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A website providing the latest research and resources on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is helping parents, educators, health professionals and policy makers navigate the complexities of the neurodevelopmental impairment condition.

Research on adults has identified an immigrant health advantage, known as the 'immigrant health paradox', by which migrants exhibit better health outcomes than natives. Is this health advantage transferred from parents to children in the form of higher birth weight relative to children of natives?

The EU LifeCycle Project was launched in 2017 to combine, harmonize, and analyze data from more than 250,000 participants across Europe and Australia, involving cohorts participating in the EU-funded LifeCycle Project. The purpose of this cohort description is to provide a detailed overview of the major measures within mental health domains that are available in 17 European and Australian cohorts participating in the LifeCycle Project.

Epigenetic modifications are associated with hepatic fat accumulation and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). However, few epigenetic modifications directly implicated in such processes have been identified during adolescence, a critical developmental window where physiological changes could influence future disease trajectory. To investigate the association between DNA methylation and NAFLD in adolescence, we undertook discovery and validation of novel methylation marks, alongside replication of previously reported marks.

SAMStat is an efficient program to extract quality control metrics from fastq and SAM/BAM files. A distinguishing feature is that it displays sequence composition, base quality composition and mapping error profiles split by mapping quality. This allows users to rapidly identify reasons for poor mapping including the presence of untrimmed adapters or poor sequencing quality at individual read positions.

Preterm birth is the leading cause of perinatal morbidity and mortality and is associated with adverse developmental and long-term health outcomes, including several cardiometabolic risk factors and outcomes. However, evidence about the association of preterm birth with later body size derives mainly from studies using birth weight as a proxy of prematurity rather than an actual length of gestation. We investigated the association of gestational age (GA) at birth with body size from infancy through adolescence.

To improve early intervention and personalise treatment for individuals early on the psychosis continuum, a greater understanding of symptom dynamics is required. We address this by identifying and evaluating the movement between empirically derived attenuated psychotic symptomatic substates-clusters of symptoms that occur within individuals over time.

In cystic fibrosis, bacteria–bacteriophage interaction in the lower airways is poorly understood. We present the near-complete genome of the uncultured Siphovirus-like bacteriophage, Staphylococcus aureus phage COMBAT-CF_PAR1, isolated from the lower airways. The genome spans 41,510 bp with 33.45% guanine–cytosine content and contains 65 open reading frames.

Over the last two decades, transcriptomics has become a standard technique in biomedical research. We now have large databases of RNA-seq data, accompanied by valuable metadata detailing scientific objectives and the experimental procedures used. The metadata is crucial in understanding and replicating published studies, but so far has been underutilized in helping researchers to discover existing datasets.

Steve Zubrick FASSA, FAAMHS, MSc AM PhD Honorary Emeritus Research Fellow 08 6319 1409 Stephen.zubrick@thekids.org.au Honorary Emeritus Research