Re: Semi-OT: Do teenagers hear higher frequencies?

I don't know how effective the device would be but I've read articles which
indicate the high frequencies are the first to go. I remember one article
which explained how this accounts for why very often older folks like newer
music less. The older the listener, the more of the tune is missing. When
listening to older more familiar music, the brain "fills in the blanks".
Bad explaination (probably), but it was a good article (in a reputable
magazine.) I know my hi-freq. hearing has diminished.

Ed

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<WadeInChugiak@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1133299326.746779.278930@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I thought this article from the NY Times website was fairly intriguing
> - a gentleman in the UK has developed a "Teenagers-B-Gone!" device that
> emits a high pitched noise oldsters can't hear.
>
> When I was a kid I could always tell if the televiions of the era were
> switched on, even when their volume was turned down, by the
> high-pitched noise they emitted. It'd be interesting to discover
> whether I've lost or retained that high frequency range.
>
>
> whm
>
>
>
> What's the Buzz? Rowdy Teenagers Don't Want to Hear It
>
>
> By SARAH LYALL
>
> BARRY, Wales - Though he did not know it at the time, the idea came to
> Howard Stapleton when he was 12 and visiting a factory with his father,
> a manufacturing executive in London. Opening the door to a room where
> workers were using high-frequency welding equipment, he found he could
> not bear to go inside.
>
> "The noise!" he complained.
>
> "What noise?" the grownups asked.
>
> Now 39, Mr. Stapleton has taken the lesson he learned that day - that
> children can hear sounds at higher frequencies than adults can - to
> fashion a novel device that he hopes will provide a solution to the
> eternal problem of obstreperous teenagers who hang around outside
> stores and cause trouble.
>
> The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Mr.
> Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he says,
> can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older
> than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after
> several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away.
>
> So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the
> entrance to the Spar convenience store in this town in South Wales.
> Like birds perched on telephone wires, surly teenagers used to plant
> themselves on the railings just outside the door, smoking, drinking,
> shouting rude words at customers and making regular disruptive forays
> inside.
>
> "On the low end of the scale, it would be intimidating for customers,"
> said Robert Gough, who, with his parents, owns the store. "On the high
> end, they'd be in the shop fighting, stealing and assaulting the
> staff."
>
> Mr. Gough (pronounced GUFF) planned to install a sound system that
> would blast classical music into the parking lot, another method known
> to horrify hang-out youths into dispersing, but never got around to it.
> But last month, Mr. Stapleton gave him a Mosquito for a free trial. The
> results were almost instantaneous. It was as if someone had used
> anti-teenager spray around the entrance, the way you might spray your
> sofas to keep pets off. Where disaffected youths used to congregate,
> now there is no one.
>
> At first, members of the usual crowd tried to gather as normal,
> repeatedly going inside the store with their fingers in their ears and
> "begging me to turn it off," Mr. Gough said. But he held firm and
> neatly avoided possible aggressive confrontations: "I told them it was
> to keep birds away because of the bird flu epidemic."
>
> A trip to Spar here in Barry confirmed the strange truth of the
> phenomenon. The Mosquito is positioned just outside the door. Although
> this reporter could not hear anything, being too old, several young
> people attested to the fact that yes, there was a noise, and yes, it
> was extremely annoying.
>
> "It's loud and squeaky and it just goes through you," said Jodie Evans,
> 15, who was shopping at the store even though she was supposed to be in
> school. "It gets inside you."
>
> Miss Evans and a 12-year-old friend who did not want to be interviewed
> were once part of a regular gang of loiterers, said Mr. Gough's father,
> Philip. "That little girl used to be a right pain, shouting abuse and
> bad language," he said of the 12-year-old. "Now she'll just come in, do
> her shopping and go."
>
> Robert Gough, who said he could hear the noise even though he is 34,
> described it as "a pulsating chirp," the sort you might hear if you
> suffered from tinnitus. By way of demonstration, he emitted a batlike
> squeak that was indeed bothersome.
>
> Mr. Stapleton, a security consultant whose experience in installing
> store alarms and the like alerted him to the gravity of the loitering
> problem, studied other teenage-repellents as part of his research. Some
> shops, for example, use "zit lamps," which drive teenagers away by
> casting a blue light onto their spotty skin, accentuating any
> whiteheads and other blemishes.
>
> Using his children as guinea pigs, he tried a number of different noise
> and frequency levels, testing a single-toned unit before settling on a
> pulsating tone which, he said, is more unbearable, and which can be
> broadcast at 75 decibels, within government auditory-safety limits. "I
> didn't want to make it hurt," Mr. Stapleton said. "It just has to nag
> at them."
>
> The device has not yet been tested by hearing experts.
>
> Andrew King, a professor of neurophysiology at Oxford University, said
> in an e-mail interview that while the ability to hear high frequencies
> deteriorates with age, the change happens so gradually that many
> non-teenagers might well hear the Mosquito's noise. "Unless the store
> owners wish to sell their goods only to senior citizens," he wrote, "I
> doubt that this would work."
>
> Mr. Stapleton argues, though, that it doesn't matter if people in their
> 20's and 30's can hear the Mosquito, since they are unlikely to be
> hanging out in front of stores, anyway.
>
> It is too early to predict the device's future. Since an article about
> it appeared in The Grocer, a British trade magazine, Mr. Stapleton has
> become modestly famous, answering inquiries from hundreds of people and
> filling orders for dozens of the devices, not only in stores but also
> in places like railroad yards. He appeared recently on Richard & Judy,
> an Oprah-esque afternoon talk show, where the device successfully vexed
> all but one of the members of a girls' choir.
>
> He is considering introducing a much louder unit that can be switched
> on in emergencies with a panic button. It would be most useful when
> youths swarm into stores and begin stealing en masse, a phenomenon
> known in Britain as steaming. The idea would be to blast them with such
> an unacceptably loud, high noise - a noise inaudible to older shoppers
> - that they would immediately leave.
>
> "It's very difficult to shoplift," Mr. Stapleton said, "when you have
> your fingers in your ears."
>
>
>
> Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
>


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