Sound

Although the chest-beating of male gorillas is a common behaviour, its purpose still isn't entirely understood. Now, however, scientists believe it may serve as a means of acoustically indicating the size of the apes' bodies.

A new metastudy conducted in conjunction with the US National Park Service has found that the sounds of nature are not only pleasant, but can have a variety of health benefits – though finding these sounds isn't always easy.

We’ve seen images of Mars for decades, but now NASA has released the first audio clips recorded on the Red Planet. The Perseverance playlist includes sounds of Martian wind, a laser zapping rocks, and the crunch of gravel under the rover’s wheels.

Opening a window may help ventilate a room, but it also lets in a lot of outdoor noise such as that of traffic. A new window could help, as it's said to bring in more fresh air than a conventional open window, while still keeping out unwanted sounds.

Scientists at Germany’s Chemnitz University of Technology have spent years developing compact and discreet speakers that are quite literally paper thin, and the latest breakthrough improves on this technology for a more immersive experience.

Fungus already shows promise as a "green" form of leather and protective packaging. Thanks to new research, it has now also found use in an environmentally-friendly sound-absorbing material.

If you're trying to eradicate disease-carrying mosquitos, it's important to know when and where the biting females of the targeted species are present. An experimental new device could help, by mimicking the insects' hearing apparatus.

A new NASA release has converted astronomy data into sounds, allowing the listener to hear musical compositions derived from the structure of the cosmos. The process takes data points in images such as galaxies or stars, and assigns them sounds.

MIT scientists have developed an acoustic system that acts like an underwater GPS, yet doesn't need batteries to operate. The system is instead powered by modulated audio signals reflected from the environment to provide net-zero energy positioning info.

For people who are deaf or hard of hearing, it can be difficult to pick out important sounds, such as a doorbell or a fire alarm. A new smartwatch system called SoundWatch identifies sounds and alerts users to them with a buzz and a visual readout.

When we talk about the speed of sound, we usually mean how fast it moves through air. But it can travel much faster through other media, and now scientists at the University of Cambridge have identified the absolute top speed of sound.

Hearing aids may indeed be commonly used and relied upon in the First World, but they're still too expensive for many people in developing nations. The experimental LoCHAid device, however, is aimed at changing that.