[HN Gopher] Noise-canceling single-layer woven silk and cotton f...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Noise-canceling single-layer woven silk and cotton fabric
        
       Author : bookofjoe
       Score  : 141 points
       Date   : 2024-11-25 13:00 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
        
       | jcims wrote:
       | Apologies for the ADHD induced tangent. Has anyone else noticed
       | that regular little party balloons seem to have a passive noise
       | cancelling effect? If you bring them close to your ear there's a
       | zone of 'dead air' when they are maybe an inch away. My theory
       | was that there's something in passing through the rubber envelope
       | that creates a phase delay or inversion, but it could just all be
       | in my head lol.
        
         | jareklupinski wrote:
         | im curious about replicating this
        
         | elicash wrote:
         | Do you see a difference regardless of helium or air? I assume
         | from your description that it has to be inflated to work.
        
           | bithive123 wrote:
           | Helium is apparently great for soundproofing:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxOzpPJbnTI (a great
           | demonstration of sound suppressing properties of helium)
           | 
           | I am a light sleeper and would love to use it somehow in my
           | bedroom, but keeping it contained is tricky.
        
         | tasty_freeze wrote:
         | It seems like the effect would be very frequency specific.
        
         | tastyfreeze wrote:
         | Having filled a room with balloons, this is very noticeable. It
         | also make heating the room difficult.
        
           | roflmaostc wrote:
           | heating difficult? Why would that be?
        
           | tasty_freeze wrote:
           | Holy cow, I read your comment and thought, "Wait, I didn't
           | write that!" Nice to meet you, doppleganger.
        
         | benplumley wrote:
         | Could it be an interaction between static electricity from the
         | balloon and tiny elements in the ear?
        
         | codazoda wrote:
         | My wife makes balloon arches and I've never noticed but this
         | sounds fascinating. Maybe I'll get her to work, for "science".
         | :P
         | 
         | Note: Her balloons are not typically helium filled, so the
         | other users question about air/helium might make a difference.
        
         | Tade0 wrote:
         | The latex from which the balloon is made is a decent
         | soundproofing material, so what you're hearing is likely just
         | that.
        
         | LikelyClueless wrote:
         | it maybe acting as an acoustic lens.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLBmWF9Xo10
         | 
         | edit: Steve Mould's video "I Made a Lens, But for Sound"
         | demonstrates how balloons filled with gasses of different
         | density than the surrounding air, act as a lens on sound waves.
         | Helium filled balloons will scatter sound because the helium is
         | less dense than air. He shows how a balloon filled with carbon
         | dioxide can focus the sound.
        
           | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
           | Somebody wrote a paper on it in 2008:
           | https://physics.byu.edu/docs/publication/644
           | A balloon filled with a gas that has a different sound speed
           | than that of air has been used as an       acoustic lens. One
           | purpose of the lens is to show refraction of sound waves in
           | an analogy to       geometric optics. We discuss the physics
           | of the balloon lens demonstration. To determine the
           | validity of a gas-filled balloon as a classroom demonstration
           | of an acoustic lens and to understand       the corresponding
           | phenomena, its physics is considered analytically,
           | numerically, and       experimentally. Our results show that
           | although a geometric analogy is a good first-order
           | approximation, scattering theory is required to fully
           | understand the observed phenomena. Thus this
           | demonstration can be adapted to a wide range of students,
           | from those learning the basic principles       of refraction
           | to advanced students studying scattering
           | 
           | Here's Harvard demonstrating it too: https://sciencedemonstra
           | tions.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/...
        
             | hammock wrote:
             | So would a wall of helium balloons work as a sound
             | dampener? Or perhaps diffuser? A lot cheaper than
             | fiberboard & foam
        
               | ParacelsusOfEgg wrote:
               | I doubt it would be cheaper than foam, but this is
               | similar to gas filled windows. Argon or Krypton gas is
               | pumped in-between the window panes to provide another
               | layer of insulation.
        
