Noise

A City Council committee Tuesday voted in favor of strict noise controls on construction of a 16-story condominium building next door to Capitol Records' studios in Hollywood. Developer David Jordan would be barred from using pile drivers at his Yucca Street project and prohibited from conducting excavation or ground-level construction within 40 feet of Capitol's property line after 10 a.m. on days that recording studios are in use under the vote by the council's Planning and Land Use Management Committee.

Keith Miller got a beast of a wake-up call Thursday morning. The 71-year-old had just stepped outside his Altadena home to get the newspaper when he saw "this huge bear, looking like a Volkswagen, staring at me," Miller said. "It ran one way and I ran the other. " Before Miller made it back inside, he turned to see where the bear - which had been snacking on leftover birthday cake tossed in a garbage can - was headed. That's when he saw two cubs scamper up an oak tree in his frontyard.

A good set of tires has always made a big difference in safety, fuel economy and handling, but one area that is getting new attention is the quality of tires to reduce or increase the amount of noise a vehicle makes. Tire manufacturers are racing to develop tires that reduce noise, aiming to meet tough new standards mandated by European and Asian nations that want to reduce noise pollution. Though U.S.

Just how much of a typical young child's life at home is played out against the insistent drone of a television somewhere in the background? For children 8 months to 8 years, the answer is just short of four hours, says a new study issued by the International Communication Assn., a professional group for scholars studying media and human communication. That, despite findings that when the television is on, parents tend to talk to and make eye contact with their children less, children are more distracted from activities such as free play and children who have TVs constantly on tend to watch more -- with the consequent rise in obesity and drop in academic success.

After eight nights in the hospital for debilitating headaches, Laurel Carpenter was ready to go home and finally get what the doctor ordered -- a good night's sleep. From a private room in a Los Angeles hospital last summer, Carpenter had endured a torrent of interruptions and noise that could wake even the sedated.

After nearly 20 years on an impersonal commercial strip, the Cathedral of Christ the King moved to a quiet residential neighborhood in the northwestern edge of this metropolis. Church leaders were eager to be part of a community. Then, on Palm Sunday 2008, they started ringing the church bells every half hour during the day. The complaints soon began, so church leaders cut back the tolling to once per hour. They put up Styrofoam to muffle the sound.

Heavy metal rocker W. Axl Rose was arrested early Tuesday for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon after allegedly clubbing his next-door neighbor on the head with an empty wine bottle, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said. Gabriella Kantor, 37, was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after complaining of a possible concussion.

In a noisy room, humans will yell to be heard, eventually giving up when communication becomes impossible. Now researchers have found that North Atlantric right whales, too, get louder in response to the noise level of their environment. Left unanswered is what might happen when an increasingly noisy ocean becomes too loud for easy communication. Monitoring 14 right whales — seven males and seven females — in the Bay of Fundy, Canada, researchers from Pennsylvania State University, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Duke University found that the animals' call amplitude rose proportionately as background noise increased.

The directors of the delightful 2001 short film "Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers," which showcases the noncutesy melodic possibilities of squeak toys, toothbrushes and vacuum cleaners, successfully build upon the premise in "Sound of Noise. " Spoofing police procedurals while bowing deeply to John Cage, the cheeky Swedish feature pits a music-loathing yet sympathetic detective against a group of anarchist percussionists. In lesser hands the mash-up might be nothing more than an act of cinematic contortion.

When bread is scarce, corpulence counts as beauty; when garbage dumpsters stink with wasted food, slenderness is prized. Small wonder that in our noisy civilization we should speak so longingly of silence. But most of us, most of the time, do not really desire silence. Something in us recoils from an utter absence of sound. The composer John Cage famously spent some time in a sensory deprivation chamber; he did not enjoy himself. Silence and noise have both been used as interrogation techniques.

