Impacts of a word-picture training on literacy skills in elementary school children and youths with intellectual disabilities

Objective: There is convincing evidence that phonological, orthographic and semantic processes influence children’s ability to learn to read and spell words. So far only a few studies investigated the influence of implicit learning in literacy skills. Children are sensitive to the statistics of their learning environment. By frequent reading they acquire implicit knowledge about the frequency of letter patterns in written words, and they use this knowledge during reading and spelling. Additionally, semantic connections facilitate to storing of words in memory. Thus, the aim of the intervention study was to implement a word-picture training which is based on statistical and semantic learning. Furthermore, we aimed at examining the training effects in reading and spelling in comparison to an auditory-visual matching training and a working memory training program. Participants and Methods: One hundred and thirty-two children aged between 8 and 11 years participated in training in three weekly session of 12 minutes over 8 weeks, and completed other assessments of reading, spelling, working memory and intelligence before and after training. Results: Results revealed in general that the word-picture training and the auditory-visual matching training led to substantial gains in reading and spelling performance in comparison to the working-memory training. Although both children with and without learning difficulties profited in their reading and spelling after the word-picture training, the training program led to differential effects for the two groups. After the word-picture training on the one hand, children with learning difficulties profited more in spelling as children without learning difficulties, on the other hand, children without learning difficulties benefit more in word comprehension. Conclusions: These findings highlight the need for frequent reading trainings with semantic connections in order to support the acquisition of literacy skills.

Impacts of a word-picture training on reading in youth with mixed intellectual disabilities. A waiting-list control group comparison

Individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) often struggle with learning how to read. Reading difficulties seem to be the most common secondary condition of ID. Only one in five children with mild or moderate ID achieves even minimal literacy skills. However, literacy education for children and adolescents with ID has been largely overlooked by researchers and educators. While there is little research on reading of children with ID, many training studies have been conducted with other populations with reading difficulties. The most common approach of acquiring literacy skills consists of sophisticated programs that train phonological skills and auditory perception. Only few studies investigated the influence of implicit learning on literacy skills. Implicit learning processes seem to be largely independent of age and IQ. Children are sensitive to the statistics of their learning environment. By frequent word reading they acquire implicit knowledge about the frequency of single letters and letter patterns in written words. Additionally, semantic connections not only improve the word understanding, but also facilitate storage of words in memory. Advances in communication technology have introduced new possibilities for remediating literacy skills. Computers can provide training material in attractive ways, for example through animations and immediate feedback .These opportunities can scaffold and support attention processes central to learning. Thus, the aim of this intervention study was to develop and implement a computer based word-picture training, which is based on statistical and semantic learning, and to examine the training effects on reading, spelling and attention in children and adolescents (9-16 years) diagnosed with mental retardation (general IQ  74). Fifty children participated in four to five weekly training sessions of 15-20 minutes over 4 weeks, and completed assessments of attention, reading, spelling, short-term memory and fluid intelligence before and after training. After a first assessment (T1), the entire sample was divided in a training group (group A) and a waiting control group (group B). After 4 weeks of training with group A, a second assessment (T2) was administered with both training groups. Afterwards, group B was trained for 4 weeks, before a last assessment (T3) was carried out in both groups. Overall, the results showed that the word-picture training led to substantial gains on word decoding and attention for both training groups. These effects were preserved six weeks later (group A). There was also a clear tendency of improvement in spelling after training for both groups, although the effect did not reach significance. These findings highlight the fact that an implicit statistical learning training in a playful way by motivating computer programs can not only promote reading development, but also attention in children with intellectual disabilities.

15q26.1 microdeletion encompassing only CHD2 and RGMA in two adults with moderate intellectual disability, epilepsy and truncal obesity

We report two patients with microdeletions in chromosomal subdomain 15q26.1 encompassing only two genes, CHD2 and RGMA. Both patients present a distinct phenotype with intellectual disability, epilepsy, behavioral issues, truncal obesity, scoliosis and facial dysmorphism. CHD2 haploinsufficiency is known to cause intellectual disability and epilepsy, RGMA haploinsufficiency might explain truncal obesity with onset around puberty observed in our two patients.

The application of medical informatics to the veterinary management programs at companion animal practices in Alberta, Canada: a case study.

Companion animals closely share their domestic environment with people and have the potential to, act as sources of zoonotic diseases. They also have the potential to be sentinels of infectious and noninfectious, diseases. With the exception of rabies, there has been minimal ongoing surveillance of, companion animals in Canada. We developed customized data extraction software, the University of, Calgary Data Extraction Program (UCDEP), to automatically extract and warehouse the electronic, medical records (EMR) from participating private veterinary practices to make them available for, disease surveillance and knowledge creation for evidence-based practice. It was not possible to build, generic data extraction software; the UCDEP required customization to meet the specific software, capabilities of the veterinary practices. The UCDEP, tailored to the participating veterinary practices', management software, was capable of extracting data from the EMR with greater than 99%, completeness and accuracy. The experiences of the people developing and using the UCDEP and the, quality of the extracted data were evaluated. The electronic medical record data stored in the data, warehouse may be a valuable resource for surveillance and evidence-based medical research.

