Volume 28 Issue 2

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- Advertisers in this Issue
First Premium Placement:
Hear better on a cell phone using the T-LINK.
Second Premium Placement:
NoiZfree Silhouettes at Harris Communications
Third Premium Placement:
IHHD Online Educational Opportunities
Fourth Premium Placement:
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Classified Section:
Two online stores and two employment opportunities

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Contact information and disclaimers are at the end of this newsletter.
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- Article 1: RNID research discovers genetic link to noise induced hearing loss
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Editor: It's become pretty common knowledge that loud noises seem to have different effects on different people - that a noise that damages the hearing of one person can leave the hearing of another totally unaffected. Scientists are starting to unravel some of the causes of these differences as they discover a genetic component to noise induced hearing loss (NIHL)

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Scientists funded by RNID, the national charity for deaf and hard of hearing people, have discovered a genetic link between exposure to loud noise and hearing loss.

The breakthrough could revolutionise ways of treating and preventing noise-induced hearing loss. In the UK, over one million people are at risk from or have already experienced noise related hearing loss.

The findings published today identified three genes that influence the risk of developing noise-induced hearing loss, a condition which is irreversible. These genes play a role in recycling potassium in the inner ear - a process essential to normal hearing.

Exposure to loud noise has long been known to cause hearing loss and is a leading occupational hazard in many countries. However, it has been less clear why some people are much more susceptible to noise damage than others.

RNID funded this pioneering research at the University of Antwerp. Professor Guy Van Camp, who led the research says: "The project tested the hearing of 1,261 noise-exposed male workers from paper pulp mills and steel factories in Sweden. Genetic testing was then carried out on the 10% most susceptible and 10% most resistant workers. 79% of the people in this study had been exposed to noise for at least 20 years. Significant differences between susceptible and resistant workers were found in the sequence of 3 genes, KCNE1, KCNQ1 and KCNQ4.

He continues: "Further studies on KCNE1 show the version of the gene associated with increased risk to noise causes the encoded ion channel to open more rapidly than the normal version. This could affect the recycling of potassium making people with this version of the gene more sensitive to noise."

Dr Ralph Holme, RNID's Biomedical Research Manager says: "This is a very exciting breakthrough. One million people in the UK alone are at risk of developing noise-induced hearing loss. This discovery could revolutionise the way this common form of hearing loss is prevented and treated in the future."

Dr Mark Downs, Executive Director of Technology and Enterprise, says: "Any kind of hearing loss can have a significant effect on the quality of personal, social and professional lives. Most people don't realise how important their hearing is until they start to lose it. Everyday activities such as using a phone, talking to colleagues and joining in with a conversation with a group of friends can become difficult. RNID would advise people who are concerned about their hearing to take our five minute, confidential, telephone hearing check on 0845 600 55 55."

RNID successfully lobbied the Government for changes in legislation relating to noise at work which the charity believes is still one of the most underestimated workplace risks. Excessive noise in the workplace has caused an estimated half a million people living in Great Britain today to suffer hearing difficulties. Tighter Noise at Work regulations which came into force in April 2006 and 2008 for the leisure industry will provide improved protection for workers from hearing loss, one of Britain's most serious occupational diseases.

Britain's Biggest Sound Check is part of RNID's Breaking the Sound Barrier Campaign, a bold campaign which aims to change attitudes towards hearing loss and hearing aids. The campaign aims to reach out to the 4 million people in the UK who are losing their hearing but doing nothing about it.

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- Article 2: HLAA Convention Opening Session - Part 1
By Cheryl Heppner 7/3/06
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Editor: It's convention time again! I didn't get to the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) Convention in Orlando, but super reporter par excellence Cheryl Heppner did, and is furiously writing up what she saw and did. Here's the first of her great reports about what went on at the HLAA convention! This Part One of Two Parts on the Opening Session.

You are welcome to share this article; please see the note at the end of the article for information on how to attribute it.

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The opening session of Hearing Loss Association of America's 21st annual convention took place at 5 pm in the Coronado Ballroom at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort. Terry D. Portis, Ed.D., Executive Director of HLAA, welcomed us by pulling our collective legs with a fictitious tale that Board President Dick Meyer was still recovering from arm wrestling with Lou Ferrigno. Terry then recognized members of the Board of Directors and Dick -- whose arm had made an incredibly speedy recovery -- welcomed us on behalf of the Board and delegates. Alan Brown and Lynn Rousseau gave their welcomes on behalf of the Florida Host Committee.

