SPEEDYSARCADE/ROCKETCABLE RECORDS INC./AUTISM

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The Autistic Journalist

2010-09-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

The Autistic Journalist

Using words to explain the mind

Autism finds its way to the gaming world

with 3 comments

Courtesy Bioware/Electronic Arts

Note: This post discusses possible spoilers, so if you’re interested in playing and haven’t completed the mission I talk about, you may want to put off reading this.
Autism has been explored in the fictional and real environments on television and film, but Bioware and Electronic Arts may be the first to include the spectrum in the gaming world.
The game happens to be Mass Effect 2, the second of a three-part space opera trilogy and a huge critical and financial success (the series is most comparable to the Star Wars saga). Bioware is supplying a lot of content for download in between releases of this game and the upcoming Mass Effect 3, which is standard for many PC games today. As such, the mission where autism comes into play must be purchased separately from the game through Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 site. Titled Project Overlord, the protagonist Commander Shepard is asked by Dr. Gavin Archer to stop a rogue VI from possibly wreaking havoc in the galaxy, as the VI can interact with and control most synthetics (ships and/or robots).
As Shepard (the player) progresses through the mission, he/she gains access to data files detailing the creation of the VI that went rogue. Shepard discovers Archer wasn’t totally upfront with his information: Archer was the lead researcher in the project and used his autistic brother, David, as a test subject to integrate with the geth, a technological race of AI robots. Shepard learns that Archer saw David’s condition as a handicap until he sees his autistic mind as useful because of his supreme mathematical skills. Before integrating David with the geth, Archer says David’s mind is as alien as an actual alien, but he still must use him in the experiment. Shepard eventually destroys the rogue VI program and finds David in the VI core, begging for mercy. Shepard then has a choice regarding David’s fate, although the influence of that choice may have little effect in Mass Effect 3 (decisions made in the first two games could influence what happens in the third).
Not even the hard-hitting social justice Star Trek franchise has touched on the autism spectrum, so Bioware at least deserves credit for its implementation of the disorder in a mission plot. Even in a futuristic sci-fi world, players who have some understanding of what autism is should find parallels with older representations of autism in fiction. The character of Charlie Babbitt in Rain Man had a difficult time accepting his brother as an equal and used Raymond’s mathematical abilities to his own advantage to win a large sum of money in blackjack (although the money won was used to pay off debts). Loosely applied, the Project Overlord mission represents what some neurotypical people see with autistic people: an alien mind that’s difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend.
Nonetheless, the plot is quite dark and it’s obvious that several moral breaches were made in the experiment, with David’s pleas for help clearly indicating that autistic people do express emotion. While Mass Effect 2 isn’t as gory as other M-rated games, the mature theme in this mission and throughout the game isn’t for the kids.
What this mission will accomplish outside of the game for ME2 fans is unclear. Chances are they won’t be too meticulous about it since completing the primary storyline and achieving desirable results can take about 24 hours of play time (there’s plenty of dialogue among the characters). A more intriguing question is if more games include autism as a plot device. Video games can bring us to very realistic worlds now thanks to improvements in graphics, while story elements have also expanded for the same reason. I’ll be surprised if a game is ever released where a player could use powers from an autistic protagonist, but I don’t believe Mass Effect 2 will be the only time we see autism in gaming.

AUTISTIC BOY SAVED FROM DROWNING

2010-08-27T22:34:00.001-07:00

English »

Gordon Penner, a boat captain with Splash Dash tours, helped rescue an autistic teenage boy after he apparently jumped into the Red River Tuesday morning.

By Jillian Austin | CNews

WINNIPEG – A teenage boy is recovering in hospital after being pulled from the Red River in a dramatic water rescue Tuesday morning.

Staff from Splash Dash boat tours noticed the boy in the water at The Forks near the main docks and called 911 before setting out on the water around 10:30 a.m.

“An autistic boy jumped into the water … off the walkway,” said Gord Cartwright, owner of Splash Dash tours. “Our staff noticed what had happened and they put a boat into the water to do a rescue.”

Captain Gordon Penner set out immediately to help the boy, along with Barry Horan who was out for a morning run along the Red River.

Witnesses estimated the boy looked to be 15 or 16 years old.

The boy did not take hold of the life preservers or hooks that rescuers were tossing to him.

Eventually Horan and a member of the Winnipeg Police Service jumped in the water and successfully pulled him onto the boat.

The entire ordeal took about 15 minutes. Police say the boy is doing fine and is in “good spirits.”

Source: http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2010/08/24/15127696.html

Please share this news with friends, family and also with your contact list on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

# Overcoming autism helped me realise I can do anything

2010-08-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

Thomas Mitchell’s parents were told their autistic son would never walk or talk. Now aged 14, Thomas told Clare Hutchinson how he exceeded all expectations…

The Autism News

By Clare Hutchinson | WalesOnline

FOR someone who was never supposed to be able to walk or talk, 14-year-old Thomas Mitchell is surprisingly eloquent.

Sitting in the front room of his family home in Caerphilly with his parents and three sisters by his side, Thomas explained what it is like to grow up with autism and his constant battle to stay in control.

“When I was younger I couldn’t control it at all,” said the Doctor Who fan, who is starting his GCSE courses next week.

“If there was a loud noise or I was in a crowded place I would hate it. Traffic jams were the worst.”

The term autism covers a wide range of conditions including Autism Spectrum Disorder, Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism.

Autism is a lifelong disabling condition affecting one in 100 people in the UK, yet many have little idea what it is.

All forms of autism are characterised by difficulty in social communication, interaction and imagination – meaning someone with autism can find it hard to understand, for example, body language, sarcasm or the unwritten rules of personal space.

Thomas was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder when he was three, after his parents Sally, 40, and Stephen, 45, noticed he was developing more slowly than his older sister Megan, now 16.

Sally, a former nurse who at the time of Thomas’ diagnosis was also struggling to cope with a spinal injury that left her having to use a wheelchair, said: “My brothers had some speech and language issues so I was a bit clued up and I already had half an eye open for it.

“When Thomas reached three and was still not speaking we took him to Ystrad Mynach Hospital, where he was diagnosed with autism.”

At the time autism was so misunderstood the doctors painted Sally and Stephen a picture of a child who would never walk or talk.

“We were told not to expect anything academically, but it was wrong of them to say that because, really, they had no idea what to expect,” said Sally.

“Every child with autism is different and you never know how it will affect them – that is the message I would like to get across to parents who might be in the same place as we were all those years ago.”

After his diagnosis, help for Thomas came quickly and, aged four, he was sent to a small specialist unit at a school in Newbridge, near Blackwood.

“They spent all the time in the first year teaching them how to sit still,” said Sally, who explained that her son was soon able to walk and talk with relative ease.

From there, Thomas went to secondary school at St Cenydd Comprehensive in Caerphilly, where, with the help of a one-to-one support worker, he soon began integrating with pupils from the main part of the school.

Having spent all his school life in specialist departments with other children with a variety of learning difficulties, going into mainstream classes was “totally alien” to him.

He learned to cope by knowing when to expect the bell so he would be prepared for the sudden noise and by going to the library to devour science fiction books during busy lunch breaks.

And despite his condition Thomas has made phenomenal progress.

The Cardiff Blues fan will begin his GCSE courses next month, having chosen leisure and tourism, geography and history for his subjects.

He now sits in mainstream classes for nine subjects, including English, science and his favourite, maths – for which he shot up from set six to set three in just one school year.

A keen sports fan, Thomas also plays in goal with Caerphilly-based disability football club the Pont Dragons.

His behaviour has improved so much he is now able to control his autism – catching himself if he is going to say something in anger and asking politely instead of being rude.

Thomas believes his behaviour has improved naturally as he gets older, while his mum, a devout Christian, sees it as a blessing.

She said: “A child with autism, by their nature, is the most selfish person in the world and it is very difficult for them to understand the needs of other people.

“But somehow last year he started realising that other people have the same needs as himself.

“Now when I come into the house he asks me how I am – that would have been unimaginable just 18 months ago.

“We thought he would have to live with us for the rest of his life, but now I’m confident he will have his own future – whatever he wants that future to be – and he will be happy.

“You have no idea how happy that makes us as parents – and hopefully it will give other parents hope too.”

She added: “It’s like there is light at the end of the tunnel, there is hope.

“I just feel it is criminal to tell any parent that their child’s future is dark because in every child’s life there is hope.”

Thomas harbours ambitions of one day becoming a sports reporter for Able Radio, a disability radio station based in Pontypool at which his mum volunteers.

After that, he hopes to raise enough money to travel the world.

Thomas added: “I just hope some of my hopes and dreams come true.

“People who have children with learning difficulties, especially those with autism, need to know that there is always hope.

“It doesn’t matter what you have got – if you work hard you will achieve your ambitions.”

Source: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health-news/2010/08/26/overcoming-autism-helped-me-realise-i-can-do-anything-91466-27137429

AUTISM NEWS

2010-08-27T22:26:00.001-07:00

and schizophrenia: Scientists measure gene mutation rate

August 27th, 2010

English

Dr. Guy Rouleau, senior author of a breakthrough paper on schizophrenia. John Morstad for The Globe and Mail

The Autism News

By Physorg

An international study led by University of Montreal scientists suggests family history may not be a good predictor of the presence of mutations predisposing to autism or schizophrenia.

The findings show how new or de novo gene mutations – alterations of the cell’s DNA – play a role in these devastating conditions. Published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, this study has implications for disease prevalence and severity.

“This study emphasizes the importance of de novo mutations as genetic factors predisposing to autism and schizophrenia. We found an increased frequency of severe de novo mutations in critical brain genes in both of these diseases,” says senior author and University of Montreal professor, Guy Rouleau.

“Harmful de novo mutations, as observed in this study, may in part explain the high global incidences of autism and schizophrenia,” adds Dr. Rouleau, who is also director of the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center and a scientist at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre.

Investigating human mutation rate:

The team analyzed 400 genes that are turned on in nerve cells from patients with autism or schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Their results showed that there is an excess of de novo gene mutations associated with the two diseases.

Their study revealed that DNA taken directly from the patient’s blood was superior to that taken from patient-derived cell lines. “The source of biological material is crucial for these types of experiments,” says lead author Philip Awadalla, a University of Montreal pediatrics professor, scientist at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center and scientific director of the CARTaGENE project.

“In the process of confirming our findings, we were also able to provide one of the first direct estimates of the human mutation rate,” continues Dr. Awadalla. “The number of mutations per generation is extremely small but on the order of what was previously indirectly inferred for human-chimpanzee comparisons. We also discovered that mutations can be introduced when cell lines are produced, which creates false-positive results. This artefact can significantly bias results and therefore great care needs to taken when analyzing these samples.”

About de novo mutations:

Mutations are alterations of the cell’s DNA that can occur because of errors in the DNA replication, which happen prior to cell division. Once DNA is changed, this mutation is passed down to a next generation. A mutation that is newly formed and therefore not inherited from either parent is called a de novo mutation.

More information: The paper, “Direct Measure of the de novo Mutation Rate in Autism and Schizophrenia cohorts,” published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, was authored by Philip Awadalla, et al. http://www.cell.com/AJHG

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news202031239.html

MARINA BIOTECH

2010-08-27T22:25:00.000-07:00

The Autism News

By Pudget Sound Business Journal

Marina Biotech Inc., which used to be known as MDRNA, said it’s sold patent rights and technology related to its Carbetocin asset for $750,000 upfront in a deal that could be worth up to $27 million.
The Bothell biotech (NASDAQ: MRNA) sold the asset to Cypress Bioscience Inc. (NASDAQ: CYPB) of San Diego. Cypress will be responsible for the future development of Carbetocin, which Cypress describes as “a potential breakthrough treatment for the core symptoms of autism.” Cypress also could pay Marina Biotech royalties on commercial sales of Carbetocin.
“The sale of our Carbetocin assets to Cypress is another example of our efforts to monetize the legacy assets of our predecessor company,” said J. Michael French, president and CEO of Marina Biotech, referring to the assets of Nastech Pharmaceuticals, the predecessor company to Marina.

