Acoustics News

April 27, 2024

Top Headlines

Data-Driven Music: Converting Climate Measurements Into Music

Apr. 18, 2024 — A geo-environmental scientist from Japan has composed a string quartet using sonified climate data. The 6-minute-long composition -- entitled 'String Quartet No. 1 'Polar Energy Budget'-- is based on over 30 years of satellite-collected climate data ...

Caller ID of the Sea: Tagging Whale Communication and Behavior

Mar. 25, 2024 — Biologists use a novel method of simultaneous acoustic tagging to gain insights into the link between whale communication and ...

What Kinds of Seismic Signals Did Swifties Send at LA Concert?

Mar. 13, 2024 — Seattle may have experienced its own Swift Quake last July, but at an August 2023 concert Taylor Swift's fans in Los Angeles gave scientists a lot of shaking to ponder. After some debate, a research team concluded that it was likely the dancing and ...

Advanced Noise Suppression Technology for Improved Search and Rescue Drones

Mar. 6, 2024 — Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are beneficial in search and rescue missions during natural disasters like earthquakes. However, current UAVs depend on visual information and cannot detect victims trapped under rubble. While some studies have used ...

Latest Headlines

updated 6:51pm EDT

Pythagoras Was Wrong: There Are No Universal Musical Harmonies, New Study Finds

Feb. 27, 2024 — The tone and tuning of musical instruments has the power to manipulate our appreciation of harmony, new research shows. The findings challenge ...

Fundamental Equation for Superconducting Quantum Bits Revised

Feb. 14, 2024 — Physicists have uncovered that Josephson tunnel junctions -- the fundamental building blocks of superconducting quantum computers -- are more complex than previously thought. Just like overtones in a ...

Photonics-Based Wireless Link Breaks Speed Records for Data Transmission

Feb. 1, 2024 — Researchers demonstrated a 300 GHz-band wireless link that was able to transmit data over a single channel at a rate of 240 gigabits per second. The wireless communication system employs signal ...

Sound-Powered Sensors Stand to Save Millions of Batteries

Jan. 29, 2024 — Researchers are developing a new type of sensor that reacts to certain sound waves, causing it to vibrate. The sensor is a metamaterial that acquires its special properties through the structuring of ...

Virtual Noise Assessment for Passenger Jet of the Future

Jan. 25, 2024 — Instead of tubular commercial aircraft, other designs could be used in the future: Jets with a blended wing body would fly more efficiently and make less noise -- but how would the noise emissions ...

Uncovering the Secrets Behind the Silent Flight of Owls

Jan. 23, 2024 — Owls produce negligible noise while flying. While many studies have linked the micro-fringes in owl wings to their silent flight, the exact mechanisms have been unclear. Now, a team of researchers ...

Towards the Quantum of Sound

Jan. 18, 2024 — A team of scientists has succeeded in cooling traveling sound waves in wave-guides considerably further than has previously been possible using laser light. This achievement represents a significant ...

Molecularly Designing Polymer Networks to Control Sound Damping

Jan. 11, 2024 — The world is filled with a myriad of sounds and vibrations -- the gentle tones of a piano drifting down the hall, the relaxing purr of a cat laying on your chest, the annoying hum of the office ...

New Percussion Method to Detect Pipeline Elbow Erosion

Nov. 20, 2023 — An engineering research team is pioneering a new method, based on percussion, to detect pipeline elbow erosion to prevent economic losses, environmental pollution and other safety issues. ...

Nuclear Expansion Failure Shows Simulations Require Change

Nov. 16, 2023 — A team of researchers looked back at a model that predicted nuclear power would expand dramatically in order to assess the efficacy of energy policies implemented ...

Teaching Physics from the Din of Flying Discs

Dec. 4, 2023 — The sound a disc makes while soaring through the air is full of information about how fast the disc is flying and how quickly it spins. This inspired Kyle S. Dalton of Penn State University to ...

Putting Sound Waves to Work to Create Safer Public Spaces

Nov. 14, 2023 — Absorbing excess sound to make public environments like theaters and concert halls safer for hearing and using the unwanted sound waves to create electricity is the aim of a new paper. The authors ...

