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Secrets of Beatboxing Revealed By MRI
united_notions writes "An international team from UCSD and Philips Research have published a paper (article paywalled; extensive free related resources at UCS here) in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, showing the results of real-time magnetic resonance imaging conducted on a beatboxing performer. The authors make interesting comparisons to sounds in many minority languages around the world (such as the 'click' consonants in many African languages); they also show how beatboxing sounds can be represented using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)."
I once worked in a medical research center where they had a MRI machine, as well as a CT scanner. The funny thing is that a MRI has to be always powered on, so they were always looking for uses, because it was going to use energy whether you used it or not. For example, several coworkers that needed a scan had them done at the center and then transferred to the hospital, on the condition that the center would keep a copy of the data for future use.
California pays more in Federal taxes than it receives in earmarks. By and large, Blue states pay in more than they receive while Red states receive more than they pay in (Texas is one of, if not the only, exception to this). So, while Democrats are generally thought of as being for bigger federal government and Republicans are for smaller federal government, the Blue states pay for it and the Red states get the benefit. Go figure.