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Since the late nineteenth century, the sounds of technology have been the subject of complaints, regulation, and legislation. By the early 1900s, antinoise leagues in Western Europe and North America had formed to fight noise from factories, steam trains, automobiles, and gramophones, with campaigns featuring conferences, exhibitions, and "silence weeks." And, as Karin Bijsterveld points out in Mechanical Sound, public discussion of noise has never died down and continues today. In this book, Bijsterveld examines the persistence of noise on the public agenda, looking at four episodes of noise and the public response to it in Europe and the United States between 1875 and 1975: industrial noise, traffic noise, noise from neighborhood radios and gramophones, and aircraft noise. She also looks at a twentieth-century counterpoint to complaints about noise: the celebration of mechanical sound in avant-garde music composed between the two world wars.

Bijsterveld argues that the rise of noise from new technology combined with overlapping noise regulations created what she calls a "paradox of control." Experts and politicians promised to control some noise, but left other noise problems up to citizens. Aircraft noise, for example, measured in formulas understandable only by specialists, was subject to public regulation; the sounds of noisy neighborhoods were the responsibility of residents themselves. In addition, Bijsterveld notes, the spatial character of antinoise interventions that impose zones and draw maps, despite the ability of sound to cross borders and boundaries, has helped keep noise a public problem. We have tried to create islands of silence, she writes, yet we have left a sea of sounds to be fiercely discussed. ... Read more

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This study first describes the nature of sound to give the reader a basis for understanding the principles and techniques for its measurement and to analyze sound and noise. Subjective and psychological aspects are then considered, including such questions as: what are the annoying features of noise? How is noise rated? How much noise is needed to cause deafness? The final and most important section deals with the control of noise. Traditional methods and more recent developments, such as active control, are included. The subject matter keeps in mind the regulations and legal requirements that have made noise an important issue. ... Read more

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Designed for engineers with little or no training in noise measurement, this practical handbook provides a thorough grounding in machinery acoustics, techniques crucial for the design of today's quieter machines.After a discussion of fundamental acoustic terminology; the authors describe various methods for machinery sound power measurement in free field, in semi-reverberant space, and in a reverberant room.Other sections consider noise measurement on nominally identical small machines, sound intensity measurement, and the new analogue and digital noise measuring equipment. In an era of growing noise pollution, this book will be very useful to acoustic engineers and equipment designers responsible for producing quieter machines. ... Read more

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Noise and distortion that degrade the quality of speech signals can come from any number of sources. The technology and techniques for dealing with noise are almost as numerous, but it is only recently, with the development of inexpensive digital signal processing hardware, that the implementation of the technology has become practical.Noise Reduction in Speech Applications provides a comprehensive introduction to modern techniques for removing or reducing background noise from a range of speech-related applications. Self-contained, it starts with a tutorial-style chapter of background material, then focuses on system aspects, digital algorithms, and implementation. The final section explores a variety of applications and demonstrates to potential users of the technology the results possible with the noise reduction techniques presented. The book offers chapters contributed by international experts, a practical, systems approach, and numerous references. For electrical, acoustics, signal processing, communications, and bioengineers, Noise Reduction in Speech Applications is a valuable resource that shows you how to decide whether noise reduction will solve problems in your own systems and how to make the best use of the technologies available. ... Read more

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This book provides a detailed study of the theory and introduces the techniques for signal recovery and noise removal. It builds on an understanding of analog electronics and provides the background for work in domains such as radio transmission, image processing, magnetic resonance imaging, etc. The book is written at the level of senior undergraduate and postgraduate in electrical and electronic engineering.
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This volume presents the proceedings of the Sixth Van der Ziel Symposium on this topic. It contains papers on fundamental aspects of noise and fluctuations in physical systems and in materials: theory; 1/f noise in thin films, contacts and structures; low frequency noise in solid state diodes; bipolar and heterobipolar junction transistors; 1/f noise in field effect transistors; SQUIDS and STM. ... Read more

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Presents and discusses fundamental aspects and key implications of noise and fluctuations in various fields of science, technology and sociology, with special emphasis in 1/f fluctuations in biology. There are contributions from leading international experts. ... Read more

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Noise and fluctuations are at the seat of all physical systems. The advertised scope of the conference included gravitational wave detection, quantum fluctuations, quantum Brownian motion, Brownian ratchets, stochastic resonance, biological systems, semiconductors, electronic devices, sandpile physics, optical phenomena and all types of stochastic phenomena. This solicited a wide range of papers from cosmology to biology to electronic devices. Using the study of fluctuations as the unifying theme for these diverse disciplines is a new and exciting concept. UpoN is a unique conference in that it focuses on open questions and problems, rather than answers. 90% of the solution is asking the right question. The discovery of a problem is often more profound than the discovery of a solution. In the spirit of this conference, authors were asked to (1) conclude each manuscript with a section called AConclusions and Open Questions§ and (2) ask questions to the audience at the §End.txt.Int.: of their oral presentation. An important characteristic of this conference is that refereeing of all papers was carried out to a high standard by the International Scientific Advisory Committee using a strict double-blind refereeing process. ... Read more

