A Video describing SensAge can be seen at here. Playing time is 6 mins 06 seconds.

The commentary is by John Harris, Coordinator of the SensAge Project. He describes the rationale and process of the Project, emphasising the objective of SensAge to become the European Reference Point for the gathering, analysis and dissemination of methodologies and materials to enable an active ageing of European citizens with sensory impairments, promoting their autonomy, quality of life and social inclusion.

The video can be used for promotion and dissemination of the Network, together with encouragement for organisations and other interested people to associate with SensAge by accessing the website at www.sensage.eu.

For further information, please contact the Project Coordinator John Harris, Vision Europe Limited – johngharris@btopenworld.com

Free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, covering all subjects and many languages.

Click here to go to the website.

Aim & Scope
The aim of the Directory of Open Access Journals is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. In short a one stop shop for users to Open Access Journals.

Definitions
Open Access Journal: We define open access journals as journals that use a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access.

Quality Control
The journal must exercise peer-review or editorial quality control to be included.

Coverage Subject
All scientific and scholarly subjects are covered

Level
The target group for included journals should be primarily researchers.

Access
All content freely available. Registration: Free user registration online is acceptable. Open Access without delay (e.g. no embargo period).

A new gene therapy approach can reverse hearing loss caused by a genetic defect in a mouse model of congenital deafness.

ScienceDaily (July 25, 2012) — A new gene therapy approach can reverse hearing loss caused by a genetic defect in a mouse model of congenital deafness, according to a preclinical study published by Cell Press in the July 26 issue of the journal Neuron. The findings present a promising therapeutic avenue for potentially treating individuals who are born deaf.

“This is the first time that an inherited, genetic hearing loss has been successfully treated in laboratory mice, and as such represents an important milestone for treating genetic deafness in humans,” says senior study author Lawrence Lustig of the University of California, San Francisco.

Hearing loss is one of the most common human sensory deficits, and it results from damage to hair cells in the inner ear. About half of the cases of congenital hearing loss are caused by genetic defects. However, the current treatment options — hearing amplification devices and cochlear implants — do not restore hearing to normal levels. Correcting the underlying genetic defects has the potential to fully restore hearing, but previous attempts to reverse hearing loss caused by genetic mutations have not been successful.

Addressing this challenge in the new study, Lustig and his team used mice with hereditary deafness caused by a mutation in a gene coding for a protein called vesicular glutamate transporter-3 (VGLUT3). This protein is crucial for inner hair cells to send signals that enable hearing. Two weeks after the researchers delivered the VGLUT3 gene into the inner ear through an injection, hearing was restored in all of the mice. This improvement lasted between seven weeks and one and a half years when adult mice were treated, and at least nine months when newborn mice received the treatment.

The therapy did not damage the inner ear, and it even corrected some structural defects in the inner hair cells. Because the specific gene delivery method used is safe and effective in animals, the findings hold promise for future human studies. “For years, scientists have been hinting at the possibility of gene therapy as a potential cure for deafness,” Lustig says. “In this study, we now provide a very real and big step towards that goal.”