OK. Off topic, some. But next time you're plugged in, augmented bass cranked up full blast, your back teeth rattling and your hair standing on end as you weep into your coffee, consider this:

British scientists believe the extreme bass sound known as infrasound produces a range of bizarre effects in people including anxiety, extreme sorrow and chills.

So says Patricia Reaney in a September 8 Reuters report, Soundless music shown to produce weird sensations

"Normally you can't hear it," Dr Richard Lord, an acoustic scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in England who worked on the project, is quoted as saying.

"Lord and his colleagues [professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in southern England] who produced infrasound with a seven metre (yard) pipe and tested its impact on 750 people at a concert, said infrasound is also generated by natural phenomena," says Reaney, going on:

"In the first controlled experiment of infrasound, Lord and Wiseman played four contemporary pieces of live music, including some laced with infrasound, at a London concert hall and asked the audience to describe their reactions to the music. The audience did not know which pieces included infrasound but 22 percent reported more unusual experiences when it was present in the music. Their unusual experiences included feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills down the spine or nervous feelings of revulsion or fear."

Sarah Angliss, a composer and engineer who worked on the project, said, "So much has been said about infrasound -- it's been associated with just about everything from beam weapons to bad driving. It's wonderful to be able to examine the evidence."

Wiseman presented the findings to the British Association science conference.