Creating Clarity in Noisy Environments by Using Deep Learning in Hearing Aids.

Hearing aids continue to acquire increasingly sophisticated sound-processing features beyond basic amplification. On the one hand, these have the potential to add user benefit and allow for personalization. On the other hand, if such features are to benefit according to their potential, they require clinicians to be acquainted with both the underlying technologies and the specific fitting handles made available by the individual hearing aid manufacturers.

Mid-Term Functionality and Survival of 116 HemiCAP® Implants for Hallux Rigidus.

Hallux rigidus can be treated with a proximal hemiarthroplasty (HemiCAP®) to preserve the motion in the first metatarsophalangeal joint and reduce pain. This study examines the functionality, and survival rates of HemiCAP® implants, with or without a dorsal flange. One hundred and five patients were treated with a HemiCAP® (N = 116 HemiCAPs®) between 2006 and 2014.

Personalized signal-independent beamforming for binaural hearing aids.

The effect of personalized microphone array calibration on the performance of hearing aid beamformers under noisy reverberant conditions is studied. The study makes use of a new, publicly available, database containing acoustic transfer function measurements from 29 loudspeakers arranged on a sphere to a pair of behind-the-ear hearing aids in a listening room when worn by 27 males, 14 females, and 4 mannequins. Bilateral and binaural beamformers are designed using each participant's hearing aid head-related impulse responses (HAHRIRs).

Relationship Among Signal Fidelity, Hearing Loss, and Working Memory for Digital Noise Suppression.

Objectives: This study considered speech modified by additive babble combined with noise-suppression processing. The purpose was to determine the relative importance of the signal modifications, individual peripheral hearing loss, and individual cognitive capacity on speech intelligibility and speech quality.

Design: The participant group consisted of 31 individuals with moderate high-frequency hearing loss ranging in age from 51 to 89 years (mean = 69.

Head injury as risk factor for psychiatric disorders: a nationwide register-based follow-up study of 113,906 persons with head injury.

Objective: Studies investigating the relationship between head injury and subsequent psychiatric disorders often suffer from methodological weaknesses and show conflicting results. The authors investigated the incidence of severe psychiatric disorders following hospital contact for head injury.

Method: The authors used linkable Danish nationwide population-based registers to investigate the incidence of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, unipolar depression, bipolar disorder, and organic mental disorders in 113,906 persons who had suffered head injuries.

Effects of noise and working memory capacity on memory processing of speech for hearing-aid users.

Objectives: It has been shown that noise reduction algorithms can reduce the negative effects of noise on memory processing in persons with normal hearing. The objective of the present study was to investigate whether a similar effect can be obtained for persons with hearing impairment and whether such an effect is dependent on individual differences in working memory capacity.

Design: A sentence-final word identification and recall (SWIR) test was conducted in two noise backgrounds with and without noise reduction as well as in quiet.

Schizophrenia in patients with atopic disorders with particular emphasis on asthma: a Danish population-based study.

Objective: Autoimmune diseases and infections have been associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia that could be rooted in inflammatory mechanisms. However, other diseases characterized by a heightened immune response, such as atopic disorders, remain to be thoroughly investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate whether atopic disorders in the individual or in a first-degree relative affect the risk of developing schizophrenia.

Modelling the contribution of family history and variation in single nucleotide polymorphisms to risk of schizophrenia: a Danish national birth cohort-based study.

Background: Epidemiological studies indicate that having any family member with schizophrenia increases the risk of schizophrenia in the probands. However, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have accounted for little of this variation. The aim of this study was to use a population-based sample to explore the influence of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on the excess schizophrenia risk in offspring of parents with a psychotic, bipolar affective or other psychiatric disorder.

Role of mask pattern in intelligibility of ideal binary-masked noisy speech.

Intelligibility of ideal binary masked noisy speech was measured on a group of normal hearing individuals across mixture signal to noise ratio (SNR) levels, masker types, and local criteria for forming the binary mask. The binary mask is computed from time-frequency decompositions of target and masker signals using two different schemes: an ideal binary mask computed by thresholding the local SNR within time-frequency units and a target binary mask computed by comparing the local target energy against the long-term average speech spectrum. By depicting intelligibility scores as a function of the difference between mixture SNR and local SNR threshold, alignment of the performance curves is obtained for a large range of mixture SNR levels.

Speech intelligibility in background noise with ideal binary time-frequency masking.

Ideal binary time-frequency masking is a signal separation technique that retains mixture energy in time-frequency units where local signal-to-noise ratio exceeds a certain threshold and rejects mixture energy in other time-frequency units. Two experiments were designed to assess the effects of ideal binary masking on speech intelligibility of both normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI) listeners in different kinds of background interference. The results from Experiment 1 demonstrate that ideal binary masking leads to substantial reductions in speech-reception threshold for both NH and HI listeners, and the reduction is greater in a cafeteria background than in a speech-shaped noise.

Speech perception of noise with binary gains.

For a given mixture of speech and noise, an ideal binary time-frequency mask is constructed by comparing speech energy and noise energy within local time-frequency units. It is observed that listeners achieve nearly perfect speech recognition from gated noise with binary gains prescribed by the ideal binary mask. Only 16 filter channels and a frame rate of 100 Hz are sufficient for high intelligibility.

Two-microphone separation of speech mixtures.

Separation of speech mixtures, often referred to as the cocktail party problem, has been studied for decades. In many source separation tasks, the separation method is limited by the assumption of at least as many sensors as sources. Further, many methods require that the number of signals within the recorded mixtures be known in advance.

Estimation of polishing and leaching behaviour of antifouling paints using mathematical modelling: a literature review.

The development of chemically active antifouling paints has traditionally been based on an empirical approach. Optimisation and evaluation of novel and existing products are frequently conducted by means of, for example, systematic paint rotary tests in the laboratory or at sea sites. In this review, the usefulness of combining rotary experiments with the development of detailed mathematical models of paint behaviour will be discussed with reference to the relevant literature.