Six Organizations Receive Grants from the Special Hope Foundation Evidence-Based Cost and Quality of Care Research Grants for Adults with Developmental Disabilities

Six Organizations Receive Grants from the Special Hope Foundation Evidence-Based Cost and Quality of Care Research Grants for Adults with Developmental Disabilities (Palo Alto, CA, February 22, 2016) — The Special Hope Foundation and the Academy of Developmental Medicine and Dentistry are pleased to announce that six organizations serving the healthcare needs of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities were selected to receive funding for their research projects. These grants will support a variety of […]

Necessity, the mother of participation

Mothers of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often experience stress and suffer from sleep deprivation. Sacrifices almost always follow as they abandon professional careers and personal ambitions, believing that care for their children “comes first.” But is maternal abandonment of aspirations and interests really beneficial for the ASD child? A new Tel Aviv University study finds that a mother’s positive attitude to involvement in everyday activities and a sense of competency in the performance […]

Mind-controlled prosthetic arm moves individual ‘fingers’

Physicians and biomedical engineers from Johns Hopkins report what they believe is the first successful effort to wiggle fingers individually and independently of each other using a mind-controlled artificial “arm” to control the movement. The proof-of-concept feat, described online in the Journal of Neural Engineering, represents a potential advance in technologies to restore refined hand function to those who have lost arms to injury or disease, the researchers say. The young man on whom the […]

Roots, Bark and Branches

ANCORA IMPARO BY RICK RADER, MD ■ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF There was an additional attraction of the tree for Helen. The tree provided her with a self contained sensory experience. Education, at least for me, was never a walk in the park. Undergraduate, graduate and medical school was a challenge, but they paled in comparison to Public School 244 in Brooklyn. Back in the 1950’s and 60’s, the New York City elementary schools (as well as junior […]

Why are There Increasing Numbers of Children and Adults with Disabilities?

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE & DENTISTRY BY H. BARRY WALDMAN DDS, MPH, PHD, STEVEN P. PERLMAN DDS, MSCD, DHL (HON), AND MISHA GAREY, DDS AN INORDINATE FONDNESS FOR BEETLES “The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, for the simple reason that there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with  somewhat less than 9,000 species […]