iPad Hearing Loss Simulator App

November 24th, 2010

iPad Screenshot 1

iTunes have released an a iPad application to buy and download, to help those who are not hearing impaired really understand what it is consists of.

Sometimes it can be hard to put yourself in a deaf person’s position and realise how hard life can become without full hearing senses.

Or maybe you are just curious of what it would be like to  have a hearing loss, especially if you have a family member or friend with a hearing impairment.

The application, The Hearing Loss Simulator by Starkey Laboratories, enables you to experience these interests and wonders and choose a specific hearing loss configuration; and then listen to sounds as though you have that particular hearing loss.

It contains pre-recorded common sounds and has the option to let you record your own voice for playback through the different hearing loss arrangments.

It includes graphics to show where the common sounds, speech, and individual speech sounds are located for loudness and frequency.

iPad Screenshot 2

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Deaf Music Artist Raps Sign Language

November 22nd, 2010

The world’s first deaf rapper who has an international record contract and a released album is stomping his way through the music industry, by rapping in sign language.

Signmark, born Marko Vuoriheimo, made headlines back in 2006 when he released “Signmark”,  the world’s first rap album by a person who is deaf.

In 2009, he became the first deaf rapper to ever land a record contract and released the single and video “Smells like Victory”.

“Those two words, music and deaf, they’ve never gone together,” signed Signmark.

Born deaf, Signmark performs alongside a rapper called Brandon, who puts his voice to the lyrics, so both the deaf and hearing can hear it together.

The Finland artist recently braved New York City as part of International Deaf Awareness week, during his tour of the U.S.

He started out by translating Christmas carols so the whole family could sing together. He wanted to bring his hearing grand parents and deaf parents together through music.

“There’s still a lot of people that need to come together like my family did,” he signed.

It is reported, that Signmark was drawn to the rap style of music as a teenager because he identified with rappers feelings of having no voice in society.

“They want equality, they’re fighting for rights from the government, fighting for information, that was right up my alley and I said that’s what I want to do,” said Signmark.

And even though he can’t hear the music, he feels it through the beats.

“You can go to a concert with earplugs and you’ll feel it, you’ll then notice that you feel it in your body,” said Signmark.

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UK Hearing Expert 2010

November 19th, 2010

Mr David Bryce: Audiologist of the Year 2010

A hearing expert who drove over 200 miles to help a patient has been named the UK’s Audiologist of the Year for 2010.

David Bryce, who is from Aberdeen, Scotland, has been chosen as the nation’s top hearing professional in a competition voted for by patients around the UK.

He is an experienced professional who has been caring for patients for over 20 years and was nominated for the award by regular patient, Brian Johnston.

Mr Bryce said: “Brian is someone who’s been coming to my clinic for many years so I’m very touched that he went to the effort of voting for me. I feel very proud to have won and happy that the service I provide is appreciated by patients like Brian.

“It’s very much a team effort as well, as I rely a great deal on my colleagues to provide on-going support and aftercare to patients.”

In his nomination, Brian praised the high quality of David’s care; highlighting his knowledge of hearing, his compassion and understanding of patients’ problems and particularly the time and care he takes to explain what he is doing and discuss any technical issues.

This includes spending significant amounts of time trialling new settings on his hearing aids to find the perfect one and driving more than 200 miles to visit him at home in Thurso and getting to know his family.

The competition is run by hearing aid battery maker Rayovac, to encourage patients with hearing difficulties to nominate professionals and hearing care specialists who go above and beyond the call of duty in the provision of care, demonstrating exceptional skills and compassion to provide excellent patient care.

Mr Bryce, who runs Scottish Hearing Services centre with his family, is the first Scottish professional to win the Audiologist of the Year title.

As winners, both David and Brian receive prizes, with David now in the running to be named this year’s European Audiologist of the Year – a title that will be awarded at the EUHA conference in Germany.

The respected award, which gives a chance for patients to recognise and say thank you to their audiologist, is now in its fourth year and is held for over 3,000 hearing care professionals working in the UK today. 

The award continues to attract a growing number of high quality entries year-on-year and was judged by an independent panel of industry experts including Alan Talbot, Head of the British Society of Hearing Aid Audiologists (BSHAA), Tom Davison, a consultant at the RVI Hospital in Newcastle and Gillian Lacey from Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.

Paula Brinson-Pyke of Rayovac said David was a fitting winner due to the excellent level of care and commitment he provided. He said: “David demonstrates all the qualities of an outstanding hearing professional. He cares deeply for his patients, shows great sympathy and compassion and works incredibly hard to help them get them the right support they require.

“Reading through his nomination it was very easy to see the affection and regard in which he is held by his patients and the undoubted impact he has on their lives.”

Besides the winner, sixteen other hearing professionals were highly commended by the judges for their work.

