Blue, blue, my ears are blue.: The blue morpho butterfly hears through ears on its wings.
Courtesy William Warby
The blue morpho does. Scientists have found that this large butterfly of Central and South America has ears on its wings. These primitive ears can distinguish between the high-frequency sound of a bid singing, and the low-frequency sound of a bird flapping its wings. A singing bird is a sitting bird, and thus no threat to the morpho, but a flying bird could be attacking, and detecting those sounds tells the butterfly when to beat a slow, erratic retreat.
(Wait a minute…Blue Morpho…wasn’t he a character in Yellow Submarine Reloaded?)
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Maybe you'll get to like the hum: and maybe not.
Courtesy LunaDiRimmelThe hum… if you can’t hear it already, you will now, because now you know about it. And once you hear it, it will never go away. Never.
Before I go any further:
So… I hear that there’s an X-Files episode out there that’s all about this. If this is truly the case, I’d like all of you X-Filiacs reading to just bite down on your autographed Gillian Anderson coasters, and grip your David Duchovny brand Wholesome Stress Release Balls, and just deal with it for a few minutes. (So many people read my posts, I’m sure there must be at least a few thousand die-hard X-Files fans among them.) Are y’all occupied? Think about bees.
Now, for the rest of you (us): The hum.
“The hum” is a sound so low that for most of us it’s usually beyond the southern end of perception. But some people hear it. And they can’t stop hearing it. It’s a deep rumbling tone, and for some people it’s only apparent in certain locations, but to others it can be heard just about everywhere. All the time. The hum has driven people to punch through brick walls, and bite the heads off of gear shifters, because it just won’t stop. (I’m assuming about the brick punching and car biting.)
Scientists believe that the hum is actually a real sound, unlike the tones perceived by people suffering from tinnitus. Tinnitus is an inner ear disorder (and maybe sometimes psychological, which causes people to hear sounds when there’s nothing actually making that sound. The perceived sounds vary, but, in general, it’s like when your ears start ringing for no apparent reason, except that the ringing might never stop.
The hum, on the other hand, is usually perceived as something like the sound of an idling diesel engine. But while there are folks who believe that the hum is actually caused by aliens, and sinister government X-Filesy activity, most scientists believe that the hum is a combination of real sounds (not that aliens wouldn’t make real sounds, but, um…) and a sort of unintended fixation on the part of the hearer.
As this article on the BBC points out, the hum might be caused by the actual vibrations of a nearby factory, or a constantly running piece of equipment in your house, like a fan or the refrigerator. While the sound is so low and quiet that it’s usually barely on the edge of perception, if someone hears it, and focuses on it, they may not be able to make themselves stop hearing it. Once it’s on their minds, they think about how they can’t stop hearing it, and they become focused on the sound, and without intending to they end up adjusting their internal “gain” to notice that sound. Sort of like if you’re trying to be sneaky, the sounds you make seem very loud, or if you’re trying to catch someone else being sneaky, the sound of someone unlocking the front door after curfew is going to be very noticeable.
I just hope none of y’all ever notice the hum. Because what if you can’t stop thinking about it? It’ll always be there… So don’t sit back and try to hear it right now. Don’t even think about that continuous rumbling sound that might be flooding through our town now and forever.
(Oh, if you’re wondering what to listen for, the BBC article has a simulated sample of the hum that you can check out.)
Stradivarious secret is in the sauce
Courtesy caribb
Stradivarius violins soaked in "secret sauce"
Having obtained minute wood samples from restorers working on Stradivarius and Guarneri instruments, scientists now have verified that the wood was treated with borax, fluorides, chromium and iron salts. Borax is a wood preservative and an insecticide. It makes sense that wood craftsmen would want to protect their creations from being chewed up by worms.
Joseph Nagyvary, a professor emeritus of biochemistry, first theorized in 1976 that chemicals used on the instruments – not merely the wood and the construction – are responsible for the distinctive sound of these violins." Texas A&M University
Joseph Nagyvary, a professor emeritus of biochemistry, along with Renald Guillemette, director of the electron microprobe laboratory, and Clifford Spiegelman, professor of statistics, all Texas A&M faculty members published their research in the current issue of the scientific journal Public Library of Science (PloSONE).
Learn more about Nagyvary's research
Source: "Secrets Of Stradivarius’ Unique Sound Revealed"
Nagyvary's website: Nagyvary Violins
Pipe down: What's causing all this noise we're hearing down here under the water?
Courtesy Whit Welles“Hey, quiet down up there. We can’t hear a thing down here.”
No, it’s not the lament of some landlord who’s rented out the upper level apartment to a rock-and-roll loving tenant. It’s a case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court right now pitting whales off the coast of California against the U.S. Navy.
Justices heard oral arguments yesterday on the case. Environmentalists are challenging the Navy’s claim to perform training exercises along the California coast which use extensive and strong sonar transmissions. The sound waves of those sonar blasts can harm whales and other marine mammals, petitioners contend, with sounds that can be up to 2,000 times louder than a jet engine. Some scientists feel that sounds that loud can cause whales to lose hearing loss, bleed on the brain and possibly lead to mass strandings on beaches.
Decision spot: The U.S. Supreme Court is the site of a pending decision pitting U.S. Navy sonar training exercises against the health of marine mammals like whales.
Courtesy Thor CarlsonThe Navy says that strong sonar level is critical to be able to detect submarines that can elude weaker modes of sonar.
