• The section on Recent Medline OAE articles was updated. Volume 6 presents the latest 15 article additions to 2003. These additions have currently a broader scientific use because PubMed services index now a large number of non English (and non-impact factor) journals, and thus scientific information from numerous non-mainstream research centers is now available (at least in abstract form).
  
  

•  The section on OAE books was updated including non-English references. Since the initial compilation of the book-lists a number of items is out of print or it is difficult to order (even through the American Amazon.com). For this reason references which are readily available are presented with the book cover.
  
  

• The policy for the publication of white papers and on-line communications (powerpoint point material included) has changed from this month, in order to ensure a higher quality standard of the material presented in the Portal. Due to the increased storage capabilities of the OAE Portal (courtesy of the Computer Science Dept, of Ferrara University) there are also changes related to the length of the presented contributions. The updated details for any submitted material (white paper or on-line lecture) can be found in the submit pages.
  
  
• The section on the SOAE basics was updated.
  
  

•  The biophysics section of the white papers was updated with a contribution from Dr. Paul Avan on the Physiopathological significance of distortion-product otoacoustic emissions at 2f1-f2 produced by high- vs. low-level stimuli. The paper was published in JASA 2003, 113, 430-441 and examines evidence related to the so-called existence of passive and active components in the DPOAE response. Analytically the synopsis of the JASA paper reports the consequences on high- vs low-level DPOAEs of three types of cochlear impairments involving OHCs: progressive OHC degeneration of genetic origin in CD1 mice, complete cochlear ischemia in gerbils, and furosemide injection vs ischemia-reperfusion in gerbils. The obtained results lead to the proposal that although high-level DPOAEs are expected to be poor audiometric indicators, they seem well adapted to assessing the functional integrity of nonlinear elements in OHCs, i.e., presumably their mechanoelectrical transduction channels.
  
          Additional information on the high vs low level DPOAE stimuli can be found in another white paper from the group of Dr. Avan , titled "Cubic difference tones (2f1-f2) produced by high-intensity stimuli: their origin revealed by the combined effects of cochlear ischemia and auditory fatigue" and written by Dr. Thierry Mom.
  
  

• The policy for the publication of white papers and on-line communications (powerpoint point material included) has changed from this month, in order to ensure a higher quality standard of the material presented in the Portal. Any material to be presented (except invited editorials from well known experts) should have been published in an impact factor peer-reviewed journal. The material included in the powerpoint presentations should have been presented in international or well-known national congresses.
  
  
• The section on clinical white papers has been updated with a contribution (paper synopsis) from the Ferrara group titled TEOAE Recording Protocols Revised. Data from adult subjects. The material continues a line of research, which started in the early 90's, and it is dealing with the quest of the most efficient TEOAE protocol.The paper was published in the International Journal of Audiology 2003 Sep;42(6):339-47 and interested readers can download a pdf copy from here.
  
  

•  The section on future highlights was updated with material spanning the period December 2003 -May 2004.
  
  

• We apologize for the fact that the Portal was not on-line a number of hours yesterday November 20th. Due to maintenance of the national university network structures (GARR) our server at the University of Ferrara was off-line.
  
  
• The section on screening programs from around the world was updated with information related to the targeted screening program at Ljubljana, Slovenia.
  
  

       Several interesting advances have been reported the last few months in the European scene of Neonatal Hearing Screening.

•  In the UK, the Department of Health has commissioned the Institute of Hearing Research, part of the Medical Research Council, to implement the Newborn Hearing Screening Program (NHSP). This program aims to implement a hearing screening for all newborn babies in England. Over 40 areas of England are currently screening and it is estimated that all areas will be participating by April 2005. A very efficient web-site provides additional information on the activities of the UK-NHSP.
  
