Not long ago, I signed myself up for the National Institutes of Health autism newsletter. And, as it turns out, it wasn’t a moment too soon. Just today, an email arrived on my desktop announcing the creation of the new Autism Research Network website.

This is a valuable resource for those of us who want to keep up with the research without making ourselves crazy. Not only is all of the research on the site sponsored by the NIH -- which means, at the very least, that it has been approved by a panel of researchers in the field -- but the research projects themselves are actually searchable by keyword.

Interested in digging in? You might want to start with a quick visit to Autism Jargon for a refresher on the terms, the acronyms, and the definitions...