Maize as metaphor. CAS Professor of History James McCann has begun work on a new book, Maize and Grace: A Modern History of Corn. Maize, or corn, is one of the oldest cultivated crops; its several forms derive from a single ancestor domesticated in central Mexico around 7000 years ago. By a.d. 1500 the Aztec and Maya civilizations were calling the crop maize, literally "that which sustains life."

"Maize and Grace will add rich historical commentary from archives, travel narratives, and literature that reveal the settings in which maize became a source of food, libation, livelihood, and sociopolitical metaphor," McCann says. "That's never been done before."

For agribusiness, maize is industrial raw material, used for fuel, fodder, paint, plastic, and penicillin. It has many uses, but maize is a tricky crop to grow; nutritionally, it's high in carbohydrates, but low in protein. Thus, McCann notes, maize monocultures are extremely vulnerable to environmental shocks and may be quite unhealthy for those who depend too heavily on it for food. "For all its uses and benefits, both commercial farmers and peasant farmers -- who tend to be women -- walk a tightrope of risk when they plant maize," he says.

McCann intends to draw together a narrative that examines human engagement with the maize plant and its life cycle from seed to storage crib and from mill to table. "My task as a researcher and author will be to mix and stir these ingredients into a story that places the global scale of agriculture alongside the local landscapes of human experience with maize as the organizing protagonist," he says.

A better evaluation of speech for the hearing-impaired. It has always been difficult for therapists to get a comprehensive evaluation of hearing-impaired people's speech ability, since often only one aspect of speech production -- say, voice pitch -- dominates.

Now, SAR Assistant Professor of Communication Disorders Melanie Matthies and Professor Geoff Plant have tested an approach that will serve therapists and researchers as both a highly efficient diagnostic tool and a progress evaluator. "People have been trying for a long time to come up with a reliable diagnostic and therapeutic tool," says Matthies. "Ours is one of the most useful because it evaluates so many of the speech parameters of hearing-impaired people."

They recorded 55 adults, 31 deaf and 24 with normal hearing, reading aloud. Objective measures were made of vocal level, voice pitch, and how long it took to read the passage -- which measures breath control. A panel of four speech experts rated the speech of all the subjects on overall intelligibility as well as in the specific areas of voice quality, intonation contour, voice pitch, rate, syllabic differentiation, and articulation of vowels and consonants. The judges, who didn't know whether they were listening to a deaf or hearing speaker, were able to reliably rate speech production.

Plant and Matthies expect their approach will help in a range of situations. For therapists assessing new clients, the approach will provide a baseline as well as pinpoint the areas that need the most work. As speech therapy continues, patients' progress will be tested and treatments adjusted as necessary, allowing for better results. "Also, this approach gives us a deeper understanding of the underlying processes and interactions of speech parameters," says Matthies. "That's invaluable for continuing research in this field."