EoW January 2012

Transatlantic Cable

† “This isn’t just about disability rights – it’s about good customer service,” the Times ’s Mr Tierney was told by Janice Schacter Lintz, who heads the Hearing Access Program, a New York-based group that is promoting the use of hearing loops. Noting that the rst baby-boomers turn 65 this year – and that more than 30 per cent of people over 65 have some hearing loss – Ms Schacter Lintz said: “That’s a big group of customers who won’t go to museums or theatres or restaurants where they can’t hear. Put in a loop, and they can hear clearly without . . . wearing a special headset.” † Mr Tierney reported that hearing loop systems are more complicated to install than the assistive-hearing systems in common use, which beam infrared or FM signals to special headsets or neck loops that must be borrowed from the hall. Installing a loop in an auditorium typically costs $10 to $25 per seat, an initial outlay that may discourage the facility manager. But, Mr Tierney wrote: “Advocates for the loops argue that the cost per user is lower over the long run.”

Technology

A wire-based advance in audiology, well established in Europe, is gaining ground with US advocates for the hearing-impaired A hearing loop, typically installed on the oor around the periphery of a room, is a thin strand of copper wire radiating electromagnetic signals that can be picked up by a tiny receiver built into hearing aids and cochlear implants. When the receiver is turned on, the hearing aid receives only the sounds coming directly from a microphone, not the background sound-spatter. As noted by John Tierney of the New York Times , advocacy groups for the tens of millions of hearing-impaired Americans have recognised the potential of the technology, already in wide use in Northern Europe. He observed: “As loops are installed in stores, banks, museums, subway stations, and other public spaces, people who have felt excluded are suddenly back in the conversation.” (“A Hearing Aid That Cuts Out All the Clatter,” 23 rd October). The Midwest leads the movement to embrace the hearing loop, but New York is starting to catch up. According to the Times , loops have been installed at the ticket windows of Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, at the Apple store in SoHo, and at exhibits and information kiosks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. Mr Tierney wrote: “Even in that infamous black hole of acoustics – the New York subway system – loops are being placed in about 500 fare booths, in what will be the largest installation in the United States.” Basic induction-loop technology has been around for decades as a means of relaying signals from a telephone to a tiny receiver – a telecoil, or t-coil – that can be attached to a hearing aid. As telecoils became standard on hearing aids sold in Britain and Scandinavia, they were also used to receive signals from loops connected to microphones in halls, stores, taxis, and many other spaces. The delay in the adoption of the hearing loop in the United States is probably explained by the $50 add-on cost of a telecoil, formerly an optional accessory to a hearing aid. But, according to the Times , today telecoils are built into two-thirds of the hearing aids on o er. Thus the number of Americans able to bene t from loops is growing, and suggests a sizable developing market.

Image: www.bigstockphoto.com Photographer Zsolt Ercsel

Energy

Helping to meet a demand for electricity from renewable sources, a young

battery-storage technology holds promise for wind farms

To many Americans a wind farm is no longer a novelty. But Laurel Mountain, which opened on a windy ridge in Elkins, West Virginia, in late October, is unusual for an auxiliary element: a cluster of big steel boxes containing 1.3 million batteries. This is plausibly claimed to be the largest battery installation attached to the power grid in the continental United States. As reported by Matthew L Wald in the International Herald Tribune , both the wind farm – whose 61 turbines stretch out over 12 miles, generating up to 98 megawatts of electricity – and the battery project were developed by AES Corp (Arlington, Virginia). AES says the battery installation at Laurel Mountain is intended to function as a kind of shock absorber, making variations in wind energy production a little less jagged and the farm’s output more useful to the grid. (“Batteries at a Wind Farm Help Control Output,” 28 th October). Power systems have always faced uctuations in demand. Mr Wald noted that, as they incorporate more wind into the mix, they will have to cope with supply uctuations as well. Other power sources, mainly natural gas plants, can be tapped in time of need. But such plants take longer to ramp up and ramp down than a wind farm or a eld of solar panels.

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EuroWire – January 2012