New smartphone apps 'detect epilepsy and improve stroke care'

In these modern times, there is practically a smartphone app for all aspects of life. Now, new research has detailed two new apps that could help people detect epileptic seizures and receive better treatment for stroke.

The two new studies will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA, in April.

For the first study that looks at the creation of the epilepsy app, the research team analyzed 67 people with the condition.

They were asked questions about their seizures, and the researchers used the most useful questions and answers that could predict an epileptic seizure in order to create the app.

The investigators tested the app on 132 individuals with epilepsy in India and Nepal and compared the results with their doctors' diagnoses.

The researchers found that the app was informative in 87% of people, and it complied with doctors' diagnoses in 96% of these cases.

Commenting on the findings, Dr. Victor Patterson, a neurologist from Belfast in the UK and co-author of the study, says:

"It can often be difficult to determine whether someone is having an epileptic seizure. This app will help health professionals evaluate and make the diagnosis, especially when doctors are not available."

Stroke app 'could improve patient care'
For the second study, Dr. Claude Nguyen, of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, and colleagues created an app they say could enable doctors to provide more effective care for patients who have suffered acute stroke.

Dr. Nguyen says he first thought about a stroke app when he was a fellow at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

He told Medical News Today that as a physician treating acute stroke patients, he needed a tool that would allow him to "accomplish several goals simultaneously." He wanted to be able to treat the patient in a timely manner, treat them within certain benchmarks and evaluate them for eligibility in clinical trials.

"In addition, I often needed to contact research study coordinators or other personnel," he adds. "I created the app as a way to centralize and streamline these seemingly disparate tasks."

Dr. Nguyen said the app is designed to be used in real-time. He explained that a doctor can enter data about a patient, such as symptom onset time, demographics and their score on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Stroke Scale. Using these data, the app can then determine which clinical trials the doctor might consider the patient for.

"The app also has a stopwatch feature to track and record treatment times, a phonebook to allow quick contact of study personnel and access to inclusion/exclusion criteria for clinical trials," he added.

Dr. Nguyen said he believes the app will become widely used for stroke care:

"On the most basic level, the app can be used as a quality assurance and workflow tool to ensure that practitioners are meeting treatment times for acute stroke.

What makes this app novel is that it can help identify patients who are eligible for clinical trials, which is the key toward finding the next stroke treatment."

It seems mobile technology is increasingly being investigated for use in the medical world.

(Source: medicalnewstoday.com)

Science refreshes its view of aging

With more people living longer, research has more examples of how we cope physically and mentally

How do we stay healthy and mobile into our senior years? How do we stave off dementia?

Exercise regularly. Stay mentally active. Nurture rich social connections. Find things you enjoy doing and people you enjoy doing them with, scientists said at the annual Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

"We don't know how to be old because old age is relatively young. It's something new to us," University of Illinois psychology professor Elizabeth Stine-Morrow told a crowd, many of them middle-aged scientists, at the Hyatt Regency for a program Sunday on "The Science of Resilient Aging."

"A century ago, the average life span was 45 or 50 ... and 4 to 5 percent of the population was over 65," she said. "By 2050, it's going to be over a fifth of the population."

Experts say that by 2050, for the first time in history, the proportion of adults over age 60 is expected to match the number of people younger than 15, each group representing 21 percent of the population.

It's called the Silver Tsunami. But, they emphasized, it's never too early or too late to work on aging well.

Kirk Erickson, associate professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, studies the effects of exercise on aging. He offered promising news, especially for those who had visited the hotel's fitness center that morning or chosen a cold walk over a cab ride to the hotel.

Exercise is good for your brain.

"We see changes in brain regions that typically show decline and deterioration later in life. The brain shrinks, unfortunately, as we get older," Erickson said. "But research has proven that the brain remains highly modifiable into late adulthood. And exercise is one way to modify it."

Erickson pointed to studies of people ages 59 to 81 who were all free of dementia. Those who exercised more frequently, who did something as simple as taking a brisk walk three times a week, had a larger hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with memory and spatial navigation, he said.

After a year of this exercise, they showed an actual increase in the size of the hippocampus. Greater hippocampus volume correlates with improvement in memory.

Scientists also addressed the need to stay mentally active. Symptoms of cognitive decline appear later in people with more "cognitive reserve," said Yaakov Stern. A Columbia University professor of clinical neuropsychology, Stern was Skyped in to talk at the conference after being stuck home in the East Coast snowstorm.

The cognitive reserve theory aims to explain why some people with Alzheimer's pathology maintain normal lives until they die, while others show the severe symptoms associated with the disease. Lifelong experiences, stimulating activities, education and midlife occupation, as well as leisure activities in later life, can help build this cognitive reserve to protect us, he said. And the earlier we start to build, the better. It is never too late to get going.

And when you start, it's good advice to find others who enjoy starting with you, experts say.

Being alone is one thing. Being lonely is something else, said John Cacioppo, a social neuroscientist at the University of Chicago who studies the biological effects of loneliness.

Studies have shown, he said, that socially isolated people have increased health risks and higher mortality.

Loneliness — perceived social isolation — doesn't just make you less happy, he said. It makes you depressed.

"It isn't just about being with others. The frequency of contact is unimportant," Cacioppo said. "It's what that person means to you that really matters."

On the topic of social media, Cacioppo asked whether it's a way to make friends or a substitute for connection.

"If you have no contact, then it's better than nothing," he said. "But it's not a substitute for face-to-face contact."

(Source: chicagotribune.com)

Don't just sit there! It could be harmful later in life

Sitting too much, sometimes called sitting disease, may increase the risk of disability in people over age 60, a new study suggests.

Adults this age spend an average of two-thirds of their waking time being sedentary -- roughly nine hours a day, the research showed.