Source: http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2010/08/23/daily27.html

Missing Cat Returns Home to Girl with Autism

2010-08-27T22:23:00.001-07:00

The Autism News

By ABC 13

Lynchburg, VA – Last Thursday, we brought you the heart-wrenching story of a girl with severe autism who was distraught over her missing cat. Now, Boots and 12-year-old Shyann are back under the same roof.

Boots can’t exactly say where he’s been for the past nine days. But he didn’t seem to go far. A nearby neighbor spotted him Wednesday night.

“I tried to get it and it got away and it ran over there in front of the house. We kept looking for it,” said neighbor John Keehan.

He called Jackie Paris, who rushed over.

“I started clanking my bowls and everything and the next thing you know, there he comes out of the woods, and I snatched him up, and I cried,” Paris said.

Shyann was asleep when Jackie arrived home. But in the morning, the child who had been so visibly upset was now content.

“No fussing, no nothing. She let me get her dressed. She was petting him and he was rubbing up against her, and I said are you happy your cat is home? She said [nods head] and I said, me too,” Paris said.

And he’s the real thing, not a replacement. But Jackie had plenty of offers. She got at least 50 calls since our first story aired.

“They’ve offered me animals, their own animals. Just people calling to know if I’d found the cat, that I was in their prayers.”

Shyann and Boots are now back to having a relationship that doesn’t require a conversation.

And Jackie, who is still taking in the kindness of the ABC 13 viewers, is speechless.

“Words can’t express how I feel right now, my heart is full, my soul is full, my daughter is happy, our cat is home,” Paris said.

Boots didn’t seem to be hurt, but he is a little thinner after his disappearance. He has an appointment with the vet Friday.

Source: http://www.wset.com/Global/story.asp?S=13051385

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2010-07-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

Thieves steal autistic boy’s speaking device

2010-07-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

Thieves steal autistic boy’s speaking device

July 13th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Jake Whittenberg | KING5

BELLINGHAM, Wash. – What appeared to be a normal car break-in for Sean Jones turned out to be much worse. Not because of the damage, but what was stolen.

“This is really devastating”, said Jones.

A device used by his autistic son Sheamus, 9, was stolen from his car on July 4th. Sheamus has severe Non-Verbal Autism. In recent
months his parents were able to afford a device called a “Mini-Merc”. It’s similar to an IPad. Sheamus carried it with him as a way to speak.

“He would touch a picture on the screen and it would speak for him,” said Sheamus’ mother, Frances Eustis. “It took a long time to get him comfortable using it, so the time lost not using it is huge. He really struggles expressing what he wants.”

Sean is offering a reward for the return of the device. It’s expensive and difficult to replace.

“I’m not looking to press charges or get anyone in trouble,” he said. “I just want the thing back for Sheamus.”

“Just drop it off somewhere, just call anonymously and leave it so that he can have it back,” said Eustis.

Source: http://www.king5.com/news/Thieves-Steal-Autistic-Boys-Speaking-Device-98364384.html

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Evelyn Towry, 8-Year-Old Autistic Girl, Arrested and Handcuffed for Throwing Tantrum, Autistic Teen Jailed For Officer Assault

2010-07-13T17:57:00.000-07:00

Autistic Man’s Family Sues Over Food Stamp Cuts

July 13th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By The INDY Channel
ACLU Files Suit Against FSSA
INDIANAPOLIS — The family of an Indianapolis man with autism is suing the state’s social services agency, saying it illegally cuts grocery benefits it pays to developmentally disabled people enrolled in a Medicaid program based on how much they receive in food stamps.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed the lawsuit against the Family and Social Services Administration on behalf of 26-year-old Michael Dick last week in Marion County Superior Court, 6News’ Derrik Thomas reported.
Dick has been severely autistic since birth, is nonverbal and functions on the level of a 6- or 7-year-old, his family said.
He’s enrolled in Indiana’s Developmental Disabilities Waiver Program and receives food stamps from the federal government.
But his family claims that when the federal program increased its benefits by $1.25 a day in 2009, the state deducted that same amount from his living allowance.
“If he gets a cost of living increase in his food stamps, they decrease his residential living allowance, so he gets no benefit out of the cost of living increase,” said Steven Dick, Mike’s father and lawyer, who is co-chairing the case. “He’s allowed a grocery allowance of $6.57 a day, about $45 a week. That’s an extremely modest grocery allowance.”
The suit contends that federal law says food stamp benefits cannot be considered income.
FSSA spokesman Marcus Barlow called the lawsuit baseless, saying the agency has a responsibility to make sure taxpayer dollars are used in the best way possible.
“We have a finite amount of resources. We have a finite amount of money to spend on programs like this one,” he said. “We have to make sure that when someone has an increase, we can get that to someone else.”
The suit seeks class action status for others in the Developmental Disabilities Waiver program and asks a judge to stop counting food stamps as income.
Source: http://www.theindychannel.com/news/24246437/detail.html
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Tough time finding work for autistic Ohio adults

July 13th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Rita Price | Dayton Daily News

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Her resume attracted plenty of attention.

Hospitals, technology companies and a major research organization indicated that Chelsea Ridenour — computer and math whiz, summa cum laude graduate of Capital University — looked good on paper. Some called for interviews.

And then, suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter that she is intelligent and dependable and tenacious. Ridenour can communicate with a computer in six languages, but she can’t chat her way through a face-to-face meeting with a stranger.

“People try to be nice. They’re not deliberately not nice,” the Hilliard resident said. “They just don’t understand.”

Ridenour is among a rising population of young adults whose coming-of-age stories are at best complicated and oftentimes heartbreaking. They are grown-ups with Asperger’s syndrome and other autism disorders, conditions that society seems to handle best when boys and girls are young and in school.

But Ridenour is 23. What she needs is a job.

“My pitch always has been, ‘There’s a buyer for every house. Why don’t we find the buyers for these kids who want to work?’” said Tom Fish of the Ohio State University Nisonger Center, a support and research institute for people with developmental disabilities.

“The challenge with people on the (autism) spectrum, of course, is social interaction,” he said. “People look at these kids and say, ‘Be more social.’ Well, they can’t.”

Many young people with Asperger’s syndrome, or “high-functioning” forms of autism, emerge from years of struggle, bullying and isolation in high school only to find that the adult world can be even more difficult. According to the Ohio Center for Autism and Low Incidence, national studies have found that only 6 percent to 14 percent of adults with autism are competitively employed.

Yet many possess normal — and in a lot of cases, superior — intellectual abilities.

The surge in autism diagnoses – the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the incidence at one in 110 American children – first was felt in education systems.

Now, families and government agencies are trying to chart the course to employment.

“We weren’t ready,” said Chris Filler, transition coordinator at the Ohio Center for Autism. “This wave of what used to be preschoolers with autism is moving on, and we’re really scrambling to meet that need.”

Families report frustration as they turn to agencies such as the Rehabilitation Services Commission of Ohio; its history is rooted in finding jobs for people with traditional disabilities: hearing loss, mobility problems and blindness, for example.

County boards of developmental disabilities serve some adults with autism, but those with mild forms such as Asperger’s might not qualify for services and the waivers that pay for them. Yet their “social dyslexia,” as some describe the condition, can be crippling in the work world.

Ellen Ridenour, Chelsea’s mother, said the family sought help from the commission’s Bureau of Vocational Services in 2008 but found that their caseworker knew little about Asperger’s syndrome. Although Chelsea had recently graduated from college with a 3.9 grade-point average, her family was told that she was “not competitively employable.”

Others have reported similar experiences.

“I don’t think they have any idea yet of the challenges of Asperger’s,” said Nancy Beu, a North Side woman whose 28-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, went through many difficult evaluations and interviews before getting a job at a YMCA.

“They don’t do well with job interviews. That’s overwhelming for them. Some of the case managers think, ‘They’re not employable.’ Well, most of these young people have wonderful skills. Elizabeth always proves herself.”

The commission’s administrator, Michael Rench, met with some families and told them the agency is working to improve training and find better ways to help clients with autism.

“We recognize the frustration,” he said.

But, at the same time, the commission remains obligated to serve the most-significantly disabled first. “If they have a master’s degree and drive a car, it can be hard to determine how they qualify for our services,” Rench said.

The commission served 860 Ohioans with autism last year. Officials say 122 cases were “successfully closed,” meaning that the workers maintained competitive employment for at least 90 days.

Filler said that’s often not long enough for a young adult with autism to adjust. She worries that traditional time frames and limited budgets allow cases to be closed before the workers attain stability.

National employment studies have found that, among recent high-school graduates with disabilities, those with autism have the highest job-retention rates after more than a year, Filler said. But two to six months into the job, they fare the worst.

Brian Cloppert had the ability. What he needed was someone to help him find a groove, to put abstract concepts into concrete terms.

“He’s a very bright young man, has a lot of knowledge, skill and capability,” said Pat Batdorf, an on-the-job training specialist at the Franklin County Board of Developmental Disabilities who works with Cloppert. “It’s just a matter of connecting the dots.”

For three years, Cloppert, a 27-year-old who has Asperger’s syndrome, has worked as a supply coordinator at the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital, where he handles inventory for four floors.

“Of all the jobs I’ve trained in 25 years, this is probably the most complicated,” Batdorf said. “But he’s doing great.”

Cloppert’s family agrees that he is fortunate to have long-term job coaching, which isn’t easy to come by. And not everyone who gets the help is happy to land jobs that seem below their abilities.

“We have one man who has a master’s degree, and right now, he’s doing some janitorial work,” said Claudia Ross, the board’s employment-services director. “He’s not happy, and we know it; but socially, he’s so unskilled.”

Filler and others see some solutions in earlier job planning — in middle school, not after high school or college — and by helping employers understand the strengths of many people with autism.

“Small-business owners,” Rench said, “can make adaptations quicker than a corporation. They’re more than willing to tolerate the quirkiness.”

Chelsea had to leave one promising job because she was required to work on the help desk. “If they’d let her do programming, she’d be great,” said her dad, Rick Ridenour. “But the help desk? She’s phone-phobic.”

His wife said she hopes the lessons learned by her family can help others understand that academic success isn’t enough of a base to build on. She wishes that Chelsea had had earlier work experience and support.

“We didn’t think we’d have to do all this,” Ellen Ridenour said. “We thought employers would be looking for skills, not the ability to socialize around the water cooler.”

Chelsea recently learned that she is eligible, at least temporarily, for some job help from the developmental disabilities board, and she might try an internship for math- and science-skilled adults with disabilities.

She’s trying to forget the person who, after a strained conversation about employment, “decided that I didn’t really want a job.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Source: http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/ohio-news/tough-time-finding-work-for-autistic-ohio-adults-809437.html

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Easier and earlier diagnoses of autism

July 13th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

The University of Calgary may have found a way to make an easier autism diagnoses.

By CTV – Calgary

The University of Calgary may have found a way to make an easier autism diagnoses.

The researchers are interested in how children with autism develop language skills, and if there’s some markers that parents and doctors could look for that would help in making a diagnosis.

Two-year-old John Beaven has autism.

He was at a higher risk because his older brother has the disorder.

John’s parents have enrolled their youngest son in a study of siblings so researchers can see how language develops in kids with autism, and perhaps find an easier and earlier way of diagnosing the disease.

Earlier diagnosis means earlier intervention.

If you are interested in learning more about this study or participating in it please contact The Speech Lab.

They are looking for new participants, specifically families who have an older child already diagnosed with autism and a younger sibling between the ages of two months and two year.

Please call 403-220-2444 or go to:

http://psych.ucalgary.ca/speechlab/autismcontact.html

Source: http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100713/CGY_diagnoses_autism_100713/20100713/?hub=CalgaryHome

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Autistic Teen Jailed For Officer Assault

July 13th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Stacey Cohan | My FOX D.C.

Mother Reaches Out Through Blog

STAFFORD, Va. – An 18-year-old autistic man sits in the Rappohannock County Jail and his mother is fighting for his release.

Reginald Latson is charged with assaulting a police officer.

