our documentary series slavery routes starts march 10th on w. guy. this is news live from berlin the plea of guilty a man is sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder of multis journalist daphne carr want to believe she was a reporter who exposed corruption within multi political and business elite killing rocked the island nation sparking protests that led to the resignation of the prime

minister. also coming up a facebook and australia's government struck a deal to end a blackout on news feeds is it does this mean that facebook will now pay for journalism on its platform. also on the shore one of football's fears this rivalries gets a reboot germany gear up to play the uk trival ducks in a preview of a potential clash at next year's women's european championship. and gerrard raid welcome to the shore one of 3 men accused of murdering multiuse journalist daphne caro on a good has been sentenced to 15 years in jail it came after he unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty and admitted to all of the charges against him carol. nicolette

sia had been exposing corruption among political and business elite when she was killed in a car bomb attack in 2017. spot angry protests and ultimately led to the resignation of the country's prime minister 3 new suspects were arrested on choose day on suspicion of supplying a bomb that killed her. earlier i spoke to journalist keith mccullough fan multis capital walesa and i asked him if this murder case is now solved. will definitely not to work has been soft or partially sort of was due to have been putin to speak to who did the actual assignation but the question still beckons who was behind who was the mastermind behind this as the nations over there is one suspect one businessman who was suspected to be involved in they can keep banks in taking bribes but there are those who have been suspicions that politicians might be involved might be interesting tonight the prime minister interest press

conference saying that his was very happy with what happened in the sense that the rule of law is working and more than saying that somebody no has been jailed for 15 years but at the same time his room ones that there are no indications that the politicians are involved it did raise some eyebrows because to world you compilation of this into world court proceedings we heard very prominent people who were in those of was god's government who had close links to one of the suspects is businessman you were going to nic so yes did the case is definitely not closed. and that was journalist keith mccullough speaking to me a little bit earlier from capitol hill asap let's turn now to some of the other stories making news this hour. in ecuador say at least 70 people have died in riots in 3 all of the country's prisons in a statement on twitter president lenin merino blamed the riots on criminal organizations in gauged in civil tiniest acts of violence in several prisons jails

in ecuador vili overcrowded and often see violence between rival gangs. thousands have been protesting in the georgian capital tbilisi against the detention of the country's main opposition leader the demonstration began a few hours after police stormed the headquarters of the united national movement and detained. he faces charges of inciting violence during protests in 2019 1000000 denies all wrongdoing. astra zeneca will reportedly deliver less than half of the vaccines it promised the european union in the 2nd quarter of this year the drug maker is supposed to provide $180000000.00 doses to the e.u. by the end of june it is already missed its 1st quarter commitments jus to production issues. well the coronavirus pandemic has hospitals in portugal at the brink earlier this month germany sent health care workers and

equipment there a 2nd team from the german military has just arrived in lisbon to support intensive care units. john philip schultz filed this report. german soldiers sent into battle against covert 19 in portugal its capital city lispund it's an act of solidarity between 2 e.u. countries but as we discovered they are also a small part of a much bigger story of chinese investments that reach you're wrong the world this is what those german soldiers were probably expecting portugal's public health system is struggling to cope and your lens has lined up outside completely overwhelmed hospitals but this is where the soldiers are fighting the disease a 5 star private hospital versus the hospital lose its football legend christiane ronaldo came for an operation on this foot some years ago on its website the

hospital says it's proud to be continuing all of its normal services despite the pandemic those services cover a wide range from 10 such treatments to customer. not only that in its latest annual reports the hospital says it will continue to focus on profitability despite the pandemic hospital isn't providing the intensive care unit fun nothing the portuguese government is paying the operating company behind the hospital is in the hands of a chinese congress on the right we asked the health ministry representative who was paying for want there's an agreement we do private hospital yes to have patients here so you'll have to pay the price for money return or you can use the person just because we are using their services the hospital did not want to speak with us offering a statement instead. new sounded group considering the critical stage that portugal is going through does not intend to benefit financially from the situation but

