Spotlight on
innovation industry
& insights
Product releases, acoustic research, manufacturing updates, plus occasional perspectives from our team.
◆ Industry & TechnologyMaking the World a Lot Quieter
BU engineers have developed an “acoustic metamaterial” that can cancel 94 percent of sounds. The mathematically designed, 3D-printed acoustic metamaterial is…
◆ Industry & TechnologyCoating provides extra layer of protection for battery cathodes.
Lithium-ion battery. Credit: © janaka Dharmasena / Adobe Stock Building a better lithium-ion battery involves addressing a myriad of factors simultaneously,…
◆ Industry & TechnologyUltrasound Waves Turn Wine into Something Better
As brandies age, chemical interactions between the spirits and the wood casks they mature in grant them their distinctive hues, scents and tastes. These…
◆ Industry & TechnologySuper Material That Shapes Sound
Finely shaped sound fields are used in medical imaging and therapy as well as in a wide range of consumer products such as audio spotlights and ultrasonic…
◆ Industry & TechnologySound Waves Boosts Elders’ Sleep and Memory
Deep sleep is critical for memory consolidation. But beginning in middle age, deep sleep decreases substantially, which scientists believe contributes to…
◆ Industry & TechnologyNew Technology Brings Sound To Little Girl
“The physician was able to get all of the electrodes into her cochlea,” Daniel says, “however, you have to have a sufficient or healthy auditory nerve to…
◆ Industry & TechnologyAbsorbing acoustics with soundless spirals: Researchers have designed a super-thin acoustic metasurface for perfect sound absorption — ScienceDaily
Acoustic absorption systems work by absorbing sound energy at a resonant frequency and dissipating it into heat. Traditional acoustic absorbers consist of…
◆ Industry & TechnologyLiquid acoustics half way to the Earth’s core | RIKEN
Now, in research published in Nature Communications , scientists from the Materials Dynamics Laboratory at the RIKEN SPring-8 Center, along with collaborators…
◆ Industry & TechnologyUsing sonar to navigate: Bats do it, dolphins do it, and now humans can do it, too: Graphene-based microphone, speaker yield lightweight ultrasonic receiver, transmitter — ScienceDaily
Speakers and microphones both use diaphragms, typically made of paper or plastic, that vibrate to produce or detect sound, respectively. The diaphragms in the…
◆ Industry & TechnologyRobotic drones help scientists map sand tiger shark routes along the Delaware coast | Delaware First Media
The technology has revealed that the sand tiger sharks like to remain close to shore and in the fall, they travel in low salinity waters, particularly the…
◆ Industry & TechnologySound-bouncing membrane could make plane cabins 1,000 times quieter
North Carolina State University and MIT researchers, whose work was detailed last week in Applied Physics Letters , figured out that by putting a rubber…
◆ Industry & TechnologyNano-sized audio recordings could signal storage breakthrough
Using this method, you could store sound information either as a varying-intensity waveform or a frequency-varying waveform. To test it, the group stored eight…
◆ Industry & TechnologyDo stars make sound? Researchers say yes
A team of researchers have found the first evidence that stars generate a sound of their own — although the result is distinctly otherworldly. At nearly a…
◆ Industry & TechnologyAlzheimer’s Treatments Could Go Acoustic | Chemical
Two scientists demonstrated that bombarding mouse brains with sound waves not only removed disease-related amyloid-β plaques but also restored memory in mice…
◆ Industry & TechnologyStonehenge As An Ancient Dance Club
Whatever our prehistoric ancestors were doing at Stonehenge , they were probably doing it to trance music, suggests a new study. Researchers conducted the…
◆ Industry & TechnologySee it, touch it, feel it: Researchers use ultrasound to make invisible 3-D haptic shape that can be seen and felt
The research, led by Dr Ben Long and colleagues Professor Sriram Subramanian, Sue Ann Seah and Tom Carter from the University of Bristol’s Department of…
◆ Industry & TechnologyUltrasounds dance the ‘moonwalk’ in new metamaterial
In this study, the researchers developed a new type of metamaterial, in the fluid phase, formed of porous silicone microbeads embedded in a water-based gel.…
◆ Industry & TechnologyVentriloquist delight: Scientists twist sound with metamaterials so sound appears to come from somewhere else — ScienceDaily
“Numerous research efforts have centered on metamaterial-based devices with fascinating wave-control capabilities such as invisibility or illusion cloaks,”…
◆ Industry & TechnologyHow researchers are resurrecting antique musical instruments
Before completing his medical degree from the UConn School of Medicine, Robert Howe ’82 MD had already been heading toward a life of wide curiosity and…
◆ Industry & TechnologyMicrosoft’s bone-conducting headset guides the blind with audio cues
According to her detailed report on the experiment, the beacons would constantly send audio cues that sound like the galloping coconut noise from Monty Python…
◆ Industry & TechnologyFirst phononic crystal that can be altered in real time — ScienceDaily
Dynamically reconfigurable metamaterials based devices with optical or acoustic wavelengths from ten microns to ten cm could have a wide range of applications.…
◆ Industry & TechnologyA short stay in darkness may heal hearing woes — ScienceDaily
Call it the Ray Charles Effect: a young child who is blind develops a keen ability to hear things that others cannot. Researchers have long known that very…
◆ Industry & TechnologyFly-inspired sound detector: New device based on a fly’s freakishly acute hearing for futuristic hearing aids — ScienceDaily
A team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin has developed a tiny prototype device that mimics the parasitic fly’s hearing mechanism, which may…
◆ Industry & TechnologyFrench Scientists are Working on an Acoustic Earthquake Shield | The Verge
It works on the principle of refraction, planting an array of boreholes to redirect the reverberations around the city and into areas where they will do less…
◆ Industry & TechnologyPlants fight back when they ‘hear’ bugs chew | Futurity
The sound a caterpillar makes when it chews on a leaf sets off a plant’s alarm system. In response, researchers say, the plant launches its defenses. “Previous…
◆ Industry & TechnologyYour Candy Wrappers are Listening – IEEE Spectrum
The research, which will be presented at the computer graphics conference SIGGRAPH 2014 next week, builds on work from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial…
◆ Industry & TechnologyAcoustic Manipulation in 3D Space
The essence of levitation technology is the countervailing of gravity. It is known that an ultrasound standing wave is capable of suspending small particles at…
◆ Industry & TechnologyElectrostatic Graphene Sound Generator
Most loudspeakers work using a diaphragm that creates pressure waves in air by mechanically vibrating. “For human audibility, an ideal speaker or earphone…
◆ Industry & TechnologyAudio Editing Software
Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. The interface is…
◆ Industry & TechnologyTransparent Gel Speaker
In a materials science laboratory at Harvard University, a transparent disk connected to a laptop fills the room with music—it’s the “Morning” prelude from…
◆ Industry & TechnologySlim Membrane Speaker
Audiophiles have long been presented with an unending dilemma, pitting the need for sonic perfection against the desire to maintain a comfortable, aesthetic…