This Wednesday I received the following email, titled "hand bag" and bearing an Italian name:
K was so happy when she found out that she started to cry. Through subsequent e-mails we found out that everything seems to be intact (we certainly don't expect to find any of the cash, however). The officer even took a picture of the important contents to help us verify what was recovered:I am a theorist working at Torino and collaborating with CMS. I have just been contacted by a member of the metropolitan police of Torino, which I happen to know, because they have found an hand-bag with inside a Cern badge of (K.D.) and other documents regarding her and her family. Of course they are trying to find the owner. They told me that the bag has been found on the 13th, so I presume that you were taking part at the Torino CMS meeting with your wife. If this is the case, the mail address of the officer you should contact is...
Oddly, the officer says that the strap is intact, so now we really don't know how the robber did it. The police officer thinks she just misplaced the purse - except that we did get a bogus transaction on the one credit card, and the purse was found in Piazza Solferino, which we never visited, but is just a few blocks west from Via Settembre where we switched trams. (Grab the picture and spin it around for a 360 street-level view! And if you want, go back and visit my previous blog, I've added links to similar views of places that we did visit.)
This turn of events came none too soon - we had just started the arduous process of replacing all of the important documents. Fortunately I held off officially reporting the passports, because after that even if the passports are found we would have to finish the process, paying over 100 Swiss francs each for K, B, and G.
Once again, Paolo steps in (see previous blog entry). The police officer offered to drop off the purse at the University, where the theorist will hold it. Meanwhile, Paolo is visiting family in Torino this weekend and plans to connect with the theorist today (Sunday) and then return to CERN/Geneva tomorrow with the purse.
Another angel, an American missionary that goes to our church, called me up just after we got back from Torino on Saturday and said: "Hey, I've got two free tickets to the Geneva Auto Show, wanna go after church tomorrow?" He told me that he had been thinking about asking if I wanted to go, and next thing you know some guy gives him these free tickets. I wasn't about to say no, and K gave her hearty endorsement (must've wanted me out of the house...). So check out our dropshots website for some ultra kewl pics of some ultra kewl cars. Here's an appetizer:
Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
Aside from the wonderful news, this week was another intense week of meetings, our quarterly "CMS Week". Even before we got back from Torino, "HCAL" (the subdetector of CMS that I work on) was having weekend meetings. Because this last week was also spring break at the University of Minnesota, we had an unusual alignment of the planets: all three professors that work on CMS, as well as two post-docs normally stationed in MN, all came out to attend the weeklong meetings. It made for quite a crowded office in Building 40. We decided to get someone from down the hall at the Iowa office to take our picture (one of the postdocs was in meetings at the time).
(Can you believe that in the most modern office building at CERN, on the ground floor in the same wing - prime real estate as far as I can tell - there are two offices completely occupied by representatives from two neighboring states of the Upper Midwest?)
Even though these two weeks were intense, I believe that, looking back, they may prove to be pivotal in setting the stage for my PhD endgame: preparing for and writing my thesis (chess playing PhDs out there: I know, I'm using the term very loosely). The exercise of writing up the research proposal for the DDF application last week really helped bring it more into focus, and meeting with my adviser and a couple others this week gave me some near-term goals to shoot for.
The current working title for my thesis: "Searching for supersymmetric dark matter with the CMS detector using leptons and missing transverse energy". My adviser says: "Heaven help you if you actually find it!" - meaning that if I do find it, my thesis committee would want to make darn sure I didn't make any mistakes small or large, adding possibly months more till graduation, which is now already slated to be at the end of 2010, just because of the LHC delays!
The project itself is steadily coming back to life. We now have "MWGRs" every two weeks ("mid-week global runs"), about 39-40 hours of all systems running continuously Wednesday morning to Thursday midnight.
Check out the new 360 panoramas of CMS, taken with a fisheye lens. (You left-click on the image and "drag" left/right/up/down to view the scene in any direction.)
B is once again teetering on the edge of a significant milestone: he is perilously close to walking. We were told this week that his physical therapist is moving to Hong Kong (!). She saw him for one last time on Friday, and as a parting gift showed us how we can get him to stand free without assistance (at least for a short period), by distracting him. She says he's doing very well and thinks now that occupational and speech therapy will become more important for him.
Interestingly, his occupational therapist thinks that he may have an additional complicating neurological disorder: something called sensory processing disorder. A recent report of hers helps explain some of his behaviors:
1) It's true that the questionnaire results indicate that B has both "high" and "low" thresholds for different types of sensory processing. For example, as you said, he has a high threshold for auditory inputs but also for muscle tone/endurance. Rather than implying that he can tolerate more music than others, it means that he NEEDS more of this type of input than others in order to register the information. For example, music will help stimulate his neurological activity to improve his level of arousal and attention.Regarding whether this is linked to Down syndrome or not, she says that the answer is mostly "not":
2) B has a low threshold for touch. This means that he is quickly overwhelmed by tactile input. He will "protect" his neurological system by withdrawing from tactile activities so that he does not become overwhelmed, confused and distressed. So with eating, he may be receiving enough tactile input from the food texture and temperature, and he cannot easily cope with the added touch coming from contact with the spoon/cup/etc.
3) When I looked again at the questionnaire, it would seem that B is seeking out visual input by looking at shiny, moving or spinning objects and looking at fast-paced TV shows.
It is hypothesised that children who are “sensory seekers” have inadequate neural activation. They are driven to meet their thresholds and so create opportunities to increase input to meet their high needs. Children with a “sensory seeking” profile create sensory experiences for themselves, therefore their behaviour indicates what sensory input they need. The most effective strategy is to incorporate the needed sensory input into the child’s daily routine. When the sensory input is provided while the child is going about their daily activities, they don’t have to stop what they’re doing to “load up” on sensory input to stay alert. The sensory input should not be used as a reward or to reinforce behaviour. The model of sensory integration suggests that the child is demonstrating what he needs and it must be provided first to enable performance.
This may offer an explanation for his hyper-extending. B may be providing himself with proprioceptive and visual inputs that he feels that he needs.
Children with Down syndrome perform like other children in all but one section. Children with Down syndrome tend to obtain a lower score in the auditory processing section, as did B. Therefore B's scores for visual processing and vestibular processing are not typical for a child with Down syndrome. Also his scores for Low Registration and Sensation Avoiding are not typical for a child with Down syndrome.
Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
Check out more pictures at our dropshots website.
Keep remembering us in your prayers, they're working! Thanks,
-PKBGD
No comments:
Post a Comment