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Sniffing Device Helps Disabled People Move, Write
Technology Helps Severely Disabled People Use Their Noses to Drive Electric Wheelchairs, Write Text Messages
July 26, 2010 — Israeli scientists have developed a device that allows severely disabled people to sniff to precisely control objects such as wheelchairs and personal digital assistants, a new study says.
The nasal-mask device works so well that disabled people who can’t move at all can learn to write text messages and drive electric wheelchairs by sniffing, researchers report in the July issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Noam Sobel, PhD, of the department of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and colleagues set out to find a way to allow people with disabilities ranging from quadriplegia to “locked-in syndrome” to learn how to control devices with their noses just as they would using a joystick or computer mouse.
The Weizmann Institute has filed for a patent on sniff-controlled technology, which the researchers report as a possible conflict of interest.
The researchers built a “sniff controller” that measures changes in nasal pressure, which occur when the soft palate (the soft area at the back of the roof of the mouth) is repositioned. The device was tested on healthy and disabled people. The researchers report that sniffing can be done with precision, and that it requires precise movements of the soft palate, which receives signals from cranial nerves that often are not affected by paralytic injury and other disorders. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Recent Posts, Science and Technology, Special Education on July 27, 2010 - ט"ז אב תש"ע at 9:17 pm
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Autism in the Holy Land: Conference Skyrockets Interest
Av 6, 5770, 17 July 10 11:51
by Ruth Amber Gristak and Maayana Miskin
(Israelnationalnews.com) One in 91 children worldwide, and one in 58 boys, are diagnosed with autism. Where do Jewish children rank in autism numbers? As there is no research in that specific area of autism, there is no answer. In Israel, the official statistic is 1 in 241. “Lack of answer” is the common end point for most questions about autism. There is no definitively known cause for the disorder.
This may be one reason that the Icare4autism 2010 International Autism conference in Jerusalem brought in over 500 attendees from Israel and around the globe. Attendees included educators, researchers, and those touched by autism. This conference was Israel’s first major international autism conference.
The event was held on July 5-6, 2010, by the NY-based, global non-profit, the International Center for Autism Research and Education (Icare4autism). It featured 30 speakers from around the globe and was held at the Ramada- Renaissance Hotel. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Health Sciences, Mental Health, Middle East, Recent Posts, Special Education on July 17, 2010 - ו' אב תש"ע at 9:53 pm
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A lesson for Israel’s education system
What money can’t buy: Third of a six-part series on the challenges facing the Israeli economy.
By Nathan Lipson, Haaretz, July 14, 2010
Joining the OECD was a feather in Israel’s cap. Yet with the opportunity to pat ourselves on the back for Israel’s economic achievements, there is another opportunity we must not cringe from grasping – to compare the state of our school system with that of the other members in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We do not fare well from the comparison.
Based on a chart published in The State of the Nation report by Dan Ben-David, professor of economics and executive director of the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, there are grounds for concern.
Ben-David collated data on the results of Israeli junior high school pupils who participated in two international tests: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS ) and OECD PISA – Program for International Student Assessment. The tests were conducted five times over the past 10 years.
Israelis scored much lower than the OECD average on all five exams. In all the tests but one, Israel’s pupils came in last place among a comparative sample of 25 OECD countries. In that one exception, they were nearly last.
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Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Middle East, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 14, 2010 - ג' אב תש"ע at 11:58 am
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School districts slow to tap into federal stimulus funds
By Jeremy P. Meyer, July 12, 2010
The Denver Post
Federal authorities are encouraging school districts to spend education stimulus money to save jobs and blunt the effects of statewide budget cuts, but districts have been slow to draw their share of the funds.
"We really hope that you’ll do your best to see how these funds can help alleviate the layoffs and budget crises that your districts or states are facing," Maura Policelli, a senior adviser with the U.S. Department of Education, said in an online seminar, or webinar, last month.
"That does require some courage, and it does involve the possible risk of investing in staff that you may not be able to retain in the 2011-12 school year," she said.
Districts across the nation have been slow to tap stimulus money that is targeted for specific programs — particularly the money intended to bolster programs for students with disabilities or those who come from low-income households.
