Interesting effects of very low frquency sound on flowing water:
here
Friday, 10 May 2013
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Moxi Kiss Launch.
New Unitron 312 shell-set.
Loses telecoil option, becomes longer; but apparently that's all better because it was designed by Californians and a few focus groups.
Here.
Loses telecoil option, becomes longer; but apparently that's all better because it was designed by Californians and a few focus groups.
Here.
Friday, 3 May 2013
Bionic Ear: a bit of the future.....
Latest 3d printing techniques and some pretty fancy materials combined with some high end bioscience could see this sort of thing becoming the norm in few years time.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57582634-1/printable-bionic-ear-sends-hearing-to-the-dogs/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57582634-1/printable-bionic-ear-sends-hearing-to-the-dogs/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
Monday, 22 April 2013
APD - Auditory Processing Disorder
APD on-line lecture
Introduction into the team in the SIG group and opportunity to follow up their work in more detail.
Introduction into the team in the SIG group and opportunity to follow up their work in more detail.
Friday, 19 April 2013
Sonova cochlear implant trial.
Sonova in a bit of bother over their Cochlear Implant programme: the ability to adequately seal the components has always been a major issue. Long term hermetic sealing is obviously an integral design consideration.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A central Kentucky family won a $7.24 million verdict after a jury concluded that a company that makes implantable hearing aids knowingly sold a defective device that shocked a 6-year-old girl.
The jury in federal court in Louisville awarded $6.25 million in punitive damages and $994,000 in compensatory damages on Wednesday to the family of Breanna Sadler of Vine Grove. Sadler's family sued Advanced Bionics in 2011 — about three years after the girls' cochlear implant made her ill and sent her into convulsions when moisture seeped into the device.
Attorney Ronald Johnson, who represents the Sadler family and focuses on medical device litigation, said the company was "defiant" about whether it had done anything wrong in handling the hearing aid.
"This is, without a doubt, the worst conduct I've ever seen by a corporation, especially when dealing with such a vulnerable population," Johnson said.
The Swiss parent company of Advanced Bionics, Sonova, said in a written statement that it will consider appealing the judgment. In court records, the company said the devices complied with all federal regulations and recalls were issued appropriately.
The jury's award is the third largest in the western district of Kentucky since 1998, said Shannon Ragland, who runs the Kentucky Trial Court Review, a publication that monitors jury verdicts and awards.
A cochlear implant, sometimes called a bionic ear, is a device that is surgically placed into the bone of a patient's skull. Wires attach it to a magnet, which rests on the person's skull. When the magnet is engaged, the device gives a profoundly deaf or hard of hearing person a sense of sound.
The device has gained popularity among parents who have children with profound hearing issues, such as the one suffered by Breanna Sadler.
Breanna was 4 in 2006 when her family decided to have the cochlear device implanted.
"It worked pretty well," Johnson said. "It was a big surgery and they had it."
Breanna Sadler's device malfunctioned on Dec. 29, 2008. Johnson said her mother heard the girl screaming and found Breanna rubbing her head on the carpet and having convulsions. After calming the girl down, the mother removed the magnet from the device.
"When she did, the convulsions stopped," Johnson said.
A doctor reattached the magnet, prompting more illness, screaming and convulsions, Johnson said. Six weeks later, Breanna underwent surgery to remove the Advanced Bionics device and have a new brand implanted.
Tests later showed that the device inside Breanna Sadler's ear had over 30 percent moisture. The allowable amount of moisture is .5 percent.
"She was at 60 times the allowable amount," Johnson said.
Advanced Bionics first became aware of problems with the implant in 2004 and conducted a limited, six-week recall in which they ceased shipping the devices. In March 2006, the company recalled devices that hadn't been implanted because of the issue of excessive moisture seeping into the device.
The company shipped roughly 4,000 implants between the 2004 recall and the 2006 recall. The Food and Drug Administration cited Advanced Bionics in 2007 for failing to get approval for a new supplier of a component to keep moisture out of the device. The FDA and Advanced Bionics settled the charges in 2008 for $1.1 million.
"It was too late for Breanna," Johnson said.
To date, more than 1,000 have malfunctioned — a failure rate of about 40 percent. Johnson said the rate could rise to as high as 50 percent.
"If they're lucky, they just won't be able to hear anymore," Johnson said.
Breanna is now 11-years-old and the impact of the two surgeries and malfunctioning have taken a toll on her, Johnson said.
"Anytime she hears anything, she jumps out of her skin. She's very, very apprehensive," Johnson said. "She's just a very, very fearful little girl now."
The jury in federal court in Louisville awarded $6.25 million in punitive damages and $994,000 in compensatory damages on Wednesday to the family of Breanna Sadler of Vine Grove. Sadler's family sued Advanced Bionics in 2011 — about three years after the girls' cochlear implant made her ill and sent her into convulsions when moisture seeped into the device.
Attorney Ronald Johnson, who represents the Sadler family and focuses on medical device litigation, said the company was "defiant" about whether it had done anything wrong in handling the hearing aid.
"This is, without a doubt, the worst conduct I've ever seen by a corporation, especially when dealing with such a vulnerable population," Johnson said.
The Swiss parent company of Advanced Bionics, Sonova, said in a written statement that it will consider appealing the judgment. In court records, the company said the devices complied with all federal regulations and recalls were issued appropriately.
The jury's award is the third largest in the western district of Kentucky since 1998, said Shannon Ragland, who runs the Kentucky Trial Court Review, a publication that monitors jury verdicts and awards.