During the welcoming presentations, we learned that Lou Ferrigno, our keynote speaker, was not just television's Incredible Hulk but a star in the 1977 movie "Pumping Iron", where he is seen alongside California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joe Gold, who founded Gold's Gym. Lou is recognized as one of the pioneers of men's bodybuilding. The first time that Lou was mentioned during the opening session, his name was spelled "Lou Forerig" in the CART on the big screen. Computer dictionary with a sense of humor? That mistake was made only once.

We also learned about some of HLAA's accomplishments during the past year. More than 1,000 people walked to raise funds for HLAA in the Walk4Hearing. HLAA's American Academy of Hearing Loss Specialists has now had over 100 students. Advocacy programs are, and will continue to be, the cornerstone of HLAA. The website had over 5 million hits during the month of April. With the number of people who have hearing loss rising from 28 million to 31 million, these trends will continue.

The most moving moment during the opening ceremony occurred when we were informed that among those in the audience was Tom Wiggins, an Army Ranger who had been wounded in Afghanistan. Tom, who had come from Oregon to attend the conference, was given a standing ovation.

National Access Award
The National Access Award is given by HLAA to those who have provided or improved communication access in a significant way for people with hearing loss. Their work contributes to furthering attitudinal changes and improving the quality of life for all people who are hard of hearing. This year's award was presented to Mark J. Golden, head of the National Court Reporters Association (NCRA), by Terry Portis. NCRA was recognized for its leadership in promoting high quality captioning and CART services and its successful advocacy for federal funding to train more reporters in captioning and CART. Golden, whose organization has nearly 25,000 members, said that the captioning and CART providers like to feel that they are making a difference in someone's life.

Sponsors Tell a Partnership Tale
Terry Portis recognized Cochlear Americas and Walt Disney Parks & Resort for their sponsorship of the Opening Session. Donna Sorkin, Vice President of Consumer Affairs at Cochlear America and Greg Hale, Chief Safety Officer and Vice President of Safety Accessibility and Advanced Technology at Walt Disney Parks & Resorts had a back and forth dialogue about the long and fruitful partnership between HLAA and Walt Disney Parks & Resorts.

Ten years ago, when Donna headed HLAA, the organization had its first convention at Disney World. Prior to the convention, HLAA representatives visited Disney World to check for access and couldn't find the appropriate person to give feedback to. One cast member handed them a card that was for the head of legal services at Walt Disney World.

Greg was told "you've got to talk to this lady" and ended up having a wonderful conversation with Donna. As a result, he realized that Disney World needed to concentrate more on training its staff. Disney sent an access engineer to HLAA's Dallas convention.

Preparing for that first convention was a challenge. Disney had tens of thousands of cast members to train. At the same time it was rolling out new technology: assistive listening systems, sign language interpreters, and television captions at the click of a button. Donna said she realized from that experience how many things could go wrong. HLAA helped Disney develop its educational materials.

Donna called the period "an exciting time" because HLAA was working with the largest entertainment complex in the world. Volunteers went in with clipboards and gave their input to Disney. Greg said that the main desire was a way to make moving rides accessible through captioning. Disney eventually invented the technology to do it and rolled it out at 39 attractions. Now they call the device they've been using "the red brick" and are working on a small, light hand-held unit that incorporates the receiver for the listening systems and the TV captioning device. It will be rolled out, both at Disney World and Disneyland, as soon as the bugs are worked out.

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(c)2006 by Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons (NVRC), 3951 Pender Drive, Suite 130, Fairfax, VA 22030; www.nvrc.org Items in this newsletter are provided for information purposes only; NVRC does not endorse products or services. You do not need permission to share this information, but please be sure to credit NVRC.

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You're Career Oriented... Career Driven...and Hard of Hearing or Deaf
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The Institute for Persons Who Are Hard of Hearing or Deaf (IHHD) is a nonprofit Congressionally-funded agency dedicated to facilitating workplace and career advancement for aspiring professionals like you.

IHHD provides important online educational opportunities to share experiences, access top professional leaders, and develop crucial communication and business skills. Choose from a number of programs that cover all aspects of career growth - from starting a business to leadership and advocacy development.

These month-long courses are delivered online using National University's acclaimed state-of-the-art interactive learning system to provide optimal accessibility. Visit: http://cha.nu.edu/ec/formihhd-careerdev.html?ypd002
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- Article 3: Non-Hispanic blacks have best hearing in US, new study shows
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Editor: I think hearing loss demographics are fascinating, and the information in this news release is no exception.

