A Reanalysis of the Voicing Effect in English: With Implications for Featural Specification.

The voicing effect is among the most studied and robust of phonetic phenomena. Yet there remains a lack of consensus on why vowels preceding voiced obstruents should be longer than vowels preceding voiceless obstruents. In this paper we provide an analysis of the voicing effect in a corpus of natural speech, and using production data from a metronome-timed word repetition study.

Implications of an exemplar-theoretic model of phoneme genesis: a velar palatalization case study.

Diachronic velar palatalization is taken as the case study for modeling the emergence of a new phoneme category. The spread of a palatalized variant through the lexicon is treated as a stochastic classification task for the listener/learner. The model combines two measures of similarity to determine classification within an exemplar-theoretic framework: acoustic distance and phonotactic expectation.

A systematic review of housing interventions and health: introduction, methods, and summary findings.

Subject matter experts systematically reviewed evidence on the effectiveness of specific housing interventions in improving health. The panelists reviewed housing interventions associated with exposure to biological and chemical agents, structural injury hazards, and community-level interventions. Intervention studies were grouped together according to recommendations in the Guide to Community Preventive Services, which identifies similarities in the type of intervention, its delivery and setting, and the target population.

Housing interventions at the neighborhood level and health: a review of the evidence.

A panel of subject matter experts systematically reviewed evidence linking neighborhood-level housing interventions, such as housing programs or policies, to health outcomes. One of the 10 interventions reviewed--the Housing Choice Voucher Program--had sufficient evidence for implementation or expansion. The evidence showed that voucher holders are less likely to suffer from overcrowding, malnutrition due to food insecurity, and concentrated neighborhood poverty than non-voucher holders.

Mold and endotoxin levels in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: a pilot project of homes in New Orleans undergoing renovation.

Background: After Hurricane Katrina, many New Orleans homes remained flooded for weeks, promoting heavy microbial growth.

Objectives: A small demonstration project was conducted November 2005-January 2006 aiming to recommend safe remediation techniques and safe levels of worker protection, and to characterize airborne mold and endotoxin throughout cleanup.

Methods: Three houses with floodwater lines between 0.