That may seem inconsequential, but consider this: Hoeffer is an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. He researches human learning and memory—specifically, how they are affected by neurological and neurodegenerative disorders like autism, down syndrome and Alzheimer’s. To study these conditions, he uses live mice.

“I essentially have a little mouse circus downstairs,” Hoeffer said of his lab in the basement of the Joan and Joel Smilow Research Center, one of Langone’s many buildings between East 30th and 34th streets and First Avenue and FDR Drive. These are not mice you see scurrying across the street: They are carefully bred to replicate specific genes involved in human disorders, for instance, or to have other exact traits. Producing these exact mice can take months, even a year, of studious cross-breeding, depending on the complexity of the trait needed.

“You can’t replace the time,” Hoeffer said. “That’s the real loss.”

On Monday, Oct. 29, Hoeffer watched from his apartment building next door as his downstairs lab along with the rest of Langone’s lower floors filled with floodwater. The damage was swift, the result of a storm surge that pushed the East River’s water beyond First Avenue along the Upper East Side. Langone’s backup generator failed in the middle of the night, forcing staff at the center’s hospital to evacuate hundreds of patients and jeopardizing any materials throughout the center that needed refrigeration to survive.

Langone had vivariums (cages that house lab animals) spread throughout the center, some in basements and others at higher levels. NYU is still in the midst of assessing the extent of damages to its faculty’s research projects, but Hoeffer explained that these damages varied significantly from researcher to researcher. In terms of mice, some people who kept them in above-ground facilities were totally unaffected, while others who worked exclusively in underground labs suffered more crippling losses.

For Hoeffer, things could have been much worse, he said. He worked below ground in Smilow, but also has mice above-ground in a satellite lab. “We’re still trying to find out what we lost exactly,” he noted, “but I think that almost all our losses are pretty quickly replaceable.”

Neither Hoeffer nor NYU had specific estimates of the number of mice killed. Hoeffer tended about 300 mice, but bigger labs, he said, kept up to 6,000. It is still unclear how many of these mice were caged high enough in labs to avoid floodwater or removed in advance.

Hoeffer was optimistic about the recovery process, and pointed out many silver linings to the destruction. “The community definitely got closer,” he said, and also mentioned thankfully that researchers across the country—and world—offered their support in the wake of the storm, sharing data and donating supplies.

A disaster like this shows “what’s really important to human health and science,” Hoeffer said, “what really needs to get done, and what kind of things you can live without.”

During the flooding, NYU’s Division of Laboratory Animal Resources (DLAR) worked throughout the night, and the following days, to save what remaining animals they could after removing as many animals as possible days in advance of the storm. DLAR’s director, who asked not to be named for protection from animal rights groups, said that floodwater rushed into basement facilities “like [on] the Titanic.”

The director noted that a number of mice in vivariums high off the floor of flooded labs were found alive and well last week. Some had babies.

Hoeffer explained, “It’s not this complete tragic situation. It’s not cataclysmic. The great thing about science is that you can change your question or change your approach. You can still do important things, just not the way you originally planned.”

If you’re looking to restore your faith in humanity, look no further than this video of Stephen St. Bernard, 52, catching a seven-year-old girl on Monday after she fell from her family’s third floor apartment in Brooklyn.

[Video courtesy of http://nbcnewyork.com.]

NBC New York reports that the MTA city bus driver was on his way home to Coney Island when nearby screams drew him into a building courtyard. There he saw the girl atop the air conditioning unit outside a window, dancing without pants.

St. Bernard ran under the window. “She just stood up there teetering, teetering,” he told NBC. “Please let me catch her, please let me catch her, that’s all I could say. Let me catch the little baby.”

St. Bernard shouted up to the girl, urging her to go back into her apartment. Then she fell, and he caught her.

“I picked her up and carried her, and I was holding her, rubbing her, and she just more or less kept looking around,” he said to NBC. ”She never closed her eyes, she didn’t lose consciousness.”

Police reported that the girl is autistic. She was taken to the hospital, and had only minor bruises. St. Bernard tore a tendon in his shoulder, but said it was a small price to pay.

