Students outraged after Australian university made six kittens deaf for a year before killing them for cochlear implant research.
VICTORIA, Australia -- Australian universities are under fire for using cruel animal testing practices as part of various medical and scientific studies.
But one Deakin University student is calling on the prestigious institutions to end their cruel practices.
Alexandra Sedgwick, 24, has kickstarted a campaign against her own university after she suspected Deakin to be using fetal pigs cut from the bodies of pregnant mothers in scientific studies.
Ms Sedgwick organised a meeting on Friday morning with the Dean of the faculty of science, engineering and built environment, to put her case against the university's current animal testing policy.
To activate this feature, press the "CC" button.
But the vegan activist said her message was difficult to get across as she was refused any support in the meeting.
'It was an intense experience. I had requested to bring in people as support which the Dean didn't allow,' Ms Sedgwick told Daily Mail Australia.
Ms Sedgwick said the university branded her view as 'unique' and unsupported as she was not allowed to bring in her support team.
Other Australian universities also use cruel animal testing practices for scientific and educational purposes.
The University of Melbourne made six kittens Deaf before killing them as part of a medical study with the Bionics Institute while Monash University made eight healthy baby monkeys brain dead as part of a brain injury study, Fairfax Media reported.
Despite Ms Sedgwick's efforts, the Dean stood by his position that animal tissue was more effective in scientific studies than non-animal alternatives, and insisted they had already adopted a cruelty-free stance.
'If they were a cruelty-free university, why wouldn't they agree to stop using animals? It doesn't make sense to say we have all these animals but then say we're not going agreeing to stop,' Ms Sedgwick said.
'For me this was never about Deakin, it was about Victorian universities and institutions and I had hoped Deakin would be the first to change,' she said.
She acknowledged the difficulty of being up against a big organisation with extensive resources but hopes to further expose animal cruelty in science through her social media accounts and by connecting with like-minded people.
'I've had hundreds of people contact me and hopefully they will be willing to tell their stories.
'I hope to connect with Victorians, students, researchers and interns who are brave enough to tell the truth about this, as universities are all quite secretive especially in the research department,' she said.
Over 900,000 animals are killed for scientific purposes in Victoria alone, which has been increasing every year for the past 10 years according to the most recent data from 2014.
Ms Sedgwick said this does not include animal organs purchased from slaughterhouses.
While she described the mood as 'devastating', Ms Sedgwick said she will not stop pursuing the issue and urges all students not to participate in dissection.
Trevor Day, Deakin's executive dean of the faculty of science, engineering and built environment, told Fairfax Media that there was 'very limited use of live animals in teaching and training.'
According to the researchers, the cascading impact of hearing loss on access to school communication.
Fragmented Hearing, Effort, Listening, Comprehension, Fatigue and Pace of Learning. Hearing Loss is invisible. Someone observing a student with hearing loss may believe that he or she has an attention problem or a learning disability as hearing loss can also impact perceiving, language processing, processing speed, memory and attention. Unlike ADHD or LD, learning issues caused by hearing loss are not due to a disorder (an issue with brain processes). Instead the learning issues are secondary to delays because the child has incomplete access to speech occurring around him or her, especially soft speech or completely understanding someone talking from a distance further than 3-6 feet.
Fragmented Hearing: Our educational system is based on the assumption that students in the classroom will perceive, and therefore understand, all of what the teacher is saying. When much information received in school is fragmented because of hearing loss, learning consequences are likely. Even with the latest hearing technology, normal hearing ability is not restored by hearing devices. Even aided thresholds of 20 dB HL will cause soft speech, high pitch speech sounds and unemphasized brief words to be undetected or too quiet to process.
It is not unusual for children with hearing loss to have a 20% ‘listening gap’ as compared to class peers who may miss only 5% of information 1. The image shows a story about Fran the frog who has a sore throat. As you can see, comprehending the meaning of the story is impacted when 20% of the information missing. Even if a child is able to perform well in a quiet setting using hearing devices, a classroom setting is typically noisy, with fast-paced peer-to-peer conversations and teachers that move about the classroom, causing significant listening challenges. These conditions typically result in barriers to access.
Increased Effort: Effort refers to the exertion of physical or mental power. Listening effort refers to the attention necessary to understand speech. Ease of listening is the perceive difficulty of the listening situation by the listener. Even low noise in the environment will interact with the fragmented hearing to interfere with their speech understanding. Children with hearing loss work harder than their peers to listen leaving fewer cognitive resources to understand speech in the classroom as compared to class peers.
CSS Movies presents "Alone In A Hearing World" shows true to life scenarios of a young Deaf boy growing up in a hearing world. With family members who can't communicate and continuous misunderstandings by his teachers and coaches, he is forced to live in a world of isolation. However, when he pleas for his Mothers understanding and falls short, he ends up in the only place he seems to find acceptance.
It has been assumed that speechreading will help children to compensate for what is missed due to fragmented hearing. Research results make it clear that speechreading (lipreading) help children to compensate for what was missed...read more: http://successforkidswithhearingloss.com/pdf.
WATCH [CC] - "Have We Cured Deafness?" Research being studied on the ASL and CI users at the University of Washington.
SEATTLE -- Like much of America, I was raised having minimal to no interactions with the Deaf community and I didn’t give it a second thought. That is, until I took two years of American Sign Language (ASL) in high school and a full year of ASL at the University of Washington. While completing these classes, I discovered that there is a very strong and rich sense of community within Deaf Culture.
Over the years, I have found myself troubled by how a group of people so large (approximately 1 in 20 people are Deaf or Hard of Hearing) could play such a minor role in America with stereotypes continuously dampening their career aspects. When the opportunity presented itself to create a video aimed to educate hearing people about the Deaf person’s inequality, I took it.
