A CSUN Deaf Studies student, who just published a novel, hosted a presentation about her book at the National Center on Deafness on Friday.

Leah Bornstein, 20, discussed her new book “Once Upon a Sunshine.” It is about three siblings who set out on a journey and meet vampires on their way. The author related many of the events in the book to real life situations she has faced.

Bornstein said she grew up deaf, and often felt she could not relate with her family who are all oral speakers. She said that she felt like she did not fit into their world, so she created her own imaginary world.

“When I was struggling with things in my reality I would deal with it in my book,” Bornstein said.

She came up with the idea to write the book during an RV trip. Bornstein and her cousin noticed a cave in a mountain and started imagining different ideas about who might live there.

“I started playing around with it, like a diary.” Bornstein said. “I wanted to take the people I knew, hide their names, and develop their character.”

The characters in her book represent close people in Bornstein’s life such as friends, family members and teachers. The main character, Bobbi, represents Bornstein herself.

“I didn’t have a goal.  I thought I was writing for me and not for anyone else.” Bornstein said.

She said that she is thankful and shocked with all the support she has received from friends, family, and from people who attended the event.

Amy Hollis, 20, traveled from Bakersfield to see her high school friend speak about the book she published.

“I think it is absolutely amazing that it is our third year out of high school and she wrote a novel.” Hollis said.

“It is not your typical vampire book.  It’s got a twist to it,” Hollis said. “I think it is better than ‘Twilight.’”

Hansol Suh, 18, Deaf Studies major, said that what Bornstein is doing is inspiring, and she will motivate other students to pursue what they want to practice.

“She has been working really hard and I knew she always wanted to publish a book,” Suh said.

Bornstein started writing her novel when she was fifteen years old, and it took her five years to finish writing and publishing it.

Bornstein read passages from her book, and explained certain situations in the book and how it related to her. The vampires in the book represent people who are not readily understood by society. Bobbi, the main character of the book is scared of vampires, but quickly learns they are not frightening.

Bornstein has always been an advocate for people to not judge a book by its cover.

Bornstein said that there was a moment in the book where the vampires were free from their cave. She said that it was parallel to her life when she moved away to college to live at the dorms.

Kayla LaBruno, 19, Zoology major, met Bornstein at the dorms on campus. She said it is great that Bornstein published the book that she was working on for years.

“I believe she will inspire deaf people that they can do anything if they set their mind to it.” LaBruno said.

Bornstein said that she would not stop writing, because writing is her passion. She plans to write another book, which will be a series to her first book. “I won’t stop writing.  It is like my diary,” Bornstein said.

“Vibrations” delivered a stimulating show for the hearing that demonstrated how the deaf experience music through theater performances.

The Loeb Playhouse filled with 368 people of both hearing and deaf on Sunday to watch the Indiana School for the Deaf perform its theatrical show, “Vibrations.” The show was performed by 13 students ranging from middle to high school. Unlike performances where the performers express emotion through voice, the “Vibrations” performers used facial expressions and their whole bodies to convey emotions and words. Loud music and pumping bass added to the experience by demonstrating the vibrations that songs make that allow the deaf to experience music.

“It was an awesome experience, made me really appreciate the deaf culture,” said Rachel Roembke, a freshman in the College of Liberal Arts.

The purpose of the show was for the deaf to express their culture and experiences through dancing, poetry and various skits. These different skits ranged from an entertaining “Pepsi boy,” who signed while an interpreter spoke about being a boy who loves Pepsi, to a skit where performers pretended to be different TV channels on a giant TV prop as two girls neglected their homework and later put their mother into the TV. One of the most expressive song interpretations was a group performance to the song “Mr. Roboto” by Styx, where the performers signed and danced like robots in flashy costumes.

The mixture of the audience between hearing and deaf caused for some moments where one did not know whether to clap or to wave their hands in the symbol for clapping that deaf people use. By the end of the show, the audience demonstrated what they had learned by using the sign language symbol for clapping. Unlike hearing another language, watching the performers use American Sign Language was surprisingly easy to follow because of their use of body language and gestures.

“I thought it was really cool, makes you really appreciate hearing,” said Lauren O’Connor, a junior in the College of Health and Human Sciences.

A study from the St Louis University School of Medicine’s department of otolaryngology and the Ear Institute of Texas is warning that convertible drivers should keep the top down at speeds of more than 55mph.

