NEW YORK (Reuters) - Yields on U.S. and European debt fell to record lows on Friday and stock markets plunged after a weak U.S. jobs report aggravated fear of a global slump and sent investors scurrying for safety.
The data, which showed U.S. job growth at its weakest in a year, underscored a growing sense that the U.S. economy is not immune to a slowdown in Europe where Spain is struggling to support its banks or to China's slackening economic demand.
U.S. and European stock indexes fell sharply. The blue-chip Dow average and FTSEurofirst 300 index of European shares erased their gains for the year.
Crude oil hit a 16-month low of less than $98 per barrel.
Poor Chinese manufacturing data and dismal European reports on factory activity added to the anxiety, propelling safe-haven gold to its biggest one-day rally in more than three years.
"I don't think we were ever out of the woods, but people got very optimistic earlier this year. Now, reality is setting back in," said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR, a global consulting firm. "Globally, we've got a tough road ahead."
John Kilduff, a partner at New York-based investment manager Again Capital, added: "From China to Europe to the U.S., all the data have shown real slowing."
The gloomy outlook sparked talk of more emergency measures from major central banks, which have tried to boost growth in recent years by slashing interest rates to almost zero and boosting cheap credit to banks.
"The time has probably come for some new government action in the U.S., Europe and China," said Rick Meckler, president of hedge fund LibertyView Capital Management LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey.
"The hope for U.S. investors," he said, "had been that the U.S. economy at least could continue its growth even as Europe was declining."
The possibility of new Federal Reserve bond purchases pushed the dollar down against the euro, although Europe's crisis limited the single currency's gains. It last traded up 0.6 percent at $1.2429 after dipping below $1.23 earlier.
German Bund futures hit a record high of 146.89, up 86 ticks on the day, and yields on German 10-year bonds fell as low as 1.127 percent. Two-year yields on German debt dipped below zero for the first time, falling to -0.001 percent.
Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes rose as much as 1-4/32 in price to yield 1.442 percent, the lowest on records that date to the early 1800s, according to Reuters data.
British government borrowing costs sank to record lows across the full range of maturities.
Some questioned the wisdom of buying bonds that on an inflation-adjusted basis are already providing negative returns. The coupon on German and U.S. 10-year government debt is 1.75 percent - below the rate of inflation.
"It's starting to get a little ridiculous. The bond market is just insane, insane. People have lost their mind," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.
Dan Fuss, vice chairman and a portfolio manager at Loomis Sayles, said global growth was clearly slowing, but the price on government debt had gotten out of hand.
"Treasuries are vastly overpriced and getting more so. If the Fed engages in another round of quantitative easing, they won't call it that," Fuss said.
But the appetite for riskier assets was in short supply.
MSCI's all-country world equity index fell 1.9 percent, while the FTSEurofirst 300 closed down 1.9 percent at 954.874, wiping out this year's gains.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 274.88 points, or 2.22 percent, to end at 12,118.57. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 32.29 points, or 2.46 percent, to finish at 1,278.04. The Nasdaq Composite Index shed 79.86 points, or 2.82 percent, to close at 2,747.48.
Copper sank to its lowest level this year on global growth concerns, and market measures of investor anxiety spiked. The CBOE Volatility index jumped 10.2 percent and the Euro STOXX 50 volatility index rose 4.1 percent.
"I highly doubt the selling will abate today, especially with all the European turmoil going on" said Tom Donino, co-head of trading at First New York Securities.
Gold shot up more than 4 percent at one point on speculation U.S. authorities could unveil another round of monetary easing to boost growth.
Spot gold rose to a high of $1,629.41, before paring some gains. U.S. gold futures for August delivery settled up $57.90 at $1,620.50 an ounce.
Brent crude oil futures tumbled to their lowest since February 2011 to an intra-day low of $97.70, before settling down $3.44 at $98.43.
U.S. July crude fell $3.30 to settle at $83.23 a barrel, its lowest settlement since October 7.