Using Informatics and the Electronic Medical Record to Describe Antimicrobial Use in the Clinical Management of Diarrhea Cases at 12 Companion Animal Practices

Antimicrobial drugs may be used to treat diarrheal illness in companion animals. It is important to monitor antimicrobial use to better understand trends and patterns in antimicrobial resistance. There is no monitoring of antimicrobial use in companion animals in Canada. To explore how the use of electronic medical records could contribute to the ongoing, systematic collection of antimicrobial use data in companion animals, anonymized electronic medical records were extracted from 12 participating companion animal practices and warehoused at the University of Calgary. We used the pre-diagnostic, clinical features of diarrhea as the case definition in this study. Using text-mining technologies, cases of diarrhea were described by each of the following variables: diagnostic laboratory tests performed, the etiological diagnosis and antimicrobial therapies. The ability of the text miner to accurately describe the cases for each of the variables was evaluated. It could not reliably classify cases in terms of diagnostic tests or etiological diagnosis; a manual review of a random sample of 500 diarrhea cases determined that 88/500 (17.6%) of the target cases underwent diagnostic testing of which 36/88 (40.9%) had an etiological diagnosis. Text mining, compared to a human reviewer, could accurately identify cases that had been treated with antimicrobials with high sensitivity (92%, 95% confidence interval, 88.1%-95.4%) and specificity (85%, 95% confidence interval, 80.2%-89.1%). Overall, 7400/15,928 (46.5%) of pets presenting with diarrhea were treated with antimicrobials. Some temporal trends and patterns of the antimicrobial use are described. The results from this study suggest that informatics and the electronic medical records could be useful for monitoring trends in antimicrobial use.

Competition and the Legal Environment: Intellectual Property Rights in the Early American Film Industry

No abstract available.

Intellectual disability: A quandary for immigration

Current immigration options for individuals with intellectual disabilities do not adequately address their special needs and under existing immigration laws, intellectually disabled adult dependents of United States citizens suffer an excessive burden. This problem causes undue hardship of persons whose families lawfully reside in the United States or have the opportunity to immigrate to the United States. The aim of this review is to examine materials relevant to the issue and answer the question: What are the barriers and pathways for adults with intellectual disability within the family-based preference system under United States immigration law? ^ Adults with intellectual disability are a vulnerable population that often relies upon family members to be their principle caregiver and provide financial support. Under the family-based preference system, the United States has maintained that the reunion of family members with their close relatives promotes the health and welfare of the United States, but a review of the number of findings of inadmissibility due to a mental/physical disorder with associated harmful behavior and the number of waivers granted show otherwise. The lack of reviewability of the decisions made by the Board of Immigration Appeals in addition to the lack of transparency surrounding the immigration process only serve to compound this problem. ^

Biomedical informatics applications for epilepsy management: A systematic review

Epilepsy is a very complex disease which can have a variety of etiologies, co-morbidities, and a long list of psychosocial factors4. Clinical management of epilepsy patients typically includes serological tests, EEG's, and imaging studies to determine the single best antiepileptic drug (AED). Self-management is a vital component of achieving optimal health when living with a chronic disease. For patients with epilepsy self-management includes any necessary actions to control seizures and cope with any subsequent effects of the condition9; including aspects of treatment, seizure, and lifestyle. The use of computer-based applications can allow for more effective use of clinic visits and ultimately enhance the patient-provider relationship through focused discussion of determinants affecting self-management. ^ The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic literature review on informatics application in epilepsy self-management in an effort to describe current evidence for informatics applications and decision support as an adjunct to successful clinical management of epilepsy. Each publication was analyzed for the type of study design utilized. ^ A total of 68 publications were included and categorized by the study design used, development stage, and clinical domain. Descriptive study designs comprised of three-fourths of the publications and indicate an underwhelming use of prospective studies. The vast majority of prospective studies also focused on clinician use to increase knowledge in treating patients with epilepsy. ^ Due to the chronic nature of epilepsy and the difficulty that both clinicians and patients can experience in managing epilepsy, more prospective studies are needed to evaluate applications that can effectively increase management activities. Within the last two decades of epilepsy research, management studies have employed the use of biomedical informatics applications. While the use of computer applications to manage epilepsy has increased, more progress is needed.^

FDI inflows and outflows, intellectual property rights, and productivity growth

Using panel data of 57 countries during the period of 1995-2012, this study investigates the impact of intellectual property rights (IPR) processes on productivity growth. The IPR processes are decomposed into three stages, innovation process, commercialization process, and IPR protection process. Our results suggest that better IPR protection is directly associated with productivity improvement only in developed economies. In addition, the contribution of IPR processes on growth through foreign direct investment (FDI) appears to be very limited. Only FDI inflows in developed countries which help to create a better innovative capability lead to a higher growth. And in connection with FDI outflows, only IPR protection and commercialization processes are proven to improve productivity in the case of developing countries, particularly when the country acts as the investing country.

Towards Openness in Biomedical Informatics

Over the last years, and particularly in the context of the COMBIOMED network, our biomedical informatics (BMI) group at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid has carried out several approaches to address a fundamental issue: to facilitate open access and retrieval to BMI resources —including software, databases and services. In this regard, we have followed various directions: a) a text mining-based approach to automatically build a “resourceome”, an inventory of open resources, b) methods for heterogeneous database integration —including clinical, -omics and nanoinformatics sources—; c) creating various services to provide access to different resources to African users and professionals, and d) an approach to facilitate access to open resources from research projects