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This book treats the various aspects of noise from magnetic recording media and the impact on systems performance. Several authors present discussion of materials and processes used to fabricate media for computer data storage, theoretical aspects of noise and micromagnetic behaviour, experimental methods and characterization, and system analysis. In the past decade thin film recording media have largely displaced particle media in rigid disk recording systems. During the same period of time the field has evolved from the prevalent belief that thin film media were virtually noiseless to a detailed understanding of the origin and the manifestation of noise in these new media. This understanding has led to the ability to make the very low noise media needed in present applications. The present state of understanding of both particulate and thin film media is summarized. ... Read more

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The seventh in a series which had been initiated by A.vanderZiel and C.M.VanVliet in 1985, this Symposium continues the established tradition by bringing together scientists from university, industry, and governmental laboratories interested in the quantum 1/f effect, in its many high-technology applications, and in other, less fundamental, low frequency fluctuations in electronic devices. For smaller sizes, the steep 1/N increase hampers again the relentless miniaturization process. This is just where we have arrived today in continuously scaling down the size of devices and integrated circuits. These considerations explain the resurgence of interest in 1/f noise in the present nano-technology phase of the miniaturization process. There is strong interest for 1/f noise in quantum wires. The quantum 1/f effect in biological realizations of quantum wires, in biological motors and in molecular switches is also of major interest. Of particular interest is the role of the quantum 1/f effect in spin-polarized transport, in spin-transistors, and in the new spectral domain of the upcoming terahertz technology. Finally, the increased impact of quantum 1/f research is also present in the emerging ultra-low-power electronics domain, with wireless applications where higher frequencies coupled with higher frequency stability requirements are utilized. ... Read more

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Intended for graduate students and researchers in physics, chemistry, biology, and applied mathematics, this book provides an up-to-date introduction to current research in fluctuations in spatially extended systems. It offers a practical introduction to the theory of stochastic partial differential equations and gives an overview of the effects of external noise on dynamical systems with spatial degrees of freedom.

The text begins with a general introduction to noise-induced phenomena in dynamical systems followed by an extensive discussion of analytical and numerical tools needed to get information from stochastic partial differential equations. It then turns to particular problems described by stochastic partial differential equations, covering a wide part of the rich phenomenology of spatially extended systems, such as nonequilibrium phase transitions, domain growth, pattern formation, and front propagation. The only prerequisite is a minimal background knowledge of the Langevin and Fokker-Planck equations. ... Read more

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All papers in this proceedings volume were peer reviewed. The purview of this third conference was shifted toward biology and medicine. Among the topics covered were: the constructive role of noise in the central nervous system, neuronal networks, and sensory transduction (hearing in humans, photo- and electroreception in marine animals), encoding of information into nerve pulse trains, single molecules and noise (including single molecule detection and characterization by nanopores - molecular "Coulter counting"), concepts of noise in neurophysiology (randomness and order in brain and heart electrical activities under normal conditions and in pathology), the role of noise in genetic regulation and gene expression, biosensors, etc. ... Read more

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Additive and multiplicative noise in the information signal can significantly limit the potential of complex signal processing systems, especially when those systems use signals with complex phase structure. During the last few years this problem has been the focus of much research, and its solution could lead to profound improvements in applications of complex signals and coherent signal processing.Signal Processing Noise sets forth a generalized approach to signal processing in multiplicative and additive noise that represents a remarkable advance in signal processing and detection theory. This approach extends the boundaries of the noise immunity set by classical and modern signal processing theories, and systems constructed on this basis achieve better detection performance than that of systems currently in use. Featuring the results of the author's own research, the book is filled with examples and applications, and each chapter contains an analysis of recent observations obtained by computer modelling and experiments.Tables and illustrations clearly show the superiority of the generalized approach over both classical and modern approaches to signal processing noise. Addressing a fundamental problem in complex signal processing systems, this book offers not only theoretical development, but practical recommendations for raising noise immunity in a wide range of applications. ... Read more

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The prospect of the active control of noise has intrigued, and frustrated, scientists and engineers in many countries for over five decades. The basic idea is relatively simple: to artificially generate a secondary acoustic field that destructively interferes with the field produced by the unwanted sound. However the limitations of the available electronic technology have restricted practical realization to a few simple applications.With the development of flexible and cheap digital signal processing devices, capable of processing signals within the audio range, there has been a resurgence in interest in the theory and practice of developing active noise control systems. Further, the flexibility of these devices allows the developer to concentrate on the design procedure and corresponding control algorithms, rather than the acoustic properties of the arrangements. This book provides an introduction to the design of such systems from the perspective of control engineering.The approach allows the designer to predict the performance of the system in advance and reduces the empirical aspect of many previous approaches. The use of control engineering methods moreover permits the progressive development of various control techniques--from fixed digital control to self-tuning adaptive control--to be realized within a single coherent framework. ... Read more