Environmental Sound Training in Cochlear Implant Users

PubMed Central

Sheft, Stanley; Kuvadia, Sejal; Gygi, Brian

2015-01-01

Purpose The study investigated the effect of a short computer-based environmental sound training regimen on the perception of environmental sounds and speech in experienced cochlear implant (CI) patients. Method Fourteen CI patients with the average of 5 years of CI experience participated. The protocol consisted of 2 pretests, 1 week apart, followed by 4 environmental sound training sessions conducted on separate days in 1 week, and concluded with 2 posttest sessions, separated by another week without training. Each testing session included an environmental sound test, which consisted of 40 familiar everyday sounds, each represented by 4 different tokens, as well as the Consonant Nucleus Consonant (CNC) word test, and Revised Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN-R) sentence test. Results Environmental sounds scores were lower than for either of the speech tests. Following training, there was a significant average improvement of 15.8 points in environmental sound perception, which persisted 1 week later after training was discontinued. No significant improvements were observed for either speech test. Conclusions The findings demonstrate that environmental sound perception, which remains problematic even for experienced CI patients, can be improved with a home-based computer training regimen. Such computer-based training may thus provide an effective low-cost approach to rehabilitation for CI users, and potentially, other hearing impaired populations. PMID:25633579

Social and environmental sustainability in large-scale coastal zones: Taking an issue-based approach to the implementation of the Prince William Sound sustainable human use framework

Treesearch

Dale J. Blahna; Aaron Poe; Courtney Brown; Clare M. Ryan; H. Randy Gimblett

2017-01-01

Following the grounding of the Exxon Valdez in 1989, a sustainable human use framework (human use framework) for Prince William Sound (PWS), AK was developed by the Chugach National Forest after concerns emerged about the social and environmental impacts of expanding human use due to cleanup activities and increased recreation visitation. A practical, issue-based...

Climatic factors related to land-use planning in the Puget Sound basin, Washington

USGS Publications Warehouse

Foxworthy, B.L.; Richardson, Donald

1973-01-01

The purpose of this study is to review available data related to the climate of the Puget Sound basin and to present selected climatic information along with an evaluation of its significance and general adequacy for planning purposes. This is part of continuing efforts aimed at imporving the accessibility and usefulness of environmental and other data needed for land-use planning, resource development, and environmental protection. 

A Lexical Analysis of Environmental Sound Categories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Houix, Olivier; Lemaitre, Guillaume; Misdariis, Nicolas; Susini, Patrick; Urdapilleta, Isabel

2012-01-01

In this article we report on listener categorization of meaningful environmental sounds. A starting point for this study was the phenomenological taxonomy proposed by Gaver (1993b). In the first experimental study, 15 participants classified 60 environmental sounds and indicated the properties shared by the sounds in each class. In a second…

Hearing Living Symbols and Nonliving Icons: Category Specificities in the Cognitive Processing of Environmental Sounds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Giordano, Bruno L.; McDonnell, John; McAdams, Stephen

2010-01-01

The neurocognitive processing of environmental sounds and linguistic stimuli shares common semantic resources and can lead to the activation of motor programs for the generation of the passively heard sound or speech. We investigated the extent to which the cognition of environmental sounds, like that of language, relies on symbolic mental…

Sound and heat revolutions in phononics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maldovan, Martin

2013-11-01

The phonon is the physical particle representing mechanical vibration and is responsible for the transmission of everyday sound and heat. Understanding and controlling the phononic properties of materials provides opportunities to thermally insulate buildings, reduce environmental noise, transform waste heat into electricity and develop earthquake protection. Here I review recent progress and the development of new ideas and devices that make use of phononic properties to control both sound and heat. Advances in sonic and thermal diodes, optomechanical crystals, acoustic and thermal cloaking, hypersonic phononic crystals, thermoelectrics, and thermocrystals herald the next technological revolution in phononics.

EXPANDING THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMMUNOASSAYS: TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES REGULATORY ISSUES AND COMMUNICATION VEHICLES

EPA Science Inventory

Large numbers of samples are commonplace in environmental monitoring and human exposure assessment studies. When the goals of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of research and Development (sound methods, integrated with human and ecological health, common sense...