Both Brent and U.S. crude posted their heaviest monthly losses in May since the late 2008 downturn.
The benchmark Thomson Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a global commodities benchmark, fell 1.7 percent, after a decline of almost 11 percent in May, the second-largest monthly decline since 2008.
In a step towards improving rehabilitation for patients with walking impairments, researchers from the Kennedy Krieger Institute found that non-invasive stimulation of the cerebellum, an area of the brain known to be essential in adaptive learning, helped healthy individuals learn a new walking pattern more rapidly. The findings suggest that cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may be a valuable therapy tool to aid people relearning how to walk following a stroke or other brain injury.
Previous studies in the lab of Amy Bastian, PhD, PT, director of the Motion Analysis Laboratory at Kennedy Krieger Institute, have shown that the cerebellum, a part of the brain involved in movement coordination, is essential for walking adaptation. In this new study, Dr. Bastian and her colleagues explored the impact of stimulation over the cerebellum on adaptive learning of a new walking pattern. Specifically, her team tested how anode (positive), cathode (negative) or sham (none) stimulation affected this learning process.
"We've known that the cerebellum is essential to adaptive learning mechanisms like reaching, walking, balance and eye movements," says Dr. Bastian. "In this study, we wanted to examine the effects of direct stimulation of the cerebellum on locomotor learning utilizing a split-belt treadmill that separately controls the legs."
The study, published today in the Journal of Neurophysiology, found that by placing electrodes on the scalp over the cerebellum and applying very low levels of current, the rate of walking adaptation could be increased or decreased. Dr. Bastian's team studied 53 healthy adults in a series of split-belt treadmill walking tests. Rather than a single belt, a split-belt treadmill consists of two belts that can move at different speeds. During split-belt walking, one leg is set to move faster than the other. This initially disrupts coordination between the legs so the user is not walking symmetrically, however over time the user learns to adapt to the disturbance.
The main experiment consisted of a two-minute baseline period of walking with both belts at the same slow speed, followed by a 15-minute period with the belts at two separate speeds. While people were on the treadmill, researchers stimulated one side of the cerebellum to assess the impact on the rate of re-adjustment to a symmetric walking pattern.
Dr. Bastian's team found not only that cerebellar tDCS can change the rate of cerebellum-dependent locomotor learning, but specifically that the anode speeds up learning and the cathode slows it down. It was also surprising that the side of the cerebellum that was stimulated mattered; only stimulation of the side that controls the leg walking on the faster treadmill belt changed adaptation rate.
"It is important to demonstrate that we can make learning faster or slower, as it suggests that we are not merely interfering with brain function," says Dr. Bastian. "Our findings also suggest that tDCS can be selectively used to assess and understand motor learning."
The results from this study present an exciting opportunity to test cerebellar tDCS as a rehabilitation tool. Dr. Bastian says, "If anodal tDCS prompts faster learning, this may help reduce the amount of time needed for stroke patients to relearn to walk evenly. It may also be possible to use tDCS to help sustain gains made in therapy, so patients can retain and practice improved walking patterns for a longer period of time. We are currently testing these ideas in individuals who have had a stroke."
Thanks to Kennedy Krieger Institute for this article.
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Contact: B. Rose Huber rhuber@pitt.edu 412-624-4356 University of Pittsburgh
Pitt, LTER Network researchers urge decision makers to take historic human activity into account when creating environmental policy
PITTSBURGHEarly human activity has left a greater footprint on today's ecosystem than previously thought, say researchers working at the University of Pittsburgh and in the multidisciplinary Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, created by the National Science Foundation to investigate ecological processes over long temporal and broad spatial scales. Highlighted in the June issue of BioScience, the Pitt/LTER collaboration shows how historic human actions caused changes in nature that continue to reverberate throughout present-day ecosystems.
