Static Helps the Deaf to Hear

OmegaGeek writes: "Jay Rubinstein, a researcher at the University of Iowa, has found a way to improve the signal processing algorithms of cochlear implants (and he's writing in FORTRAN - is this a leading indicator of a FORTRAN revival?). Adding static to the signal actually increases the dynamic hearing range in patients with a cochlear implant."

Comments

Re:This is equally amazing..

[Christopher Thomas]

Bio-engineering is nifty stuff. From intro undergraduate DSP if the brain doesn't treat each ear independently (kind of like stereo vision) I wonder if the brain is doing any covolution or difference between the signals to increase sensitivity.

It definitely does compare signals. This is where a large part of our perception of where a sound is loacated comes from (the rest is from sound interacting with the external part of the ear, which ends up attenuating different frequency bands by different amounts depending on the angle of incidence, if I remember correctly).

Re:ummm... - Fortran in scientific computing

[dpp]

Actually, Fortran still is quite popular in the field of scientific computing. Fortran90/95 and High Performance Fortran that is, definitely NOT Fortran77.

Actually, Fortran77 is still common in astronomy, partly (or mostly?) due to inertia. A lot of code is written in old Fortran, such as the NRAO Astronomical Image Processing System (AIPS).

During my degree we were taught Fortran90, but during my Ph.D. so much of the old code was Fortran77, and so many of the people you'd work with still used it, that many people ended up writing Fortran77 anyway. Of course, I'm not saying that's a good thing, that's just how it was :-)

It's starting to change, though... the new AIPS++ is written in C++, and I haven't written any Fortran for ages.