Lawyer: NCAA actions affected entire PSU community

BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) ? From former players to faculty members, a mini-cross section of the Penn State community has partnered with the late head coach Joe Paterno's family in suing the NCAA to overturn the landmark sanctions against the school for the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

While the Paternos are the headliners among the plaintiffs in the civil suit filed Thursday in Centre County court, 19 others with ties to Penn State are also seeking a jury trial to reverse what they call the NCAA's swift and unlawful punishment of the storied football program.

Paul Kelly, an attorney representing trustees, faculty, and former players and coaches, said the action related to the impact on "the entire Penn State community."

"I would say the overwhelming majority of the complaints and the facts really relate to ... due process, and the fairness and actions of the NCAA," Kelly said in a phone interview. "It's much broader than (the Paterno family's claims) and I hope people realize that."

Therefore, Kelly said, his clients had no other choice but to turn to the courts "since the NCAA acted in an area in which it had no authority, failed to follow its own rules, forcibly imposed an onerous result on innocent parties" and refused to recognize appeal efforts.

In Irving, Texas, NCAA president Mark Emmert ? named as a defendant in the lawsuit ? said he had not reviewed the filing and declined comment Thursday on individual cases. He spoke to reporters after addressing Big 12 Conference presidents and athletic directors during their spring meeting.

"We have a number of lawsuits out there around a number of cases ... I'm perfectly fine to have an opportunity for us to state our case and have it heard in a court of law, then we'll let a legal system do its work," he said. "Again, I'm always happy for the NCAA and for college athletics to make its case because I think it's got a pretty powerful case for what it is and what it does."

The 40-page filing culminated months of rumors about whether the Paterno family and others would enter the already complex web of litigation over the sanctions. Most notably, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA.

Penn State itself is not a party in the latest suit. The university Wednesday said it remained committed to fully complying with the sanctions levied last July, including a four-year bowl ban, steep scholarship cuts and a $60 million fine.

The Associated Press left messages Thursday for a spokesman for former FBI director Louis Freeh. His scathing report for the university on the scandal concluded that Paterno and three school officials conspired to conceal allegations Sandusky, a retired defensive coordinator.

Those conclusions have been strongly denied by Paterno's family and the officials. The lawsuit blasts Freeh's report as an "unreliable rush to injustice," and that the NCAA improperly relied on the findings instead of conducting its own investigation.

Acting with uncharacteristic speed, the NCAA delivered its punishment less than two weeks after Freeh's findings were issued.

"The road may be long and the fight will be tough, but in the end, we will do right for Penn State," the trustees, faculty members, and ex-coaches and players in the case wrote in a letter Thursday to other former players explaining the action.

"Everyone involved deserves fairness, due process, truth and a just outcome ? and this is our cause," they wrote.

Besides the Paterno family, Paterno's son, Jay Paterno, is listed separately as a plaintiff ? as one of two former assistant coaches ? along with Bill Kenney.

The other 18 plaintiffs are:

?Trustees Ryan McCombie, Anthony Lubrano, Adam Taliaferro, Peter Khoury and Al Clemens. McCombie, Lubrano and Taliaferro weren't on the board in November 2011, when the board fired Paterno ?a decision that still irks many alumni and former players. Taliaferro is also a former player who gained notoriety for his recovery from a severe spinal cord injury during a game in 2000.

McCombie, in a letter Wednesday to trustees chair Keith Masser explaining his position, said the Penn State case was an example of how the NCAA was an "out-of-control monopoly" that uses its power to threaten and bully members.

Khoury is a graduate student and a gubernatorial appointee to the board in October 2011, a month before the scandal hit. Clemens was on the board in 1998 and 2001, during which Freeh said Paterno and the school officials covered up allegations against Sandusky.

?Faculty members Peter Bordi, Terry Engelder, Spencer Niles and John O'Donnell. The faculty has suffered "collateral damage" from the sanctions, Kelly said, due to the trickle-down impact of the scandal. He included attracting and recruiting faculty and top-flight students, and pay raises as areas that might be affected.