above all to help the country chinese kong its own many companies in portugal a trend that where recently number of up service louis bardo us an investigative journalist found out that in the 1st 6 months of the pun demick the portuguese government paid to the loose i would group around $40000000.00 euros for covert 900 services it's interesting to see that these 3 biggest. companies 3 companies the most amount of money at all is the connection share. news was really at a key role. although of course is dormant and will depend i mean do you think this will increase europe's and in part a growth dependency on china i think the base asked europeans we should we should. they are just $26.00 military medics and from one european country to

another they work so if a new reality that reality is of you countries relying on a host of chinese companies as part of the for profit business. some other developments in the pandemic now and betty in better news for the united states vaccine supplies they should see in the coming weeks pfizer modena and johnson and johnson say they can provide enough vaccine to fully and not kill 8130000000 people by the end of march mexico has received its 1st shipment of russia's sputnik vivax aimed at senior citizens in mexico city's poorest communities will be the 1st to get the shots and form a chick president and coronavirus skeptic klaus has fallen ill with cove at 19 the czech republic has one of the highest per capita in fiction rights in the world.

wolf facebook says it will reinstate access to australian news pages in the coming days after reaching a compromise with the government facebook blocked the pages after lawmakers unveiled new legislation requiring take giants to pay news outlets for content social media companies have been fiercely opposed to the law they say it would create an international preceded similar legislation has been considered in other countries in the compromise a strategy will not penalize facebook if the company reaches some deals with local media this is what the government had to say or facebook has read friended strike. and australian news will be restored to the facebook platform. and facebook has committed to entering into good faith negotiations with the strain news media businesses seeking to reach agreements to pay for content ok

reporter. has been following this story so hard federica facebook. why did facebook make its use. so facebook resume negotiations with the australian government after it was promised that there would be amendments to the proposed code and now under these changes facebook will get more time to negotiate private deals with media companies also it will be allowed more freedom in terms of choosing which media companies to close deals with and the government said that if facebook and tech giant can prove that they are already contributing enough money to. journalism then they will be they can be exempted from from the law so as a result facebook decided to refrain and yes and it said it will now give access to news articles i get in the coming days now that

a lot of my friends in australia were very surprised when so i spoke suddenly blocked all of the news links. in their seeds what kind of impact. well i mean for us trillion media platforms it was quite a prompt as you said. one day last week without being able to open our to find articles or shared them so and of course that led to a decrease in traffic. and news a website and it just you know it's a confirmation of how dependent media has become on social networks to have to share their content but the move was also very risky for facebook itself there was a huge backlash in australia and internationally facebook was accused. acting undemocratically of bullying and also this comes at a time when if they can use that continues to prove itself for being a huge problem still and still trying to keep that under control so of course and

then also depriving users from a reliable news and information source is it just doesn't really help in that sense a sense either so it was a really good publicity for facebook but now that an agreement seems to have been reached we could also find ourselves in front of a new and more sustainable way of consuming news for the future that also other countries are looking at to report all to mention interesting something tells me this story isn't quite yet thank you said. reporter thank you. for germany are one of the favorites for next summer's the women's european championship in england and they currently warming up with a friendly mini tournament got off to a good start with the win over belgium on sunday and on wednesday they renew one of the sport's fiercest rivalries against the netherlands. winter is finally drawing

to an end and the german national team is starting to feel full of the joys of spring not told the school it could be here the players based in the u.k. and france have had to stay away because of pandemic restrictions. he says it's. a very happy with how things have gone this week we've had a lot of fun and enjoyed being on the pitch i hope will take this with us into the game. after the victory against belgium a tougher opponent to wait in the dutch but the coach isn't focused on short term results or local rivalries. it's not about a rivalry quite the opposite. i think there's many tournament is a good sign for others but we can play football again. some countries have had to cancel their games being come under not. in any case this is

a germany team full of confidence after an unbeaten qualifying campaign for next year's european championship. you know. we have the highest expectations of ourselves. our goal is to compete for the title in england you will give everything this year to develop as a team. by the end. of the pun demick isn't making those preparations easy but friendly tournaments like this week's are providing something of a test and those tests would come much tougher in the netherlands. finally now gulf legend tiger woods has undergone surgery from multiple lake injuries after being involved in a single car accident in los angeles saying he a winning the masters tournament in 201945 year old woods had to be pulled from his vehicle after the crash the s.u.v. sustained major damage after rolling over it's understood woods was the only person

