Titanium Dioxide Nanotube Batteries anybody?

Here

.....the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries is replaced with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide.

Titanium dioxide is an abundant, cheap and safe material found in soil. It is commonly used as a food additive or in sunscreen lotions to absorb harmful ultraviolet rays.

Naturally found in spherical shape, the NTU team has found a way to transform the titanium dioxide into tiny nanotubes, which is a thousand times thinner than the diameter of a human hair. This speeds up the chemical reactions taking place in the new battery, allowing for superfast charging......

Therefore greater energy density and faster charging cycles.....

We need to see this in hearing aids soon.  

binax trailer English - New stuff - BETTER than normal hearing.

Brian Taylor interview with Jason Mayer

http://www.audiologyonline.com/videos/meeting-needs-modern-consumer-13008

New stuff coming to the hearing aid market.

Sonova new product coming: from Forbes. Promises of Iphone integration and streaming on the 2.4GHz channel.

Oticon look to be in the same boat and Widex have just announced a 'New Portfolio' launch.

Given that Starkey and Resound have already launched their first 'Made for Iphone' products, there's only Siemens and the smaller manufacturer tail to fall into line.

Sonova in a bit of a dip at the run-out stage of it's latest platform......

Seems that the Veterans Association int he US doesn't like them as much as they used to either.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/12/hearing-aids-usa-idUSL6N0QI2FE20140812

Researching Violins and Hearing Aids.....

What do you do when a client plays a violin right next to his hearing aid and expects it to sound perfect?

I'm currently having a look at this: Marshall Chasin - On Music and Hearing Loss
and this:http://www.audiologyonline.com/articles/five-differences-between-speech-and-1116

He's currently wearing a pair of Unitron Moxi Kiss 20 (with a music program that is significantly lowered) which are 'OK' for listening to orchestral music at a distance, poor at listening to a string quartet and very poor when he plays his own violin........

Any suggestions?

iPhones or iPhoney - Are iPhones the best thing to happen to hearing aids or not?

Looking at the latest releases of product from the hearing aid manufacturers you'd think that we (hearing aid audiologists) were having a revolution in communication technology. Every brochure seems to come with picture of an iPhone showing us a smart new app for controlling your hearing aids.

Fantastic, exceptional, coming of age etc? or not quite there yet? I guess the public will decide. All I can really say is that the average (Mrs Jones) hearing aid wearer is going to be a bit dubious about the smartphone integration and may not be that enamoured.

OTOH the average NEW user who is perhaps in their late 50's or early 60's and may be coming from a technically savvy background is perhaps where this is headed. If ever there was a way to tackle the baby boomer market: it's perhaps the integration of their hearing aid within their communications technology.

Starkey are currently pitching the Halo : www.starkey.com/blog/2014/04/what-does-Made-for-iPhone-mean-for-hearing-aid%20research as a potential research tool, to track where the hearing system needs to perform. Though I'm not quite sure how relevant location settings are vs real-time sound scene analysis, especially as the signal to noise ratio in a restaurant will dramatically differ at busier periods as the music gets louder and people raise their voices over each other (Lombard Effect).

My only other observation is the link with IOS - keeping the proprietary programming of the hearing aid a secret is key. Either the aid gets built with a 'user accessible' portion of the EEPROM which limits changes within the overall prescription OR it's coded out of range to the adjustments available within IOS. If the latter is the case, then I'm struggling to see how Android functionality can ever be made available. As you may well know Android is open-source, so anybody could program a Widget to access all of the hearing aid functionality, thereby eliminating the need for a hearing aid provider and to some extent the profit margin of the manufacturers who currently charge for incremental levels of product performance on the same chip.

As ever, time will tell.....