In the article, researchers take a retrospective look at the impact of human activity on LTER Network sites spanning states from Georgia to New Hampshire and propose methods for measuring the effects of such activity. The study of legacy effects is important because it provides insights into how today's actions can affect tomorrow's ecological systems, says Daniel Bain, coprincipal investigator at the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER Network site and an assistant professor in the Department of Geology and Planetary Science in Pitt's Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. Bain notes that decision makers at all levels, including those creating policy, need historical information about ecosystems to make more effective environmental policies. In a democracy, says Bain, a diverse group of stakeholderssuch as outdoor enthusiasts like Trout Unlimited, fiscal watchdog groups such as Common Cause, and individual landownersneeds this kind of data to effectively engage in the management of common resources.
"Increasingly, we propose to manage our ecosystems with sophisticated and complicated strategies," Bain says. "For example, we are attempting to manage agricultural runoff by changing how streams and floodplains are arranged. However, while designing these strategies, we tend to address the most recent impacts rather than the entire history of impacts. This can lead to wasted effort and misuse of relatively limited resources."
Legacy effects from human activities are all around us, says Bain, but few people ever give them a thought. For example, urban systems accumulate a lot of human-made materials, some of which have large ecological footprints and will ultimately leave a legacy. Bain cites the example of lead, which has been banned from gasoline and paint in the United States for several decades but can remain in soils for much longer periods of time. "We should be careful about growing food close to roads or near old houses," he cautions.
In agriculture, areas that were plowed hundreds of years ago react differently to contemporary acid deposition from air pollutants when compared with adjacent unplowed areas. Similarly, our extensive use of cement may add substantial amounts of calcium to urban soils, although the ecological impact of this practice is not yet fully understood, Bain adds.
Indeed, many landscapes that provide baseline ecological data for evaluating environmental change were structured in part by previous human interactions, such as settlements and agricultural practices. To make sense of the observed ecological patterns on such landscapes, Bain says, we must know something of the history of the processes acting to shape those patterns. A recent example of the need for historical data associated with the impact of humans is the debate over global warming and its associated climate changethe legacy of increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over millennia, but hugely accelerated since the industrial revolution and, especially, over the past several decades.
Bain points out that without a systematic collection of data recorded by the LTER Network, the broader geographical patterns of legacy effects would be much more difficult to detect. For example, scientists have discovered that recently glaciated areas have much less dirt accumulation than unglaciated areas. When Europeans first arrived in the eastern United States and dramatically changed local agricultural practices, eroded soil ultimately found its way into waterways. However, the glaciated areas produced less dirt, leaving less of an erosional signal in contrast to unglaciated areas, which lost more dirt and left such erosional legacies as buried valley bottoms and filled harbors. "In terms of policy, the management of glaciated and unglaciated areas requires different approaches," Bain says.
Nevertheless, Bain says, "although LTER sites have decades of data to draw from, we do not necessarily capture these changes, even with our best multidecade studies. It's hard to know what we might have been able to understand now had the LTER Network been established six or nine decades ago instead of three."
Another major benefit of the LTER approach, according to Bain, is the network of scientists that can jointly design a study, analyze the data, and produce such synthetic work efficiently. This type of historical analysis would take a small scientific team much longer to produce and perhaps be restricted to a smaller geographical and time scale than this regional synthesis of historical human legacies at long-term research sites in the eastern United States, Bain emphasizes.
###
About Pitt
A nonsectarian, coeducational, state-related, public research university founded in 1787, the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is an internationally renowned center for learning and research in the arts, sciences, humanities, professions, and the health sciences. The University offers approximately 400 programs in 16 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools and confers 7,800 degrees annually. With more than 35,000 students and 12,600 faculty, research associates, and staff on five campuses, Pitt has an annual budget of $1.74 billion.