in the vehicle at the time. and you're up to date here on t w sarah kelly will be back in 45 minutes with the news headlines coming up next hour documentary series explores the miracle of hearing there's more on the d.w. news out on d.w. dot com and on instagram and twitter too with d.w. news i'm gerri brady in berlin have a great day. can you hear me you know here's what we're going to do to you and how it all stands gemstone it's now going to bring you i'm going to back off and you've never. surprised himself with what is possible who is mad cool really want to move back and want. to talk to people who are on the way maurice and critics will join us

from apple's lock stock. yes yes i'm thinking of all those millions of people down there. and if arduous for have a hearing loss. here you us is a problem and the science can provide solutions. and here i am. here they don't know i exist but i'm working on a sense that. we are thinking always about care and the work we are doing alternately help some of these people. if i work and contribute to solving that problem to me personally it's extremely important to.

our sense of hearing enables us to experience the world around us through sound it also allows us to single out and focus on a particular sound even amid the cacophony of every day noise. sometimes we choose to shut out that every day noise. and sometimes we hear it whether we want to or not. our ears are the gateway to an extraordinary sense the sense of hearing. before they began building cities humans were closely connected to their natural surroundings our sense of hearing is like a radar that helps us explore our environment even when our bodies are at rest this radar picks up even the slightest sounds and localizes the direction they're coming

from. humans process information with their ears. atter and much faster than they do with their eyes. the ability to localize where each sound comes from plays an especially important role for people who are visually impaired and we need to move because my sense of hearing is what allows me to explore my surroundings because it keeps me safe and helps me connect with people. saluki being able to hear is wonderful and sometimes quite emotional especially when i hear certain sounds or listen to music. or in music. reports since i can see that i experience everything that others experience with their eyes through my ears or so consequently would do them on. his sense of hearing plays a crucial role in helping d.j.

rush navigate everyday life even in paris aloud and bustling city his ears let him scope his surroundings peter weir knows he said the magic secure mr meticulous it's almost magical. my sense of hearing ensures that i'm safe on the streets soundwave spread in a predictable pattern and can tell me for example if there is an obstacle to my rights from abortion which a car to my left or a person is coming up behind my hearing is an excellent tool that affords me autonomy it's like a miracle worker being able to hear let's me live my life you know. the ability to identify the location or origin of any detected sound gives people who are visually impaired cues that help them orient themselves and avoid obstacles . to your solo dial more i can hear water behind me it sounds

like it's coming out of a tap. someone is right behind me behind my right shoulder. i feel like there's a wall or a building nearby come. good gracious god is something else caused by to my right i don't want them used i can hear children playing clapping their hands they're behind me. visitors there are grown ups here too and from a woman to my right with a child. ok so no other one is upset there's an order. to look over there's something odd happening above me like a storm brewing grand laws or sounds directly above me does reach me as well it's also so i don't know what that is. masochist will both ammonia. has detected something that isn't even emitting sound the sound operator's boo

microphone directly above head and untrained ear would never have noticed that. at a relatively short distances we can detect the direction a sound is coming from with an accuracy of about 2 degrees to do that our brain calculates the difference in time it takes the sound to reach each ear and factors in fluctuations in volume and frequency caused by the shapes of our head and outer ear the pinna or oracle. sound waves enter the outer ear and travel through a narrow passage way the auditory can now this leads to the ear drum. hear the sound waves are picked up as vibrations and passed on to 3 tiny bones in the middle ear the 1st is the hammer which carries the vibrations on to the and us which in turn passes them to the stirrup. together these 3

ossicles convert the vibrations from the ear drum into amplified pressure waves that they pass forward to the inner ear or coakley or this is the spiral shaped cavity in the bony labyrinth. the motion of the bones causes the fluid and membrane inside the coakley to move along the entire length of its spiral shape. depending on the frequency and volume of the incoming sound this causes the hair cells in certain areas of the coakley to bend. the bent terrorist cells then generate a nerve impulse these stimuli are transmitted to the brain and interpreted as sound . researchers are learning more and more about how we hear it all but that it's