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Non-Hispanic black adults in the U.S. have on average the best hearing in the nation, a new study shows, with women hearing better than men in general. Overall, the nation's hearing health remains about the same as it was 35 years ago, despite massive changes in society and technology. The results were presented last week at the Acoustical Society of America's spring meeting in Providence, Rhode Island.

William Murphy, Christa Themann, and Mark Stephenson at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Cincinnati studied the hearing test results of more than 5,000 U.S. adults aged 20-69 who identified themselves as members of one of three major ethnic groups in the U.S. They studied the adults' "hearing thresholds," the softest sound an individual could hear, over a range of frequencies. They found that non-Hispanic blacks have on average the best hearing thresholds, non-Hispanic whites the worst, with Mexican Americans in between. Women in general had better hearing compared to men.

Comparing the new hearing data to a similar study 35 years ago with adults aged 25-74, the researchers found the median hearing levels in U.S. adults have not changed much; the hearing of U.S. residents is on average not any worse, nor any better than in the early 1970s. This is somewhat surprising because of the greater number of noise sources now present in our society. One potential factor is that hearing protection was not widely available in the early 1970s. Another speculation for the results is that fewer U.S. residents are working in noisy factory jobs, potentially offsetting the effects of newer noise sources. In addition, it is worth noting that the effects of playing portable music players such as now-ubiqitous iPod too loudly might not yet fully be accounted for, since the analyzed data span the years 1999-2004.

The U.S. adults had their hearing tested as part of a more comprehensive study called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). In this study, individuals fill out a survey and receive a comprehensive set of tests in a mobile examination center that travels around the U.S.

Hearing loss can be caused by a myriad of factors, such as age, noise exposure (occupational or recreational), developmental syndromes, infectious disease, physical trauma, ototoxic drugs and chemicals, all of which may be influenced by genetic susceptibility. However, it is estimated that at least one third of the cases of hearing impairment stem from overexposure to noise. Estimates of noise exposure in the United States vary, but range from 5 to 30 million persons exposed in the workplace and 16 to 66 million exposed recreationally. Effective prevention programs could therefore make a large impact in reducing the prevalence of hearing loss in the United States.

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- Article 4: Short Takes
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Editor: Here are our picks of some additional stories that you may find interesting. For more, please point your browser to:
http://www.hearinglossweb.com/news/curr.htm

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The Audiogram: Explanation and Significance

Recently, I've been trying to organize some of the columns and articles I've written over the past ten years. As I was looking through them, it became apparent that I've neglected to discuss what is perhaps most important hearing dimension of all, the simple audiogram. In reality, however, the "simple" audiogram, and particularly its implications, is not quite so simple. Even though just about everybody who receives a hearing aid has his or her hearing tested with a pure-tone audiometer, not everybody receives a comprehensive explanation of exactly what the results mean and what the implications are for them. And even for those that do, at a time when prospective hearing aid purchasers are being inundated with new information, anxious about the test results, and worried about the cost involved, much of this explanation will be forgotten or misconstrued the time several weeks have passed.

http://tinyurl.com/oeuen

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Tinnitus: Do you Hear that Ringing Noise?

One February morning in 1984, Judith Schwegman of Carbondale woke up with a ringing sound in her ears and felt dizzy. "My first thought was: How do I stop this?" Schwegman said. After many visits to doctors who specialize in ear problems (otolaryngologists), many tests, and trying various medications, Schwegman still had the ringing in her ears. She has lived with tinnitus for more than twenty years. [. . .] According to the American Academy of Otolaryngology, in the United States nearly 36 million people are dealing with this condition, on a daily basis. For some, this is a nuisance. For others, it is a life-changing condition.

http://tinyurl.com/p7evs

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Stereo Sound - Bilateral Cochlear Implants

"I want to hear Michael when he whispers," Caroline confided to her parents one day last year, referring to a soft-spoken friend. So, in January, Caroline underwent more surgery to place a cochlear implant in her left ear, eliminating her deaf side and letting her hear the world in stereo for the first time. Caroline, who turned 8 over the weekend, is one of a small but growing number of deaf people who are getting cochlear implants in both ears, revolutionizing what it means to be deaf. Though Caroline's brain is still adjusting, her parents hope her hearing eventually will be acute enough so she can sing in a choir, talk on a cellphone, and possibly go to school without an aide.

http://tinyurl.com/prvwm

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- Classifieds
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Two online stores and two employment opportunities appear in this issue. (Ads appear after this brief table of contents.)

