Diagnosing Parkinson's Audibly

A researcher at MIT has developed audio-recognition software trained to identify 10 dysphonias in human voices and diagnose the early onset of Parkinson's disease with 99% accuracy, taking advantage of the disease's early effect on controlling the vocal chords and soft palate.

Young Goats Develop Accents

Young goats have been found to develop distinctive bleating "accents" to their vocalizations when divided into separate similar social groups, a subtle and innate quality once thought too primitive to be expressed in all but a few mammals and songbirds.

Shipping Noise Stresses Whales

Using data from the two days following the 9/11 attacks in which shipping traffic all but ceased in the Bay of Fundy, Canada, marine biologists found stress-hormone levels taken from North Atlantic right whale feces to be lower than the following four years, providing the first evidence that human underwater noise stresses whale populations.

Tarsiers Call in Ultrasound

New research has discovered that Philippine tarsiers (Tarsius syrichta) are the only primate species and one of the few mammal species to communicate using purely ultrasonic calls, vocalizing at 70 kHz to 90 kHz and well beyond the range of human hearing.