Can't Crawl?, Then Roll...

Children with mobility issues, like cerebral palsy and spina bifida, can’t explore the world like other babies, because they can’t crawl or walk. Mobility-deprived kids start exploring when they can operate a traditional power wheelchair, typically at age 3 or often older.

Physical therapy professor Cole Galloway and mechanical engineering professor Sunil Agrawal have developed tiny power chairs babies as young as 6 months can operate using a joystick. Now, they’ve paired with Permobil, a national producer of power chairs, and outfitted a chair for toddlers. Galloway will be showcasing this research February 10 in Las Vegas at the American Physical Therapy Association’s Combined Sections Meeting.

A 17-month-old boy, Andrew, who’s been driving the robots for more than a year, will be on hand to demonstrate the technology. On an average day, Andrew uses his chair to navigate his home and the outside world. He is ready to attend pre-K next year, impressive progress for a child with spina bifida.

Galloway believes providing mobility to children who wouldn’t have it otherwise could impact their lives in countless ways, especially when you consider the rapid brain development during infancy.

“Babies literally build their own brains through their exploration and learning in the complex world,” he says. “Their actions, feelings and thinking all shape their own brain’s development. “Mobility is linked to widespread advances in cognitive development and learning abilities in typically developing infants.”
The University of Delaware has filed patents and is working to bring to market a robot-enhanced mini wheelchair for children aged 6 months-2 years.

This is a great advancement, unfortunate children will not be left behind.

Great Day!

today is a great day because I finally finished a program for VB, only took two weeks. Now I only have two more to catch up on, ha.

What to do...hmm

Yeah, its finally Friday, AND I get to take a test today! Someone is messing with me, because this is too good to be true. I'm feeling a little left behind in programming, but it's only the beginning of the semester and I'll be able to catch up.

But if anyone is wondering on what to do on their Friday night, wanderlist.com has some great suggestions:
Make Rice Crispy Treats
Just BEAT IT!!!
Paint your apt. to look like the inside of a whales stomach
Race crabs at a chinese grocery store.
Listening to Led Zeppelin and jump off a house.
Play Atari
laugh your ass off. its the best :)
Get Kicked Out Of Somewhere. Where? Unimportant. Anywhere.
Start a new bad habit
Take an enema
Go Trenchcoating

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for the abuse and misuse of crabs.

Mudvayne, HOB Mar. 17!

Yes boys and girls,
Your dreams are coming true, Mudvayne is coming to the New Orleans House of Blues on March 17th, one of my top ten favorite bands. I found out by going to the wcpr website, which is a great websit to go to for concert info, dj, and segment info. Anyone that goes there also needs to sign up to be a cpr webhead, for some exclusive stuff. For example, when Metallica came to New Orleans in November, only the webheads were offered special ticket packages. Don't miss out, tickets go fast!
[GO HERE]
WCPR
979cprrocks.com
ticketmaster
ticketmaster.com
house of blues
hob.com
concertinfo
pollstar.com

Got a case of the Mondays?

How are YOU doing,
Dont you love trading a warm bed for a cold room and a computer screen, I know I do ( I hope my sarcasm comes across well enough in text). But we did insert our first flash video into a website today, and flash seems really neat. I'm rather anxious to start building our own flash videos. I had no idea before I started to use Dreamweaver that it was so user friendly. The user almost needs no training in HTML, and there is no comparison to notepad.