An assessment of hearing thresholds among student orchestral musicians was carried out at the UCL Ear Institute in conjunction with the Royal College of Music (RCM). Audiogram data taken from 162 students (86 F, 76 M; mean age=23.7 years, SD=4.8) showed a statistically significant notch at 6 kHz in the left ear, indicative of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), but no significant notch was found...

BACKGROUND Bovine viral diarrhea is a contagious disease of domestic and wild ruminants and one of the most economically important diseases in cattle. Bovine viral diarrhea virus belongs to the genus Pestivirus, within the family Flaviviridae. The identification and elimination of the persistently infected animals from herds is the initial step in the control and eradication programs. It is the...

Lateral inhibition mediated by Notch is thought to generate the mosaic of hair cells and supporting cells in the inner ear, but the effects of the activated Notch protein itself have never been directly tested. We have explored the role of Notch signalling by transiently overexpressing activated Notch (NICD) in the chick otocyst. We saw two contrasting consequences, depending on the time and si...

This experiment investigated the accuracy with which the location of a probe tip relative to the tympanic membrane can be estimated by means of standing waves. The ear canal length of each ear of six adult subjects was measured with a probe tube using a tactile method. A 6-kHz warble tone was then generated, and the position of the standing wave notch in the ear canal was determined using a pro...

The Notch signaling pathway controls differentiation of hair cells and supporting cells in the vertebrate inner ear. Here, we have investigated whether Numb, a known regulator of Notch activity in Drosophila, is involved in this process in the embryonic chick. The chicken homolog of Numb is expressed throughout the otocyst at early stages of development and is concentrated at the basal pole of ...

Each of the sensory patches in the epithelium of the inner ear is a mosaic of hair cells and supporting cells. Notch signalling is thought to govern this pattern of differentiation through lateral inhibition. Recent experiments in the chick suggest, however, that Notch signalling also has a prior function - inductive rather than inhibitory - in defining the prosensory patches from which the dif...

Mechanosensory hair cells in the sensory patches of the vertebrate ear are interspersed among supporting cells, forming a fine-grained pattern of alternating cell types. Analogies with Drosophila mechanosensory bristle development suggest that this pattern could be generated through lateral inhibition mediated by Notch signalling. In the zebrafish ear rudiment, homologues of Notch are widely ex...

Multipotent progenitor cells in the otic placode give rise to the specialized cell types of the inner ear, including neurons, supporting cells, and hair cells. The mechanisms governing acquisition of specific fates by the cells that form the cochleovestibular organs remain poorly characterized. Here we show that whereas blocking Notch signaling with a γ-secretase inhibitor increased the convers...