News 2019

Young fish can be drawn to degraded coral reefs by loudspeakers playing the sounds of healthy reefs, according to new research published today [29 November] . An international team of scientists from the UK's Universities of Exeter and Bristol, and Australia's James Cook University and Australian Institute of Marine Science, say this "acoustic enrichment" could be a valuable tool in helping to restore damaged coral reefs.

Channels McGill University News and Events Music, including songs with words, appears to be a universal phenomenon according to a paper published this week in Science. An international team of researchers involving musicians, data scientists, psychologists, political scientists and linguists, including one from McGill University, reached this conclusion after five years of collaboration, bringing together a broad range of skills and tools to the question of whether music is universal.

The human brain can recognise a familiar song within 100 to 300 milliseconds, highlighting the deep hold favourite tunes have on our memory, a UCL study finds. Anecdotally the ability to recall popular songs is exemplified in game shows such as 'Name That Tune', where contestants can often identify a piece of music in just a few seconds.

A study of the genetic make-up of zebrafish has provided brand new insights into the cause of congenital hearing disorders in humans. A team including scientists from Cardiff University has identified how specific genes can dictate the patterns of the tiny cells - so-called hair cells - within our ears that allow us to hear and process sounds.

Gone are the days when people use smart speakers - like Amazon Echo or Google Home - only as kitchen timers or dinner party music players. These devices have started helping people track their own health, and can even monitor for cardiac arrest. Now researchers at the University of Washington have developed a new smart speaker skill that lets a device use white noise to both soothe sleeping babies and monitor their breathing and movement.

A team of Empa acoustic researchers has built macroscopic crystal structures that use internal rotation to attenuate the propagation of waves. The method makes it possible to build very light and stiff materials that can also "swallow" low frequencies very well, as they report Communicatons. The world of crystals offers many interesting properties: crystals can strike electric sparks in disposable lighters, for example, they can produce polarized light and they can scatter bundled X-rays into thousands of individual reflexes that are refracted in all spatial directions.

To play a piece of music as it was conceived by the composer is a trend. But where can the rare historical instruments be found? The solution would be exact copies of the coveted originals. A team of Empa researchers is analysing such replicas with the aim of reproducing historical trombones with their typical sound.

A rippling stream is Jean-Marc Wunderli's favourite sound. However, his everyday research has little to do with calming natural sounds. He deals with completely different ones: noise from aircraft turbines, train noise, busy roads, wind turbines and now even drones. All these emissions are part of the research activities of Empa's Acoustics / Noise Control Lab, which Wunderli is heading since last July.

There is plenty of science on the boil at the International Space Station - including an experiment literally designed to expand our knowledge of the boiling process. Get a glimpse into the experiments ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano has been working on over the past two weeks in this fortnightly spotlight on Space Station science.

How do our senses, like vision, hearing, and touch, work together to create the perception of the world around us' A new study by scientists at Universität Hamburg finds that commonly found associations between shapes and sounds might rely on childhood vision. The results were published in the journal Psychological Science.

A new study by an international team headed by the University of Zurich sheds light on whether animal vocalizations, like human words, are constructed from smaller building blocks. By analyzing calls of the Australian chestnut-crowned babbler, the researchers have for the first time identified the meaning-generating building blocks of a non-human communication system.

Evanescent Acoustic Beam Moves Suspended Particles at Lower Cost & Energy Consumption Than Existing Propagative Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) Systems. CEA-Leti has developed a new acousto-microfluidic technology for manipulating microand nanoscale samples using evanescent sound waves. Described in a paper published in the September issue of Nature (Comm.

The scent of a lemon could help people feel better about their body image, new findings from University of Sussex research has revealed. In a new study from the university's Sussex Computer-Human Interaction (SCHI) Lab, people feel thinner and lighter when they experienced the scent of a lemon. The research, carried out in collaboration with researchers at the University College of London Interaction Centre (UCLIC) and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), also revealed people contrastingly felt thicker and heavier when they smelt vanilla.

A beautiful landscape painting, a beautiful piano sonata - art and music are almost exclusively described in terms of aesthetics, but what about math? Beyond useful or brilliant, can an abstract idea be considered beautiful? Yes, actually - and not just by mathematicians, reports a new study in Cognition.

Researchers create first-ever personalised sound projector with £10 webcam A University of Sussex research team have demonstrated the first sound projector that can track a moving individual and deliver an acoustic message as they move, to a high-profile tech and media conference in LA. Dr Gianluca Memoli and his colleagues demonstrated what they believe to be the world's first sound projector with an autozoom objective in a talk at the 46th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics & Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH 2019) this week.

Researchers at UNIGE and at Maastricht University have demonstrated that the brain adapts to a person's listening intentions by focusing either on a speaker's voice or on the speech sounds that are being uttered.

From left are music therapist Kimberly Sena Moore, from the Frost School of Music, SONHS assistant professor Zhan Liang, and SONHS Dean Cindy L. Munro. Photo: RM Lamazares-Romero/University of Miami From left are music therapist Kimberly Sena Moore, from the Frost School of Music, SONHS assistant professor Zhan Liang, and SONHS Dean Cindy L. Munro.

What makes Beethoven sound like Beethoven? EPFL researchers have completed a first analysis of Beethoven's writing style, applying statistical techniques to unlock recurring patterns. EPFL researchers are investigating Beethoven's composition style and they are using statistical techniques to quantify and explore the patterns that characterize musical structures in the Western classical tradition.

Blue supergiants are rock 'n' roll: they live fast and die young. This makes them rare and difficult to study. Before space telescopes were invented, few blue supergiants had been observed, so our knowledge of these stars was limited. Using recent NASA space telescope data, an international team led by KU Leuven studied the sounds originating inside these stars and discovered that almost all blue supergiants shimmer in brightness because of waves on their surface.

Scientists with the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago have made two breakthroughs in the quest to develop quantum technology. In one study, they entangled two quantum bits using sound for the first time ; in another, they built the highest-quality long-range link between two qubits to date.