The Hearing Knowledge Hub

  • The Hearing Clinic

    Computers eavesdrop on fishy love songs.

    It seems that, when the time is right, fish sing songs of love to attract a mate. And they don’t tend to enjoy big solos – preferring to vocalise in choruses which can even be heard from land at low frequencies.  But it’s not just other fish who are listening. Biologists in California are eavesdropping on fish populations in the nearby Pacific Ocean to try to identify spawning seasons with a view to preserving fish populations and protecting marine health. Capturing the recordings was just the beginning. Highly skilled acousticians would then need to listen to weeks or months of recordings to pick out the fish chorusing sounds – a process…

  • Articles

    AI – what we can gain for hearing aids.

    You can’t read the news or switch on the telly at the moment without hearing about artificial intelligence (AI). Depending on your point of view, the buzz around AI is either alarming or exciting as experts debate its potential to alter so many aspects of our daily lives and even potentially eliminate certain jobs. What is AI? AI is the method by which a computer is able to mimic human cognitive functions, such as learning and problem-solving. The computer analyses and learns from data through specifically designed algorithms. AI has actually been with us for quite a few years (Siri and Alexa, the virtual personal assistants, are AI features). And…

  • Articles

    New propeller design to reduce noise pollution

    Boats and aircraft still use propeller designs that are hundreds or even thousands of years old. However, that could be set to change thanks to a new design being implemented by the aviation and marine sectors. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US that has been working on a new drone has found that adapting the traditional shape of the propellers into a twisted ring, or twisted-toroid, drastically reduces the noise from the drone blades. The sound created is more like a rushing breeze than a propeller, making it far less intrusive. What’s more, the new design also produces more thrust. These benefits are equally apparent…

  • Articles

    Can snakes hear you scream?

      Sight and taste are the main ways snakes sense their environment, but hearing is a more important element than previously thought. Snakes can feel sound vibrations through the ground (called tactile sensing) but new research shows that they can also hear sounds through the air, like we can, and different species respond in different ways. Australia is a country well known for its variety of impressive and mostly lethal snakes so it seems apt that the new research has been published by a team at the University of Queensland. The team tested 19 different snakes from seven species in a soundproof room where they were able to move freely.…

  • Articles

    New rapid DNA to prevent hearing loss in newborn babies

      The eagle-eyed of you may remember that, back in July last year, we blogged about a new genetic test being trialled by some NHS hospitals that could protect the hearing of newborn babies who are vulnerable to a particular antibiotic.  One in 500 babies born in the UK has a gene that can lead to permanent hearing loss if they’re given the common emergency antibiotic, Gentamicin. Gentamicin is life-saving and the first-choice antibiotic if a newborn develops a serious bacterial infection. It’s safe for most people, but some 180 babies in England each year suffer hearing loss as they have the gene and are given this drug. Thanks to…

  • Articles,  The Hearing Clinic

    Your Life, with Subtitles

    A new tech breakthrough is helping to better connect deaf and hearing impaired people with friends, family and the world around them. The XRAI Glass app uses augmented reality to convert audio to visuals via smart glasses. The user wears a pair of smart glasses that provide subtitles of what’s going on around them in real time. The user simply reads the subtitles which appear instantaneously in front of their eyes. The glasses look like slightly larger-than-average sunglasses, and users can even have their custom prescription spectacle lenses inserted into the XRAI Glass frames. The glasses connect to the XRAI Glass app on the user’s smartphone which will even translate…

  • Articles,  The Hearing Clinic

    Can the brain be trained to hear sound in background noise?

    Scientists studying the brains of old and young mice believe that the brain might be trained to filter out background sound, potentially helping to solve the challenges people with a hearing impairment experience when listening to speech in background noise. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine found that old mice were less able than young mice to suppress actively firing brain cells in the midst of ambient noise making it difficult for the brain to focus on one type of sound — such as spoken words — and filter out surrounding noise. Researchers recorded the activity of 8,000 brain cells, or neurons, in the auditory cortex brain…

  • Articles,  The Hearing Clinic

    Revealing Churchill’s Hearing Loss

    Like many people, as Winston Churchill got older he began to suffer from hearing loss. Records in the government’s archives shed light on this little-known aspect of his life as well as the technology that was installed in the House of Commons chamber to help him work effectively. Churchill was initially reluctant to admit that his hearing was deteriorating and only had his first hearing aid fitted in 1952, some eight years after his hearing loss was first detected. The hearing aid was made by a company owned by Russian engineer Alexander Poliakoff. However in 1953 Poliakoff’s contract was ended because MI5 was concerned that Soviet Russia could bug the…

  • Articles,  The Hearing Clinic

    Making space more accessible

    In mid-December some 16 ‘AstroAcces’ disability ambassadors took off from Houston, Texas, to test a system that would help to make the physical environment of a space vessel more accessible to people who are blind, deaf or hearing impaired.  The ambassadors flew aboard a specially modified Boeing 727 G-FORCE ONE aircraft to test a system created by SonicCloud which might enable improved speech understanding in space. The personalisation software allows the user to tailor audio, delivered through Sony headphones, to their hearing ability. This was a first global mission comprising people from different countries and saw the ambassadors taking part in weightlessness testing. Other experiments looked at how the physical environment aboard…

  • Articles,  The Hearing Clinic

    5 Tips for better hearing at Christmas

    If it’s your turn to host this Christmas and you have a family member with hearing loss, it’s worth remembering our top tips to help them to hear well, feel included and have a great time.  1. Turn the music off Any background noise, including music, makes it hard for people with hearing loss to follow the conversation so it’s best to turn it off, rather than down. 2. Take a seat Put the person with hearing loss at the centre of the Christmas dinner table so they’re close to as many people as possible. If everyone is mindful of the person’s hearing challenges, then encourage people to speak one…

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