An article published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery by researchers from the University College London and Davies Veterinary Specialists describes a new condition called feline audiogenic reflex seizures (FARS) that seizures can occur in some elderly cats when they are exposed to certain sounds such as crinkling tin foil and striking a metal spoon on a ceramic feeding bowl.
Read the full article reported in The Telegraph.
The Federal Aviation Authority has started a helicopter noise complaint system in the Los Angeles county area called the Automated Complaint System (this sounds like a spambot!). The monitoring system uses the WebTrak site that Bruel and Kjaer bought a few years ago.
The WebTrak system combines GPS data from aircraft movements with noise levels from monitoring stations. Historical data of flight paths and noise levels can be inspected using a web browser.
The NFL team Atlanta Falcons were fined $350,000 for playing artificial crowd noise into the Georgia stadium.
Read the article on the NFL.com web site.
Researchers at University of Connecticut Health Center, the University of Rochester, and University of Louisville have published a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience, investigating the ability of a rabbits to determine the distance of a noise source depends on the modulation of the sound. The researchers inserted tiny microphones inside rabbits’ ears to record the sounds played at several locations. They used these recordings to simulate modulated or unmodulated noise coming from different distances away from the rabbit. Then they played the simulated sounds back to the rabbit, and measured the responses of neurons in the rabbit’s inferior colliculus (IC), a region of the midbrain known to be important for sound perception. When the rabbit heard the simulated sounds, certain types of IC neurons fired more when the sound was closer and the depth of modulation was higher – that is, when there was a bigger difference between the sound’s maximum and minimum amplitude. The neurons fired less when the sound source was further away.
Read the full article on the UConn Today web site.
An acoustic consulting company ARUP has created a 3D virtual sound simulation of the proposed Heathrow’s third runway in their facility called SoundLab. The room is lined with acoustic material to reduce reflections and 12 loudspeakers are positioned on the surface of an imaginary virtual sphere, which are used to generate sound from any direction.
Read the full article on wired.co.uk.
The verge.com has a great article on the history of binaural recordings. A binaural recording is similar to a stereo recording using two microphones, only the microphones are placed within the ears of an anatomically accurate human manikin.
A company called VocalZoom has created an optical microphone sensor that can be used on phones to enhance the pickup of voice, and claims to increase noise rejection by 40dB.
Motorola Solutions has made a venture capital investment into VocalZoom, as reported on the IWCE’s Urgent Communications web site.
An article in The Journal of Acoustical Society of America describes the scientific review of 10 iOS and 4 Android smartphone apps for measuring sound levels. Although 130 iOS apps were evaluated, only 10 apps met their selection criteria, and only 4 out of 62 Android apps were tested. Only a few apps were available on the Windows phone platform, but none met their selection criteria. As a result, no testing was conducted on Windows-based devices or apps.
The results were that
the SPLnFFT app had the best agreement, in unweighted SPLs, with a mean difference of 0.07 dB from the actual reference values. The SoundMeter app had the best agreement, in A-weighted sound levels, with a mean difference of −0.52 dBA from the reference values. For unweighted sound level measurements, NoiSee, SoundMeter, and SPLnFFT had mean differences within the ±2 dB of the reference measurement. For A-weighted sound level measurements, Noise Hunter, NoiSee, and SoundMeter had mean differences within ±2 dBA of the reference measurements.
Read the full paper on the The Journal of Acoustical Society of America web site.
In Maine and New Hampshire in the USA, the coast guard is replacing old style foghorns from the 1970s that were unserviceable, with new technology that is activated by marine radio resulting in fewer blasts of the foghorn noise. In a surprising twist, some residents want to retain the old style foghorns.
Read the full article on the CTV News web site.
Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College and the Gladstone Institutes have found a way to prevent noise-induced hearing loss in a mouse using a simple chemical compound that is a precursor to vitamin B3. This discovery has important implications not only for preventing hearing loss, but also potentially for treating some aging-related conditions that are linked to the same protein.
Read the full article on the Weill Cornell web site.