Problems of Practice in Large Cities

A Symposium on Post War Problems of the Legal Profession

Problems of Practice in Large Cities

A Symposium on Post War Problems of the Legal Profession

Rent Regulations under the Police Power

Conditions resulting from the widespread housing shortage caused by the cessation of building during the war have given rise to legislation which must seem startling indeed to much of the legal talent surviving from a generation ago. The outstanding example is to be found in the New York laws which so far have succeeded admirably in eluding the constitutional pitfalls relied upon to nullify them. Three provisions have borne the brunt of the attack. The first prevents the recovery of an unreasonable rent in an action at law, and places the burden of showing reasonableness upon the landlord. Another suspends for two years the landlord\u27s right to maintain summary proceedings for dispossession except in four instances.2 These are: (a) where the tenant is objectionable, (b)\u27 *here the landlord, bing a natural person, desires the premises for his own personal use, (c) where the landlord desires to construct a new building on the site of the old one, and (d) where the building has been sold to a co~perativf apartment company. A third provision suspends the right to maintain ejectment in the same manner.8 In general, these provisions have been sustained,4 but the last was declared invalid by the Supreme Court, Appellate Division of the First Department, in Guttag v. Shatzkin5 chiefly on the ground that it impaired the obligation of existing contracts in that it was the final enactment of the legislature culminating in the removal of every remedy, excepting in the particular instances stated, of an owner for the recovery of the possession of real property occupied by tenants whose terms had expired and who were under contract obligations expressed in the leases or implied by law to vacate the premises and surrender possession thereof to their landlord

Recording and Analysis of Head Movements, Interaural Level and Time Differences in Rooms and Real-World Listening Scenarios

The science of how we use interaural differences to localise sounds has been studied for over a century and in many ways is well understood. But in many of these psychophysical experiments listeners are required to keep their head still, as head movements cause changes in interaural level and time differences (ILD and ITD respectively). But a fixed head is unrealistic. Here we report an analysis of the actual ILDs and ITDs that occur as people naturally move and relate them to gyroscope measurements of the actual motion. We used recordings of binaural signals in a number of rooms and listening scenarios (home, office, busy street etc). The listener's head movements were also recorded in synchrony with the audio, using a micro-electromechanical gyroscope. We calculated the instantaneous ILD and ITDs and analysed them over time and frequency, comparing them with measurements of head movements. The results showed that instantaneous ITDs were widely distributed across time and frequency in some multi-source environments while ILDs were less widely distributed. The type of listening environment affected head motion. These findings suggest a complex interaction between interaural cues, egocentric head movement and the identification of sound sources in real-world listening situations

Biomimetic direction of arrival estimation for resolving front-back confusions in hearing aids

Sound sources at the same angle in front or behind a two-microphone array (e.g., bilateral hearing aids) produce the same time delay and two estimates for the direction of arrival: A front-back confusion. The auditory system can resolve this issue using head movements. To resolve front-back confusion for hearing-aid algorithms, head movement was measured using an inertial sensor. Successive time-delay estimates between the microphones are shifted clockwise and counterclockwise by the head movement between estimates and aggregated in two histograms. The histogram with the largest peak after multiple estimates predicted the correct hemifield for the source, eliminating the front-back confusions