We developed and evaluated a new parent report instrument--Parent Observation of Early Markers Scale (POEMS)--to monitor the behavioral development of infants at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) because they have older affected siblings. Parents of 108 at-risk infants (74 males, 34 females) completed the POEMS from child age 1-24 months. The POEMS had acceptable psychometric properties and promising predictive validity. Most concerning items were social and communication deficits, and intolerance to waiting. Results provide preliminary evidence that prospective parent report measures can help to detect early ASD symptoms in infants at biological risk. We invite researchers to join us in multi-center studies of the POEMS.

Knowledge about social recognition and memory in animals can help us to determine appropriate management and husbandry techniques. In this study, we used a habituation-discrimination procedure to investigate the ability of horses (Equus caballus) to distinguish between the body odour samples of unfamiliar conspecifics. To pick up body odour, we rubbed material on the coat of horses and presented these unknown body odours to 16 different conspecifics of the same sex and similar age. The test consisted of two successive two-min presentations of a sample from one individual (e.g. individual 'A') and a simultaneous presentation of samples from individual 'A' and a novel individual (e.g. individual 'B') during a final third presentation. The results showed that horses, regardless of sex, decreased the time they spent investigating conspecific body odour across the initial two presentations-demonstrating habituation. In the final presentation, the results demonstrated successful discrimination of the previously experienced odour because horses investigated the novel olfactory sample ('B') significantly more than the pre-exposed sample ('A'). Taken together, these findings suggest, for the first time, that horses are able to discriminate two stimuli derived from body odours of unfamiliar conspecifics over short period of time.

Identification of early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) could lead to earlier diagnosis and intervention. This cross-sectional study used the Parent Observation of Early Markers Scale (POEMS, Feldman et al. in J Autism Dev Disord 42:13-12, 2012) to identify early signs of ASD in 69 ASD high-risk (older sibling diagnosed with ASD) and 69 sex and aged-matched ASD low-risk second-born or later infants (no family history of ASD) between 6 and 36 months of age. Family sociodemographic comparisons were also made between the risk groups. The high-risk children had significantly more elevated POEMS items than the low-risk children at 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36 months of age, even when the children subsequently diagnosed with ASD were removed from the analyses. Families of the high-risk group had older parents, lower family income and fewer mothers working out of the home than the low-risk group. These sociodemographic variables were not significantly correlated with POEMS scores. The results suggest that high-risk infants may show signs of the broader ASD phenotype as early as 12 months of age that may be unrelated to observed sociodemographic family differences.

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Let V = {1, 2, . . . , M} and let {H i : i ∈ V } be a set of Hadamard matrices with the property that the magnitude of the dot product of any two rows of distinct matrices is bounded above. A Hadamard partition is any partition of the set of all rows of the matrices H i into Hadamard matrices. Such partitions have an application to the security of quasi-synchronous code-division multiple-access radio systems when loosely synchronized (LS) codes are used as spreading codes. A new generation of LS code can be used for each information bit to be spread. For each generation, a Hadamard matrix from some partition is selected for use in the code construction. This code evolution increases security against eavesdropping and jamming. One security aspect requires that the number of Hadamard partitions be large. Thus the number of partitions is studied here. If a Kerdock code construction is used for the set of matrices, the Hadamard partition constructed is shown to be unique. It is also shown here that this is not the case if a Gold (or Gold-like) code construction is used. In this case the number of Hadamard partitions can be enumerated, and is very large.

Later-born siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are considered at biological risk for ASD and the broader autism phenotype. Early screening may detect early signs of ASD and facilitate intervention as soon as possible. This follow-up study revisits and re-examines a second-degree autism screener for children at biological risk of autism, the Parent Observation Early Markers Scale (POEMS, Feldman et al., 2012). Using available follow-up information, 110 children (the original 108 infants plus 2 infants recruited after the completion of the original Purpose of the Study .

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