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Ear to the ground for all things ear-related in the media The internet means we all have a wealth of information from around the world competing for our attention 24 hours a day. With a swipe of a finger or the click of a mouse the world wide web is available at work, home and even on the move. There are already hundreds of dedicated health websites online and social media means we are constantly asked to 'like', 'subscribe', 'add' or 'click' on something new. It can feel as if you are being drowned in a sea of news, data, criticism, advice and piano playing cats. But there's no need to worry because help is at hand. Here we examine useful websites to follow to pick up the latest ear related news, features and viral trends.
Website: www.sciencedaily.com/news/health_medicine/hearing_loss/ Average Estimated Web Hits: 2.5 Million Unique Monthly Visitors
Science Daily is an American news website for topical science articles. It features articles on a wide variety of science topics. Articles are selected from news releases submitted by universities and other research institutions. Users can subscribe to a free daily newsletter distributed by email, which contains links to all articles for the day and a short introduction to each article, as well as following it on Social Media Sites. ScienceDaily: May 2013 Blind People Have the Potential to Use Their 'Inner Bat' to Locate Objects This research started to ask the question can blind people use echoes from an object to work out its location. The researches wanted to find out what factors help or restrict the ability to use echoes to look at real world solutions and aids for blind and those with difficulties seeing in certain environments. The results showed that both sighted and blind people with good hearing showed the potential to use echoes to locate objects. Key to good performance was hearing above 2000Hz. The next step will be for researchers to develop training programmes and assistive devices to use these new findings. Rowan et al Identification of the lateral position of a virtual object based on echoes by humans. Hearing Research, 2013; 300: 56
Website: www.theconversation.com Average Estimated Web Hits: 1 Million Monthly Visitors
The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community and delivered direct to the public. Professional editors work with university and research institute experts to unlock their knowledge for use by the wider public theconversation: Oct 2012 Tone deaf people struggle to hear emotional subtext Tone deaf? Then you might also struggle to hear emotional messages such as sadness or annoyance in speech. So says a study reported on ‘theconversation.com’. The study found that tone deaf participants were significantly worse at detecting the emotional subtext in the spoken phrases. In a separate questionnaire, the tone deaf subjects said that they struggled with this problem in their daily lives, reporting that facial cues, body language and the pace of speech were more useful in determining hidden meaning in speech. The findings suggest music and language, usually thought to be controlled by two different parts of the brain, may in fact be more closely related. This has caused excitement in other researchers and the finds are compatible with the theory proposed by Charles Darwin that in human evolution song must have existed before language.
ear to the ground