About LTER
The LTER program was created in 1980 by the National Science Foundation to conduct research on ecological issues that can last decades and span huge geographical areas. The network brings together a multi-disciplinary group of more than 2000 scientists and graduate students. The 26 LTER sites encompass diverse ecosystems in the continental Unites States, Alaska, Antarctica, and islands in the Caribbean and the Pacificincluding deserts, estuaries, lakes, oceans, coral reefs, prairies, forests, alpine and Arctic tundra, urban areas, and production agriculture.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: B. Rose Huber rhuber@pitt.edu 412-624-4356 University of Pittsburgh
Pitt, LTER Network researchers urge decision makers to take historic human activity into account when creating environmental policy
PITTSBURGHEarly human activity has left a greater footprint on today's ecosystem than previously thought, say researchers working at the University of Pittsburgh and in the multidisciplinary Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, created by the National Science Foundation to investigate ecological processes over long temporal and broad spatial scales. Highlighted in the June issue of BioScience, the Pitt/LTER collaboration shows how historic human actions caused changes in nature that continue to reverberate throughout present-day ecosystems.
In the article, researchers take a retrospective look at the impact of human activity on LTER Network sites spanning states from Georgia to New Hampshire and propose methods for measuring the effects of such activity. The study of legacy effects is important because it provides insights into how today's actions can affect tomorrow's ecological systems, says Daniel Bain, coprincipal investigator at the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER Network site and an assistant professor in the Department of Geology and Planetary Science in Pitt's Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. Bain notes that decision makers at all levels, including those creating policy, need historical information about ecosystems to make more effective environmental policies. In a democracy, says Bain, a diverse group of stakeholderssuch as outdoor enthusiasts like Trout Unlimited, fiscal watchdog groups such as Common Cause, and individual landownersneeds this kind of data to effectively engage in the management of common resources.
"Increasingly, we propose to manage our ecosystems with sophisticated and complicated strategies," Bain says. "For example, we are attempting to manage agricultural runoff by changing how streams and floodplains are arranged. However, while designing these strategies, we tend to address the most recent impacts rather than the entire history of impacts. This can lead to wasted effort and misuse of relatively limited resources."
Legacy effects from human activities are all around us, says Bain, but few people ever give them a thought. For example, urban systems accumulate a lot of human-made materials, some of which have large ecological footprints and will ultimately leave a legacy. Bain cites the example of lead, which has been banned from gasoline and paint in the United States for several decades but can remain in soils for much longer periods of time. "We should be careful about growing food close to roads or near old houses," he cautions.
In agriculture, areas that were plowed hundreds of years ago react differently to contemporary acid deposition from air pollutants when compared with adjacent unplowed areas. Similarly, our extensive use of cement may add substantial amounts of calcium to urban soils, although the ecological impact of this practice is not yet fully understood, Bain adds.
Indeed, many landscapes that provide baseline ecological data for evaluating environmental change were structured in part by previous human interactions, such as settlements and agricultural practices. To make sense of the observed ecological patterns on such landscapes, Bain says, we must know something of the history of the processes acting to shape those patterns. A recent example of the need for historical data associated with the impact of humans is the debate over global warming and its associated climate changethe legacy of increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over millennia, but hugely accelerated since the industrial revolution and, especially, over the past several decades.
Bain points out that without a systematic collection of data recorded by the LTER Network, the broader geographical patterns of legacy effects would be much more difficult to detect. For example, scientists have discovered that recently glaciated areas have much less dirt accumulation than unglaciated areas. When Europeans first arrived in the eastern United States and dramatically changed local agricultural practices, eroded soil ultimately found its way into waterways. However, the glaciated areas produced less dirt, leaving less of an erosional signal in contrast to unglaciated areas, which lost more dirt and left such erosional legacies as buried valley bottoms and filled harbors. "In terms of policy, the management of glaciated and unglaciated areas requires different approaches," Bain says.
Nevertheless, Bain says, "although LTER sites have decades of data to draw from, we do not necessarily capture these changes, even with our best multidecade studies. It's hard to know what we might have been able to understand now had the LTER Network been established six or nine decades ago instead of three."