?Former players Anthony Adams, Gerald Cadogan, Shamar Finney, Justin Kurpeikis, Rich Gardner, Josh Gaines, Patrick Mauti, Anwar Phillips and Michael Robinson. Each played between 1998 and 2011 ? the years during which the NCAA vacated 111 wins under Paterno as part of the sanctions. That resulted in Paterno no longer holding the record for major college victories.

Of the group, Robinson might be the most notable as an NFL fullback with the Seattle Seahawks.

Besides the NCAA and Emmert, the lawsuit names Oregon State president Edward Ray, the former chair off the NCAA's executive committee, as a defendant.

Sandusky's arrest in November 2011 ignited one of the worst scandals in the history of college athletics.

"We talk about transparency and getting to the bottom of it," Kelly said. "We talk about that for the victims as well. In my view, the victims haven't had the opportunity to have this matter fully reviewed."

Sandusky was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison in October following his conviction last summer on dozens of counts of child sex abuse covering allegations on and off campus.

___

AP Sports Writer Stephen Hawkins in Irving, Texas contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lawyer-ncaa-actions-affected-entire-psu-community-210840871.html

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China official PMI to show minimal growth in May

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's slowing factory sector may have barely grown in May amid lackluster local and foreign demand, a Reuters poll showed, adding to fears that the world's second-largest economy is losing steam.

The median forecast of 10 economists polled by Reuters showed China's official Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) likely retreated to 50.1 in May from April's 50.6 to hover a whisker above the 50-point threshold.

A reading above 50 indicates expanding activity while a reading below that level points to a contraction. The report will be released on Saturday morning.

Evidence has mounted in recent weeks that the economy is fast losing growth momentum as sluggish domestic demand fail to make up for lethargic export sales, dampening hopes for a China economic revival this year.

And there are considerable risks that the PMI could miss even conservative forecasts, especially after last week's dismal preliminary PMI reading.

"Overall, the economy seems to be slowing so a drop below 50 in the PMI is likely," said Zhang Zhiwei, a Nomura economist in Hong Kong who forecast the PMI would fall to 49.

"There are also seasonal factors. There is usually a big drop in the PMI in May."

A flash private PMI survey released last week by HSBC showed China's manufacturing sector shrank for the first time in seven months in May as new orders fell, an unexpectedly poor outcome that caused a rout in global financial markets.

The data spurred banks to downgrade their initial rosy forecasts for a 2013 China economic recovery to predict instead that annual growth could decelerate from last year, and perhaps even miss Beijing's 7.5 percent target.

The IMF and OECD have also slashed their forecasts. The IMF this week cut its 2013 economic growth estimate for China to 7.75 percent from 8 percent, citing a struggling world economy and abysmal exports growth.

The OECD slashed its China 2013 economic growth forecast this week to 7.8 percent from a previous 8.5 percent, attributing its move to tepid domestic demand.

FORECASTS

Nomura 49.0

ING Financial Markets 49.6

Hwabao Trust 49.7

Peking First Advisory 50.0

Daiwa Capital Markets 50.1

Industrial Bank 50.1

Rising Securities 50.1

Zheshang Securities 50.1

Haitong Securities 50.2

Shanghai Securities 50.4

Standard Chartered 50.5

-------------------------------------------

Median 50.1

High 50.5

Low 49.0

Prior 50.6

No. of forecasts 11

(Reporting by Koh Gui Qing; Editing by Kim Coghill)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-official-pmi-show-minimal-growth-may-073819393.html

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Alarm grows as Iraqi forces fail to stem violence

Civilians inspect the site of a parked car bomb attack near a popular restaurant in the Ur neighborhood in northern Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 30, 2013. A series of morning bomb explosions in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday, killed and wounded dozens of people, police said, in the latest eruption of violence rattling the country. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Civilians inspect the site of a parked car bomb attack near a popular restaurant in the Ur neighborhood in northern Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 30, 2013. A series of morning bomb explosions in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday, killed and wounded dozens of people, police said, in the latest eruption of violence rattling the country. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Baghdad municipality workers clean up while restaurant staff react in front of their destroyed restaurant after a parked car bomb exploded near a popular restaurant in the Ur neighborhood in northern Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 30, 2013. A series of bomb explosions in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday killed and wounded dozens in the latest eruption of violence rattling the country, officials said. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Workers inspect their destroyed restaurant after a parked car bomb exploded near a popular restaurant in the Ur neighborhood in northern Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 30, 2013. A series of bomb explosions in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday killed and wounded dozens in the latest eruption of violence rattling the country, officials said.(AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Iraqis gather at the scene of a bomb attack in the commercial area of Karradah in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 30, 2013. A series of morning bomb explosions in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday, killed and wounded dozens of people, police said, in the latest eruption of violence rattling the country. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Security forces inspect the scene of a car bomb attack in the commercial area of Karradah in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 30, 2013. A series of morning bomb explosions in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday, killed and wounded dozens of people, police said, in the latest eruption of violence rattling the country. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)