  
•  Poland has been a surprisingly efficient model of neonatal hearing screening, specially in the way the Polish health administrators have located the necessary financial resources (see the April-June 2003 editorial by Dr. Marzanna Radziszewska-Konopka). Recent reports indicate that 95.5% to 98,8% of newborns born in Poland are screened. The success of the program lies also in the inventiveness of the organizers and specially of Mr. Jerzy Owsiak in locating new revenues of financial support. The second greatest Polish bank issued a credit card in cooperation with "The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity Foundation", and a percentage of the interests is donated to the UNHS program in Poland. Every year "The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity Foundation" organizes The Great Finale. The next one is scheduled on January 11 2004. During the event the results of the current UNHS Polish program will be presented and noted guests from the US and Europe with discuss current US and European hearing screening models. An update on the Polish UNHS will be on-line from early 2004.
  
  

• A new section has been added to the main page, called Future Highlights where you can preview the material which will be available on line in the near future.
  
  

• The section on Recent Medline OAE articles was updated. Volume 5 presents the latest 40 article additions to 2003.
  
  
• The section on Italian Authoring was updated with the recent contributions of the Ferrara group.
  
  

• The on-lecture pages on neonatal screening were updated with a another contribution from Dr. Christie Yoshinaga-Itano. Her second lecture addresses the factors determining successful screening outcomes and uses as a reference her screening experience and findings at University of Colorado Boulder.
  
  

• The pages on Neonatal screening Programs from Around the World were updated with a report from the national Dutch screening program. The status of the Dutch screening program will be updated in the future, by a series of short reports from Dr. Van Zantem.
  
  

• The GSI sponsored hardware pages were updated, with material related to the Audioscreener , product comparisons with other screeners and the status of the screening among various US states.
  
  

• Despite the fact that Neonatal Screening is the primary OAE application, in European terms, we are far behind from public-organized programs. Even countries where neonatal screening practices started early in the 90s (Italy, Greece) did not succeed in finalizing the initial pilot programs into public driven screening structures.
             In the screening section of the on-line lectures we have added the contribution of Dr. Stavros Korres and Dr. Dimitris Balatsouras , who explain the dynamics of the screening situation in Greece and shows that there are always alternative ways to offer quality services to the public. Dr. Korres is an associate professor of the ENT department of Athens University. His presentation is based on an invited lecture during the EFAS meeting in Crete, May 2003.
  
  

• The Sponsored Pages for Fischer-Zoth were updated with documentation related to the EchoScreen family of screening devices.
  
  

• The Sponsored Pages for Etymotic Research were updated with documentation related to the EROSCAN family of products and accessories.
  
  

• The fourth International Conference on Neonatal Hearing screening has been announced officially. The title of the meeting is NHS 2004 - Beyond Early Hearing Detection and Intervention: Infant Hearing in Science and in Clinical practice and it will take place at Villa Erba, Cernobbio (Como Lake), Italy, from May 27-29, 2004 .
  
          The topics of the conference cover a wide spectrum of interests including :Neuromaturation and plasticity, Language development, cognition and deafness, Genetics of hearing loss, Speech development, Physiologic measures of audiological function, Steady State Evoked Potentials. Newborn hearing screening, Audiological assessment, Aetiological evaluation, Information Systems for EHDI Programs, Outcome of EHDI programmes, Auditory neuropathies. Intervention strategies for infants and families, Amplification, Cochlear implants, Strategies for aural habilitation, Language outcomes in infants with cochlear implants, Medical and surgical intervention for hearing loss. Pediatric hearing health services, Family-directed services for deaf and hard-of-hearing infants, Family counseling, Web-based resources for parents and professionals, Impact of deafness on family systems, Perspectives of the Deaf community, Parents' perspective.
  
           Important dates to remember :

  January 20, 2004: Deadline for abstract submission
  February 4, 2004: Notification of acceptance
  February 28, 2004: Notification oral or poster presentation
  March 15, 2004: Deadline Early registration and Hotel reservation
  

  Additional information will be posted in the Portal in future updates. To obtain further information about the conference contact the organizer's web site.
  
  

• The main page of the OAE Hardware section was re-written and updated .
  
  
• The main page of the English Portal was modified in order to improve the access of information.
  
