Hayley Krier

http://0-search.proquest.com.library.uark.edu/docview/879793921?pq-
origsite=summon

Integrating Social Media into Emergency-Preparedness Efforts by

Raina Merchant, Stacy Elmer, and Nicole Lurie published in The New
England Journal of Medicine on July 28, 2011 discusses many benefits
of implementing social media into emergency crisis situations. The
article mentions using social medias GPS locator capabilities as a way
to check your surrounding areas for any emergencies in the area.
Having this GPS capability could also allow medical professionals to list
their location, if they should chose, so that they may help in any
emergency situation. The article also states that social media can be
used to keep people updated on hospital and clinic wait times. This
could allow first responders to take patients in critical condition to
hospitals with more availability. Many medical facilities have already
started to use twitter and other social media sites to keep communities
updated with this information.

The article used many real world examples to demonstrate how social
media has previously been used to help in emergency situations. In
2010, people used Facebook to attract attention to their location when
stuck in the rubble from an earthquake in Haiti. During the 2009
influenza pandemic, Virginia used Twitter to inform civilians where
vaccines were available in their area. In addition to these examples,
the article states that during crisis situations, many people use social
media sites to do on the scene live reporting. This allows the
community, news broadcasters, and first responders to take a closer
look at what is happening in real time. These are just a few of the
many ways in which the authors of this journal article believe that
social media can help improve emergency situations. However, the
article is careful to mention that not all postings can be trusted or
validated by credible sources and that more research needs to be done
to discover how to eliminate these unreliable sources.

Extra Credit article:

http://0-search.proquest.com.library.uark.edu/docview/1643103568?
pq-origsite=summon
The article Maternal Gesture Use and Language Development in Infant
Siblings of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder by Meagan R.
Talbott and Helen Tager-flusberg posted in the Journal of Autism and
Developmental Disorders on April 13, 2013 highlights a study done on
infants at risk of being autistic. The study examines gesture use
between these children and their mother and also evaluates the
gestures used at 12 months to see if they correlate with their
communicative abilities at 18 months. The article explains that children
who have an older sibling on the autism spectrum are more likely to be
autistic themselves. The article elaborates on to say that children with
autism have difficulty communicating, partially because of their
inability to demonstrate gazing and joint attention, which are
important aspects for communicational capabilities. For the purpose of
this study, infants were observed interacting with their mothers and
again while engaged in an activity alone.

The infants and their mothers were scored using three different scales.
The first was the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scale (CSBS),
which measured infant and mother gesture use. The second was the
Autistic Diagnostic Observation Schedule: Generic (ADOS), which
measured autistic behavior in the child, such as repetitiveness or
limited interest. Lastly, Mullen Scales of Early Learning measured gross
motor skills, fine motor skills, visual receptiveness, and expressive and
receptive language. The results of the study found that maternal
gesture use was greater with children at high risk of autism than with
children at low risk. The CSBS scale found that maternal and infants
gestures at 12 months were correlated with gestures at 18 months.
This study shows how having a child at risk for autism can influence
parent-child interactions, which can impact the communicational
capabilities for that child in the future.