ARE AIRPODS BAD FOR YOUR EARS AND BRAIN?

ARE AIRPODS BAD FOR YOUR EARS AND BRAIN?

Sit on public transport for long enough, people-watch from a street café or click through a handful of YouTube videos, and you’re sure to recognise these small signature white speakers quite literally hanging from people’s ears.

Apple AirPods account for around 60% of the global wireless earbud market.

But despite their popularity, they’re not without some controversy.  

Some researchers and scientists have suggested that Apple’s big seller could be dangerous.

But are AirPods bad for your ears and brain?  Or is it just scaremongering?

 ARE AIRPODS BAD FOR YOUR EARS?

 

AirPods can definitely be bad for your ears but it’s the same problem with almost any type of earbud: people are more likely to turn up the volume on in-earphones and this can lead to permanent hearing damage.

It’s not a problem specific to AirPods, but they sit outside the ear canal and that means they have poor noise isolation.

If you’re having trouble hearing the audio you’re playing, your reaction will be to dial the volume up. As Angela Lashbrook writes on Medium, AirPods do a poor job of ‘overpowering noise like chattering colleagues or teens on the subway’.

AirPods Pro have noise-cancellation, and this offsets some of the incoming soundwaves and helps keep the volume lower, but noise-cancelling in general isn’t always effective at reducing loud voices: shrill conversations or babies crying, for example.

Whilst on-ear and over-ear headphones offer an additional buffer to noise thanks to their cushions, AirPods don’t.

The reality is that AirPods can be bad for your ears. The design does little to encourage safe listening in noisy environments but Apple may argue that it’s up to the responsibility of the listener.

And is it fair to single them out when you could also pick up any other brand and say the same thing?

But even though other earbuds may be just as poor at noise-isolation, AirPods have 60% of the market share.

If you’ve recently bought a pair of AirPods, you should bear in mind that an iPhone can reach up to 100 decibels and hearing damage can start to occur at around 85 decibels. This is worrying precisely because AirPods are poor noise isolators; sitting so close to the ear canal, they can also ‘elevate sound by up to 9 decibels’.

If you’re willing to listen to your AirPods at a safe volume, then they’re no better or worse for your hearing than any other pair of wireless earbuds on the market. But if you struggle to keep off the volume button when things get a little loud around you, then you might be better considering other headphone options for noisy environments.

Noise-cancelling headphones are much better at reducing ambient noise. This means you’ll be able to hear audio more clearly without cranking up the volume and risking your hearing.

There are rumours thatApple is planning on releasing over-ear headphones in October 2020 so if you can’t be without your Apple-branded products then you might not have too long to wait.

brain may present health problems later on. We don’t know, and some researchers believe it’s fine and others believe wearers should be concerned.

Speaking to Business Insider, Elizabeth Kelley, the director of the International EMF Scientist Appeal, said that anyone who is especially concerned should change their Bluetooth earphones for wired headphones.

The confusion for most people stems from the fact we don’t know. The good news is that you don’t need to buy AirPods if you don’t want to. Buy another brand or buy wired headphones or manage the time you spend wearing in-earphones or don’t wear anything in your ears at all.

And if it doesn’t bother you? Buy your Airpods and wear them without shame.

If you’re ready to jump from earbuds to headphones, don’t forget to add sweat-proof covers to the cushions to protect them from moisture damage and to keep them smelling fresh and looking fab even when you’re working out or gaming regularly.

 

Samsung is hoping to attract fitness and health-tracking tech enthusiasts with its latest wearable device, the Galaxy Ring.

It launched the device at its Galaxy Unpacked event on Wednesday as the latest addition to its ecosystem of devices that it says are "supercharged" with artificial intelligence , according to the BBC, and seen by Al Arabiya Business.

Smart rings, which use tiny sensors to monitor various health metrics, have so far been a niche product – although their recent use by the England men's football team has made headlines.

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Galaxy Smart Ring - Reuters

technology

Samsung unveils the smart "Galaxy Ring"... a small ring that could make a big impact

The devices will start shipping on July 24th for around $400.

South Korea

Dubai - Al Arabiya.net

Published in:July 11, 2024: 01:35 PM GST

Last updated:July 11, 2024: 03:50 PM GST

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Samsung is hoping to attract fitness and health-tracking tech enthusiasts with its latest wearable device, the Galaxy Ring.