  

• We start presenting the lectures series on neonatal screening by Dr. Christie Yoshinaga-Itano. Dr. Yoshinaga-Itano is a Professor and Head of Audiology in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She conducts research to determine what variables predict successful outcomes in children with hearing loss. During the last ten years she has focused primarily upon the infant/toddler/preschool periods of development and the efficacy of universal newborn hearing screening followed by appropriate and immediate intervention services. Her research focuses on language, speech, cognitive, and social-emotional factors.
          Her first on-line lectures refers to the Colorado Task Force Audiologic Assessment and Medical Protocol. To see a preview of the lecture (125 K) click here . To download her lecture consult the neonatal screening on-line lecture pages.
  
  
• The OAE Hardware pages were updated with a number of links and references from the Etymotic Research / Maico OAE equipment series.
  
  

• The OAE Hardware pages were updated with data-sheets from the latest OAE equipment of Interacoustics, including the OtoRead (Screener) and the revised desktop OAE station TEOAE-25.
  
  
• The section of Multimedia downloads was updated with a DPOAE animation (plus a clinical setup) courtesy of GNOtometrics.
  
  

• The OAE Hardware pages were updated with preliminary information which will be available from October 2003. Please note that news related to recent firmware and software releases can be found in the update section dedication to each manufacturer. News related to new hardware models can be found in the OAE-equipment page.
  
  

• A new set of pages is on-line dedicated to Multimedia downloads, that is multimedia elements(mainly videos)related to OAEs . The section is placed above the Latest News and the latest additions can be accessed here.
  
  

• The Search pages have been modified to assist you better in the localization of the OAE material you are looking for. The word-index of the Portal has been re-compiled and enhanced with possible synonyms, so in case you cannot find a specific term you might be able to locate the arguments you are interested via a synonym connection.
          Since the Search function is fundamental for this site we would like to get your feedback and evaluation. To report an opinion or to make a comment please click here.
  
  

• During the first phase of the reviewing process we have announced, we will be contacting the various manufacturers (mainly the ones who are not directly sponsor the Portal) in order to obtain the latest info for the 4th generation OAE devices, which seems to dominate the OAE market internationally. Unfortunately this trend compromises the research possibilities of the majority of the currently available OAE instruments. Obviously there is a need to explore further the application of OAE technologies to Hearing Science, which might fuel a further interest of the OAE manufacturers in producing research OAE equipment.
          An interesting proposal of a clinical / research tool is the Polish Kuba mikro. The instrument is a result from the co-operation between the Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing and the Institute of Control Systems. Both Institutes reside Warsaw, Poland. The device utilizes as hardware platform a Palmtop PC and implements clinical and newborn / infant screening with Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions and ABR. To get more information and relative links you can download the following pdf file (350K). The file will download inside your browser so expect some delays until its final visualization.
  
  

• We would like to welcome the new sponsor of the portal the Interacoustics A/S group presenting a new line of OAE products including the OtoRead portable OAE screener.
  
  

• The section on Recent Medline OAE articles was updated. Volume 4 presents the latest 12 article additions to 2003.The reason for this update (the last addition to this section was on late August) is the fact that the MEDLINE indexing has presented delays due to the insertion in the PubMed database of many foreign non-English journals.
  
  
• The section on Italian Authoring was updated with the recent contributions of the Ferrara group.
  
  

• The section on Workshops has been updated with a series of lectures on OAEs, ABR and ASSR offered by Kresge Hearing Research Laboratory, New Orleans, LA.
  
  

• The section on Recent Medline OAE articles was updated. Volume 3 presents the latest 69 article additions to 2003.
  
  
• The section on Italian Authoring was updated with the recent contributions of the Ferrara group.
  
  

• We would like to welcome the new sponsor of the portal the Etymotic Research group, manufacturer of the Eroscan OAE screener distributed internationally by Maico.
  
  

• The Impact Factor ratings for 2002 have been added to the OA E_Articles MEDLINE section.
  