a photon so shallow i've been researching how hearing works for about 20 years i wish and every single day i'm still astonished by how little we know even if your business. if you can toss and buy health untasted what we do know is our ears are highly sophisticated in terms of sensitivity and temporal position in the simplest . quantum so in the fun side you really don't encounter that anywhere else in our nervous system in offices to think of them the topic of of my job is going to mean going to the major leagues and doctors and researchers at a number of institutes in gutting and are focusing on various aspects of hearing me in this many different building we get a portion of the response where their findings are used to help develop new medical applications and therapies here on campus certainly for the field where you basically check ins in the field.

but so far research has not found a way to make music fully accessible to people with hearing impairments even though they can learn to understand speech. at the inner ear lab at the university medical center in gottingen researchers are trying out a new approach they're working on an implant that digitally converts sound into light. and transmits the impulses directly into the coils of the cochlear this should allow for a high quality perception of language sounds and even music. by botanists fighting or. there are 2 conditions for being able to hear with like 1st we need to be able to install light switches and these nerve cells in the kettle and then we have to insert a chain of light sources into the coakley to stimulate these light sensitive nerve itself from just a 1000000. a person who is profoundly deaf or

a severely hard of hearing can already use a coakley or implant or c.i. then wires directly stimulate the auditory nerve with electrical impulses. these signals generated by the implant are sent by way of the auditory nerve to the brain which recognizes the signals as sound. these days fitting a c.i. is a straightforward procedure how well they work varies from person to person and if pushed up any cuts money explains why is. unfair i don't find the pain hard of hearing when i was about 3 years old or and of eventually hearing aids weren't enough for this there anymore when i was pretty much deaf at least in one ear and talk so i decided to get an implant even though i never wanted one before and often she'd know police. stephanie cuts man uses a hearing aid in one ear and

a coakley or implant in the other with the consent is there a difference. of moral it really does is amplify the hairy ability i still have left on this side any sound i hear is artificially generated technician i would never have imagined our brains could mesh what we hear in each together so well i can't tell a difference. what i hear completely normal and it's incredible the. expected a computer generated until sounds of the computer place john i'm quite impressed. to chicago. this week too. this is how a co clear implant sounds the user can recognise speech quite well picking up music works last well. this is how music sounds

as a select to chicago that have kind of thought points of tar these days a cochlear implant can deliver 8 to 10 channel should the implant might in fact offer 20 to 24 channels it's funny but only $8.00 to $10.00 are practical for the user know that limits the range of creek once the resolution available it's like playing piano with your 4. club you. as a strawman see you in 4 picture the coakley like a spiral staircase along spiral staircase with 2000 steps and one of us who can view the need usually we can tell the steps apart but the coke clear implant stimulates the nerve cells in a way that activates an entire flight of steps at once as much as you're going to upset surprise on the stimuli generated extend so far into the coakley as fluence has no go it would be akin to trying to play the piano with your face or your entire for a few to toss you head many keys at once life is easier to spatially confinement is

bad brings us closer to a more natural hearing experience the true the children in our stair example it's like skipping fewer steps but there's a finer pitch resolution. i mean you think illustrates the difference this is how you hands a bass chant bass sounds with an 8 channel c.i. i barely more than a strange with them i. am using light signals to stimulate the inner ear improves intelligibility and allows listeners to enjoy the music in many more facets i am. but before nerve cells can respond to light impulses they have to be genetically

altered to be light sensitive. opto genetics is a relatively new field of research its approach to controlling neurons with light is the basis for l.-e. d. based coakley or implants. high resolution imaging renders the auditory hair cells and their sign abscess visible. these hair cells are critical. they collect sound information and relay it to the brain through the auditory nerve. how many we have greatly determines how well we hear. these affair going to be interesting and it's very we develop the coloration technique here in getting and that is now used all over the world all use it allows us to count sign up says and the results are astounding in that there are 80 year olds who have just one sign