BAGHDAD (AP) ? Officials in Iraq are growing increasingly concerned over an unabated spike in violence that claimed at least another 33 lives on Thursday and is reviving fears of a return to widespread sectarian fighting.

Authorities announced plans to impose a sweeping ban on many cars across the Iraqi capital starting early Friday in an apparent effort to thwart car bombings, as the United Nations envoy to Iraq warned that "systemic violence is ready to explode."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, was shown on state television visiting security checkpoints around Baghdad the previous night as part of a three-hour inspection tour, underscoring the government's efforts to show it is acting to curtail the bloodshed.

Iraqi security forces are struggling to contain the country's most relentless round of violence since the 2011 U.S. military withdrawal.

The rise in violence follows months of protests against the Shiite-led government by Iraq's Sunni minority, many of whom feel they've been marginalized and unfairly treated since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Tensions escalated sharply last month after a deadly crackdown by security forces on a Sunni protest camp.

Sunni militants, including al-Qaida, have long targeted Iraq's Shiite majority and government security forces. But Sunni mosques and other targets have also been struck over the past several weeks, raising the possibility that Shiite militias are also growing more active.

Several members of the security forces were killed in Thursday's bombings. The attacks also included an assassination attempt by a suicide bomber targeting a provincial governor in the country's Sunni-dominated west.

"These daily patterns of car bomb attacks ... in Baghdad and some other cities (are) really unacceptable for the people of Iraq, who have suffered so much," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Thursday.

"It's the government's responsibility to redouble its efforts, to revise its security plans, to contain this wave, to prevent it from sliding into sectarian conflict and war," he added. "That should not happen again."

The spike in violence, which has gained momentum since the middle of the month, is raising worries that Iraq is heading back toward the widespread sectarian bloodletting that spiked in 2006 and 2007 and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

More than 500 people have been killed in May. The month before was Iraq's deadliest since June 2008, according to a United Nations tally that put April's death toll at more than 700.

"Iraq is a reactor that's overheating and there's little coolant available," said Ramzy Mardini, an analyst at the Beirut-based Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies. "Iraq's nascent politics is not equipped to sustain the current dangerous levels of internal and external pressure. There needs to be an off-ramp to relieve some of the pressure."

The vehicle ban coming into effect Friday applies to cars bearing temporary black license plates. Those plates are common in post-war Iraq, where for years it was difficult to obtain new ones. They are typically on older-model vehicles and are more difficult to trace, and authorities say they are frequently used in car bombings.

Most of Thursday's blasts erupted in Baghdad.

Car bombs killed four in the northeastern Shiite neighborhood of Binouq, and three died in a bombing at a market selling spare car parts in central Baghdad, according to police. In Baghdad's eastern Shiite Ur neighborhood, a parked car bomb went off next to an army patrol, killing four and wounding 17, police said.

Police officials also said that a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in the largely Shiite central commercial district of Karradah, killing three people there. That explosion shattered glass on several storefronts and left the stricken police unit's modified Ford pickup truck charred and mangled.

"What have these innocent people done to deserve this?" asked witness Sinan Ali. "So many people were hurt. Who is responsible?"

In Baghdad's northern Shiite neighborhood of Shaab, a car bomb exploded in a commercial area, killing six civilians and wounding 17 others.

In the largely Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah in the capital's north, a car bomb struck near a military convoy, killing three people, including two soldiers, according to police. Another 14 people were wounded in that attack.

