Photo credit: Putulik Jaaka from Pexels by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition This fascinating article in The Atlantic describes research into how male walruses make noise to attract mates. The research subject was Sivuqaq, an orphaned walrus rescued as a calf who spent the rest of his life at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom
Photo credit: Michael Pennay licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition This fascinating report in Smithsonian Magazine reports on a study showing that people can learn to echolocate just like bats do. Of course, people can’t do it as well as bats, but whether we can see or not, we
Photo credit: Carsten Kohler from Pexels by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition In this report from Positive.News, author Martin Wright discusses efforts to make cities and parks quieter. He mentions renting a farmhouse so he could concentrate on writing. When he returned the keys to the farmer, he said how nice the quiet
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by David M. Sykes, Vice Chair, The Quiet Coalition Here’s some real buzz from NASA: they’ve launched a robotic helicopter on Mars. The old Zen koan needs a re-write: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Now it’s: "What is the sound of a robot helicopter on
Photo credit: Tom Leishman from Pexels by Arline L. Bronzaft, Ph.D., Board of Directors, GrowNYC, and Co-founder, The Quiet Coalition Early on during the pandemic I began to hear comments from people about the sounds that surrounded them. Some people told me how happy they were to hear birds sing rather than the airplane noise
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech by Arline L. Bronzaft, Ph.D., Board of Directors, GrowNYC, and Co-founder, The Quiet Coalition Am I surprised to read that NASA’s Mars rover, when it landed on Mars, brought “grinding, clanking, banging” to this planet? The answer is a resounding “No.” After all, having brought noise pollution to planet Earth in huge
Photo credit: Amir Esrafili from Pexels by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition Snow muffles sound by absorbing the sound waves, but it is also noisy underfoot. Why? This fun report from WTTW in Chicago explains that snow contains tiny ice crystals that crunch when we compress them underfoot as we walk. I also
Photo credit: Olaf Arndt licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition This article in the current issue of Acoustics Today discusses electric vehicle noises, which are mandatory in the U.S. to alert blind and visually impaired pedestrians of approaching electric vehicles. Apparently an early study showed increased pedestrian accidents
How did classical music get louder? It started with Beethoven. Now Dr. Daniel Fink says he has to wear ear plugs at the orchestra to listen without pain.
Dr. Arline Bronzaft writes about an unintended consequence of the pandemic. A recent Atlantic article shows that stay at home have resulted in cleaner air, less noise.