Correlation between Identification Accuracy and Response Confidence for Common Environmental Sounds

DTIC Science & Technology

set of environmental sounds with stimulus control and precision. The present study is one in a series of efforts to provide a baseline evaluation of a...sounds from six broad categories: household items, alarms, animals, human generated, mechanical, and vehicle sounds. Each sound was presented five times

Sound level exposure of high-risk infants in different environmental conditions.

PubMed

Byers, Jacqueline F; Waugh, W Randolph; Lowman, Linda B

2006-01-01

To provide descriptive information about the sound levels to which high-risk infants are exposed in various actual environmental conditions in the NICU, including the impact of physical renovation on sound levels, and to assess the contributions of various types of equipment, alarms, and activities to sound levels in simulated conditions in the NICU. Descriptive and comparative design. Convenience sample of 134 infants at a southeastern quarternary children's hospital. A-weighted decibel (dBA) sound levels under various actual and simulated environmental conditions. The renovated NICU was, on average, 4-6 dBA quieter across all environmental conditions than a comparable nonrenovated room, representing a significant sound level reduction. Sound levels remained above consensus recommendations despite physical redesign and staff training. Respiratory therapy equipment, alarms, staff talking, and infant fussiness contributed to higher sound levels. Evidence-based sound-reducing strategies are proposed. Findings were used to plan environment management as part of a developmental, family-centered care, performance improvement program and in new NICU planning.

A multivariate twin study of early literacy in Japanese Kana

PubMed Central

Fujisawa, Keiko K.; Wadsworth, Sally J.; Kakihana, Shinichiro; Olson, Richard K.; DeFries, John C.; Byrne, Brian; Ando, Juko

2013-01-01

This first Japanese twin study of early literacy development investigated the extent to which genetic and environmental factors influence individual differences in prereading skills in 238 pairs of twins at 42 months of age. Twin pairs were individually tested on measures of phonological awareness, kana letter name/sound knowledge, receptive vocabulary, visual perception, nonword repetition, and digit span. Results obtained from univariate behavioral-genetic analyses yielded little evidence for genetic influences, but substantial shared-environmental influences, for all measures. Phenotypic confirmatory factor analysis suggested three correlated factors: phonological awareness, letter name/sound knowledge, and general prereading skills. Multivariate behavioral genetic analyses confirmed relatively small genetic and substantial shared environmental influences on the factors. The correlations among the three factors were mostly attributable to shared environment. Thus, shared environmental influences play an important role in the early reading development of Japanese children. PMID:23997545

An Experimental Analysis of Procedures for Increasing Specific Vocalizations of Children Who Do Not Develop Functional Speech. Progress Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

LeBlanc, Judith M.

To gain some insight into the problem of deviant speech development in low income populations, this study investigated the environmental factors that encourage the development of normal speech. Two specific questions were examined in this study: (1) If specific vocalized environmental sounds are presented contiguously with reinforcement, will…

Assessing the Sustainability of Japan's Foreign Aid Program: An Analysis of Development Assistance to Energy Sectors of Developing Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yamaguchi, Hideka

2005-01-01

This article examines the effect of Japan's official development assistance (ODA) over 10 years that proposed to facilitate environmental conservation in developing countries. Special emphasis is given to ODA disbursements in the energy sector to evaluate whether Japan's foreign aid has shifted its policy toward more environmentally sound goals.…

Constructing "sound science" and "good epidemiology": tobacco, lawyers, and public relations firms.

PubMed

Ong, E K; Glantz, S A

2001-11-01

The tobacco industry has attacked "junk science" to discredit the evidence that secondhand smoke-among other environmental toxins-causes disease. Philip Morris used public relations firms and lawyers to develop a "sound science" program in the United States and Europe that involved recruiting other industries and issues to obscure the tobacco industry's role. The European "sound science" plans included a version of "good epidemiological practices" that would make it impossible to conclude that secondhand smoke-and thus other environmental toxins-caused diseases. Public health professionals need to be aware that the "sound science" movement is not an indigenous effort from within the profession to improve the quality of scientific discourse, but reflects sophisticated public relations campaigns controlled by industry executives and lawyers whose aim is to manipulate the standards of scientific proof to serve the corporate interests of their clients.

Identification of environmental sounds and melodies in syndromes of anterior temporal lobe degeneration.

