The social communicative deficits and repetitive behaviours seen in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may be affected by altered stimulus salience and reward attribution. The present study used eye ...tracking and a behavioural measure to index effort expenditure, arousal, and attention, during viewing of images depicting social scenes and subject-specific circumscribed interests in a group of 10 adults with ASD (mean age 25.4 years) and 19 typically-developing controls (mean age 20.7 years) Split-plot and one-way repeated measures ANOVAs were used to explore results. A significant difference between the ASD and control group was found in the amount of effort expended to view social and circumscribed images. The ASD group also displayed significant differences in pupillary response to social and circumscribed images, indicative of changes in autonomic arousal. Overall, the results support the social motivation hypothesis in ASD (Chevallier et al., Trends Cogn Sci 16(4):231–239, 2012) and suggest a role for autonomic arousal in the ASD symptom dyad.
Pictorial warnings on tobacco products are promising for motivating behavior change, but few studies have examined pictorial warnings for sugary drinks, especially in naturalistic environments. This ...study aimed to examine the impact of pictorial warnings on parents' purchases of sugary drinks for their children in a naturalistic store laboratory.
Parents of children ages 2 to 12 (n = 325, 25% identifying as Black, 20% Hispanic) completed a shopping task in a naturalistic store laboratory in North Carolina. Participants were randomly assigned to a pictorial warnings arm (sugary drinks displayed pictorial health warnings about type 2 diabetes and heart damage) or a control arm (sugary drinks displayed a barcode label). Parents selected 1 beverage and 1 snack for their child, as well as 1 household good; one of these items was selected for them to purchase and take home. The primary outcome was whether parents purchased a sugary drink for their child. Secondary outcomes included reactions to the trial labels, attitudes toward sugary drinks, and intentions to serve their child sugary drinks. Pictorial warnings led to a 17-percentage point reduction in purchases of sugary drinks (95% CI for reduction: 7% to 27%), with 45% of parents in the control arm buying a sugary drink for their child compared to 28% in the pictorial warning arm (p = 0.002). The impact of pictorial warnings on purchases did not differ by any of the 13 participant characteristics examined (e.g., race/ethnicity, income, education, and age of child). Pictorial warnings also led to lower calories (kcal), purchased from sugary drinks (82 kcal in the control arm versus 52 kcal in the pictorial warnings arm, p = 0.003). Moreover, pictorial warnings led to lower intentions to serve sugary drinks to their child, feeling more in control of healthy eating decisions, greater thinking about the harms of sugary drinks, stronger negative emotional reactions, greater anticipated social interactions, lower perceived healthfulness of sugary drinks for their child, and greater injunctive norms to limit sugary drinks for their child (all p < 0.05). There was no evidence of difference between trial arms on noticing of the labels, appeal of sugary drinks, perceived amount of added sugar in sugary drinks, risk perceptions, or perceived tastiness of sugary drinks (all p > 0.05).
Pictorial warnings reduced parents' purchases of sugary drinks for their children in this naturalistic trial. Warnings on sugary drinks are a promising policy approach to reduce sugary drink purchasing in the US.
The trial design, measures, power calculation, and analytic plan were registered before data collection at www.clinicaltrials.gov NCT04223687.
The threat associated with chemical warfare agents (CWAs) motivates the development of new materials to provide enhanced protection with a reduced burden. Metal–organic frame‐works (MOFs) have ...recently been shown as highly effective catalysts for detoxifying CWAs, but challenges still remain for integrating MOFs into functional filter media and/or protective garments. Herein, we report a series of MOF–nanofiber kebab structures for fast degradation of CWAs. We found TiO2 coatings deposited via atomic layer deposition (ALD) onto polyamide‐6 nanofibers enable the formation of conformal Zr‐based MOF thin films including UiO‐66, UiO‐66‐NH2, and UiO‐67. Cross‐sectional TEM images show that these MOF crystals nucleate and grow directly on and around the nanofibers, with strong attachment to the substrates. These MOF‐functionalized nanofibers exhibit excellent reactivity for detoxifying CWAs. The half‐lives of a CWA simulant compound and nerve agent soman (GD) are as short as 7.3 min and 2.3 min, respectively. These results therefore provide the earliest report of MOF–nanofiber textile composites capable of ultra‐fast degradation of CWAs.
Skewering nerve agents: Conformal metal–organic framework (MOF) kebab structures decorated on nanofibers that can degrade chemical warfare agents within minutes are described. These MOF–nanofiber composites show excellent reactivity towards both simulant and nerve agent soman (GD).