Based on justices’ questions and reactions, however, it appears that court is leaning toward siding with the Navy and national security concerns.
Here’s a full report on yesterday’s court session. Justices were pretty upfront in stating their lack of expertise in mammal biology and national defense matters.
So if you had to decide on this conflict, where would you come down on this question? Does the health and a comfort of whales trump national security? Is loud sonar just an unfortunate byproduct of keeping our national interests safe? Share your thoughts here with other Buzz readers.
Mount Vesuvius and Naples
Courtesy Mark WalesResidents of Naples had thoughts of Pompeii flashing through their minds yesterday when Italian F-16s flying nearby created sonic booms while flying to intercept a nearby unidentified aircraft. Residents jammed the phone lines to the city's eruption hotline.
Several million people live in areas that could be affected by Vesuvius, making it one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world.
Geologists predict that at least 300,000 people would be killed should Vesuvius erupt without ample warning for evacuation. A recent computer simulation used to model an eruption shows that residents to the south of Vesuvius, in the direction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, will have little chance to survive a blast like the one that buried these towns in 79 AD.
Ancient wall art at Cave at Lascaux, France: Was music used here to soothe the savage breast?
Courtesy Thag the cavemanDo you enjoy hearing your favorite rock group perform their ear-splitting music in a huge cavernous concert arena with flashing colored lights and giant video imagery? Or listening to hymns and spirituals bounce off the vaulted ceiling of a church full of colorful stained-glassed windows and religious icons? Well, I’ve got news for you. It could be you’re attracted to such things by a deep-seated urge to mix echoing music and art; a practice mankind has apparently been doing since the Stone Age. At least according to a new theory coming out of the University of Paris.
Professor Iegor Reznikoff, a specialist in the resonance of building and spaces, theorizes that the most resonant areas of prehistoric-era caves are also the locations where most of the cave wall paintings appear.
Reznikoff stumbled upon the idea by accident.
"The first time I happened to be in a prehistoric cave, I tried the resonance in various parts of the cave, and quickly the question arose: Is there a relation between resonance and locations of the paintings?"
Reznikoff tested his theory inside various well-known French caves where prehistoric art adorned the walls. As he moved about each space, singing and humming, Reznikoff measured where the optimum resonance occurred.
To his surprise, the most resonant areas of each cave were usually spots where most of the cave art was concentrated. And where the resonance was the greatest, the artwork was the densest. In smaller spaces, such as narrow passages between larger cavern rooms where painting would have been difficult, the walls were marked with red lines.
Bear Bone Flute: Neanderthal-aged flute made from bear's femur
Courtesy WikipediaIt occurred to Reznikoff that perhaps a cave’s acoustics was important to prehistoric culture, and may be the reason why primitive musical instruments, such as a Neanderthal flute made out of the femur of a bear, have been found in similar caves.
"The [prehistoric] tribes could make sounds with stones, pieces of wood, different types of drums and so on," Reznikoff says. "Of course the Paleolithic tribes did sing, as do all cultural groups from other regions. That they did so in the caves is shown by my studies. The ritual purpose appears very convincing."
This may explain why the popularity of cavernous concert halls, and large arena music performances, or even subterranean music clubs continue to be popular to this day. Perhaps the ancestral effects of long ago cave rituals still resonate in us.
The cells of our bodies are constantly in motion. In fact, zap them with light and they vibrate, creating sound – much too faint to hear, but sensitive instruments can record the vibrations. Two biologists at the University of Manchester in England have found that healthy cells vibrate differently than cancerous cells. They are hoping to use this to develop new, less-invasive tests to diagnose cancer.
No, it wasn't Thomas Edison. Rather, French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville developed a primitive sonogram -- a means of making a picture of sound -- nearly 20 years before Edison's phonograph. Unfortunately, de Martinville had no way of playing the sound back -- a rather serious limitation. Recently, however, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California programmed a computer to read the sonogram and reproduce the sound -- a mere 148 years after the picture was made. Edison still gets credit for the first machine to play recorded sound.
A famous dog translator: David spent years speaking with his neighbor's dog, Harvey, without the aid of Hungarian computers. Fortunately, we can't all be like him.
Courtesy Wikimedia commons“Doctor, no! I need those!” “Kibbles and bits, kibbles and bits,” “It tasted great both times I ate it,” and “Rook out, Raggy!” All exclamations humanity has every right to expect from a dog. The canine linguistics community, however, has been left sorely disappointed by the recent bark translations of a team of Hungarian researchers.
The Hungarians, no doubt doing their best with the resources at hand, recorded and digitized over 6,000 barks of Hungarian sheepdogs, and fed them into a specially designed computer program. The computer was then able to correctly identify, 43 percent of the time, whether the dog was barking in a “fight,” “stranger,” “play,” “walk,” “alone,” or “ball” scenario, with “fight” and “stranger” most often yielding accurate results. The program was also able to correctly determine the individual dog barking 52 percent of the time.
Both of these statistics are much better than the average human translation of dog barking, although they pale in comparison to some of history’s more notable dog translators (Shaggy, The Son of Sam and Jack London, to name just a few). It is, certainly, an admirable start, and it has got me looking forward to the day when I can ask my brother’s dog just what’s so great about putting his nose right there, exactly.
The robotic self-tuning guitar. Only $2,100.
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