
Good one
Personally I'm moving away from a noisy neighborhood but I wonder whether this couldn't be marketed as a kind of sleeping pill for those in residential areas which ill-conceived traffic regulations have turned into major routes?
Top doctors and brainboxes in America and Argentina believe they may be on the track of pills which could "turn down" people's ears, protecting their hearing from damage at noisy clubs or concerts. "So far, there is little or no specific pharmacology of hearing," says Paul Fuchs, professor of otolaryngeal surgery at Johns …
'100 decibels' is meaningless. A deciBel (note capital B, it's one tenth of a Bel) is a ratio, not a unit, and must ALWAYS be expressed with a reference level. If we're talking sound pressure level (SPL), as I suspect, the weighting curve must also be given.
100 decibels = piffle
100dB(A)SPL = an actual measurement
I expect better from a site that's supposed to be technical.
I also struggle to see how something like what is described in the article actually works, as tinnitus resulting from exposure to high sound pressure levels is caused by physical damage to the microscopic hairs in the ear canal. So does the drug alter your DNA to stiffen said hairs? Find that hard to believe, although we are living in the 21st century now...
Musicians earplugs are fine for this application. No drugs required, they are reusable, and I highly doubt that any pill is going to avoid damage to the ear when exposed to high sound pressure levels for durations exceeding the current allowable integrated exposure.
Why resort to drugs when simple earplugs (about $10.00 for the good ones) will do?
This is daft.
There's no mention of how long the pill's effects last, in fact, it doesn't mention if the treated mice ever had normal hearing again or if they were permanently half deaf! So, do they last an hour? A day? Or forever?
And couldn't a reverse drug be used to turn up the hearing of those with poor hearing?
Or, turn down the music a bit and anyone who wants to be deafened and unable to hold a conversation can take the reverse pill !!!
I'll stick to my flesh coloured ear plugs that no one ever notices in the clubs.
"And, of course, the volume de-pump-upper pills would need to avoid any unfortunate side effects when taken in combination with the usual legislatively disadvantaged array of chemical canapés often seen as essential for full enjoyment of modern music"
I didn't realise that pharmaceutical companies had to ensure that their prescription drugs worked in combination with illegal drugs? Have never seen Neurofen saying "warning, do not take with Methylenedioxymethamphetamine.
And if we're being really anal (and as technical people it's our duty) the time over which the reading was taken should also be given. 110dB(A)SPL Leq over 5 hours is a hell of a lot louder than a peak reading of the same number.
@ Steve Lubman - $10.00 doesn't buy you 'good' musicians earplugs. Whilst the cheap ones will attenuate the overall level acceptably, you have to spend a significant amount more than that to get anything that will attenuate all frequencies equally, which is what a musician would want. I agree the cheap ones are fine for the general public wanting to protect their hearing though (personally when I'm listening to music loud enough to require plugs, I want to hear the music as it was originally intended, not a muffled mess. Although I am a nerd when it comes to these matters)
Firstly, the drug only seems to reduce the perception of noise. Surely this could result in someone listening to louder music for longer and so cause MORE physical damage.
Secondly, if you insist on going to one of these places - Grumpy old man mode engaged - then surely it is FOR the loud music, so why would you want to turn it down? If you don't want to listen to loud music, then why would you go to a place whose whole existence is based around aural assault.
And, as mentioned by many above, if you do HAVE to be exposed to loud music (as I was way back when I was keeping it real, living the dream, playing in a band to packed-out houses of as many as 10 people) then you just wear proper, musicians ear plugs (I like the etymotic research ones).
I'm used to solutions looking for a problem but these guys seem to have identified a non-existent problem and have then produced a solution that wouldn't work. Genius!
O.K. my hearing's knackered anyway but when I want loud music I go to places where there's loud music. I wouldn't see the point in dropping a couple of pills to make things quieter.
(If I was working there then it'd be a case of never without earplugs)
Earplug technology has allowed us to buy them for different ranges of bandwidth and level filtering and as everyone's ears work differently would a pill just be like stuffing cotton wool in yer ears?
is caused by DJs and sound engineers who have no clue what the f*ck they're doing. The worst sort is the DJ who thinks "louder == better" and cranks the *mixer* up to 11, resulting in clipping and general distortion, which generates high frequency harmonics that damage your hearing.