               | hammock wrote:
               | Makes sense
        
           | kurthr wrote:
           | At the old Exploratorium in the Palace of Fine Arts there was
           | an exhibit that had a large 3-4m balloon filled with
           | something heavy (Argon or maybe SF6?) and two points on the
           | floor at the foci of the balloon. You could whisper at one
           | focus and hear it easily at the other. I think it has been
           | replaced with a more durable pair of concrete parabolic
           | reflectors with similar effects.
        
         | Brian_K_White wrote:
         | Do other smooth surface spherical objects have the same effect?
         | 
         | Sound reflects off smooth surfaces. The ballon is probably just
         | acting like any simple physical obstruction, because the
         | surface does a lot all by itself even if theres almost no
         | substance.
         | 
         | The air inside the ballon is also at a different density than
         | outside, without helium, because of the elastic tension in the
         | rubber. The air inside is always slightly compressed vs
         | outside. I have no idea how much the two densities must differ
         | to make the accoustic lense effect. I din't think it's this,
         | just everyone seemed to be overlooking that even plain air will
         | also have a different density.
        
           | chipsa wrote:
           | Density does not affect the speed of sound of a gas.
           | Temperature and molar mass does. So increasing the pressure
           | of a given composition of gas won't change anything, assuming
           | you can bring the temp back down. Helium is obviously a
           | different molar mass. But also dry air vs moist air can have
           | an effect.
        
         | metalman wrote:
         | just the humidity level in the gas used to fill a balloon is
         | going to have a significant effect on its properties, human
         | breath will have more c02 that air and s higher humidity. Any
         | canned pressurised gas, will be pure with zero humidity.
         | Heating exchange works through convection cells, the greater
         | the number and the smaller they are, the lower covective heat
         | transfer will happen, so filling a room with balloons, and you
         | have made foam, and at that point the acoustical properties
         | must be pronounced fun stuff The activity of silk working as a
         | sound absorber is its property of bieng one of(the) best heat
         | conductive substances, and as a basic fact, all sound is
         | eventualy turned into heat The silk is presumably working to
         | convert the mechanicsl motioninduced by sound into heat,
         | quickly disapating it and releasing it to the air.
        
         | amarcheschi wrote:
         | Definitely
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Balloon hats for autistic and sensitive people.
        
       | atoav wrote:
       | Cool stuff, especially for applications where space is at a
       | premium and the adaptability of the material is at a premium.
        
         | circlefavshape wrote:
         | _Really_ useful for audio in a small space if this lives up to
         | its promise. Absorbing low-frequency sound currently requires a
         | lot of space
        
           | atoav wrote:
           | Exactly, and I guess there is potential in layering this and
           | create way more compact absorbers.
        
       | bogwog wrote:
       | > Sound, an omnipresent sensory stimulator, holds significant
       | relevance in the human experience, as it continually engages our
       | auditory and mental faculties.
       | 
       | This first sentence makes it seem as if the paper was written by
       | aliens. Not even deaf people would gain anything from that
       | sentence.
       | 
       | I think LLMs have caused me to be more perceptive to and annoyed
       | by stuff like this.
        
         | Etheryte wrote:
         | Writing like this makes me sigh, exhaling air, the omnipresent
         | chemical stimulator, which holds significant relevance in the
         | human experience, as it continually engages our biological and
         | mental faculties.
        
           | bawolff wrote:
           | I think your sentence demonstrates the difference between
           | trying to fake "sounding smart" and just writing in a complex
           | way.
           | 
           | Like seriously, "[exhaling air] continually engages our [...]
           | mental faculties" is pretty nonsensical, since breathing is
           | something autonomic. "Omnipresent chemical simulator" seems
           | irrelavent in context. All in all, its a nonsense sentence
           | 
           | Now compare with the original sentence. Its an introduction
           | to the paper. They are trying to establish why they are doing
           | the research they are doing and why you should care. And it
           | tells you - we did research into sound dapening because sound
           | is all around us and its constantly effecting us. Which is
           | something as a human i find to be true - the modern (urban)
           | world is quite noisy. When there is too much noise it can be
           | mentally exhausting and can tax my ability to understand
           | those around me. After reading that sentence I now know why
           | they are researching this area, and agree it is a worthy
           | thing to research. That introductory sentence did everything
           | an introductory sentence to a paper is supposed to do.
           | 
           | Sure, they use some fancy words, but they aren't even that
           | fancy. It is a formal paper, i think high school level
           | reading ability can be presumed.
        