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Fingerprints No More: Ears Are The New Unique ID

November 17th, 2010

Having ID is fundamental in today’s culture and lifestyle. It is vital to know who you are in cases such as health, terrorism, security and personality.

We already have passports, driving licences, and now the government want to bring out an overall ID card; and yet still people’s identities are stolen and bank accounts defrauded.

But the single most important ID of all is our unique fingerprint. It sets us apart from every other person in the universe, even if you are an identical twin.

Up until now our fingerprint has been the best way to get a person’s unique ID however, it seems the ear may be the best identification.

According to a study presented at the IEEE Fourth International Conference on Biometrics, through a new shape-finding algorithm called “image ray transform,” the outer ear may prove to be one of the most accurate and least intrusive ways to identify people.

Fingerprint databases can store the records of more than 100 million people but prints can rub off. With the advent of computer vision, researchers and identification industries are seeking easier biometrics to get their hands on.

And how does the science work?

Mark Nixon, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton and leader of the research, said: “When you’re born your ear is fully formed. The lobe descends a little, but overall it stays the same. It’s a great way to identify people.”

Recent technologies use computer vision to convert human features, even a person’s walk, into reliable alternatives to fingerprints.

Nixon’s technology can identify an ear, time after time, with 99.6 percent accuracy. It works by unleashing a ray-producing algorithm on an image to seek out curved features. When a ray finds one, the software draws over the part and repeats the analysis. In a few hundred or thousand cycles, it cleanly paints the ear more than any other face structure.

From there, another program turns the curves into a unique set of numbers, something that could be used as an ear-based ID.

Disadvantages to the technology include; hair covering the ears, less-than-ideal lighting conditions, cosmetic lifestyle changes and different IDs generated from different angles.

Fingerprinting has a history of 100 years showing that it works. And you all know the saying, if something isn’t broke, don’t fix it!

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Top Tips on How to Choose a Hearing Aid

November 16th, 2010

 

Learn the features of an open-behind-the-ear hearing aid from an audiologist in this free health video.

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Music chair for the deaf

November 12th, 2010

A professor has helped make music for the deaf by inventing a chair that allows deaf people to feel music through vibrations.

Frank Russo, a psychology professor, worked with a team of researchers to invent the chair, called the “emoti-chair”, and worked with both deaf and hearing musicians to compose music that focuses on vibrations and vision rather than sound.

Prof. Russo, a music cognition expert, will be discussing music without sound at the TEDx Talks Conference in Toronto, on Thursday. The conference’s tagline is “ideas worth spreading.”

Russo talks about there being a long history of the deaf experiencing music through vibration and deaf culture being extremely visual and involving the body.

He said: “Their experience of music, maybe not surprisingly, is informed by what they see and what they feel. There’s this long history of feeling music. For example, there’s a famous percussionist, Evelyn Glennie. She’s deaf and she talks about experiencing music through her body. So she’ll perform without shoes so that she can feel the vibration through her body.”

The emoti-chair is a sensory substitution technology that’s designed to take sound and present it to the body as vibration. You can put your hand on a speaker and  feel the vibration because all sound emanates from some form of vibration.

“The challenge though, with touching a speaker or even touching a musical instrument is what we call perceptual masking. Perceptual masking occurs in vibration when the lower frequency vibrations dominate the higher frequency vibrations. So all we feel is the thump, thump, thump.”

“What we’ve done in the emoti-chair is separate out the frequencies and present them to different parts of the body. We’ll take the high frequencies and we’ll present them to the upper part of the back. We’ll take the lower frequencies in the music signal and we’ll present them to the lower part of your back,” he added.

FAMOUS DEAF MUSICIANS

- Beethoven

- Shawn Dale Barnett

- Michael Bolton

- Evelyn Glennie

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How can a hearing aid improve your well-being?

November 10th, 2010

Having a hearing aid has many advantages to your well being; socially, psychologically and physically.

Firstly, and most importantly, for health reasons you need to wear one. If it has been prescribed to you by a doctor and not for cosmetic purposes, then you need to put your health first and forget about any stigmatisation.

Hearing aids do not restore your hearing to normal but they do significantly improve it and you will hear a lot better. It will become easier for you to hear what people are saying; whether that be shouting from across the playground or on the other side of the office.

It is similar to your eye sight, it will be the little things you will notice; like the wind, the car down the street or the birds singing. You will also gain confidence from hearing coversations more clearly.

Another advantage of using one is in the UK you are entitled to get a hearing aid for free on the NHS if you are registered with a GP or family doctor; and your tests show you need one.

In studies results’ and hearing impaired user’s feedback, experience shows that hearing aids generally improve your quality of life and will help you:

- feel better about yourself

- feel more independent

- concentrate better

- feel less tired and exhausted

- be able to participate in more social gatherings

- be able to do better in your job

- increase your social contacts

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Whale mass strandings linked to hearing loss?