Evaluation of UiO-66 and UiO-67 metal–organic framework derivatives as catalysts for the degradation of soman, a chemical warfare agent, showed the importance of both the linker size and ...functionality. The best catalysts yielded half-lives of less than 1 min. Further testing with a nerve agent simulant established that different rate-assessment techniques yield similar values for degradation half-lives.
The pluses and minuses of mefloquine: A highly enantioselective catalytic borylative isomerization/aldehyde allylboration method for the stereoselective synthesis of the antimalarial drug mefloquine ...was optimized, thus leading to an efficient synthesis of all four mefloquine stereoisomers and analogues (see scheme). The absolute configuration of these potent compounds was determined for the first time by using chemical synthesis.
How do international organisations (IOs) legitimise their right to rule in times of a Pandemic? Where are their previously made environmental commitments on their agenda during a crisis? What are the ...differences in self-legitimation, if any, across different types of IOs? These questions have gathered renewed urgency during the ongoing COVID-19 and climate change crises posing a threat to the legitimacy not only of national governments but also of IOs. The paper aims to address these questions through the analysis of environmental commitments made in legal documents of three IOs (the EU, the EAEU, and the AIIB) and through the analysis of their respective social media between 2017 and 2021. Among other issues, we find significant differences in self-legitimation strategies of these three IOs as reflected by their social media and some evidence of mimicry across these IOs that should remain on the agenda for further studies.
The Amazon rainforest is a critical hotspot for bio-diversity, and plays an essential role in global carbon, water and energy fluxes and the earth's climate. Our ability to project the role of ...vegetation carbon feedbacks on future climate critically depends upon our understanding of this tropical ecosystem, its tolerance to climate extremes and tipping points of ecosystem collapse. Satellite remote sensing is the only practical approach to obtain observational evidence of trends and changes across large regions of the Amazon forest; however, inferring these trends in the presence of high cloud cover fraction and aerosol concentrations has led to widely varying conclusions. Our study provides a simple and direct statistical analysis of a measurable change in daily and composite surface reflectance obtained from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) based on the noise level of data and the number of available observations. Depending on time frame and data product chosen for analysis, changes in leaf area need to exceed up to 2 units leaf area per unit ground area (expressed as m2m−2) across much of the basin before these changes can be detected at a 95% confidence level with conventional approaches, roughly corresponding to a change in NDVI and EVI of about 25%. A potential way forward may be provided by advanced multi-angular techniques, such as the Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction Algorithm (MAIAC), which allowed detection of changes of about 0.6–0.8units in leaf area (2–6% change in NDVI) at the same confidence level. In our analysis, the use of the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) did not improve accuracy of detectable change in leaf area but added a complicating sensitivity to the bi-directional reflectance, or view geometry effects.
•We analyze ability to detect change in tropical vegetation with MODIS time series.•Changes in daily MODIS reflectance had to exceed 20% NDVI or 2 LAI units to be significant.•With compositing and new MAIAC correction, this was reduced to 0.6–0.8 LAI.•When using EVI, directional effects are important to be considered.
Patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) have a better prognosis than those with HPV-negative tumours. There is interest in de-escalating their ...treatment but strategies are needed for risk stratification to identify subsets with a poor prognosis. This study investigated tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in relation to HPV tumour status and patient survival.
Biopsies from 218 patients diagnosed with OPSCC between 2002 and 2011, who underwent chemo/radiotherapy were analysed for HPV by PCR, in-situ hybridisation and p16 immunohistochemistry (IHC). One hundred and thirty-nine samples with concordant HPV detection were analysed for CD3, CD4, CD8 and FoxP3 expression in tumour and stromal regions using multiplexIHC and multispectral image analysis. Labelling of smooth muscle actin (SMA) identified activated stroma.
Human papillomavirus-positive compared with HPV-negative OPSCC had higher infiltration in both tumour and stromal areas of CD4 and CD8 T cells but not FoxP3 T regulatory cells. Only CD3+CD8+ stromal and not tumour area infiltration was associated with increased survival (P=0.02). There was significantly higher SMA expression in HPV-positive compared with -negative tumours, which did not correlate with survival.
Studies of TILs for risk stratification in OPSCC should assess stromal infiltration.
Oxygen-containing heterocycles such as pyrans are a common substructure present in a variety of natural products and pharmaceutical drugs. Highly functionalized 4- and 6-aryl/heteroaryl dihydropyran ...derivatives are assembled by a highly stereoselective, ligand-controlled regiodivergent sp3–sp2 Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling of a 2-ethoxy dihydropyranyl boronate derived from a catalytic enantioselective inverse-electron-demand oxa4 + 2 cycloaddition. The scope and selectivity of this method were assessed along with an application to a concise total synthesis of the diarylheptanoid natural product diospongin B.
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