HPCwire: TACC's Ranger Used in Hearing Research

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May 22, 2009

TACC's Ranger Used in Hearing Research

Air Force-funded research on Ranger explores how sound travels through the skull

May 22 -- War is dangerously noisy. Between explosions, gunfire, and jet take-offs and landings, armed forces personnel are frequently exposed to extreme decibel levels. This exposure has consequences: hearing loss is one of the most common medical problems facing soldiers and veterans.

A recent report from the Department of Veterans Affairs found that 58,000 of the 1.3 million soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are on disability for hearing loss. And in 2006, the V.A. reportedly spent $539 million on payments to veterans with hearing-related ailments. This number is expected to rise in the coming years.

"People talk about dramatic battle-field injuries, but hearing loss is the number one medical issue for the Air Force," Margaret Wismer of the Bioacoustics Research Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said. "A lot of people suffer from this problem."

When we think of hearing, we usually imagine our ear canal. However, sound also travels through the bones in our skulls, and at high noise levels can be just as damaging. To understand the nature of bone-conducted hearing, Wismer studies this phenomenon on behalf of the Air Force, using computer simulations generated at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

For the rest of the story, visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/research/users/features/dynamic.php?m_b_c=hearing.

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Source: Aaron Dubrow, Texas Advanced Computing Center

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