A bomb hidden on a minibus killed three and maimed eight in the eastern mixed Sunni-Shiite New Baghdad neighborhood. And a police patrol was struck in the southern neighborhood of Saydiyah, wounding six.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualties.

In Anbar province, the provincial governor escaped an assassination attempt when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into his convoy, his deputy Dhari Arkan said. The governor escaped unharmed, but four of his guards were wounded.

Anbar is a vast Sunni-dominated province west of Baghdad that for months has been the center of protests against the Shiite-led government.

In the former insurgent stronghold city of Mosul, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, a suicide bomber attacked a federal police checkpoint, killing three people, according to police.

And to the west of Mosul, a suicide attacker drove his explosives-packed car into a security checkpoint, killing two members of the security forces and two civilians, according to a police officer and a doctor. Eight other people were wounded in the attacks in the town of Tal Afar, they added.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media.

The United Nations envoy to Iraq, Martin Kobler, urged Iraqi leaders to do more to "pull the country out of this mayhem."

"Systemic violence is ready to explode at any moment," he said in a statement.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks but blame for many of the attacks is likely to fall on al-Qaida's Iraq arm, which frequently carries out bombings against civilians and security forces in an effort to undermine faith in the Shiite-led government.

Other militant groups have also grown more active in recent months, including the Army of the Men of the Naqshabandi Order, which has ties to members of Saddam Hussein's now-outlawed Baath party.

The attacks began hours after bomb blasts tore through two Baghdad neighborhoods Wednesday evening, killing at least 30, including several members of a wedding party in the mixed Sunni-Shiite Jihad neighborhood.

___

Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this story.

___

Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at http://twitter.com/adamschreck

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-05-31-Iraq/id-ee5ad4e4704346e0b6e7c7a1d1c6df3b

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Great Advice On How To Get Good Auto Insurance Rates ...

Some criteria that determine insurance cost are fixed, and some are variable. The prices of your insurance policy premiums decrease with higher deductibles. Read on for some ways to reduce the price you pay for auto insurance.

Before you purchase a car, it?s important to talk to your insurance agent first. Your insurance agent should know which cars have low premiums. This should help you choose your next vehicle, whether it?s new or used. A car with a higher safety rating will save you money in the long run on the lower cost of your insurance premium.

If you have a new driver you can find out if their own policy would cost less. You may save money by purchasing your child a separate policy; the type of cars that you have factor into the price.

Even just a lapse of auto insurance for one day can end up costing you higher premiums. If you continuously switch insurance providers, it will make gaps in coverage. If the insurance company you are moving to finds that you have gone any length of time without insurance, your monthly rates may increase.

Switching vehicles between members of the family can raise premiums. Typically, you will get a better price by only having one name attached to each vehicle.

You should raise your deductible, so that you can save more money in the end. Although you are taking your chances, this can be a good choice if you are able to save the money for the higher deductible. Increasing your deductible will lower the amount you have to pay for your premium.

Your auto insurance agent will have a list of any discounts offered by their company. Find out about all discounts to ensure that you are saving money.

Buying insurance as a bundle leads to paying lower rates. Keep your eyes open for these bundle deals, so you can insure everything you own on one policy, making it cheaper and easier handle. Be sure that the bundle provides acceptable coverage as well as a good price. Sometimes it makes better sense to stick with two separate insurance policies.

You can alter a few of the factors that influence your insurance costs. Things that are in your hands are where you reside, the amount you drive and your record. With a little homework on your part, you can lower your insurance premiums to a manageable cost.

Professional-Info

Source: http://insuranceauto.professional-info.com/2013/05/27/great-advice-on-how-to-get-good-auto-insurance-rates-2/

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Football: Jagielka eager to seize England chance

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Talkin' 'bout The Unspeakable Act | Movie Review | Chicago Reader

Movies that deal with incest are often couched in melodrama, dealing with hidden transgressions and shattered family roles. But The Unspeakable Act, which makes its Chicago premiere this week at Gene Siskel Film Center, is different. Written and directed by Dan Sallitt (a former Reader contributor), this hushed, discreet indie drama details the complicated relationship between two siblings of a tight-knit, upper-middle-class Brooklyn family. Seventeen-year-old Jackie (Tallie Medel), the bright and seemingly well-adjusted younger daughter, harbors romantic and sexual feelings for her 18-year-old brother, Matthew (Sky Hirschkron). He never openly reciprocates them, but they share an intimacy that complicates their other relationships.

