Someone didn't get the memo, apparently. Despite California's Public Utilities Commission giving ridesharing services the all clear on a statewide level, Los Angeles' Department of Transportation has sent cease-and-desist warnings to Lyft, Sidecar and Uber, claiming that all three are breaking local laws by operating without city permits. Drivers could face arrests and lose their cars if they keep serving customers, according to the notices. Not surprisingly, the ridesharing firms have a very different opinion. Uber tells Engadget that it's operating a limousine-like service which only needs PUC permission to operate, and Lyft says it's talking with the Mayor's office to resolve what it believes is a "state issue." For now, we're at an impasse -- let's just hope that Los Angeles follows in New York's footsteps and tries to reach a happy medium.
'Singing' rats show hope for older humans with age-related voice problemsPublic release date: 24-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Chelsey B. Coombs diya@illinois.edu 217-333-5802 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. A new study shows that the vocal training of older rats reduces some of the voice problems related to their aging, such as the loss of vocal intensity that accompanies changes in the muscles of the larynx. This is an animal model of a vocal pathology that many humans face as they age. The researchers hope that in the future, voice therapy in aging humans will help improve their quality of life.
The research appears in the Journals of Gerontology.
University of Illinois speech and hearing science professor Aaron Johnson, who led the new study along with his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, said that aging can cause the muscles of the larynx, the organ that contains the vocal folds, to atrophy. This condition, called presbyphonia, may be treatable with vocal training, he said.
Johnson explains in a healthy, young larynx the vocal folds completely close and open during vibration. This creates little puffs of air we hear as sound. In people with presbyphonia, however, the atrophied vocal folds do not close properly, resulting in a gap during vocal fold vibration.
Degradation of the neuromuscular junction (NMJ), or the interface between the nerve that signals the vocal muscle to work and the muscle itself, also contributes to the symptoms of presbyphonia, Johnson said. In a healthy human, when the signal reaches the NMJ, it triggers a release of chemicals that signal the muscle to contract. But an age-related decline in the NMJ can cause weakness and fatigue in the muscle, and may result in a person having a breathy or weak voice and to become fatigued as a result of the extra effort needed to communicate.
Surgery and injections may help correct the gap between the vocal folds seen in presbyphonia, but these invasive procedures are often not viable in the elderly population, Johnson said.
His previous experience working with the elderly as a former classical singer and voice teacher propelled Johnson to "become interested in what we can do as we get older to keep our voices healthy and strong."
"We know exercise strengthens the limb musculature, but we wanted to know if vocal exercise can strengthen the muscles of the voice," Johnson said.
To find out if vocal training could have an effect on the strength and physiology of the vocal muscles in humans, Johnson turned to a rat model. Rats make ultrasonic vocalizations that are above the range of human hearing, but special recording equipment and a computer that lowers the frequency of the rat calls allows humans to perceive them. (They sound a bit like bird calls).
Because rats and humans utilize similar neuromuscular mechanisms to vocalize, the rats make ideal subjects for the study of human vocal characteristics, Johnson said.
Both the treatment and control groups contained old and young male rats. In the treatment group, a female rat was placed into a cage with a male rat. When the male expressed interest in her, the female was removed from the cage, causing the male rat to vocalize. The male was rewarded with food for these vocalizations, and after eight weeks of this operant conditioning in which rewards were only given for certain responses, all of the rats in the treatment group had been trained to increase their number of vocalizations during a training session.
At the end of the eight-week period, the researchers measured the intensity of the rats' vocalizations and analyzed the animals' larynges to see whether the training had any effect on the condition of their neuromuscular junctions.
The researchers found the trained old and young rats had similar average vocal intensities, but the untrained older rats had lower average intensities than both the trained rats and the young rats that had not been trained. They also found several age-related differences within the groups' neuromuscular mechanisms.
"Other research has found that in the elderly, there is a dispersion, or breaking apart, of the neuromuscular junction at the side that is on the muscle itself," Johnson said. "We found that in the older rats that received training, it wasn't as dispersed," Johnson said.