Every additional hour adults over age 60 spend sitting increases by 50% their risk of being disabled for activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing and walking, says the study's lead author Dorothy Dunlop, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Too many people "have very low levels of activity," she says.

The health problems associated with sitting disease are mounting. Research has linked too much sitting to increased risk of heart failure, type 2 diabetes and death from cancer, heart disease and stroke. It may affect mood and creativity. One study showed that if most people spent fewer than three hours a day sitting, it would add two years to the average life expectancy in this country.

Dunlop and colleagues reviewed data on more than 2,200 people, age 60 and older, who participated in the government's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The participants wore accelerometers (motion sensors) during their waking hours for one week during the three-year survey period. This measured the time they spent being sedentary, doing light physical activity such as pushing a grocery cart, doing moderately vigorous physical activity such as brisk walking, or vigorous physical activity such as running.

Among the findings out Tuesday in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health:

• 6.2% of participants met the government's physical activity guidelines, which advise adults to get at least 2½ hours of moderate-intensity physical activity each week, such as brisk walking, or 1¼ hours of a vigorous-intensity activity, such as jogging or swimming laps, or a combination of the two types.

• 3.6% reported having disabilities in activities of daily living (eating, bathing, dressing, walking).

• The odds of a person being disabled were almost 50% greater for each hour spent in sedentary behavior, Dunlop says. This was true after researchers controlled for physical activity, obesity, socioeconomic status and other health factors.

So if you take two women who are 65 years old who spend the same amount of time doing exercise and have the same health profile, if one was sedentary for 12 hours a day, her chance of being disabled is about 6%, Dunlop says. If another person with exactly the same health profile spent 13 hours a day being sedentary, her chance of being disabled was 9%.

This study doesn't not prove cause and effect, she says. It could be that disabled people are more sedentary, but there are good reasons to believe that being sedentary could lead to disability, Dunlop says.

"Older adults should be as physically active as possible," she says. "We know that moderate physical activity, such as brisk walking, is good for your health, and being sedentary is bad for your health. People should find opportunities to replace some of their sitting time with light activity. It's a low-cost strategy to good health."

This study is "further evidence that simply getting off the couch has great health benefits," says Tim Church, a physician and director of preventive medicine research at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. "The only known prescription for maximizing quality of life as we age is the prescription of physical activity."

This research is "heavy hitting" because it is "telling us that being sedentary is debilitating when one is elderly," says James Levine, co-director of Obesity Solutions at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and Arizona State University. He did some of the first research on sitting disease but was not involved in this study. "This is the first time that has been well illustrated."

Levine says if you've been sitting for an hour, you've been sitting too long. He recommends getting up for 10 minutes of every hour.

Dunlop offers these suggestions for replacing some sitting time with light activity:

• If you are watching TV, get up and walk around the house when a commercial comes on.

• When you are working in front of a computer, get up and walk around every hour.

• When you go to grocery store or mall, park in a space that is far away.

• When you get up to have glass of water or for a meal, walk around the house or office.

• Take the stairs instead of the elevator, if you are able.


(Source:  USAToday.com)

For Columbus boy, horse therapy, speech therapy combine to ease autism symptoms

COLUMBUS, MONTANA — When 5-year-old Eddie Arlt got "caught being good" at school several weeks ago, his mother Stacy Arlt could hardly believe his change in behavior.

“That is not something I had planned on him getting this year,” she said. “It was cause for celebration.”

Eddie has been diagnosed with several disorders — ADD, ADHD and executive function disorder — that affect his behavior, as well as his speech and language function. Two years ago, Arlt enrolled him in speech-language therapy that incorporates hippotherapy that she credits, at least in part, for his transformation. She is so convinced of its benefits that even during a time when her insurer quit covering his sessions, she paid for them out of pocket.

“He’s a very smart kid, but he couldn’t communicate,” she said. “Before, he communicated more with actions than words. Now, he’s using more words than actions.”

Hippotherapy (“hippo” derives from the Greek word for “horse”) refers to the use of the movement of a horse as a treatment strategy for physical, occupational and even speech-language therapy.

With more than 40 years of history to back it up, the technique is recognized by the American Physical Therapy Association, the American Occupational Therapy Association and the American Speech and Hearing Association.

It differs from “therapeutic” riding, which is aimed at improving riding skills or quality of life for individuals with special needs.

“It’s not about riding, it’s about the movement they’re getting from the horse,” said Chrissy Daly, Eddie’s therapist.

She serves as a speech and language pathologist for the Stillwater Sweet Grass Educational Cooperative and uses hippotherapy in her private business Daly Communication Speech-Language Therapy. Daly has six years’ experience in speech and language pathology and first worked with horses in therapy a decade ago during college. Her focus includes autism spectrum disorders, which she said, "is one disorder that often sees many benefits from hippotherapy because of the sensory component."

The theory behind hippotherapy, Daly said, is that some children need a consistent pattern of motion, which seems to transfer from the horse to the human during sessions.

The movement not only helps develop greater postural strength and control for the child, but it helps with sensory-processing issues and motor planning.

“With hippotherapy, we’re trying to help build the sensory and physical systems and when those are functioning more cohesively, you can target goals for speech and language,” she said.

During a session in mid-November, Eddie climbed onto Becky, a carefully selected "bombproof," 13-year-old mustang mare Daly uses for hippotherapy.

Becky’s well-balanced gait makes her an ideal horse for hippotherapy, she explained. With two volunteers walking alongside the boy on the horse, Daly challenges Eddie to recite the alphabet, count by tens and reach back to touch Becky’s tail. She interrupts her instructions frequently to challenge Eddie’s physical and mental flexibility.