PubMed

Golden, Hannah L; Downey, Laura E; Fletcher, Philip D; Mahoney, Colin J; Schott, Jonathan M; Mummery, Catherine J; Crutch, Sebastian J; Warren, Jason D

2015-05-15

Recognition of nonverbal sounds in semantic dementia and other syndromes of anterior temporal lobe degeneration may determine clinical symptoms and help to define phenotypic profiles. However, nonverbal auditory semantic function has not been widely studied in these syndromes. Here we investigated semantic processing in two key nonverbal auditory domains - environmental sounds and melodies - in patients with semantic dementia (SD group; n=9) and in patients with anterior temporal lobe atrophy presenting with behavioural decline (TL group; n=7, including four cases with MAPT mutations) in relation to healthy older controls (n=20). We assessed auditory semantic performance in each domain using novel, uniform within-modality neuropsychological procedures that determined sound identification based on semantic classification of sound pairs. Both the SD and TL groups showed comparable overall impairments of environmental sound and melody identification; individual patients generally showed superior identification of environmental sounds than melodies, however relative sparing of melody over environmental sound identification also occurred in both groups. Our findings suggest that nonverbal auditory semantic impairment is a common feature of neurodegenerative syndromes with anterior temporal lobe atrophy. However, the profile of auditory domain involvement varies substantially between individuals. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Nitrogen dioxide sequestration using demolished concrete and its potential application in transportation infrastructure development : final report.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2016-04-01

Achieving environmental sustainability of the US transportation infrastructure via more environmentally sound construction is not a trivial task. Our : proposal, which addresses this critical area, is aiming at transforming concrete, the material of ...

Distributed Processing and Cortical Specialization for Speech and Environmental Sounds in Human Temporal Cortex

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leech, Robert; Saygin, Ayse Pinar

2011-01-01

Using functional MRI, we investigated whether auditory processing of both speech and meaningful non-linguistic environmental sounds in superior and middle temporal cortex relies on a complex and spatially distributed neural system. We found that evidence for spatially distributed processing of speech and environmental sounds in a substantial…

Environmental Sound Training in Cochlear Implant Users

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shafiro, Valeriy; Sheft, Stanley; Kuvadia, Sejal; Gygi, Brian

2015-01-01

Purpose: The study investigated the effect of a short computer-based environmental sound training regimen on the perception of environmental sounds and speech in experienced cochlear implant (CI) patients. Method: Fourteen CI patients with the average of 5 years of CI experience participated. The protocol consisted of 2 pretests, 1 week apart,…

Effect of real-world sounds on protein crystallization.

PubMed

Zhang, Chen-Yan; Liu, Yue; Tian, Xu-Hua; Liu, Wen-Jing; Li, Xiao-Yu; Yang, Li-Xue; Jiang, Han-Jun; Han, Chong; Chen, Ke-An; Yin, Da-Chuan

2018-06-01

Protein crystallization is sensitive to the environment, while audible sound, as a physical and environmental factor during the entire process, is always ignored. We have previously reported that protein crystallization can be affected by a computer-generated monotonous sound with fixed frequency and amplitude. However, real-world sounds are not so simple but are complicated by parameters (frequency, amplitude, timbre, etc.) that vary over time. In this work, from three sound categories (music, speech, and environmental sound), we selected 26 different sounds and evaluated their effects on protein crystallization. The correlation between the sound parameters and the crystallization success rate was studied mathematically. The results showed that the real-world sounds, similar to the artificial monotonous sounds, could not only affect protein crystallization, but also improve crystal quality. Crystallization was dependent not only on the frequency, amplitude, volume, irradiation time, and overall energy of the sounds but also on their spectral characteristics. Based on these results, we suggest that intentionally applying environmental sound may be a simple and useful tool to promote protein crystallization. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

ENVIRONMENTAL FEATURE FINDER: A REMOTE SENSING DECISION SUPPORT TOOL

EPA Science Inventory

Land cover maps are essential to sound environmental stewardship and EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment, but existing maps are not always sufficiently current, detailed, or appropriate for a given application. Consequently, we are developing a decision sup...

An Environmental Perspective until the Year 2000 and Beyond.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

UNEP News, 1987

1987-01-01

Summarizes the blueprint for environmentally sound development, which was endorsed by the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Program in June 1987. Includes recommendations on a World Food Bank, satellite communication costs, labelling toxic chemicals and pesticides, and water quantity and quality. (TW)

Human brain regions involved in recognizing environmental sounds.

