Implementation of reform curricula requires teachers to adopt new approaches to teaching. Research has provided promising results about the influence of educative curriculum on teachers' learning and instruction. However, this approach generally focuses on teachers as isolated learners. Using a design-based research approach, the authors developed…

Objective: To review findings on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and attention problems (AP) in children, adolescents, and adults, as established in the database of the Netherlands Twin Register and increase the understanding of stability in AP across the lifespan as a function of genetic and environmental influences. Method: A…

Efforts to understand the causes of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have been hampered by genetic complexity and heterogeneity among individuals. One strategy for reducing complexity is to target endophenotypes, simpler biologically based measures that may involve fewer genes and constitute a more homogenous sample. A genome-wide association…

An algorithm has been developed for the rapid determination of single-gene inheritance patterns from genetic pedigrees.

Newborn screening (NBS) is a public health program aimed at identifying treatable conditions in presymptomatic newborns to avoid premature mortality, morbidity, and disabilities. Currently, every newborn in the Unites States is screened for at least 29 conditions where evidence suggests that early detection is possible and beneficial. With new or…

Although the theory that creativity requires blind variation and selective retention (BVSR) is now more than a half-century old, only recently has BVSR theory undergone appreciable conceptual development, including formal three-parameter definitions of both creativity and sightedness. In this article, these new developments are for the first time…

Textbook descriptions of the foundations of Genetics give the impression that besides Mendel's no other research on heredity took place during the nineteenth century. However, the publication of the "Origin of Species" in 1859, and the criticism that it received, placed the study of heredity at the centre of biological thought. Consequently,…

Maureen Murphy-Ryan offers a clinical look at attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Her thorough definition of ADHD and the diagnoses that may occur simultaneously offer teachers an awareness of what this could look like in a classroom. However, it is only with professional medical input that a true diagnosis can be made and appropriate…

Research has highlighted potential differences in the phenotypic and clinical presentation of autism spectrum conditions across sex. Furthermore, the measures utilised to evaluate autism spectrum conditions may be biased towards the male autism phenotype. It is important to determine whether these instruments measure the autism phenotype…

The influence of the broader autism phenotype (BAP) on the adjustment of siblings of children with autism has previously been researched mainly in Western cultures. The present research evaluated a diathesis-stress model of sibling adjustment using a questionnaire study including 80 and 75 mother-typically developing sibling dyads in Taiwan and…

Homologous recombination, a central concept in biology, is defined as the exchange of DNA strands between two similar or identical nucleotide sequences. Unfortunately, undergraduate students majoring in biotechnology often experience difficulties in understanding the molecular basis of homologous recombination. In this study, we developed and…

Background: People with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) typically have mild to moderate intellectual deficits, compulsivity, hyperphagia, obesity, and growth hormone deficiencies. Growth hormone treatment (GHT) in PWS has well-established salutatory effects on linear growth and body composition, yet cognitive benefits of GHT, seen in other patient…

The ability to acquire language is a critical part of human development. Yet there is no consensus on how the skill emerges in early development. Does it constitute an innately-specified, language-processing module or is it acquired progressively? One of Annette Karmiloff-Smith's (1938-2016) key contributions to developmental science addresses…

Purpose: This paper is second of seven in this volume elaborating different approaches to quality improvement in education. It delineates a methodology called design-based implementation research (DBIR). The approach used in this paper is aimed at iteratively improving the quality of classroom teaching and learning practices in defined problem…

Previous evidence suggests that language function is modulated by genetic variants on chromosome 7q31-36. However, it is unclear whether this region harbors loci that contribute to speech delay in autism. We previously reported that the WNT2 gene located on 7q31 was associated with the risk of autism. Additionally, two other genes on 7q31-36,…