous forces are only significant in thin boundary layers, (ii) the Elsasser number is O(10), (iii) the strong magnetic fields cannot prevent small-scale structures from becoming dominant over the large-scale components, (iv) the Taylor-Proudman effect is detectable, (v) the Taylorization decreases as the Ekman number is lowered, and (vi) the ageostrophic velocity component makes up 80% of the flow.