By SUSAN ASCHOFF and wire reports
Published December 2, 2003
A PERSON'S VOICE may be a giveaway to his age and a clue to his health, say researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
A research team led by Rahul Shrivastav, Ph.D., an assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders, found that pitch and speed can reveal age. The research team's work recently was presented at the Acoustical Society of America meeting.
"If you . . . call (someone) on the phone, we were trying to see what parameters of speech signal the age of the person speaking," Shrivastav says. The team analyzed 30 voices that listeners consistently identified as old or young to determine common characteristics. It then used computer software to manipulate those characteristics.
With all speakers, the speed at which they talk tends to decrease with age, Shrivastav says. "With male speakers, the pitch increases, or gets higher, as they age. The female speaker may be different. It lowers," he says.
From a medical standpoint, a change in a person's voice can be a symptom of a life-threatening condition, such as throat cancer. The UF researchers and others are also interested in how speech and voice changes may indicate Parkinson's disease, stroke or other health problems.
ORGANIC PRODUCE, though desired by many as a healthier food choice, may be hard to find and harder to afford. So what should a shopper buy? Based on the results of testing for pesticides by the federal government, the Environmental Working Group says certain fruits and vegetables ranked the highest in pesticide residue and should be purchased as organically grown, if possible.
They are strawberries, raspberries, apples, peppers, peaches, nectarines, pears, cherries, imported grapes, spinach, celery and potatoes. Going organic on these dozen could cut pesticide exposure by 90 percent, the group says.
Fruits and vegetables least likely to have pesticide residue are sweet corn, avocado, cauliflower, asparagus, onions, peas, broccoli, pineapples, mangoes, bananas, kiwi and papaya.
Organically grown food reduces not only exposure to pesticides for the consumer but reduces risk to agricultural workers and chemical pollution to the planet. To find a community supported agriculture farm near you, go to www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/csa/
PSORIASIS, the itchy skin patches caused by an immune system disorder, improved by at least 50 percent in about half of the patients given a new drug called efalizumab.
According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the drug, brand name Raptiva, has fewer side effects than most other psoriasis treatments. Given in the form of a weekly shot, the drug shrunk the scaly patches in about four weeks.
Psoriasis is an incurable condition in which some white blood cells, called T-cells, cause skin cells to multiply too quickly and trigger other immune responses, leading to inflammation. Current drug therapies include cyclosporine and methotrexate. But both of those can damage the liver. Another treatment, alefacept, works by killing responsible T-cells, but patients must have their blood tested to ensure their white blood cell count doesn't become too low.
The clinical trial involved almost 600 patients given either Raptiva or a placebo for 12 weeks.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Raptiva in late October, with sales expected to begin this month.