PubMed

Lewis, James W; Wightman, Frederic L; Brefczynski, Julie A; Phinney, Raymond E; Binder, Jeffrey R; DeYoe, Edgar A

2004-09-01

To identify the brain regions preferentially involved in environmental sound recognition (comprising portions of a putative auditory 'what' pathway), we collected functional imaging data while listeners attended to a wide range of sounds, including those produced by tools, animals, liquids and dropped objects. These recognizable sounds, in contrast to unrecognizable, temporally reversed control sounds, evoked activity in a distributed network of brain regions previously associated with semantic processing, located predominantly in the left hemisphere, but also included strong bilateral activity in posterior portions of the middle temporal gyri (pMTG). Comparisons with earlier studies suggest that these bilateral pMTG foci partially overlap cortex implicated in high-level visual processing of complex biological motion and recognition of tools and other artifacts. We propose that the pMTG foci process multimodal (or supramodal) information about objects and object-associated motion, and that this may represent 'action' knowledge that can be recruited for purposes of recognition of familiar environmental sound-sources. These data also provide a functional and anatomical explanation for the symptoms of pure auditory agnosia for environmental sounds reported in human lesion studies.

Urban Maglev Technology Development Program : Colorado Maglev Project : part 2 final report

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2004-06-01

The overall objective of the urban maglev transit technology development program is to develop magnetic levitation technology that is a cost effective, reliable, and environmentally sound transit option for urban mass transportation in the United Sta...

Pitch features of environmental sounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Ming; Kang, Jian

2016-07-01

A number of soundscape studies have suggested the need for suitable parameters for soundscape measurement, in addition to the conventional acoustic parameters. This paper explores the applicability of pitch features that are often used in music analysis and their algorithms to environmental sounds. Based on the existing alternative pitch algorithms for simulating the perception of the auditory system and simplified algorithms for practical applications in the areas of music and speech, the applicable algorithms have been determined, considering common types of sound in everyday soundscapes. Considering a number of pitch parameters, including pitch value, pitch strength, and percentage of audible pitches over time, different pitch characteristics of various environmental sounds have been shown. Among the four sound categories, i.e. water, wind, birdsongs, and urban sounds, generally speaking, both water and wind sounds have low pitch values and pitch strengths; birdsongs have high pitch values and pitch strengths; and urban sounds have low pitch values and a relatively wide range of pitch strengths.

Human emotions track changes in the acoustic environment.

PubMed

Ma, Weiyi; Thompson, William Forde

2015-11-24

Emotional responses to biologically significant events are essential for human survival. Do human emotions lawfully track changes in the acoustic environment? Here we report that changes in acoustic attributes that are well known to interact with human emotions in speech and music also trigger systematic emotional responses when they occur in environmental sounds, including sounds of human actions, animal calls, machinery, or natural phenomena, such as wind and rain. Three changes in acoustic attributes known to signal emotional states in speech and music were imposed upon 24 environmental sounds. Evaluations of stimuli indicated that human emotions track such changes in environmental sounds just as they do for speech and music. Such changes not only influenced evaluations of the sounds themselves, they also affected the way accompanying facial expressions were interpreted emotionally. The findings illustrate that human emotions are highly attuned to changes in the acoustic environment, and reignite a discussion of Charles Darwin's hypothesis that speech and music originated from a common emotional signal system based on the imitation and modification of environmental sounds.

Interdisciplinary Adventures in Perceptual Ecology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bocast, Christopher S.