These "singing rats" are the "first evidence that vocal use and vocal training can change the neuromuscular system of the larynx," Johnson said.
"While this isn't a human study, I think this tells us that we can train ourselves to use our voices and not only reduce the effects of age on the muscles of our voices, but actually improve voices that have degraded," Johnson said.
###
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'Singing' rats show hope for older humans with age-related voice problemsPublic release date: 24-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Chelsey B. Coombs diya@illinois.edu 217-333-5802 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. A new study shows that the vocal training of older rats reduces some of the voice problems related to their aging, such as the loss of vocal intensity that accompanies changes in the muscles of the larynx. This is an animal model of a vocal pathology that many humans face as they age. The researchers hope that in the future, voice therapy in aging humans will help improve their quality of life.
The research appears in the Journals of Gerontology.
University of Illinois speech and hearing science professor Aaron Johnson, who led the new study along with his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, said that aging can cause the muscles of the larynx, the organ that contains the vocal folds, to atrophy. This condition, called presbyphonia, may be treatable with vocal training, he said.
Johnson explains in a healthy, young larynx the vocal folds completely close and open during vibration. This creates little puffs of air we hear as sound. In people with presbyphonia, however, the atrophied vocal folds do not close properly, resulting in a gap during vocal fold vibration.
Degradation of the neuromuscular junction (NMJ), or the interface between the nerve that signals the vocal muscle to work and the muscle itself, also contributes to the symptoms of presbyphonia, Johnson said. In a healthy human, when the signal reaches the NMJ, it triggers a release of chemicals that signal the muscle to contract. But an age-related decline in the NMJ can cause weakness and fatigue in the muscle, and may result in a person having a breathy or weak voice and to become fatigued as a result of the extra effort needed to communicate.
Surgery and injections may help correct the gap between the vocal folds seen in presbyphonia, but these invasive procedures are often not viable in the elderly population, Johnson said.
His previous experience working with the elderly as a former classical singer and voice teacher propelled Johnson to "become interested in what we can do as we get older to keep our voices healthy and strong."
"We know exercise strengthens the limb musculature, but we wanted to know if vocal exercise can strengthen the muscles of the voice," Johnson said.
To find out if vocal training could have an effect on the strength and physiology of the vocal muscles in humans, Johnson turned to a rat model. Rats make ultrasonic vocalizations that are above the range of human hearing, but special recording equipment and a computer that lowers the frequency of the rat calls allows humans to perceive them. (They sound a bit like bird calls).
Because rats and humans utilize similar neuromuscular mechanisms to vocalize, the rats make ideal subjects for the study of human vocal characteristics, Johnson said.
Both the treatment and control groups contained old and young male rats. In the treatment group, a female rat was placed into a cage with a male rat. When the male expressed interest in her, the female was removed from the cage, causing the male rat to vocalize. The male was rewarded with food for these vocalizations, and after eight weeks of this operant conditioning in which rewards were only given for certain responses, all of the rats in the treatment group had been trained to increase their number of vocalizations during a training session.
At the end of the eight-week period, the researchers measured the intensity of the rats' vocalizations and analyzed the animals' larynges to see whether the training had any effect on the condition of their neuromuscular junctions.
The researchers found the trained old and young rats had similar average vocal intensities, but the untrained older rats had lower average intensities than both the trained rats and the young rats that had not been trained. They also found several age-related differences within the groups' neuromuscular mechanisms.
"Other research has found that in the elderly, there is a dispersion, or breaking apart, of the neuromuscular junction at the side that is on the muscle itself," Johnson said. "We found that in the older rats that received training, it wasn't as dispersed," Johnson said.
These "singing rats" are the "first evidence that vocal use and vocal training can change the neuromuscular system of the larynx," Johnson said.
"While this isn't a human study, I think this tells us that we can train ourselves to use our voices and not only reduce the effects of age on the muscles of our voices, but actually improve voices that have degraded," Johnson said.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) ? Saudi Arabia is switching its weekend to begin on Friday to align its banking and business days with most other nations in the region.
