Word: sound
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Angeles has performed about 330 implants of its devices since 1973. But these implants, as well as others done at Coleman, Stanford University and the University of Melbourne in Australia, have met with only modest success in duplicating the complex way in which the inner ear translates sound for the brain. Dr. James Parkin, who is chief of surgery at the Utah medical center and will perform the implants, believes Ineraid would make it possible to restore the hearing of about 70% of the 500,000 deaf people in the U.S. who at present cannot benefit from hearing aids...
These people have lost their hearing usually because disease has destroyed the functioning of the cochlea, a snail-shaped organ the size of a pea. Inside the cochlea are thousands of microscopic cells that transmit sound as electrical signals through the auditory nerve to the brain...
Ineraid duplicates this function. A tiny microphone, worn around the ear, is connected to a microprocessor, which turns sound waves into electrical impulses and feeds them through the implanted wires into the auditory nerve. Six of the wires are implanted in those areas of the cochlea that would normally transmit different frequencies, from high to low. The remaining two wires are grounded to muscle tissue to complete the electrical circuit. Says Parkin: "It's like taking the cochlea outside the head and putting it on your belt...
...does not sound like promising materal for comedy. But Fo has turned the event into fine and unlikely totalitarian farce. The central character is a sort of derelict loon who is a professional impostor. Fo took the part himself in the original Italian production, and, obviously, the Fool is essentially Fo. As wonderfully played at the Arena by Richard Bauer, the Fool behaves like Karl Marx masquerading as Dr. Hugo Hackenbush. He is what the Russians call a yurodivy, an elaborately disguised truth seeker, an anarchist-individualist working under deep cover...
Galileo made it plain that his sympathies were with the character upholding the Copernican view, a know-it-all who disdainfully dismissed his opponents. He made Ptolemy's advocate sound like a simpleton, even giving him the name Simplicio. Into Simplicio's mouth went some of the arguments made by Pope Urban against the Copernican world...