ups left printer harris out soon for a year when we lose auditory hair cells dog will 1st notice a decline in understanding a speech should 1st only later well we noticed poor performance and a hearing test at some point in our hair cells start to deteriorate across the entire frequency range of the coakley that's what we call a dead region where sound is no longer being encoded dalt with god can china could get. the function of hair cells is to convert the mechanical waves they pick up into nerve signals. if only a patchwork of hair cells remain our hearing becomes limited. there are some 20000 hair cells in the inner ear. but only $3600.00 of them are responsible for converting and transmitting most of the signals received they're the ones doing the heavy lifting. but persistent noise or noise that is too loud

can damage the hair cells beyond repair this damage is often irreversible. once a hair cell loses its functionality it can't be reactivated. 3600 hair cells is a finite number. if they stop working our inner ear looses the ability to hear. this can happen as a result of acoustic trauma or of gradual hearing loss which affects a growing number of people. could restoring the sign absence between hair cells and nerve cells restore someone's sense of hearing. this is what professor charles mckenna researches at the university of southern california. i have

a feeling that hearing loss is associated with all the people of their uncle their grandfather saying you know speak up please i can't hear you there may be a lack of realization that this is a process that can be get very young in especially if you're being exposed to very loud sounds for example devices placed in your play music that is too loud. and there's got damage which accumulates over time. hearing loss is very gradual it doesn't like to wake up the day after a big music concert where the music was extremely loud you deaf. it is insidious it is taking place. there is slowly and in perceptively if you will it's a little bit like protecting yourself from the sun you know you have to wear sunscreen but if you don't wear it a particular day you don't get student cancer the next week it's something that

slow and insidious according to the world health organization over 450000000 people worldwide suffer disabling hearing loss they can no longer hear a clock ticking the figure includes 34000000 children and young people a solution to the problem is urgent. charles mckenna and his colleagues are looking for a method to reverse hearing loss caused by nonfunctioning hair so it's. almost all adults will experience age related hearing loss the older they get the harder it becomes to detect higher frequencies. young people on the other hand have no problem with that sounds. good anyway it's a real job where you can hear it and i hear it so.

you're at it but if i. was 10 or so. the. gradual loss of hearing often goes undiagnosed for some time even though it affects a person's everyday life and their social life. well i can think about for example my own father who passed the age of about 60 years started to have noticeable hearing loss he had to use a hearing aid. and. i was really struck by the way he began to feel isolated even within our own family because of difficulties in communication and he started to complain that people don't speak up or in a restaurant why are people talking so loud you can talk to my mom i also saw in the progression how it gets worse and worse the hearing ability declines and the

impact therefore grows on on the person. it's easy to distinguish the effects of hearing loss in a noisy environment. when we converse our brains filter speech out of the surrounding sounds to understand speech the brain needs to detect the higher frequencies that set speech apart from other sounds for young people and people whose hearing is fully intact this is easy. but older people start to lose the ability to hear high pitched sounds and struggle to filter speech out of background noise. all they can hear is a muffled hum conversing becomes increasingly challenging they need people to speak up. children have no problems filtering speech out of a wall of sound. this is

roughly how conversation sounds to someone with age related hearing loss. and this is how it sounds to a child or teenager yes. you claim that there was a lot of push me out on julian that i don't want to. stop the research on the. young people here a wider frequency range children in particular are good at filtering speech out of ambient noise the alarmed by the prospect of hearing loss to students in miami florida have decided to do what they could to prevent it. i been music my entire life i did choir and then i was the vocalist for the jazz band at my high school i i realized since i was young 14 that it could affect me at

such a young age and i really had no idea and i was a little worried too as a musician. kelly cole hain and ben manley were still at school when they joined a nonprofit organization that raises awareness for hearing loss. in online videos aimed at young people kelly talks about ways they risk damaging their hearing. after learning about. the issue about how widespread it is and how it's a global health topic it really changed my behavior i didn't necessarily limit how much i was involved in music and stuff like that i just changed my approach to it and i'm just much more cautious now about how you know how much exposure i'm getting but few young people are likely to take similar precautions even when they know the risks i mean for a lot of people especially young people appeal to