             | Jackson__ wrote:
             | I took it as a play on the common meme of "You are now
             | breathing manually." which I did find pretty funny.
        
             | engineer_22 wrote:
             | I agree - the motivation provides important context to the
             | rest of the research. It helps the reader quickly parse and
             | sort.
        
             | PittleyDunkin wrote:
             | In this case they could have just said "hearing is
             | trivially important to most humans" without any loss of
             | value to the paper. The purple prose seems to add nothing
             | at all.
        
             | supertofu wrote:
             | The opening sentence isn't "complex" or "fancy" writing.
             | It's LLM writing.
             | 
             | The paper has: "Sound, an omnipresent sensory stimulator,
             | holds significant relevance in the human experience, as it
             | continually engages our auditory and mental faculties."
             | This is just a sentence stuffed with adjectives. It conveys
             | nothing beyond the definition of sound in a bunch of
             | adjectives.
             | 
             | Complex (and admittedly annoying) writing would be
             | something like: "Ever-cognizable and in continual interplay
             | with our auditory faculties, sound is one of the most
             | significant objects of human sense perception." This is
             | annoying writing for sure, but it's well-constructed,
             | unlike the LLM opener for the paper. It culminates with the
             | fact that sound is important because it is ubiquitous to
             | our perception.
             | 
             | "Fancy" writing would be a little more poetic, something
             | like: "As stimulating as it is pervasive, as significant to
             | the human experience as it is mundane, sound relentlessly
             | occupies our sensory and mental perception: whether
             | significant or inconsequential, substantial or
             | infinitesimal, sound is all at once the vehicle of our
             | heritage, the body of our cognitive terroir, and the symbol
             | of our highest arts." This sentence is also annoying, but
             | only because it's kind of pretentious. But there is a point
             | here: sound is _powerful_ to human beings.
             | 
             | I think the problem with our times is that people cannot
             | tell the difference between complex writing, poetic
             | writing, and just plain adjective-stuffed LLM writing.
             | Which all comes down to the fact that we as a culture have
             | devalued complex writing. Complex writing isn't read in
             | schools, nor taught at any level of schooling. It's
             | actually disencouraged in every Freshman writing class.
        
               | pineaux wrote:
               | Although no hat populates my head, I take off my hat to
               | you, while jealously cursing your cunning wielding of the
               | English language, my good sir.
        
         | bawolff wrote:
         | Its low on informational content, but as an introductory
         | sentence seems fine to me.
        
           | troyvit wrote:
           | Yeah I kinda liked it. It made me stop and listen where I
           | was, realizing all the weird noises happening around me that
           | I was mentally trying to cancel out.
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | It's very motivational. IMO, my answer to it is a sound
           | "hell, yeah! can you help with it?"
           | 
           | But the way it's written is bad. The OP would have a point if
           | the complaint was about the form, and not the contents.
           | Whatever makes people believe they have to write papers this
           | way (whether it's true or not) needs fixing.
        
         | PrismCrystal wrote:
         | That first sentence has been a totally standard way to open a
         | research paper for at least twenty years now. (As I have seen
         | from both publishing myself, and as a side gig, doing editing
         | of myriad papers by non-native English speakers working in many
         | other branches of the sciences.) A writer has to start
         | somewhere, and that has always been a matter of social
         | convention.
        
         | nyc_data_geek1 wrote:
         | How do you do, fellow humans?
        