  

NOTE 1: The low impact factor of Audiology, British Journal of Audiology and Scandinavian Audiology is caused by the fact that these journals have merged from 01/01/2003 to the International Journal of Audiology.

NOTE 2: The impact factors listings are always reported for one year before the latest publications, so the 2002 list is the latest one reported by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI).

• The pages of the clinical on-line lectures were updated with supplemental material on NIHL and OAEs (the topic of the current editorial) , contributed by Dr. Giota Lalaki.
  
  

• We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Giota Lalaki, will become the 17th member of our editorial board, starting July 2003.
          Dr. Lalaki is mainly interested on clinical applications of OAEs in clinical scenarios involving NIHL (noise induced hearing loss), SIHL (Sudden idiopathic hearing loss), tinnitus, middle ear effusion and grommets and OAE suppression in retrocochlear lesions. She is a scientific fellow of the University ENT Clinic in AHEPA Hospital in Thessaloniki, Greece and she is the director of the Otology & Neuro-otology Department in the Interbalkan European Medical Center in Thessaloniki. She is also a member of the Greek team participating in the European Concerted Action: "Potential adverse effects of GSM cellular phones on hearing 'GUARD', from the 5th framework program on the Quality of life and management of living resources.
  
  

• Occasionally manufacturers of Audiological Equipment, hearing aids or cochlear implants release educational multimedia CDs to promote the technologies they have developed. The last few years the quality of the multimedia CDs has been impressive and this material is very suitable for academic classes in Audiology, ENT, Pediatrics and Hearing Science.
           Recent examples (released in 2002-2003) of Multimedia CDs for the classroom are the following :
  
  
  • Infant Hearing Screening: Education and training CD (2003), by GnOtometrics. The material focuses on the application of the AccuScreen neonatal screening device, but there are many generic examples on screening practices and the auditory periphery. If you are interested in obtaining a copy, contact Mr. Paul Morrison.
    
    
  • A Better Understanding of Hearing: (2002) Contains information many practical issues for undergraduate classes in Audiology. OAE practitioners will find nice videos showing the expansion of the OHC's, the movement of the stereocilia etc. If you are interested in obtaining a copy, contact your local Oticon / Widex dealer or the information desk of Oticon.
    
    
  • A promenade tour around the Cochlea (2002). This is the CD version of the web-site created by Remý Pujol, and represents an excellent multimedia material for Hearing Science and Audiology students. If you are interested in obtaining a copy, contact Thierry Pujol.
    
    

• The pages on OAE Hardware were updated.
  
  

• The pages from the section on World Programs of neonatal screening were updated.
  
  

• Another review / announcement on the OAE-POrtal is currently available. Jerry Northern Ph.D. gave a look to the Portal and his positive comments can be found on Audiology Today, May-June 2003. To view this article (120 k) click here.
  
  

• We are very pleased to announce that Dr. James W. Hall III, will become the 16th member of our editorial board, starting June 2003.
             James W. Hall III, Ph.D. received a Masters degree from Northwestern University and, in 1979, his Ph.D. in audiology from Baylor College of Medicine under the direction of Dr. James Jerger. Since then, he has held clinical and academic audiology positions at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, University of Texas School of Medicine-Houston, and the School of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Hall is now Clinical Professor of Audiology and Chair in the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Florida in Gainesville. In addition to his administrative duties, he maintains a clinical practice at University of Florida Shands Medical Center, and serves as a clinical instructor and mentor in the Doctor of Audiology on-site and distance learning programs.
            Dr. Hall's main research interests are in the area of auditory neurophysiology, clinical assessment of auditory processing disorders and central auditory nervous system function, newborn hearing screening, tinnitus & hyperacusis, and the assessment and management of hearing of professional musicians. Dr. Hall lectures internationally on these topics. He is the author of over 120 journal articles, monographs, or book chapters, as well as the Handbook of Auditory Evoked Responses and Audiologists' Desk Reference Volumes I and II, the Handbook of Otoacoustic Emissions and the forthcoming two volume series Handbook of Auditory Neurophysiology.
  
