A 3.6-GHz digital fractional-N frequency synthesizer achieving low noise and 500-kHz bandwidth is presented. This architecture uses a gated-ring-oscillator time-to-digital converter (TDC) with 6-ps raw resolution and first-order shaping of its quantization noise along with digital quantization noise cancellation to achieve integrated phase noise of less than 300 fs (1 kHz to 40 MHz). The synthe...

For assessment of safety, it is necessary to measure the maximum possible force exerted by a bone conduction device coupled to the human head. Calibration of bone conduction hearing aids and vibrators in the audiometric range is based on measurement of acceleration and force using an artificial mastoid. Extending the measurement to the high audio range was accomplished using a live head. To ass...

We demonstrate a cryogenically cooled Ti:sapphire ultrafast regenerative amplifier laser system producing >20 μJ energies at 50 kHz, >12 μJ at 200 kHz and >3.5 μJ at 1MHz with repetition rates continuously tunable from 50 kHz up to 1.7 MHz in a footprint of only 60x180 cm². This laser uses down-chirped pulse amplification employing a grism stretcher and a glass-block compressor, achieving sub-6...

The ATLAS ReadOut System (ROS) receives data fragments from ∼1600 detector readout links, buffers them and provides them on demand to the second-level trigger or to the event building system. The ROS is implemented with ∼150 PCs. Each PC houses a few, typically 4, custom-built PCI boards (ROBIN) and a 4-port PCIe Gigabit Ethernet NIC. The PCs run a multi-threaded object-oriented application man...

Aim: To see the effect of LLLT on noise-induced hearing loss. Methods: Eleven rats were exposed to noise (120 dB, 16 kHz, 6 h) and left ears were irradiated at 60J/cm2, 830 nm laser for 12 days. Right ears were control. Hearing levels were measured at frequencies of 4, 8, 12, 16, 32 kHz before noise exposure and after 12th irradiations. Results: The initial hearing levels were 26.5±4.7, 24.5±5....

This work aims at optimizing sludge pretreatment by non-isothermal sonication, varying frequency, US power (PUS) and intensity (IUS varied through probe size), as well as hydrostatic pressure and operation mode (continuous vs. sequential - or pulsed - process). Under non isothermal sonication sludge solubilization results from both ultrasound disintegration and thermal hydrolysis which are conv...

We behaviorally determined the audiograms of three Common vampire bats (Phyllostomidae, Desmodus rotundus), a species specialized to exist exclusively on blood. The bats were trained to respond to pure tones in a conditioned suppression/avoidance procedure for a blood reward and a mild punisher for failures to detect the tones. Common vampire bats have a hearing range from 716 Hz to 113 kHz at ...

Few mammals-cetaceans, domestic cats and select bats and rodents-can send and receive vocal signals contained within the ultrasonic domain, or pure ultrasound (greater than 20 kHz). Here, we use the auditory brainstem response (ABR) method to demonstrate that a species of nocturnal primate, the Philippine tarsier (Tarsius syrichta), has a high-frequency limit of auditory sensitivity of ca 91 kH...

We show in this Letter that relativistic dragging of inertial frames around fast rotating collapsed stars is substantial and can give rise to observable effects. We apply this to the kHz quasi periodic oscillations (QPOs) sources, low mass X-ray binaries (LMXRBs) containing an accreting neutron star. Within the beat frequency model, both the Keplerian frequency of the innermost region of the ac...

Psychoacoustical tuning curves and interaural pitch matches were measured in a listener with a unilateral, moderately severe hearing loss of primarily cochlear origin below 2 kHz. The psychoacoustical tuning curves, measured in a simultaneous-masking paradigm, were obtained at 1 kHz for probe levels of 4.5-, 7-, and 13-dB SL in the impaired ear, and 7-dB SL in the impaired ear, and 7-dB SL in t...