This chapter provides details of the molecular techniques in use to detect viral RNA and DNA, including PCR, NAAT, nested PCR, multiplex PCR, real time PCR, quantitative PCR, LAMP, TMA, microarrays, sequencing and point-of-care tests and their utility.

In the last chapter, we discussed the first method (RFLP) used in DNA typing. This procedure targeted relatively long DNA fragments (VNTRs) containing many repeated units of a base pair sequence. We ended by noting that they were not amenable to automation and therefore not destined for widespread forensic applications. However, by the early 1990s, many factors coalesced to set the stage for a leap in DNA typing capabilities. For example, the forensic and legal community had adjusted to DNA evidence, and analysts had moved from serological techniques such as ABO to genetic typing utilizing multiple DNA markers. Additionally, researchers in molecular biology, including in genomic sequencing, had identified many shorter repeat sequences that exhibited variation among individuals in a population.

Acquiring spoken language is generally quite an effortless process for children who can hear. However, children with hearing loss may experience greater difficulties in supporting their spoken language development. This chapter explores how hearing influences spoken language learning, reviewing the impact of health initiatives, such as universal newborn hearing screening, on lowering the age at detection of congenital hearing loss. Results from large population-based studies highlight how earlier intervention and provision of amplification (hearing aids or cochlear implants) improves language outcomes of children with permanent, sensorineural hearing losses, but outcomes on average still lag those of their peers with normal hearing. General agreement in the literature around permanent hearing losses contrasts with the lack of evidence on the consequences of conductive hearing loss. Most knowledge is drawn from clinical studies of children with otitis media with effusion and examines speech and language outcomes in this context. The auditory system and speech and language abilities seem to recover with age, but there is no consensus on the impact on more discrete abilities. Here, factors impacting language outcomes and the language learning environment are discussed in the context of hearing loss.

The Thriving with Social Purpose (TSP) motivational pattern focuses on the powerful consequences of effectively “amplifying” each of the components within our motivational systems to promote optimal functioning, while also infusing goals focused on belonging, helping, equity, and social responsibility into our “home page” motivational orientation. This chapter thus explains, in scientific terms, what it means to thrive and how social purpose goals can elevate our life experience. Consistent with the idea that humans are “whole-person-in-context” living systems, this chapter also discusses ways to enhance motivation and optimal functioning by amplifying the nonmotivational components of human functioning (i.e., biology, knowledge and skills, and key features of the environment). This is the chapter that scholars can best use to generate a wide range of hypotheses for future research about motivation and optimal functioning and that professionals can best use to guide and catalyze their (intrinsically whole-person) intervention efforts.