A portfolio dissertation that began as acoustic ecology and matured into perceptual ecology, centered on ecomusicology, bioacoustics, and translational audio-based media works with environmental perspectives. The place of music in Western eco-cosmology through time provides a basis for structuring an environmental history of human sound perception. That history suggests that music may stabilize human mental activity, and that an increased musical practice may be essential for the human project. An overview of recent antecedents preceding the emergence of acoustic ecology reveals structural foundations from 20th century culture that underpin modern sound studies. The contextual role that Aldo Leopold, Jacob von Uexkull, John Cage, Marshall McLuhan, and others played in anticipating the development of acoustic ecology as an interdiscipline is detailed. This interdisciplinary aspect of acoustic ecology is defined and defended, while new developments like soundscape ecology are addressed, though ultimately sound studies will need to embrace a broader concept of full-spectrum "sensory" or "perceptual" ecology. The bioacoustic fieldwork done on spawning sturgeon emphasized this necessity. That study yielded scientific recordings and spectrographic analyses of spawning sounds produced by lake sturgeon, Acipenser fulvescens, during reproduction in natural habitats in the Lake Winnebago watershed in Wisconsin. Recordings were made on the Wolf and Embarrass River during the 2011-2013 spawning seasons. Several specimens were dissected to investigate possible sound production mechanisms; no sonic musculature was found. Drumming sounds, ranging from 5 to 7 Hz fundamental frequency, verified the infrasonic nature of previously undocumented "sturgeon thunder". Other characteristic noises of sturgeon spawning including low-frequency rumbles and hydrodynamic sounds were identified. Intriguingly, high-frequency signals resembling electric organ discharges were discovered. These sounds create a distinctive acoustic signature of sturgeon spawning. Media files include concert performance video, sturgeon audio samples, podcasts, radio pieces, music recordings, sound design, and a time-lapse soundscape reconstructed from Aldo Leopold's notes.

NOAA/NESDIS Operational Sounding Processing Systems using the hyperspectral and microwaves sounders data from CrIS/ATMS, IASI/AMSU, and ATOVS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sharma, A. K.

2016-12-01

The current operational polar sounding systems running at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS) for processing the sounders data from the Cross-track Infrared (CrIS) onboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) under the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) program; the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) onboard Metop-1 and Metop-2 satellites under the program managed by the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological (EUMETSAT); and the Advanced TIROS (Television and Infrared Observation Satellite) Operational Vertical Sounding (ATOVS) onboard NOAA-19 in the NOAA series of Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES), Metop-1 and Metop-2. In a series of advanced operational sounders CrIS and IASI provide more accurate, detailed temperature and humidity profiles; trace gases such as ozone, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, and methane; outgoing longwave radiation; and the cloud cleared radiances (CCR) on a global scale and these products are available to the operational user community. This presentation will highlight the tools developed for the NOAA Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System (NUCAPS), which will discuss the Environmental Satellites Processing Center (ESPC) system architecture involving sounding data processing and distribution for CrIS, IASI, and ATOVS sounding products. Discussion will also include the improvements made for data quality measurements, granule processing and distribution, and user timeliness requirements envisioned from the next generation of JPSS and GOES-R satellites. There have been significant changes in the operational system due to system upgrades, algorithm updates, and value added data products and services. Innovative tools to better monitor performance and quality assurance of the operational sounder and imager products from the CrIS/ATMS, IASI and ATOVS have been developed and deployed at the Office of Satellite and Product Operations (OSPO). The incorporation of these tools in the OSPO operation has facilitated the diagnosis and resolution of problems when detected in the operational environment.

Sound synthesis and evaluation of interactive footsteps and environmental sounds rendering for virtual reality applications.

PubMed

Nordahl, Rolf; Turchet, Luca; Serafin, Stefania

2011-09-01

We propose a system that affords real-time sound synthesis of footsteps on different materials. The system is based on microphones, which detect real footstep sounds from subjects, from which the ground reaction force (GRF) is estimated. Such GRF is used to control a sound synthesis engine based on physical models. Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, the ability of subjects to recognize the surface they were exposed to was assessed. In the second experiment, the sound synthesis engine was enhanced with environmental sounds. Results show that, in some conditions, adding a soundscape significantly improves the recognition of the simulated environment.

Environmentally Sound Small-Scale Water Projects. Guidelines for Planning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tillman, Gus

This manual is the second volume in a series of publications on community development programs. Guidelines are suggested for small-scale water projects that would benefit segments of the world's urban or rural poor. Strategies in project planning, implementation and evaluation are presented that emphasize environmental conservation and promote…

Ambient sound levels at four Department of Interior conservation units in support of Homestead Air Base reuse supplemental environmental impact statement

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1999-06-01

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in cooperation with the United States Air Force (USAF), is developing a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) in support of the planned commercialization of Homestead Air Base in Southern Florid...

Environmentally Sound Small-Scale Agricultural Projects. Guidelines for Planning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mohonk Trust, New Paltz, NY.