         | kspacewalk2 wrote:
         | My thesis supervisor used excessively flowery language like
         | that in papers, and I had to have a few tugs with him over
         | needless verbosity all while learning to write a paper for the
         | first time. I think there's a subconscious "look at how wise I
         | am" whiff that comes off this type of writing. And sure, yes,
         | impressive, but let's leave creative writing to creative
         | writers. As a scientist, you should instead be focusing on
         | communicating a (probably complex enough) idea as clearly and
         | as simply as you possibly can - just not any simpler.
         | 
         | By the time I wrote my thesis, I was far more assertive in
         | politely declining many of his edits.
        
           | bookofjoe wrote:
           | When I was a research fellow in anesthesiology, my supervisor
           | constantly made edits that seemed to me unnecessary, almost
           | as if he felt it was required of him to demonstrate his
           | mastery.
           | 
           | After he changed something I'd revised per his instructions
           | back to my original copy I decided I'd had enough: I revised
           | only where I thought it improved the papers and ignored the
           | rest.
           | 
           | He never said a thing.
        
             | hinkley wrote:
             | I wrote an article for an early Java dev website thinking I
             | might do that more professionally. I don't know what
             | crawled up the editor's butt, but he kept suggesting edits
             | that took sentences I sweated over to be precise and
             | basically edited them to say either nothing at all or the
             | opposite of what I meant. My last round of edits I sent to
             | him came with my _own_ comments about why things needed to
             | stay worded a certain way, because I thought he was trying
             | to make me sound like an idiot - not plain-speaking but
             | plain wrong.
             | 
             | It was exhausting and stupid and I stuck to blogging after
             | that. Who knows, I might have written books. But not
             | dealing with shit like that. I can torture myself much more
             | efficiently, TYVM.
        
               | __mharrison__ wrote:
               | self-publishing books... just sayin
        
               | hinkley wrote:
               | I was always on the fence about whether I had enough to
               | say to fill a book. It's more that the experience made me
               | stop asking the question.
        
             | Terr_ wrote:
             | > my supervisor constantly made edits that seemed to me
             | unnecessary, almost as if he felt it was required of him to
             | demonstrate his mastery.
             | 
             | There are many stories of savvy workers engaging
             | proactively including a flaw in their work being reviewed,
             | something small but obvious and easy to fix, so that their
             | managers can feel involved. One that often comes up in
             | software is an apocryphal "duck" in an unreleased attack
             | animation for the queen-unit in Interplay's Battle Chess
             | game.
             | 
             | Closely related are the _appearance_ of changes, such as a
             | tale that Michelangelo was pressured to  "fix" the nose of
             | his _David_ statue, so he climbed up and knocked off a
             | little bit of material and the superior down below was
             | satisfied without being able to verify anything had really
             | changed.
        
           | bane wrote:
           | My English professors in college beat this kind of stuff out
           | of the students. One went so far as to grade all papers that
           | started with something like "since time immemorial, man
           | has..." with an F.
        
           | RandomThoughts3 wrote:
           | The issue here is not so much that it's flowery but that it's
           | completely unremarkable, bordering on a truism, in its
           | content. The sentence literally means: sound is relevant
           | because you constantly hear it.
        
             | abdullahkhalids wrote:
             | The sentence is badly written, which is why it feels like a
             | truism. But there is content in it.
             | 
             | > Sound, an omnipresent sensory stimulator, ...
             | 
             | Sounds are always being heard by your senses: ears + bass
             | that you feel in your body.
             | 
             | > Sound ... continually engages our auditory and mental
             | faculties.
             | 
             | The continuous usage of our senses then lets sounds force
             | our brains to think in particular ways. This is distinct
             | from above - brain vs ears.
             | 
             | > Sound ... holds significant relevance in the human
             | experience ...
             | 
             | The continuous engagement results in sound being important
             | to what being human means. Note that human experience is
             | larger than what you think. So this is also distinct from
             | above.
        
               | RandomThoughts3 wrote:
               | I'm sorry but you have taken a lot of words to basically
               | say: you hear sounds.
               | 
               | Special mention to " Sound ... holds significant
               | relevance in the human experience" which is itself a
               | truism in the truism. Yes, sound is an experience and
               | experiencing is a significant part of being alive. You
               | are welcome for this insanely new and deep nugget of
               | information.
               | 
               | Honestly, you can remove the first paragraph of the
               | introduction with no loss of information involved and end
               | up with a better article.
        