Latson’s mother is on a mission to free her son and has launched an internet campaign that is drawing national interest.

The local NAACP is helping, even though the issue isn’t color of the man’s skin.

From the time he was small, Reginald “Neli” Latson’s mom knew he was different.

She knew from the small things, from teaching a child how to tie his shoes to eating with a spoon, but it took years of frustration and special education to get a hard diagnosis-autism, specifically Aspergers Syndrome.

“That brought me to tears because I realized for the first time…this was my son,” said mom Lisa Alexander.

With help, she says Neli improved.

He often walked to the local library which he loved, but on May 24, someone called police to report a suspicious man with a gun outside the library.

When police arrived, Neli had left but a high school resource officer nearby found him.

What happened next landed Neli in jail.

This is what he told his mom while he was being questioned.

“He said ‘I was attacked, I didn’t mean for this to happen’ then the phone went dead,” said Alexander.

The Stafford sheriff’s office says Neli was violent; the officer used pepper spray. Neli stole it, used it and broke the officers’ ankle.

No gun ever was found.

His mother says she doesn’t know exactly what happened, but she says nearly two months in custody is too long for her autistic son.

“I’m terrified,” said Alexander. “He was in Western State for a while, he’s very confused.
He doesn’t know why all this is happening to him.”

“I was there at the hearing,” said Melvin Allen Sr. of NAACP. “They told him he could not afford an attorney one would be appointed. He couldn’t understand what they meant.”

Shortly after his arrest, the court moved Neli to Western State Mental Hospital which is where a video was made for his mom’s internet campaign to win his freedom.

After the video hit YouTube, Neli was taken out of the hospital and put back in jail.

The Stafford Sheriff’s Office declined an interview but says, “when this case goes to court, it will become abundantly clear that not only did the deputy who was assaulted act in a completely professional an appropriate manner, but all law enforcement involved acted in a professional and appropriate manner.”

According to the national organization ” Autism Speaks ,” conflicts between autistic individuals and law enforcement has become so problematic that there is an education program already underway to training officers to deal with autistic persons.

Source: http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/virginia/autistic-teen-jailed-for-officer-assault-071310

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Evelyn Towry, 8-Year-Old Autistic Girl, Arrested and Handcuffed for Throwing Tantrum

July 13th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Caleb Hannan | Seattle Weekly – Blogs

Little 8-year-old Evelyn Towry just wanted to be able to go to the party like all the other kids. But for some reason, a teacher at the Boise third-grader’s elementary school wouldn’t let her while she was wearing her favorite sweatshirt, a hoodie that her mom had sewn cow ears on to look like a cartoon character. Instead, the teacher put Evelyn in a classroom and asked two staffers to watch her and make sure she didn’t leave.

This wasn’t cool with Evelyn. She tried to leave the room but staffers blocked her path. And it was then that her parents say their daughter — who has Asperger’s, a high-functioning form of autism — freaked out.

According to the staffers, Evelyn spit on and “inappropriately touched” her two guards. Probably the kind of behavior that happens every day in schools all across the country. And likely not to leave a mark unless the kid happens to be the daughter of an NFL lineman which, based on these pictures, she is not.

But the panicked flailing of a scared little girl was apparently too much for the grown-ups to handle on this day. As the school’s principal called police and asked to have Evelyn arrested on suspicion of battery.

The cops, presumably not possessing a single critical-thinking bone in their bodies, went along with the administrator’s wacky demand, patting and frisking Evelyn before putting her in what we can only imagine were kiddie-sized handcuffs

A prosecutor wisely refused to press charges. And Evelyn was released to her parents before having to spend too much time in the county’s juvenile lockup.

They’re now suing the school district and the sheriff’s department for violating the Americans With Disabilities Act. But really, it’d be just as accurate to say they’re suing for a lack of common sense.

Evelyn Towry’s tantrums are apparently so fearsome it takes a deputy and handcuffs to restrain her.

Source: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/07/cops_arrest_and_handcuff_8-yea.php

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2010-07-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

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Students, meet your new teacher, Mr. Robot ,Idaho parents sue over 8-year-old’s school arrest, Holding your breath and testing the limits of autism

2010-07-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

Students, meet your new teacher, Mr. Robot

July 12th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Benedict Carey And John Markoff | NDTV

Los Angeles: The boy, a dark-haired 6-year-old, is playing with a new companion.

The two hit it off quickly — unusual for the 6-year-old, who has autism — and the boy is imitating his playmate’s every move, now nodding his head, now raising his arms.

“Like Simon Says,” says the autistic boy’s mother, seated next to him on the floor.

Yet soon he begins to withdraw; in a video of the session, he covers his ears and slumps against the wall.

But the companion, a three-foot-tall robot being tested at the University of Southern California, maintains eye contact and performs another move, raising one arm up high.

Up goes the boy’s arm — and now he is smiling at the machine.

In a handful of laboratories around the world, computer scientists are developing robots like this one: highly programmed machines that can engage people and teach them simple skills, including household tasks, vocabulary or, as in the case of the boy, playing, elementary imitation and taking turns.

So far, the teaching has been very basic, delivered mostly in experimental settings, and the robots are still works in progress, a hackers’ gallery of moving parts that, like mechanical savants, each do some things well at the expense of others.

Yet the most advanced models are fully autonomous, guided by artificial intelligence software like motion tracking and speech recognition, which can make them just engaging enough to rival humans at some teaching tasks.

Researchers say the pace of innovation is such that these machines should begin to learn as they teach, becoming the sort of infinitely patient, highly informed instructors that would be effective in subjects like foreign language or in repetitive therapies used to treat developmental problems like autism.

Several countries have been testing teaching machines in classrooms. South Korea, known for its enthusiasm for technology, is “hiring” hundreds of robots as teacher aides and classroom playmates and is experimenting with robots that would teach English.

Already, these advances have stirred dystopian visions, along with the sort of ethical debate usually confined to science fiction. “I worry that if kids grow up being taught by robots and viewing technology as the instructor,” said Mitchel Resnick, head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “they will see it as the master.”

Most computer scientists reply that they have neither the intention, nor the ability, to replace human teachers. The great hope for robots, said Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, “is that with the right kind of technology at a critical period in a child’s development, they could supplement learning in the classroom.”

Lessons From RUBI

“Kenka,” says a childlike voice. “Ken-ka.”

Standing on a polka-dot carpet at a preschool on the campus of the University of California, San Diego, a robot named RUBI is teaching Finnish to a 3-year-old boy.

RUBI looks like a desktop computer come to life: its screen-torso, mounted on a pair of shoes, sprouts mechanical arms and a lunchbox-size head, fitted with video cameras, a microphone and voice capability. RUBI wears a bandanna around its neck and a fixed happy-face smile, below a pair of large, plastic eyes.

It picks up a white sneaker and says kenka, the Finnish word for shoe, before returning it to the floor. “Feel it; I’m a kenka.”

In a video of this exchange, the boy picks up the sneaker, says “kenka, kenka” — and holds up the shoe for the robot to see.

In person they are not remotely humanlike, most of today’s social robots. Some speak well, others not at all. Some move on two legs, others on wheels. Many look like escapees from the Island of Misfit Toys.

They make for very curious company. The University of Southern California robot used with autistic children tracks a person throughout a room, approaching indirectly and pulling up just short of personal space, like a cautious child hoping to join a playground game.

The machine’s only words are exclamations (“Uh huh” for those drawing near; “Awww” for those moving away). Still, it’s hard to shake the sense that some living thing is close by. That sensation, however vague, is enough to facilitate a real exchange of information, researchers say.

In the San Diego classroom where RUBI has taught Finnish, researchers are finding that the robot enables preschool children to score significantly better on tests, compared with less interactive learning, as from tapes.

Preliminary results suggest that these students “do about as well as learning from a human teacher,” said Javier Movellan, director of the Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego. “Social interaction is apparently a very important component of learning at this age.”

Like any new kid in class, RUBI took some time to find a niche. Children swarmed the robot when it first joined the classroom: instant popularity. But by the end of the day, a couple of boys had yanked off its arms.

“The problem with autonomous machines is that people are so unpredictable, especially children,” said Corinna E. Lathan, chief executive of AnthroTronix, a Maryland company that makes a remotely controlled robot, CosmoBot, to assist in therapy with developmentally delayed children. “It’s impossible to anticipate everything that can happen.”

The RUBI team hit upon a solution one part mechanical and two parts psychological. The engineers programmed RUBI to cry when its arms were pulled. Its young playmates quickly backed off at the sound.

If the sobbing continued, the children usually shifted gears and came forward — to deliver a hug.

Re-armed and newly sensitive, RUBI was ready to test as a teacher. In a paper published last year, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Joensuu in Finland found that the robot significantly improved the vocabulary of nine toddlers.

After testing the youngsters’ knowledge of 20 words and introducing them to the robot, the researchers left RUBI to operate on its own. The robot showed images on its screen and instructed children to associate them with words.

After 12 weeks, the children’s knowledge of the 10 words taught by RUBI increased significantly, while their knowledge of 10 control words did not. “The effect was relatively large, a reduction in errors of more than 25 percent,” the authors concluded.

Researchers in social robotics — a branch of computer science devoted to enhancing communication between humans and machines — at Honda Labs in Mountain View, Calif., have found a similar result with their robot, a three-foot character called Asimo, which looks like a miniature astronaut. In one 20-minute session the machine taught grade-school students how to set a table — improving their accuracy by about 25 percent, a recent study found.

At the University of Southern California, researchers have had their robot, Bandit, interact with children with autism. In a pilot study, four children with the diagnosis spent about 30 minutes with this robot when it was programmed to be socially engaging and another half-hour when it behaved randomly, more like a toy. The results are still preliminary, said David Feil-Seifer, who ran the study, but suggest that the children spoke more often and spent more time in direct interaction when the robot was responsive, compared with when it acted randomly.

Making the Connection

In a lab at the University of Washington, Morphy, a pint-size robot, catches the eye of an infant girl and turns to look at a toy.

No luck; the girl does not follow its gaze, as she would a human’s.

In a video the researchers made of the experiment, the girl next sees the robot “waving” to an adult. Now she’s interested; the sight of the machine interacting registers it as a social being in the young brain. She begins to track what the robot is looking at, to the right, the left, down. The machine has elicited what scientists call gaze-following, an essential first step of social exchange.

“Before they have language, infants pay attention to what I call informational hotspots,” where their mother or father is looking, said Andrew N. Meltzoff, a psychologist who is co-director of university’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. This, he said, is how learning begins.

This basic finding, to be published later this year, is one of dozens from a field called affective computing that is helping scientists discover exactly which features of a robot make it most convincingly “real” as a social partner, a helper, a teacher.

“It turns out that making a robot more closely resemble a human doesn’t get you better social interactions,” said Terrence J. Sejnowski, a neuroscientist at University of California, San Diego. The more humanlike machines look, the more creepy they can seem.

The machine’s behavior is what matters, Dr. Sejnowski said. And very subtle elements can make a big difference.

The timing of a robot’s responses is one. The San Diego researchers found that if RUBI reacted to a child’s expression or comment too fast, it threw off the interaction; the same happened if the response was too slow. But if the robot reacted within about a second and a half, child and machine were smoothly in sync.

Physical rhythm is crucial. In recent experiments at a day care center in Japan, researchers have shown that having a robot simply bob or shake at the same rhythm a child is rocking or moving can quickly engage even very fearful children with autism.

“The child begins to notice something in that synchronous behavior and open up,” said Marek Michalowski of Carnegie Mellon University, who collaborated on the studies. Once that happens, he said, “you can piggyback social behaviors onto the interaction, like eye contact, joint attention, turn taking, things these kids have trouble with.”

One way to begin this process is to have a child mimic the physical movements of a robot and vice versa. In a continuing study financed by the National Institutes of Health, scientists at the University of Connecticut are conducting therapy sessions for children with autism using a French robot called Nao, a two-foot humanoid that looks like an elegant Transformer toy. The robot, remotely controlled by a therapist, demonstrates martial arts kicks and chops and urges the child to follow suit; then it encourages the child to lead.

