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Abstract Background Despite the success of genome-wide association studies for asthma, few, if any, definitively causal variants have been identified and there is still a substantial portion of the heritability of the disease yet to be discovered. Some of this “missing heritability” may be accounted for by family-specific coding variants found to be segregating with asthma. Methods To identify family-specific variants segregating with asthma, we recruited one family from a previous study of asthma as reporting multiple asthmatic and non-asthmatic children. We performed whole-exome sequencing on all four children and both parents and identified coding variants segregating with asthma that were not found in other variant databases. Results Ten novel variants were identified that were found in the two affected offspring and affected mother, but absent in the unaffected father and two unaffected offspring. Of these ten, variants in three genes (PDE4DIP, CBLB, and KALRN) were deemed of particular interest based on their functional prediction scores and previously reported function or asthma association. We did not identify any common risk variants segregating with asthma, however, we did observe an increase in the number of novel, nonsynonymous variants in asthma candidate genes in the asthmatic children compared to the non-asthmatic children. Conclusions This is the first report applying exome sequencing to identify asthma susceptibility variants. Despite having sequenced only one family segregating asthma, we have identified several potentially functional variants in interesting asthma candidate genes. This will provide the basis for future work in which more families will be sequenced to identify variants across families that cluster within genes.

This article presents the Mentorship, Integrated Curriculum, Collaboration, and Scholarship (MICCS) framework as an applicable model for transformative, creative, and curriculum-based K-12 dance education and arts integration. Developed and practiced by the authors--an artist/educator, a classroom teacher, and an arts education scholar and former dance practitioner--this framework provides replicable guidelines for educators, professional and community partners, and administrative leaders. The MICCS framework encompasses (1) professional mentorship with artist/teacher collaborators, student teachers, and arts education scholars, (2) a framework for dance integration at K-12 schools involving curricular and pedagogical design for a range of contexts, from whole-school to individual classroom practice, (3) collaborative strategies, and (4) research and scholarship partnerships. The practice and presentation of this framework, along with past examples of residencies and research, stand as a form of creative leadership, merging creative arts and educational pursuits through dance.

In this article, the collaborating authors, a researcher and dance artist, confront assumptions surrounding dance's experiential nature and assessment in schools. Presenting findings from a qualitative case study assessment of a three-week, whole-school dance artist-in-residence at a diverse and inclusive metropolitan K-5 school, the authors focus on assessing student experiences and calling attention to the socially and theoretically constructed nature of experience. Their assessment research findings yield rich insight into how dance experiences shaped through a complex interplay of both embodied and experiential and social and theoretical forces can illuminate students' complex thinking and abilities to represent knowledge. The implications of these findings provide direction for how to better understand, assess, and communicate students' dance and curricular knowledge that are made possible through arts experiences and arts assessments. (Contains 2 figures.)

The aim of this analysis was to examine the effect of environmental tobacco smoke exposure on the risk of small-for-gestational-age (SGA) birth. The study population included 2, 283 nonsmokers from a nested cohort study undertaken in southern Connecticut from 1988 to 1992. The duration and intensity of exposures incurred at multiple locations during the third trimester of pregnancy were measured by postpartum interview. The effect of exposure on birth weight and on incidence of SGA birth was assessed by multivariate logistic and linear regression. An estimated 26.5% of the women had been exposed to environmental tobacco smoke for at least 1 hour per week during the third trimester. The median duration of exposure among the exposed over all locations was 5 hours per week. The adjusted odds ration for SGA birth in exposed mothers compared with unexposed mothers, using a dichotomous exposure variable, was 0.82 (95% confidence interval: 0.51, 1.33). The adjusted birth weight difference associated with exposure was –1.2 g (95% confidence interval: –43.3, 41.0). No effect of environmental tobacco smoke exposure on fetal growth was seen in this relatively homogeneous upper middle class group of women exposed at low levels. This is reassuring for women exposed at low levels, but it does not exclude the possibility of an effect in women exposed to higher levels of environmental tobacco smoke. Am J Epidemiol 1999; 150: 695-705. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The National Hospital Discharge Survey records for medical-legal, spontaneous, and "other" abortions (ICDA-8 640-641, 643, and 644 respectively) for 1970-77 were analyzed to investigate the impact of liberalized access to abortion on abortion-related morbidity in the United States. The analysis suggests that in census regions where an increase in medical-legal abortions performed in hospitals occurred over the study period there was an associated decreased likelihood of a "spontaneous" or "other" abortion. The spontaneous and "other" abortion codes appear to have been used synonymously and a small number of each used to classify complications of both illegal and legal abortions performed outside hospitals. There was a significant reduction in length of slay for spontaneous and other abortions between 1970 and 1977. This is suggestive of decreasingly severe presenting symptomatology for complicated abortion. The study further suggests that: during 1970-77 illegal abortions were largely replaced by legal procedures: increases in legal abortion beyond those replacing illegal have not resulted in increased rates of hospitalization for complicated abortion; and, the case morbidity rate for legal abortion appears to have declined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The home wiring code is the most widely used metric for studies of residential electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure and health effects. Despite the fact that wiring code often shows stronger correlations with disease outcome than more direct EMF home assessments, little is known about potential confounders of the wiring code association. In a study carried out in southern Connecticut in 1988–1991, the authors used strict and widely used criteria to assess the wiring codes of 3, 259 homes in which respondents lived. They also collected other home characteristics from the tax assessor‘s office, estimated traffic density around the home from state data, and interviewed each subject (2, 967 mothers of reproductive age) for personal characteristics. Women who lived in very high current configuration wiring coded homes were more likely to be in manual jobs and their homes were older (built before 1949, odds ratio (OR) = 73.24, 95% confidence interval (Cl) 29.53–181.65) and had lower assessed value and higher traffic densities (highest density quartile, OR = 3.99, 95% Cl 1.17–13.62). Because some of these variables have themselves been associated with health outcomes, the possibility of confounding of the wiring code associations must be rigorously evaluated in future EMF research. Am J Epidemiol 1998;148: 467–74. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]