Another major benefit of the LTER approach, according to Bain, is the network of scientists that can jointly design a study, analyze the data, and produce such synthetic work efficiently. This type of historical analysis would take a small scientific team much longer to produce and perhaps be restricted to a smaller geographical and time scale than this regional synthesis of historical human legacies at long-term research sites in the eastern United States, Bain emphasizes.
###
About Pitt
A nonsectarian, coeducational, state-related, public research university founded in 1787, the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is an internationally renowned center for learning and research in the arts, sciences, humanities, professions, and the health sciences. The University offers approximately 400 programs in 16 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools and confers 7,800 degrees annually. With more than 35,000 students and 12,600 faculty, research associates, and staff on five campuses, Pitt has an annual budget of $1.74 billion.
About LTER
The LTER program was created in 1980 by the National Science Foundation to conduct research on ecological issues that can last decades and span huge geographical areas. The network brings together a multi-disciplinary group of more than 2000 scientists and graduate students. The 26 LTER sites encompass diverse ecosystems in the continental Unites States, Alaska, Antarctica, and islands in the Caribbean and the Pacificincluding deserts, estuaries, lakes, oceans, coral reefs, prairies, forests, alpine and Arctic tundra, urban areas, and production agriculture.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
A built-in timer allows users to calculate the length of the planet's shadow on the solar disk to reproduce an experiment done in the 19th century with less precise instruments
By Ed Oswald and TechNewsDaily
?|
June 1, 2012
Image: VenusTransit
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More??
On June 5-6, amateur and professional astronomers alike will be treated to a very rare celestial event: the trek of the planet Venus across the sun. Of course, there?s an app for that.
Called VenusTransit and available on both the iOS (iPhone) and Android platforms, the app recreates a centuries-old experiment that was used to help calculate the size of the solar system, specifically the Earth?s distance from the sun.
The transit of Venus across the sun is one of the rarest celestial events ever witnessed in human history. Only six Venus transits have been observed in the last 400 years, and if you miss this one, you're out of luck. The next transit of Venus occurs in the year 2117.
That's where the VenusTransit app comes in.
The skywatcher society Astronomers Without Borders and Dutch schoolteacher Steven van Roode are behind the app. Users of VenusTransit are asked to use a built-in timer within the app to calculate the length of the ?ingress,? or entrance, of Venus' shadow onto the solar disk, and the ?egress,? or departure, of Venus?s shadow from the face of the sun. [NASA Launches App Competition]
The app combines that info with location data from the phone itself and sends it to a central server. The app?s creators hope to see whether the data gleaned from amateur astronomers can be as accurate as those of 18th and 19th century stargazers who did the same experiment with far less precise instruments.
Astronomers who watched the 1874 and 1882 transits were able to determine the distance from the Earth to the sun to within 1 percent of its actual value.
VenusTransit has three sections: a timer, a simulator and a visibility section, which tells you when the Venus transit should occur in your location.
If you would like to participate, be sure to read this description of the app and familiarize yourself with the methods of timing the transit. From there, use the simulator to practice timing both the ingress and egress, and compare your times to the correct time to gauge your accuracy. (Note that the app has locked out the timer portion until the time of the actual transit to prevent bogus entries.)
Following the transit, data collected will be posted to an interactive map on the Astronomers Without Borders website. Roode says he hopes the site will become a ?time capsule? for future descendants to look back on the events of the Venus transits of the 21st century.
Copyright 2012 TechNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Lakewood, WA - Wil Houdeshell, a US Army Veteran and Graphic Technologies student at Clover Park Technical College, has won the 2012 Print and Graphics Scholarship (PGSF) College Poster Design Competition.
The poster, titled, "PGSF Scholarships are the KEY, unlock your FUTURE," will be given to all colleges and high schools in the United States that have printing and graphic communication programs for the 2012-2013 academic year.
This student-designed poster is used to promote the availability of scholarships to pursue a career in the graphic communication industry. The posters will be available at the PGSF booth during the 2012 GRAPH EXPO in Chicago, October 7 through October 10.