The better clubs have experienced techs who keep a firm grip on all the crucial controls, resulting in a better experience for everyone. I've even heard of techs patrolling the dancefloor of a certain London club with microphone-equipped PDAs, allowing them to adjust levels and equalisation on-the-fly.
all you people muttering about decibels and ratios, could you please for bleeding sake start letting us know what base you are throwing all these numbers around in?
Stylish blue man with glasses, because there is always someone more pedantic than you ;o)
SAM offered "I want to hear the music as it was originally intended, not a muffled mess."
Some artists / clubs seem to prefer the sound of eardrums slamming up against the stops. Been there, done that, won't ever allow that to occur again.
The $10.00 musicians earplugs are not perfect, but as a photographer who spends significant time pressed up against the stage monitors craning for a shot, I have to say that they are indispensable and far superior to the foamy plugs you pick up at the hardware store that are designed to protect you from the growl of power tools etc.
Always willing to look at something better. Have you any suggestions?
If the drug was able to mutate the mice into losing aural sensitivity, how does this provide a net gain? Pressumably, if your aural sensitivity is affected, you won't hear well at normal levels. So what is the benefit of a drug that reduces sensitivity preemptively in order to prevent damage?
Might as well just go to the club. At least you may get lucky there, even if you can't hear sh*t the next morning.
-dZ.
I see a few other people here (no pun intended) suffer from tinnitus. I've had it for years now, bloody nuisance...
A couple of years ago I was referred to the audiology dept of Charing X Hospital (London) where I tried out some new in-ear devices that treat tinnitus by feeding back the specific frequencies in to your ear at a low level to train your aural networks to ignore it. It was getting better but the devices were very fragile and kept breaking. (The audiologist said the NHS had complained but the manufacturers weren't interested in fixing the problem).
Since then there's been the release of a software-based solution which I'm about to try. It's had some very good reviews. It also explains in detail the current knowledge about it.
Sorry for slightly off-topic comment, but it is relevant, IMHO.
http://www.vavsoft.com/
"Bit more 4k please"
why not invent a pill that gives the impression that the music is louder? thus reduce the physical damage to the ear and allows the yoof of today to dance to crazy loud music without disturbing other people. maybe saves some electricity bills too. if they can make a toaster that prints darth vader, then surely this can be done...
"I didn't realise that pharmaceutical companies had to ensure that their prescription drugs worked in combination with illegal drugs?"
Well, Viagra specifically lists Amyl Nitrate, aka Poppers, as a contraindication. Not that Amyl is illegal but it's definitely recreational (as, I suspect in this context, is Viagra). Give Pfizer credit, they do know their target audience.
... to put the SPEAKERS into some kind of enclosure that reduces the amount of sound they give out?
The speaker has been put in an enclosure already, one that is designed to make it louder, or fill a space with sound, or resonate at particular frequencies to make more efficient use of the power being put into it.
May as well go to a club and stand outside, it sounds quieter there.
I had been unsuccessfully trying to get viagra to work for many months.
Taking a clue from this forum, i tried sticking one of the little blue pills in each ear.
Sure enough, i was able to perform quite admirably as soon as the sound of her whining and complaining was blocked.
Paris,now that i know this secret.
Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania say they've developed a photonic deep neural network processor capable of analyzing billions of images every second with high accuracy using the power of light.
It might sound like science fiction or some optical engineer's fever dream, but that's exactly what researchers at the American university's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences claim to have done in an article published in the journal Nature earlier this month.
The standalone light-driven chip – this isn't another PCIe accelerator or coprocessor – handles data by simulating brain neurons that have been trained to recognize specific patterns. This is useful for a variety of applications including object detection, facial recognition, and audio transcription to name just a few.
Video Robot boffins have revealed they've created a half-millimeter wide remote-controlled walking robot that resembles a crab, and hope it will one day perform tasks in tiny crevices.
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A coalition of advocacy groups on Tuesday asked the US Supreme Court to block Texas' social media law HB 20 after the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week lifted a preliminary injunction that had kept it from taking effect.
