Heard this morning (27 March, 2023) A transcript for this piece is not yet up. They're usually up in a couple of days.
~3 minute listen.
This one right-to-repair law got through in just one state, because the lawmaker who introduced it narrowed its focus down from "The right of everybody to repair anything" (too many businesses to lobby against that) to "the right of wheelchair users to repair their own wheelchairs."
On the one hand it's great. On the other hand, it's a reminder of how marginalized we are in society.
Next thing to fight for: the right of farmers to repair their own farm equipment.
One state's gotten started. Forty-nine to go...
Transcript is now up. I've put the full thing under the cut.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Somewhere on your list of life's annoyances is probably this - manufacturers who won't let customers fix products themselves. Some states are pushing back with right-to-repair laws. Andrew Kenney from Colorado Public Radio visited with one of the first people to use a new right-to-repair law for powered wheelchairs.
(SOUNDBITE OF WHEELCHAIR WHIRRING)
ANDREW KENNEY, BYLINE: Bruce Goguen, who's 68, has used his powered wheelchair for so long that it feels like an extension of himself. He has multiple sclerosis, which affects his speech.
BRUCE GOGUEN: I just think of it as legs, as being my legs.
KENNEY: And that means when he got a new chair last year, every detail had to be right, like the speed of its different modes. His wife, Robin Bolduc, says each one of those adjustments required a visit from an authorized technician. It took weeks.
ROBIN BOLDUC: We would have to call someone, make an appointment, have them come out and say, gee, I'd like to change it so we're walking just a little bit faster.
KENNEY: On one of those visits, Robin realized that the technician wasn't using some specialized device to change the settings. It was a smartphone app. She even found it on the App Store, but it was only available for authorized users.
BOLDUC: Well, I want the app. And he was like, you can't have the app. But I want the app.
KENNEY: That would've been the end of the road, except that Robin and Bruce knew that Colorado's new wheelchair right-to-repair to repair law had just gone into effect. Representative Brianna Titone is the sponsor of the new law. Back in 2021, she originally proposed a much broader bill that would've applied to computers, cellphones and more. That meant an uphill fight against lobbyists for everything from hospitals to tech giants.
BRIANNA TITONE: So I did not win that fight. I lost that fight pretty bad. So that's why the following year, we pared it back to the people who really deserve to have this right. And that were the people who were in wheelchairs.
TITONE: The narrower, wheelchair-focused law passed the legislature last year with the help of advocates like Bruce and Robin. Once it went into effect on New Year's Day, Robin called the manufacturer to demand access to their app.
BOLDUC: They were not prepared. Right. Which - understandably, we're the only state. And it was day one, right? So they were not prepared.
KENNEY: In a committee hearing last year, Tonya Hammatt of National Seating and Mobility, a wheelchair vendor, warned state lawmakers that power wheelchairs are too complex for DIY jobs.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TONYA HAMMATT: This bill will allow anyone to perform complex repairs to power wheelchairs, which may lead to negative outcomes for the end user.
KENNEY: But after Robin showed Bruce's wheelchair's maker the text of the law, they agreed, sending out two staffers to get the family set up with the internal software.
BOLDUC: They gave me the code to get into the app. We played around. We programmed.
KENNEY: The couple have been tweaking the wheelchair's different modes, searching for the perfect speed for Robin to jog alongside Bruce or the right settings for a steep walking trail.
GOGUEN: It's wonderful. It's very wonderful.
KENNEY: And their success could have broader effects. They've been told the manufacturer is working on a public-facing app for everyone else who wants to use it. The company didn't respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, right-to-repair laws are gaining momentum around the country, says Kevin O'Reilly of the advocacy group PIRG.
KEVIN O'REILLY: We think that this first bill was the crack in the dam that we needed.
KENNEY: That includes a new bill from Representative Titone that guarantees similar rights for farmers to repair their increasingly high-tech tractors and other equipment. It's poised to clear the state legislature in a matter of weeks. For NPR News, I'm Andrew Kenney.
(SOUNDBITE OF EDAPOLLO'S "BY THE RIVER")
890 notes
·
View notes
Interesting Papers for Week 37, 2024
Simple spike patterns and synaptic mechanisms encoding sensory and motor signals in Purkinje cells and the cerebellar nuclei. Brown, S. T., Medina-Pizarro, M., Holla, M., Vaaga, C. E., & Raman, I. M. (2024). Neuron, 112(11), 1848-1861.e4.