Daly follows up the half-hour mounted session with more traditional speech and language therapy, part of which includes work on an iPad.

The maximum benefit comes while riding, but the benefits often linger for some time after, Daly said.

“It’s about developing skills that will transfer into other environments,” she said. “Clients don’t always have access to the horse’s movement, so hopefully they gain the needed skills to use in other contexts.”

Hippotherapy is one tool among many for making therapy sessions more effective, Daly said. Because each child is unique, she uses Becky on a case-by-case basis. In fact, sometimes the child never rides at all.

“The animal connection is still there,” she said. “Sometimes they talk to the horse and not to you.”

Daly tells of one young girl who objected to riding during one of her sessions.

“The great thing was she was able to verbalize her feelings where previously she was not able to express that,” Daly said.

Another child exhibited remarkable progress, speaking more after a one-hour session of hippotherapy than he had spoken over the span of his life.

“Of course, you don’t always see that,” Daly said, “But you tend to get more responses, more participation, more clarity and more use of language. The theory is that it heightens brain function which allows for an increase in communication and connection to others.”

As a lifelong equestrian, and as someone who enjoys working with children, Daly is pleased to see the benefits of combining her two loves. She has worked with children as young as 2 up through early adolescents. Because she has access to an indoor arena, she can maintain continuity year-round, which can help achieve a client’s goals.

“After two years of hippotherapy, Eddie is able to interact more and communicate better, Arlt said. His behavior has improved both at school and home and his mother said he’s never left (therapy) not having had a good time.”

“He’s still a boy, but it helps me to work with him,” she said, offering a word of advice for other parents. “If kids are questionable at a young age, throw them on a horse and see what happens.”

(Source: missoulian.com)

Apple Prepping Sensors That Predict Heart Attacks, Report Says

We now know that Apple held closed-door talks with Tesla, a meeting of two innovative companies that hints at a number of possibilities. But buried in that same report from the San Francisco Chronicle is the news that Apple may also be preparing to release a heart-attack prediction device.

According to the report, Apple is developing sensor technology that would be able to predict heart attacks. The effort, led by audio expert Tomlinson Holman, the inventor of THX and 10.2 surround sound, will reportedly focus on the sound blood makes as it travels through a person's arteries.

However, in order for Apple's supposed sensor to monitor the sound of a person's blood, that device would likely have to be worn on a person's body. Therefore, this new information directly points to the continued rumors of an upcoming Apple wearable device, commonly referred to as the iWatch.

The iWatch implications of the San Francisco Chronicle report are further backed by last week's news that Apple hired medical-device expert Marcelo Malini Lamego. What's more, a report in January claimed that Apple is also working on new health-focused apps for iOS.

If this new report regarding Apple's heart sensor research pans out — barring a surprise move by the company to enter the medical scanner bed industry — Apple's rumored iWatch will turn out to be far more broadly impactful than anyone could have guessed.

(Source: mashable.com)

Vaccines reduce risk of strokes in children

Kids who were unvaccinated or undervaccinated were almost seven times as likely as others to have a stroke, a new study finds.

A new international study finds another benefit to childhood vaccines: preventing strokes.

Pediatric strokes are rare, affecting about five out of every 100,000, for about 5,000 pediatric strokes a year in the USA, says co-author Heather Fullerton, a professor of neurology and pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. About half of these strokes are caused by blood clots, the focus of her study.

In the study, which included children in the developing world, kids who received "some, few or no" vaccines were nearly seven times more likely to have a stroke than kids who had all or most of their recommended shots, according to Fullerton's research, presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in San Diego.

Previous research has shown that infections greatly increase a child's risk of stroke, partly by causing a temporary increase in the blood clotting, Fullerton says.

Several vaccine-preventable bacterial diseases – such as those caused by the bacteria pneumococcus or Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib — can lead to meningitis, an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord that also increases a child's risk of stroke, she says.

Vaccines have been hailed as one of medicine's greatest success stories, and have eliminated a host of deadly diseases from the USA.

While some strokes are related to genes, doctors still don't understand what causes many childhood strokes, said Fullerton's co-author, Nancy Hills, also of the University of California, San Francisco, in a statement. She said she's encouraged to find a way to reduce children's risks.

"The exciting thing about this study is that with vaccination, it might prevent these strokes from happening," says neurologist M. Shazam Hussain, director of the stroke center at the Cleveland Clinic, who was not involved in the new study.

Robert Brown, chair of neurology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Minnesota, called the study's findings "remarkable," noting that study was large and well-designed.

"To lower the risk of stroke is noteworthy," Brown says. And while strokes in children are rare, "these are precious young children who are having these strokes, which affect them throughout their long, long lives."

Researchers presented their work in abstract form. It has not yet been published as a full paper in a peer-reviewed journal.

Leaders of the international study, Vascular effects of Infection in Pediatric Stroke, or VIPS, interviewed the parents or guardians of 310 children who had a stroke, and compared their findings with 289 children who hadn't experienced a stroke. Kids in both groups were around 7.5 or 8 years old. The study, which included 40 centers on five continents, is the largest study on pediatric stroke ever funded by the National Institutes of Health.
(Source: usatoday.com)

Drug reverses autism brain activity in mice, study shows

A generic blood pressure drug could prevent hyperactive brain cell firing associated with early stages of autism spectrum disorder, according to a new study.

Injecting pregnant mice with Bumetanide, a diuretic, appears to correct a developmental switch flipped during childbirth that reverses the firing characteristics of neurons in newborns, according to a study published online Thursday in the journal Science.

Bumetanide mimics the effects of oxytocin, a hormone released during labor that helps protect newborns from the stresses and complications of birth, the study found. That surge of oxytocin changes the way a neurotransmitter regulates neurons -- it no longer encourages the firing of neurons and becomes a kind of electrochemical brake in the adult brains.

