Volume 44 Issue 13

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Classified Section:
One Online Store and four Employment Opportunities

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Contact information and disclaimers are at the end of this newsletter.
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- Article 1: Study Suggests Avenue To Restore Hearing Loss From Nerve Damage
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Researchers at the University of Washington have reportedly tracked a cell-to-cell signaling pathway that designates the future location of the ear's sensory organs in embryonic mice. The scientists succeeded in activating this signal more widely across the embryonic tissue that becomes the inner ear. Patches of sensory structures began growing in spots where they don't normally appear.

The structures contained tufted cells, called hair cells, which respond to sound waves and other sensations, and additional nerve cells that amplify or code sounds for the brain to interpret.

The results suggest an avenue for further investigation in restoring hearing loss from nerve damage.

The findings are reported in the early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers Byron H. Hartman, Thomas Reh, and Olivia Bermingham-McDonogh of the Department of Biological Structure at the University of Washington (UW). All three are members of the UW Institute for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine. The senior author, Bermingham-McDonogh, is also an affiliate of the UW Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center.

"As the population ages," said Bermingham-McDonogh, "there's a great interest in discovering how to regenerate the inner ear sensory cells that we need for our hearing and balance. Both of these falter as we get older -- we get hard of hearing and unsteady on our feet - due to accumulated destruction of the sensory cells in the inner ear."

The goal of their research is to develop ways to restore inner ear sensory hair cells in people who have lost them due to age, excessive noise or other toxic damage. The hair cells do not spontaneously recover after they are lost, and adult stem cells have not been found in the mammalian inner ear. In order to devise a way to restart hair cell formation in the adult ear, Bermingham-McDonogh's group is studying how hair cells are made in the first place during ear development.

The first stage in the normal development of hair cells is called prosensory specification. In the growing embryo, regions of the ear-forming tissue are selected to become the inner ear organs that detect sound and allow for our sense of balance. This action is similar to digging the foundation of a building. All the subsequent, complex steps in the construction of the building require a solid foundation.

Byron Hartman, a postdoctoral fellow in the Bermingham-McDonogh lab, found that a signaling system called the Notch pathway is important in laying the foundation for the inner ear sensory hair cells and their associated supporting cells. The researchers were able to activate the Notch pathway in regions of the inner ear that would normally never make hair cells and convert these regions to patches of new sensory tissue. In other words, they could encourage the formation of new building foundations throughout the inner ear. Once these new sensory patches were made, new hair cells and support cells were properly produced within them. So by starting the ball rolling with the Notch signal, the researchers observed that the rest of the developmental processes followed along correctly.

Notch proteins straddle the inside and outside of the cell membrane. They collect information at the cell surface and report to the cell's operations center, the nucleus. Embryologists and cancer researchers have been studying the Notch pathway for many years. More recently scientists in the regenerative medicine field have begun taking advantage of this key regulatory signal to restart developmental processes in adults.

"The Notch signaling for prosensory specification does not appear to be active in the mature inner ear," the UW researchers noted, "and this could explain their lack of ability to regenerate new hair cells." They are now studying ways of manipulating the Notch pathway in the adult inner ear to see if this will stimulate hair cell regeneration in the hearing and balance organs.

If ways could be found to safely re-start particular Notch signals in adults, therapies might be designed to regenerate specific tissues, like nerves, and thereby repair damage and restore lost function, like hearing. Perhaps this knowledge, they noted, may lead to ideas on how to re-create this earlier state in the mature adult ear to stimulate re-growth of the cells critical to hearing.

The research for "Notch signaling specifies processor domains via lateral induction of the developing mammal inner ear" was supported by a National Research Service Award and grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication and National Eye Institute, both part of the National Institutes of Health, and assistance from the Lynn and Mike Garvey Cell Imaging Laboratory at the UW Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Research.

SOURCE: University of Washington

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What's New at Harris Communications?
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Harris Communications has added many new products to their website including alarm clocks, signaling systems, books, DVDs and novelties. Check our website frequently for the latest products available for deaf and hard of hearing people.