“I just love robots, and I know this is therapy, but I don’t know — I think it’s just fun,” said Sam, an 8-year-old from New Haven with Asperger’s syndrome, who recently engaged in the therapy.

This simple mimicry seems to build a kind of trust, and increase sociability, said Anjana Bhat, an assistant professor in the department of education who is directing the experiment. “Social interactions are so dependent on whether someone is in sync with you,” Dr. Bhat said. “You walk fast, they walk fast; you go slowly, they go slowly — and soon you are interacting, and maybe you are learning.”

Personality matters, too, on both sides. In their studies with Asimo, the Honda robot, researchers have found that when the robot teacher is “cooperative” (“I am going to put the water glass here; do you think you can help me by placing the water glass on the same place on your side?”), children 4 to 6 did much better than when Asimo lectured them, or allowed them to direct themselves (“place the cup and saucer anywhere you like”). The teaching approach made less difference with students ages 7 to 10.

“The fact is that children’s reactions to a robot may vary widely, by age and by individual,” said Sandra Okita, a Columbia University researcher and co-author of the study.

If robots are to be truly effective guides, in short, they will have to do what any good teacher does: learn from students when a lesson is taking hold and when it is falling flat.

Learning From Humans

“Do you have any questions, Simon?”

On a recent Monday afternoon, Crystal Chao, a graduate student in robotics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, was teaching a five-foot robot named Simon to put away toys. She had given some instructions — the flower goes in the red bin, the block in the blue bin — and Simon had correctly put away several of these objects. But now the robot was stumped, its doughboy head tipped forward, its fawn eyes blinking at a green toy water sprinkler.

Dr. Chao repeated her query, perhaps the most fundamental in all of education: Do you have any questions?

“Let me see,” said Simon, in a childlike machine voice, reaching to pick up the sprinkler. “Can you tell me where this goes?”

“In the green bin,” came the answer.

Simon nodded, dropping it in that bin.

“Makes sense,” the robot said.

In addition to tracking motion and recognizing language, Simon accumulates knowledge through experience.

Just as humans can learn from machines, machines can learn from humans, said Andrea Thomaz, an assistant professor of interactive computing at Georgia Tech who directs the project. For instance, she said, scientists could equip a machine to understand the nonverbal cues that signal “I’m confused” or “I have a question” — giving it some ability to monitor how its lesson is being received.

To ask, as Dr. Chao did: Do you have any questions?

This ability to monitor and learn from experience is the next great frontier for social robotics — and it probably depends, in large part, on unraveling the secrets of how the human brain accumulates information during infancy.

In San Diego, researchers are trying to develop a human-looking robot with sensors that approximate the complexity of a year-old infant’s abilities to feel, see and hear. Babies learn, seemingly effortlessly, by experimenting, by mimicking, by moving their limbs. Could a machine with sufficient artificial intelligence do the same? And what kind of learning systems would be sufficient?

The research group has bought a $70,000 robot, built by a Japanese company, that is controlled by a pneumatic pressure system that will act as its senses, in effect helping it map out the environment by “feeling” in addition to “seeing” with embedded cameras. And that is the easy part.

The much steeper challenge is to program the machine to explore, as infants do, and build on moment-to-moment experience. Ideally its knowledge will be cumulative, not only recalling the layout of a room or a house, but using that stored knowledge to make educated guesses about a new room.

The researchers are shooting for nothing less than capturing the foundation of human learning — or, at least, its artificial intelligence equivalent. If robots can learn to learn, on their own and without instruction, they can in principle make the kind of teachers that are responsive to the needs of a class, even an individual child.

Parents and educators would certainly have questions about robots’ effectiveness as teachers, as well as ethical concerns about potential harm they might do. But if social robots take off in the way other computing technologies have, parents may have more pointed ones: Does this robot really “get” my child? Is its teaching style right for my son’s needs, my daughter’s talents?

That is, the very questions they would ask about any teacher.

Source: http://www.ndtv.com/article/sci-tech/students-meet-your-new-teacher-mr-robot-36799

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5 year-old hit-and-run victim released from hospital

July 12th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By KARE 11

ST. PAUL– It would not be a stretch to call the recovery ‘miraculous’.

Five-year-old Godswill Udoh is home after spending four days in the hospital recovering from a hit and run in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood.

It happened Thursday night just before 6:30 p.m. at the intersection of Marion and Thomas Avenues.

“The impact knocked the child onto the hood of the car. The child struck the windshield went over the car and landed in the street behind it,” says Sgt. Pete Crum with the St. Paul Police Department.

Godswill spent the weekend at Gillette Children’s Hospital, recovering from bumps, bruises, and trauma to his head.

His parents say Godswill has autism, and somehow managed to climb out the window of their ground floor apartment and into the busy intersection.

Police describe the vehicle as an older model car, possibly a Honda Civic. It was red or maroon in color with gray trim around the bottom. The car had a small spoiler and large exhaust pipe. There was damage to the passenger side headlight.

If you know anything about this hit and run, call St. Paul Police.

Source: http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=857607&catid=14

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Idaho parents sue over 8-year-old’s school arrest

July 12th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Rebecca Boone | The Alva Review-Courriel/Newsgram

BOISE, Idaho — The parents of an 8-year-old autistic girl who was arrested at her northern Idaho elementary school are suing the school district and the sheriff’s department in federal court, contending the agencies violated the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Spring Towry and Charles Towry, along with their daughter, Evelyn, filed the lawsuit Friday in Idaho’s U.S. District Court against the Lake Pend Oreille School District and the Bonner County Sheriff’s Department.

The family claims the district discriminated against Evelyn because of her disability, and that the school failed to make reasonable modifications so she could access to school services and facilities. They are asking for unspecified monetary damages.

“The school district denies any wrongdoing in this case and feels that in accordance with various precedents set forth in state and federal law, the school will ultimately be vindicated,” said Brian Julian, the attorney for the school district. The attorney representing the Bonner County sheriff’s department did not immediately return a call seeking comment Monday.

The case arose Jan. 9, 2009, when the Kootenai Elementary School third-grader was arrested, handcuffed and taken to the county’s juvenile lockup on suspicion of battery. School staffers said Evelyn had spit on and inappropriately touched two instructors. The child was later released to her parents, and the prosecutor’s office dropped the charge against her.

After the incident, Charles Towry said his daughter has Asperger’s Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. He said that on the day of the altercation, she was wearing a hooded sweatshirt her mother had decorated with sewn-on ears to look like an animated cow character from the movie “Barnyard.” She wasn’t allowed into a school party because of the sweatshirt, although the lawsuit didn’t explain why.

Evelyn was placed in a separate classroom instead, Towry said, and when she tried to leave, staffers restrained her. Towry said that caused the girl to panic and react violently.

According to the lawsuit, Evelyn’s teacher, Louise Zumuda, and her principal, Betsy Walker, called police and asked to have her arrested and charged “because they felt they were not getting their point across” to the child and her parents after creating a plan to address behavioral issues. The Towrys say two deputies arrested, handcuffed and patted down Evelyn, refusing Spring Towry’s request that they release the child to her.

That caused the family severe emotional distress, the Towrys contend.

Source: http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?show=localnews&pnpID=348&NewsID=983244&CategoryID=20366&on=1

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Holding your breath and testing the limits of autism

July 12th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Susan Senator | The Sydney Morning Herald

A bike ride led to new understanding between mother and son.

On holiday in Cape Cod last weekend, I decided to ride my bike into the next town. As I gathered my helmet, phone and water bottle, I saw my adult son, Nat, was watching me. I knew he would come along for the ride if I asked him, but I hesitated.

Nat has fairly severe autism. Like so many of his skills, his cycling ability is erratic. He knows how to brake, but he does not know how to shift gears. He obeys traffic signals but is foggy about the more subtle, human signals. Or he seems foggy – I have never been able to test this definitively. But then, how do you test something that could endanger him or others? Hang back and see if he stops and looks both ways at a small side street with no stop light?

What about the other bikers, families and dogs along the way, all of whom he would have to navigate carefully? How do you catch someone before he hurts himself if you’re also on a bike?

The answer is: You don’t. I know because I’ve tried.

When Nat learnt how to ride, at age seven, he was merely going back and forth on our street, bookended by my husband, Ned, and my father. When they finally decided to step aside and see how Nat did, he took off – all the way around the block. There was some shouting and then screaming for him to stop and come back, but he kept going.

There was no time to get my bike, so I took off after him on foot. I ran fast, following him in time to watch him go around the first corner just right and stay on the footpath. But soon he pedalled out of sight, turning the second corner. I realised then, as I felt that leaden, incapacitating fear that our bodies seem to reserve for our children, that my son was, for the next moments, on his own, and that I had no idea what he would do.

In all his seven years, Nat had never once been on his own – in any way. We just did not know how to find out if he would be OK. A normally developing child can give signals of what he can and cannot do, of what he wonders about and what confuses him.

Nat could not do those things. I knew all this and yet as I rushed back to our home, where I hoped he would end up, I felt a flicker of something other than fear. A rebellious voice in me challenged: Why wouldn’t he be OK? He knows how to ride and where to go. And when I reached our driveway, Ned voiced the very same point; he reminded me that even though this was terrifying, there was no reason to think that Nat would not continue around the third corner and come back on his own. He called it a ”calculated risk”. I knew what he meant. I had just never thought to apply the concept to Nat.

I waited and watched for Nat, hoping Ned was right. A few seconds later, Nat rounded the corner and pedalled towards us, with perfect biker’s form, steering, braking and stopping right where he should.

He was grinning with excitement and delight. He knew, even without the words to express it, that he had accomplished something.

I felt I had accomplished something too, in this moment of letting go. It was the first time I understood that Nat could grow and develop away from me, and on his terms. It is a lesson I have had to learn again and again because each time there is risk involved.

So I took Nat with me the other day on my holiday bike ride – reluctantly, of course, because my old fears cling to me like a sweaty T-shirt. But he wanted to go with me, so how could I say no? Once we started riding, the spectre of little mischievous Nat evaporated, replaced by the reality of solid, stolid grown-up Nat. Nat who pedals slowly and steadily; who still doesn’t talk much and certainly doesn’t allow you to know his thoughts. Nat who doesn’t walk his bike or stand on the pedals but just presses harder. This is the man he has grown into, dogged and competent, still limited in many ways by his autism – but more so by how we all underestimate him. Especially me.

I thought about that while riding behind him. But mostly I just breathed, a little more tense than I probably needed to be, watching out for him from a few metres back, while he chugged along, his yellow shirt lifting in the breeze like a sail.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/holding-your-breath-and-testing-the-limits-of-autism-20100712-107y7.html

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Evolution determines infant brain growth

July 12th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

Research suggest that certain regions of the brain might develop more quickly in young infants for evolutionary reasons.

By Cosmos

WASHINGTON: The parts of the human brain that grow the most during infancy and childhood are nearly identical to the brain regions that have changed the most when humans are compared to primates, a recent study has shown.

Researchers made the discovery as they conducted a study to try to better understand abnormal brain development in premature babies and assess the long-term effects of premature birth on brain development.

The number of babies born before term in the United States has risen steadily to reach 12% of all births, said Terrie Inder from Washington University in St Louis and lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Disorders due to brain structure

Babies born prematurely face a greater risk of having learning disabilities, attention deficits, behavioral problems and cognitive impairments, according to the researchers.

“This study and the data that we’re gathering now could provide us with very powerful tools for understanding what goes wrong structurally in a wide range of childhood disorders,” Inder said.

The researchers hope to gain insight into the after-effects of premature birth and even conditions such as autism, attention-deficit disorder or reading disabilities, they said.

Uneven growth points to evolution

The researchers used a technique called surface reconstruction to compare regions and structures in different brains.

In analysing the brain scans of 12 full-term babies and comparing them to the scans of 12 healthy young adults, the researchers found that the cerebral cortex – the wrinkled area on the surface of the brain responsible for higher mental functions – grew unevenly.

A quarter to a third of the cortex expanded around twice as much as other cortical areas during normal development.