Overly excited brain circuits are strongly linked with autism spectrum disorder, a disease that strikes an estimated 1 of every 88 children, causing them to have restricted interests, and impaired communication and social skills.

The drug was tested for only two types of autism that constitute a minority of cases of the perplexing disorder: a genetic mutation that causes Fragile X Syndrome, and autism sparked by prenatal exposure to the anticonvulsive valproic acid.

Researchers warned that further testing will be needed to determine both the efficacy of the drug in children and its potential for causing side effects. And because there is no way to diagnose autism risks to fetuses, it remains unlikely that such a therapy would be administered prenatally, as a prevention of autism.

“I’m not convinced that the hope is one day to be able to treat during pregnancy,” said neurologist Yehezkel Ben-Ari, of the French Institute of Health and Medical Research, the lead author of the study. “The hope is after birth, provided we have a good diagnosis.”

Early clinical trials in Europe have shown that the drug diminished autism symptoms among 60 children age 3-11. Further trials are underway, Ben-Ari said.

Researchers have long suspected the role of gamma aminobutyric acid, or GABA, but have not understood the intricacies of the “GABA switch” that is apparently thrown at birth, nor how it might be altered.

They focused on a kind of biochemical trade balance of chloride ions in neurons of the hippocampus. A surplus inside fetal neurons gradually decreases as a chloride exporter comes to dominate the equation, and oxytocin appears to mediate this change, according to the study.

“During delivery, you have important reactions that, if they fail, you have a higher likelihood of autism,” Ben-Ari said. “The delivery has a major priming effect on what is going to happen subsequently.”

But that priming doesn’t happen in mice with the Fragile X mutation or those exposed to valproic acid in utero, the researchers found. Chloride export was reduced in both. And GABA continued to excite the neurons of the newborns of both type rats, rather than inhibit them. This led to more active circuits, according to the study.

Bumetanide administered to pregnant mice changed the aberrant chloride profile in the the neurons of mice offspring, which also exhibited fewer autism-like characteristics in their vocalizations, according to the study.

Andrew Zimmerman, a pediatric neurologist at the Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, said the findings were encouraging.

“They’ve further defined this GABA switch that we’ve suspected is present in normal brain development but is probably abnormal in autism brain development,” Zimmerman said. “This is direct confirmation, as close as you can get in animals.”

Zimmerman noted that 80% of autism cases arise from unknown causes unrelated to Fragile X syndrome or exposure to valproic acid. Still, he added, the fact that two widely different causes of autism showed a chloride imbalance suggests that this may be a common denominator in other cases.

(Source: latimes.com)

Why Vitamins May Be Bad for Your Workout

Many people take vitamins as part of their daily fitness regimens, having heard that antioxidants aid physical recovery and amplify the impact of workouts. But in another example of science undercutting deeply held assumptions, several new experiments find that antioxidant supplements may actually reduce the benefits of training.

Antioxidants became popular dietary supplements largely because they were said to sop up free radicals, the highly reactive oxygen molecules that are generated during daily activities. Physical exertion, through its breakdown of oxygen, results in the creation of large numbers of these molecules, which, in excess, can lead to cell death and tissue damage. So it seems logical that reducing the number of free radicals produced by exercise would be desirable.

Enter antioxidants, which absorb and deactivate free radicals. While the body creates its own antioxidants, until recently many researchers believed that we produce too few natural antioxidants to counteract the depredations from free radicals created during exercise. So many people who exercise began downing large doses of antioxidants such as vitamins C and E, even though few experiments in people had actually examined the precise physiological impacts of antioxidant supplements in people who work out.

For a study published last week in The Journal of Physiology, researchers with the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo and other institutions gathered 54 healthy adult men and women, most of them recreational runners or cyclists, and conducted a series of tests, including muscle biopsies, blood draws and treadmill runs, to establish their baseline endurance capacity and the cellular health of their muscles.

Then they divided the volunteers into two groups. Those in one group took four pills a day, delivering a total dose of 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C and 235 milligrams of vitamin E. Members of the second group got identical placebo pills.

Finally, they asked all of the participants to complete a vigorous 11-week training program, consisting of increasingly intense interval sessions once or twice per week, together with two weekly sessions of moderately paced hour-long runs. By the end, all of the volunteers were more fit than they had been at the start, with their maximum endurance capacity increasing by an average of about 8 percent.

But their bodies had responded quite differently to the training. The runners who had swallowed the placebo pills showed robust increases of biochemical markers that are known to goose the creation of mitochondria, the tiny structures within cells that generate energy, in cells in their bloodstream and muscles. More mitochondria, especially in muscle cells, means more energy and, by and large, better health and fitness. The creation of new mitochondria is, in fact, generally held to be one of the most important effects of exercise.

But the volunteers who had consumed the antioxidants had significantly lower levels of the markers related to mitochondrial creation. The researchers didn’t actually count the specific populations of mitochondria within their volunteers’ muscles cells, but presumably, over time, those taking the antioxidants would see a smaller uptick in mitochondrial density than among those not taking them.

That finding echoes the results of another study of antioxidant supplementation and exercise, also published last year in The Journal of Physiology, in which half of a group of older men downed 250 milligrams daily of the supplement resveratrol, an antioxidant famously found in red wine, and the other half took a placebo. After two months of exercising, the men taking the placebo showed significant and favorable changes in their blood pressure, cholesterol profiles and arteries, with fewer evident arterial plaques.

The men taking the resveratrol were not as fortunate. They had exercised as much as the other men, but their blood pressures, cholesterol levels and arteries had remained stubbornly almost unchanged.

