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BABIES CRY. The cry can mean a whole bunch of things: the baby is hungry or tired or uncomfortable or doesn’t feel well.

Sometimes the baby cries a lot and even a doctor can’t tell if the crying indicates something serious or not.

So researchers at Brown University in Rhode Island, US, have created a cry analyzer app that they hope will one day decode a baby’s cry, as first spotted by Network World’s Michael Cooney.

The tool can detect slight variations in cries imperceptible to the human ear. These sounds indicate if a baby is suffering with some kind of condition or neurological problem.

The new analyser is the result of two-year’s work between Brown’s Laboratory for Engineering Man/Machine Systems and the Women & Infants Hospital Of Rhode Island, Brown says.

The tool is not yet an app that you can download to your smartphone yet. The next step is to make it available to researchers around the world to help with the cry research.

Eventually a doctor will be able to use it to detect serious health issues.

- Julie Bort

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