While statistics indicate that more than 25 million Americans are afflicted with hearing impairment, with at least 90% treatable with a hearing aid, only 20% of the people who receive hearing aids actually wear them. Although strides have been made in improving fit, users have found them wanting in function, saying they deliver less than the natural sound they advertise. The Natura hearing aid from Sonic Innovations, Salt Lake City, UT, was designed with digital sound processing technology, including a new algorithm for processing audio signals. As a result, Natura treats hearing loss as a multifaceted impairment requiring evaluation and control across and within multiple sound levels and frequencies. Sound is processed in near-real time -- the manufacturer states it's 50%-90% faster than traditional units. With more than twice as many individually adjustable channels for audio processing than other hearing aids, sounds within each half-octave frequency range can be heard clearly and in correct contrast to sounds on the other channels. Professional audiologists can program the Natura during the patient's fitting, using a softwarepackage that plugs into a 3Com PalmPilot. The program presents "slide controls," as on a stereo equalizer, that correspondingly make adjustments in each half-octave frequency range, as well as customizing for indoor or outdoor use. Circle 400.

From the Darwin School of Electronic Products -- while PCs await the next stage in their evolution (which will be the Pentium III, pushing processing rates over the 500 MHz mark), a new digital imaging camera for the consumer market from Ricoh Corporation, Sparks, NV, indicates the progress these products have made in their brief existence. The RDC-5000 carries 8MB of on-board memory, about the maximum that came in a PC's hard drive 10 years ago, and can lay 32MB of additional data on a SmartMedia memory card. Data can be transferred between on-board memory and the SmartMedia card, and the camera also has a USB port, turning the camera into an external disk drive for downloading images to a computer through a simple click-and-drag process. Highest resolution with the camera is 1792 x 1200 pixels, which will provide detailed 8 x 10 prints from a standard computer printer. The camera can also generate images in 896 x 600 and 640 x 480 pixel resolution, the latter ideal for online applications. Images are captured in JPEG format, with three compression modes affecting levels of detail and the quantity of stored images. Besides a 2.3x zoom lens with a 1.6-inch macro built-in, the camera offers time lapse and continuous shooting capabilities and date imprinting. Circle 401.