The team tested the 2009 Saturn Sky Red Line, the 2004 Nissan 350Z, the 2001 Porsche 911 C4, the 2005 Saab Aero Convertible and the 2005 Ford Mustang GT. All hit high noise levels when being driven at speed.

They found that drivers were regularly subjected to noise levels greater than 85dB, the top level reccomended for safety at work, and that there was a risk or long-term hearing loss from prolonged periods of driving with the wind in their hair.

“Driving convertible automobiles at speeds exceeding 88.5kmh, with the top open, may result in noise exposure levels exceeding recommended limits, especially when driving with the convertible top open for prolonged periods,” the authors conclude.

In what must have made for some fun research, the team tested various different vehicles. They found that the Saturn was the noisiest, hitting 98.7dB at 75mph – a noise level that the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety says should only be sustained for 20 minutes or less.

Nissan’s 350Z produced the loudest peak sound, reaching 104dB at 75mph – safe for only six minutes, says the Institute. The quietest vehicle, the team found, was the Mustang, which only hit 84.7dB at 75mph.

The effects could be worse, they say, if drivers are listening to music or having a conversation.

Holidays can be stressful for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Background noise and crowded rooms make communication that much tougher.

Iowa School for the Deaf has offered the following tips when interacting with hearing-impaired friends or family members during the holiday season, and for any time there is a large gathering of people:

– Hearing aids also amplify sounds such as passing cars, telephones and even sounds from household appliances. Eliminate as much background noise as possible.

– Avoid sitting in front of windows or mirrors. They reflect light, and make it harder to read lips or expressions.

– Get the person’s attention before starting the communication. Be aware that people with hearing loss work hard to understand conversations and tire easily.

– Alert the deaf or hard-of-hearing person when the conversation topic changes. Try to conduct one conversation at a time.

– Pre-teach a game that doesn’t require a lot of conversation to the deaf or hard-of-hearing child or adult. Bring the game so all can play.

– Use closed captioning on the television. It may be distracting to you, but the entertainment will be of little or no benefit to the deaf or hard-of-hearing person without the captions.

– Open gifts one at a time and announce the gift recipient as well as the gift giver.

– Text, even if you are sitting beside the deaf person with whom you are texting. Allow texting to be used at the holiday dinner for the benefit of the deaf or hard-of-hearing person. Have pen and paper available for a back-up or when texting is not an option.

– Stay close to the deaf or hard-of-hearing person with whom you are communicating. Break into smaller tables for more manageable conversation.

– When the person asks you to repeat an aside, repeat it. The comment may not be important to the conversation, but if you don’t repeat it, the deaf or hard-of-hearing person may think you don’t feel he or she is important enough to repeat the comment.

Iowa School for the Deaf is a referral-based pre-kindergarten through 12th grade educational option for students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. No tuition, board or fees are charged. Day and boarding programs are available.

Six-year-old Jordy Homack walked into Room 3 at Monroe Elementary School and jumped into Katrina Robertson’s lap.

The eyes of the two girls lit up, and they started communicating with American Sign Language.

Jordy asked Robertson, an 11th-grader at Loveland High School, about her cochlear implant, pointing to her own ear.

Marsha Dorr, one of Jordy’s teachers, said Jordy, who is deaf and nonverbal, is uncomfortable wearing the implant but thinks it’s “cool” to see an older student wearing one.

She sees that she is not the only one with hearing loss, she said.

Jordy is part of an after-school group for elementary-age students who are deaf or hard of hearing.

“When they come into this room, they’re the norm,” said Dorr, who works with deaf and hard-of-hearing students in preschool and grades K-5.

Eight students are in the group, which meets for two hours twice a month to do crafts, take field trips, work on communication skills and connect with high school students who went through Dorr’s hearing program while they were in elementary school.

“She developed an environment here where the kids feel like they have a home, a place they belong,” said Kim Miller, district audiologist. “It gives the kids a place to be themselves.”

On Thursday, students and staffers wore Santa hats while they made hand-print wreaths, ornaments and cards and frosted sugar cookies for a holiday party, working at different centers set up at tables in the classroom.

Dorr started off the nearly two-hour program by introducing the plans for the afternoon, followed by Happy-Sad, an activity in which the older and younger students describe a good event and not-so-good event from the previous week.

“It’s fun,” said Casey Latulip, a fourth-grader at Monroe. “You get to at least take a couple things home and share with your family.”

Dorr piloted the high school mentoring program this year to help her students realize they are not the only ones wearing a hearing aid or cochlear implant, she said.

“I think it definitely builds their self-esteem and confidence,” Dorr said.

