OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to compare the results of two measures of hearing aid satisfaction, an indirect measure (Satisfaction with Amplification in Daily Living, SADL; Cox & Alexander, 1999) and a direct measure (an expanded version of the MarkeTrak-IV survey; Kochkin, 1996), in a group of elderly hearing aid wearers. DESIGN A total of 43 elderly hearing aid wearers complete...

AIm: Cervical spine is the most kinetic segment of the whole vertebrae. The radiologic imaging methods concern with the morphologic changes but give no functional data. At flexion, spinal cord strains, anterior osteophytic compression increases. At extension, spinal canal gets narrower, cord shortens and gets thicker, compression of posterior ligament gets abberant and cord compression increase...

BACKGROUND Nitric oxide and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2play pivotal roles in both the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis and catabolic processes in articular cartilage. These mediators are influenced by both IL-1beta and mechanical loading, and involve alterations in the inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and cyclo-oxygenase (COX)-2 enzymes. To identify the specific interactions that are activated b...

In this paper, we present a near-collision attack on the compression functions of Dynamic SHA2 for all the output sizes. For the Dynamic SHA2-224/256, the complexity is about 2 operations and for the Dynamic SHA2-384/512, the complexity is about 2. 1 Description of Dynamic SHA2 The Dynamic SHA-2 [1] is an iteration cryptographic hash function family which is built with the design components fro...

Many visual difference predictors (VDPs) have used basic psychophysical data (such as ModelFest) to calibrate the algorithm parameters and to validate their performances. However, the basic psychophysical data often do not contain sufficient number of stimuli and its variations to test more complex components of a VDP. In this paper we calibrate the Visual Difference Predictor for High Dynamic ...

The Lempel-Ziv algorithms are well-known dynamic dictionary algorithms of use in data compression. The talk shows how analytic models originally developed for the analysis of tries and digital search trees may be used to characterize their compression characteristics.

Three different 3–channel dynamic compression schemes (automatic volume control, syllabic compression and compression limiting) which have previously been tested in the laboratory by Appell et al. [1995] were investigated in everyday life with five hearing–impaired subjects using a prototype digital hearing–aid. A battery of tests was performed containing categorical loudness scaling with narro...

This paper presents a novel solution to the High Dynamic Range (HDR) image compression problem using level set framework. Using level set framework, this method separates the HDR image into detail and profile. Then it uses a global tone mapping function to compress the profile. Finally it produces a low dynamic range version of the image for display by adding the details to the compressed profi...

BACKGROUND Articular cartilage is exposed to high mechanical loads under normal physiological conditions and articular chondrocytes regulate the composition of cartilaginous matrix, in response to mechanical signals. However, the intracellular pathways involved in mechanotransduction are still being defined. Using the well-characterized chondrocyte/agarose model system and dynamic compression, ...

The present study uses a systems engineering approach to delineate the relationship between tinnitus and hyperacusis as a result of either hearing loss in the ear or an imbalanced state in the brain. Specifically examined is the input-output function, or loudness growth as a function of intensity in both normal and pathological conditions. Tinnitus reduces the output dynamic range by raising th...