Roumen.ganeff

White Noise

Beate Firlinger

On its face, flipping on white noise before hitting the sack must be the most counterintuitive idea out there. Want to sleep better? Simple solution: make a bunch of noise. Sweet dreams ahoy. 

And yet, not only do some people swear they can't get to sleep without a fan running, there are even companies that will sell you optimized noise-makers for helping you get the best of your bed rest. What is up with our brains and our ears?

The short answer: white noise is better noise. At least for (some) sleepers.

White noise, if you're using the technical definition, is a consistent noise that comes out evenly across all hearable frequencies. Say you're a musician. To play a middle C note, you play something that's about 261.6 hertz, the unit of frequency. White noise is just an equal amount at every frequency, from low to high, that a human being can hear. To keep the music analogy going, it's a gigantic band all playing a slightly different note. (Machines pushed to the limit, like fans, are especially good at hitting these notes.)

When a noise wakes you up in the night, it's not the noise itself that wakes you up, per se, but the sudden change or inconsistencies in noise that jar you. White noise creates a masking effect, blocking out those sudden changes that frustrate light sleepers, or people trying to fall asleep. "The simple version is that hearing still works while you're asleep," says Seth S. Horowitz, a neuroscientist and author of The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind. 

"This is why the majority of bedpartners prefer the constant white noise of a CPAP machine rather than their spouse’s crescendo-decrescendo snoring sounds," Clete A. Kushida, director of the Stanford Center for Human Sleep Research, writes in an email to Popular Science. 

Makes sense, right? But it's not always that straightforward.

For one thing, there's pink noise. There's some semi-complicated math involved, but essentially, pink noise is white noise, but with the higher frequencies turned down in intensity. White noise has equal power across all frequencies; pink noise comes out louder and more powerful on the lower ends of the sound spectrum. That could be helpful for people suffering from tinnitus, or who just find the upper registers of true white noise unpleasant. The noise family tree doesn't stop there, either: depending on which frequencies you tone down or up, you might also produce Brown noise, (named for a person, not a color) violet noise, and a mess of other colors. Different folks might prefer different sounds.  

And, of course, not everyone needs that noise. In some people, the masking effect of white noise can do the exact opposite of what it does for most people--actually increasing sensitivity to underlying sounds, Horowitz says. In the strange, not-totally-explained world of stochastic resonance, people are occasionally able to pick up noises "masked" with white noise better than they are at picking up the noise in total silence. But that's an explanation article for another time. You look like you need some rest. 

Mosh pit

UIG via Getty Images

Physicists at Cornell University found that people in mosh pits behave strikingly similar to gas particles—meaning that the pits move in predictable patterns. We waded through the researchers’ paper to find a few concrete takeaways. Moshers, here’s how to avoid incurring too much bodily damage:

1) Wait a while before jumping in. The collective speed of the moshers typically spikes early on and then drops off steadily, following a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.

2) Once in the fray, make sure to avoid the middle, where a vortex-like “circle pit” can emerge as people collide and start running in the same direction.

3) When you’re ready to get out, don’t head directly toward the stage. That area will be tightly packed with bodies. Instead, exit stage left or stage right.

This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of Popular Science.

Love is in the air on Google+ for Valentine's Day

It's one of those times when no matter where you are there's a feeling of love in the air. Yep, Valentine's Day is tomorrow and Google+ is offering up a special Auto Awesome animated picture for the occasion. Upload or take a photo of people kissing, and in short order you'll be notified that there's a new Auto Awesome picture waiting — this time around you'll see a nice array of animated hearts floating around the picture.

Just like Auto Awesome pictures of the past (aside from the winter snowflakes) there's no way to manually trigger the hearts being applied. Just take a picture and hope the algorithm picks it up — we think Google probably has a pretty good chance of applying hearts to all of the pictures you want. And don't worry, Auto Awesome pictures are private by default.

Source: +Erik Murphy-Chutorian

Software giant 'seriously considering' Android app support, reports The Verge

Future Windows Phone handsets and Windows computers could run Android apps, according to a report from The Verge's Tom Warren. Citing unnamed sources, the outlet says Microsoft is "seriously considering" bringing support for Android applications to its Windows and Windows Phone operating systems. While discussions are said to be ongoing within Microsoft, and opinions within the company apparently sharply divided, the move is seen as a possible way for Windows Phone to bridge the so-called "app gap" between with Android and iOS.

Warren points out that the ubiquity of Android and its relatively strong library of apps could allow Microsoft to position Android support as a "Band-Aid" for its Windows Phone app woes. The move has echoes of BlackBerry's Android runtime, a feature which in its latest release allows BlackBerry 10 devices to run Android apps alongside native BB10 apps. Any Microsoft runtime, like BlackBerry's, would likely lack Google Play Services, and thus wouldn't offer the same APIs as an "official" Google Android device. (It's also worth considering how vastly different the design languages of Windows and Android are right now.)

Nevertheless, many companies are already working on getting Android and Windows to play nicely together, including Bluestacks and manufacturers like ASUS, with dual-OS devices. For its part, Microsoft is reported to have reached out to HTC late last year over installing Windows Phone as a dual-boot option on some of its Android phones.

Any move towards official Android app support on Windows could have far-reaching consequences for Microsoft and Google. Though the decision-making process is apparently at an early stage, it'll be interesting to see whether Microsoft decides to take a chance on Android, and if so whether it's able to turn this feature into a boost in sales and app numbers.

Source: The Verge