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Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Recent Posts, Special Education on July 13, 2010 - ב' אב תש"ע at 8:47 am
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Psychiatric Times. Vol. 27 No. 7
INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE
Integrative Management of ADHD: What the Evidence Suggests
By James Lake, MD | July 7, 2010
Dr Lake is in private practice in Monterey, Calif, and is on the clinical faculty in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University Hospital. He chairs the American Psychiatric Association Caucus on Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Medicine (www.APACAM.org) and is the author of the Textbook of Integrative Mental Health Care (Thieme, 2006) and Integrative Mental Health: A Therapist’s Handbook (Norton, 2009).
It is important for mental health professionals to be familiar with emerging research findings about widely used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in order to provide patients with accurate information on efficacy, safety, and appropriate use.
A high percentage of children and adults who have been given a diagnosis of ADHD use alternative therapies alone or in combination with conventional pharmacological treatment.1 More than half of parents of children with ADHD treat their children’s symptoms using 1 or more CAM therapies, most commonly vitamins, dietary changes, and expressive therapies; yet only about 10% disclose use of such nonpharmacological therapies to their child’s pediatrician.2 Most nonpharmacological therapies used to treat ADHD are supported by limited evidence; however, as many as 80% of patients who use herbal preparations and other natural products regard these therapies as the primary treatment of their symptoms.2
Conventional treatment
Stimulant medications, including dextroamphetamine, methylphenidate, and related compounds, are the most widely used treatments of ADHD. The nonstimulant atomoxetine has less potential for abuse but also may be less effective than stimulants.3 SSRIs and other antidepressants are used with varying degrees of success. Behavioral modification aimed at rewarding desirable behavior and extinguishing disruptive or inappropriate behavior continues to be a mainstay of conventional treatment. Psychotherapy and psychosocial support help reduce anxiety and feelings of loss of control that frequently accompany ADHD. It is estimated that ADHD is correctly diagnosed and treated in fewer than one-fifth of adults, which results in significant social and occupational morbidity.
Limitations and risks of conventional treatment
Long-term amphetamine use in childhood is associated with delays in normal development.4 One-third of individuals of all ages who take stimulants for ADHD report significant adverse effects, including insomnia, decreased appetite, and abdominal pain.5 Cases of stimulant-induced psychosis have also been reported.6 Stimulants and other conventional treatments of ADHD in adults are probably only half as effective as they are in children.4
Adverse effects of nonstimulant drugs used to treat ADHD include hypertension, decreased appetite, nausea, fatigue, liver toxicity, insomnia, and seizures. A meta-analysis of 6 controlled trials concluded that stimulant therapy started in childhood reduces the risk of subsequent substance abuse by as much as one-half. In contrast, stimulants started in adolescence or adulthood increase the risk of future substance abuse.7 Nonstimulant medications and extended-release stimulants are less likely to be abused.8 Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Special Education on July 9, 2010 - כ"ז תמוז תש"ע at 11:29 am
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Son’s autism leads to innovation
By Geoff Adams-Spink , April 23, 2010
Age & disability correspondent, BBC News website
The father of a child with severe autism has developed technology to help him communicate.
Stephen Lodge said the idea for his Speaks4Me system came to him years ago but has been waiting for technology to catch up in order to make it a reality.
His eleven-year-old son, Callum, is non-verbal and uses his father’s invention to speak.
Speaks4Me was on show at Naidex 2010 – the annual disability exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham.
Mr Lodge’s system runs on any device that can run the Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 operating system.
It uses the concept of dragging and dropping images from one area of the screen to another to form sentences.
The user then presses a speech button to "verbalise" the sentence.
"Callum has been using Speaks4Me for some time now and he has already been able to create some very expressive sentences," Mr Lodge told the BBC.
Examples include, "I want a drink of juice", "I want to go outside", and "I feel tired".
Mr Lodge – who lives in South Yorkshire – has 20 years’ experience in technology and developed Speaks4Me after deciding that other products on the market were unsatisfactory for Callum.
