http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/12/british-military-sonic-weapon-olympics

and here is another:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-18042528

Am always reminded of the LRAD’s inventor, Woody Norris’ telling statement: “in the gap between killing something and doing nothing. . .” is where the LRAD fits – that’s a pretty big remit, son.

MAY 11, 2012: Public Symposion in Lüneburg: New Technologies – New Sound Practices

A Public Symposion at Freiraum Lüneburg on the occasion of the 5th Workshop of the International Research Network

funded by the German Research Foundation DFG and Leuphana Universität Lüneburg

Friday May 11, 2012

4.30pm – 8pm

Freiraum Lüneburg
Salzstraße 1 [entry Auf der Altstadt]
21335 Lüneburg

here

Also, an interesting joint review of Sonic Warfare with Dave Tompkins’ wonderful “How to Wreck a Nice Beach” here taken from Current Musicology, number 90/fall 2010 by Wayne Marshall.

Link courtesy of Om Unit.

Wonderful passage from a wonderful book, Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

“The air pressure dips, like before a storm. A keening sound wells up soft and low, as if it’s always been there, just outside the range of human hearing. It swells to howling. And then the shadows start to drop from trees, like raindrops after the storm. The darkness pools and gathers and then seethes.

The japanese believe it’s hungry ghosts. The Scientologists claim it’s the physical manifestation of suppressive engrams. Some eyewitness reports describe teeth grinding and ripping in the shadows. Video recordings have shown only inpenetrable darkness. I prefer to think of it as a black hole, cold and impersonal as space. Maybe we become stars on the other side.

I turn away as it rushes down the road in the direction of the running man. Mr. Khan cover’s his daughters’ eyes, even though it’s her ears he should be protecting. The screaming only lasts a few awful seconds before it is abruptly cut off”

Quoted from here
“Ever wondered how well playing Call of Duty at maximum volume mimics a real combat experience? Researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology must have asked a similar question, because they’ve built a 64-speaker surround-sound audio battlefield designed to train new troops. The system reproduces screaming fighter jets, rumbling tanks, and persistent gunfire — all the better to accommodate recruits to the overwhelming, disorienting cacophony of warfare. Veterans say even with the four large 20-hertz subwoofers, it’s nowhere near the real thing: combat volume is 25 percent louder than the average rock concert, at levels that can cause permanent hearing loss. Still, the creators say every bit of training helps; having near-combat experience is certainly better than none at all. So tell that to your neighbors next time they bang on your wall.”

“You might think that being able to distinguish between a noise associated with danger and a similar but innocuous one would be a useful skill. Yet people find it hard to tell similar sounds apart if one is linked to a bad experience. The finding could help explain how people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may become hypersensitive to certain types of sound.

Rony Paz and colleagues from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, repeatedly played one of two tones to volunteers. One group heard a tone followed by an unpleasant smell, the other a tone followed by a pleasant, melon-like odour. The team then tested how well each person could distinguish between the tones they had heard and similar sounds.

On average, those who had heard the sound that was followed by an unpleasant smell performed worse at this task. The effect persisted 24 hours later.
Evolutionary sense

This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, says Paz. “If you hear a lion and you see a zebra get eaten, that should be enough for you to know that a lion is bad and to avoid it.” If you subsequently hear a different lion, you want your system to respond quickly to the threat rather than try to distinguish between the two lions.

Paz thinks this conditioning may involve rewiring of the amygdala, the part of the brain which controls the fear response. Understanding this mechanism could lead to better treatments for PTSD, he says.”