The findings reveal “evolution’s imprint on the human brain” because the rapidly developing parts of the brain are also those that differ most when the human brain is compared to primates’.

Gaining the upper hand

High-growth regions have been linked to advanced mental functions such as language and reasoning and traits that make humans uniquely human.

Previous studies have shown that many of the brain’s high-growth regions “are expanded in humans as a result of recent evolutionary changes that made the human brain much larger than that of any other primate,” said David Van Essen, one of the study’s authors.

Brain growth dictated by early needs

Van Essen, who developed the surface reconstruction technique used to scan the brain regions, speculated that the full physical growth of the rapid-growth regions may be delayed somewhat to allow them to be shaped by early life experiences.

Inder hypothesised that certain regions of the brain might develop more quickly in young infants for evolutionary reasons.

For instance, the part of the brain responsible for vision, which is necessary to allow a baby to bond with his mother during nursing, develops early, while brain functions less important early in life come later.

Source: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3562/evolution-determines-infant-brain-growth

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Mother Sentenced To Four Years For Starving Daughter To Death

July 12th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Scott Theisen | KSAX-TV

A Sandstone woman will go to prison for starving her disabled daughter to death.

Ludusky Sue Hotchkiss was sentenced to four years in prison for manslaughter. She pleaded guilty in a plea deal with prosecutors in May. Two lesser charges were dismissed.

Prosecutors say her 10-year-old daughter, Lakesha Victor, was just 31 pounds when she died of malnutrition, dehydration and pneumonia in 2006.

The girl had cerebral palsy, autism, a seizure disorder and ate through a feeding tube.

Source: http://ksax.com/article/stories/S1648774.shtml?cat=10230

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Authorities search for 5-year old abducted at gunpoint

2010-07-12T01:13:00.000-07:00

Lake Ozark (KSDK) -- Authorities issued an endangered person advisory, after a Missouri boy, 5, was taken from his father at gunpoint Saturday. It happened at his home in Lake Ozark.

Authorities believe the people responsible are the child's own mother, Elizabeth Denman, a convicted felon, and her new boyfriend, Mark Cochran, a registered sex offender.
Devon Denman was last seen wearing a black and blue shirt and camouflage sweatpants.
His aunt, Jennifer Wilson says, "He's four. Actually five, today is his birthday. And he's running around with convicted felons on his birthday and not with his dad where he should be."
The child's father was just awarded custody last week. Elizabeth Denman's family thinks this was the trigger.
Wilson says, "I think she's not happy with the fact that paul got full custody and she wants him. And she's going to take whatever she wants whether it's good for the baby or not."
Elizabeth Denman was known as Liz Lehmann when she was growing up in the Hazelwood/Florissant area. Her family is speaking out because they had thought she might bring her son here. They say she has a history of substance abuse, and might be unable to properly care for him.
Her brother, Matt Lehmann says, "I don't think she would do anything to him intentionally to hurt him, but I don't think she would create a situation or an environment where something's not going to happen."
Authorities say the suspects ditched the Cavalier they were driving and are now in a black 1997 Lincoln, four-door, with the Missouri license plate KEO R9P.
Lehmann says, "There's a rumor that they might be going to Texas because Mark Cochran has family."
In fact, the family tells us late Sunday, someone broke into Cochran's stepfather's house in Oklahoma taking guns and money. They're unsure where the couple will end up. And while Devon is in his mother's hands, they say they fear for his safety.
Wilson says, "He doesn't know how to call anybody for help, he just doesn't. He needs somebody else to speak for him. And he is more important than her right now."
Anyone with information should call the Miller County Sheriff's Department at 573-369-2341 or they can call 911.

Research News How Drug Interferes With Neuronal Cell Function Discovered in York U Autism-Related Study,Temple Grandin HBO Movie Receives 15 Emmy Nominations,Africa: Child-witchcraft or Autism symptoms?

2010-07-10T01:19:00.000-07:00

Temple Grandin HBO Movie Receives 15 Emmy Nominations

July 9th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Jim Beers | Colorado State University

FORT COLLINS – An HBO movie, which aired last February, illustrating the life story of Temple Grandin, Colorado State University animal scientist and renowned animal behaviorist has received 15 Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Entitled “Temple Grandin,” the film chronicles her perseverance while struggling with autism.

Among the nominations that the film received are those for Best Made for Television Movie, Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie (Claire Danes), Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie (David Strathairn), Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie (Julia Ormond and Catherine O’Hara) and Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special (Mick Jackson).

Grandin is a high-functioning autistic person who is a renowned designer of humane animal-handling facilities, work she’s primarily accomplished while a CSU faculty member. The movie depicts Grandin’s life as a child, during her high school years, and follows her during the 1970’s as she begins her career in her chosen field of food-animal welfare and designing equipment to help make their lives less stressful. The film delivers messages about autism and treating animals humanely.

Grandin’s ability to see pictures in her head and her understanding that cows mainly experience their world as visual stimuli has enabled her to design livestock facilities that treat cattle more humanely.

A professor in Colorado State’s Department of Animal Sciences, Grandin teaches courses on livestock behavior and facility design. She regularly consults with the livestock industry on design, livestock handling and animal welfare. Facilities she has designed are located in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and other countries around the world. In North America, almost half of the cattle are handled in a center track restrainer system that she designed for meat plants. Curved chute and race systems she has designed for cattle are used extensively throughout the livestock industry.

Grandin has published several books on the humane treatment of animals and on a better understanding of autism. Her 1995 autobiography “Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism” is the basis for the HBO movie. She’s also the author of “Animals in Transition: Understanding the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior,” a New York Times best seller published in 2005, and last year’s “Animals Make Us Human”.

Grandin’s writings on the flight zone and other principals of grazing animal behavior have helped to reduce stress during animal handling. She developed an objective scoring system for the assessment of handling cattle and pigs at meat plants. This scoring system is being used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare.

Other Emmy nominations for the movie “Temple Grandin” include:
• Outstanding Art Direction For A Miniseries Or Movie
• Outstanding Casting For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special
• Outstanding Hairstyling For A Miniseries Or A Movie
• Outstanding Main Title Design
• Outstanding Makeup For A Miniseries Or A Movie
• Outstanding Music Composition For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special – (Original Dramatic Score)
• Outstanding Sound Editing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special
• Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special
• Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For A Miniseries Or A Movie

The 62nd annual Primetime Emmy Awards will be held Aug. 29 and broadcast on NBC.

Source: http://www.news.colostate.edu/Release/5291

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Research News How Drug Interferes With Neuronal Cell Function Discovered in York U Autism-Related Study

July 9th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Kathy Jones | MED India – Networking For Health

The mechanism behind how the drug misoprostol, which has been linked to neurodevelopmental defects associated with autism, interferes with neuronal cell function has been shown in a new study by York University study.

It is an important finding because misoprostol is similar in structure to naturally-occurring prostaglandins, which are the key signaling molecules produced by fatty acids in the brain.

Past clinical studies have shown an association between misoprostol and severe neurodevelopmental defects including autism symptoms. Those studies looked at cases in Brazil in which women misused the drug early in pregnancy in unsuccessful attempts to terminate their pregnancies.

The York study examined mouse neuronal cells to discover how the drug actually interferes at a molecular level with prostaglandins, which are important for development and communication of cells in the brain.

“Early in the first trimester of pregnancy, neuronal cells reach out to communicate with one another,” says Dorota Crawford, an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in York’s Faculty of Health. “Our study shows that misoprostol interferes with this process by increasing the level of calcium ions in neuronal extensions, which reduces the number and length of these extensions. It prevents the cells from communicating with each other. If changes in prostaglandin level alter the development or differentiation of cells, it may have a physiological impact.”

Crawford and Javaneh Tamiji, who undertook the research for her master’s thesis in the Neuroscience Graduate Diploma Program at York, co-authored a study published online in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications: “Prostaglandin E2 and misoprostol induce neurite retraction in Neuro-2a cells.”

There is no indication that women in Canada are misusing misoprostol to terminate pregnancies, and in fact the drug is used safely for other purposes such as treatment and prevention of gastrointestinal ulcers. However, during early neuronal development the drug misoprostol or other environmental factors such as infections or inflammations, which can also increase the level of prostaglandins, may interfere with normal brain function, says Crawford.

Crawford and Tamiji focused on the drug misoprostol because they had evidence from the clinical studies of the neurotoxic effects of the drug. They used misoprostol and the naturally occurring prostaglandins side by side in their study and found that both compounds produced the same effects on neuronal cell function.

The study shows that misoprostol interferes with the prostaglandin pathway in a dose-dependent manner – in other words, the higher the dose, the greater the problems created.

“What that indicates to us is whether it is infection that will activate it, or whether it is the drug, it will cause the same effect,” says Crawford.

Now that it has been shown that misoprostol affects interaction between cells, the next step will be to do animal studies on mice to examine the physiological impacts on particular parts of the brain, she says.

Crawford’s lab is one of very few in the world that has adopted a multidisciplinary approach to the study of autism spectrum disorders, using molecular techniques to understand the link between causative biological factors (genes and environment) and the behavioural expression.

Source: http://www.medindia.net/news/How-Drug-Interferes-With-Neuronal-Cell-Function-Discovered-in-York-U-Autism-Related-Study-71103-1.htm

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Africa: Child-witchcraft or Autism symptoms?

July 9th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Konye Obaji Ori | Afrik-News

Across Sub-Sahara Africa, children from underprivileged backgrounds who sometimes exhibit symptoms of Autism, are often labeled as witches or wizards, and victimized – poisoned, drowned, hacked to death with machetes or buried alive in an attempt to deliver their soul from the snare of the ‘devil’.

Autism, according to the U.S. autism science and advocacy organization Autism Speaks, is a “complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and affects a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others”. But in countries like Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda, many churches organize fellowships and revival meetings to cast out the demons of witchcraft in children who exhibit such characteristics.

While witch hunting is considered a thing of the past in the entire western world, the practice remains a reality in Africa. A lack of scientific analysis or understanding of certain anomalies in children has perpetuated the belief in such superstitions as child-witchcraft.

The children, often accused of witchcraft or wizardry and victimized, exhibit uncommon physical, mental, social and behavioral characteristics which may include acting up with intense tantrums, showing aggression to others or themselves, stubborn, preferring solitary or ritualistic play, do not startle at loud noises, and often refer to themselves in third person. In some cases even children who exhibit signs of physical ailments like allergies, asthma, epilepsy, digestive disorders, persistent viral infections, feeding disorders, sensory integration dysfunction, sleeping disorders, etc, tend to find themselves doubly penalized by a society they helplessly depend upon for their existence.

But these characteristics, medically considered as symptoms of autism, are traditionally seen as unusual by some rural communities across Africa. Usually, illiterate parents, guardians and sometimes neighbors readily accept witchcraft as an explanation for extraordinary events. An act that shapes the future of autistic and underprivileged African children. And responsibility, more often than not, may be leveled at the whimsical pronouncements of powerful religious leaders at extremist churches where Christianity and traditional beliefs have usually combined to produce an entrenched belief in witchcraft.

The belief in witchcraft is predominant amongst the underprivileged rural class, and it holds that child-witches bring destruction, waste, hardship, disease and death to their families. Other identified symptoms that worsen the plight of the so-called child-witches are crying and screaming in the night, hallucinations which sometimes arise from a high fever or other illness involving a fever, and worsening health – symptoms that can be found among many children in an impoverished region with poor health care.

In November 28, 2008, the telegraph.co.uk reported the story of Mary, a five-year-old girl who was driven into the streets by her father, after the local priest denounced her as a witch and blamed her “evil powers” for causing her mother’s death.

Ostracized, vulnerable and frightened, Mary wandered the streets in south-eastern Nigeria, struggling to stay alive. According to the report, Mary was found by a British charity worker and today lives at a refuge in Akwa Ibom province with 150 other children who have been accused of being withdrawn, hardly responding to eye contact or smiles, treating others as if they were objects, preferring to spend time alone, rather than with others, and showing a lack of empathy.

Although attitudes are changing across Africa, many still believe that children like Mary who are often branded child-witches organize nocturnal meetings in the seas, oceans and forests where they feast on human blood, flesh or fetuses, and inflict harm or undermine the progress of people especially their family members.