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To find out about all our new products, go to http://bit.ly/harriscomm_hlw092610 or contact us at: mailto:info@harriscomm.com.
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- Article 2: HLAA Convention Exhibits - Part Two
By Cheryl Heppner & Bonnie O'Leary
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Editor: One of the great things about the hearing loss conventions is the exhibit floor, where attendees can see all the latest and greatest devices from the scores of vendors. Cheryl and Bonnie did their usual outstanding job of recording what's available.

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Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA)
By Cheryl Heppner

This year the exhibit hall was one of the best I remember - spacious, well-lit, with lots of cheerful colors. During the three hour lunch break from 11 am to 2 pm, lines would form at one end of the hall as people took advantage of the food concessions. And each day from 4-6 pm a reception sponsored by a different company was held to entice people to return. I particularly enjoyed the exhibit hall's areas of good pile carpet, so much easier on the feet when one is standing for hours to interview exhibitors.

No visit to the exhibit hall would be complete without stopping by the HLAA exhibit. On display racks were colorful copies of past issues of Hearing Loss magazine. This year they had an impressive spread and great location, with several tables and racks of materials. On various occasions when I passed by, I would see Hollace Goodman handling requests for banquet seating, Ahme Stone giving smiles and encouragement, and George Kosovich with a dark golfer's tan responding to questions. Lise Hamlin seemed to be having meetings there; I saw her huddled with Mark Valkonen on a project. And there were always volunteers ready to take donations for the Rocky Stone Endowment Fund.

If you weren't at the convention, you didn't get a program book so you just might miss these bits of good information: Free biweekly e-News from HLAA - sign up at www.hearingloss.org/membership/Sen.asp HLAA initiative for people age 18-35 with hearing loss - www.hearingloss.org, click on HearingLossNation on the home page.

The program book also recognized five members of HLAA who passed away in 2009. These five individuals provided tireless hours of service. One was Northern Virginia's beloved George DeVilbiss. He and Marcia Dugan, who also passed away, were both recipients of the "Rocky" Stone Humanitarian Award. Others remembered in the book are Louise Cremeen of Arkansas, Verna "Marty" Neidigh of Indiana, and Marjorie Thompson of Colorado.

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ATS
By Bonnie O'Leary

ATS Resources (Access to Sound) had an interesting array of devices for hearing loss and visual magnification aids as well. Exhibitor Romy Pierce showed me two of the devices on display for hearing loss that were so new they were released after the latest catalog was printed. One was the Blue Ant S4 Voice Controlled Car Speaker Phone. Bluetooth compatible, this system is placed on the visor of the car, and is voice activated. You can download the phone numbers from your cell phone as well as your phone's GPS system. When your cell phone rings, you simply say "answer" to the speaker phone, it answers the call and the voice of the person calling you comes through the speaker phone. Likewise, when you want to place a call, you tell the speakerphone to call that specific person, and it puts the call through. The speakerphone will also voice the GPS directions from your phone. A single charge will give you up to 20 hours of talk time.

Another new item is the solar powered battery charger for cell phones, iPods, MP3 players, etc. Put it on a sunny window sill, it will let you know when the charge is complete, and it will hold the charge for one year.

For telecoil wearers, the CMBT Bluetooth cell phone neckloop lets you answer your cell phone without having to take it out of your pocket or purse, all you have to do is click the neckloop's "on" button.

ATS is located at 3809 Eubank Blvd., NE, Suite C, Albuquerque, NM, 87111. Visit their website to learn more about their variety of products, www.ATSResources.org, or contact Romy Pierce directly at RPierce@ATSResources.org.