a loud noise just so it's so big that like it's so fun to put in your headphones or just to last at full volume it's so fun to put your speakers on in your room and the last a full volume or go to a party and stand right next to speakers and feel the bass in your chair feel the vibrations it's fun and that's why a lot of people do it. people just have to realize the tradeoff of short term pleasure versus long term pleasure yeah if you have a lot of the short term pleasure of loud noises everywhere in your headphones and at parties and events then you're going to miss out on the long term pleasure of just even being able to hear in general later in life. loud music is one of the main causes of hearing loss. but that doesn't stop most of us from enjoying it. we just encourage people to

be more cautious about how loud the sound is and take notice when it is too loud. we want people to grow up knowing that protecting their hearing is important we want to be normal and and cool i have. ear plugs that fit right on my key chain and i bring those everywhere with me and if it's too loud i pop in and really people don't notice that they're in your ear unless they're actually looking for it these are great because they. they filter out high frequency sound and allow you to still hear everything so have conversations with people and it just you can hear things better. hearing is the ability to perceive sounds but what it gives us goes far beyond that. this principle combined with his own experience gave d.d. rushed the idea for his business. about children are now dog dining allows people to rediscover their other senses in this setting the sense of hearing becomes

something almost magical you know the guest spend a couple of hours talking to a stranger they can't see it creates an instant bond like our hearing allows us to intimately connect with the people around us you went to a world of emotion of laughter and can picture what your environment and the people around you might look like it's funny when people leave the restaurant and actually see each other then they greet each other as if for the 1st time even though they've just spent the last 2 hours chatting. with the guests are greeted by blind waiters who lead them into a dining area that is pitch black out. there they must rely on their hearing to orient themselves and communicate with the other diners most of. them as we film here we too can only rely on our ears and the power of our imaginations. on.

any sort of mess. so when the guests leave the restaurant they notice a heightened sense of hearing smell and touch. it's as though taking away their ability to see rewired and enhance their other senses. this is the 1st time they can actually see what they. 8 wants to know when i got the feeling that my other senses were more intense partly because the ambient noise was somehow different. from when you enter a dark question not the 1st thing you hear with the other guests complicity that from the start of speaking quietly then at the end when you leave everyone is speaking really loudly the atmosphere is great your senses feel alternate you focus on the person you're speaking to much more i had never really thought about the

importance of hearing. this experience gave us a whole new perspective so it was very interesting that we noticed things we wouldn't normally notice it was a battle for the. researchers in getting in hope the opto genetic code clearer implants will help people with hearing impairments distinguish a wider variety of sounds. hues algae proteins to render nerve cells light sensitive. 101 kind of hearts or heart. even if you've lost your hair cells you still have the corresponding nerve cells is and you can be in flats where we use a viral vector to position the light switch. along the nerve fibers and then the cell bodies and then when the light from the coakley or implant hits him it

triggers the light switch and stimulates the nerves are when it's just it's often ultimately we bypassed the degraded hair cells and their sign up says and activate the nerve cell directly. defect and afghans are. genetically reprogramming cells in the coakley is a bio chem. nickel process that is still being clinically tested it's not ready for human trials the stall is as good. at say the great part is it works very well with these we can see that the l e d's provide an improved resolution it in connecticut slits are in experiments with rodents and we recently showed that there was no difference between a hearing with a light here and acoustic hearing and soft and medium sound ranges which is the size of the skin also it's just as good which in the next few months we'll be able

to quantify this advantage was in the next. year. at the getting an institute studies of monkeys are helping scientists refine and optimize optical see isaac h. one particular species are the closest proxy researchers have to the human brain when it comes to hearing and speech. right side so we are in vice the snuffing this is an exact line of work with marmosets which are very small monkeys that way around 400 grams also there are about the same size as oral sores and her 4 perfect animals to experiment with in my field of auditory research because they operate with an unusually broad vocal repertoire in a social context when it's in short they communicate with sounds which is of course very interesting for auditory researchers and scientists.