It launched the device at its Galaxy Unpacked event on Wednesday as the latest addition to its ecosystem of devices that it says are "supercharged" with artificial intelligence , according to the BBC, and seen by Al Arabiya Business.

Smart rings, which use tiny sensors to monitor various health metrics, have so far been a niche product – although their recent use by the England men's football team has made headlines.

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Elon Musk

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It seems that Samsung is trying to change that, becoming the largest tech company that has not yet entered the smart ring market.

For his part, CCS Insight analyst Ben Wood said the product choice is an “interesting bet” for Samsung, as his firm estimates there will be a total global market of about 4 million smart rings in 2025.

"That's a rounding error when compared to the 250 million smartwatches that are also expected to be sold," he told the BBC.

But others suggest that Samsung could help make smart rings more widespread.

James Kitto, vice president and head of mobile at Samsung UK and Ireland, described the launch of the ring as a “big moment” for the company.

 rings?

Smart rings can track health metrics such as heart rate, sleep, and menstrual cycle.

Finnish health technology company Oura currently dominates the market.

In recent years, rings have become a staple in the fitness tech world of celebrities like Kim Kardashian.

With its small size and sleek look, analysts say it could become a successor to smartwatches like the Apple Watch and Google Pixel Watch.

Kitto described Samsung's Galaxy Ring as "our smallest and most unique product yet, providing precise 24/7 health, wellness and sleep tracking."

Smartwatches typically have more sensors than smart rings, allowing them to access and provide a wider range of health data.

But “less intrusive” smart rings could provide a convenient, comfortable and stylish alternative for those who don’t want to wear a bulky smartwatch, especially at night to track their sleep patterns, says Geronimo.

The device works with Samsung Galaxy smartphones running Android 11 or higher, and will hit shelves for $399 on July 24

Amidst the Gaza War, Meta Amends Publishing Rules

  its publishing rules on its platforms to restrict the use of the word “Zionists” as a sign of hatred of Jews.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram said in a statement published on Tuesday that it would remove more posts attacking "Zionists" on its platforms, and the group threatened to suspend or remove accounts that repeatedly violate the rules of posting on its platforms.

Meta, based in California, US, justified changing the rules of publishing on its platforms to limit the use of the word Zionists by saying that “the term tends to be used to refer to Jews and Israelis, with dehumanizing comparisons, or calls to harm them or deny their existence,” according to its statement

The statement pointed out that this move comes after an investigation launched by Meta 5 months ago, in which historians, human rights activists and associations participated to determine whether this term is used to refer to supporters of a political movement (Zionism), Jews or Israelis.

The investigation found that there is no consensus on what people mean when they use the term “Zionist,” but the company said it decided to take action because its research and investigations revealed that the word Zionists was being used on the platforms to refer to Jews and Israelis in connection with certain types of “hate attacks.”

Meta cited examples of such uses, including “claims that they rule the world or control the media,” “dehumanizing comparisons, such as comparing them to pigs, dirt, or insects,” and “calls for physical violence,” according to the statement

Since the start of the devastating Israeli war on Gaza on October 7, the group has imposed severe restrictions on Palestinian content and removed much of it, which has angered Palestinians and supporters of their cause.

In contrast, Meta announced a week ago that it intends to consider the term “martyr” a neutral word with conditions, which will allow its use on Facebook and Instagram, and will not likely lead to the removal of content.

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Huge neutrino detector sees first hints of particles from exploding stars

Japan’s Super-Kamiokande observatory could be seeing evidence of neutrinos from supernovae across cosmic history.

By Davide Castelvecchi

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Two people in protective clothing pictured inside the tank of Super-Kamiokande.

Super-Kamiokande’s underground tank must be drained for major maintenance work.Credit: Takumi Harada/Yomiuri Shimbun via AP/Alamy

Every few seconds, somewhere in the observable Universe, a massive star collapses and unleashes a supernova explosion. Japan’s Super-Kamiokande observatory might now be collecting a steady trickle of neutrinos from those cataclysms, physicists say — amounting to a few detections a year.

These tiny subatomic particles are central to understanding what goes on inside a supernova: because they zip out of the star’s collapsing core and across space, they can provide information about any potentially new physics that occur under extreme conditions.