Source: http://www.afrik-news.com/article17924.html

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Help for a guy named Jerry and maybe a few others

July 9th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Laurie Roberts | AZCentral

If you were anywhere near north Tempe around mid morning Friday, you might have noticed a brief uptick in the temperature. I think it was the glow from Jerry Fischer’s face.

Jerry, you see, had just heard that he’s going back to work and his smile was enough to warm even the coldest heart at the Arizona Legislature where our leaders this year were forced to make “tough choices”.

Unfortunately, one of those tough choices was Jerry and 700 others who like him have mental disabilities. In order to save $3.7 million, the state cut them loose.

Jerry, 51, has Down syndrome and lives with his brother Jack Florez in Glendale. For 11 years, Jerry has gone to VALLEYLIFE, formerly the Valley of the Sun School and Habilitation Center, where he participated in a vocational program supported by state tax dollars.

Though there is a lot that Jerry can’t do, there is a fair amount that he can do and with VALLEYLIFE’s help, he’s been able to go to work and earn a paycheck and feel like he has something to offer the world.

But when the state budget went down the drain, it took with it some of those least able to swim against the current: Mentally ill people and poor children and people like Jerry.

Suddenly last week, there was no place for him to go each morning and though the state of Arizona deems him able to go it alone, those who know him or someone like him know better.

People like Aidan and Karie Warrington. Aidan runs Alliance Refuse Trucks, a Tempe company that buys and rebuilds garbage trucks and sells them to cities across the country. Life has been good to the Warringtons and they count among their greatest treasures their 12-year-old son Dylan, who has autism.

They understand both the burden and the blessing that comes with someone like Jerry. They understand, too, that the state is broke and that they are exceedingly blessed and that with those blessings come obligations.

“It’s not just up to government to do something,” Aidan said. “It’s time for other people to step up and do our share.”

And so he and Karie have pledged to underwrite Jerry’s participation in the VALLEYLIFE program. Their $900-a-month contribution will allow Jerry to continue working and going to “school,” as he calls the accompanying enrichment program.

Jerry went to Aidan’s work yard in Tempe on Friday to meet the man responsible for tossing him a lifeline. His smile said it all.

“It’s better out working,” he told me. “Yeah. I’ll get a paycheck.”

For his brother Jack, it’s less about a paycheck than about the relief of knowing that Jerry will be taken care of during the day and have something to do, which every human being craves.

“You did Jerry a miracle,” he tells me.

Of course, what he really meant is that Aidan and Karie did Jerry a miracle, and here’s where the rest of us come in.

There are plenty more miracles to be done, both at VALLEYLIFE and at centers that serve the disabled all over this state. In addition to Jerry, 16 others at VALLEYLIFE have lost funding, including a man named Michael.

Unlike Jerry, Michael doesn’t have any family. He lives alone and gets by somehow, despite being both mentally disabled and deaf. His only outlet is VALLEYLIFE’s sheltered workshop but the state cut him off on May 31.

Margaret Stephens-Reed, who manages vocational services, doesn’t know what’ll happen to Michael and the others. VALLEYLIFE is doing what it can but commitment can only take you so far without cash.

Ron and Kerrie Simpson understand that. They are former Arizonans, now living in the Snoqualmie Valley in Washington, where they run the David and Minnie Meyerson Foundation, which helps people with disabilities. After reading Jerry’s story on Wednesday, they pledged nearly $10,000, so that four people will be able to attend VALLEYLIFE’s three-hour-a-day enrichment program for the coming year.

“I’m hoping that others will get the message that helping even one person not only shows how important the individual is but lets the families know that they are not alone,” Ron told me.

If you’d like to help, too, call Margaret at VALLEYLIFE at 602-331-2414 or e-mail her at mreed@valleylifeaz.org. You may not have $10,000 but it costs just $10 to sponsor an afternoon in the enrichment program.

There are plenty of Jerrys out there, people hit hard by a state budget that for them was once a lifesaver. This state may no longer be able to help them but I’m guessing this state’s residents won’t let them down.

“It’s just nice,” Aidan said, “to go home everyday and feel that you’ve done something and achieved something and given something.”

Source: http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/LaurieRoberts/90205

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Is Sitting While Autistic a Crime?

July 9th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

Latson is currently in a state-run psychiatric facility after being arrested for assault.

By Claudia Kalb | Newsweek

Law-enforcement officials often misinterpret the language and behavior of people on the autism spectrum, with serious consequences. One activist hopes to change that.

In late May, Clifford Grevemberg had a traumatic encounter with the police. Grevemberg, 18, was standing outside the Rock House Bar and Grill in Tybee Island, Ga., waiting for his brother to pick up some cheeseburgers when he was approached by officers, Tasered, and arrested for disorderly conduct. A police-department report posted by the Savannah Morning News says Grevemberg was “staggering back and forth and appeared to be either intoxicated or on something.” By the time his brother came out of the restaurant, Grevemberg was handcuffed and bleeding with a broken tooth. Only then did police receive the critical information they’d been missing: Clifford Grevemberg is autistic.

Three days later, and several hundred miles to the north, the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia had its own disturbing clash with autism. After receiving a call about a “suspicious male, possibly in possession of a gun,” sitting on the grass outside an elementary-school library, officers confronted Reginald Latson, 18, who is African-American and has Asperger’s disorder. Latson wound up being charged with assault and battery after he “proceeded to attack and assault the deputy,” according to a police report. No gun was ever found. Details of the incident are complex and still evolving, but the preliminary reports were enough to gain attention from members of the autistic community who worry their children could be next. In the words of one mother, this story is “my nightmare.”

Law enforcement and autism are a volatile mix, and not an uncommon one. “It happens quite regularly, unfortunately,” says Lee Grossman, president of the Autism Society, a grassroots organization based in Bethesda, Md. Decades ago, people with autism and other developmental disorders tended to land in institutions, where they had little interaction with anybody other than family members and staff. Today, autistic children and adults live with their families, go to local schools and, in some cases, get jobs in their communities. The unfortunate downside to this independence, says Grossman, is that “many more individuals on the spectrum are having run-ins with the police department and others, and it’s generally not a very positive experience.”

Autism is a diverse condition, but it is characterized by behaviors—repetitive movements, poor eye contact, sensitivity to lights and noise—that can be misinterpreted as unusual and even disrespectful. Even innocent behaviors can be come off as malicious. Grossman tells the story of an autistic man who loved to ride the bus. One day, he started staring at a female passenger. “She told him to stop, he wouldn’t, and it got uglier and uglier,” says Grossman. Ultimately, the police were called. The man’s crime turned out to be an autistic trait: fixation on a single object. In this case, the man was fascinated by the woman’s dangling earring.

One of autism’s defining features is the inability to process even the most mundane social interactions. When police are involved, an autistic person’s anxiety level is likely to spike, triggering unnerving mannerisms or behaviors. The person may say nothing at all, appearing to ignore an officer’s commands. Or he may repeat back what somebody says to him, a form of communication medically known as echolalia. “You can imagine if a police officer comes up and says, ‘What’s your name?’ and the kid’s response is, ‘What’s your name?’ the police will figure he’s a smart aleck or he’s on drugs,” says Grossman. “Usually, the situation goes downhill from there.”

Dennis Debbaudt, author of Autism, Advocates and Law Enforcement Professionals, is trying to stop the misunderstanding before it happens. Debbaudt, the father of a young man with autism, has conducted autism training sessions for law enforcement for the last 15 years. Today, he says, “I’ve never been busier.”

It was an incident with his son more than 20 years ago that triggered Debbaudt’s interest in educating police. When he couldn’t get a toy he wanted at the mall, his son, who was about 5 or 6 at the time, had a full-fledged meltdown. “He fell to the floor, he was lying face up, his back arched, red-faced, teary-eyed and screaming,” Debbaudt says. “When I bent over to pick him up, he was kicking and trying to scratch me.” Debbaudt managed to carry his son out of the store, but was then surrounded by mall police responding to a report of a possible child abduction. Public misperceptions about his son’s autism and the chaos that ensued made Debbaudt determined to raise awareness. “I wanted to get material about autism to the police,” says Debbaudt, “and I learned there wasn’t any.”

When Debbaudt started his training sessions in 1995, only a handful of audience members even knew about autism. “Now I can’t even ask that question because everybody has heard of it,” he says. But that doesn’t translate to understanding. In his sessions, Debbaudt outlines the communication challenges law enforcement will likely face. He encourages officers to speak softly in clear and simple terms (avoiding idioms like “Are you pulling my leg?”) and to project calming body language, like keeping hands low rather than raised. Sensory overloads can cause autistic people to become aggressive or to flee, so flashing lights and sirens should be minimized or turned off if it’s safe to do so. Ideally, officers should keep a safe distance and keep the pace slow, giving the person time and space to calm himself down.

Brent Stevenson, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Chiefs of Police, brought Debbaudt in to educate his members in June. The high-profile shooting death of a mentally disabled 21-year-old Arkansas man in 2006 (the officer told a judge that “I mistook this young man’s actions as threatening toward me and the other officers, and I made the mistake of acting on this misunderstanding”) spotlighted the need for more education about cognitive and developmental disorders. Because autism can be difficult to recognize, says Stevenson, “the more training you have, the better chance officers have of being able to deal with the situation at hand.”

Victoria Barkley Robinett, an instructor at the Law Enforcement Training Academy at Black River Technical College in Pocahontas, Ark., attended Debbaudt’s session and plans to teach her recruits what she learned. One thing Debbaudt stresses is the benefit of disclosure: if police know ahead of time that the person they’re dealing with is autistic, they can adjust their behavior accordingly. He urges law enforcers to consider creating a voluntary 911 registry that would allow people with autism or their families to provide essential information, including a digital photograph, so police would know who they are and where they live. Law-enforcement departments in California and New Hampshire have instituted registration programs, and Robinett says she plans to suggest it to police chiefs in her state. “To go to a cold call with an autistic person and not have a clue could escalate a situation,” she says. “There’s no need for that.”

Had Georgia police known about Clifford Grevemberg’s diagnosis before their encounter, they might have acted differently. Since the incident, local police officers have attended an educational session on autism. But that won’t resolve what happened to Grevemberg. In June, he and his mother filed a lawsuit against the city.

Source: http://www.newsweek-interactive.com/2010/07/08/is-sitting-while-autistic-a-crime.html?from=rss

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Warrants Served After Child Left on Hot Richmond School Bus

July 9th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

Richmond police arrested 60-year-old school bus monitor Irene Jenkins of Richmond. She is charged with one count of felony child endangerment. Her arrest comes after a child was found alone on a Richmond school bus.

Richmond police officers arrested 43-year-old school bus driver Alvin Matthews of Hopewell. He is charged with felony child endangerment after a child was found alone on the school bus.

By Sandi Cauley | CBS 6 Richmond, VA

Commonwealth’s Attorney says warrants for felony child neglect were issued for both bus driver and bus monitor.

RICHMOND – Richmond prosecutors are charging two people connected to the case involving a five year old boy who was accidentally left on a hot city school bus for more than an hour Tuesday morning.

The mother of the young boy says the arrests should have come Tuesday. She claims her son is now scared to get on the school bus in the morning because of the incident. Tiara Butler says she cannot understand how the bus driver and bus monitor neglected to see her autistic son when they parked the bus at the bus depot just moments after dropping off several children at Summer Hill Elementary School for the Pre-K summer program. Butler says, “I was mad because he can’t speak for himself and when they found him he was on the back of the bus. I was like how can he be left on the bus when she (the bus monitor) puts him in the seatbelt.”

It was the young boy’s faint cries that alerted another bus driver who immediately called 9-1-1 as temperatures were already close to 100 degrees outside that morning. The bus was not running and all windows were up.

An investigation by school personnel, police, and the commonwealth’s attorney shows protocol was not properly followed. Prosecutors have charged the bus monitor, 60 year old Irene Jenkins, and the substitute bus driver, 43 year old Alvin Matthews, with felony child neglect.

