Individual differences in auditory brainstem response wave characteristics : relations to different aspects of peripheral hearing loss

Little is known about how outer hair cell loss interacts with noise-induced and age-related auditory nerve degradation (i.e., cochlear synaptopathy) to affect auditory brainstem response (ABR) wave characteristics. Given that listeners with impaired audiograms likely suffer from mixtures of these hearing deficits and that ABR amplitudes have successfully been used to isolate synaptopathy in listeners with normal audiograms, an improved understanding of how different hearing pathologies affect the ABR source generators will improve their sensitivity in hearing diagnostics. We employed a functional model for human ABRs in which different combinations of hearing deficits were simulated and show that highfrequency cochlear gain loss steepens the slope of the ABRWave-V latency versus intensity and amplitude versus intensity curves. We propose that grouping listeners according to a ratio of these slope metrics (i.e., the ABR growth ratio) might offer a way to factor out the outer hair cell loss deficit and maximally relate individual differences for constant ratios to other peripheral hearing deficits such as cochlear synaptopathy. We compared the model predictions to recorded click-ABRs from 30 participants with normal or high-frequency sloping audiograms and confirm the predicted relationship between the ABR latency growth curve and audiogram slope. Experimental ABR amplitude growth showed large individual differences and was compared with the Wave-I amplitude, Wave-V/I ratio, or the interwaveI-W latency in the same listeners. The model simulations along with the ABR recordings suggest that a hearing loss profile depicting the ABR growth ratio versus the Wave-I amplitude or Wave-V/I ratio might be able to differentiate outer hair cell deficits from cochlear synaptopathy in listeners with mixed pathologies

Apparatus and method for congestion control in high speed networks

An adjustable bit rate (ABR) feedback control scheme is provided where the effects of multiloop delays and high priority traffic transmission are built into the control model. The data traffic is filtered by a low pass filter. Then, the low frequency bandwidth of the filtered traffic is measured and compared to a predetermined threshold. If the measured value exceeds the threshold, the ABR traffic flow is reduced. If the measured value is less than the threshold, the ABR traffic flow is increased. In addition, a General Prediction Control (GPC) method may be applied to the control model for optimal performance. An object of the invention is to minimize the unused link capacity subject to no congestion, where the ABR traffic is adapted to the low frequency variation of high priority traffic flow for high efficiency.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Modal properties and modal control in vertically emitting annular Bragg lasers

The modal properties, including the resonant vertical radiation, of a type of laser structures based on the annular Bragg resonance (ABR) are studied in detail. The modal threshold gains and the resonance frequencies of such lasers are obtained from the derived governing characteristic equation. Two kinds of ABR lasers, one with a π/2 phase shift in the outer grating and the other without, are analyzed. It is numerically demonstrated that, it’s possible to get a large-area, high-efficiency, single defect mode lasing in ABR lasers if we choose the kind without a π/2 phase shift in the outer grating and also a device size smaller than a critical value

Performance and Buffering Requirements of Internet Protocols over ATM ABR and UBR Services

The Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks are quickly being adopted as backbones over various parts of the Internet. This paper analyzes the performance of TCP/IP protocols over ATM network's Available Bit Rate (ABR) and Unspecified Bit Rate (UBR) services. It is shown that ABR pushes congestion to the edges of the ATM network while UBR leaves it inside the ATM portion.Comment: IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol 36, no 6, pp152-15

Performance of Bursty World Wide Web (WWW) Sources over ABR

We model World Wide Web (WWW) servers and clients running over an ATM network using the ABR (available bit rate) service. The WWW servers are modeled using a variant of the SPECweb96 benchmark, while the WWW clients are based on a model by Mah. The traffic generated by this application is typically bursty, i.e., it has active and idle periods in transmission. A timeout occurs after given amount of idle period. During idle period the underlying TCP congestion windows remain open until a timeout expires. These open windows may be used to send data in a burst when the application becomes active again. This raises the possibility of large switch queues if the source rates are not controlled by ABR. We study this problem and show that ABR scales well with a large number of bursty TCP sources in the system.Comment: Submitted to WebNet `97, Toronto, November 9

Perceptual and electrophysiological masking of the auditory brainstem response : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University

Effective masking levels of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) to tonepips were established on 10 normal-hearing subjects at 500, 1000, 2000 and 4000 Hz, using white noise. Effective masking levels of perceptual responses to the same stimuli were also established, for both presentation of single (1/second) and repeated (41.7/second) tonepips. Perceptual masking levels for repeated tonepips were significantly higher than levels for single tonepips, indicating temporal summation effects. Levels which effectively masked the ABR did not differ significantly from perceptual masking levels at either presentation rate. A signal-to-noise ratio of -5 to -10 dB was found to provide effective masking for all conditions. For the stimulus and recording parameters in the present study, a behavioural method of determining effective masking levels is considered appropriate. Behavioural thresholds determined for single tonepips were higher than thresholds for repeated tonepips, demonstrating dependence of nHL behavioural references for ABR thresholds on stimulus repetition rate. Effective masking levels determined in the present study may be applied to the use of tonepip ABRs to provide an objective frequency-specific measure of hearing in infants