The girl’s mother was inside the apartment busy watching her other child at the time of the fall. She did not want to speak with reporters after the incident.

Monique Harding, the girl’s aunt, though, publicly praised St. Bernard. “He’s my hero,” she said. “He definitely did our family a favor today.”

Class at Rebecca School, which teaches children with autism. Photo courtesy of Rebecca School

Autism now affects one in 88 children in the United States, according to a recent study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month. That’s a 23 percent increase over the last two years and a 78 percent increase in the last decade.

Doctors and experts agree that this staggering jump may bring feelings of fear and confusion to an already little understood disorder.

The cause of autism, a neurological developmental disorder, is still unknown, though most science currently available points to a mixture of genetic and environmental factors. Similarly, the cause of the recent increase is not fully understood; it’s unclear whether the number represents more cases or simply better detection and screening.

“The most important thing is that there are more kids who are identified with autism spectrum disorders, so we need to plan accordingly for services that address that,” said Dr. Catherine Lord, director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell and Columbia. “No matter why they’re there, they clearly exist.”

The actual diagnosis of autism can be just as confusing.

The three most common disorders on the autism spectrum are autism, Asperger’s syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD NOS). Autism is characterized by difficulties in social interaction and verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors.

Asperger’s syndrome is considered to be on the high end of the autism spectrum; the symptoms are less severe and people with this disorder tend to preserve linguistic and cognitive development. PDD NOS is the diagnosis used to describe individuals who do not fully meet the criteria for autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

Dr. Andrew Gerber, assistant professor of clinical psychology and director of the Developmental Neuropsychology Program at Columbia University, said this last diagnosis tends to be the most difficult for parents to understand because it does not seem to be defined.

“It can be terribly confusing,” he said, “because it could mean so many different things.”

However, Gerber emphasizes that the focus should not be on the diagnosis but on the individual needs of the child.

“The optimal model of care is to focus on a description of your child’s strengths and weaknesses and what we can do to bolster the child’s strengths and address his or her weaknesses,” he said.

The diagnosis is important, however, to help families get the services they are entitled to.

While it varies from state to state, children in New York with PDD NOS are entitled to the same services as those with other disorders on the autism spectrum, though they may be entitled to fewer hours of service. These include early intervention for children under 3, which can consist of at-home educational treatments and occupational, language and speech therapy. When kids get older, they are eligible for special preschools, which are run by both for-profit and nonprofit agencies.

All school-aged children are entitled to “free and appropriate” public education, according to the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Insurance companies may also pay for some services like speech, language and behavioral therapy, as well.

Children and adults with PDD NOS are treated similarly to those with other disorders on the autism spectrum. The most well-studied method of treatment is applied behavioral analysis, which relies on intensive behavioral intervention and teaches targeted skills and behaviors through positive reinforcement.

“It encompasses a lot of different techniques, but they all involve the idea that you learn to do things in a certain situation by recognizing the signs that now is a good time to act in a certain way, then you are rewarded for acting in that way,” Lord explained.

A perhaps lesser-known model, the developmental individual differences relationship-based model, is utilized by Rebecca School, a private day school for children with autism in Manhattan.

“We focus on relationships as the foundation of learning and pay close attention to each child’s individual needs,” said Dr. Gil Tippy, the school’s clinical director.

Instead of using reinforcement, Tippy said, children learn to relate, communicate and think critically about the world through developing relationships with teachers, staff and each other.

There has been an ongoing push to change the definition of autism in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The new criteria is more restrictive and would combine the three subgroups of the autism spectrum into one category, requiring children to exhibit more pronounced symptoms to qualify for the diagnosis.

Some fear that these changes will reduce the number of people who are diagnosed with autism and qualify for treatment.

“The main concern that I have is that state and federal governments and health care providers will use the new severity scale to exclude those people who look like their ASD [autism spectrum disorder] is less severe,” said Tippy.

However, opposing voices say the new changes will help improve autism diagnoses.

“These redefinitions are part of a general effort to improve all diagnoses in mental health,” Lord said. “It’s not that autism was picked out specifically. The American Psychiatric Association periodically tries to look at what has been learned in the last decade or two to make the definitions more accurate.”