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Sound Clarity
By Bonnie O'Leary

George Khal, President of Sound Clarity, was exceptionally patient with me as I tried a few devices at their exhibit, which had an abundant variety of hearing assistive technologies. Having a severe-profound hearing loss, I'm personally interested in finding a good wireless FM system. Both the Bellman Audio Domino Personal Hearing System and the Comfort Contego, by Comfort Audio, were user friendly and transmitted George's clear and discernable speech signals from quite a distance, but I was surprised that there was a low level of competing room noise. I was also hoping to find a good TV listening system that would work with my t-coil and my level of hearing loss, and George directed me to the Sennheiser 840S, an FM system which allows you to leave the room and still hear the TV program. The system comes with a neckloop, but you can plug any earpiece of your choice into the receiver, even a Silhouette. (Note to readers: I did purchase this system and have been using it since I returned from the convention. For the first time in several years, I was able to understand about 75% of the actors' speech in a movie, without captions.)

George and his brother Tony, who is Vice President but claims to be the company's Chief Go-fer and Goodwill Ambassador, are both late-deafened adults. Because they have personal experience with hearing loss, George and Tony test hearing assistive technologies and decide which ones Sound Clarity will carry. The Iowa-based company is a retailer and a distributor, and has been in business for 10 years. Products include telephones and TTYs, telephone accessories, assistive listening devices and accessories, clocks, alerting/signaling/paging devices, and assistive devices for speech, mobility and vision.

You can reach George directly at George.sc@soundclarity.com, or visit the website at www.soundclarity.com.

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C2010 by Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons (NVRC), 3951 Pender Drive, Suite 130, Fairfax, VA 22030; www.nvrc.org; 703-352-9055 V, 703-352-9056 TTY, 703-352-9058 Fax. You do not need permission to share this information, but please be sure to credit NVRC.

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YOUR AD HERE
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If you're interested in getting your message out to people who are hard of hearing or late deafened, and to the people who serve them, you might consider a premium ad in this newsletter! Our rates are surprisingly affordable and we reach the movers and shakers in the hearing loss world. And this newsletter (unlike some of the others) is strictly "opt-in", which means that everyone who receives it WANTS to receive it!

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- Article 3: Healthy ears hear the first sound, ignoring the echoes
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University of Oregon researchers say auditory neurons just simply process that first strong signal

Voices carry, reflect off objects and create echoes. Most people rarely hear the echoes; instead they only process the first sound received. For the hard of hearing, though, being in an acoustically challenging room can be a problem. For them, echoes carry. Ever listen to a lecture recorded in a large room?

That most people only process the first-arriving sound is not new. Physicist Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, noted it in 1849, dubbing it the precedence effect. Since then, classrooms, lecture halls and public-gathering places have been designed to reduce reverberating sounds. And scientists have been trying to identify a precise neural mechanism that shuts down trailing echoes.

In a new paper published in the Aug. 26 issue of the journal Neuron, University of Oregon scientists Brian S. Nelson, a postdoctoral researcher, and Terry T. Takahashi, professor of biology and member of the UO Institute of Neuroscience, suggest that the filtering process is really simple.

When a sound reaching the ear is loud enough, auditory neurons simply accept that sound and ignore subsequent reverberations, Takahashi said. "If someone were to call out your name from behind you, that caller's voice would reach your ears directly from his or her mouth, but those sound waves will also bounce off your computer monitor and arrive at your ears a little later and get mixed in with the direct sound. You aren't even aware of the echo."

Takahashi studies hearing in barn owls with the goal of understanding the fundamentals of sound processing so that future hearing aids, for example, might be developed. In studying how his owls hear, he usually relies on clicking sounds one at a time.

For the new study, funded by the National Institutes of Deafness and Communication Disorders, Nelson said: "We studied longer sounds, comparable in duration to many of the consonant sounds in human speech. As in previous studies, we showed that the sound that arrives first -- the direct sound -- evokes a neural and behavioral response that is similar to a single source. What makes our new study interesting is that the neural response to the reflection was not decreased in comparison to when two different sounds were presented."

The owls were subjected to two distinct sounds, direct and reflected, with the first-arriving sound causing neurons to discharge. "The owls' auditory neurons are very responsive to the leading edge of the peaks," said Takahashi, "and those leading edges in the echo are masked by the peak in the direct waveform that preceded it. The auditory cells therefore can't respond to the echo."

