Pupils perform 'alarming' feat .. Really?
2006-05-26 16:14 - Links
The Mosquito technology is said to play on a medical phenomenon called presbycusis, or age-related hearing loss. It is thought to begin at 20 and first affect the highest frequencies — 18 to 20kHz. The device was developed by Merthyr Tydfil-based Compound Security.
This quote is actually about a "non-loitering device" mentioned a few months back, which I was skeptical of even then. The claim was that it produced some kind of sound that only teenagers could hear, so blaring it out the front door of a shop where they hang out will get them to leave.
It didn't make the slightest bit of sense. It got even worse when recently, articles began popping up about kids using the noise as a cell phone ring tone, to go undetected in class. This made it only sound more like urban legend run amok. But this article finally mentioned a few somewhat verifiable details. They mentioned a real medical condition, presbycusis.
The article says that it "is thought to begin at 20 and first affect the highest frequencies". Thing is, my references say that the symptoms start somewhere from "after middle age" to "gradually after the age of sixty". So I'm still calling this an elaborate hoax.
