Product Description: Noise, as we usually think of it, is background sound that interferes with our ability to hear more interesting sounds. In general terms, though, it is anything that interferes with the reception of signals of any sort. It includes extraneous energy in the environment, degradation of signals in transit, and spontaneous random activity in receivers and signalers...read more

Product Description: Neuronal Noise combines experimental, theoretical and computational results to show how noise is inherent to neuronal activity, and how noise can be important for neuronal computations.  The book covers many aspects of noise in neurons, with an emphasis on the largest source of noise: synaptic noise...read more

Written by the world's leading scholars and researchers in the emerging field of sound studies, The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies offers new and fully engaging perspectives on the significance of sound in its material and cultural forms. The book considers sounds and music as experienced in such diverse settings as shop floors, laboratories, clinics, design studios, homes, and clubs, across an impressively broad range of historical periods and national and cultural contexts. Science has traditionally been understood as a visual matter, a study which has historically been undertaken with optical technologies such as slides, graphs, and telescopes. This book questions that notion powerfully by showing how listening has contributed to scientific practice. Sounds have always been a part of human experience, shaping and transforming the world in which we live in ways that often go unnoticed. Sounds and music, the authors argue, are embedded in the fabric of everyday life, art, commerce, and politics in ways which impact our perception of the world. Through an extraordinarily diverse set of case studies, authors illustrate how sounds -- from the sounds of industrialization, to the sounds of automobiles, to sounds in underwater music and hip-hop, to the sounds of nanotechnology -- give rise to new forms listening practices. In addition, the book discusses the rise of new public problems such as noise pollution, hearing loss, and the "end" of the amateur musician that stem from the spread and appropriation of new sound- and music-related technologies, analog and digital, in many domains of life. Rich in vivid and detailed examples and compelling case studies, and featuring a companion website of listening samples, this remarkable volume boldly challenges readers to rethink the way they hear and understand the world.

Product Description: They say that in space no one can hear you scream... and its true! In the emptiness of space, nothing makes a noise. But on Earth... our ears are constantly pounded by sounds. Learn all about the most disgusting and dreadful aspects of sound...read more

Product Description: Historically, developmental psychologists have tended to focus on the effects of understimulation and certain types of deprivation on child development. More recently researchers have shifted their attention to the deleterious effects of overstimulation or "chaos" in children's environment...read more

Product Description: The study of phase transitions is among the most fascinating fields in physics. Originally limited to transition phenomena in equilibrium systems, this field has outgrown its classical confines during the last two decades. The behavior of far from equilibrium systems has received more and more attention and has been an extremely active and productive subject of research for physicists, chemists and biologists...read more