scholarly journals Filtering to Match Hearing Aid Insertion Gain to Individual Ear Acoustics

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven L. Bell

When hearing aid gain is prescribed by software, gain is calculated based on the average acoustics for the age of patient, gender, mold type, and so on. The acoustics of the individual's ear often vary from the average values, so there will be a mismatch between the prescribed gain and the real-ear gain. Real-ear measurement can be used to verify the gain and adjust it to meet targets, but the quality of the match will be limited by the number of channels and the flexibility of the hearing aid. A potential way to improve this process is to generate a filter that compensates for variations in real-ear insertion gain due to individual ear acoustics. Such a filter could be included in the processing path of a digital hearing aid. This article describes how such a filter can be generated using the windowing method, and the principle is demonstrated in a real ear. The approach requires communication between the real-ear measurement and hearing aid programming software. A finite impulse response filter with group delay just over 2 ms matched insertion gain to target values within the acceptable tolerance defined by British Society of Audiology guidelines.

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth T. Jones ◽  
Gary J. Macfarlane ◽  
Karen Forrest Keenan ◽  
Paul McNamee ◽  
Aileen R. Neilson ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) presents a unique clinical challenge. Affecting joints, skin, nails, and other organs, it is associated with various comorbidities and has a significant impact on quality of life, social participation and working life. While biologic and other targeted synthetic disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (bDMARDs and tsDMARDs) have revolutionised therapy, questions remain about the long-term safety of these agents, and their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness in the real-world clinical setting. Methods/design The British Society for Rheumatology Psoriatic Arthritis Register (BSR-PsA) is a prospective registry of patients with PsA, recruited from across Great Britain, who are (a) commencing a bDMARD/tsDMARD; or (b) naïve to all bDMARDs/tsDMARDs. Ethical approval was given by the NHS West of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 3 (reference: 18/WS/0126). Clinical data are extracted from participants’ medical records, including symptom onset and diagnosis, joint, skin and nail symptoms, dactylitis and enthesitis. Physical measurements (height, weight and 66/68 joint counts) and a detailed drug history are taken. Participants are also asked to complete questionnaires comprising instruments relating to general health and quality of life, axial disease, sleep and fatigue, impact of disease, functional status, mental health, other symptoms, and occupational status. The study duration is 5 years in the first instance, and all participants are followed up annually until the end of the study. Participants commencing a bDMARD/tsDMARD are also followed up three and six months after the start of therapy. Disease activity, including C-reactive protein, is assessed at each visit; and participants from some centres are invited to donate blood and urine samples for the creation of a biobank. Discussion Complementing data from randomised trials, results from this study will contribute to the evidence base underpinning the clinical management of psoriatic arthritis. Various analyses will determine the effectiveness and safety of bDMARDs/tsDMARDs in the real-world, will examine the clinical and biological predictors of treatment response, and will provide real-world data on the cost-effectiveness of these therapies, as well as providing informative data important to patients such as quality of life and occupational outcomes. Trial registration The full study protocol is registered on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/jzs8n).


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-14
Author(s):  
Robert Moore ◽  
Susan Gordon-Hickey

The purpose of this article is to propose 4 dimensions for consideration in hearing aid fittings and 4 tests to evaluate those dimensions. The 4 dimensions and tests are (a) working memory, evaluated by the Revised Speech Perception in Noise test (Bilger, Nuetzel, & Rabinowitz, 1984); (b) performance in noise, evaluated by the Quick Speech in Noise test (QSIN; Killion, Niquette, Gudmundsen, Revit, & Banerjee, 2004); (c) acceptance of noise, evaluated by the Acceptable Noise Level test (ANL; Nabelek, Tucker, & Letowski, 1991); and (d) performance versus perception, evaluated by the Perceptual–Performance test (PPT; Saunders & Cienkowski, 2002). The authors discuss the 4 dimensions and tests in the context of improving the quality of hearing aid fittings.