Why and how antioxidant supplements would blunt the effects of exercise is not altogether clear, said Goran Paulsen, a researcher at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, who led the vitamin C and E study. But he and many other physiologists have begun to suspect that free radicals may play a different role during and after exercise than previously thought.

In this theory, free radicals are not villainous but serve as messengers, nudging genes and other bodily systems into starting the various biochemical reactions that end in stronger muscles and better metabolic health. Without free radicals, those reactions don’t begin.

And large doses of antioxidant supplements absorb most of the free radicals produced by exercise.

Of course, that theory is still unsubstantiated and requires long-term testing in people, Dr. Paulsen said. It is possible, he said, that smaller doses of antioxidants or different formulations might be useful for athletes. Meanwhile, natural antioxidants from food sources, such as blueberries and red wine, are unlikely to be problematic, he said. “It’s probably only concentrated extracts that are potentially dangerous,” he said. It is also worth pointing out that the volunteers who took the concentrated extracts of vitamins C and E increased their endurance to the same extent as those taking a placebo.

On the other hand, the supplements did not improve performance in comparison with a placebo, so why bother with them, Dr. Paulsen asked. “Personally, I would avoid high dosages” of antioxidants while training, he said. The science on the topic may not be complete, but the intimation of the recent studies is that by downing the supplements, “you risk losing some of the benefits of exercise.”

(Source well.blogs.nytimes.com)

Jobs Alert: COTA and SLP Jobs in Brooklyn and Manhattan!

Job no. 29474
Discipline: SLP

Population: Adult

Location: Manhattan

Schedule: Coverage

Description: Can’t beat this Manhattan neighborhood! This large subacute skilled nursing facility boasts a very dynamic short term population based on relationships with nearby hospitals. They seek a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) for coverage 2/27, 2/28, 3/3 and 3/4. Join a great team of therapists and apply your orthopedic and neurological skills. 

Email Caldra
Call 212.589.1207

Jobs no. 29455

Discipline: COTA

Population: Adult

Location: Brooklyn

Schedule: Coverage

Description:  A newly rebuilt 200-bed not-for-profit nursing center that provides both short and long term care seek a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant (COTA) for coverage 2/19.

Email Caldra
Call 212.589.1207

Your Body Odor Could Be Your New ID Card

Facial recognition, fingerprints and iris scans could soon take a back seat to the newest biometric identification method on the block: body odor. Researchers at Spain's Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, in collaboration with tech firm IIia Sistemas SL, are developing a system that can verify people by their scent signatures.

Recognizable body odor patterns remain constant enough over time to allow people to be identified with an accuracy rate of 85 percent. Researchers believe this result is enough to create less aggressive ways to ID people than intrusive measures currently being used today.

While iris and fingerprint scan may have a higher accuracy rate, the researchers contend these techniques are commonly associated with criminal records, perhaps making people reluctant to participate with the process. On the other hand, facial recognition has a high error rate. Therefore, the development of scent sensors that could identify a person as they walk through a system stall could provide less invasive solutions with a relatively high accuracy rate.

Researchers believe such technology could be used in airports, border checkpoints or anyplace where photo identification is required. TSA agents may have reputations for being gruff grouches who love nothing more than to nose through your bags, but their rotten tempers might be because of all the rank B.O. they're forced to smell, day in, day out. At least with a scent-detecting security system, someone else could sniff out the bad guys.

(Source: mashable.com)

Happy Presidents Day From Therapeutic Resources!

Happy Presidents Day from Therapeutic Resources!  

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.” ~George Washington

Happy Valentine's Day From Therapeutic Resources!

-If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
Maya Angelou

Warmest wishes to all our readers, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, Speech Language Pathologists, and Assistants.  We are in this profession because we LOVE people...and what a perfect day to celebrate.

Autism and Disclosure: Is Virginia's 'Autism' ID Card Ethical?

(Taken from the Huffington Post) Kathie Snow, a disability rights advocate, brought to my attention a recent news item about Senate Bill 367 in Virginia. The bill would require an optional bar code on driver's licenses and identification cards that can be scanned to reveal if a person has autism. The bill was introduced by Senator Donald McEachin, who is quoted as saying that police and first responders need additional tools in order to discern if a given individual, in McEachin's unfortunate parlance, "has this malady."

While the concept may be altruistic, both Ms. Snow and I were perplexed by what essentially amounts to "outing" the neurodiversity of others. Autism is not a medical condition that would require immediate knowledge of a person's status in an emergency such as diabetes, for example. (And the term "malady" is off-putting to autism self-advocates.) That aside, the bar code raises legal issues that conflict with the Americans with Disabilities Act as scanning the card would also reveal an individual's diagnosis to potential employers and others. At the heart of the ID card issue, however, is disclosure. Decisions are being made by people who do not have autism without direct input from the very individuals whom they propose to support.

It may be very challenging for parents, caregivers, educators and others to fully understand what it is to endure the autistic experience. Because most people with autism are intensely sensitive beings, we should never underestimate the potential for others' remarks to cause undue humiliation and embarrassment. Many caregivers are unaware that their words may be perceived this way; and none of us who are caring and committed willfully wishes to cause hurt feelings.

Our society wrongly condones as acceptable our speaking openly and freely about the most intimate details of another person's physical, mental, behavioral, and educational being. We're most likely to do this with children, the elderly and people with different ways of being. Too often, a person's "behaviors" are discussed at length on their behalf and without permission. Such conversations frequently occur in the presence of the individual, be it a child or adult. Usually the persons being discussed are without a voice or equal say. While caregivers believe they are being helpful, a regrettable breach of trust has occurred.

