Rap music powers medical sensor

January 30, 2012

A driving bass rhythm can be harnessed to power a new type of miniature medical sensor designed to be implanted in the body.

Low-frequency acoustic waves from music were found to effectively recharge the pressure sensor. Such a device might ultimately help to treat people stricken with aneurisms or incontinence due to paralysis.

Ref.: A. Kim, T. Maleki, and B. Ziaie, A Novel Electromechanical Interrogation Scheme for Implantable Passive Transponders, findings are detailed in a paper to be presented during the IEEE MEMS conference, Jan. 29 to Feb. 2 in Paris

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Implanted transponder scavenging musical sound and radiating an RF pulse at the resonant frequency of the passive sensor (credit: Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University)

Ecomusicologies 2012

30-31 October 2012, New Orleans

Pre-Conference (Live & Virtual) to the AMS/SEM/SMT 2012 Joint Annual Meeting

The AMS Ecocriticism Study Group and the SEM Ecomusicology Special Interest Group invite submissions on research from any academic field related to any issues of and around ecomusicology (ecocritical / ecological / environmental studies of music and/or sound), which is broadly construed as the dynamic relationships between culture, music/sound, and  nature/environment, in all the complexities of those terms. (For more on ecomusicology, consult the information and resources at www.ams-esg.org.)

Papers accepted for the conference will be considered for publication in a volume of essays currently being prepared under the working title “Ecomusicology: A Field Guide,” edited by Aaron S. Allen (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA) and Kevin Dawe (University of Leeds, UK).  This volume will present the diversity of ecomusicological work in the field by including various disciplinary approaches from, e.g., history, literature, ethnography, anthropology, and ecology.

The CFP is available as a PDF.

The conference will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, on the uptown campus of Tulane University on 30-31 October, which is immediately prior to the Joint Annual Meeting of AMS, SEM, and SMT in downtown New Orleans. 

For more information, please see http://www.ams-esg.org/events/upcoming-events/ecomusicologies-2012

On Site Review Call for Contributions

On Site Review # 28 will be devoted to the theme of ‘Architecture and Sound.’ In addition to articles, photographs, and drawings, the journal will also incorporate a sound exhibition tentatively titled sonic/tech/tonic. Joseph Heathcott will curate the sound compilation.

Architecture and Sound have always been closely entwined through a range of modes, materials, scales, and practices. At one level, architecture experiments with and controls for sonic results. The high-buttressed walls of Gothic cathedrals amplify human song to the God-register. The barrel vaults of Romanesque chambers and the parapet seams of Andalusian palaces conduct whispered breaths to unseen ears. Clustered skyscrapers force the wind like a bellows. Carefully articulated panels dampen and direct the flow of sonic waves through concert halls. The city’s buildings and bridges resonate with the febrile vibrations of innumerable signals.

At another level, sound comprises an architecture in its own right, with physical laws of constraint, materials of production, sensory registration, and spatial form. If architecture presents pre-discursively through figure and ground, sound does so through signal and noise. The visible realm of architecture is only a faster vibration of waves than sound; both can be revealed through analogue and digital technologies. Architecture projects planes and volumes beyond the envelope of the building; sound projects signals beyond the register of the human ear. Architecture encompasses a world of discourses, signs, and practices; buildings are but one instantiation of architecture. Sound is the apprehended and digested signal that emerges from the cloud of audible and inaudible noise that constantly surrounds us.

The sound project sonic/tech/tonic seeks contributions that explore the multifaceted, polymorphous, and unstable relationship between architecture and sound. Contributors are encouraged to deploy the medium of sound to examine this relationship in several modalities: sound as architecture, architecture as sound, the sounds of architecture, the architectures of sound, and so forth. Or just surprise us with something non-categorical! Contributions can be archival or newly composed, but in all cases should meditate on the intersections of architecture and sound.

MUSIC SPACE AND ARCHITECTURE

10/01/2012

A publication of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture with contributions of Justin Bennett, Barry Blesser, Berend Jan Bockting, Cilia Erens, Raviv Ganchrow, Sebastian Janusz, Maarten Kloos, Lieselore Maes, Rob Metkemeijer, Linda-Ruth Salter, Sjoerd Soeters, Machiel Spaan, Bart Visser and Jacob Voorthuis
(Architectura & Natura Publishers) ISBN 978-94-614-0005-5

Research

Therapeutic ultrasound as a potential male contraceptive: power, frequency and temperature required to deplete rat testes of meiotic cells and epididymides of sperm determined using a commercially available system

James K Tsuruta, Paul A Dayton, Caterina M Gallippi, Michael G O’Rand, Michael A Streicker, Ryan C Gessner, Thomas S Gregory, Erick JR Silva, Katherine G Hamil, Glenda J Moser and David C Sokal.

Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology 2012, 10:7 doi:10.1186/1477-7827-10-7

Published: 30 January 2012

Background

Studies published in the 1970s by Mostafa S. Fahim and colleagues showed that a short treatment with ultrasound caused the depletion of germ cells and infertility. The goal of the current study was to determine if a commercially available therapeutic ultrasound generator and transducer could be used as the basis for a male contraceptive.

