Hearing

There are times when not being able to hear the wailing caterwaul that sometimes passes for music would be a distinct bonus. On the whole, though, the hearing impaired have it rough where music is concerned. A German designer has proposed incorporating a membrane into a special collar which resonates when music is played through it, allowing people with hearing difficulties to really get down and feel the funk. Read More

It’s become an accepted fact of life that people tend to lose much of their hearing as they get old. This is because our hair cells, the cells in our ears which allow us to hear, cannot regenerate - we’re born with 30,000 per ear, but once they die off or get damaged, they’re gone for good. Stefan Heller, a professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat stuff) at Stanford University, wants to change that. To that end, he recently succeeded in creating mouse hair cells in a petri dish. Could an end to deafness be far behind? Read More

The Outer Ear is a non-surgical concept system for the hearing impaired that detects sound-waves and converts them into physical vibration. A watch-like wrist-strap acts as the receiver and transmits a signal via Bluetooth to a device mounted on the arm which in turn converts the sound into low, medium or high vibrations depending on the frequency. Read More

Touch-screen interfaces have already usurped traditional buttons on a range of mobile devices that boast a larger screen size and/or smaller form factor by doing away with a wide range of buttons or dedicated keypad. Now buttons of all sorts on all sorts of devices are under assault. Just last week Apple declared war on mouse buttons, and now hearing technology company, Starkey Laboratories, has taken aim at fiddly hearing aid buttons with its "Sweep Technology" touch-based interface for hearing aids. Read More

There’s something about seeing ear buds in young ears that makes me nervous - not just because of concerns about damage to the ear canal, but also because there’s no way of telling how high the volume is turned. MyPhones headphones from Griffin Technology are set to a maximum of 85 decibels - so even though you can’t always control what your kids are listening to, at least you know there won’t be long-term damage to their hearing. Read More