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The Hearing in Daily Life (HearDL) app was developed for the everyday assessment of listening situations of bimodally fitted patients (cochlear implant (CI) on one side and hearing aid (HA) on the other). In addition, the data obtained can be used to provide user-centered guidance for (bimodal) hearing instrument fitting. The data collection of the app includes four areas: measurements of general satisfaction (quality of life and functional aspects) using CI guideline-compliant questionnaire procedures, adaptive measurement of listening effort as a tested, mobile version of ACALES (Adaptive CAtegorical Listening Effort Scaling), a new procedure for assessing individually significant everyday situations (Ecological Momentary Assessment, EMA), and two assessment tools (Voting Tool, VT) for A/B comparison of features/settings of the hearing instruments and for comparing HA and CI. In addition to the app, a dashboard was developed as a separate PC software for audiologists and hearing care professionals, in which a study planner including appointment entries and reminders for patients is integrated. The bidirectional data transfer between the app and the dashboard is wired. The HearDL app and dashboard are available as fully functional, technically mature and tested research versions in English and German for the operating system Android. The app can be used for research purposes, for clinical routine and for monitoring the success of rehabilitation measures as a tool for paperless and flexible data collection including a content management system for questionnaires and tasks., Die App Hearing in Daily Life (HearDL) wurde für die alltagsnahe Bewertung von Hörsituationen von bimodal versorgten Patienten (Cochlea-Implantat (CI) auf der einen und Hörgerät (HG) auf der anderen Seite) entwickelt. Zusätzlich können die gewonnenen Daten genutzt werden, um nutzerzentrierte Hinweise für die (bimodale) Anpassung der Hörsysteme zu gewinnen. Die Datenerhebung der App umfasst vier Bereiche: Messungen der generellen Zufriedenheit (Lebensqualität und funktionale Aspekte) mittels CI-Leitlinien-konformen Fragebogenverfahren, die adaptive Messung der Höranstrengung als geprüfte, mobile Version von ACALES (Adaptive CAtegorical Listening Effort Scaling), ein neues Verfahren zur Bewertung von individuell bedeutsamen Alltagssituationen (Ecological Momentary Assessment, EMA) sowie zwei Bewertungs-Tools (Voting Tool, VT) für den A/B-Vergleich von Features/Einstellungen der Hörsysteme und zum Vergleich HG und CI. Zusätzlich zur App wurde ein Dashboard als separate PC-Software für Audiologen und Hörakustiker entwickelt, in welcher ein Studienplaner inkl. Termineingaben und -erinnerungen für die Patienten integriert ist. Der bidirektionale Datentransfer zwischen App und Dashboard erfolgt kabelgebunden. Die HearDL-App und das Dashboard liegen als voll funktionsfähige, technisch ausgereifte und geprüfte Forschungsversionen in Englisch und Deutsch für das Betriebssystem Android vor. Die App kann für Forschungszwecke, für die klinische Routine und zur Erfolgskontrolle von Rehabilitationsmaßnahmen als Tool zur papierlosen und flexiblen Datenerfassung inkl. eines Content-Management-Systems für Fragebögen und Aufgaben eingesetzt werden.

A combined experimental (optical and electro-optical absorption measurements) and computational (ab initio RHF and DFT) approach has been used to investigate the molecular low- and high-Tg photorefractive (PR) performances of neutral and zwitterionic heteroaromatic dipolar chromophores in terms of structural and solvent-polarity effects. We have found that the nature of the building units (donor, acceptor, and spacer) and the polarity of the surrounding medium strongly affect all the relevant ground-state and nonlinear optical properties involved in the PR activity, that is, the dipole moment, the polarizability anisotropy, and first hyperpolarizability of the electronic ground-state. The variation of these properties is in turn transferred to molecular low- and high-Tg PR figures of merit. It is shown that PR molecular performance not only relies on a proper choice of structural components but varies by orders of magnitude as a function of the medium polarity, and this suggests that a combination of molecular design and host-matrix engineering is required for optimized performances of PR materials. © 2006 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmhH & Co. KGaA.

The strongly enhanced cooperative influence of medium polarity and organic structural design on the first hyperpolarizability beta of a novel family of highly polarizable azinium-(CH=CH-thienyl)-dicyanomethanido chromophores 1-3 is described. The dyes can be efficiently synthesized by regioselective protonation/alkylation of the corresponding bidentate anion precursors. Consecutive annelation of the pyridyl ring of 1 (pyridine quinoline acridine) and medium polarity effects are responsible for an extraordinarily variable range of intramolecular charge transfer (ICT), leading to a large set of pi-electron distribution patterns. Accordingly, systems with remarkably different zwitterionic/quinoid character in the ground and excited states present P values in a broad range, eventually switching from negative to positive. Our investigation is based on a combination of experimental (UV/Vis spectroscopy, multinuclear NMR spectroscopy, and electrooptical absorption measurements) and computational (ab initio) approaches. It is shown that: 1) beta and mubeta are dramatically influenced, even by orders of magnitude, by a complex, non-monotonic interplay of structure and medium action, which in turn affects molecular ICT and bond length alternation (BLA), 2) the computations, validated by different experimental data, are to be recommended as an extremely useful tool in the search for a greatly improved set of molecular nonlinear optical (NLO) responses (in the case of 1-3 they show that such conditions may be attained only in a narrow and limited range of dielectric constants in which the annelation effect operates most efficiently), and 3) the search for the most favorable molecular NLO response of a highly polarizable chromophore both in solution and in solid matrices should simultaneously take into account not only the molecular design supplemented by annelation effects but also the polarity of the medium.

To elucidate the dependence of the nonlinear optical (NLO) response on the conformation of triply branched derivatives, a new series of D-pi-A dendrimers has been synthesized. A combined approach of experiments (UV-vis and EOA measurements) and computational predictions (semiempirical and ab initio) was applied both on the dendrimers and on the corresponding single-strand chromophores. It has been shown that depending on the surrounding media the NLO activity of a flexible dendrimer can be very different. Two limiting cases are proposed: (i) the dendrimer resembles a solution of the corresponding single-strand chromophores with about 3-fold concentration, where the hyperpolarizability is the sum of the effect of three noninteracting single-strand subunits ("independent chromophores" limit); (ii) the dendrimers show nearly parallel or helical alignments of the single-strand subunits. Because of this change of conformation the NLO activity can be enhanced up to nine times the value of the "independent chromophores" limit and, thus, are more than a single strand chromophore. Conformers of dendrimers with interacting single-strand chromophores have been identified experimentally in nonpolar solutions by the EOA spectroscopy and possible structures have been revealed by numerical calculations, which could moreover show the tendency of the effects on the hyperpolarizability due to structural changes of the flexible dendritic architecture. Implications for future research developments are given to implement the "more than three times" concept., QC 20100820. Tidigare titel: Three-branched dendritic NLOphores, more than three times a single-strand chromophore? Titel ändrad och uppdaterad från Submitted till Published 20100820.