The next time you feel entitled or obligated to disclose information about someone with a "different way of being in the world," whether that person is in your presence or not, please ask yourself:

1. Do I have prior permission from the individual to do so?
2. Is what I'm about to share gentle, respectful, private or even necessary?
3. Would I be willing to say the exact same thing about myself in exactly the same forum--or have others say it about me without my prior consent and without a way to defend myself?
4. Is there a more discreet manner in which to share the information, such as texting or emailing sensitive information to vocational, educational, medical or school personnel?

The Virginia Institute of Autism has taken a proactive position in their statement on Bill 367: "It should be a personal choice for the individual to opt-in to having a notification on their driver's license." The Institute trains law enforcement and first responders to understand the signs and symptoms of autism, which is an appropriate educational approach. I am well aware of instances in which law enforcement has used unnecessary and undue force on individuals with autism who may outwardly appear to be disregarding an officer's requests or otherwise appear under the influence. But instead of mandating a breach of disclosure for those who have autism (and who are capable enough to drive a vehicle), let's invite those very individuals into a meaningful dialogue to gain their perspective on the circumstances. Such a respectful partnership could yield some beneficial insights as well as dismantle myths about autism as a malady.

(Source: huffingtonpost.com)

OT, PT, and SLP Jobs at Therapeutic Resources!

School Based Occupational Therapy jobs are here!
-Part-time (20 sessions) at a District 75 School on 155th Street, Queens, 11413
-Four days (40 sessions) at a District 75 school on Beach 29th Street in Far Rockaway, 11691
-Full Time (50 sessions) at a District 75 school on Hancock Street in Ridge-wood, 11385

Email Wendy


Physical Therapy School Position
-Part Time Physical Therapist needed in a District 75 school on West Avenue, 10024

Email Bridgette


Early Intervention Cases for Physical and Speech Therapists-A baby needs services on Webster Avenue and 168th Street in the Bronx (10456)  Flexible scheduling, afternoon preference.
-A toddler needs PT and an SLP with feeding experience on West 137th street and Lenox Avenue (10030) Harlem.  Mornings preferred.
-Services are needed for a baby on 101st place and 109th avenue in Jamaica (11433)  Flexible schedule.

Email Maggie

PT for pets? More vets are prescribing physical therapy.

When Ronna Kelly’s dog, Cici, made little progress following knee surgery, Kelly decided the athletic Australian shepherd mix should try treatment usually reserved for humans: physical therapy.

So for the next several months, Cici underwent a personalized exercise program — including running on an underwater treadmill — up to twice weekly at about $60 a pop. “At first she was confused,” says Kelly, of Piedmont, Calif. “But after a few times she learned the routine.”

A year later — and after a rigorous treatment program that included home exercise, vitamins and painkillers — Cici is back in action. “She’s running like crazy after squirrels at the local dog park, and jumping up and down steep hills with amazing agility. She looks like a deer sometimes,” Kelly says.

Physical therapy for pets is one of the fastest growing areas of veterinary medicine, aimed at helping achy, injured or post-operative animals feel better.

“In the past, we didn’t know what to do with them and put them in a crate for six weeks,” says Kirk Peck, a physical therapy professor at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., and president of the American Physical Therapy Association’s animal rehabilitation group.

Now, he says, the veterinary community knows better: “The faster you mobilize them, the faster their recovery is.”

Animal care experts say physical therapy for animals is based on the same tenets as it is for people, and is frequently executed by the same practitioners.

Treatment options include therapeutic exercise programs (many of which feature underwater treadmills, at least for dogs) to strengthen muscles; manual therapy to mobilize tight muscles and joints; cold laser therapy, and sports conditioning. Rehab also could include stretching and using some standard equipment, such as balance boards, clinicians say.

There are outpatient and inpatient programs, depending on the pet and its condition.

While dogs make up the bulk of animal physical therapy patients, cats and horses are also prime candidates. The animal rehabilitation program at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., had a pig as a patient.

Although animal rehab has been around in practice for a couple of decades, it has become a more standard component of pet health care only in the last five years or so, experts say.

Part of the reason is that more veterinarians now recognize the benefits of rehab, which not only helps post-op patients but could also prevent some pets from having to undergo surgery at all, doctors say.

“People have recognized through research that, in the same way we do with people, we can accelerate pets’ recovery after surgery, or even without surgery improve their quality of life,” says Colorado State veterinarian Felix Duerr, who specializes in sports medicine. “Instead of just giving pain medication, we try to improve the outcome of the cases.”

Animal rehab also has benefited from a boost in credibility. Today, practitioners (many of whom are traditional physical therapists — i.e., they work with humans) can get certified through programs such as the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga and the Canine Rehabilitation Institute, which partners with Colorado State.

The popularity of animal rehab also reflects the devotion of pet owners, who time and again have proven their willingness to invest in pets’ health as options in veterinary care grow.

“People really look at their pets as part of the family,” says Sasha Foster, a physical therapist who runs the Colorado State rehab program with Duerr. “What we get to do now is improve the quality of life for a family member, which improves the quality of life of everybody.”

Peck says a pet’s poor health can have detrimental effects on its owners’ health too, since many pet owners, particularly older ones, frequently give up exercising if their dog can’t join them. “Often, a goal for an owner is just to be able to walk his dog,” Peck says.

Of course, there are key differences between treating animals and treating humans — and it’s more than just anatomy. Therapists say they need to build trusting relationships differently with four-legged clients, and be creative when it comes to getting an animal to comply.

“They need to have a good time,” Foster says.

The payoffs are big, Peck adds. “You see the response,” he says. “A dog doesn’t sit there and say, ‘My knee feels so much better, now I can jump.’ They just do it.”