The Poster design competition was entered by many classes and individual students that used the competition entry as a real working assignment.
"The PGSF scholarship program inspires ALL my students," said John Moyer, Graphic Technologies instructor. "My students have researched our industry and most have made a tough decision to change the direction of their lives by entering into this vast industry of Graphic Communications. For them to see that there is a national program that supports their decision, reaffirms their decision and is inspiring to us all," said Moyer.
"All of the student submissions to the foundation were of a truly professional caliber, making it a challenging choice for our team of judges," said Larry Kroll, vice president of development at PGSF. "Wil Houdeshell, Clover Park Technical College's winning student, used a unique approach combining awareness of PGSF and the availability of scholarship funds with a call to fellow students to take action."
More than 200 college students attending 72 schools are receiving financial assistance through PGSF.
About Wil Houdeshell, Graphic Technologies student:?Wil served in the US Army Infantry for nine years on active duty before being honorably discharged from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in 2011. He and his family decided to make Lakewood their home. He has always been interested in graphic design and visual arts. With the prospect of returning to school after the service, he researched the Puget Sound region's art schools and universities and found the Graphic Technologies program at Clover Park Technical College. Wil plans to continue his education in visual arts after graduating from CPTC and hopes to one day own his own design studio.
31 May 2012Last updated at 16:19By Ben AvissReporter, BBC Nature
Great white egrets are breeding in the UK for the first time at a Somerset nature reserve.
At least one chick has hatched at Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve, it has been confirmed, setting a new UK breeding bird record.
To have the egrets, a species of heron and rare visitors to the UK, breeding in the country was "incredibly exciting", manager Simon Clarke said.
There have also been unconfirmed sightings of a second chick.
"It was a great sense of relief when we confirmed we have got at least one chick on the nest," Mr Clarke told BBC Nature.
Watch the great white egret pair flying to their nest
"We've been on tenterhooks like expectant parents ourselves.
"To have this bird successfully hatch here is just brilliant," he said.
Volunteers at the Natural England site who have been helping with 24-hour monitoring of the nest, believed they saw wing flapping and a quick glimpse of a yellow bill on Tuesday night.
Continue reading the main story
?Start Quote
To have this bird successfully hatch here is just brilliant?
End QuoteSimon ClarkeShapwick Heath reserve manager
On Wednesday morning, Kevin Anderson, great white egret project coordinator for Natural England, provided "100% definite confirmation when he saw it flapping its wings after a feed from the parent," Mr Clarke said.
"The chick already looks the size of a little egret, is looking healthy, and there are lots of feeding flights from the parents.
"It's looking good."
Recent unconfirmed sightings of a second chick would not be unusual, as great white egrets can lay up to six eggs, one at a time, over a period of a few days.
The eggs then hatch over a similar period, depending on the day they were laid.
Mr Clarke is hoping to confirm more chicks: "We're just waiting to see how many more turn up."
Not unlike many of the headphones offered by, say, Skullcandy, Outdoor Technology's designs have a certain extreme sports aesthetic. The company's logo is a silhouette of a Yeti-like creature, and it appears prominently on the thick headband for the eye-catching DJ Slims. At $69.95 (direct), I admittedly didn't have super-high expectations for the DJ Slims' audio performance, but the Bluetooth-streaming headphones offer surprising quality in this price range. Ease-of-use (as both headphones and a headset for wireless phone calls), an outdoor-friendly design, and comfort are all added bonuses. But the flashy design?which even features a flashing indicator light when paired?won't appeal if you want to blend in, whether outdoors or on, say, public transportation.
Design Like the SOL Republic Tracks ($99.99, 4 stars), the DJ Slims' most obvious design trait is its wide, flat headband. Offered in black, white, or blue, the DJ Slims' headband has a matte rubberized finish, and the same twistable, but seemingly unbreakable build. As the company name suggests, these headphones are designed to be worn outdoors, so they can take a little bit of a beating and some dirt, but they're not waterproof. The rectangular foam earpads look a little flimsy, but the DJ Slims are not exactly priced like a luxury headphone, and when you put them on, you won't care?they're extremely comfortable, and the supra-aural (on-ear) design doesn't cause fatigue over long listening sessions. A significant level of audio will bleed out, however, since the earpads create no seal around the ears.
