Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Sinatra and Hendrix ? these and many other of the world’s most famous musicians have had “perfect” or “absolute” pitch. The ability, defined as recognizing the pitch of a musical note without having to compare it to any reference note, is quite rare in the U.S. and Europe, where only about one person in 10,000 is thought to have it.
Utah physicists have developed small devices that turn heat into sound and then into electricity. The technology holds promise for changing waste heat into electricity, harnessing solar energy and cooling computers and radars. “We are converting waste heat to electricity in an efficient, simple way by using sound,” says Orest Symko, a University of Utah physics professor who leads the effort. “It is a new source of renewable energy from waste heat.”
Increasingly scientists are discovering unusual mechanisms by which fish make and hear secret whispers, grunts and thumps to attract mates and ward off the enemy.
…Currently the purposes of some fish sounds remain complete mysteries…
Ray Charles was really good at snapping, said musical acoustician Kenneth Lindsay of Southern Oregon University in Ashland. Charles’s snaps that open “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” are timed so well that he is never more than 5 milliseconds off the tight beat.
A new type of stethoscope enables doctors to hear the sounds of the body in extremely loud situations, such as during the transportation of wounded soldiers in Blackhawk helicopters. Using ultrasound technology, the kind used to generate images of internal organs, muscles and unborn fetuses, the new stethoscope design will be presented later this week at the Fourth Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of American and the Acoustical Society of Japan, which will be held at the Sheraton Waikiki and Royal Hawaiian Hotels in Honolulu, Hawaii.
With populations increasing around the globe in recent decades, no one would be surprised by an increase in the amount of noise produced in terrestrial environments. Now, a unique study involving researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has shown that the underwater world also is becoming a noisier place, with unknown effects on marine life.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at the University of Missouri at Rolla have built an ultrasound analogue of the laser. Called a uaser (pronounced WAY-zer) — for ultrasound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation — the instrument produces ultrasonic waves that are coherent and of one frequency, and could be used to study laser dynamics and detect subtle changes, such as phase changes, in modern materials.
The songs of the humpback whale are among the most complex in the animal kingdom. Researchers have now mathematically confirmed that whales have their own syntax that uses sound units to build phrases that can be combined to form songs that last for hours.
Male bullfrogs communicate with other bullfrogs through calls made up of a series of croaks, some of which contain stutters, according to a new study which describes a pattern not previously identified in scientific literature. Researchers recorded 2,536 calls from 32 male bullfrogs in natural chorus and analyzed the number of croaks in each call and the number of stutters in each croak. It is known that the male bullfrog’s call attracts females for mating, maintains territorial boundaries with other males, and indicates that the frog is healthy and aggressive.
Scientists have not yet found a way to actually make time run backward, but in the cutting-edge world of recent acoustics research, they have shown a way to make sound waves run backward in a kind of ultra-focused reverse echo. By the technology known as time-reversal acoustics, sound waves – in exact reverse order from the original sound – echo directly and very precisely back to their source point. The technology promises a wide array of applications, including medical applications such as ultra-precise medical imaging, diagnostic techniques using ultrasound, incision-free surgical techniques, and even the potential for a method of recharging the batteries of implanted devices like pacemakers without performing surgery.
Data gathered by Penn State engineers in a volunteer effort at the World Trade Center tragedy, suggests that simple, inexpensive microphones dropped into the rubble of a collapsed building may be able to aid search and rescue teams despite ground level noise.
Dr. Thomas B. Gabrielson, associate professor of acoustics and senior research associate at Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, says, “In conventional survivor searches, noise generating activities at the surface must be stopped while listening for survivors.”
However, the Penn State team found that the noise level in the interior voids of the rubble was about the same as that of a quiet residential neighborhood even though the noise level at the surface was much higher due to constant operation of three heavy lift cranes, air hammers, and dozens of rescuers workers.