Thin fluid or elastic films and membranes are found in nature and technology, for instance, as confinements of living cells or in loudspeakers. When applying a net force, the resulting flows in an unbounded two-dimensional incompressible low-Reynolds-number fluid or displacements in a two-dimensional linearly elastic solid seem to diverge logarithmically with the distance from the force center, which has led to some debate. Recently, we have demonstrated that such divergences cancel when the total (net) force vanishes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExposure to noise and ototoxic drugs are responsible for much of the debilitating hearing loss experienced by about 350 million people worldwide. Beyond hearing aids and cochlear implants, there have been no other FDA approved drug interventions established in the clinic that would either protect or reverse the effects of hearing loss. Using Auditory Brainstem Responses (ABR) in a guinea pig model, we demonstrate that fluvastatin, an inhibitor of HMG-CoA reductase, the rate-limiting enzyme of the mevalonate pathway, protects against loss of cochlear function initiated by high intensity noise.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe bipolar spiral ganglion neurons (SGN) carry sound information from cochlear hair cells to the brain. After noise, antibiotic or toxic insult to the cochlea, damage to SGN and/or hair cells causes hearing impairment. Damage ranges from fiber and synapse degeneration to dysfunction and loss of cells.
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