On the right ear, there is a control pad, with a multi-function button in the middle that serves as the Power button, as well as the control for pairing and call-answering and -ending. Four controls surrounding it raise or lower the volume, or skip tracks forward or backward. It's easy to operate these buttons blindly, but at first, you might find yourself skipping when you intend to raise the volume. The microphone is located on the underside edge of the right ear, next to the jack for the power cable. A USB charging cable is included, but no AC adapter, which means you can't charge the DJ Slims without a computer or USB charger handy.
The blinking blue light on the right ear, an indicator that the DJ Slims are properly paired, is a bit annoying, but not to you, since you will rarely see it. And if you happen to be in the great outdoors using the DJ Slims at dusk or later, the blinking light strikes me as a fine announcement to the natural world of your presence. Other than smitten fireflies coming over to investigate, I doubt it would cause any real issues?it just seems like an unnecessary design element.
Performance From an audio performance standpoint, the DJ Slims offer far better sound than I expected for its modest price. There's a nice low frequency response that doesn't distort, even on deep bass tracks, at least until you reach maximum volume on both your sound source and the headphones?and even then, this distortion is subtle enough that it isn't very noticeable. Plenty of headphones can't handle the deep bass of The Knife's "Silent Shout" at high volumes, but this was not an issue for the DJ Slims. Only at a completely maxed-out volume did we encounter a hint of distortion. You shouldn't be listening at this volume anyway, so it's not a huge problem, particularly when you factor in the budget price.
On classical tracks, like John Adams' "The Chairman Dances," the bass response adds a bit of depth to the lower register strings and percussion, while the overall frequency response provides an articulate listening experience?not overly bright, never muddy, and generally fairly clear. Bill Callahan's vocals on his most recent record, Apocalypse, are both crisp and resonant here. Those familiar with higher-end headphones won't mistake the DJ Slims for a flat-response pair, but for $70, they sound fantastic?and it's easy to forget that you're listening to a Bluetooth stream.
The pairing process is a piece of cake?I hooked up an iPhone 4S in a matter of seconds. Like most Bluetooth headsets, the range is about 30 feet, but it's possible to encounter some dropout before then. If the phone is in your pocket or backpack, however, this seems very unlikely?we didn't have any dropout issues within 20 feet. Call clarity is not magnificent, but cell phone calls rarely are, and the microphone is placed well enough so that your call partner can understand you?though outdoors, the wind can wreak a bit of havoc. Outdoor Technology claims the DJ Slims should get 8-9 hours of audio playback on a full charge, and the headphones take about three hours to fully charge.
It's a rare thing for such an affordable pair to offer such quality audio, Bluetooth or wired. Still, if you want better audio performance, the wireless Phiaton PS 20 BT ($149, 4 stars) sounds great, adding a bit more clarity and low-end presence than the DJ Slims possess. This comes at a higher price, however, and with a slightly annoying shirt clip compartment. Very few in-ear stereo Bluetooth headsets offer quality audio without a shirt-clip compartment to house the Bluetooth receiver, but Sony's XBA-BT75 ($299.99, 3.5 stars) do. Of course, that's a lot to pay for a Bluetooth pair when there are perfectly serviceable options like the DJ Slims out there. If you're on a budget, want quality audio performance, and don't mind the design, the DJ Slims are a great value.
More Headphone Reviews: ??? Senta-40 Wood Headphones by C. Crane ??? Outdoor Technology DJ Slims ??? Tivoli Audio Radio Silenz ??? Bowers & Wilkins P3 ??? MEElectronics A161P ?? more
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Public release date: 1-Jun-2012
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