The official Saudi Press Agency said late Sunday that a royal decree takes effect this week after an advisory body in April recommended changing from the current system, in which the two-day weekend begins Thursday.
A similar proposal in 2007 failed, but the Saudi business community has been lobbying for the switch for years to match the schedule in main regional commercial hubs, such as Dubai.
Oman switched to Friday-Saturday weekends last month. Most other countries in the Gulf start their weekends Friday, the Muslim day of communal prayer.
A wine shipping container manufactured by Ecovative from mushrooms and agricultural waste
Courtesy of Ecovative
Eben Bayer is the co-founder of Ecovative, a company based in Green Island, N.Y.,that makes packaging from agricultural waste and the mycelium of mushrooms. He says the next step is to make building materials this way.
Richard Schiffman: How did you come to make packaging materials from mushrooms? Eben Bayer: I grew up on a farm in Vermont and noticed the mycelium?essentially the "roots"?of mushrooms clumping wood chips together. Years later, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, I was working to develop a better insulation material. I remembered mushrooms' bonding ability and began to think about industrial applications. After making a few samples, I teamed up with Gavin McIntyre and our professor Burt Swersey to figure out how this could work as a product.
RS: Can your products be made cheaply enough to compete with Styrofoam? EB: Yes. In general, we are cost competitive with synthetic packaging materials such as expanded polystyrene and polyethylene. Plastics start with expensive, finite feedstocks derived from oil or natural gas. We're starting with waste from farms.
RS: What advantages do these biomaterials have over conventional materials? EB: For more than a century, humans have been using petrochemicals to make plastics. Eventually we will run out, and if we aren't careful toxic waste will choke our oceans and landfills. Biomaterials like ours are sustainable, nonpolluting, and need little outside energy to make. They also dissolve back into the earth at the end of their useful lives.
RS: Can you create durable materials from fungi? EB: The strength of our products comes from the mycelium, which consists of millions of tiny fibers. The fibers bond with chitin?a natural plastic produced by mushrooms, similar to what crab shells are made of. Together, these act like a glue, fusing agricultural waste such as seed husks into solid forms. Our materials basically self-assemble; the organism is doing most of the work.
RS: You have also developed building materials. Have any been used in construction yet? EB: The first experimental use is happening in our warehouse?we're growing a miniature house from mushrooms! Eventually, we expect our products to replace materials such as the plastic foams used in insulation and acoustic tiles.
RS: You are able to bind your materials to wood without chemical glues. How does that work? EB: The mycelium naturally bonds to wood, so we can use it to bind thin veneers and other materials without formaldehyde-based glues. We're also hoping to use the mycelium as an adhesive in composites like fiberboard and particle board.
RS: Have your products attracted much interest? EB: We're now working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to produce materials for buoys. We also supply packaging to a number of Fortune 500 companies, and this summer we're collaborating with the company Sealed Air to build a manufacturing plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
RS: What is the biggest challenge to more widespread use of your technology? EB: Our key challenge at the moment is a wonderful one: scaling up to meet the growing demand.
This article originally appeared in New Scientist.
If you're looking for a new smartphone, this is apparently the weekend to go shopping. Following Radio Shack's promise to chip in a $100 Google Play credit with purchase an HTC One and Walmart's deep iPhone discounts, AT&T has quietly tacked on a 50% discount for phones under $199. This puts devices like the HTC One, Samsung's Galaxy S4 (and the S4 Active), the Note II, both of BlackBerry'slatest handsets and iPhone 5 at an enticing $100. Naturally, Ma Bell has attached the usual hooks: the deal necessitates a new 2-year agreement or contract renewal, and in-store purchases require a trade-in device to activate the discount. Not a bad deal if you're hankering for new hardware -- just make sure you don't walk away with buyer's remorse.
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Public release date: 24-Jun-2013
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A wine shipping container manufactured by Ecovative from mushrooms and agricultural waste 