ENGINEERING CORE

我们中心的科学进步依赖于专门的计算机控制的实验设施， 听觉研究是强大和灵活的，足以让新的有效实施 范例工程核心的一个主要作用是设计和维护这种专门的数据采集 系统（目标1）。这项复杂的任务涉及选择商业工具， 相互兼容，安装这些仪器，编写特殊的软件， 由用户灵活控制、维护和升级。核心工程师还设计和建造 非商用的电子、声学和机械设备（例如声学系统）， 满足生理学实验不断发展的要求（目标2）。通过网络发布 技术成就，核心工程师将分享我们的软件和硬件的选定示例 与广大科学界合作解决问题（目标3）。 工程核心的功能是促进现有的研究项目和新的倡议 利用新兴和成熟的技术。工程核心使之成为可能， 个别调查人员使用他们原本不会使用的复杂（或复杂）技术 能够开发或使用。通过提供共享实验设施，工程核心还鼓励 使用这些设施的调查人员之间的合作项目，并使这些设施可用于 其他NIH资助的研究人员，外部的中心，谁分享听力和耳聋的兴趣。 最后，工程核心使中心的科学研究更加高效， 一个知识库，使实验者能够了解和使用由另一个开发的技术 实验者简而言之，工程核心提高了中心科学研究的数量和质量， 输出，使我们能够更好地解决听力和耳聋的新问题。

Scientific advances at our Center depend on specialized, computer-controlled experimental facilities for auditory research that are powerful and flexible enough to allow the efficient implementation of new paradigms. A major role of the Engineering Core is to design and maintain such specialized dataacquisition systems (Aim 1). This complex task involves selecting commercial instruments that are compatible with each other, installing these instruments, writing special software allowing them to be flexibly controlled by users, maintaining them, and upgrading them. Core Engineers also design and build electronic, acoustic and mechanical devices that are not commercially available (e.g. acoustic systems) to meet the constantly evolving requirements of physiological experiments (Aim 2). By web publishing of technical accomplishments, Core Engineers will share selected examples of our software and hardware solutions with the greater scientific community (Aim 3). The function of the Engineering Core is to facilitate both current research projects and new initiatives by taking advantage of emerging and mature technologies. The Engineering Core makes it possible for individual investigators to use sophisticated (or complicated) techniques that they would otherwise not be able to develop or use. By providing shared experimental facilities, the Engineering Core also encourages collaborative projects among the investigators using these facilities, and makes these facilities available to other NIH-funded investigators, external to the Center, who share an interest in hearing and deafness. Finally, the Engineering Core makes the scientific research of the Center more efficient by providing a knowledge bank that enables experimenters to be aware of and use techniques developed by another experimenter. In short, the Engineering Core increases the quantity and quality of the Center's scientific output, allowing us to better attack new issues in hearing and deafness.