Methods

Sprague-Dawley rats were anesthetized and their testes were treated with 1 MHz or 3 MHz ultrasound while varying power, duration and temperature of treatment.

Results

We found that 3 MHz ultrasound delivered with 2.2 Watt per square cm power for fifteen minutes was necessary to deplete spermatocytes and spermatids from the testis and that this treatment significantly reduced epididymal sperm reserves. 3 MHz ultrasound treatment reduced total epididymal sperm count 10-fold lower than the wet-heat control and decreased motile sperm counts 1,000-fold lower than wet-heat alone. The current treatment regimen provided nominally more energy to the treatment chamber than Fahim’s originally reported conditions of 1 MHz ultrasound delivered at 1 Watt per square cm for ten minutes. However, the true spatial average intensity, effective radiating area and power output of the transducers used by Fahim were not reported, making a direct comparison impossible. We found that germ cell depletion was most uniform and effective when we rotated the therapeutic transducer to mitigate non-uniformity of the beam field. The lowest sperm count was achieved when the coupling medium (3% saline) was held at 37 degrees C and two consecutive 15-minute treatments of 3 MHz ultrasound at 2.2 Watt per square cm were separated by 2 days.

Conclusions

The non-invasive nature of ultrasound and its efficacy in reducing sperm count make therapeutic ultrasound a promising candidate for a male contraceptive. However, further studies must be conducted to confirm its efficacy in providing a contraceptive effect, to test the result of repeated use, to verify that the contraceptive effect is reversible and to demonstrate that there are no detrimental, long-term effects from using ultrasound as a method of male contraception.

The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.

4th Music and Media Meeting

4th MaM Meeting (Turin, June 28 & 29, 2012 ) 

The IMS study group “Music and Media” (MaM) will hold its fourth international meeting in Turin at the Università di Torino , as pre-conference to the IMS Rome 2012 conference. One of the themes will be ‘ Unheard Melodies : 25 years’. This session will thematize a retrospective on Claudia Gorbman’s groundbreaking book on the role of narrative film music.

Other areas of interest include (but are not limited to):

-(New) methodologies for the study of film soundtracks;

-Unheard melodies and New Media;

-Synchronisation;

-Non-canonical music and New Media.

Laboratory of Applied Bio-Acoustics (LAB)

Bioacoustics is a cross-disciplinary science, which investigates sound production and reception in animals, including man, the biological acoustically-borne information transfer and its propagation in elastic media. Bioacoustics also refers to the organs of hearing and to the sound production apparatus, as well as to the physiological and neurophysiological processes by which sounds are produced, received and processed. Furthermore, bioacoustics attempts to understand the relationships between the features of the sounds an animal produces and the nature of the environment in which they are used, as well as the functions they are designed to serve. Finally, it includes the techniques associated with instrumental and biological sonar for its use in population monitoring, identification and communication encoding mechanisms and allows the assessment and control of the effects of human-made noise on animals.

The creation of the Laboratory of Applied Bio-Acoustics (LAB) is the necessary and mature response, from a multi-disciplinary group of scientists to the increasing acoustic degradation of the marine habitat in the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic.

The LAB has the clear objective to respond with technological solutions to the progressive deterioration of the seas, limiting the effects of anthropogenic noise and contributing to the sustainable development of human marine activities. The research outcome will answer the increasing demand from local, national and European administrations and from the society itself, by providing the necessary expertise on the control mechanisms and a better understanding of the marine noise pollution.

The Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics was created with a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology and the institutional support from the City of Vilanova i la Geltrú and the Ports Directorate of the Catalan Government.

Listening to Deep-Ocean Environment

sonsetc.com

Pierre Henry: Paroxysms - World Premiere

Pierre Henry is the father of musique concrete, and pioneered most of the recording techniques musicians use today.

His reputation outpasses the frontiers of pure classical and French musics. In 1967, he composed Psyché Rock, an internationally successful track remixed from then on by many DJs and bands (Willy Orbit, Stereolab, Fatboy Slim, Christopher Tyng for the US TV show Futurama, Moog Cookbook…). Pierre Henry is a spiritual leader for generations of artists who still enjoy the discoveries and the daring and visionary experiments of the composer.

medici.tv makes you see live on the internet the world premiere of a unique project, in which Pierre Henry appears at his home in Paris, which hosts the sounds and pictural creations of his life and carreer. He will show us all the stages of creation – from insemination of idea and gestation of sound, to phonetic improvisation with his own voice. No public in front of him. That is to say, the largest public ever! Because the audience for this exclusive show will stand in Tasmania, where the MONA FOMA (MOFO) 2012 – the Museum of Old and New art (MONA) Festival of Music and Art – will broadcast it live and on giant screens, and in the whole world through medici.tv.

Noise induced hearing loss and other hearing complaints among musicians of symphony orchestras

An investigation of the hearing status of musicians of professional symphony orchestras, performed by researchers from ENT-Audiology, Academic Medical Center Amsterdam, Amsterdam, AZ, Netherlands.