Faculty Opinions recommendation of Strength of nonhuman primate studies of developmental programming: review of sample sizes, challenges, and steps for future work.

Author(s):  
Anthony Michael Carter
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hillary F. Huber ◽  
Susan L. Jenkins ◽  
Cun Li ◽  
Peter W. Nathanielsz

AbstractNonhuman primate (NHP) studies are crucial to biomedical research. NHPs are the species most similar to humans in lifespan, body size, and hormonal profiles. Planning research requires statistical power evaluation, which is difficult to perform when lacking directly relevant preliminary data. This is especially true for NHP developmental programming studies, which are scarce. We review the sample sizes reported, challenges, areas needing further work, and goals of NHP maternal nutritional programming studies. The literature search included 27 keywords, for example, maternal obesity, intrauterine growth restriction, maternal high-fat diet, and maternal nutrient reduction. Only fetal and postnatal offspring studies involving tissue collection or imaging were included. Twenty-eight studies investigated maternal over-nutrition and 33 under-nutrition; 23 involved macaques and 38 baboons. Analysis by sex was performed in 19; minimum group size ranged from 1 to 8 (mean 4.7 ± 0.52, median 4, mode 3) and maximum group size from 3 to 16 (8.3 ± 0.93, 8, 8). Sexes were pooled in 42 studies; minimum group size ranged from 2 to 16 (mean 5.3 ± 0.35, median 6, mode 6) and maximum group size from 4 to 26 (10.2 ± 0.92, 8, 8). A typical study with sex-based analyses had group size minimum 4 and maximum 8 per sex. Among studies with sexes pooled, minimum group size averaged 6 and maximum 8. All studies reported some significant differences between groups. Therefore, studies with group sizes 3–8 can detect significance between groups. To address deficiencies in the literature, goals include increasing age range, more frequently considering sex as a biological variable, expanding topics, replicating studies, exploring intergenerational effects, and examining interventions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 036016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew C Bishop ◽  
Mark Libardoni ◽  
Ahsan Choudary ◽  
Biswapriya Misra ◽  
Kenneth Lange ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (suppl_1) ◽  
pp. 1154-1154
Author(s):  
P. Nathanielsz ◽  
K. Franke ◽  
C. Gaser ◽  
R. Dahnke ◽  
A. Kuo ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Damian Rogers ◽  
Filippo A. Salustri

Based on their previous work in creating a new method of design, termed the “Design by DNA” method, the authors are now experimentally validating the method against other, known methods. The goal of the experiment is to determine if Design by DNA promotes creative designs. Specifically, the authors are seeking to measure and compare creativity resulting from the use of Design by DNA and from other, known design methods. However, few have conducted empirical experiments in the past, and further, the literature on comparatively evaluating creativity of different design methods is relatively sparse. Therefore, the authors are developing a framework for defining and executing meaningful experiments that can accommodate various design methods, including Design by DNA, and also provide meaningful data to comparatively evaluate those methods, with the goal of determining whether Design by DNA impacts creativity in design. The experimental framework is described, and results of a pilot experiment are given. In that framework, creativity was characterized by novelty, usefulness, and cohesion. Due to small sample sizes, confidence in the results is not particularly high. Even so, some results do indicate several points of interest. An analysis of the results suggests that Design by DNA can offer advantages in engineering design, ranking higher in both the ‘usefulness’ and ‘cohesion’ categories of the creativity assessment. Hypotheses are given to explain why the experimental results show the slightly lower score in the ‘novelty’ category. Experiment participants were also evaluated on the NASA Task Loading Index (TLX) to evaluate how taxed they were using the different design methods and results are shown. Here, the Design by DNA method accrues better scores in 5 of the 6 NASA TLX categories, suggesting that it was less strenuous on the participants than the other methods. Statistical analysis of both the creativity scores and the TLX document shows confidence levels of between 65% and 96%, which is acceptable for very low populations. As this was a pilot experiment, the authors foresee future work to improve the results presented here. First, larger sample sizes are needed to improve statistical significance of our conclusions. Secondly, the authors wish to set out a series of experiments whereby each test is run by pitting one specific design method against the Design by DNA method, to better show a 1-on-1 comparison between the methods and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each.


