Free Republic

Cue the Drum Loop Are you curious what FEMA’s been spending money on? Well, here’s one project: FEMA for Kids Rap. (Hat tip: Riding Sun.) Cue the drum loop. Disaster . . . it can happen anywhere, But we’ve got a few tips, so you can be prepared For floods, tornadoes, or even a ‘quake, You’ve got to be ready - so your heart don’t break. Disaster prep is your responsibility And mitigation is important to our agency. People helping people is what we do And FEMA is there to help see you through When disaster strikes, we are at...

Implants Bring Upheaval to Deaf Education The growth of cochlear implants -- electronic devices surgically placed in the bone behind the ear -- is reshaping a longstanding battle over how deaf children should be educated.

A pioneering form of gene therapy has apparently cured deafness in guinea pigs, raising hopes that the same procedure might work in people. "It's the first time anyone has biologically repaired the hearing of animals," says Yehoash Raphael at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and head of the US-Japanese team that developed the technique. The therapy promotes the regrowth of crucial hair cells in the cochlea, the part of the inner ear which registers sound. After treatment, the researchers used sensory electrodes around the animals' heads to show that the auditory nerves of treated - but not...

Belting out a few notes on key might take years of practice, and perfect pitch the right genetics, but when it comes to something as simple as telling noise from symphony, speech from music, all ears are created equal - or so it was once thought. But in a new study, scientists have found that the left and right ears process sound differently. From birth, the right ear responds more to speech, while the left ear is more attuned to music, according to the study, published in Science on Sept. 10. The findings could have substantial implications for deaf people...

"Siemens AG anticipates additional costs from a software problem with new mobile phones that has led retailers to suspend sales. Five models of its new 65 series can emit a piercing melody into users' ears if the battery fails during a call, causing hearing damage in extreme cases, according to a statement."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sign language may have helped make deafness more common in the United States because it allowed deaf people marry other deaf people, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. A computer simulation showed a high rate of marriage among deaf people could have caused a doubling of rates of genetic deafness seen in the past 200 years -- since a coordinated system of sign language was developed. Intermarriages among the deaf started to increase about 1800 after the first schools to teach sign language were opened, improving the social and economic status of the deaf and allowing them to...

BOSTON (AP) - For years, futurists have dreamed of machines that can read minds, then act on instructions as they are thought. Now, human trials are set to begin on a brain-computer interface involving implants. Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., has received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients. If successful, the chips could allow patients to command a computer to act - merely by thinking about the instructions they wish to send. It's a small, early step in a mission to improve the...

I have read several articles that try to tie Rush Limbaughs deafness to the abuse of OxyContin. I have been reading about it on the Internet (No, I am not a pharmacist). None of the places I have read say that deafness is a side effect of OxyContin. Here are a few: http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic3/oxycontin_ad.htm http://www.drugs.com/OxyContin/ http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/oxycontin/default.htm I also notice that there are several lawyers with webpages trying to drum up business (sue the OxyContin maker).

Oct. 13 — While radio giant Rush Limbaugh tries to beat his pain killer addiction in a rehab clinic, questions about what really caused his hearing loss in recent years persist. Questions have risen about the autoimmune inner ear disease that caused Limbaugh profound deafness between October of 2001 and January of 2002. The radio host subsequently regained hearing through the use of cochlear implants. Research has shown that the drugs seem to sabotage the workings of the inner ear, causing permanent damage. But the drugs do not appear to affect the cochlear nerve, which brings sound into the brain....

<p>FEEDING HIS ADDICTION: Radio host Rush Limbaugh is checking into a substance abuse clinic to treat his prescription pill addiction.</p> <p>A desperate, drug-addicted Rush Limbaugh begged his dealer to score him a final, explosive dope cocktail just two weeks before he attempted to detox last year, a new report says.</p>

As baby boomers head into their 40s and 50s, the bill for their glory days is coming due. Musicians and their fans are discovering that their ears don't work as well as they used to, and the loud rock music they reveled in is at least partly to blame. It's a frightening prospect. Once you've battered some of the thousands of inner-ear hair cells that transmit sounds to the brain, they are lost forever. And the only remedy for most people is hearing aids. Bill Clinton owned up to his rock 'n' roll past when he was fitted with hearing...

How loud is too loud? What kinds of sound cause noise-induced hearing loss? Allen Senne, doctor of audiology with HearX Hearing Centers in Lancaster and Valencia, said noise damage can occur in two ways: sudden trauma, in which a person is exposed to intense noise for a relatively short period of time, and long-term exposure, which can lead to progressive hearing loss like Shawna Foxgrover's. The National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders reports that of the 28 million Americans who have some degree of hearing loss, about one-third can attribute their hearing loss, at least in part, to...

Va. music student defies deafness to a high degree By Bill Baskervill, The Associated Press May 18, 2003 RICHMOND, Va. - A woman who lost all hearing when she was beaten by a robber received a master's degree in music composition Saturday from Virginia Commonwealth University, becoming the first deaf student ever to earn a music degree from the school. By Lisa Billings/AP Tammie Willis watches fellow music student Tiara Walker play piano at Virginia Commonwealth University. Willis can't hear the music - she was rendered deaf in a 1994 beating Instructor William Eldridge described Tammie Willis's accomplishment as...

WASHINGTON - (AP) -- Foreign-language classrooms across the country are growing increasingly silent. Instead of tackling French, German or other more commonly taught languages, students are learning to speak with their hands. ''If we teach one American Sign Language course, we have enough students for three. If we teach three courses, we have enough students to fill six,'' said Sherman Wilcox, professor of linguistics at the University of New Mexico, which offers ASL as a foreign language. ``We just cannot keep up with demand.'' ''I just thought it was a beautiful language,'' said Kelly King, 21, who is majoring in...