TY - BOOK AU - Kosko,Bart TI - Noise SN - 0670034959 PY - 2006/// CY - New York PB - Viking KW - Noise KW - Social aspects KW - Signal processing N1 - Includes bibliographical references (p. [167]-231) and index; THE WAR ON NOISE: Noise is an unwanted signal -- The noise-signal duality: one person's signal is another person's noise -- Information theory made a science out of the war on noise -- Channel noise randomly flips bits -- Noise limits channel capacity -- Noise can sometimes help -- NOISE IS A NUISANCE: Noise is a private nuisance if it substantially and unreasonably interferes with someone's use and enjoyment of land -- Noise is a public nuisance if it substantially interferes with a right common to the public -- E-mail spam counts as a cyber-noise nuisance -- THE NUISANCE THAT DEFERS: Noise-induced hearing loss is a common health hazard -- Noise can damage the inner ear's frequency detectors -- Noise increases stress -- Noise can harm simpler animals -- WHITE NOISE AIN'T SO WHITE: White noise is independent in time and has a flat spectrum, and so is physically impossible -- There are infinitely many types of white noise -- Most noise is impulsive -- Chaos and fuzz can produce white noise -- Real noise is colored noise because its frequency spectrum is not flat -- Thermal noise fills the universe -- Even black holes emit noise, and die -- FIGHTING NOISE WITH NOISE: The ideal low-pass filter resembles wideband noise in digital sampling -- Noise helps shape the spectrum of signals -- Noise cancellers learn noise patterns to annihilate them -- Delilah's secret: wireless signals can hide in noise -- THE ZEN OF NOISE: STOCHASTIC RESONANCE: many physical and biological systems display a stochastic resonance noise benefit because they are nonlinear systems -- The "forbidden interval" theorem: model neurons benefit from noise if the average noise lies outside the "forbidden interval" -- Noise can benefit nanosystems and the molecular motors of life ER -