Teaching Robot Helps Children to Use Wheelchair

ScienceDaily (Aug. 12, 2010) — A robotic wheelchair is being developed that will help children learn to 'drive'. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation describe the testing of ROLY -- RObot-assisted Learning for Young drivers -- in a group of children without disabilities and one child with cerebral palsy.

Laura Marchal-Crespo, worked with a team of researchers at the University of California at Irvine, USA, to carry out the study. She said, "The conventional approach for powered wheelchair driver's training is expensive and labor-intense, typically requiring the hand-over-hand assistance of a skilled therapist. To lower the cost and improve accessibility to training, we have developed a robotic powered wheelchair system on which young children with a disability can safely develop driving skills at their own pace with minimum assistance."

The researcher's technique involves the trainee learning to chase a small robot along a line painted on the floor. The force feedback joystick used to steer the wheelchair can also give physical assistance to the driver, at a level appropriate to their ongoing performance. When caught, the robot performs a dance and the chair plays a little tune. The joystick haptic assistance was found to enhance learning in both the non-disabled children trained with haptic guidance and in the child with a severe motor impairment.

Speaking about the results, Marchal-Crespo said, "Ultimately, we envision creating a training experience that compares favorably with the fun children experience with the best amusement park rides, but that facilitates the development of driving skill."

To read more about ROLY please click on the title.

To access the CDR Library catalog, please click on this link.

Columbia Parkinson Support Group April 15 2012 Meeting Reminder

Our April 15th meeting is very special --- one that you do not want to miss! We are having 5 Parkinson's specialists serving on an Open Forum panel; where meeting attendees can ask the doctors questions about Parkinson's disease. We encourage you to send us your questions ahead of time. We will not reveal your personal information (e.g., email, name, etc.).

Please see attached PDF document for more information about our April 15, 2012 meeting and how to submit your questions ahead of time. If you have difficulty reading this PDF document, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Our meetings are free!

Bring Guests: Please don't forget, we always welcome any guests to come with you. The more your family, friends, neighbors, business associates, or anyone who has an interest in Parkinson's disease can learn about Parkinson's disease, the more support they can provide. We always welcome students from our universities and colleges!

To Contact Us: Please call us between the hours of 9:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Zone and leave a message on our answering machines -or- send us email

Dottie Gantt, President - Email: contact@columbiaparkinsonsupportgroup.org - Telephone: 803-604-0061

Carol Baker, Vice President - Email: caroltbaker@bellsouth.net - Telephone 803-781-6193


We look forward to seeing you at the April 15, 2012 meeting or any of our meetings!


“Every PD patient is unique and everything about his or her disease

is specific to him or her and ONLY to him or her. PD has only one time - NOW,

the present. The previous hours do not forecast how you are going to feel.

The only thing that is predictable about this disease is its unpredictability.”

~~Written by Rick Kramer and Margaret Tuchman~~

To read more about the meeting, please click on the above title.
To Access the CDR Library catalog, please click on this link.

Young man with autism appeals to Obama

FoxNews - "At 18 months old, Billy Pagoni was diagnosed with severe autism. The disorder was so disabling, he had trouble speaking.
Today, he’s 20 years old, about to graduate from high school in Naples, Fla., and wants more than anything to go to college. But, so far, every school he and his mother have contacted have told them there is no program available for his specialized needs.
With seemingly no opportunities available for him, Billy has made a public plea to President Obama to help him enroll into a college or university and continue his education.
“Dear President Obama, my name is Billy Pagoni,” Billy implored on a video posted on Facebook. “I want to be a baker. I am a great student. I never miss a day of school. I get A’s on my report card. Please, can you help me go to college? I am an American. I am autistic.”
According to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in 88 children in the U.S. have been identified with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). When Billy was first diagnosed, nearly 18 years ago, the rate was two in 10,000.
Now, with the disorder so widely recognized, doctors, parents and other autism experts are pushing for early intervention programs more than ever before. Last week, applied behavioral analysis was officially recognized by a federal judge as a proven method, rather than an experimental one, to help autistic children with learning and development.
ABA uses techniques such as positive reinforcement to increase useful learning behaviors and decrease behaviors that may harm or interfere with learning. In Florida, Medicaid must now cover the treatment for children with autism, following the federal judge’s ruling.

