hearing

You might think you can't have a phone conversation with someone who's deaf, but Dimitri Kanevsky would not only disagree, he'd prove you wrong.

Deaf since he was 3, Kanevsky has hardly let his disability get in the way of progress -- or success. Born in the Soviet Union, he eventually emigrated, first to Israel, and then to the United States, and went on to become a research staff member in the speech and language algorithms department at IBM's Thomas Watson Research Center.

On Monday, Kanevsky and 13 others were honored at the White House in … Read more

Cochlear implants, which help 220,000 deaf people around the world hear, come with a few unfortunate side effects.

Because the implants also consist of external parts (the mic, a speech processor, and a radio transmitter coil) worn rather conspicuously behind the ear, users are often unable to swim or wear helmets comfortably, must fully rely on a microphone exposed to the elements, and have to deal with appearing at least somewhat handicapped.

So an electrical engineer at the University of Utah has developed a prototype that moves all these external parts into the middle ear, allowing cochlear implants to … Read more

Body suit simulators are nothing new. Earlier this year the Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Japan unveiled Mommy Tummy 8.0, designed to help the partners of expecting moms--as well as teenagers thinking about getting it on--to understand the physical ramifications of, well, getting it on.

Now students at MIT's AgeLab are taking this empathy concept to another level with AGNES, the Age Gain Now Empathy System, a suit designed to help wearers understand the physical ramifications of neglecting our bodies for decades on end. (AGNES is meant to emulate a 75-year-old with arthritis and diabetes.)

The suit incorporates shoes that compromise one's sense of balance and shorten one's gait; knee and elbow braces that limit joint mobility; earplugs that tune out soft or high-pitched sounds; a helmet that compresses the spine; and gloves that reduce not only strength and mobility in one's hands and wrists but also tactile sensation.… Read more

The original NHT SuperZero speaker was an immediate hit with audiophiles when it was introduced in 1993, and the current SuperZero 2.0 ($198 a pair) is still the company's biggest seller.

NHT (Now Hear This) was in New York last week demonstrating its newest creation: the SuperPower speaker ($199 each). It's a near twin of the SuperZero 2.0, but the new one comes with a built-in 90-watt power amplifier. Just hook up the little speakers directly to smartphones, portable media players, tablets, video games, entertainment systems, and, of course, desktop and laptop computers, and bask in … Read more

Sarah Churman is the unlikeliest Internet star. The Texas stay-at-home mom of two little girls has somewhat ordinary interests--she loves to read, watch movies, and attend concerts with her husband of almost 10 years, Sloan.

But on September 26 of this year, Churman was catapulted to YouTube fame due to an intimate, home movie that went viral. She was born deaf. But on that day, she heard her own voice for the very first time. The 91-second video clip brought this viewer goosebumps, tears, and an empathy for this remarkable woman.

When I interviewed Sarah and Sloan Churman at medical offices in San Jose, Calif., she explained to me that the deaf community tends to be divided into two categories: those who want to use technology to restore their hearing and those who try to make the most of life without it. She is very firmly rooted in the first camp and has spent a good deal of her adult life researching the latest hearing devices to come onto the market. In May 2011, Churman heard a radio ad for Envoy Medical's Esteem implant. That set the balls in motion for a summer of hope, frustration, high emotion, and ultimately, success. … Read more

Etymotic Research was at the giant IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin to debut its new earphones designed to protect children's hearing.

The product, ETY*Kids Safe-Listening Earphones, consists of noise canceling in-ear earphones (or "earbuds") that allow parents to insure that the volume of sound that reaches their child's ears doesn't exceed safe levels. The earphones will be available in October, starting at $49.

In a podcast interview (scroll down to listen) recorded at the Showstoppers press event at IFA, Karnes said that, by proportion of population, there are now more hearing impaired … Read more

I live in New York, N.Y., a place that's never quiet. It's not just traffic noise, people noise, music in the streets, or the cumulative effect of all the buildings' air conditioning exhaust fans. There's a low, deep hum that always throbs to the beat of a city of 8 million people.

Judging by the number of folks wearing headphones on the subway, I'm not the only one using music to mask the noise. The subway may be one of the loudest places you can be in this town, but restaurants can get painfully loud, … Read more

Many of us know at least one person who has a hearing aid that sits on a shelf somewhere, collecting dust. The usual complaint: The thing just doesn't work right.

A professor at the University of Essex in the U.K. says these aren't just excuses, but legitimate complaints. "Today's hearing aids don't help to separate sounds--they just amplify them," said Ray Meddis, who has led work on a new kind of hearing aid. "They often make everything too noisy for the wearer, especially in social situations like parties, and some wearers still can't make out what people are saying to them. They find the whole experience so uncomfortable that they end up taking their hearing aids out," Meddis said in a statement released today.

Meddis and his team at Essex have been working on a new kind of aid they say could revolutionize what is now an antiquated approach to treating hearing impairments. The key, they say, is to use unique computer models (what they call "hearing dummies") that treat the root causes, not just the symptoms, of the user's unique condition.

"In the same way that a tailor's dummy is used to measure and fit a garment for a particular person, our software dummy is used to gauge a patient's hearing requirements so that their hearing aid can then be programmed to suit their needs," Meddis said.… Read more

A second U.S. Senate hearing over location privacy has been scheduled, a move intended to highlight how well companies notify their customers about when and how their whereabouts are stored and transmitted.

Following the U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about mobile privacy last week, representatives from Apple and Google are expected to again appear in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to answer questions from U.S. lawmakers in a new hearing that will also include Facebook.

The topic of a hearing, put on by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance, is "… Read more