  

• The updating of the OAE material in the Portal has been purposely delayed until the 15th of June. A number of members of the editorial board have been invited to various OAE related conferences and meetings (EFAS, 2nd International Cochlear Implant meeting, IERASG etc) and it has been agreed to include some of the presented (and collected) material in the Portal's pages in June and July.
  
  

• We would like to welcome the new sponsor of the portal the GSI-Viasys group, presenting the GSI OAE line of products and the Audioscreener 4th generation portable OAE device developed by Everest Biomedical.
  
  

• The section on TEOAE signal analysis was re-written and updated with additional references per method of analysis.
  
  

• The section on Recent Medline OAE articles was updated. Volume 2 presents the latest 19 article additions to 2003.
  
  

• We are very content to present another contribution from an OAE manufacturer on the details of their developed OAE technology. The section of White papers dedicated to OAE signal processing has been updated with a contribution from Vivosonic. The title of the paper is Vivography™: A fast, accurate, and reliable new method for measuring DPOAE and ASSR, and provides information on the methodology developed by Vivosonic for high-resolution DPOAE recordings.
  
  

• The software pages related to OAE databases have been updated , with recent information regarding HI*TRACK. New versions of HI*TRACK have been announced at the AAA meeting in S. Antonio. To get a glimpse of the new features click here.
  
  

• Mr. David Rajczak from Vivosonic Inc has send us a series of updates on the Vivosonic products and the methodology of recording high resolution DPOAEs. Vivosonic Inc. has developed a novel method of continuous real-time estimation and recording of physiological signals called Vivography™. It employs a linear minimum mean-square error filter, based on a signal modeling and digital signal processing, and consists of three steps: (1) Modeling of the measured signal and background noise; (2) Processing the measured signal using the properties of the model to reduce the number of computational operations and processing time; (3) Post-processing that includes signal presentation and recording (Fig. 3). This continuous signal recording Vivogram™. To read the rest of this update click here.
  
  

• The page on Clinical Applications of OAEs has been reviewed and enhanced. Due to constant requests on material related to OAE clinical applications , other than screening, we intend in the near future (by October 2003) to generate individual pages on the most important OAE clinical applications of today. In this context, we have invited a number of dedicated editorials on Ototoxicity and Cisplatin and Tinnitus and OAEs which should be presented by the end of 2003. If you need additional information on an application you do not find extensive references or material, please contact us.
  
  

• The Search page has been enhanced to help you locate faster the information you are searching. In the main Search page we have added a table of the top-ten search items during the years 2001 and 2002. The top-ten search items will be updated every year. The table indicates a search item and a number of main (not all) links within the data-structure of the OAE Portal.
  
  

• The pages dedicated to Frequently Asked Questions, for new programs in neonatal hearing screening were updated.
  
  

• After the AAA meeting, preliminary information has been inserted into the neonatal screening pages and the OAE-Hardware pages. Detailed reports and more information is expected to be on-line by the end of the month.
  
  

• The American Academy of Audiology conference is starting in a few days. The web editor , Dr. Stavros Hatzopoulos and the assistant web editors Dr. Thierry Morlet and Dr. Katia De Almeida, will be present in the meeting. If you would like to meet them, ask questions about the Portal and exchange views and opinions you can contact them after their oral presentations (Friday April 4).
  
  
  
  

• We would like to apologize for some technical problems, you might have experienced on Sunday, March 16. Due to security maintenance procedures the Portal was not accessible for 4 hours (14:00- 18:00).
  
  
• The part of TEOAEs in the section Basics of OAEs, was updated. The TEOAE introductory page was enhanced to include material on the two-source interference model, which currently is considered as the main generation mechanism of TEOAEs and DPOAEs.
  

• With the increase of the Portal's traffic we have been aware that more and more users are connecting to us not via PCs but with Macs and LINUX-based systems. As a result the last 4 months we have received a number of messages indicating that some Portal pages were not properly visible. To the contrary, our technical staff controls every 2 months the proper visibility of our pages, but for a specific type of computers that is for PCs, which represent the 91.8% of our visitors.
         From March 2003 we have decided to format our pages for the majority of operating systems (web TV excluded) , sacrificing some PC browser features which are causing problems in other systems. If you still find any page which has visualization problems please contact us by clicking here.
  