NOTE: To read the entire article, click on the title above.
NOTE: To access the Center for Disability Resources Library, click on this link.

Big Advance Against Cystic Fibrosis: Stem Cell Researchers Create Lung Surface Tissue in a Dish

ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2012) — "Harvard stem cell researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have taken a critical step in making possible the discovery in the relatively near future of a drug to control cystic fibrosis (CF), a fatal lung disease that claims about 500 lives each year, with 1,000 new cases diagnosed annually.
Beginning with the skin cells of patients with CF, Jayaraj Rajagopal, MD, and colleagues first created induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, and then used those cells to create human disease-specific functioning lung epithelium, the tissue that lines the airways and is the site of the most lethal aspect of CF, where the genes cause irreversible lung disease and inexorable respiratory failure.
That tissue, which researchers now can grow in unlimited quantities in the laboratory, contains the delta-508 mutation, the gene responsible for about 70 percent of all CF cases and 90 percent of the ones in the United States. The tissue also contains the G551D mutation, a gene that is involved in about 2 percent of CF cases and the one cause of the disease for which there is now a drug.
The work is featured on the cover of this month's Cell Stem Cell journal. Postdoctoral fellow Hongmei Mou, PhD, is first author on the paper, and Rajagopal is the senior author.
Mou credits learning the underlying developmental biology in mice as the key to making tremendous progress in only two years. "I was able to apply these lessons to the iPS cell systems," she said. "I was pleasantly surprised the research went so fast, and it makes me excited to think important things are within reach. It opens up the door to identifying new small molecules [drugs] to treat lung disease."
NOTE: To read the entire article, click on the title above.
NOTE: To access the Center for Disability Resources Library, click on this link.

Gene studies begin to unravel autism puzzle

Reuters (Apr. 4, 2012)- A sweeping study of hundreds of families with autism has found that spontaneous mutations can occur in a parent's sperm or egg cells that increase a child's risk for autism, and fathers are four times more likely than mothers to pass these mutations on to their children, researchers said on Wednesday.

The results of three new studies, published in the journal Nature, suggest mutations in parts of genes that code for proteins - called the exome - play a significant role in autism.

And while these genetic mistakes can occur across the genetic code, and many are harmless, they can cause big problems when they occur in parts of the genome needed for brain development. One of the three teams found these glitches may result in a five to 20 times higher risk of developing autism.

"These results confirm that it's not the size of the genetic anomaly that confers risk, but its location," said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, one of the National Institutes of Health, which funded one of the studies.

Among the other findings, the teams - led by Mark Daly of the Broad Institute at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Matthew State of Yale University and Evan Eichler of the University of Washington in Seattle - identified several hundred new suspect genes that could eventually lead to new targets for autism treatments.

Many of the researchers were part of the Autism Sequencing Collaborative, the largest effort of its kind to use advanced gene sequencing technology to identify the genetic underpinnings of autism.

Autism encompasses a wide spectrum of disorders, ranging from profound inability to communicate and mental retardation to relatively mild symptoms, as in Asperger's syndrome.

In the United States, an estimated 1 in 88 children have autism, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and while scientists believe genetics account for 80 to 90 percent of the risk for developing autism, most cases of autism cannot be traced to a known inherited cause.

To read more about the study, please click on the above title.

To access the CDR Library catalog, please click on this link.

Service + Learning = A Winning Course

When preparing to teach their first Information Literacy course, Amy Edwards and Andrea Jarratt approached the task in an unusual way: They met with the S.C. Autism Society. The two reference librarians in USC's Thomas Cooper Library wanted to add a service component to the course, and they believed that the society could benefit from their pilot project.

The result of combining information literacy with a service project is a classroom full of students who are learning how to do research and help others at the same time.

“We are working with the Autism Society to develop an online manual to be used by parents of autistic children to describe service points and resources within the state,” Edwards said.

“We met with the Autism Society first to get the project started,” Edwards said. “The Libraries’ IT department built a form for us, and students are filling out the forms, then the information will be put on a database. We are handing all the information over to the Autism Society when complete. Everything we developed was with an eye toward giving it over to the S.C. Autism Society.”

A manual on the national level exists, but the South Carolina resource section isn’t strong, Jarratt said. She believed that the students could create a more comprehensive one.