         | visarga wrote:
         | It is just setting the problem space. It doesn't convey
         | anything but a topic.
        
         | trgn wrote:
         | Given the obsequious near limitless tolerance we extend to
         | operators of loud ICE engines in the public realm, I don't
         | think this is nearly stressed enough.
        
           | sephamorr wrote:
           | I entirely agree that there is substantial tolerance for
           | vehicle noise tolerance and this drives me crazy. Cities
           | aren't loud, cars are! I just want to make clear though that
           | replacing the ICE part with electric engines solves the
           | problem for low speeds only -- once they're going at a
           | reasonable speed, engine noise doesn't dominate (if you
           | exclude the antisocial behaviors of deliberately loud
           | vehicles, most motorbikes).
        
             | the__alchemist wrote:
             | Cars aren't loud; commercial vehicles are. (Relatively) So
             | are motorcycles, and food truck generators.
        
               | dpe82 wrote:
               | The Mustang that parks my street and operates 100% of the
               | time in Sport Mode is the loudest vehicle I hear on a
               | regular basis.
        
               | surfingdino wrote:
               | Some care are loud. Especially those modded exhausts.
        
               | geraldwhen wrote:
               | The illegal street racing near me says otherwise.
        
               | creer wrote:
               | You can't equate "illegal street racing" to "cars". I
               | mean you can but how is that going to address anything?
        
               | blargey wrote:
               | Are pickup trucks "commercial vehicles"? Either way
               | there's plenty of them in residential areas, revving up
               | at 5am or rumbling home in the dead of night.
        
               | Mountain_Skies wrote:
               | They really don't need to be, but jerks sometimes do
               | modify them to be loud even when idling. About five years
               | ago I lived in a neighborhood where some jackass would
               | idle his modified truck every morning at a quarter till
               | 5am. He'd leave around 5am and you could hear the truck
               | for at least a minute as he left the neighborhood and
               | started accelerating hard on the highway. His house was
               | across the street and four doors down and his truck still
               | could be heard through my bedroom window which faced the
               | backyard. I don't know how his next door neighbors
               | tolerated it. This was an exurban area with lots of
               | pickups and even a few commercial vehicles in the
               | neighborhood but he was the only one whose vehicle was
               | loud and it obviously was made that way intentionally.
        
               | the__alchemist wrote:
               | No; they do not have the loud engines I referred to.
        
               | abdullahkhalids wrote:
               | If I am walking down the street, listening to something
               | on my earphones, I inevitably have to pause/rewind if a
               | non-commerical car is passing by.
               | 
               | I could maybe get headphones, or some noise cancelling
               | earphones, but I shouldn't have to.
        
               | the__alchemist wrote:
               | Valid; I should have clarified. This is a matter of
               | degree, not kind.
               | 
               | Commercial vehicles are much louder than cars. Especially
               | at the lower speeds where engine noise dominates tire
               | noise.
        
               | the__alchemist wrote:
               | I will update this: Y'all have valid points regarding
               | cars making noise:
               | 
               | Non-modified personal vehicles are significantly less
               | loud than commercial vehicles, motorcycles, and food
               | truck generators.
        
             | bpfrh wrote:
             | To add to that, public transport based on trains is and
             | always will be a source of noise, even if they are purely
             | electrical
        
               | LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
               | That depends entirely on the tracks, and the wheel(sets)
               | of the trains, though.
               | 
               | No matter if streetcars/trams downtown, or so called
               | 'light-rail'/fast-rapid-mass-transit reaching out into
               | the periphery, or neighbouring towns.
               | 
               | They can also be buried by applying that strange concept
               | called 'subway'.
               | 
               | Hrrm, what happened to all those hyped loops, btw?
        
               | trgn wrote:
               | i'd trade the predictable rumble of a train a couple of
               | hours a day over the unpredictable roar and rumble of
               | trucks and muscle cars.
        