The older students provide an example of how to stand up for themselves in the classroom, Dorr said.

“They become role models to the younger students,” Dorr said.

Robertson, who wants to become a preschool teacher, said she identifies with the younger students.

“I can help the kids work on what they need and (help them) improve their signing,” she said.

Berkeley, Calif.-based Disability Rights Advocates filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court on behalf of two plaintiffs and the Association of Late-Deafened Adults. It seeks class-action status.

Kevin Knestrick, an attorney for the plaintiffs, says Cinemark Holdings Inc. is the only one of the nation’s three largest movie chains not to offer closed-captioning equipment. Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc. provide captioning, though not at all hours and in all theaters.

The lawsuit asks for unspecified damages and an order requiring Plano, Texas-based company to install the captioning devices.

A call to Cinemark was not immediately returned. View original article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101201/ap_on_en_mo/us_cinemark_closed_captioning_2

West Palm Beach - Shoshana Rappaport lost her hearing when she was a little girl. Her ear problems caused her to lose her balance when she was younger. It wasn’t unusual for her to end up with bumps and bruises. “I am deaf with assistance of cochlear implant which I was implanted with when I was in 10th grade, which gives me about 85 percent of an ability to hear. I would fall down the stairs, I hit my head against the walls and it was pretty bad.”

Shoshana is now 18 years old and in college at Northwood University. She has a service dog, eight month old Macy, which she says she trained to help her open doors and pick up objects. “Well I started volunteering at shelters when I was nine and I would work with the dogs and teach them basic obedience because it improved their chances of being adopted and staying in a forever home. My goal is to start a service dog organization to train autism service dogs for children.” Soshana is receiving a lot of support from the university in her quest to achieve her dreams.”

Robert Cabello, who is Dean of Students at Northwood University said, “She is living in our residence halls right now, we had to make some accomodations in order to assist her.I think that if you have an opportunity to see Macy her service dog you see that this is an animal that has been trained extremely well to assist someone who is in need of those sorts of services.”

Voices carry, reflect off objects and create echoes. Most people rarely hear the echoes; instead they only process the first sound received. For the hard of hearing, though, being in an acoustically challenging room can be a problem. For them, echoes carry. Ever listen to a lecture recorded in a large room?

That most people only process the first-arriving sound is not new. Physicist Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, noted it in 1849, dubbing it the precedence effect. Since then, classrooms, lecture halls and public-gathering places have been designed to reduce reverberating sounds. And scientists have been trying to identify a precise neural mechanism that shuts down trailing echoes.

In a new paper published in the Aug. 26 issue of the journal Neuron, University of Oregon scientists Brian S. Nelson, a postdoctoral researcher, and Terry T. Takahashi, professor of biology and member of the UO Institute of Neuroscience, suggest that the filtering process is really simple.

When a sound reaching the ear is loud enough, auditory neurons simply accept that sound and ignore subsequent reverberations, Takahashi said. “If someone were to call out your name from behind you, that caller’s voice would reach your ears directly from his or her mouth, but those sound waves will also bounce off your computer monitor and arrive at your ears a little later and get mixed in with the direct sound. You aren’t even aware of the echo.”

Takahashi studies hearing in barn owls with the goal of understanding the fundamentals of sound processing so that future hearing aids, for example, might be developed. In studying how his owls hear, he usually relies on clicking sounds one at a time.

For the new study, funded by the National Institutes of Deafness and Communication Disorders, Nelson said: “We studied longer sounds, comparable in duration to many of the consonant sounds in human speech. As in previous studies, we showed that the sound that arrives first — the direct sound — evokes a neural and behavioral response that is similar to a single source. What makes our new study interesting is that the neural response to the reflection was not decreased in comparison to when two different sounds were presented.”

The owls were subjected to two distinct sounds, direct and reflected, with the first-arriving sound causing neurons to discharge. “The owls’ auditory neurons are very responsive to the leading edge of the peaks,” said Takahashi, “and those leading edges in the echo are masked by the peak in the direct waveform that preceded it. The auditory cells therefore can’t respond to the echo.”

When the leading sound is not deep enough in modulation and more time passes between sounds, the single filtering process disappears and the owls respond to the sounds coming from different locations, the researchers noted.

The significance, Takahashi said, is that for more than 60 years researchers have sought a physiological mechanism that actively suppresses echoes. “Our results suggest that you might not need such a sophisticated system.”

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1909316/healthy_ears_hear_the_first_sound_ignoring_the_echoes/index.html?source=r_science