WEATHER East Oregonian Page 2A REGIONAL CITIES Forecast SUNDAY TODAY MONDAY Considerable cloudiness A couple of afternoon showers 53° 36° 46° 38° TUESDAY Mostly cloudy, a shower; breezy Today WEDNESDAY Astoria Baker City Bend Brookings Burns Enterprise Eugene Heppner Hermiston John Day Klamath Falls La Grande Meacham Medford Newport North Bend Ontario Pasco Pendleton Portland Redmond Salem Spokane Ukiah Vancouver Walla Walla Yakima Sun and clouds with a shower Some sun, then turning cloudy PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST 47° 34° 45° 35° 46° 31° HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST 49° 41° 54° 36° PENDLETON through 3 p.m. yesterday TEMPERATURE HIGH LOW 54° 44° 66° (1894) 46° 30° 2° (1993) PRECIPITATION 24 hours ending 3 p.m. Month to date Normal month to date Year to date Last year to date Normal year to date Trace 0.78" 1.20" 11.17" 7.81" 11.23" HERMISTON through 3 p.m. yesterday LOW 58° 46° 70° (1960) SUN AND MOON Dec 7 Full 7:10 a.m. 4:15 p.m. 4:12 a.m. 3:14 p.m. Last Dec 13 Dec 20 Beijing Hong Kong Jerusalem London Mexico City Moscow Paris Rome Seoul Sydney Tokyo W r c sn r c c r c c c sn c c r r r pc c c r c r c c r c r Hi 53 42 40 51 38 39 50 45 49 41 41 43 40 49 53 54 48 51 46 49 45 51 41 40 49 48 50 Lo 48 28 33 44 28 32 44 36 41 37 31 37 35 41 46 45 30 38 38 46 34 44 33 33 46 36 34 Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day. W r c pc r pc c c sh pc c pc c r r r r pc pc sh sh pc pc pc sf sh pc pc Hi 48 68 57 49 67 32 50 63 40 78 54 Lo 26 58 39 40 43 29 39 43 33 66 47 Sun. W s r s pc pc sn c pc r pc pc Hi 44 68 59 47 74 36 47 61 48 73 53 Lo 21 59 43 38 42 28 36 43 26 67 50 W s sh s pc pc sn c pc pc pc r WINDS Medford 50/38 Trace 0.52" 0.98" 7.85" 5.39" 8.29" Lo 42 27 27 42 26 30 39 33 36 33 26 36 33 38 42 43 31 34 36 41 26 40 34 29 41 36 30 Today Caldwell 53/34 Burns 45/26 PRECIPITATION Nov 29 Bend 44/27 Hi 52 46 44 51 45 47 49 51 54 51 42 51 50 50 50 52 52 55 53 49 49 49 48 47 49 53 50 NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY Sun. WORLD CITIES John Day 51/33 Ontario 52/31 46° 31° -4° (1985) 24 hours ending 3 p.m. Month to date Normal month to date Year to date Last year to date Normal year to date Sunrise today Sunset tonight Moonrise today Moonset today New First Albany 49/42 Eugene 49/39 TEMPERATURE Yesterday Normals Records 50° 32° Spokane Wenatchee 48/34 48/33 Tacoma Moses 50/37 Lake Pullman Aberdeen Olympia Yakima 49/31 49/35 49/38 50/37 50/30 Longview Kennewick Walla Walla 50/41 53/36 Lewiston 56/35 Astoria 51/36 52/42 Portland Enterprise Hermiston 49/41 Pendleton 47/30 The Dalles 54/36 53/36 51/35 La Grande Salem 51/36 49/40 Corvallis 49/41 HIGH 50° 35° Seattle 51/41 ALMANAC Yesterday Normals Records 53° 34° Saturday, November 26, 2016 (in mph) Boardman Pendleton Klamath Falls 42/26 Sunday WSW 7-14 WSW 7-14 UV INDEX TODAY Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows. REGIONAL FORECAST Coastal Oregon: Occasional rain today into tomorrow. Monday: mostly cloudy with a shower. Eastern and Central Oregon: Showers of rain and snow near the Cascades today. Some sun, then clouds in the east. Western Washington: Rain today, steadiest and heavies his morning. A couple of show- ers this evening. Today SW 6-12 SW 6-12 Eastern Washington: Showers around today; a bit of morning snow, then a little rain toward the Cascades. Cascades: Mostly cloudy today with rain and snow; snow level mostly near 4,000 feet with 3-6 inches. Northern California: Rain today, but snow snow in the interior mountains with slower and diffi culr travel. 0 1 1 1 211 S.E. Byers Ave., Pendleton 541-276-2211 333 E. Main St., Hermiston 541-567-6211 Office hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed major holidays www.eastoregonian.com To subscribe, call 1-800-522-0255 or go online to www.eastoregonian.com and click on ‘Subscribe’ East Oregonian (USPS 164-980) is published daily except Sunday, Monday and Dec. 25, by the EO Media Group, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801. Periodicals postage paid at Pendleton, OR. Postmaster: send address changes to East Oregonian, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801. 0 8 a.m. 10 a.m. Noon 2 p.m. 4 p.m. 6 p.m. 0-2, Low 3-5, Moderate 6-7, High; 8-10, Very High; 11+, Extreme The higher the AccuWeather.com UV Index™ num- ber, the greater the need for eye and skin protection. Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2016 Subscriber services: For home delivery, vacation stops or delivery concerns: 1-800-522-0255 Didn’t receive your paper? Call 1-800-522-0255 before noon Tuesday through Friday or before 10 a.m. Saturday for same-day redelivery — Founded Oct. 16, 1875 — 0 SUBSCRIPTION RATES Local home delivery Savings off cover price EZPay $14.50 41 percent 52 weeks $173.67 41 percent 26 weeks $91.86 38 percent 13 weeks $47.77 36 percent *EZ Pay = one-year rate with a monthly credit or debit card/check charge Single copy price: $1 Tuesday through Friday, $1.50 Saturday Copyright © 2016, EO Media Group -10s -0s showers t-storms 0s 10s rain 20s flurries 30s 40s snow ice 50s 60s cold front 70s 80s 90s 100s warm front stationary front 110s high low National Summary: Snow showers will extend from the Great Lakes to northern New England and the central Appalachians today. Rain and mountain snow will push southward on the Pacific coast. Most other areas will be dry. Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states) High 87° in Edinburg, Texas Low 0° in Leadville, Colo. NATIONAL CITIES Today Albuquerque Atlanta Atlantic City Baltimore Billings Birmingham Boise Boston Charleston, SC Charleston, WV Chicago Cleveland Dallas Denver Detroit El Paso Fairbanks Fargo Honolulu Houston Indianapolis Jacksonville Kansas City Las Vegas Little Rock Los Angeles Hi 55 64 55 55 51 62 53 47 69 47 48 45 66 60 46 67 0 44 84 72 49 72 58 64 58 64 Lo 41 36 40 34 31 31 33 35 38 29 33 34 53 35 31 53 -4 26 71 52 32 46 43 47 35 50 W c s pc pc pc s c r pc pc pc sn pc s pc c c s pc s pc pc s s s r Sun. Hi 51 65 51 52 48 67 47 45 64 54 50 51 71 55 49 67 2 44 84 76 52 70 58 57 59 61 Lo 33 46 37 30 29 49 32 33 40 31 40 35 62 28 35 43 -3 36 72 66 41 49 49 39 50 48 Today W pc pc s s c pc c c s pc pc pc c c pc s c pc pc pc s s sh pc c c Louisville Memphis Miami Milwaukee Minneapolis Nashville New Orleans New York City Oklahoma City Omaha Philadelphia Phoenix Portland, ME Providence Raleigh Rapid City Reno Sacramento St. Louis Salt Lake City San Diego San Francisco Seattle Tucson Washington, DC Wichita Hi 54 58 82 49 44 55 67 53 63 57 54 76 48 50 60 56 52 55 57 54 65 57 51 80 56 61 Lo 31 34 66 33 29 28 46 38 47 34 38 52 32 34 31 28 36 43 38 36 56 49 41 49 38 45 W pc pc pc pc pc pc s pc pc pc pc c c pc s pc c r s c c r r c s s Sun. Hi 58 61 80 50 46 62 69 47 65 56 50 63 43 47 59 51 44 58 55 45 66 59 49 64 55 64 Lo 43 51 69 41 41 45 57 35 50 40 34 45 29 30 34 29 31 44 46 31 51 51 42 43 36 43 W s pc pc pc r pc s pc c r s pc c c s c c pc pc sf sh pc sh pc s sh Weather (W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain, sf-snow flurries, sn-snow, i-ice. 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Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com. • To submit sports or outdoors information or tips: 541-966-0838 • sports@eastoregonian.com COMMERCIAL PRINTING Production Manager: Mike Jensen 541-215-0824 • mjensen@eastoregonian.com Team of deaf scientists probe hearing loss treatments LYNNE TERRY The Oregonian/OregonLive PORTLAND — When Peter Steyger learned to speak, he had to wear hearing aids. At 14 months, he was struck with meningitis. The powerful antibiotic that saved his life largely stripped him of hearing. His mother, determined to keep him in the hearing community, worked with him an hour a day for four years as part of an intensive regime of speech therapy. Some- times it took him 10 minutes to learn a single word. He didn’t start to catch up to his peers until eight years later. But today at 54, Steyger is a prominent auditory neuroscientist. At Oregon Health & Science University, he’s part of a team of researchers who are studying the auditory system in hopes of helping others who can’t hear. The 10 faculty members in OHSU’s Oregon Hearing Research Center are considered trailblazers among their peers. “I look at their program as a very unique one in the world because of the breadth and the depth of their auditory science and the high quality of the science that’s done there,” said Jennifer Stone, an audi- tory neuroscientist at the University of Washington in Seattle. The center also stands out in another way: It has five professors with hearing loss. Few other audi- tory research departments have even one scientist with a hearing disability. None has as many as OHSU, experts say. Their varied biomedical back- grounds allow them to study every aspect of the auditory system, and their personal experiences inform their research. “They’ve all got pretty high profiles and are covering lots of different bases,” said Jonathan Ashmore, a leading auditory neuroscientist based at University College London in Britain. Their work has helped make the center, dating to 1967, one of the biggest nationwide. About a dozen other universities have hearing research centers with at least three faculty members. Only about five have 10 or more. OHSU’s depart- ment of otolaryngology — an ear, nose and throat specialty — is No. 2 in funding from the National Institutes of Health, at $10 million a year, right behind Johns Hopkins University. For the scientists, it’s not been easy. Their hearing loss has compli- cated their lives. They struggled to follow their teachers and profes- sors, keep up in graduate school and