ONZ Spine specializes in more than 10 years of assisting thousands of individuals in traveling to Germany for orthopedic surgery. Are you in pain and tired of waiting for knee, hip, or spine surgery? Germany’s top Neurosurgeons at the ONZ Clinic do not have long waiting periods – usually within one month. Knee and hip surgeries are not age restrictive in Germany. Call, text or email for further information and a free consultation. We guide you through from assisting with booking flights, travel insurance, taxis, and hotels from the beginning to the end of your journey.
Community News
Words To Live By
“I’ll tell you a big secret, my friend. Don’t wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.” – Albert Camus
Words To Live By
“There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.” – Franz Kafk
Words To Live By
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” –John Quincy Adamsa
May Brain Teaser Answers
1. A sponge. 2. Your breath! 3. River 4. Your name
Oral Health Month
April is Oral Health Month in Canada and a great reminder to practice good oral hygiene! Here are five tips for maintaining good oral health: 1) Make healthy food choices and limit sugary and highly acidic foods to avoid tooth decay and acid erosion. 2) Don’t smoke or use tobacco products, which can stain teeth, cause gum damage, give you bad breath, cause tooth loss, and even lead to oral cancer. 3) Brush twice and floss once daily. 4) Make note of any oral issues you have, including sensitivity, bleeding, pain, or strange lumps. 5) Visit your dentist regularly.
Dr. Lindsay Scherr
GreenLeafDental.ca
How Artificial Intelligence Helps With Hearing Loss
One of the reasons that makes it difficult to address hearing loss is that the way in which each individual experiences hearing loss can be a bit different, which is why a visit to a trained hearing professional is important. Different environments with varying amounts of noise adds an additional layer of complexity to the problem.
A hearing solution that works well for you for having a conversation at home may not work well in a noisy restaurant. If you have any experience with hearing loss, you may understand that the solution isn’t as simple as just making everything louder.
Hearing loss research has seen significant advancements from using artificial intelligence (AI). AI is a system that uses data to recognize patterns, which can then be applied to solve problems. With large amounts of data, AI is able to navigate through complex problems involving many variables.
We will take you through how AI has been used for hearing loss so far and the potential for AI to help with hearing loss in the future.
Current uses of AI in hearing loss
You may have already encountered the use of AI already without knowing it. A common use of AI is to recognize speech. This technology has been applied to provide automated closed captioning for video services to help those with hearing loss.
Some audiologists have started to also use AI to help fit hearing aids. In these cases, the audiologist would play different sounds for you, and software with AI functions would provide suggestions to tune the hearing aid.
To provide a more direct impact on hearing loss, AI is used in increasingly sophisticated hearing aids. Early uses of AI were used to create pre-trained models for different environments. The hearing aid would then have different modes with different frequencies preset for environments such as being at home, in restaurants, or in front of the television.
Newer hearing aids with AI are able to listen to the environment and automatically make adjustments as necessary. These hearing aids can actively lower background noise while also working to increase the volume of voices, making it easier to hear speech.
Future uses of AI in hearing loss
AI is being used to help achieve the aim of getting as close as possible to replicating how the brain hears sounds without hearing loss. Hearing aids with AI technology will automatically adjust to best match each individual’s hearing needs.
AI is able to create a balanced, personalized output by scanning the sounds in an environment, identifying the elements of different sounds, and understanding how to process each element. By listening to the voices that you hear often, the AI could emphasize voices from certain individuals while reducing others.
More advanced use of AI may be able to tackle some of the trickiest situations for people with hearing loss, such as focusing on conversations between multiple people in a noisy environment. Further in the future, to prioritize the voice of interest, which may constantly shift among speakers, the AI could determine which voice to focus on by tracking the neural activity of the brain.
Another possibility to focus on a particular speaker in the future would be to use augmented reality (AR) glasses, which is a pair of glasses that provides information to the wearer. Eye-tracking technology would allow the AI to know in which direction to focus while the glasses could provide automated captions to supplement the speech in case the wearer still has trouble making out the speech.
While the future is full of bright possibilities when applying AI to help with hearing loss, a lot of work is still required to get there. Luckily, we have seen considerable progress. Advanced hearing aids are already able to suppress unwanted noise to allow you to focus on voices. All it takes is a visit to a trained practitioner, such as the professionals at NexGen Hearing, to get a hearing aid expertly adjusted to your individual hearing needs.
Sources:
https://www.hearsoundly.com/guides/best-ai-hearing-aids
https://sfaudiology.com/the-future-of-hearing-devices-deep-neural-networks-artificial-intelligence/
April 7th is World Health Day!
For 2022, The World Health Organization (WHO) is focusing their attentions on urgent actions needed to keep humans and the planet healthy and to foster a movement to create societies focused on well being. We all have a part to play in contributing to the wellbeing of our world. We can make more sustainable and ethical buying decisions and reduce pollution and waste through walking, carpooling or taking transit, as well as recycling and composting.
Looking for Volunteer Drivers
If you like to drive and want to help people get to medical appointments, or do escorted grocery shopping, or maybe deliver groceries on a Friday the Golden Circle is the place to call. You are compensated for your gas and you would be helping people who really appreciate it. Please call Gail or Diane at 403-343-6074
Frozen Meals
The frozen meal program is one of the services available here at the Golden Circle. In 2021, our in-house kitchen made and distributed 18,276 frozen meals, provided 1993 potpies and 1555 servings of soup. We offer pick up or delivery for a $5.00 delivery. If you want to try our delicious meals give us a call at 403-343-7064, you will not regret it! Our frozen meal menu is also available on our website. When you are ordering your frozen meals don’t forget to order one of Grandma’s Pies for dessert! Our butter tarts and muffins are great options, too!
Happipad Partnership
Golden Circle Senior Resource Centre has partnered with Happipad, the developer of Canada’s first web-based companion housing platform, to expand affordable shared housing opportunities specifically for vulnerable population segments including seniors, students, people with disabilities, and recent immigrants. This partnership is supported in part by funding from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) under the National Housing Strategy Demonstrations Initiative. To learn more, go to https://www.goldencircle.ca/happipad-what-is-it/
