Laurel's 2016 presentation at the Pan-American Vocology Association that poses the question - how can the voice community engage with demographics that are constantly attacked for how they use their voices?

The diaphragm, as we all know, plays a key role in respiration.  Its unique structure and location within the body makes it one of the more fascinating muscles to consider.  Even with only thinking of it as a respiratory giant, the diaphragm has captured people's imagination, and been the focus of countless hypothesis about singing, acting, and voice use in general. Body movement specialists have begun to focus on the diaphragm as well, not only for its use in breathing, but also for its unique placement in the body, and the influence it has on centering and balance.

Until recently, though, few have considered the diaphragm's role as a gastrointestinal structure in the body.  Mark  Pickering's and James FT Jones' article The Diaphragm: Two Physiological Muscles In One explores the complexity of the muscle, and how an understanding of the portion of the diaphragm that helps to regulate the fluids that pass through it going from the top of our bodies to the bottom can influence conditions like acid reflux.

Sign language innovators explain how they  visualize rhythms and rhymes through American Sign Language.

After the release of his industry-changing dissertation (link here), Ian Howell has taken to offering the concepts and constructs that he developed in more bite-sized chunks, combining them into pedagogically-enticing threads.  This recent article  Necessary Roughness In The Voice Pedagogy Classroom  in the NYSTA magazine "VoicePrints" carefully takes the reader through several key psychoacoustic phenomena, helping us understand more closely how we perceive sound, and how that perception profoundly impacts the sounds that we make.  Howell continues to show why he is one of the more important pedagogues and researchers working in vocology today, not to mention his moving and inspiring countertenor voice.

"A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison grew a pair of vocal cords that appear to be able to produce sound. Dr. Nathan Welham, who lead the project, said they could someday help the millions of people who have lost their ability to speak. He said the vocal cords his team created functioned phenomenally well, adding that they were comparable to..."