WCI. Providing Solutions for People with Hearing Loss.
SPECIAL DEALS ON ALARM CLOCKS AT WCI!
http://www.weitbrecht.com

Potomac Technology - Everything You Need Under One Roof!
WIN A SIMPLICITY SIGNALER FREE!
http://www.potomactech.com

Employment Opportunity 1
Various Opportunities
GLAD
Various Southern California Locations

Employment Opportunity 2
Various Positions
The Learning Center for Deaf Children
Framingham, MA

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WCI. Providing Solutions for People with Hearing Loss.
SPECIAL DEALS ON ALARM CLOCKS AT WCI!
http://www.weitbrecht.com
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SPECIAL DEALS ON ALARM CLOCKS AT WCI!

Choose from two different alarm clocks on sale during July. The Sonic Alert Travel & Bedside Clock features a large easy to read display and powerful 12-volt shaker. Regularly $34.95, this month it's only $27.95! The SBP-100 Sonic Shaker portable clock includes travel case, pillow clasp and one-year warranty. Retail price is $29.95 but it's only $24.95 this month! Call 1-800-233-9130 (V/TTY) or visit us online at http://www.weitbrecht.com.

To receive a copy of our catalog, email sales@weitbrecht.com

WCI. Providing Solutions for People with Hearing Loss.

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Potomac Technology - Everything You Need Under One Roof!
WIN A SIMPLICITY SIGNALER FREE!
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WIN A SIMPLICITY SIGNALER FREE!

Summer is heating up and so are the savings at Potomac Technology starting with 15% off all Clarity phones. Then add FREE SHIPPING to any purchase over $50.00. And if that weren't enough, your name will be entered for a chance to win a free Simplicity LTW Phone and Doorbell combination signaler. Call us toll free at 1-800-433-2838 (V/TTY) or visit us online at http://www.potomactech.com for details (use code PTEC706H for free shipping).

And to request our catalog just email us at info@potomactech.com

Potomac Technology. Everything You Need Under One Roof!

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Employment Opportunity 1
Various Opportunities
GLAD
Various Southern California Locations
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GLAD is an Affirmative Action Employer with equal opportunity for men, women and people with disabilities. For more information on the following positions, please go to: www.gladinc.org. The status of all positions is: Regular, Full-time, Non-Exempt, Full Fringe Benefits unless otherwise noted. All positions are open until filled.

* LIFESIGNS Director - Los Angeles
* Network I.T. Administrator - Los Angeles

If interested for any of these positions then please submit resume and application to:

Jeff Fetterman
Human Resources Specialist
Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness, Inc.
2222 Laverna Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90041
V/TDD: (323) 550-4207
Fax #: (323)550-4204
E-mail: jfetterman@gladinc.org

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Employment Opportunity 2
Various Positions
The Learning Center for Deaf Children
Framingham, MA
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Teacher of the Deaf

Requirements: Massachusetts teacher certification or ability to become certified. Multiple positions available from preschool through high school for the 2006-2007 academic school year. ASL fluency essential.

Learning Disabilities/Reading Specialist

Ensure that students with learning disabilities effectively access the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and effectively participate in state-wide level assessment. The Learning Disabilities/Reading Specialist will work collaboratively with an interdisciplinary team of department supervisors, teachers, speech/language pathologists, and therapists in creating and facilitating instructional supports and activities.

Requirements: Massachusetts DOE license or demonstrate the ability to be licensed by the Massachusetts DOE. Teacher of the Deaf with evidence of further training in learning disabilities or a Teacher of Learning Disabilities with additional training in Deaf Education.

Director of Vocational Services
Licensed Vocational Teacher

This program is designed to prepare deaf and hard of hearing adolescents, some with developmental and/or other learning challenges, for successful employment as young adults. Both individuals should possess degrees and experience that will enable them to work with a team in the development and implementation of services. ASL fluency essential.

Curriculum Specialist

Plan and organize MCAS testing and curricula alignment including alternative testing. This qualified candidate will work collaboratively with department supervisors and teachers related to the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks alignment and MCAS state-wide alternative testing. He/she will plan and organize curricula alignment and MCAS portfolio testing.

Requirements: Minimum of 5 years as a Teacher of the Deaf or related field. MA degree in Deaf Education, Curriculum or related field. American Sign Language fluency. Excellent written communication skills. Must have the ability to work with teachers in collaborative efforts in accessing the general curriculum for all students.

Please send resumes and references to:
The Learning Center for Deaf Children
Attn: Lynn Marshall
848 Central Street
Framingham, MA 01701
Fax: 508-875-9203
Phone: 508-879-5110 v/tty
www.tlcdeaf.org

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- Contact Information and Disclaimers
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