I created the “Have We Cured Deafness?” video as part of a class project within my Master’s program (Communication Leadership) at the University of Washington. I designed this three-minute video to both set the stage for and be the first of a series that will further break down stereotypes that plague the Deaf community.
I hope you not only take the time to watch “Have We Cured Deafness?” but that you also do the due diligence of looking into Deaf culture and how we can improve our systems to better include these amazing people. As stated in the video, I recommend StartASL.com to learn more about Deaf culture.
Director - Jacob Christensen.
Filming Assistant - Leigh Burmesch.
What is it like to be the sibling of a Deaf child in the family? What can I do as a parent to help them? A set of research information and advice from siblings of Deaf children growing up.
Experiences of Siblings of Deaf Children - Full Documentary with Captions.
Crab Theory in Deaf Community and Gallaudet University.
The "Crab Theory" is used in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community as a metaphor to describe the tendency of some Deaf people to criticize or put down the successes or achievements of other Deaf people.
It may take several different forms: malicious and negative gossip, grudges, social rejection, etc., and is directed against Deaf community leaders, successful Deaf business entrepreneurs or educational administrators, Deaf individuals who go to college while their Deaf peers never get beyond high school, Deaf people who "don't act Deaf enough", even ordinary Deaf individuals who do such positive things as buying a new car or marrying a good person.
The analogy is to a bucket of live crabs: whenever one crab attempts to escape the bucket by climbing out of it, the others reach up and pull it back down. The result, of course, is that no crab succeeds in escaping the bucket. Other groups, especially other minority groups, also use the "crab theory" to describe similar negativity within their own communities, but the "crab theory" is probably more widely mentioned and discussed within the Deaf community than in any other group.
This brief paper cannot attempt an analysis of the sometimes-complex psychological reasons for the practice of the "crab theory". However, certain common elements that tend to contribute to this phenomenon can be identified in the Deaf community.
Jealousy is often involved, of course: one Deaf person sees another Deaf person become successful while s/he still is not, so the first Deaf person tries to minimize feelings of "inferiority" by putting down the other Deaf person's success.
This likely arises out of the low self-esteem frequently seen among Deaf people, often brought on from low expectations set for them by hearing parents and hearing educators, as well as from oppression by those same hearing persons (see related Deaf FAQ on Audism).
This attitude by hearing authorities and parents that "Deaf people can't" gets internalized by many Deaf persons during their formative years and carries into adulthood. Self-oppression and internecine strife is a common result of low self-esteem in the Deaf community. To learn more about crab theory in the Deaf community - Read The Full Story.
Professor Marc Marschark, Editor Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education helps Oxford University Press to changing research of Deaf education in the United States.
ROCHESTER, New York -- Marc Marschark, Ph.D., is a Professor at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology, Editor of the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, reflects on how a partnership with Oxford University Press has helped the journal to fundamentally change research in the field of Deaf studies, language, and education.
Professor Marschark is the founding Editor of the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education and Series Editor for Perspectives on Deafness , both published by Oxford University Press.
Professor Marc Marschark's primary research and teaching interests focus on language and cognition among Deaf and Hearing Adults; interactions of language, cognitive, and social development of Deaf children; and links between cognitive processes (e.g., memory, problem solving) and literacy among Deaf students. He is now developing a research program concerning several aspects of sign language interpreting.
Microsoft uses Kinect to interpret sign language, should the team's efforts reach commercialization, it could have a big effect on the world's Deaf population.
Microsoft’s Kinect technology, already adept at reading hand and body movements, is incorporating sign language into its motion-sensing vocabulary as part of a new research project meant to help the Deaf. Developers at Microsoft Research have been using the Xbox 360 gaming peripheral to read sign language from Deaf users, and translate it into spoken text.
To activate this feature, press the "CC" button.
On Wednesday, they showed off some of the results. “Thanks Microsoft for turning my dream into a reality,” gestured Yin Dandan, a Deaf student, who demonstrated the Kinect translator.
The technology can not only turn sign language into words spoken by a computer, but also do the reverse. A non-Deaf user can speak or type words into the Kinect translator. The system will then motion the words in sign language using a virtual avatar shown on a display.
Microsoft Research demonstrated the technology as it celebrated the 15th year of its Asia division. language translation has been among one of its focuses and already researchers there have developed software that can artificially replicate a person’s voice, and have it speak other languages, including Chinese.
At the same time, the company has been promoting the use of Kinect among software developers in China, said Wu Guobin, a Microsoft Research program manager. The gadget has proven to be an ideal motion-sensing device for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has long been researching sign language recognition technology... Read The Full Story.
Do not make the work of Deaf YouVideo content look like your own. Give credit where it is due and requires that articles be based on reliable published sources.
Deaf News: Michael W. Hubbs announced that he was hositpalized by stress symptoms. SALT LAKE CITY, Utah -- Michael (Mike) Hubbs of short...
That Deaf Guy Comic
About This Site
Deaf YouVideo is public web site and a free assessment for everyone. A public web site is a web site that you can use to have a presence on the internet. It is a public facing site to attract customers and partners, and it usually includes increase traffic. Feel free to exploring the online community - Deaf, Hearing-Impairment, Hearing-Loss, Sign Language, News, Events, Societies, Resources, Links, Videos, Vloggers and much more. Be sure to Bookmarks this website.
Submitted content, to whom it may concern of posting on this site: YouPrivacy
Videos and Channels Powered By YouTube
RSS Feed Content
Deaf YouVideo provided byYouTube, Blogger, Google Feedburner, RSS Feed are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content as well beyond just visitors using browsers. The feed icon feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader vlogs or blogs and etc. Submitted content and/or disabled by request consume content and will be immediately removed from Deaf YouVideo. If you see the content appears "error, blank, and feed not support", click home or refresh your browsers.