complete their post-doctoral training. They had difficulty taking notes. They suffered from a sense of isolation and found it tough to make friends. But they found a home at the Oregon Hearing Research Center. They’re not alone in their disability, and they have a personal motivation to succeed. Though their research might not cure their own hearing loss, they hope to help the hearing of future generations. “Each and every one of them Corrections The East Oregonian works hard to be accurate and sincerely regrets any errors. If you notice a mistake in the paper, please call 541-966-0818. had to work very hard to overcome the disabilities that they have but they’re all extremely effective communicators and very effective teachers,” Stone said. “Each and every one of them is a leader in their field.” Steyger’s specialty is the toxicity of certain pharmaceutical drugs to the inner ear. He’s studying a powerful class of antibiotics called aminoglycosides, which are known to damage hearing. Unlike some other antibiotics such as penicillin, which prevent bacteria from dividing, aminogly- cosides kill bacteria. They include Gentamicin and Streptomycin, which Steyger was given for meningitis. He figures the antibiotic was responsible for his hearing loss or contributed to it. His Ph.D. thesis at Keele University in England, where he was born, focused on aminoglyco- side-induced damage to the inner ear, which governs hearing and balance. In post-doctorate work at Keele, he studied the anatomy and function of the cochlea — part of the inner ear. When he got an offer from OHSU in 1997, he set up shop on the hill. His lab is trying to understand how aminoglycosides cross the blood-labyrinth barrier, which has a similar function to the blood-brain barrier but instead of protecting the brain, it protects the ears from harmful substances. Aminoglyco- sides exploit an existing pathway for other compounds, allowing them to barge through the physical barrier. Both infections and amino- glycosides can harm hearing by themselves, and in a triple whammy effect, the inflammation that’s caused by an infection allows more of the antibiotics into the inner ear. Steyger is trying to understand the mechanics of how that happens. “This is a serious issue, and it’s not just affecting me,” he said. “It’s still affecting people today.” Eighty percent of premature babies who enter a neonatal inten- sive care units get antibiotics to prevent infections, Steyger said. If they’re kept on them long enough, they can lose their hearing. “When a kid is born, if they’re not treated with aminoglycosides and they have an infection, they can die within 12 hours,” Steyger said. “That’s why so many kids will get the drug.” His choice to focus on hearing was strategic, he said. “I expected that they would be more welcoming of a hearing-im- paired person,” said Brigande, 51. “The annual meetings would have captioning. They would have listening technologies. I thought that this would be an obvious, clear path to give me the best chance to communicate effectively.” At OHSU, he’s working with mice that are congenitally deaf. He’s found a way to introduce a healthy gene into the inner ear while the animal is in the womb. When they’re born, they can hear. “John’s a superstar,” Ashmore said. “That really is a technical discovery of the first order.” Brigande wants to see his work benefit people. “I’m passionately committed to trying to make that happen,” Brigande said. “I would love to be able to spare a child from growing up with hearing loss.” Besides breaking new ground in the lab, Brigande has raised aware- ness about the need to accommodate students with hearing impairments on the campus. Together with Steyger, he’s persuaded OHSU management to equip conference halls with assisted-listening devices. The center’s director, Alfred Nuttall, 73, whose hearing loss started in his 40s, said their personal situations didn’t influence the decision to hire Steyger, Brigande and Lina Reiss, who’s 41 and another member of the department with severe hearing loss. Frederick Gallun, 45, originally hired by the VA Portland Health Care System, also conducts auditory research at the center and can hear out of only one ear. Another researcher at the center, John Brigande, is focused on preventing deafness through treat- ments in the womb. Like Steyger, Brigande has profound hearing loss. He gradu- ally lost hearing in his left ear from some unknown cause. By the time he was in college, he had to wear hearing aids. But having them all has turned out to be an advantage for the scientists. It creates camara- derie and boosts their confidence in their work. “It’s very stimulating to be around a group with many deaf people,” Reiss said. THANKSGIVING SAVINGS NOW Friday Nov 25th, Sat. 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