(Source: thetowntalk.com)

Prosthetic Hand Gives Man the Ability to Feel Again (VIDEO)

In a firework accident 10 years ago, Dennis Sorenson lost his left hand.

A faulty firework rocket exploded in Sorenson's hand during a New Year's Eve celebration, which resulted in doctors having to amputate his limb. Since the accident, Sorenson, 36, had been using a standard prosthesis that performed most day-to-day tasks. However, the Danish man still wasn't able to feel — at least until he participated in a study for a new prosthetic hand.

Created by a team of researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, Lifehand 2 enables users to regain feeling in their hands through a surgical procedure where surgeons insert tiny electrodes into the arm; these electrodes then connect sensors in each finger of the prosthetic hand to nerves in the arm.

“The goal of our project was to provide sensory information to an amputee in real-time in order to increase the usability of the prosthesis — to give back as much as possible natural sensory information,” Silverstro Micera, director of the Translational Neural Engineering Laboratory at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, told NPR. "These are the nerves which connect the hand to the brain. They are the natural ones conveying the sensory information from our natural sensors in the fingers in the hand back up to the brain.”

After undergoing the surgery, Sorenson began testing Lifehand 2 in a clinical trial at Rome's Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma last February. While wearing a blindfold and earplugs, Sorenson was able to distinguish between the shape and consistency of multiple items, noting the differences between a mandarin orange and a baseball, a short bottle and a tall bottle, and a wooden block and a piece of fabric.

"It was really, really amazing because suddenly my artificial hand and my brain were working together for the first time in many years," Sorensen said. "It was very close to be like your normal hand."

Research from the trial was published Wednesday, February 5th in Science Translational Medicine.
(Source: mashable.com)

Therapy helped kids overcome peanut allergy, but don't try it at home

Gradual exposure to peanut protein powder over six months helped more than half of kids with peanut allergies learn to tolerate the equivalent of about 10 peanuts per day, according to the results of a new clinical trial.

The Phase 2 trial also found that the overwhelming majority of kids who tested the experimental therapy were able to eat the equivalent of about five peanuts each day without having an allergic reaction. This led to significant improvements in the quality of life for the families of these children, according to a report published Thursday by the Lancet.

Experts estimate that 15 million Americans and another 17 million Europeans are allergic to peanuts, and most of them are children. Among food allergies, reactions to peanuts are the “most common cause of severe and fatal allergic reactions,” the study authors wrote. As many as half of all kids with peanut allergies wind up eating them by accident over the course of a year, and the constant fear of eating hidden peanuts is a big drag on the quality of life for these kids and their families.

A group of researchers from the U.K. has been experimenting with oral immunotherapy as a way to desensitize kids to peanuts. Their regimen involves feeding kids increasingly higher doses of a finely ground peanut protein powder, mixed in with their regular food. It starts with a dose of 2 milligrams of peanut protein powder per day, then building to a daily dose of 5 mg, 12.5 mg, 50 mg, 100 mg, 200 mg, 400 mg and finally leveling off at 800 mg. (Oral immunotherapy, or OIT, has been tested for allergies to eggs and milk as well.) In the peanut study, the first exposures to each dose occurred at a clinical research facility; after that, kids were able to eat at home.

The trial, known as STOP II, involved kids between the ages of 7 and 16. After six months, 24 of the 39 kids who tried OIT were able to tolerate 1,400 milligrams of peanut protein each day, for a success rate of 62%, the researchers found. Those 1,400 mg are the equivalent of eating about 10 peanuts – more than someone with allergies is likely to eat by accident.

In addition, 84% of the kids were able to tolerate a daily dose of 800 mg of peanut protein at the end of the six-month period. That’s roughly the amount of protein found in about five regular peanuts, according to the study. The average amount of peanut protein that kids could tolerate without having an allergic reaction was 25.5 times greater than it was before they began the sensitization protocol.

Meanwhile, none of the 46 kids in the control group were able to tolerate either level of peanut exposure after following their usual routine of simply avoiding peanuts as much as possible. Making matters worse, the average amount of peanut protein that they could tolerate fell slightly over the six-month period, according to the study.

In the second phase of the trial, the kids in the control group were invited to try OIT. Six months later, 54% of them were able to handle 1,400 mg of peanut protein powder each day, and 91% could tolerate a daily dose of the 800 mg, the researchers reported.

Most of the side effects of the therapy were mild, and they included itchy mouth, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, according to the study. A total of 22% of study participants experienced wheezing, though that occurred after only 0.41% of the doses administered. One study volunteer had to use a device like an EpiPen. No one was admitted to a hospital as a result of peanut exposure.

Quality of life improved for kids in both groups as they stopped having to worry so much about the negative consequences of accidental exposure to peanuts, the study authors reported.

“The families involved in this study say that it has changed their lives dramatically,” study leader Dr. Andrew Clark, of Cambridge University Hospitals, said in a statement.

To maintain the benefits seen in this study, kids would have to keep eating peanut protein powder for as long as several years, the study authors noted. In past studies, subjects who stopped OIT after nine months saw their allergies return.

The results from STOP II are “exceptionally promising,” Dr. Matthew Greenhawt, research director of the University of Michigan Food Allergy Center, wrote in a commentary that accompanied the Lancet study. However, he cautioned that OIT as a treatment for peanut allergies “remains experimental.” More studies are needed – especially ones involving larger groups of patients, younger children, and kids with severe reactions to peanuts – to to determine whether OIT is safe and cost-effective, he wrote.

The therapy “is years away from routine clinical use,” Greenhawt wrote. The additional research needed “must be done without added pressure or heightened expectations to quickly produce a marketable therapy.”

The study authors echoed his concerns, warning patients and their families not to try OIT on their own. “Because of the significant risks involved, OIT should be restricted to specialist centers,” they wrote. 