The author analyzes the reasons that objectively reduce the importance and quality of the organizational and technological solutions of work production plans and the content of their main documents. Based on a generalization of practical experience, one of the real ways of increasing the level of work production plans is proposed as a result of the development of "The Unified Rules for Work Production on the Site" as part of the construction organization project, in the form of fundamental requirements, followed by the inclusion of this document in the work production plan as an input document. The structure and content of the Unified Rules are described with the disclosure of the main documents - calendar plans of work, construction master plans, technological schemes of works. The first section of the document contains requirements for the content of tasks for the development of the project of work execution, the order of its approval, and requirements for the quality of solutions. The second section presents principal solutions, methods of work execution and their technological schemes. The organizational and technological solutions adopted in the proposed document are specified and detailed by the General Contractor Construction Organization with due regard for the resource capabilities and the actual conditions of construction or reconstruction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Nomensen Freddy Siahaan

After a long time was not heard to the public area, lately death penalty toward the criminal cases that classified as extraordinary crime are appear. The author discovers electronic article about the execution of the death penalty which is the prosecutor prepares to execute death penalty toward the drugs dealer. The president of Republic of Indonesia stated that it is necessary to give a deterrent effect to the convicted  criminal and keep the morality of Indonesian teenagers. According to my opinion, the author argues that it will be better and wiser if we discuss about renovating all of the Penitentiary in Indonesia than debating whether death penalty could be done in Indonesia or not, because it will be displeasure many parties, death penalty infringed the human rights of the convicted criminals and cause psychological burden to them, families, the executor of the death penalty, and other parties. Because if we have to improve the quality of the Penitentiary, if the function of Penitentiary for fostering moralily has been optimal or properly enough to the convicted criminals, Indonesia will be no longer need the death penalty option as sanction to the convicted crimanals including for the extraordinary crime (especially for drugs trafficking in our country). Penitentiary is one of the public services which aims for fostering the people that initially have bad habits (commited to the crime), so that they will have the awareness to change their bad attitude into the be better ones, will not harm others, and positively contributed to the society. Already Penitentiary’s conditions should be designed in such a way and as good as possible, so that the inmates feels like at their own home (like having a second home after his own home), and feel humaner to spend their days in the Penitentiary. The author believes that if the Penitentiary has been improved and optimized its function well, then the real purpose of Penitentiary will definitely achieved. As stated in Law Number 12 Year 1995 regarding to Penitentiary Article 2 which states "sanction system are organized in order to fostering the convicted criminals in order to be the real man, aware of their fault, improve themselves, and not to repeat the criminal act so that they can be friendly received by the community, can actively participated in the development of our country, and can socialize themselves as good citizen."Article 3 on this regulation also intensifies the function of Penitentiary "the function of Penitentiary is to prepare convicted criminals to be able to properly integrated to the society, so they can be accepted again as members of the public who are free and responsible ones." 


Author(s):  
Stephen Verderber

The interdisciplinary field of person-environment relations has, from its origins, addressed the transactional relationship between human behavior and the built environment. This body of knowledge has been based upon qualitative and quantitative assessment of phenomena in the “real world.” This knowledge base has been instrumental in advancing the quality of real, physical environments globally at various scales of inquiry and with myriad user/client constituencies. By contrast, scant attention has been devoted to using simulation as a means to examine and represent person-environment transactions and how what is learned can be applied. The present discussion posits that press-competency theory, with related aspects drawn from functionalist-evolutionary theory, can together function to help us learn of how the medium of film can yield further insights to person-environment (P-E) transactions in the real world. Sampling, combined with extemporary behavior setting analysis, provide the basis for this analysis of healthcare settings as expressed throughout the history of cinema. This method can be of significant aid in examining P-E transactions across diverse historical periods, building types and places, healthcare and otherwise, otherwise logistically, geographically, or temporally unattainable in real time and space.


2020 ◽  
pp. 99-104
Author(s):  
S.A. Zaydes ◽  
A.N. Mashukov ◽  
T.Ya. Druzhinina

The contact belt of the gate assembly is the main part of high pressure fittings. The serviceability of the fittings assembly as whole depends on the air-tightness and quality of the mating surfaces. The technology of diamond burnishing allows to increase the interface of the nodes by red ucing the surface roughness of the metal-to-metal seal. The real experience for improving of the fittings contact belt due to the use of diamond burnishing of the nozzles seats and the conical surface of the rods.