At last month’s Neutrino 2024 conference in Milan, Italy, Masayuki Harada, a physicist at the University of Tokyo, revealed that the first hints of supernova neutrinos seem to be emerging from the cacophony of particles that the Super-Kamiokande detector collects every day from other sources, such as cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere and nuclear fusion in the Sun’s core. The result “indicates that we started observing a signal”, says Masayuki Nakahata, a physicist at the University of Tokyo and spokesperson for the experiment, which is commonly referred to as Super-K. But Nakahata cautions that the supporting data — collected over 956 days of observation — are still very weak.

Elusive particles

Neutrinos are extremely hard to catch. Most travel through the planet like light through glass, and Super-K catches only a tiny fraction of those that cross it. Even so, the detector has a decent chance of catching neutrinos from supernovae, because the Universe should be awash with them. The collapse of a star releases stupendous numbers of these particles (estimated to be around 1058), producing what astrophysicists call the diffuse supernova neutrino background.

A supernova could light up the Milky Way at any time. Astronomers will be watching

But as yet, no one has been able to detect this background. Neutrinos have only once been conclusively traced back to a collapsing star — Nakahata was among the researchers who spotted the particles using the Kamiokande-II detector, a predecessor of Super-K, in 1987. The detection was possible because the supernova had occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is close enough that the exploding star’s neutrinos reached Earth in large numbers.

In 2018–20, the Super-K detector, a tank containing 50,000 tonnes of purified water located under one kilometre of rock near Hida in central Honshu Island, underwent a simple but important upgrade aimed at increasing its ability to tell supernova neutrinos apart from other particles.

When a neutrino — or more precisely, its antiparticle, an antineutrino — collides with a proton in the water, that proton can transform into a pair of other particles, a neutron and an antielectron. The antielectron produces a flash of light as it travels at high speed in the water, and that light is captured by the sensors that line the tank’s walls. By itself, that flash of light could be indistinguishable from those produced by neutrinos or antineutrinos from a number of other sources.

But during the upgrade, scientists added a gadolinium-based salt to Super-K’s water. This allows the neutron produced when an antineutrino hits the water to be captured by the gadolinium nucleus, which releases a second, telltale flash of energy. Super-K physicists in search of supernova neutrinos look for a rapid sequence of two flashes, one produced by the antielectron and the second by the neutron being captured.

Solving cosmic mysteries

It will still take several years for genuine supernova signals to clearly emerge, Nakahata says, because double-flash signals can come from other neutrino sources, including those generated by cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere. But by the time Super-K is scheduled to shut down in 2029, he adds, it should have gathered enough data to make a solid claim.

And an even larger experiment called Hyper-Kamiokande, scheduled to be completed around 2027, could massively improve on Super-K’s results. Initially, Hyper-K will be filled with pure water, but “all components of the detector are tested to be compatible with gadolinium”, which could be added at a later time, says Francesca Di Lodovico, a physicist at King’s College London and co-spokesperson for the project.

Gigantic Japanese detector prepares to catch neutrinos from supernovae

Showing that neutrinos from distant supernovae that happened billions of years ago are still around would confirm that neutrinos are stable particles and do not decay into something else, says Nakahata. This is something physicists have long suspected but haven’t been able to prove decisively.

Measuring the full spectrum of supernova neutrino energies could also provide clues about how many supernovae have gone off during different epochs of cosmic history, says Harada. In addition, it could reveal how many collapsing stars resulted in a black hole — which would halt the emission of neutrinos — as opposed to leaving behind a neutron star.

The data from Super-K are still too weak to claim a discovery, but the prospect of detecting the diffuse neutrinos is “extremely exciting”, says Ignacio Taboada, a physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and spokesperson for the IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole. “Neutrinos would provide an independent measurement on the history of star formation in the Universe.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02221-y

Scientific Miracles

 True peace lies in the heart of man, peace of mind, peace of soul, and can only be achieved by understanding the Creator of the universe.

If you want to learn Islam, you should study Islam rather than studying Muslims, because Islam is perfection, not Muslims.

Terrorism is not limited to any religion, and Islam strongly condemns the killing of innocent people.

Righteousness is an essential part of your relationship with Allah, so you must commit to righteousness, because if you lose it, you lose everything. You

should not only change yourself during the holy month of Ramadan, but you should change your whole life, and make Ramadan a new beginning

Scientific fact

 Brother, there are numerous scientific facts in the Qur'an Majeed recently proven to be irrefutably truth! Here are only few examples:

1) Sirius star (in surah 49:9) has an unseen star orbits each other in a bow length shape which mentioned in the Qur'an, the orbit completed in 49 years, 9 month. Scientists just learnt of this in 21st century. (Please note the matching of numbers 49 and 9).