The Lone Star State law, which forbids large social media platforms from moderating content that's "lawful-but-awful," as advocacy group the Center for Democracy and Technology puts it, was approved last September by Governor Greg Abbott (R). It was immediately challenged in court and the judge hearing the case imposed a preliminary injunction, preventing the legislation from being enforced, on the basis that the trade groups opposing it – NetChoice and CCIA – were likely to prevail.
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Video Engineers at MIT have created paper-thin speakers using a plastic film and a piezoelectric layer embossed with tiny domes.
These sheet speakers could potentially be applied to any surface for sound output or input: think surround sound or noise cancellation in aircraft. The technology also has potential for ultrasound imaging and echolocation, among other possibilities.
The work is described in a paper published recently in the journal IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, "An Ultra-Thin Flexible Loudspeaker Based on a Piezoelectric Micro-Dome Array."
Some tech companies are tightening their belts as they adjust to ongoing financial turbulence, with Uber and Meta both looking to reduce expenses and hiring.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees in an internal email that the ride-hailing service is going to try harder to stop losing so much money. Khosrowshahi's email, obtained by CNBC's Deirdre Bosa, begins, "It's clear that the market is experiencing a seismic shift and we need to react accordingly."
The memo says hiring will be more cautious and promises cost cutting.
In the race to provide the best machine-learning accelerators, one of Nvidia's top challengers has claimed a victory in the biotech space, London firm LabGenius, which said Graphcore's intelligence processing units (IPUs) provide significantly faster performance for AI-based drug discovery than some unidentified traditional GPUs.
Founded in 2012, LabGenius is a venture-backed company that develops antibody treatments for cancer and inflammatory diseases by leaning on machine-learning algorithms and laboratory automation to discover proteins that have the right qualities to treat medical conditions.
In a blog post to be published Thursday, and seen by The Register, Bristol, UK-based Graphcore is set to reveal LabGenius turned to its IPUs to train a BERT Transformer model on a large data set of existing proteins to predict masked amino acids. This, in turn, we're told, helped LabGenius suss out important protein features that can help it develop new therapies.
Updated Intel and QuTech claim to have created the first silicon qubits for quantum logic gates to be made using the same manufacturing facilities that Intel employs to mass produce its processor chips.
The demonstration is described by the pair as a crucial step towards scaling to the thousands of qubits that are required for practical quantum computation.
According to Intel, its engineers working with scientists from QuTech have successfully created the first silicon qubits at scale at Intel's D1 manufacturing factory in Hillsboro, Oregon, using a 300mm wafer similar to those the company uses to mass produce processor chips.
British outfit First Light Fusion claims it has achieved nuclear fusion with an approach that could provide cheap, clean power.
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We're told that, in a fully working reactor, this high-speed projectile will hit the moving target, which contains a small deuterium fuel capsule that implodes in the impact. This rapid implosion causes the fuel's atoms to fuse, which releases a pulse of energy.
The largest academic supercomputer in the world has a busy year ahead of it, with researchers from 45 institutions across 22 states being awarded time for its coming operational run.
Frontera, which resides at the University of Texas at Austin's Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), said it has allocated time for 58 experiments through its Large Resource Allocation Committee (LRAC), which handles the largest proposals. To qualify for an LRAC grant, proposals must be able to justify effective use of a minimum of 250,000 node hours and show that they wouldn't be able to do the research otherwise.
Two additional grant types are available for smaller projects as well, but LRAC projects utilize the majority of Frontera's nodes: An estimated 83% of Frontera's 2022-23 workload will be LRAC projects.
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zurich in Switzerland have managed to accomplish a technological breakthrough that could lead to new forms of low-energy supercomputing.
It's based around something called artificial spin ice: think of water molecules freezing into a crystalline lattice of ice, and then replace the water with nanoscale magnets. The key to building a good spin ice is getting the magnetic particles so small that they can only be polarized, or "spun," by dropping them below a certain temperature.
When those magnets are frozen, they align into a lattice shape, just like water ice, but with the added potential of being rearranged into a near infinity of magnetic combinations. Here the use cases begin to emerge, and a couple breakthroughs from this experiment could move us in the right direction.
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