We investigated 267 infants and children aged 9 days to 16.8 years to study the spontaneous otoacoustic emission (SOAE) data prevalence, number per ear, level and frequency as a function of growth. Dependence on age, gender and ear side was statistically analyzed using the method of generalized estimation equations. Except in the 1st year of life, SOAE prevalence per ear and SOAE number per ear decreased significantly with increasing age. Both SOAE parameters were significantly higher in female than in male subjects, with gender difference of SOAE prevalence per ear being more distinct in the 1st year of life. Although a clear ear side effect on SOAE prevalence per ear could already be seen in ears of female children in this age group, only SOAE number per ear was significantly higher in right ears than in left ears from the 1st year of life on. Except in the first 12 months, SOAE level and SOAE frequency decreased significantly with increasing age. Neither a significant gender difference nor a significant ear side difference could be determined. Our results found in infancy and childhood are discussed within the framework of the current literature.

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Politkovskaya was a unique voice in the discussion of the war in Chechnya. She took her readers into terrifying bombardments, into zachistki (ethnic-cleansing operations), in chicken coops and tool sheds, into neighborhoods from which all the tall boys had disappeared. She recorded scenes like this one, from the beginning of the second war in December 1999: "Men were grabbed from their homes, and the howls of women for their abducted sons, husbands, brothers, and neighbors rang out over the whole city, mixed with rounds from automatic weapons and the thunder of mortars." 1 Politkovskaya took her readers to Makhketi, a Chechen village where nearly everyone who had talked to her on an earlier visit had been murdered. The entire republic of Chechnya, as her writings demonstrated, has been turned into a special off-limits zone, a place where disappearances, torture, and violent death are commonplace experiences. Politkovskaya continued to go to Chechnya when almost all other outsiders had ceased their visits, against her editor's and her family's wishes. She chronicled the trade in human beings and bodies. She wrote about Chechnya's filtration points and police stations, and she quoted the often minuscule ransom prices.

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