Author(s):  
Ashashri Shinde ◽  
Pankaj Gupta ◽  
Sudipt Rath

A quality drug is central to the success of any therapeutic plan. The quality of drug is determined right from the collection to delivery to the patients. The commonest problem involving the medicinal plant stating materials is intentional or unintentional substitution and adulteration owing to multiple reasons like unavailability, higher costs, unfair trade etc. This trend was also present in the olden days, as evident from the concept of substitute drugs (Pratinidhi Dravya) as available in Yogratanakara, Bhavaprakasha and Bhaishajyaratnawali. Therefore, Charka and later Acharyas also have dealt with authentication and standardization of herbal drugs and formulations in detail by using four Pramanas (tools of knowledge) Ch.Vi.8/87. Nowadays the concept of substitution is entirely converted into intentional and unintentional malpractices of adulteration. The established authenticity parameters for plant material identification and standardization like organoleptic, physical, chemical and genetic parameters are relatively inaccessible for routine use. Not withstanding the accuracy and usefulness of these lab parameters and delay in the development of easy to perform parameters for reasonable drug authentication. These adulteration malpractices spoils the market of herbal industries. In this article we discuss about concept of substitution in ancient Ayurveda and at present intentional and unintentional adulteration practices.


Author(s):  
Isiaka Ajewale Alimi

Digital hearing aids addresses the issues of noise and speech intelligibility that is associated with the analogue types. One of the main functions of the digital signal processor (DSP) of digital hearing aid systems is noise reduction which can be achieved by speech enhancement algorithms which in turn improve system performance and flexibility. However, studies have shown that the quality of experience (QoE) with some of the current hearing aids is not up to expectation in a noisy environment due to interfering sound, background noise and reverberation. It is also suggested that noise reduction features of the DSP can be further improved accordingly. Recently, we proposed an adaptive spectral subtraction algorithm to enhance the performance of communication systems and address the issue of associated musical noise generated by the conventional spectral subtraction algorithm. The effectiveness of the algorithm has been confirmed by different objective and subjective evaluations. In this study, an adaptive spectral subtraction algorithm is implemented using the noise-estimation algorithm for highly non-stationary noisy environments instead of the voice activity detection (VAD) employed in our previous work due to its effectiveness. Also, signal to residual spectrum ratio (SR) is implemented in order to control the amplification distortion for speech intelligibility improvement. The results show that the proposed scheme gives comparatively better performance and can be easily employed in digital hearing aid system for improving speech quality and intelligibility.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Jenny Paola Cervera Quintero

Esta investigación muestra las características y estrategias socioeconómicas identificadas en un grupo de famiempresas de confección en Ciudad Bolívar, localidad de Bogotá, con las cuales logran la permanencia de sus negocios y así la reproducción de la vida y la subsistencia de sus familias. Este primer elemento se contrasta con las políticas de consecución de ingresos desarrolladas por los gobiernos distritales en el período 2000-2013, con el fin de encontrar los elementos comunes y el real aporte con el que las políticas sociales y económicas del Distrito benefician la economía popular de la ciudad, teniendo como referencia el grupo de famiempresas con el que se trabajó. Después de obtener un paralelo entre las políticas socioeconómicas del Distrito y las necesidades reales de las famiempresas, se desarrolla un ejercicio práctico aplicando la metodología de Vester como base para la formulación de recomendaciones dirigidas hacia los gobiernos distritales, en las que se manifiestan las prioridades que esta población objetivo espera de la acción institucional para mejorar el desempeño de sus famiempresas y, por ende, el de su consecución de ingresos para mejor su calidad de vida y la de sus familias.ABSTRACTThis research examines the socio-economic characteristics and strategies pertaining to a group of family business in the apparel sector in Ciudad Bolivar (Bogota), which ensures some stability in the business itself and in their families´ livelihood. This first element is contrasted with the policies of resource allocation pursued by Bogota local administrations in the period 2000-2013, in order to identify the real governmental contributions to thelocal economy. Next, a practical exercise is conducted by applying the methodology of Vester as a basis for the formulation of recommendations addressed to the city government; those recommendations depict the priorities that the targeted population expects from the institutional action to improve the performance of their business and to enhance their income to better their quality of life and that of their families. Fecha de recepción: 23 agosto 2016Fecha de aprobación: 15 noviembre de 2016Fecha de publicación: 6 de enero de 2017


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