The Unspeakable Act isn't presented as a case study of incestuous behavior, nor does it offer any insights into the psychology of incestuous desire. In fact it actively works against the Oedipal notions we bring to an incest story. In the grand tradition of French director Eric Rohmer, to whom Sallitt dedicates the film, The Unspeakable Act is a story in which transgression is considered but never acted upon.

As viewers, we constantly analyze and critique a movie's characters, basing our judgments on our own ideas of taste, ethics, and morality. We're conditioned to accept the strictest notions of right and wrong: good guys and bad guys; proper and improper behavior. The Unspeakable Act challenges these notions in part because Sallitt refuses to judge his characters; there are no good guys or bad guys, only believable, acutely rendered people whose shortcomings are innately human.

This is where the film deviates from most incest stories, which either exploit the act (Flowers in the Attic) or condemn it as despicable and detrimental to the family unit (Chinatown). With its muted cinematography and deliberate pace, The Unspeakable Act is anything but lurid, and the family unit is "impossibly close," as Jackie puts it. (Jackie and Matthew's father died a few years after Jackie was born, leaving them with their mother, an older sister, and an older brother who's since left the household.)

Despite the sensational subject matter, the drama is understated. Jackie casually spells out the conflict in the film's opening voice-over: "In the spring of 2011, at the age of 18, my brother Matthew got his first real girlfriend. I somehow thought that he and I had a unspoken agreement that we belonged to each other, which was really pretty stupid of me."

Instead of pushing Jackie and Matthew into taboo behavior, Sallitt situates them directly before it and explores the possible origin and meaning of their emotions; alongside the audience, he seems to be searching for a way to justify their mutual desire. This may bore or frustrate some viewers: the appeal of an incest story is the prospect of seeing repressed, taboo desires erupt into explicit sex and ensuing scandal. In The Unspeakable Act, the heart of the drama is not the transgression but the curious lack thereof.

Jackie's feelings, however fervent, stem from her arrested development. In addition to the new girlfriend, Matthew is also preparing to leave home for his freshman year at Princeton, and Jackie can't accept what may be the beginning of the end of their lifelong intimacy. Not until Matthew leaves does Jackie, faced with the reality that she can't spend her life with him, confront her emotions in a pragmatic fashion.

Talking to Mubi.com, Sallitt has described Jackie as "an unsolvable puzzle," someone whose impulses are plausible but paradoxical. She acknowledges the inconvenient nature of her desire but refuses to let Matthew go. She admits as much to him, glibly labeling his new romance as an attempt to "grow up and have mature, adult relationships and not immature, stunted ones like ours."

With her incongruous emotions, Jackie is impervious to psychoanalysis, as Sallitt illustrates in a series of nearly comical scenes involving a therapist. Jackie talks in circles, at one point describing herself as someone who loves to talk yet is painfully shy. This rigmarole culminates in her recollection of a dream that suggests her incestuous feelings are a form of narcissism; the idea offers some sense of thematic closure even as it opens up more avenues of her personality.

These oblique scenes are meant to suggest the impenetrability of human emotion. Sallitt's characters are intricate beings, and their issues, though grounded by the naturalistic performances, can seem so inscrutable as to be otherworldly. Jackie and Matthew's saga may never end, but the film must. Sallitt might have come up with some tidy conclusion, but he's comfortable letting this situation resolve itself the way most situations do: with time.

Source: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-unspeakable-act-dan-sallitt-gene-siskel-film-center/Content?oid=9682352

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Video: Terminal Snooping at Bloomberg

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Official: Shiny dog bowl sparks Calif. house fire

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) ? A Northern California couple might be able to blame this one on the dog.

Authorities say sun refracted off the dog's shiny water bowl and ignited a fire at Terry and Shay Weisbrich's Santa Rosa home on Wednesday afternoon.

The fire was quickly put out, but it left a hole in the siding.

