Showing 20 articles starting at article 61

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Mathematics: Puzzles, Physics: Acoustics and Ultrasound

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

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 says.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

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 with hearing loss preferred louder lead vocals, higher frequencies, and sparser mixes with fewer frequencies overall. Previous research has found that music steadily shifted to quieter vocals and louder instrumentals leading up to 1975, meaning today's music may be less accessible to those with hearing loss.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

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 the scalp, can detect letters only. The speech generated is robotic and affectless. Neuroscientists have now shown that they can reconstruct the song a person is hearing from brain recordings alone, holding out the possibility of reconstructing not only words but the musicality of speech, which also conveys meaning.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Legal restrictions placed on the amount of time young people in China can play video games may be less effective than originally thought, a new study has revealed.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

In prehistoric societies, humans tended to learn from members of our ingroup or from more prestigious individuals, as this information was more likely to be reliable and result in group success. However, with the advent of diverse and complex modern communities -- and especially in social media -- these biases become less effective. For example, a person we are connected to online might not necessarily be trustworthy, and people can easily feign prestige on social media. Now, a group of social scientists describe how the functions of social media algorithms are misaligned with human social instincts meant to foster cooperation, which can lead to large-scale polarization and misinformation.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

An interdisciplinary team of mathematicians, engineers, physicists, and medical scientists has uncovered an unexpected link between pure mathematics and genetics, that reveals key insights into the structure of neutral mutations and the evolution of organisms.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

In hopes of improving the survival rate for breast cancer patients, researchers designed a wearable ultrasound device that could allow women to detect tumors when they are still in early stages.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Physicists have succeeded in making a new imaging technique ready for use on humans. Radioactive markers and radiation are not necessary for this.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

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 collaboration, a team has achieved unidirectional transport of signals in pairs of 'one-way streets'. This research opens up new possibilities for more flexible signaling devices.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

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

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Board games based on numbers, like Monopoly, Othello and Chutes and Ladders, make young children better at math, according to a comprehensive review of research published on the topic over the last 23 years.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

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 actuators and AI, this robotic glove is the first to 'feel' the difference between correct and incorrect versions of the same song and to combine these features into a single hand exoskeleton. Unlike prior exoskeletons, this new technology provides precise force and guidance in recovering the fine finger movements required for piano playing and other complex tasks.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Measuring human brain activity down to the cellular level: until now, this has been possible only to a limited extent. With a new approach it will now be much easier. The method relies on microelectrodes along with the support of brain tumor patients, who participate in studies while undergoing 'awake' brain surgery. This enabled the team to identify how our brain processes numbers.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

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 tries.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Acoustic waves may be able to control how particles sort themselves. While researchers have been able to separate particles based on their shape -- for example, bacteria from other cells -- for years, the ability to control their movement has remained a largely unsolved problem, until now. Using ultrasound technology and a nozzle, researchers have separated, controlled and ejected different particles based on their shape and various properties.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Making history with 42 digits: Scientists have unlocked a decades-old mystery of mathematics with the so-called ninth Dedekind number. Experts worldwide have been searching for the value since 1991. Scientists arrived at the exact sequence of numbers with the help of the Noctua supercomputer.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

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, the new study also shows that wind farm noise isn't more disruptive to sleep than road traffic, which was a little more disruptive at the loudest audio level but not at more common levels. Sleep researchers have studied the impact of exposure to wind farm noise during sleep in three new scientific publications to better understand its impact.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Porous media such as concrete physically represent a spherical packing of different components -- in this case cement, rock and water. The mechanical properties of such mixtures are still difficult to calculate due to their discretized nature. A team has now been able to investigate an unexpected property of mixtures of granular media consisting of soft and stiff spherical particles. For this purpose, a combination of ultrasound investigations and X-ray computed tomographic imaging was employed, allowing a three-dimensional (3D) characterization and evaluation. The discovery could contribute to safer future building in earthquake zones.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

To ensure that wounds remain tightly sealed in the abdomen after surgery, researchers have developed a patch with a sensor function. The polymer patch warns before the occurrence of dangerous leaks on sutures in the gastrointestinal tract take hold, while closes the areas on its own. A new material now enables a fast, easy and non-invasive leak diagnosis.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A simple sponge has improved how robots grasp, scientists have found.