             | adrianN wrote:
             | At low speeds new cars are required to make a sound for
             | safety reasons.
        
             | ofalkaed wrote:
             | I sometimes miss the constant din of the city, I have heard
             | nothing but wind and waves for the past week and those are
             | louder than any densely populated area I have lived in. Now
             | that they have settled down the crows can hear each other
             | so they have been at it all day. When it actually gets
             | quiet is when I miss the city the most, I like the quiet
             | but every noise breaks that silence which demands your
             | attention making it difficult to concentrate on anything.
             | It is now below freezing and everything green is gone,
             | everything is getting hard and that is when things really
             | get loud here, nothing to absorb sound but plenty to
             | reflect it. Nature is pretty noisy for the most part, while
             | it seems quiet compared to the city it is actually just
             | different.
             | 
             | Sometimes when it is _quiet_ here I wonder what the noises
             | of nature must have been like to people a century or two or
             | three ago when the wind was not just wind but something
             | which could destroy your crops and make the next year very
             | difficult for you. Or the extended lack of noise constantly
             | reminding you that the drought continues and even the
             | animals have had the sense to move on while you watch your
             | fields slowly die. City or nature our relationship to the
             | sounds around us have changed quite a bit, we can now
             | choose to ignore the majority of sounds and write them off
             | as meaningless or irritating if we can not manage to ignore
             | them but those sounds are never meaningless, they all
             | signify something more than our irritation.
             | 
             | Right now I am missing the wind and the waves and feeling
             | the constant low rumble, I really hate listening to the
             | compressor on the fridge but if it stopped making noise I
             | would probably be more irritated by the thought of spoiling
             | food and the potential inconveniences which that would
             | cause. Never could hear my fridge when I lived in the city,
             | if it stopped working it would just be an issue to deal
             | with when I discovered it was no longer cold, not something
             | I had a constant reminder of.
        
               | abdullahkhalids wrote:
               | It's interesting that you didn't once mention the sound
               | of humans. Background human noise, where you can't catch
               | the words, is very nice to hear.
               | 
               | I love the constant din of cities, but the din of people.
               | Not the din of cars. If one is lucky enough to live in
               | that sort of city.
        
           | fullstop wrote:
           | I'm seriously considering moving because I live near an
           | interstate. By near, I mean about a mile away, but the trucks
           | with the straight pipe exhausts that engine brake drive me
           | _bonkers_. On top of those, the sound just carries sometimes.
           | I can't see the highway from my house, so it's not a line-of-
           | sight thing, just acoustics.
           | 
           | I've started recording the outdoor sound levels using a USB
           | sound meter: https://i.imgur.com/IdYdhA8.png
           | 
           | When the quietest it gets is above 55 decibels, I don't like
           | being outside. It's not just cars passing by, it is a
           | pulsating drone which never ends.
        
             | ffsm8 wrote:
             | Cars are extremely noisy, and it's so hard to predict how
             | loud any given address is without actually living there for
             | a while... Beyond the obvious reasons anyway.
             | 
             | My current address would be perfectly fine if people drove
             | according to the rules, but it turns out that people in
             | this town don't adhere to speed limits whatsoever and there
             | is literally no police control.
             | 
             | Consequently, the 50km/h speed limit is ignored entirely
             | with most cars driving around 70km/h.
             | 
             | That shit gets loud!
        
               | fullstop wrote:
               | In my case the area has become a haven for warehouses,
               | and large (18-wheel) truck traffic is up 90% in the last
               | few years alone. I've lived here for over 20 years, and
               | it's hard to see it change like this.
        