(Source: latimes.com)

New York Wants To Give Special Education Kids Easier Tests Like 'The Old South,' Advocate Says

Should students with disabilities be held to the same academic standards and tests as other kids their age?

That decades-old question is being revived by a debate in New York. Some advocates charge that a proposed tweak to the state's No Child Left Behind update may shortchange vulnerable students -- and, if approved, could spread to other states. They want these kids tested alongside their peers, so that they won't fall behind as each grade passes them by. Others, though, say tougher testing for kids with disabilities can have its own detrimental effects.

New York Education Commissioner John King has proposed allowing up to 2 percent of the state's students with "severe disabilities ineligible for the alternate assessment" to be tested at their instructional ability -- not their chronological grade year -- up to two full grade levels below a student's current grade level. The tweak would, for example, allow an 8th grader with autism to be tested on exams written for sixth graders.

"When we take students and test them two levels below their enrolled grade and say you only have to master that content, … they get trapped in a cycle of low performance that happens regardless of their own abilities," said Lindsay Jones, who heads public policy for the National Center for Learning Disabilities. "There's a group of kids who will be lost under this proposal."

The National Center for Learning Disabilities, a New York-based group that represents 500,000 parents of students with disabilities, sent New York a letter protesting the change on Thursday, arguing it would result in such students receiving less rigorous instruction. Civil rights groups are considering similar letters.

The proposed New York amendment "is both inappropriate and offensive" to nearly 400,000 students eligible for schooling under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, including nearly 150,000 with specific learning disabilities, the group wrote in the letter, provided to The Huffington Post. "We urge the Board of Regents to reject it." The group instead advocated "access to high standards and accurate measurement of student growth."

The group contended federal law prevents New York from making the tweak. The letter asserted that allowing "out of level" testing would "take students off track," and create a new category of students not recognized by federal law.

King's proposal comes as New York seeks to renew the waiver that allows state educators to bypass parts of the No Child Left Behind Act. After Congress failed to reauthorize No Child Left Behind, President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told states in 2011 that they could escape some of the law's strictures -- particularly those punishing schools for low raw test scores -- by agreeing to preferred policies. Those policies include teacher evaluations that take test scores into account, and a new system for setting school performance goals. New York's waiver was approved in May 2012.

In November, the U.S. Education Department told states that had already received waivers that they could ask for a one-year extension by showing how the waiver improved education outcomes. In an October 2013 letter, King outlined "smarter testing options" in proposing the new testing for students with disabilities. If the state regents adopt his proposal, King will present it to the U.S. Education Department in seeking the waiver extension by the end of February.

Advocates for students with disabilities said they hope the proposal doesn't make it that far. "If New York's request gets approved, other states will try," said Jones. "We won't really know how these students are doing. It's a way to game the system."

For years, the U.S. Education Department allowed 2 percent of students with disabilities to take a test based on lower standards. Some states, however, wound up testing up to half of all students with disabilities on this exam.

Education officials have since moved away from the practice. Testing students at lower grade levels, according to Dianne Piche, who oversees education initiatives at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, was used decades ago in segregated schools in the South to justify teaching black students at lower levels than white students.

Over the summer, Duncan said he would seek to abolish the 2 percent rule, instead allowing only 1 percent of students with the most severe disabilities to take an alternative test.

Advocates said they worry New York is trying to bring these excoriated policies back.

"New York is not proposing to create a new separate assessment for students with disabilities, but its amendment is based on a similar theory -- separate out students with disabilities and test them on lower academic standards," the group said in the letter.

Piche called the New York proposal "regressive."

"We are resurrecting issues with racism and disabilities that we never resolved," Piche said. "For a progressive state like New York to revert to practices that were embedded by the old South is horrifying."

Instead of lowering standards, underperforming students with disabilities should be encouraged to learn at higher levels, the National Center for Learning Disabilities said. "They will be permanently behind," under the proposal, the group wrote. "To the extent that New York’s students with disabilities are failing to perform at a proficient level on the state assessments in Reading and Mathematics, the response should be changes and enhancements to students’ instructional programs."

King spokesman Dennis Tompkins said the state Education Department is accepting comments on the proposal and "we'll look at and consider any input we get from any sources." Tompkins also pointed out that during often-racuous public forums King held last fall on the Common Core State Standards Initiative, many special education teachers said new Common Core tests were too hard for their students.

Tompkins cited several letters to King's office supporting the proposal. One, from the Syracuse University Parent Advocacy Center and Mid-State Region Special Education Center, expressed "tentative support" for out-of-level testing, pending the final proposal. Amy Zogby, director of that group, wrote that testing students "so far beyond their current ability" takes a toll. "Assessing a child closer to their instructional level will provide more accurate information," she wrote.

Another letter, from Naomi Brickel project coordinator of the Hudson Valley Special Education Parent Center, expressed similar sentiments. "We are aware that students, and their parents alike, frequently become frustrated, resigned, and disheartened when required to participate in a state assessment process that is not aligned with their day to day instruction, often leading to significant angst and anxiety and even subsequent behavior issues," Brickel wrote.

Under King's proposal, test scores of students who are tested at lower grades than peers, if proficient or higher, could count toward the accountability rankings of the lower grade level. That is to say that a sixth grade student tested at fourth grade standards could count toward the state's fourth grade proficiency goals.

The National Center for Learning Disabilities called the state's desire to use out-of-level tests to satisfy testing goals "a double sucker punch and will only result in unreliable and inaccurate information."

"It's cheating the system," Jones said. "It's implying that they're going to pass a fourth grade test so the fourth grade proficiency rate will look good, but they're a sixth grader."

(Source: huffingtonpost.com)