The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa reports (http://bit.ly/ZC3vgY ) that a fire department engineer helped discover the dog bowl's role in the fire.

Rene Torres returned the bowl to its original position during his investigation of the fire's cause. He found it concentrated light right on the area of the home that was charred.

The Press Democrat says the couple's dog, Toby, had a replacement bowl by the evening.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2013-05-02-Dog%20Dish%20Fire/id-3c8606b954b94a44be01cf08ab24bc8e

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See Mindy Kaling Without Makeup!

The comedian is the latest celeb to go makeup-free! Take a look at more stars who have shared their au naturel looks.

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Researchers successfully treat autism in infants: Playing games that infants prefer can lessen severity of symptoms

Apr. 29, 2013 ? Most infants respond to a game of peek-a-boo with smiles at the very least, and, for those who find the activity particularly entertaining, gales of laughter. For infants with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), however, the game can be distressing rather than pleasant, and they'll do their best to tune out all aspects of it -- and that includes the people playing with them.

That disengagement is a hallmark of ASD, and one of the characteristics that amplifies the disorder as infants develop into children and then adults.

A study conducted by researchers at the Koegel Autism Center at UC Santa Barbara has found that replacing such games in favor of those the infant prefers can actually lessen the severity of the infants' ASD symptoms, and, perhaps, alleviate the condition altogether. Their work is highlighted the current issue of the Journal of Positive Behavioral Interventions.

Lynn Koegel, clinical director of the center and the study's lead author, described the game-playing protocol as a modified Pivotal Response Treatment (PVT). Developed at UCSB, PRT is based on principles of positive motivation. The researchers identified the activities that seemed to be more enjoyable to the infants and taught the respective parents to focus on those rather than on the typical games they might otherwise choose. "We had them play with their infants for short periods, and then give them some kind of social reward," Koegel said. "Over time, we conditioned the infants to enjoy all the activities that were presented by pairing the less desired activities with the highly desired ones." The social reward is preferable to, say, a toy, Koegel noted, because it maintains the ever-crucial personal interaction.

"The idea is to get them more interested in people," she continued, "to focus on their socialization. If they're avoiding people and avoiding interacting, that creates a whole host of other issues. They don't form friendships, and then they don't get the social feedback that comes from interacting with friends."

According to Koegel, by the end of the relatively short one- to three-month intervention period, which included teaching the parents how to implement the procedures, all the infants in the study had normal reactions to stimuli. "Two of the three have no disabilities at all, and the third is very social," she said. "The third does have a language delay, but that's more manageable than some of the other issues."

On a large scale, Koegel hopes to establish some benchmark for identifying social deficits in infants so parents and health care providers can intervene sooner rather than later. "We have a grant from the Autism Science Foundation to look at lots of babies and try to really figure out which signs are red flags, and which aren't," she said. "A number of the infants who show signs of autism will turn out to be perfectly fine; but we're saying, let's not take the risk if we can put an intervention in play that really works. Then we don't have to worry about whether or not these kids would develop the full-blown symptoms of autism."

Historically, ASD is diagnosed in children 18 months or older, and treatment generally begins around 4 years. "You can pretty reliably diagnose kids at 18 months, especially the more severe cases," said Koegel. "The mild cases might be a little harder, especially if the child has some verbal communication. There are a few measures -- like the ones we used in our study -- that can diagnose kids pre-language, even as young as six months. But ours was the first that worked with children under 12 months and found an effective intervention."

Given the increasing number of children being diagnosed with ASD, Koegel's findings could be life altering -- literally. "When you consider that the recommended intervention for preschoolers with autism is 30 to 40 hours per week of one-on-one therapy, this is a fairly easy fix," she said. "We did a single one-hour session per week for four to 12 weeks until the symptoms improved, and some of these infants were only a few months old. We saw a lot of positive change."

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Journal Reference:

1. L. K. Koegel, A. K. Singh, R. L. Koegel, J. R. Hollingsworth, J. Bradshaw. Assessing and Improving Early Social Engagement in Infants. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 2013; DOI: 10.1177/1098300713482977

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/mind_brain/child_development/~3/Sre2VwSLjIQ/130430092511.htm

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