A Brazilian educational experiment: teleradiology on web TV

Since 2004, educational videoconferences have been held in Brazil for paediatric radiologists in training. The RUTE network has been used, a high-speed national research and education network. Twelve videoconferences were recorded by the Health Channel and transformed into TV programmes, both for conventional broadcast and for access via the Internet. Between October 2007 and December 2009 the Health Channel website registered 2378 hits. Our experience suggests that for successful recording of multipoint videoconferences, four areas are important: (1) a pre-planned script is required, for both physicians and film-makers; (2) particular care is necessary when editing the audiovisual material; (3) the audio and video equipment requires careful adjustment to preserve clinical discussions and the quality of radiology images; (4) to produce a product suitable for both TV sets and computer devices, the master tape needs to be encoded in low resolution digital video formats for Internet media (wmv and rm format for streaming, and compressed zip files for downloading) and MPEG format for DVDs.

Listeners' Discrimination of Real and Human-Imitated Animal Sounds

To determine if listeners can accurately distinguish between real and human-imitated animal sounds, a total of 165 recorded sounds (55 real and 110 human-imitated) of cats, cows, dogs, pigs, and sheep were randomly arranged on a master tape and presented to 30 listeners for discriminative judgments. Results indicate that, in general, listeners can accurately discriminate real from human-imitated animal sounds. Suggestions for future research are discussed.

Listeners' Identification of Human-Imitated Animal Sounds

To determine whether listeners can accurately identify human-imitated animal sounds, 20 speakers (10 females and 10 males) recorded their imitations of cows, cats, dogs, pigs, and sheep. These recordings were randomly arranged on a master tape and presented to 30 judges for identification. Analysis indicates that listeners can accurately identify various human-imitated animal sounds. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Listeners' Identification of Environmental Sounds

To determine if listeners can accurately identify various environmental sounds, a total of 40 sounds, including animal, inanimate, musical, and human sounds, were recorded, randomly arranged on a master tape, and presented to 30 judges for identification. Analysis indicated that, in general, listeners can accurately identify environmental sounds. However, their accuracy was not equal for all four classes of sounds investigated: human sounds yielded the highest accuracy, followed by musical and inanimate sounds, and animal sounds were least accurately identified. Implications and suggestions for research are discussed.

Attacks and Releases as Factors in Instrument Identification

Identification of musical instruments according to their individual timbres was the focus of this study. It was theorized that the attack and release of a tone could be a factor in identifying specific instruments. For testing purposes, a two-part master tape recording was prepared-part A containing 18 randomized instrumental tones with attacks and releases spliced out, part B containing 18 unaltered, randomized tones sounded by the same instruments as in part A. A total of 57 graduate music students served as subjects. Results showed that in part A (attacks and releases removed), only three instruments-Bb clarinet, oboe, and trumpet-were correctly identified a significant number of times; in part B (unaltered tones), all instruments except the cello were correctly identified a significant number of times. For all participants, the mean score was significantly higher on part B than on part A. Thus, it was concluded that attacks and releases may well be influential factors in differentiating between and identifying specific instrumental tones.

Recorded and Braille Textbooks: Everything the Blind Student Needs to Know

Recording for the Blind, Inc., provides tape recorded textbooks to blind high school and college students and others by either making a copy of one of the 23,000 titles already recorded and located in its Master Tape Library or by having it recorded at one of its 23 recording units. Textbooks in braille are prepared by certified volunteer transcribers all over the country. Master copies of over 1,100 textbooks, from which thermoform duplicates can be made, are located in the Braille Book Bank of the National Braille Association. Nearly 200 scientific and mathematical tables in braille are available through the Association's Braille Technical Tables Bank. The Instructional Materials Reference Center maintains a Central Catalog of braille books and their location in various other depositories. Full instructions for the use of these various services are included in this two-part article.