Disentangling the effects of metabolic cost and accuracy on movement speed. Bruening, G. W., Courter, R. J., Sukumar, S., O’Brien, M. K., & Ahmed, A. A. (2024). PLOS Computational Biology, 20(5), e1012169.
Two Prediction Error Systems in the Nonlemniscal Inferior Colliculus: “Spectral” and “Nonspectral”. Carbajal, G. V, Casado-Román, L., & Malmierca, M. S. (2024). Journal of Neuroscience, 44(23), e2327232024.
In and Out of Criticality? State-Dependent Scaling in the Rat Visual Cortex. Castro, D. M., Feliciano, T., de Vasconcelos, N. A. P., Soares-Cunha, C., Coimbra, B., Rodrigues, A. J., … Copelli, M. (2024). PRX Life, 2(2), 023008.
Visual working memories are abstractions of percepts. Duan, Z., & Curtis, C. E. (2024). eLife, 13, e94191.3.
A scalable spiking amygdala model that explains fear conditioning, extinction, renewal and generalization. Duggins, P., & Eliasmith, C. (2024). European Journal of Neuroscience, 59(11), 3093–3116.
Mesostriatal dopamine is sensitive to changes in specific cue-reward contingencies. Garr, E., Cheng, Y., Jeong, H., Brooke, S., Castell, L., Bal, A., … Janak, P. H. (2024). Science Advances, 10(22).
Astrocytes as a mechanism for contextually-guided network dynamics and function. Gong, L., Pasqualetti, F., Papouin, T., & Ching, S. (2024). PLOS Computational Biology, 20(5), e1012186.
Ventral Pallidum and Amygdala Cooperate to Restrain Reward Approach under Threat. Hernández-Jaramillo, A., Illescas-Huerta, E., & Sotres-Bayon, F. (2024). Journal of Neuroscience, 44(23), e2327232024.
Choice overload interferes with early processing and necessitates late compensation: Evidence from electroencephalogram. Hu, X., Meng, Z., & He, Q. (2024). European Journal of Neuroscience, 59(11), 2995–3008.
Decision-related activity and movement selection in primate visual cortex. Laamerad, P., Liu, L. D., & Pack, C. C. (2024). Science Advances, 10(22).
Intrinsic and synaptic determinants of receptive field plasticity in Purkinje cells of the mouse cerebellum. Lin, T.-F., Busch, S. E., & Hansel, C. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 4645.
Effects of post-saccadic oscillations on visual processing times. Llapashtica, E., Sun, T., Grattan, K. T. V., & Barbur, J. L. (2024). PLOS ONE, 19(5), e0302459.
Cholinergic Neuromodulation of Prefrontal Attractor Dynamics Controls Performance in Spatial Working Memory. Mahrach, A., Bestue, D., Qi, X.-L., Constantinidis, C., & Compte, A. (2024). Journal of Neuroscience, 44(23), e1225232024.
Binocular receptive-field construction in the primary visual cortex. Olianezhad, F., Jin, J., Najafian, S., Pons, C., Mazade, R., Kremkow, J., & Alonso, J.-M. (2024). Current Biology, 34(11), 2474-2486.e5.
Behavioral strategy shapes activation of the Vip-Sst disinhibitory circuit in visual cortex. Piet, A., Ponvert, N., Ollerenshaw, D., Garrett, M., Groblewski, P. A., Olsen, S., … Arkhipov, A. (2024). Neuron, 112(11), 1876-1890.e4.
Exact Distribution of the Quantal Content in Synaptic Transmission. Rijal, K., Müller, N. I. C., Friauf, E., Singh, A., Prasad, A., & Das, D. (2024). Physical Review Letters, 132(22), 228401.
Phase-dependent word perception emerges from region-specific sensitivity to the statistics of language. Ten Oever, S., Titone, L., te Rietmolen, N., & Martin, A. E. (2024). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(23), e2320489121.
Temporal interference stimulation disrupts spike timing in the primate brain. Vieira, P. G., Krause, M. R., & Pack, C. C. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 4558.
Theoretical principles explain the structure of the insect head direction circuit. Vilimelis Aceituno, P., Dall’Osto, D., & Pisokas, I. (2024). eLife, 13, e91533.
6 notes
·
View notes