John Harper, a close friend of the bus driver, says Matthews would have never done anything to put a child in harms way by ignoring protocol. “He thought everything checked out and that was it…he’s a very nice guy, he has no type of criminal record.” Harper says Matthews was hoping to secure a permanent position with Richmond Public Schools and had an impeccable driving record.

Tiara Butler says the bus driver and monitor should have known proper protocol. She says she doesn’t believe the felony charges are too harsh. “My son could have died if no one was in that parking lot, he could have died. He could have had an asthma attack, anything could have happened. They should be thankful they got what they got.”

Earlier Post

According to Richmond Commonwealth’s attorney, Mike Herring, warrants have been issued and will be served on the school bus driver and bus monitor accused of leaving a 5-year-old boy on a Richmond city school bus this week.

Herring says both are charged with felony child neglect. The substitute bus driver is 43-year-old Alvin Matthews. The bus monitor is listed as 60-year-old Irene Jenkins.

The child who was attending summer school at Summer Hill Elementary School off Jeff Davis Highway in South Richmond, was forgotten and left on a school bus Tuesday morning. Another bus driver apparently heard the child’s cries coming from the bus parked in the school bus depot and discovered the child.

The child was rushed to Chippenham Medical Center and was treated for heat exhaustion and released.

Richmond Public School Spokeswoman Felicia Cosby tells CBS 6 the child was discovered at 10:45 Tuesday morning and had been on the bus close to an hour.

CBS 6 Chief Meteorologist Zach Daniel says the temperature was between 86 and 95 degrees during the time period in which the child was on the bus.

When the case first surfaced, Richmond police said they were not going to press charges and were not investigating because this was a school personnel matter. On Wednesday, Herring told reporters that he was going to review the police investigation and determine whether or not charges need to be brought forward.

Source: http://www.wtvr.com/news/wtvr-child-hot-bus-warrants-story,0,3758962.story

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Autistic boy not welcome in music store

2010-07-09T00:54:00.000-07:00

As an autistic savant, Ryan Morales has an extraordinary talent for music -- he can play the piano by ear; he has an encyclopedic knowledge of Broadway trivia, and he loves to go to his local music store to look at the drums.
But the owner of Lane Music Center blocked the 13-year-old boy and his caregiver from entering the New Dorp Lane shop this week because, the store owner said, Ryan's behavior makes him feel uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry, I'm not going to let you in," owner Alan Wilcov reportedly told Ryan's caregiver, Oluwaseun Cole, whose job it is to take Ryan on walks through the community to familiarize him with the social rituals of everyday life. "I just can't let him in," Cole said Wilcov had told him on Wednesday afternoon.

Bill LyonsMusically inclined Ryan Morales of New Dorp looked forward to visiting the Lane Music Center.

"I have a problem with his kind," he allegedly told Ryan's parents and caregiver later that night, when they went to the store to discuss what had happened; it was a heated conversation that left both parties fuming.
Wilcov denies using those words, but he says that when Ryan entered the store for the fourth time in two days, he asked the caregiver to make their visits less frequent.
"When he is in here, I have a heightened level of concern," Wilcov told the Advance. "It makes me a little anxious in comparison to having a normal visitor."
That, he added, "doesn't deserve to be called discrimination."
But Ryan's stunned family doesn't know what else to call it.
The law is clear: Exclusion and unequal treatment, according to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), constitute discrimination when they're applied to a person for no reason other than a disability.
"It would be a violation of the ADA to prevent a person with a disability from entering," said Department of Justice spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson. "Businesses have a responsibility to give access to people with disabilities-- just like anyone else. In this circumstance, it seems likely that there was a violation."
Ryan and his residential habilitation worker took neighborhood walks on Tuesday and Wednesday: Walks that began and ended with brief visits to Lane Music Center. Ryan's fascination with the drums in the shop enables the caregiver to reward and reinforce the teen-ager's good behavior as he develops community skills.
Ryan has pervasive developmental disorder and a moderate case of autism, the brain development disorder that affects 1 in 166 children. The condition affects Ryan's communication skills and manifests in repetitive and ritualistic behavior; Ryan might bite his hand when he feels upset. But he has striking memorization skills and he's more affectionate, his mother says, than the average teen.
When Ryan and his caregiver went to the music store for the second time on Tuesday, Cole says the owner expressed reluctance to let them in. Cole, who is Nigerian, said he'd wondered, at first, whether the cold welcome had been based on his race.
Ryan's 11-year-old brother, who was with them, said Wilcov rolled his eyes and sighed when they walked in. "He got all angry and I don't know why," he said.
Wilcov explained to the Advance Thursday: "I was more than happy to allow him to come into the store with his caregiver. Then he came back with his caregiver that same afternoon. I said I'd like to put limits on this. I don't think it's fair for him to come in two times a day. I feel it's within my rights to put limits on his visitation."
Wilcov added that he and his business have a longstanding reputation for friendly service.
"If I was a discriminator, why did I allow him into the store the first time? There are many handicapped people who come in here and I'm very gracious to them. Not until the fourth visit did I say something. I was polite about it, too."
Wilcov said Ryan had never caused a problem in the store; he hadn't been loud, unruly or destructive.
His visits lasted about two minutes, according to Cole, who said Ryan liked to count the drums in the window, then look at the sheet music and go.
When Ryan's parents confronted Wilcov on Wednesday night, they said the store owner had insisted Ryan could not be considered a customer.
"Come on," the parents and caregiver said he had told them, "No one would buy a drum set for that kind."
"He kept saying, 'that kind,' " said Frances Morales, Ryan's mother. "That was so hurtful. He made you feel like your kid wasn't a human being."
"A community is supposed to be a close-knit group of people who accommodate each other," said Ryan's father, Leonardo.
Staten Island has often supported Ryan. Neighbors donate to the Eden II School in Ryan's name and walked as a team in a recent fund-raiser for Autism Speaks; Our Lady Queen of Peace R.C. Church, New Dorp, has held five annual basketball tournaments in Ryan's honor. The Staten Island Board of Realtors only yesterday held its third annual Family Day, an event that will fund Eden II's new children's playground.
When somehow the community fails, says special education attorney Daniel Ajello, whose daughter has cerebral palsy, it's difficult for parents to know what to do next.
"The challenge for the parent is to take it as an opportunity to educate others," he said. "It's a shame when a store owner doesn't know what to do. Unfortunately, every parent has a story like this."
This is a story that Ryan, who calls out "Lane Music" at the beginning of his daily walk, won't understand.
"Ryan's not going to know why he can't go back there, and that's sad, because he loved to go there," his father said.
-- Contributed by Tevah Platt

For kids with special needs, camp comes with valuable therapy, higher price tag, Lt. Gov. Tries to Block Health Care Reform,Autism Study Gives Parents Blueprint

2010-07-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

For kids with special needs, camp comes with valuable therapy, higher price tag

July 8th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

At the Leaps and Bounds Occupational Therapy day camp in Washington, kids with autism, learning disabilities and other special needs have fun while they learn to improve their motor skills.

By Mari-Jane Williams | The Washington Post

Matthew Hoffman will spend much of his summer doing handwriting exercises set to music, practicing conversation techniques with other kids on the soccer field and improving his motor planning by learning to ride a bike.

In other words, the 6-year-old from Bethesda is going to camp.

Matthew has autism. So his five weeks at Basic Concepts in Rockville, which began June 28, will be very different from the typical summer day camp in the Washington area.

Few camp counselors here are home from college for the summer. The Basic Concepts staff members are trained specialists in speech and occupational therapy as well as special education teachers and play therapists. And there are lots of them: one therapist for every two or three children. Equipment goes far beyond what you usually find at the playground, including weighted vests, trampolines and swings commonly used in therapy sessions.

“I love that he can go to a summer camp like every other kid,” Matthew’s mother, Ali Hoffman, said.

Basic Concepts, a private therapy center offering speech and language services and other help for children with mild learning differences, began a therapeutic camp a decade ago with 10 children. This year it is at capacity with 90 students and had to turn families away because of a lack of space, said Katy Whidden, a speech and language pathologist at the practice.

Across the Washington region, enrollment in therapeutic camps soars every year, even though they are far more expensive than regular day camp.

Camp Friendship, which is run by Tots to Teens, a speech therapy practice in Woodbridge, drew kids from five counties last year for its program in Stafford County. This year it is adding a session in Prince William County to meet the demand. Lynne Israel, director of Lynne C. Israel and Associates in the District, an occupational therapy group, says she has been able to fill as many as 70 slots at her summer camp in recent years, with requests for more.

Most campers have a combination of delays and diagnoses that can include autism spectrum disorders and learning disabilities as well as sensory processing problems, which are defined by a difficulty handling certain sounds, sights, smells, textures and other environmental stimuli. They struggle with reading, writing, cutting, and sustaining conversations with other kids. Loud noises, bright lights or unfamiliar tastes or textures can disrupt or disorganize them.

Therapeutic camps, with small group activities and individual plans for each camper, are often modeled after the weekly therapy sessions and classroom help many of these children receive during the school year. The goals are the same: to improve their academic and social skills and help them function better in what often seems like an overwhelming world.

So cooking, for example, becomes a way to expand vocabulary and teach campers how to work together. Science experiments force children to get their hands dirty and get accustomed to new textures. Arts and crafts projects double as intensive practice of fine motor skills.

“They give them therapy where they don’t even know they’re getting it,” said Holly Jankowski of Germantown. Her daughter Apryl, 6, has pervasive developmental disorder, an autism spectrum disorder, and is in her third summer at Basic Concepts.

Thick pudding, chewy gummy bears and hard candy used to make Apryl turn her chair around and face away from the table. But at Basic Concepts, she’s taken small steps to improving her diet: She must bring a snack to her lips, politely kiss it and put it back down on the plate before refusing it.

“It’s a new strategy that they tried and now we do that at home,” her mother said.

Across the nation, as more children are diagnosed with special needs, their parents are seeking out more help to hone skills from handwriting to playground etiquette.

The number of summer day camps for children with special needs listed on http://mysummercamps.com, one of the largest online camp directories, has quadrupled, from 235 in 2004 to 971 this year, said Carol Mendelsohn, a spokeswoman for the site.

Susan Feeley is director of admissions at the Lab School in the District, a private school for students with learning disabilities, which also runs a summer camp. She attributes the growing demand, in part, to an increase in early diagnosis of children with learning differences, and parents’ understanding that early intervention can make a tremendous difference in a child’s long-term success.

“Especially with younger children, the earlier you get remediation and therapy in place, while you can’t change the blueprint of who the child is, you can really help the child develop quicker and develop coping mechanisms,” Feeley said.

Allison Mistrett, an occupational therapist at Leaps and Bounds in the District, which offers a six-week camp for preschoolers, thinks that more strenuous academic demands for kindergartners is partly responsible for the increased interest. For children with learning delays, the standards at school are even more challenging.

“One of the things we hear more and more is that now kindergarten is what used to be first-grade,” Mistrett said. “I attribute a lot of it to the demands schools place on kids.”

But the downside of these camps is the price. The average day camp costs $100 to $275 per week, according to the American Camp Association. But a special needs camp, with a different program for nearly every child, small therapist-to-student ratios and lots of expensive gym equipment costs much more.

Camp Friendship is $500 for a week of half-day sessions. The Lab School’s five-week program ranges from $1,275 to $2,735, depending on the activities. The six-week camp at Leaps and Bounds is $2,400.

But many parents are willing to pay. They consider the summer a time for intense work on skills and an opportunity to help close the gap between their child and typically developing peers.

“Everything in the special needs community is expensive, so I feel almost immune to it at this point,” Hoffman said. “[Matthew would] get lost at a typical camp. This is really the best opportunity for him to have a camp experience, but get extra help. So for me it’s totally worth it.”

Jodie Steiner said she’s hopeful that her son Gabriel Mini, 7, will get some help making friends during his three weeks of camp at Treatment and Learning Centers in Rockville. Gabriel has autism.

“He really, really wants to be social, he likes to be part of a group, but he gets there and freaks out,” said Steiner, of Takoma Park. “If he can get there and not be intimidated, that would be a huge step for him.”