He cashed in his savings and raised money on his property in order to finance the venture.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Science and Technology, Special Education on April 24, 2010 - י' אייר תש"ע at 11:24 pm
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How Not to Raise a Bully: The Early Roots of Empathy
By Maia Szalavitz, TIME , Apr. 17, 2010
Since the Jan. 14 death of Phoebe Prince, the 15-year-old in South Hadley, Mass., who committed suicide after being bullied by fellow students, many onlookers have meditated on whether the circumstances that led to her after-school hanging might have been avoided.
Could teachers have stepped in and stopped the bullying? Could parents have done more to curtail bad behavior? Or could preventive measures have been started years ago, in early childhood, long before bullies emerged and started heaping abuse on their peers? (Read what can be done about bullying in school.)
Increasingly, neuroscientists, psychologists and educators believe that bullying and other kinds of violence can indeed be reduced by encouraging empathy at an early age. Over the past decade, research in empathy — the ability to put ourselves in another person’s shoes — has suggested that it is key, if not the key, to all human social interaction and morality.
Without empathy, we would have no cohesive society, no trust and no reason not to murder, cheat, steal or lie. At best, we would act only out of self-interest; at worst, we would be a collection of sociopaths.
Although human nature has historically been seen as essentially selfish, recent science suggests that it is not. The capacity for empathy is believed to be innate in most humans, as well as some other species — chimps, for instance, will protest unfair treatment of others, refusing to accept a treat they have rightfully earned if another chimp doing the same work fails to get the same reward. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Education Report, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Special Education on April 18, 2010 - ד' אייר תש"ע at 6:34 am
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Why everything you’ve been told about evolution is wrong
What if Darwin’s theory of natural selection is inaccurate? What if the way you live now affects the life expectancy of your descendants? Evolutionary thinking is having a revolution . . .
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, Friday 19 March 2010
The story, still sometimes repeated in creationist circles, goes like this: it is the 1960s, at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, and a team of astronomers is using cutting-edge computers to recreate the orbits of the planets, thousands of years in the past. Suddenly, an error message flashes up. There’s a problem: way back in history, one whole day appears to be missing.
The scientists are baffled, until a Christian member of the team dimly recalls something and rushes to fetch a Bible. He thumbs through it until he reaches the Book of Joshua, chapter 10, in which Joshua asks God to stop the world for . . . "about a full day!" Uproar in the computer lab. The astronomers have happened upon proof that God controls the universe on a day-to-day basis, that the Bible is literally true, and that by extension the "myth" of creation is, in fact, a reality. Darwin was wrong – according to another creationist rumour, he’d recanted on his deathbed, anyway – and here, at last, is scientific evidence!
Inevitably, those of us who aren’t professional scientists have to take a lot of science on trust. And one of the things that makes it so easy to trust the standard view of evolution, in particular, is amply illustrated by the legend of the Nasa astronomers: the doubters are so deluded or dishonest that one needn’t waste time with them. Unfortunately, that also makes it embarrassingly awkward to ask a question that seems, in the light of recent studies and several popular books, to be growing ever more pertinent. What if Darwin’s theory of evolution – or, at least, Darwin’s theory of evolution as most of us learned it at school and believe we understand it – is, in crucial respects, not entirely accurate?
Such talk, naturally, is liable to drive evolutionary biologists into a rage, or, in the case of Richard Dawkins, into even more of a rage than usual. They have a point: nobody wants to provide ammunition to the proponents of creationism or "intelligent design", and it’s true that few of the studies now coming to public prominence are all that revolutionary to the experts. But in the culture at large, we may be on the brink of a major shift in perspective, with enormous implications for how most of us think about how life came to be the way it is. As the science writer David Shenk puts it in his new book, The Genius in All of Us, "This is big, big stuff – perhaps the most important [discoveries] in the science of heredity since the gene."
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Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Evolutionary Biology, Science on March 21, 2010 - ו' ניסן תש"ע at 4:01 pm
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ADHD Is Not a Disease
Today, the “epidemic” of ADHD has grown to about seven million young people in the U.S. Most of these children are on medication. And if you add in the numbers that are on antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, the number is over 10 million. That is larger than the entire population of New York City!
By Jon Herring, Total Health Breakthroughs, March 10, 2010
“Hey, Phillip… do you mind if I sit here and eat with you?” I asked.