“We want to teach information literacy as a lifelong skill,” said Jarratt. “We want students to know that these information literacy skills apply to your work, your personal life, your volunteer work.”
To read more about this topic, please click on the above title.
To access the CDR Library catalog, please click this link.

Autism More Common Than Previously Thought: CDC Report Shows One in 54 Boys Identified

ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2012) — "The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 88 children in the United States has been identified as having an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to a new study released March 29 that looked at data from 14 communities. Autism spectrum disorders are almost five times more common among boys than girls -- with 1 in 54 boys identified.
The number of children identified with ASDs ranged from 1 in 210 children in Alabama to 1 in 47 children in Utah. The largest increases were among Hispanic and black children.
The report, Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders -- Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 14 Sites, United States, 2008, provides autism prevalence estimates from 14 areas. It was just published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
"This information paints a picture of the magnitude of the condition across our country and helps us understand how communities identify children with autism," said Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "That is why HHS and our entire administration has been working hard to improve the lives of people living with autism spectrum disorders and their families by improving research, support, and services."
"One thing the data tells us with certainty -- there are more children and families that need help," said CDC Director Thomas Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. "We must continue to track autism spectrum disorders because this is the information communities need to guide improvements in services to help children."
Zachary Warren, Ph.D., director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center's Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders at Vanderbilt University, says effective early identification and treatment of autism is a public health emergency.
"The new CDC data is the best evidence we have to date that autism is a very common disorder. While recent estimates have varied, we have always known the individual, familial, educational and societal costs that go along with autism are tremendous," Warren said. "We are now seeing autism in more than 1 percent of the population, which highlights how challenging it will be for systems of care to meet service needs.""

NOTE: To read the entire article, click on the title above.

NOTE: To access the Center for Disability Resources Library, click on this link.

Kids With Autism Bullied Three Times More

Disability Scoop (March 26, 2012) In the largest look ever at autism and bullying, new research shows that children on the spectrum are significantly more likely than other kids to be bullied.

Researchers polled nearly 1,200 parents across the country and found that 63 percent of kids with autism have been bullied. What’s more, some 39 percent of parents said their child with autism had been bullied within the last month compared to just 12 percent of typically developing siblings.

While many within the autism community have long believed that bullying is an especially acute problem for those with the developmental condition, the preliminary findings released Monday add to a growing body of scientific evidence on the topic.

“Even though I expected it to be a big problem, it was bigger than I even thought,” said Connie Anderson, community scientific liaison at the Interactive Autism Network, a national autism registry at the Kennedy Krieger Institute which conducted the ongoing survey.

With concrete findings, the researchers say they hope policymakers and educators can be encouraged to take steps to address the issue.

For the survey, parents across the country were asked about the bullying experiences of their kids with autism ages 6 to 15 and about the experiences of their typically developing children within the same age group. Findings reflect the experiences of 1,167 kids with autism and 795 children without.

Overall, those with autism were more likely to be bullied in fifth through eighth grade and kids attending regular public school were 50 percent more likely to be bullied than those enrolled in private schools or special education environments, the survey found.

To read more about Bullying, please click on the above title.

To access the CDR library catalog, please click this link.

Learning to Drive With A.D.H.D.

NYTimes (March 26, 2012)-The first time Jillian Serpa tried to learn to drive, the family car wound up straddling a creek next to her home in Ringwood, N.J.

Ms. Serpa, then 16, had gotten flustered trying to sort out a rapid string of directions from her father while preparing to back out of their driveway. “There was a lack of communication,” she said. “I stepped on the gas instead of the brake.”

On her second attempt to learn, Ms. Serpa recalled, she “totally freaked out” at a busy intersection. It was four years before she tried driving again. She has made great progress, but so far has still fallen short of her goal: Two weeks ago she knocked over a cone while parallel parking and failed the road test for the fourth time.

Learning to drive is hard and scary for many teenagers, and driving is far and away the most dangerous thing teenagers do. But the challenges are significantly greater for young people who, like Ms. Serpa, have attention problems.

A number of cognitive conditions can affect driving, and instructors report a recent increase in the number of teenagers with Asperger syndrome seeking licenses. But the largest group of challenged teenage drivers — and the mostly closely studied — appears to be those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A 2007 study, by Russell A. Barkley of the Medical University of South Carolina and Daniel J. Cox of the University of Virginia Health System, concluded that young drivers with A.D.H.D. are two to four times as likely as those without the condition to have an accident — meaning that they are at a higher risk of wrecking the car than an adult who is legally drunk.