• The section of the recent OAE papers was updated with a listing of the latest 49 publications (volume 1)
  
  
• The section of the Italian contribution was updated.
  
  

• The section on OAE hardware was re-organized and updated. A more complete revision is scheduled after the American Academy of Audiology (AAA) meeting in S. Antonio Texas in the first week of April.

• The Biophysics section of white papers has been updated with a second contribution of Dr. Andrei Lukashkin titled "One source for distortion product otoacoustic emissions generated by low- and high-level primaries". The article is a synopsis of a paper presented in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (111, 2740-2748).
       The authors present evidence supporting the single source generation of DPs and conclude that "the non-linear cochlear amplifier, which depends on OHC activity, is the main source of DPOAEs recorded for levels of primaries below about 75 dB SPL. Any pathology leading to the generation of “passive-like” DPOAEs is NOT due to dysfunction of the OHC mechanoelectrical transducer. Emissions of this kind appear because cochlear amplification is impaired due to, for example, a reduction in the endocochlear potential or to feedback desynchronisation".
       Readers who are interested in this type of material might consult also the following paper Cubic difference tones (2f1-f2) produced by high-intensity stimuli: their origin revealed by the combined effects of cochlear ischemia and auditory fatigue by Thierry Mom, Pierre Bonfils, Laurent Gilain, and Paul Avan (2002).

• We have placed on line the Portal access statistics for the year 2002. Visitors who are interested in the number of hits and pages access numbers, can visit the 2002 FACT sheet. The numbers we have obtained for 2002 are very encouraging and show that the reviews we received from Ear and Hearing and ACTA Laryngologica have informed the OAE community about the existence of the OAE Portal.
       The numbers of visitors per month is telling us that there is a great demand in the OAE community for FREE on-line material. Despite the fact that OAE-based hearing screening is the most widely used OAE clinical application, the top-five page consultation topics were in this order :
  
  

  1. OAE Fundamentals
  2. White papers and on-line lectures
  3. OAE Hardware
  4. OAE Screening
  5. OAE and Biophysics

        According to the data on the country of origin of our visitors, the American audience still prevails the European audience with a 44% vs 42% of visits . In terms of accesses the numbers we have obtained in 2002 are very similar to those of the NCHAM and suggest that the main information on OAEs in INTERNET is starting being exclusively distributed by few and specific information structures. This is a good sign in terms of the Portal objectives, but it also implies an additional degree of responsibility to the OAE community, in terms of quality of information. Your FEEDBACK on these issues is more than welcome.

• We have started putting on line the new graphical interfaces and testing the updated data structures. Additional changes have been programmed during late hours (European time) of the next two Fridays and Saturdays . During these times NOT all pages will be available.

• The Biophysics section of white papers has been updated with a contribution of Dr. Andrei Lukashkin titled "Modifications of a single saturating non-linearity account for post-onset changes in 2f1-f2 distortion product otoacoustic emission". The article is a synopsis of a paper presented in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (112, 1561-1568).
          Andrei works with Dr. Ian Russell in the Hearing Research Group at the University of Sussex. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Biology from the University of Sussex in 1998. His research interests include: cochlear physiology and mechanics, otoacoustic emissions and non-linear signal processing. His second contribution in the area of biophysics will be posted soon in the biophysics section of White papers.

• It has come to our attention that there are several web sites which treat arguments related to cochlear mechanics, DPOAEs and SOAEs. These sites are listed under the links sub-section "Cochlear Mechanics" and our visitors are encouraged to visit them and participate and follow the various discussion groups (FORUMS).
  
  
• The interface and the data-structure of the Portal will undergo several changes which are programmed for the last week of January. During that week (mainly on 30 - 31) access to the Portal might be difficult.