“Sure, whatever…”
“How’s school going? Are you doing well?”
“Not really. I just want it to be summer.”
“Yeah, I remember how that used to feel,” I told him.
Phillip is eleven years old. He’s the son of some family friends and I was at a small party when I saw him sitting by himself. I hadn’t seen him for a few years, so I wanted to remind him who I was and get to know him a little better.
As he became comfortable, he opened up a bit more. He told me his plans for the summer. He told me about his friends and the girl he likes at school. And he also told me that he didn’t care for school all that much.
“It’s hard,” he said. “Plus, I have ADHD, so I don’t pay attention very well.”
“Really? How do you know you have ADHD?” I asked.
“That’s what my doctor said. He said I’ve had it since I was born. That’s why I have to take medicine.”
“Well, I think you’re just fine. How does that medicine make you feel?”
“It used to make me kinda nervous,” he said. “And I couldn’t go to sleep when I took it. Now, it just makes me not want to eat.”
After complimenting Phillip on his manners and intelligence, I changed the subject back to his plans for the summer. But what he said bothered me. Here was a bright young boy who was bored and frustrated in school… who probably had a few behavioral problems… and who had now been labeled as having a “disease” and put on medication.
And, unfortunately, Phillip is just one of millions…
I was bothered by his story because I could only imagine what that would do to the psyche and development of a child to be handed a lifelong sentence like that from a doctor. You are broken. You are defective. Your brain doesn’t work right. You are not acceptable in your natural state, but taking these drugs every day can help you.
It might be one thing if ADHD was actually a “disease”… but it’s not.
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Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Special Education on March 12, 2010 - כ"ו אדר תש"ע at 12:58 pm
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Longer Saudi Arabia Is Left to Exist, Closer A Nuclear Terrorist Act Comes
Authorities continue to systematically suppress, or fail to protect, the rights of fourteen million Saudi women and girls, eight million foreign workers, and some two million Shia. Thousands of people have received unfair trials or were subject to arbitrary detention. Curbs on freedom of association, expression, and movement, as well as a pervasive lack of official accountability, remain serious concerns. In May the government cancelled scheduled municipal elections.- HRW
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
American Chronicle, February 14, 2010
Saudi Arabia is not a state; it is a factory of inhuman hatred, evil rancor, vulgar behaviour, deep ignorance, compact inanity, and utter bestialization of the human beings who happen to live there. Never ever in the World History has the Humankind testified to such an ulcerous enmity of the Knowledge, Science, Art and Philosophy. Yet, the territory presently occupied by Saudi Arabia was not always the realm of the utmost barbarism. Degradation and decay came with the gradual rise and prevalence of the Hanbal pseudo-Muslim school of jurisprudence, the pathetic theological system of Ibn Taimiya, and the Satanic cult of Abdel Wahhab – a long historical development that took almost 10 centuries to be completed.
Acting against the interests of their own citizens in the long run, the calamitous Freemasonic regimes of England and France early realized the decadence of the Ottoman Empire and its reasons, namely the predominance of the aforementioned layers of Islamic alteration. With their premeditated, anti-Ottoman and anti-Turkish acts, they averted the possibility of an Islamic Renaissance that would sweep away the aforementioned ignorance and barbarism. And with their intentional detachment of the territory presently occupied by Saudi Arabia from Turkey, they promoted to local power the main factor of this barbarism: the incestuous family of the Wahhabi Saudi tribe.
They further facilitated the expansion and the diffusion of this barbaric pseudo-version of Islam throughout the vast lands inhabited by Muslims that the colonial powers had taken good care to first occupy and then terrorize.
Their plan is evil and easy to understand: by imposing a debilitated, demented, barbaric and idiotic doctrine as Islam, and by eliminating all forms of authentic Islam preserved down to our times from Mali to Yemen and from Somalia to Indonesia, they create a fake and virtually impotent adversary that they plan to effectively eliminate. And they imagine that in this way they will eliminate Islam once and forever. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Islam, Middle East, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, News Articles, Opinion, Recent Posts on February 15, 2010 - א' אדר תש"ע at 12:00 pm
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