2009 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Symonds ◽  
Helen Budge

The ability to not only replicate but also extend the findings from both historical epidemiological studies and contemporary cohorts of the developmental programming of later disease are critical if the mechanisms by which early diet impacts on later disease are to be fully understood. To date, a plethora of models have been established, with the range including global changes in dietary input, imbalanced diets and diets deficient in single nutrients. Key factors in translating these findings to the human situation are the pronounced differences in the relative growth and development between large and small mammals from the time of conception through pregnancy, lactation and weaning. This disparity is reflected in the very different nutritional requirements between species and the substantial divergence between rodents and large animals in the ontogeny of many of the organ systems that are nutritionally regulated. For example, hypothalamic circuitry is much more developed in species with a long gestation and offspring are born with a mature hypothalamic–pituitary axis in sheep and man compared with mice and rats. Similarly, nephron number is established towards the end of gestation in large mammals compared with the lactational period in rats. These types of differences will impact on the ability of individual and combined nutritional interventions to reset developmental processes, and may be further compounded by the gender of a fetus. The challenge for future work in this exciting and dynamic area of research is to utilise these marked comparative differences to generate imaginative nutritional interventions in order to improve the viability, health and well-being of the offspring.


1978 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 175-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. J. Johnston
Keyword(s):  

A summary of results for radio astrometry with baselines ≤ 35 km and priorities for future work are given.


Author(s):  
G. C. Smith ◽  
R. L. Heberling ◽  
S. S. Kalter

A number of viral agents are recognized as and suspected of causing the clinical condition “gastroenteritis.” In our attempts to establish an animal model for studies of this entity, we have been examining the nonhuman primate to ascertain what viruses may be found in the intestinal tract of “normal” animals as well as animals with diarrhea. Several virus types including coronavirus, adenovirus, herpesvirus, and picornavirus (Table I) were detected in our colony; however, rotavirus, astrovirus, and calicivirus have not yet been observed. Fecal specimens were prepared for electron microscopy by procedures reported previously.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 2109-2130
Author(s):  
Lauren Bislick

Purpose This study continued Phase I investigation of a modified Phonomotor Treatment (PMT) Program on motor planning in two individuals with apraxia of speech (AOS) and aphasia and, with support from prior work, refined Phase I methodology for treatment intensity and duration, a measure of communicative participation, and the use of effect size benchmarks specific to AOS. Method A single-case experimental design with multiple baselines across behaviors and participants was used to examine acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of treatment effects 8–10 weeks posttreatment. Treatment was distributed 3 days a week, and duration of treatment was specific to each participant (criterion based). Experimental stimuli consisted of target sounds or clusters embedded nonwords and real words, specific to each participants' deficit. Results Findings show improved repetition accuracy for targets in trained nonwords, generalization to targets in untrained nonwords and real words, and maintenance of treatment effects at 10 weeks posttreatment for one participant and more variable outcomes for the other participant. Conclusions Results indicate that a modified version of PMT can promote generalization and maintenance of treatment gains for trained speech targets via a multimodal approach emphasizing repeated exposure and practice. While these results are promising, the frequent co-occurrence of AOS and aphasia warrants a treatment that addresses both motor planning and linguistic deficits. Thus, the application of traditional PMT with participant-specific modifications for AOS embedded into the treatment program may be a more effective approach. Future work will continue to examine and maximize improvements in motor planning, while also treating anomia in aphasia.


2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-243
Author(s):  
Roberto Nuevo ◽  
Andrés Losada ◽  
María Márquez-González ◽  
Cecilia Peñacoba

The Worry Domains Questionnaire was proposed as a measure of both pathological and nonpathological worry, and assesses the frequency of worrying about five different domains: relationships, lack of confidence, aimless future, work, and financial. The present study analyzed the factor structure of the long and short forms of the WDQ (WDQ and WDQ-SF, respectively) through confirmatory factor analysis in a sample of 262 students (M age = 21.8; SD = 2.6; 86.3% females). While the goodness-of-fit indices did not provide support for the WDQ, good fit indices were found for the WDQ-SF. Furthermore, no source of misspecification was identified, thus, supporting the factorial validity of the WDQ-SF scale. Significant positive correlations between the WDQ-SF and its subscales with worry (PSWQ), anxiety (STAI-T), and depression (BDI) were found. The internal consistency was good for the total scale and for the subscales. This work provides support for the use of the WDQ-SF, and potential uses for research and clinical purposes are discussed.


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