Moose news in a master’s thesis: “Evaluating the Behavioural Response of Moose (Alces alces) to Acoustic Stimuli,” Denice Lodnert, master’s thesis in biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2021. (Thanks to Sven Swahn for bringing this to our attention.) The author reports: “In this study, I investigated how wild moose (Alces alces) that visited saltlick-stones […]
Fluid dynamics research useful in daily life: The researchers who did the research: Akihito Kiyama, Utah State University Rafsan Rabbi, Utah State University Zhao Pan, University of Waterloo Som Dutta, Utah State University John Allen, University of Hawaii Manoa Tadd Truscott, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. (Thanks to Patricia Yang for bringing this […]
When it comes to biometric authorization systems, there are many to choose from – candidates include face recognition, fingerprint recognition, ear recognition, voice recognition, tongue recognition and body odour recognition etc etc. But none is 100% perfect, so there’s always a demand for improvement and innovation. In 2016, a team from the Department of Computer […]
What are the sounds that come from trees when those trees are hit by rocks thrown by chimpanzees? A new study addresses that question: “Chimpanzees use tree species with a resonant timbre for accumulative stone throwing,” Ammie K. Kalan, Eleonora Carmignani, Richard Kronland-Martinet, Sølvi Ystad, Jacques Chatron and Mitsuko Aramaki, Biology Letters, 18 December 2019, […]
Smells have effects on hair follicles and sounds have effects on the taste of cheese, sometimes, suggest two recent—but not necessarily related studies. The sound-and-hair study is described in LiveScience (thanks to Francesca Bewer for bringing this to our attention): Like your nose, your hair can detect odors. In a new study, researchers found that […]
Somewhere round or about the late 1850s, John Tyndall FRS [* see note below] was developing and perfecting his experiments with “Sensitive Flames”. He describes one such experiment in his book ‘Sounds’ (p. 238). In which he reads a passage of poetry from Edmund Spenser’s ‘Belphœbe the Huntress’ to the flame (which he calls The Vowel-flame) […]
Inventor (and IP / patent lawyer) Michael Mansour Ahmadshahi Ph.D., Esq. has just been granted a US patent for his ‘Signal-activated lingerie’ which incorporates a remotely activated (un)fastener “causing the lingerie to fall off from the wearer’s body” when it receives the appropriate signal. The patent document explains : “Lingerie, such as bras which are […]
A complex new attack on mosquitoes, sort of, is outlined in this new study about identifying the sound of a single mosquito: “Mosquito Detection with Neural Networks: The Buzz of Deep Learning,” Ivan Kiskin, Bernardo Pérez Orozco, Theo Windebank, Davide Zilli, Marianne Sinka, Kathy Willis, Stephen Roberts, arXiv:1705.05180, May 15, 2017. The paper points out, especially, a limitation […]
Circa 1997, Professor Christof Migone (now at Western University, Ontario, Canada) placed an ad. in a local Ottawa newspaper requesting anyone with ‘cracking’ joints (fingers, neck, back, etc etc) to participate in an audio recording session. The Ottawa based Gallery 101 was about to host an exhibition called ‘Incredibly Soft Sounds’ in January 1998, which […]
If you love the sounds of the sea, and you want to know where — precisely where in the sea — some of those sounds come from and go to, this study may be of interest: “High frequency directionality measurement of ambient noises from breaking waves in the surf zone,” Hsiang-Chih Chan, Chi-Fang Chen, Ruey-Chang […]