At the end of my senior year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1968, I took Professor Ehrlich’s final for his Geomicrobiology course. The above question beckoned to me like the Sirens to Odysseus, for if I answered, it would take so much time and thought that I would never get around to the exam’s other essay questions and consequently, would be “shipwrecked” by flunking the course. So, I ...

The Greeks considered congenital deformities to be of divine origin and eventually these monsters were thought to indicate a divine warning of some future calamity and the infant and even the mother were sacrificed to propitiate the gods (Glenister, 1957). The sympodial deformity has been recognized from earliest times and may well have given rise to the myth of the siren. The legendary monster...

Warning signals generated by sirens of authorized emergency vehicles should be audible and recognizable to all road users. Currently, there is no legislation in Poland defining sound pressure levels (SPLs) of audible warning signals generated by sirens of authorized emergency vehicles. Measured A-weighted SPLs of those signals range between 104 and 108 dB. While for road users, an audible warni...