Word: likes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...oversize, matte-black headsets look like the kind of industrial-strength ear protection worn by airport baggage handlers. But these are no ordinary earmuffs. They are high-tech earphones designed for pilots of small jets and other light (and noisy) aircraft. Rather than soften the drumming engine noise with thick layers of plastic foam, the earphones eliminate it electronically. A tiny microphone samples sound waves at the wearer's ear, processes them through special circuitry and broadcasts countertones that cancel the offending sounds in midair. Result: silence, or something close...
There are two ways to generate an antinoise wave. The analog approach, first developed in the 1930s using vacuum-tube technology, works something like a seesaw. A mechanism drives a loud speaker that pushes the air when incoming sound waves rise and pulls it back when the sound waves fall. Alternatively, antinoise waves can be created digitally, using a signal processor to convert incoming sound waves into a stream of numbers. Given those numbers, computers can quickly calculate the frequency and amplitude of the mirror-image waves. Those specifications are then fed to a conventional speaker and broadcast into...
...antinoise system is perfect. The digital devices work well with repetitive noises, like the sounds of fans and turbines, but cannot stop random or unexpected noises. Analog systems fight low, random noises but do it by eliminating all low-frequency sounds, good or bad. And none of the antinoise devices currently on the market are very good at canceling high- pitched squeals and whistles. The problem: calculating antiwaves for sounds higher than middle C requires more computing power than today's chips can provide. For now, the most cost-effective way to block those tones is still to stick your...
...probability that such steps will be taken, if not at Malta then soon thereafter, was enhanced by developments in Washington. In recent weeks feuding between anti-Soviet hard-liners like Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and moderates led by Secretary of State James Baker, who favor a more active U.S. role in helping perestroika succeed, has been decisively resolved in the moderates' favor. Whether by conviction or coercion, Cheney has lately been cooing like a dove. By ordering the Pentagon to cut as much as $180 billion from its projected spending plans through 1995, Cheney indicated that Washington is ready...
...believer in the value of personal diplomacy, wants to cement a bond with Gorbachev that he thinks will enhance relations between the two countries. He has sought advice from experts he has long trusted, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Nixon, and from some about whom he has misgivings, like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Henry Kissinger. Bush hopes not only to impress Gorbachev with his understanding of Soviet problems but also to argue cogently about solutions. "It's one on one, and at stake is the world," said a senior Administration official. "He's a little nervous about...