Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Static Helps the Deaf to Hear

Posted by timothy on from the pssssh-bad-connection-pssshhhh dept.

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."

1 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. Re:ummm... - Fortran in scientific computing by Ilari · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, Fortran still is quite popular in the field of scientific computing. Fortran90/95 and High Performance Fortran that is, definitely NOT Fortran77. F90/95 is actually a rather easy language to program in, it is very similar to Matlab (the leading choise of many scientists for numerical analysis) in many ways, which makes porting from Matlab to Fortran easy. (Many projects start with a rough "first draft" code in Matlab and then move on to more powerful languages as the project advances and computational requirement increase.) Memory management, vector and matrix manipulation is also definitely a lot easier in Fortran than in C.

    It still doesn't mean that Fortran is making a comeback. It just fills a particular niche.