               | trgn wrote:
               | I have the same problem. The difference on a snowday e.g.
               | is night and day. no speeders, so much more quiet.
               | 
               | Two of my neighbors on our block bought electrical cars,
               | and not exaggerating, it made such a difference to
               | quality of life, no longer hearing them pull up or drive
               | off.
               | 
               | I lived in a "walkable city" for a number of years. The
               | noise outside my window was all human. Footsteps, people
               | talking, ... At night was dead quiet. Much more quiet
               | than the suburban street I'm on now.
               | 
               | City life is not inherently shitty, it's tolerance for
               | antisocial behaviors that make it shitty. I really think
               | americans can't always put their finger on it, and end up
               | moving out at some point, thinking it has to do with the
               | overall "busyness" of city life or something. But it
               | really is just noisy cars.
        
             | Joeri wrote:
             | I moved from the city to the beach a little over a year
             | ago, and though the sound of the waves is roughly the same
             | level as the city's car drone was, it being a natural sound
             | made a huge difference in my sleep quality and overall
             | comfort.
             | 
             | It makes me wonder if the noise profile that cars make
             | could be modified to be less annoying, even if not
             | necessarily less loud.
        
               | fullstop wrote:
               | I would love to hear the crash of the ocean 24x7. The
               | highway noise bothers me because of the echoing nature of
               | it. It's not uni-directional, and it feels like there's
               | always a vehicle coming at me.
               | 
               | My youngest has one more year of high school remaining,
               | but maybe it's time to downsize / find a quieter place
               | after she graduates.
        
         | OJFord wrote:
         | From the way that paragraph continues:
         | 
         | > The importance of sound is underscored by its dual nature,
         | serving as both a vital tool for communication and a potential
         | source of harm, exemplified by the pervasive issue of noise
         | pollution.[1] Considered to be a public health issue by the
         | World Health Organization, unwanted noise can have harmful
         | health effects on people who are chronically exposed to
         | it.[1-5] In the US alone, an estimated 145 million people are
         | exposed to hazardous noise levels.[5] To suppress noise levels,
         | both active and passive solutions are used.
         | 
         | I suspect it may be angling to funding or a journal/conference
         | purpose or something? Without that, the rest of the paper's not
         | really going to care about noise pollution, even if it
         | potentially indirectly offers a way to mitigate it.
        
         | eyegor wrote:
         | For papers sometimes you need to hit a page count to make your
         | sponsor/advisor/conference happy. I've been told "this is a
         | great paper but can you pad it out to 12pgs?", maybe that
         | happened here as well.
        
         | lofaszvanitt wrote:
         | It shakes up people, reminding them how shallow their
         | vocabulary really is.
        
         | hammock wrote:
         | "Sound is everywhere, and fills our ears and minds" doesnt
         | quite have the same PhD level ring to it (pun intended)
        
           | piyh wrote:
           | I enjoy having an LLM rewrite my shit posts as if it was a
           | PhD research paper.
        
         | rrr_oh_man wrote:
         | Welcome to academia.
        
       | omegaworks wrote:
       | Incredibly important for the comfort and wellbeing of space
       | travelers. Imagine being in an enclosed box compacted as
       | efficiently as possible next to thrusters and life support
       | equipment. The noise must be insane. At the same time, current
       | noise suppression materials have to be heavy. Every gram saved is
       | worth its weight in gold.
        
       | optimer wrote:
       | Talking about noise-cancelling fabric, I recently wondered:
       | 
       | Is it possible to noise-isolate my bed?
       | 
       | I live in a beautiful apartment in my favorite part of the city.
       | But the neighbors on some nights are extremely noisy.
       | 
       | If I could noise-isolate my bed, that would be a huge quality of
       | life improvement.
       | 
       | I was thinking about putting some noise absorbing material under
       | the bed feet and a large noise blocking curtain over it. Like a
       | baldachin or canopy bed.
       | 
       | Do you guys think that would work?
        
         | adamweld wrote:
         | It's probably not going to be possible to completely silence
         | your neighbors, but I'm sure there are a few things you can do
         | to make a difference.
         | 
         | If noise is transmitted through the floor, add thick carpet and
         | support your bed with a vibration deadening material, e.g.
         | something viscoelastic. Sorbothane is popular for this but
         | you'll need to spread the load out or pick a high durometer
         | (stiff) rubber.
         | 
         | For the walls, hang up some carpets or similar, and/or hang
         | heavy material around your bed as a canopy as you suggest. What
         | you want is a material that's heavy enough that the energy in
         | the sound waves is dissipated trying to move it around. Maybe a
         | weighted blanket, or a duvet cover stuffed with mass loaded
         | vinyl (used in cars for sound deadening).
        