in one experiment with marmosets a monkey is led to believe that another is calling out the sounds are gradually modified to resemble the quality of a coke clear implant so the researchers can determine at what point they become unintelligible. what's interesting about this experiment is that the same boucle ization sounds are usually used by both animals commune. cadence for us in the wild animals can end up separated from the group but when that happens when they're a bit far from the group say forging for food on another tree it's going to be vocalized with long distance contact calls so called the costs if you know them if you can hear them very clearly the call is answered with a b. call and this form of vocal interaction occurs when the monkeys can't see one another so i can take advantage of that and replace one of the monkeys with a computer simulated call then i can modify the call to explore the effects of

a cochlear implant with various channels. will the same vocalization still occur on the monkey keep responding with the be called. with their special communication skills marmosets could provide researchers with the key to a new form of hearing in humans venice and southeast killings. we hope to demonstrate the viability of an obstacle cochlear implant that is to show that it can function significantly better than an electrical cochlear implants people food and this would be of its best improvement for patients we could then not only improve auditorium freshens but also bring about a fundamental improvement of the overall hearing experience thought that such a challenging and very exciting prospect. it will take another few years of research and testing before the 1st patients can be fitted with optical coakley or implants. the researchers at the institute in

getting in are trying a number of different approaches. one group is investigating ways to help people here again without any technical ends. soon as you know this sensory cell in the in a uses a very unusual mechanism with very unusual molecules to transmit signals to the nerve cell for it's very different compared to the sign ups in the brain that we have a pretty good idea of which proteins are used to signal transmission can be in the in a way less familiar with the molecules that play a role in this but we know that one of them is a tofurkey in a very large protein we know that if it's not then no signals are transmitted from the sensory cells to the near arms in previous studies we established that low levels of otoh fairlane in the membrane are enough to cause deafness in a member. of the researchers have identified

a form of deafness related to a patient's physical state a sort of on off deafness. if the president. there are patients who have more or less normal hearing a normal body temperatures they might have a little trouble understanding speech but interestingly when they have a fever a temperature of 38 degrees or above they're almost completely deaf and when we looked into this and found that this oto furlan protein is so temperature sensitive that at a high temperature it completely disappears from the plasma membrane and. based on these findings researchers have developed an approach that allows them to fully restore hearing now manage how many used a line of deaf mice who lacked the genes for otay ferland in other words they were to further and efficient with the help of 2 viruses we succeeded in reintroducing the gene that in codes it into the sensory cells yes we were able to at least

partially restore hearing in these mice and the next step is to do the same with humans 1st we have to find soon our approach and improve the level of hearing we can restore its of course it's human but we hope to be able to offer gene therapy to people who have been related deafness on this but allow them to hear much better than with an electrical or optical cochlear implant and. hearing compliments what we see it completes the world we experience. in that complex of our senses hearing is a dimension of its own. it gives us our spatial awareness. lets us feel distance and intensity. in evolutionary terms our hearing is attuned to the sounds of nature. we can detect even the slightest noises

from far away. animals can hear even better than humans for humans the sounds of nature are associated primarily with rest and relaxation. and less with hunting and personal protection. for humans today other aspects of hearing play a more important role. charles mckenna's research aims to ensure people will continue to be able to hear well as they age despite damaging environmental influences. he's collaborating with harvard medical school in boston and researching the bone of the cochlea as a docking point for drugs that can cure hearing impairment. we have been working

on the bone velcro concept in this really is a way to create images for diagnosis of diseases of the ball and and so we had created an imaging probe that delivers a fluorescent imaging agent to a ball. originally intended to identify bone damage and asked you know perot's this the substance was shown to work here perfectly to the bone structure of the coakley. we tried and we saw the compounds can beautifully imaged the cochlea similar bone structure of the year that's where we begin to think if the bisphosphonate can reach the structure why not give it a cargo a drug to carry into the structure so that that drug could work in the structure and their drugs already existing that have promise for curing diseases of the year

that have a delivery problem you can't keep them in this cochlear structure and so the idea of the bond is if you can get the drug into the interior of the cochlea it stays there and how to get it to stay there you encourage to the ball. until now the fluid exchange that takes place in the coakley meant that substances couldn't get here there and be effective. at harvard medical school in boston researchers are working on substances that should be able to reverse hearing impairment and hearing loss in the coakley. we. knew about such a drug and they said you know is there a way to take your bones all crow and combine it with this drug and so we thought about it and we said yes we can do it.

