Sound

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.

A new “Sonification” project from NASA's Chandra X-ray Center has translated visual data into sound, letting us hear the center of the Milky Way, the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, and the Pillars of Creation nebula.

Airliners can make a lot of noise and use a lot of fuel when they're coming in for a landing. A new onboard computer system, however, was recently shown to be effective at addressing both problems.

Researchers from Ben Gurion University and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have developed a new way of working out what's being said inside a room without actually hearing the audio: by monitoring the vibrations of a light bulb.

When two interlocking parts of a product are joined together in a factory, they typically make a satisfying "click" sound. By listening for such noises, a newly-developed system can detect when faults have occurred on robotic assembly lines.

Many drones already utilize ultrasound to detect obstacles lying directly in their path. A new drone system, however, uses sound to determine where all of the walls are within a room – providing guidance when vision- or light-based systems cannot.