At this week’s annual meeting of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) in California, Silicon Speech’s Steven Greenberg told listeners that by the year 2050 there could be as many as 50 million people in the U.S. with partial deafness. Because of loud music and our noisy environment, younger people have a hearing impaired rate of up to 2 1/2 times that of their elders.

Hair cells in the inner and outer ear pick up sound vibrations before traveling to the brain. Damage to outer cells can be recovered by hearing aids, but those that are on the inside cannot be replaced and so causes deafness. Although scientists are working on the problem, they cannot yet get artificial hybrid cells to survive when tested.