the challenge for the bio chemists lies in anchoring the substances to restore hearing in the bone without causing complications or i think what we're aiming for is a drug or a complete delivered to the year to the inner ear and in the ideal case a single dose would be effective but it might be several of those this is something we don't know yet the dosage that dosing regimen itself or the. lengthy testing and approval process is mean it will be years before a drug can be marketed. purslane that's really i'm very confident. but i'm also a realist as a scientist you objective you know the statistics on the other hand. you you have

to feel confident that you can beat these statistics otherwise why would you attempt this endeavor in the 1st place. los angeles alone is home to millions of people who would benefit from such a medicine. and there's no question given the obvious need we're talking about a simple substantial percentage of people around the world. world's population is what 7 or 8000000000 people a significant percentage of those persons have hearing disability of various degrees and so naturally. they have hope that someone perhaps us perhaps another group will come up with a drug help them. our hearing has to be able to withstand the demands of everyday life it helps us orient ourselves and sometimes it lets us shut out the

world. hearing is one way to maintain social contact it's a source of pleasure. most people hardly notice how their hearing slowly changes how their ability to hear and therefore communicate with others fades over time. to some extent our sense of sight can compensate for hearing loss. but nothing can replace the wonder of hearing. the world is moving in the right direction the world is moving towards caring about hearing much more and again it hasn't even been a problem for that long and there are so many different problems that have existed since like since the dawn of man it's l.a. all the like heart problems and just like all these general health conditions and site but it's

a loud noises really like like continuous exposure to loud noises really only blew up in the sense like the industrial revolution so it's only been in the last like let's say 150 years that people start to be exposed like on a daily basis to noises that will really damage your hearing. if it is astonishing i'm amazed by how much information exchanged through hank waged through here and i'm mostly fascinated by how closely hearing is linked to emotions that is when i hear music the time a while and like very much just thinking about it gives me goosebumps all brings tears to my eyes no other sense can do that not even the sense of sight which also allows us to absorb information what i see doesn't touch me as deeply as what i hear it's not. just that in consume talk. undies and contract students which means in the so all day long we are transmitting information at crazy speeds from contact points between the sensory cells and the auditory nerve

is enough as a thing the sign ups is released messenger substances all day long and the whole thing happens with a temporal precision of less than a millisecond i think and let's assume one ton of it is called the pursuit of food and all this has been developed from proteins and ions on the like here this it's fascinating that is that sage i've got no fuss and. buskers who comes home to some. new kind of well. even if i were to lose my hearing i would be very depressed who goes deep. it would probably be the end of my social life will be informative you know if i ever lost my hearing with this i would probably wonder if life was still with me to tell the user post letters from continual suppose. you know everything begins with the discovery. to have made this kind of discovery

together with my colleagues. is enormously satisfying. this is really what inspires our work because we are thinking always about care and the work we are doing ultimately help some of these people. conditions is stifling kurdistan's capital is such a small and the reason outdated coolie. residents and activists are fighting back against the air pollution but within the government their demands are falling on deaf ears in most of the. global 3000.

and 30 minutes on d w. a i value meal and i'm game fishing those that 17 trillion left of them are killed worldwide each year but it's not just the animals of all suffering the school environment if you want to know how it went to lift off the priest i'm a huntress changed us as we think is listen to our podcast on the dream fence. frank food. international gateway to the best. road and trail. located in the heart of europe you are connected to the whole world. experience outstanding shopping and dining offers triallists services. biala gassed at

frankfurt airport city managed by from. such. is the w. news live from berlin a historic verdict is due in the world's 1st court case over state sponsored torture in syria a former secret service agents is on trial for his role in repressing and assad's regime protests 10 years ago victims and their relatives hoped that the trial was set a precedent.