When the leading sound is not deep enough in modulation and more time passes between sounds, the single filtering process disappears and the owls respond to the sounds coming from different locations, the researchers noted.

The significance, Takahashi said, is that for more than 60 years researchers have sought a physiological mechanism that actively suppresses echoes. "Our results suggest that you might not need such a sophisticated system."

About the University of Oregon

The University of Oregon is a world-class teaching and research institution and Oregon's flagship public university. The UO is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization made up of the 63 leading public and private research institutions in the United States and Canada. The UO is one of only two AAU members in the Pacific Northwest.

Source: University of Oregon

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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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Six ways to improve listening to music through hearing aids

Because all speech needs to emanate from a vocal tract that is between 15 cm. (child) and 19 cm. (large adult) in length, it is no surprise that the long-term speech spectra are similar for a wide range of languages. All speech is generated by a soft-walled, moist set of tubes (oral and nasal cavities) and, although we have articulators (tongue, soft palate, lips) that can move, there are limitations to what we can generate. Byrne et al. studied the long-term speech spectra of a number of languages and (expectedly) found almost identical spectra. The only consistent difference they found was that males have more low-frequency emphasis than females, which is directly related to the lower fundamental frequencies of the male subjects. This consistency in the human vocal tract has allowed us to use aspects of the long-term speech spectrum in hearing aid fittings. Music, however, is quite different. Some forms have long-term spectra that are similar to the long-term speech spectrum and others bear little resemblance. Music can have significant low-frequency energy or none at all. It can have low- or high-frequency spectral emphasis. It can be very intense, and it can be very quiet. In short, the dynamic ranges and bandwidths of musical instruments can be, and typically are, much different and greater from those of speech.

http://tinyurl.com/25drw78

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Candidacy and Fitting Protocols for a 24/7 Hearing Device

Lyric is a unique hearing device designed to incorporate the advantages of both deep canal placement and extended wear. Deep canal placement provides many acoustic and cosmetic advantages, widely discussed with the advent of deep-canal CIC hearing aids in the 1990s and in a previous article about this device. Lyric remains in the ear canal 24 hours a day for up to 4 months at a time, creating a new category of hearing device and providing patients with a unique amplification experience. The Lyric design and same-day sizing/fitting method are designed to allow for comfortable, deep-canal placement without deep ear canal impressions and without the need for the patient to fuss with the device(s) on a daily basis. This article describes patient candidacy and fitting protocols for the Lyric device.

http://www.hearingreview.com/issues/articles/2010-08_04.asp

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Study finds self-report valid for assessing hearing loss incidence in farm population

Noise-induced hearing loss ranks among the 10 most common work-related conditions outlined by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Agricultural workers experience one of the highest rates of hearing loss caused by loud noise. Miyakita and Ueda estimate that 360,000 cases of noise-induced hearing loss are present in agriculture-related industries. Among New York State farmers, Hwang et al. found that 62% of respondents reported noise-induced hearing loss. Exposure to significant noise highly correlated with hearing loss with this group. Beckett et al. reported a correlation between crop spraying and hearing loss, and McBride et al. reported driving tractors without cabs and working with metal as important risk factors in hearing loss by farmers and other farm workers in New Zealand. Some or all of these activities are routinely performed by many types of farmers; potato farmers do all of them.

http://tinyurl.com/2ehol97

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- Classifieds
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One Online Store and four Employment Opportunities appear in this issue. (Ads appear after this brief table of contents.)