A cochlear implant, sometimes called a bionic ear, is a device that is surgically placed into the bone of a patient's skull. Wires attach it to a magnet, which rests on the person's skull. When the magnet is engaged, the device gives a profoundly deaf or hard of hearing person a sense of sound.
The device has gained popularity among parents who have children with profound hearing issues, such as the one suffered by Breanna Sadler.
Breanna was 4 in 2006 when her family decided to have the cochlear device implanted.
"It worked pretty well," Johnson said. "It was a big surgery and they had it."
Breanna Sadler's device malfunctioned on Dec. 29, 2008. Johnson said her mother heard the girl screaming and found Breanna rubbing her head on the carpet and having convulsions. After calming the girl down, the mother removed the magnet from the device.
"When she did, the convulsions stopped," Johnson said.
A doctor reattached the magnet, prompting more illness, screaming and convulsions, Johnson said. Six weeks later, Breanna underwent surgery to remove the Advanced Bionics device and have a new brand implanted.
Tests later showed that the device inside Breanna Sadler's ear had over 30 percent moisture. The allowable amount of moisture is .5 percent.
"She was at 60 times the allowable amount," Johnson said.
Advanced Bionics first became aware of problems with the implant in 2004 and conducted a limited, six-week recall in which they ceased shipping the devices. In March 2006, the company recalled devices that hadn't been implanted because of the issue of excessive moisture seeping into the device.
The company shipped roughly 4,000 implants between the 2004 recall and the 2006 recall. The Food and Drug Administration cited Advanced Bionics in 2007 for failing to get approval for a new supplier of a component to keep moisture out of the device. The FDA and Advanced Bionics settled the charges in 2008 for $1.1 million.
"It was too late for Breanna," Johnson said.
To date, more than 1,000 have malfunctioned — a failure rate of about 40 percent. Johnson said the rate could rise to as high as 50 percent.
"If they're lucky, they just won't be able to hear anymore," Johnson said.
Breanna is now 11-years-old and the impact of the two surgeries and malfunctioning have taken a toll on her, Johnson said.
"Anytime she hears anything, she jumps out of her skin. She's very, very apprehensive," Johnson said. "She's just a very, very fearful little girl now."
Friday, 5 April 2013
Battery or Body powered hearing aids.....
Here:
Looking into using the body's own electricity to power your hearing aid.
Practical considerations: where do you shove the electrodes? ;)
Looking into using the body's own electricity to power your hearing aid.
Practical considerations: where do you shove the electrodes? ;)
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Interesting refresher on dB SPL vs dB HL
Copyright Neil Bauman 2011.
by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
A student asked,
What is the relationship between the SPL dB scale and HL dB scale?
Good question. I’ll bet there are lots of hard of hearing people that are unclear about the differences between those two scales, and often treat these two terms as though they are interchangeable and mean the same thing—if they even wonder about those acronyms on their audiograms.
When audiologists measure your hearing, they measure your hearing in units called decibels (dB). The catch is that there are several decibel scales. Thus, in order to be meaningful, your audiologist indicates which decibel scale she used. The two most commonly used scales are the SPL (Sound Pressure Level) and the HL (Hearing Level) scales.
Sound meters are calibrated in dB SPL. This makes total sense because the condenser microphones used in sound meters are sensitive to changes in sound pressure in the air, just as our ears are. In contrast, audiometers are calibrated in dB HL, not in dB SPL like you would think would be done. This begs the question, “Why not calibrate audiometers using the SPL scale and forget about the HL scale?”
Here’s the reason why. Our ears do not hear equally well at all frequencies. If our ears heard all
frequencies of sound equally well, then we wouldn’t need the HL scale.
Our ears do not perceive low- and high-frequency sounds as well as they do sounds between 500 and 4,000 Hz. For example, the faintest sound a young person with normal hearing can hear at 2,500 Hz is 0 dB SPL. In contrast, at 20 Hz (a very low frequency sound), the sound needs to be much louder at 72 dB SPL in order to just faintly hear it. At the other end of the frequency spectrum, a very high-pitched sound at 15,000 Hz needs to be increased to 20 dB SPL in order for you to just detect it.
Thus, normal hearing, if plotted on an audiogram using the SPL scale, would be a curved, wavy line and look like the bottom line in Fig. 1. Since this line is both curved and somewhat wavy, it would be difficult to readily tell on an audiogram how much hearing loss a person has by frequency.
It would be ever so much easier to visualize the degree of hearing loss if normal hearing showed as a flat, straight line set at 0 dB on the audiogram. Then, any deviation from this line would indicate the degree of hearing loss.
This is the reason why they developed the HL scale. The curved SPL scale is normalized so that it becomes a flat, straight line at 0 dB. (We call this normalized SPL scale the HL scale.)
Using the HL scale, normal (“perfect”) hearing is a straight line across the top of an audiogram. When your audiologist tests you, any deviation from the 0 dB HL line indicates a hearing loss if it falls below the 0 dB line. (By the same token, if your hearing deviates above the 0 dB line, you have better than normal hearing at that frequency.)
To convert SPL readings to HL readings, audiometers are calibrated to add a specific amount to each frequency tested. This amount varies by frequency. For example, at 125 Hz, it adds 45 dB, while at 1,000 Hz it only adds 7 dB. Likewise, at 4,000 Hz it adds in 9.5 dB, while at 8,000 Hz it adds in 13 dB.
The result is that now your audiogram readily shows your hearing loss graphically in dB HL, rather than you trying to mentally visualize the degree of hearing loss if it were plotted in dB using the SPL scale.
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