To read the entire article on ADHD, please click the above title.

To access the CDR Library catalog, please click this link.

Report: Federal Employees With Disabilities Lacking

DisabilityScoop - "Despite a presidential mandate to increase hiring of people with certain, targeted disabilities, such individuals make up less than 1 percent of the federal workforce, new data shows.
Workers with targeted disabilities constituted 0.88 percent of government employees during the 2010 fiscal year, according to an annual report released Wednesday from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The statistics reflect the inclusion of individuals with intellectual disability, vision and hearing impairments in addition to a handful of other so-called “targeted disabilities” that are at the heart of several federal hiring goals.
Though 554 new employees with targeted disabilities were hired in 2010, the overall participation rate was unchanged from the prior year, the report found. What’s more, numbers fell well short of an EEOC hiring goal of 2 percent.
The inclusion rate for 2010 also paled in comparison to that seen nearly a decade earlier. In 2001, the EEOC found that 1.1 percent of federal employees had targeted disabilities.
President Barack Obama signed an executive order in July 2010 calling for the government to increase employment of people with disabilities. At the time, Obama said the effort was designed to “establish the federal government as a model employer of individuals with disabilities.”
The full impact of the executive order has yet to be seen, however, since it took effect during the time covered by the new report.
Of those with targeted disabilities who were employed by the federal government during the 2010 fiscal year, the EEOC found one bright spot. Average pay for this group inched up to $45,155, just shy of the average for all government employees of $45,771.
The U.S. government is the nation’s largest employer, with a staff of some 2.8 million people.

NOTE: To read the entire article, click on the title above.

NOTE: To access the Center for Disability Resources Library, click on this link.

Brain Injury Awareness Month

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month!

What are YOU going to do to spread the word?

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, The month-long celebration honors the millions of people with brain injury who are living with the successes and challenges that each day brings. The Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) is excited to unveil a new, multi-year campaign that everyone can embrace:
As THE Challenge! readers know, brain injury does not discriminate. Young or old, black or white, male or female, Muslim or Jewish - we're all susceptible. Anyone who has ever been touched by brain injury can be an advocate.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN ADVOCATE?
According to the dictionary, it is a person who speaks or writes in support or defense of a person or a cause.

We asked our nearly 400 Subject Matter Experts what it means to them to be an advocate and how to spread the word about brain injury and here is what they had to say:

"Talk about it. Do not hide. You'll find that when it's public, people come out of the woodwork and share how brain injury has touched them. Address disability inequality issues. By fighting for disability rights, you raise awareness, which is critical." -Laurie Rippon (NY, NY)
"Simply bring up these three letters: TBI, and ask whomever you are with what it means. Go from there." -Patti Foster (Jacksonville, TX)
"Always be ready with some talking points regarding brain injury and what it means to the public. Folks won't really get how big this issue is until they see how it applies to them. Have an "elevator speech," be ready to tell your story in a brief manner." -Darcy Keith (Fishers, IN)

Above all, speak from your own experience. Share who you are, what your relationship is to brain injury, and what it means to you. Keep coming back to the theme:
BRAIN INJURY CAN HAPPEN ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYONE

NOTE: To access the Center for Disability Resources Library, click on this link.

Autism Risk Gene Linked to Differences in Brain Structure

ScienceDaily (Mar. 21, 2012) — Healthy individuals who carry a gene variation linked to an increased risk of autism have structural differences in their brains that may help explain how the gene affects brain function and increases vulnerability for autism. The results of this innovative brain imaging study are described in an article in the groundbreaking neuroscience journal Brain Connectivity, a bimonthly peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online at the Brain Connectivity website."This is one of the first papers demonstrating a linkage between a particular gene variant and changes in brain structure and connectivity in carriers of that gene," says Christopher Pawela, PhD, Co-Editor-in-Chief and Assistant Professor, Medical College of Wisconsin. "This work could lead to the creation of an exciting new line of research investigating the impact of genetics on communication between brain regions."
To read more about the risk gene for autism, please click on the above title.
To access the CDR Library catalog, please click on this link.

Autism Speaks

To read more about Light it up Blue, please click on the above title.

To access the CDR Library catalog, please click on this link.