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Employment Opportunity 1
Various Positions at GSD
Georgia School for the Deaf
Cave Spring, GA

Employment Opportunity 2
School Psychologist
The Pennsylvania School for the Deaf
Philadelphia, PA

Employment Opportunity 3
Therapeutic Staff Support-TSS Professionals
Warwick Family Services
Philadelphia and Bucks County, PA

Employment Opportunity 4
Voc Rehab Counselor I - Deaf and Hard of Hearing
State of Vermont
Southeastern VT

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Employment Opportunity 1
Various Positions at GSD
Georgia School for the Deaf
Cave Spring, GA
-------------------

Currently accepting applications for the following positions:

Extended Learning Weekend Supplementary Staff
Paraprofessional - *10 Month Position - Continuous Recruitment
Residential Advisor - *10 Month Position - Continuous Recruitment
Speech Language Pathologist
Teacher-High School Math *10 Month Position
Teacher-High School Language Arts *10 Month Position
Substitute Teachers (hourly paid, based on credentials)

* 10 month employees work 200 days (10 months) but receive payroll checks during each of the 12 months of the year.

For more information on these positions, and to download Job Applications, go to the Employment link @: www.gsdweb.org

Completed applications may be mailed, e-mailed, or faxed to:

Denise Clark, Personnel Office
Georgia School for the Deaf
232 Perry Farm Rd. SW
Cave Spring, Georgia 30124
denise.clark@doe.k12.ga.us
Fax: (706) 777-2240

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Employment Opportunity 2
School Psychologist
The Pennsylvania School for the Deaf
Philadelphia, PA
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Full-time, 10-month position in a center school for the Deaf program. Requires Master's Degree in School Psychology and at least two years experience in a program for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students. Knowledge of deafness and experience working in a multi-cultural/multi-ethnic educational setting. Proficiency in sign language required. Responsible for coordinating the development of comprehensive Evaluation Reports for students. Provide consultation services to school personnel and/or students and their families. Assist in the planning and administration of the required state assessments and/or the school-wide student achievement testing program. Some collaboration with community behavioral health agencies.

Send letter of interest and resume to
Jane Homka
Executive Secretary
The Pennsylvania School for the Deaf
100 W. School House Lane
Philadelphia, PA 19144

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Employment Opportunity 3
Therapeutic Staff Support-TSS Professionals
Warwick Family Services
Philadelphia and Bucks County, PA
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We are seeking TSS Professionals to work with children who are deaf and/or are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. As a TSS you will be part of a team of professionals and will receive on-going clinical supervision by a Behavioral Specialist Consultant (BSC) and/or a Licensed Psychologist. You will be taught various methods of Applied Behavioral Analysis to assist the child in acquiring developmentally appropriate skills. These services help to support teachers and parents with their interaction with the clients. Ultimately, services aim to prevent out of home placement and to integrate the child within their community.

Qualified candidates must possess a bachelor's degree in Psychology, Social Work, Human Services or related field and one year previous work experience with children or at minimum 60 college credits and three years work experience with children.

All applicants must demonstrate proficiency in ASL!

Case assignments are generally in a school setting, however some clients require services in the home. Work hours vary from ten to thirty hours per week based on approved client hours and staff flexibility to accept more than one assignment. Work is available in Philadelphia and Bucks County.

For additional information about our company and current vacancies log on to our website www.warwickfamilyservices.com or Contact Maureen Stoll-Director of Administration & Human Resources via email at mstoll@warwickfamilyservices.com

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Employment Opportunity 4
Voc Rehab Counselor I - Deaf and Hard of Hearing
State of Vermont
Southeastern VT
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The State of Vermont is seeking a dynamic Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor to assist Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals in attaining training and career goals. Position is based in Southeastern region covering Brattleboro, White River Junction and Springfield. Master's Degree and fluency in American Sign Language required.

For additional information, contact Bill Hudson, Senior Rehabilitation Counselor for Deaf/Hard of Hearing Services at: bill.hudson@ahs.state.vt.us.

The State of Vermont offers an excellent total compensation package. To apply you must use the online job application at www.careers.vermont.gov. Job reference is #27490.

For questions related to your application, please contact the Department of Human Resources, Recruitment Services at (800) 640-1657 (voice) or (800) 253-0191 (TTY/Relay Service). The State of Vermont is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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- Contact Information and Disclaimers
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