In some ways, parties seem like the worst possible places to socialize.  A cacophony of voices -- not to mention a blaring stereo system -- make for a noisy environment in which to hear what a friend is saying. Hence the term "the cocktail-party effect," which refers to people's ability to focus on one speaker and tune out another. Now Nima Mesgarani and Edward F. Chang of UC San Francisco have figured out how the brain accomplishes this feat of selective hearing: The auditory cortex, which processes sounds, favors the voice that it needs or wants to hear.

A small, determined cadre approaches a location - be it a hospital, bank, symphony hall or power station - not with destruction in mind, but creativity. In each place, members of the group use objects on-site to perform musical compositions. The group's interruptions and shenanigans get its members labeled "terrorists" by the authorities, but their actual goal is anything but the spreading of fear: They want to turn the world upside down to find unexpected beauty in the mundane and everyday.

The directors of the delightful 2001 short film "Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers," which showcases the noncutesy melodic possibilities of squeak toys, toothbrushes and vacuum cleaners, successfully build upon the premise in "Sound of Noise. " Spoofing police procedurals while bowing deeply to John Cage, the cheeky Swedish feature pits a music-loathing yet sympathetic detective against a group of anarchist percussionists. In lesser hands the mash-up might be nothing more than an act of cinematic contortion.

Silver Lake residents can't wait for this construction job to bite the dust. More than two dozen residents living along the path of a $40-million water pipe project say they are suffering respiratory problems from particulate matter stirred up by construction trucks and heavy-duty trenching machines. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is replacing a massive neighborhood water conduit as part of a larger, federally mandated plan to retire the Silver Lake and Ivanhoe reservoirs, which are exposed to airborne contaminants.

Victoria Azarenka, the No. 1 female tennis player in the world and winner of the most recent major tournament, the Australian Open, is being gentle with a pupil. She is filming a promotional spot last week at the Mulholland Tennis Club and good-naturedly giving a simple tennis lesson to a novice. "Bend your arm," Azarenka says. "Knees low. Reach for it. " As tennis balls spray everywhere, Azarenka fetches them, laughing. "Yes, I am the real coach now. I'm picking up the balls.

Mark Wahlberg had the biggest opening of his career as an action star this weekend, as his crime thriller "Contraband" was the No. 1 pick at the box office. The film about the ugly world of drug smuggling was the most popular movie over the four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend, grossing a solid $28.8 million domestically, according to an estimate from distributor Universal Pictures. Meanwhile, the classic animated fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast," first released in 1991 and now in 3-D, collected a respectable $23.5 million over the long weekend.

On an unseasonably chilly Saturday night in August, the members of No Age are standing in the parking lot of a bleak warehouse near Vernon, a few blocks from the ironic-pastoral mural decorating the Farmer John's slaughterhouse. Randy Randall and Dean Spunt are eating cold pizza, shivering in their sweatshirts and surveying the thing that will soon kill them. "It looks like something you'd build to defend yourself from the zombie apocalypse," Randall, 29, said, pointing at a machine in the back of a nearby trailer.

On an unseasonably searing day in West Hollywood last fall, Nika Danilova is hiding from the sun. To meet for an interview, the 21-year-old who records as Zola Jesus rounds a corner in comically enormous geriatric sunglasses that obscure her tiny, falconish face. With her tangle of dyed-platinum hair and weather-rebutting tight goth getup, she looks like she's en route back to the local Rest Home for Retired Metalheads. To passing strangers, she could be a UV-damaged celebrity on reconnaissance.

'Joyful Noise' MPAA rating: PG-13 for some language including a sexual reference Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes Playing: In general release

DJ David Scott Stone @ The Smell DJ David Scott Stone (a.k.a. Sir DSS) performs his textured electronica/acid techno tunes for a night of joyful noise. Stone is known for his collaborations with alt rock group the Melvins and creating his own synth style with guitars, oscillators and his self-made instruments like the electric thundersheet. The Smell, 247 S. Main St., Los Angeles. 9 p.m. $5. http://www.thesmell.org