New AI Noise-Canceling Headphone Technology Lets Wearers Pick Which Sounds They Hear

Nov. 9, 2023 — Researchers have developed deep-learning algorithms that let users pick which sounds filter through their headphones in real time. Either through voice commands or a smartphone app, headphone wearers ...

Complex Data Becomes Easier to Interpret When Transformed Into Music

Oct. 30, 2023 — Researchers in the field of human-technology interaction have demonstrated how a custom-built 'data-to-music' algorithms can help to better understand complex data. The transformation of ...

Pingpong Balls Score Big as Sound Absorbers

Oct. 10, 2023 — Researchers describe an acoustic meta-surface that uses pingpong balls, with small holes punctured in each, as Helmholtz resonators to create inexpensive but effective low-frequency sound insulation. ...

Medical Imaging Fails Dark Skin: Researchers Fixed It

Oct. 10, 2023 — A team found a way to deliver clear pictures of anyone's internal anatomy, no matter their skin ...

Shape-Changing Smart Speaker Lets Users Mute Different Areas of a Room

Sep. 21, 2023 — A team has developed a shape-changing smart speaker, which uses self-deploying microphones to divide rooms into speech zones and track the positions of individual ...

A System to Keep Cloud-Based Gamers in Sync

Aug. 31, 2023 — A new technique can synchronize media streams from different networks to multiple devices with less than 10 milliseconds of delay. The technique was demonstrated on cloud gaming, but could also be ...

Experiencing the Texture of Skateboard Sounds Can Mediate Divisions New Research Says

Aug. 30, 2023 — Experiencing the harsh sounds of skateboarding can help bridge the gulf between the joy and distaste of the noises created by the sport, a new study ...

Hard-of-Hearing Music Fans Prefer a Different Sound

Aug. 22, 2023 — Researchers study the impact of hearing loss on subjects' enjoyment of different music mixes. They played different music mixes to listeners with and without hearing loss and found that those ...

Brain Recordings Capture Musicality of Speech -- With Help from Pink Floyd

Aug. 15, 2023 — For those with neurological or developmental disorders compromising speech, brain machine interfaces could help them communicate. But today's interfaces are slow and, from electrodes placed on ...

Controlling Signal Routing in Quantum Information Processing

July 13, 2023 — Routing signals and isolating them against noise and back-reflections are essential in many practical situations in classical communication as well as in quantum processing. In a theory-experimental ...

Acoustics Researchers Decompose Sound Accurately Into Its Three Basic Components

July 11, 2023 — Any sound can now be perfectly replicated by a combination of whistles, clicks, and hisses, with implications for sound processing across the media ...

Robotic Glove That 'Feels' Lends a 'Hand' to Relearn Playing Piano After a Stroke

June 30, 2023 — A new soft robotic glove is lending a 'hand' and providing hope to piano players who have suffered a disabling stroke or other neurotrauma. Combining flexible tactile sensors, soft ...

How Secure Are Voice Authentication Systems Really?

June 27, 2023 — Computer scientists have discovered a method of attack that can successfully bypass voice authentication security systems with up to a 99% success rate after only six ...

Wind Farm Noise Exposure Doesn't Wake People Up from Their Slumber More Than Road Traffic Noise

June 26, 2023 — Short exposure to wind farm and road traffic noise triggers a small increase in people waking from their slumber that can fragment their sleep patterns, according to new research. But importantly, ...

Actively Reducing Noise by Ionizing Air

May 31, 2023 — Scientists show that a thin layer of plasma, created by ionizing air, could be promising as an active sound absorber, with applications in noise control and room ...

Source-Shifting Metastructures Composed of Only One Resin for Location Camouflaging

May 30, 2023 — Acoustic source-shifters make observers mis-perceive the location of sound by reproducing a sound emanating from a location different from the actual location of a sound source. Researchers have now ...

Propellers Are Louder Over Ground

May 24, 2023 — The effects of the ground on propeller noise have now been measured ...

A Cocktail Party of 3D-Printed Robot Heads

May 8, 2023 — Imagine a cocktail party full of 3D-printed, humanoid robots listening and talking to each other. That seemingly sci-fi scene is the goal of an augmented listening laboratory. With precise control ...