November 8th, 2010

At least 33 whales that had beached themselves on the north-west coast of County Donegal may have suffered hearing problems.

The whales’ deaths in Ireland follow the latest research into aquatic mammals’ strandings, which suggests that stranded whales and dolphins often suffer from hearing loss.

The finding is the latest hail in the long-running controversy over whether undersea noise pollution is harming whales.

The research was carried out David Mann and colleagues of the University of South Florida in which they looked at eight species of cetacean, all of which had either stranded themselves or become entangled in fishing gear.

4 out of 7 of the bottlenose dolphins they looked at, and 5 out of 14 rough-toothed dolphins, had either severe or profound hearing loss, as did one short-finned pilot whale.

They also looked at Risso’s dolphins, pygmy killer whales, Atlantic spotted dolphin, spinner dolphin, and Gervais’ beaked whale.

None of these had any hearing problems though, meaning it seems hearing loss is far from the only possible cause for strandings. In total, 9 of the 34 animals had hearing problems.

David Mann said: “We do not know the noise exposure history of any of these [animals]. Based on the locations of stranding, it is possible that some of them have been exposed to chronic noise from boating and shipping, while for others this is unlikely.”

It is well-known that the oceans have got noisier over the last 60 years, largely because of commercial shipping.

Navy sonar has often been in the frame for whale strandings because the sounds produced are so loud. But they quickly fade into insignificance the further away from them the animals are, whereas the rumble of shipping noise permeates the ocean.

In 2006 a study found no link between Navy sonar and whale strandings.

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The nervous system: how do we hear?

November 4th, 2010

Your ears are your organs of hearing, just like your lungs are your organs to breathe and your hear is your organ to live.

In order to hear, you also need nerves to transmit nerve impulses to your brain, which then interpret the sounds coming from the world surrounding you.

In order to fully understand the process, here is a break down of some Hearing Terminology:

Sound: Sounds are vibrations

Ear: Divided into your outer, middle and inner ear

Cochlea: Part of your inner ear, where your actual organ of hearing is located

Locating sounds: Sound reaches your two ears at different times, enabling you to locate its source.

Your ear is divided into three parts:

  • Outer ear: your ear flap, or pinna, and your outer ear canal, which ends at your eardrum
  • Middle ear: the cavity between your eardrum and your inner ear. It contains your ossicles, the three smallest bones in your body – the malleus, incus and stapes
  • Inner ear: a maze of bony chambers called the bony labyrinth, including the snail-like cochlea, which is filled with fluid and contains your actual organ of hearing – the organ of Corti

So how do these nerve impulses travel for us to receive sound waves?

Your ear flap funnels sound waves into your outer ear canal. The waves travel along this passage until they hit your eardrum and cause it to vibrate. As a result, your ossicles start moving. They, in turn, pass on vibrations to a thin layer of tissue at the entrance of your inner ear called the oval window. The movement of the oval window then sets off wave-like motions in the fluid in your cochlea.

The body’s microphone

Your organ of hearing, the spiral organ of Corti, runs through the inside of your cochlea. It consists of thousands of sensory hair cells, attached to a membrane. Tiny sensory hairs emerge from each sensory hair cell and pierce into a second, gel-like membrane above. Whenever the fluids in your cochlea are in motion, the first membrane vibrates and squashes the sensory hairs against the second membrane. The movement of your sensory hairs is then translated into nerve impulses, which travel along your cochlear nerve to your brain.

Locating sounds

Because you have two ears, you are able to locate the source of a sound. If a sound comes from the right, for instance, it will reach your right ear slightly sooner than your left ear. Or it will be slightly louder in your right ear. As a result, you will recognise the sound as coming from your right.

For more information on Science: Human Body and Mind visit here.

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Protect your child’s ears on Bonfire Night

November 3rd, 2010

The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID)  are urging parents to ensure that they look after their children’s hearing this bonfire night.

The RNID claim that persistent exposure to noise above 85 decibels over time can cause permanent hearing damage and “with some fireworks reaching in excess of 155 decibels, the sensitive hearing of children is particularly at risk.”

It has been said this equates to roughly the sound of city traffic. 

Mark Catling, RNID Products’ Head of Business and Relationship Development, says: “Though bonfire night is a time of fun for all the family, protecting the hearing of your young ones is vital to prevent potential hearing damage, ensuring that you can all continue to enjoy bonfire night for years to come”.

Children’s hearing is more sensitive to loud noises than adults are, so use ear protectors from birth until the age of 7.  

And for other events too, ear protectors are vital  such as music concerts, on motorboats, steam trains or motor racing.

The RNID also warns that noise-induced damage can cause trouble sleeping and give rise to stress;and attention and learning capacity can be decreased.

Stand at a distance from the fireworks, you don’t have to be up close to the action to see the amazing fireworks in the sky! Or to have fun as a family!

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