At Camp Friendship, one of the cooking activities will be making popcorn, to go with the camp’s circus theme. Campers will watch the kernels pop to fully popped corn, and then talk to one another about it. Or, as the therapists see it, the activity will teach vocabulary and practice social language, according to Jennifer Ruckner, a speech and language pathologist at Tots to Teens Therapy, which runs Camp Friendship.

“They’re able to use very typical activities and learn how to play, how to use their language, how to socially use those skills to work simultaneously beside somebody and an adult doesn’t have to be there to prompt it all of the time,” Ruckner said.

“That’s what makes it different than going to a day camp.”

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/08/AR2010070802668.html

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Frenchie: She’s still a Pink Lady

July 8th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

Didi Conn as Frenchie in ‘Grease’

By Madeleine Marr | The Miami Herald

Didi Conn wants everyone to pull out their pink wigs Thursday when Grease Sing A-Long premieres.

The actress — who played the beauty school dropout Frenchie in the classic high school musical — is still as enthusiastic about the movie after 32 years.

“No one just says, `I saw your movie,’ ” she says from her home in New York City. “They say, `Oh my God, I’ve seen your movie like 50 times!’ .”

This new digitally remastered release features animated lyrics so the audience can belt out tunes like Hopelessly Devoted To You and Summer Nights.

The actress — who has worked in films and TV (Benson) and works to raise autism awareness (her son is autistic) — is still flagged as Frenchie.

“It’s usually my voice that triggers the recognition,” says Cohn, 58, in her signature Brooklyn-accented squeak.

Many of the castmates are still close.

“When we get together, it’s like no time has gone by,” she says. “We look at each other and just start giggling. I think that’s why the movie still sparkles. They cast a bunch of kids that never grew up.”

Conn is still friendly with Olivia Newton-John, who played innocent Sandy but admits she’s lost touch with greaser Danny Zuko, aka John Travolta.

Conn knows how important Grease was to pop culture and understands why movies like High School Musical and TV’s Glee are such hits.

“They’re all definitely offsprings of Grease in terms of that kind of friendship and energy and musicality and emotions,” she says.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/08/1720413/frenchie-shes-still-a-pink-lady.html

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Lt. Gov. Tries to Block Health Care Reform

July 8th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By Joe Harris | Courthouse News Service

ST. LOUIS (CN) – The lieutenant governor has joined officials from other states in suing the federal government to try to stave off health-care reform – though most of Missouri’s top political players aren’t on board. Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a Republican, sued Uncle Sam after Attorney General Chris Koster and Gov. Jeremiah Nixon, both Democrats, refused to do it.

Kinder wanted to join a lawsuit in Florida involving 20 state attorneys generals, but couldn’t because he does not have the attorney general’s power to file a complaint on behalf of the state and use state money for it.

Kinder and three Missourians sued the Secretaries of Treasury, Labor, Health and Human Services, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in Federal Court.

“Many Missourians will lose the options for health insurance they currently enjoy,” Kinder said in a statement. “Missourians have less health care coverage after the federal law was passed than they did before it was passed.”

Kinder’s move was met with skepticism by state Democrats, who want him to release the names of donors to his private legal fund.

“For months he has refused to disclose his donors,” Missouri Democratic Party spokesman Ryan Hobart told The Associated Press. “Missourians deserve to know if Peter Kinder is allowing his office to be subsidized by the insurance industry and its lobbyists or candidates who want this law repealed. Instead, up to this point, all of that information has been hidden from the public, even though Lt. Gov. Kinder is using state resources to publicize his actions.”

Kinder, who has said he is considering running against Nixon for governor in 2012, told the AP through a spokesman that the list of donors will be released, except for those who have requested anonymity.

Kinder has set up a nonprofit corporation called Health Care in Action to raise money for the lawsuit. He said he filed the complaint as the state’s senior citizen advocate and as a private citizen.

Kinder claims that Obama administration’s historic reform, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), is unconstitutional because it exceeds the powers granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause, by requiring individuals to carry a certain amount of health care coverage.

“Long before PPACA’s passage, Congress knew the individual mandate to buy certain federally sanctioned health insurance was constitutionally repugnant,” the complaint states. “A Congressional Research Service report to Congress noted the lack of constitutional authority for the mandate requirement, finding that ‘[d]espite the breadth of powers that have been exercised under the Commerce Clause, it is unclear whether the clause would provide a solid constitutional foundation for legislation containing a requirement to have health insurance. Whether such a requirement would be constitutional under the Commerce Clause is perhaps the most challenging question posed by such a proposal, as it is a novel issue whether Congress may use this clause to require an individual to purchase a good or service.’”

Kinder also claims that the bill forces state employees to enforce a federal health care scheme, in violation of Missouri’s sovereignty; that it mandates the compensation Missouri must provide to its constitutional officers; that it imposes a direct tax penalty upon Missouri because the state requires insurance companies to cover autism treatments; and that it forces the state to violate its own constitution and implement an unconstitutional state tax increase.

He wants PPACA enjoined. He is represented by Mark “Thor” Hearne II, with Arent Fox of Los Angeles.

Source: http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/07/08/28664.htm

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Autism Study Gives Parents Blueprint

July 8th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By My FOX Philly

Initiative To Help Families Deal With Challenges

PHILADELPHIA – A new study is being circulated everywhere to help parents with one of the hardest things for any family to deal with, autism.

On Thursday morning, “Good Day” had results of a new study that lists goals and activities that will improve the quality of life for your child.

Linda Meyer, executive director of Autism New Jersey, told “Good Day” that parents, when they get a diagnosis, crave information and just want answers.

The new study is called “Connecting with Autism: A Blueprint for Lifetime Support.” Copies are being distributed to the governor, legislators, local officials, community leaders.

About 80,000 people are living with autism in New Jersey. The study identifies the critical goals and activities that will improve the quality of life for people on the autism spectrum.

The goal is to help people with autism lead full and productive lives from their infant years through adulthood.

The group says the more people know, the more we can create a society that understands and can help.

Source: http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/good_day_philadelphia/autism-study-gives-parents-blueprint-070810

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Dolphins to help treat autistic children in China

July 8th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

A dolphin demonstrates a performance with a trainer at a dolphin pool in Ta…

By Sify News

Beijing: A marine amusement park in China has purchased four dolphins, but they are not intended for amusement. The mammals will be used for treating children suffering from autism.

Autism is a neural disorder characterised by impaired social interaction and communication as well as repetitive behaviour.

The dolphins, bought from Japan with five million yuan ($738,000), have begun working with young patients after a month’s adaptation and training, Chen Rujun, chief inspector of animals at the Royal Ocean World in Fushun city in Liaoning province, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

“Royal Ocean World has provided therapy for autistic children since 2007, when we had three dolphins as ‘doctors’, treating more than 20 children, ranging from two years to ten years of age,” Chen said.

Children of authoritative parents eat nutritious food

Each child would have to come to the park 12 times a month, play with a dolphin as part of therapy, and the effect would depend on the time spent, he said.

A five-year-old boy from Anshan city who used to speak only a few words was able to go to kindergarten and even sing along with songs on television after a one-and-a-half-month treatment, Chen said.

The treatment used to be free of charge, but as there has been an increase in demand, the park is now charging each family 2,000 yuan per month, and a lesser amount for poor families.

“More than 100 families from Liaoning, Hebei and Tianjin have lined up to make an appointment,” said Zhang Yingying, business manager of the park.

Chen said dolphins emit high-frequency ultrasonic waves which stimulate dormant brain cells in autistic children. However, such treatment is only an assisted therapy and is not effective for all autistic children.

“Although the effectiveness reaches 90 per cent, some families still said the treatment was not effective for their children,” Chen said.

“There is no scientific proof right now that dolphin therapy cures autistic people, and while it might be helpful for children, little effect has been seen on adults,” Zhang Zhonghe, a professor at Liaoning-based Dalian Medical University, said.

Dolphin treatment is also being used in marine parks in other provinces including Shandong and Guangdong.

Source: http://sify.com/news/dolphins-to-help-treat-autistic-children-in-china-news-animals-khim5Tgjaij.html

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Seaford woman facing abuse charges incidents as caretaker

July 8th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

Seaford resident Bonnie E. Cornish, 46, is facing two charges after a police investigation yielded evidence she allegedly abused two mentally ill patients of Falcon Crest Group Home.

By Sussex Countian

HARBESON, DEL. — Delaware State Police on Monday, June 28, arrested a Seaford woman for allegedly abusing two mentally ill patients at the Falcon Crest Group Home in Harbeson.

Bonnie E. Cornish, 46, allegedly abused and mistreated two victims who suffer from autism and mental retardation, police learned after an investigation.

In the first incident, a 26-year-old victim was eating dinner around 5 p.m. and did not want to sit while eating. Cornish, who was the caretaker on duty at the time, escorted the victim to her room. Shortly after, however, the alleged victim returned to the eating area, which angered Cornish. Cornish then allegedly took out a belt and struck the victim an undetermined amount of times while in the victim’s room. Moments later the victim again returned to the eating area, where Cornish again stuck the victim, this time on the head with a studded belt. While escorting the victim back to her room, Cornish allegedly continued striking her and gave the victim injuries to her back and thighs.

Another incident with the other alleged victim occurred on the same evening as Cornish was transporting victim one and two, a 27-year-old female, to an appointment in Georgetown. The 27-year-old, who police said has trouble adjusting to traveling in vehicles, began to cry, which made Cornish decide to pull the van over on Zoar Road. Cornish then allegedly slapped the victim across the face, which resulted in two scratches, swelling and redness under the victim’s left eye.

Following the police investigation, Cornish was arrested on two counts of abuse, mistreat or neglect of a patient or resident of a facility. She was arraigned at the Justice of the Peace Court 3 and released on $2,000 unsecured bond.

Source: http://www.sussexcountian.com/newsnow/x1876486039/Seaford-woman-facing-abuse-charges-incidents-as-caretaker

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Book Focuses on Autism Spectrum Disorders , Posing Naked (Sorta) For Autism

2010-07-07T19:47:00.000-07:00

Book Focuses on Autism Spectrum Disorders

July 6th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By WDAM

HATTIESBURG, MS (THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI) – Dr. Frances A. Karnes, Distinguished University Professor of Gifted Education at The University of Southern Mississippi and Dr. Kristen Stephens, assistant professor of practice at Duke University, have co-edited another mini-series book published by Prufrock Press.

“Enhancing Communication in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders” presents an overview of impairments in communication among children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). A variety of techniques for implementing interventions are highlighted, including applied behavior analysis, token economy systems, and social skills groups, among others.

The authors are Southern Miss assistant professor of psychology and child clinical psychologist Dr. Tammy Barry and Southern Miss clinical psychology doctoral students Stephanie Bader and Theodore Tomeny.

The book also outlines specific interventions for communication for nonverbal children, children with limited verbal communication and high-functioning verbal children with idiosyncratic communication styles. Issues with facilitated communication and other alternative therapies are also addressed.

Source: http://www.wdam.com/Global/story.asp?S=12763044

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Posing Naked (Sorta) For Autism

July 6th, 2010

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The Autism News | English

By DFO | The Spokesman Review

Marsha Cunningham, Debby Sims, Barbara Weber, and Lavonne Northcutt, members of the Knotty Knitters, pose for The News Tribune behind a white fence draped with hand knit scarves in Tacoma. Marsha Cunningham’s grandchildren Josef and Mollee Cunningham, 7-year-old twins with autism, are the inspiration for the upcoming 2011 Knitting Naked for Autism Calendar, featuring eight Pierce County knitters and one from New York State, tastefully draped in knit goods. Most of the proceeds will go to getting the twins the treatments that have shown promise. Cunningham is also making the calendar available to other autism groups that want to use it as a fundraiser. (AP Photo/The News Tribune, Drew Perine)

Question: Is there a cause that would prompt you to post naked — tastefully — for a calendar to raise money?

Source: http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/hbo/2010/jul/06/posing-naked-sorta-autism

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