2) they just discovered that there's a tear duct which tears always flow in the eyes, when we cry, the tear is overflowed from the duct. The Qur'an used the word "overflow" of tear in 1,440 years ago.

3) the Qur'an Majeed mentionscthe working bees who generated honey are female by using arabic words for female, and they eat honey from their two stomachs which scientists just found out this fact recently.

4) atmosphere (sky) of earth keeps the earth warm and protects earth from harmful sun rays, meteorites. The Qur'an Majeed says ALLAH TA'ALA made the sky as protective shield and they turn away from its sign.

Also mentioned that as we ascend the sky in high altitude, it will be difficult to breath.

5) Pulsar star was discovered in 1967. This star makes sounds like knocking on the door which the scientists recorded its sound using advance technology of 21st century. In the Qur'an Majeed, ALLAH TA'ALA says, this star’s brightness pierces the night sky and called this star "Tariq" which means the beater, also means knocking or striking something.

6) egyptologists and archeologists thought that pyramid was built from blocks of limestone,but they discovered that the blocks are baked clay. The Qur'an Majeed says that the pharaoh ordered the fire to be lit so he can bake “ the clay” blocks to build a tall building.

7) the Qur'an Majeed says those who are burnt in hell, every time their skins are roasted, ALLAH TA'ALA will replace the skins with new skins so they can feel the torture. 4:57 It was just discovered that skins have nerves which can feel the pain, if the nerves are damage, we can no longer feel the pain.

8) the development of foetus in mother's womb in each stages is proven to be true by embryonic scientists.

9) the Qur'an Majeed says after 42 nights, Allah Ta'ala sends an angel to shape the fetus and the angel will ask O! Lord, is it male or female, now the embryonic scientists just found out after 42 nite, sex of fetus can be determined.

10) the Qur'an Majeed says about internal waves in the deep sea, if you stretch out the hand you will not see. Until recently, we can go to deep sea floor to explore and know there's internal waves, and it is pitch black, we cannot see anything!

11) the Qur'an Majeed says ALLAH TA'ALA expanded the universe and the smoke in it before the stars and galaxy form, which cosmologists just discovered this fact not long ago.

12) the Quran Majeed mentions word land 13 times, sea 32 times, 13+32=45, 13/45 = 28.888% land mass on earth, 32/45 = 71.111% sea mass on earth.

Are all these amazingly true ? and yet most men (even most scientists) still don't believe and turn away from His Signs!

Alhamdulillah! May ALLAH TA'ALA 's peace and blessings be upon His beloved Nabi e Kareem (sallallahu alayhi wasallam), his noble family and his Sahabah, Ameen.

Science Experimentation

 

Cavendish conducted his experiment in a dark, windless place, to prevent any external air currents or temperature changes from affecting the results of the experiment. He was able to calculate the density of the Earth's sphere by using the ratio between the forces of attraction between the spheres and the forces exerted by the Earth's gravity on the spheres.

Every experiment that has been conducted throughout history tells us something about the nature of science, proving scientific theories and claims true or false. Each of these experiments opens the door to new information, and experiments that fail also provide us with some information about the knowledge and theories we are studying.

However, there are some exceptional experiments that changed the course of science and history, which had the greatest impact on the future, and changed the way we think and our point of view about all the concepts around us.

Let us review together some scientific experiments that changed the way of thinking and the opinions that were held at that time

Cavendish Weighs the World (1798)

The eccentric scientist Henry Cavendish not only discovered hydrogen, but he also succeeded in measuring the weight of the world .

In his experiment, he used a special device called a torsion balance, and in 1798 he announced the results of this experiment. By measuring the gravitational forces between two lead balls of different sizes, he was able to calculate the density of the Earth.

His device consisted of a wooden rod 1.8 metres long, to which he attached two lead balls, each weighing 0.73 kg, by wire. He also used two larger lead balls weighing 159 kg, which he placed close to the two smaller balls. This produced sufficient gravitational force, so that when the larger balls were moved slightly, this caused the wooden rod to bend.

The results of the experiment were incredibly accurate, and science later used them to calculate the mass of the sun, the moon, and even other planets in the solar system.