         | askvictor wrote:
         | Some noise dampening could work but probably won't get rid of
         | all of the noise. You might want to look at a white-noise
         | generator of some sort - I've recently discovered such a
         | function on my (smart-but-now-antiquated) clock/radio. I use a
         | rain sound but there are plenty of options out there. It does
         | wonders for my sleep when there's a party in the neighbourhood
         | or the pigeons are partying on my roof.
        
         | mystifyingpoi wrote:
         | Get a good quality earplugs, but these real ones, made for
         | musicians, not the single-use foam crap.
        
           | coolspot wrote:
           | Musicians' ear plugs are designed to let music go through,
           | just not dangerous levels of pressure. I am very sensitive to
           | sounds and I have tried many earplugs. Foam single-use plugs
           | are the best.
        
             | benoliver999 wrote:
             | Some companies that make custom ones also make ones for
             | sleep
             | 
             | https://acscustom.com/uk/products/other-products/sleep-
             | sound
             | 
             | But yeah even they say that for maximum noise cancelling
             | you want foam. These are better for comfort.
        
       | ChuckMcM wrote:
       | This is a pretty interesting paper. I was not aware of the
       | acoustic properties of silk (a fabric that continues to surprise
       | me). The ability to actively dampen noise emission would
       | obviously be of interest to ninja assassins but as someone who
       | has hearing challenges I think exploiting its properties to make
       | it into a full garment microphone might be an interesting
       | application. Based on the sound levels in the paper I don't think
       | it would work as a speaker however which is kind of good because
       | everyone having their own mood music all the time would be super
       | distracting.
        
         | dsr_ wrote:
         | > I don't think it would work as a speaker
         | 
         | https://www.parts-express.com/search?keywords=silk%20tweeter...
         | 
         | begs to disagree with you. (72 results, mostly for sale right
         | now)
        
           | ChuckMcM wrote:
           | Technicalities! But its a good point. I was thinking
           | unsupported fabric as would be found in clothing vs something
           | strapped into a frame. A vague neuron in mine brain has faint
           | memories of 'silk tweeters' in the Rogers Sound Labs studio
           | monitors I used to have, alas 'big' three way speakers are
           | much less common now.
        
       | hinkley wrote:
       | Bah. I thought this was going to be cool passive noise reduction
       | but it's active.
       | 
       | Back in the 90's someone figured out these little hollow beads
       | that ate sound. They talked about how we could paint them on
       | walls to dampen whole rooms, or things like airplanes.
       | 
       | Since we never heard from them again, even after the patents
       | would have expired, I suspect that they couldn't find a binder
       | that adhered to the beads without filling in the holes. Or the
       | paint neutralizes the effect.
        
         | sgt101 wrote:
         | Why wouldn't you just quilt them up in lots of pockets and then
         | attach them like wall paper?
        
       | patel011393 wrote:
       | This is a repost of an earlier HN post from months ago...
        
       | mensetmanusman wrote:
       | Since it's in the zeitgeist, the piezofiber used is a pfas. It
       | uses similar pfas materials that all lithium ion batteries
       | utilize for safety.
       | 
       | We will have to wrap our heads around which pfas technology is
       | worth it.
        
       | unit149 wrote:
       | >Finally, the fabric achieves a 75% decrease in sound as its
       | vibrations are suppressed up to 95%, and it is controlled to
       | modulate acoustic reflectivity.
       | 
       | If an LLM really did write this, I doubt it would be able to
       | distinguish between the faculties of Active noise cancellation
       | and direct sound suppression.
       | 
       | Within the IoT, SPL has potential blockchain applicability, even
       | in an absence of its incorporation in various fabrics. `
        
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