This publication is the first of a series of manuals that present environmental guidelines for planning and implementing ecologically sustainable projects. Attention is particularly directed to the agricultural situation and needs of developing nations. Subject areas discussed include: (1) users and uses (identifying the major purposes of the…

Urban Maglev Technology Development Program : Colorado Maglev Project : part 1 : executive summary of final report

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2004-06-01

The overall objective of the urban maglev transit technology development program is to develop magnetic levitation technology that is a cost effective, reliable, and environmentally sound transit option for urban mass transportation in the United Sta...

Prediction of far-field wind turbine noise propagation with parabolic equation.

PubMed

Lee, Seongkyu; Lee, Dongjai; Honhoff, Saskia

2016-08-01

Sound propagation of wind farms is typically simulated by the use of engineering tools that are neglecting some atmospheric conditions and terrain effects. Wind and temperature profiles, however, can affect the propagation of sound and thus the perceived sound in the far field. A better understanding and application of those effects would allow a more optimized farm operation towards meeting noise regulations and optimizing energy yield. This paper presents the parabolic equation (PE) model development for accurate wind turbine noise propagation. The model is validated against analytic solutions for a uniform sound speed profile, benchmark problems for nonuniform sound speed profiles, and field sound test data for real environmental acoustics. It is shown that PE provides good agreement with the measured data, except upwind propagation cases in which turbulence scattering is important. Finally, the PE model uses computational fluid dynamics results as input to accurately predict sound propagation for complex flows such as wake flows. It is demonstrated that wake flows significantly modify the sound propagation characteristics.

Mother’s voice and heartbeat sounds elicit auditory plasticity in the human brain before full gestation

PubMed Central

Webb, Alexandra R.; Heller, Howard T.; Benson, Carol B.; Lahav, Amir

2015-01-01

Brain development is largely shaped by early sensory experience. However, it is currently unknown whether, how early, and to what extent the newborn’s brain is shaped by exposure to maternal sounds when the brain is most sensitive to early life programming. The present study examined this question in 40 infants born extremely prematurely (between 25- and 32-wk gestation) in the first month of life. Newborns were randomized to receive auditory enrichment in the form of audio recordings of maternal sounds (including their mother’s voice and heartbeat) or routine exposure to hospital environmental noise. The groups were otherwise medically and demographically comparable. Cranial ultrasonography measurements were obtained at 30 ± 3 d of life. Results show that newborns exposed to maternal sounds had a significantly larger auditory cortex (AC) bilaterally compared with control newborns receiving standard care. The magnitude of the right and left AC thickness was significantly correlated with gestational age but not with the duration of sound exposure. Measurements of head circumference and the widths of the frontal horn (FH) and the corpus callosum (CC) were not significantly different between the two groups. This study provides evidence for experience-dependent plasticity in the primary AC before the brain has reached full-term maturation. Our results demonstrate that despite the immaturity of the auditory pathways, the AC is more adaptive to maternal sounds than environmental noise. Further studies are needed to better understand the neural processes underlying this early brain plasticity and its functional implications for future hearing and language development. PMID:25713382

Presence of 1/f noise in the temporal structure of psychoacoustic parameters of natural and urban sounds.

PubMed

Yang, Ming; De Coensel, Bert; Kang, Jian

2015-08-01

1/f noise or pink noise, which has been shown to be universal in nature, has also been observed in the temporal envelope of music, speech, and environmental sound. Moreover, the slope of the spectral density of the temporal envelope of music has been shown to correlate well to its pleasing, dull, or chaotic character. In this paper, the temporal structure of a number of instantaneous psychoacoustic parameters of environmental sound is examined in order to investigate whether a 1/f temporal structure appears in various types of sound that are generally preferred by people in everyday life. The results show, to some extent, that different categories of environmental sounds have different temporal structure characteristics. Only a number of urban sounds considered and birdsong, generally, exhibit 1/f behavior on short to medium duration time scales, i.e., from 0.1 s to 10 s, in instantaneous loudness and sharpness, whereas a more chaotic variation is found in birdsong at longer time scales, i.e., of 10 s-200 s. The other sound categories considered exhibit random or monotonic variations in the different time scales. In general, this study shows that a 1/f temporal structure is not necessarily present in environmental sounds that are commonly perceived as pleasant.

MOLECULAR GENETIC TOOLS FOR ASSESSING THE STATUS AND VULNERABILITY OF AQUATIC RESOURCES

EPA Science Inventory

Development of ecological indicators that efficiently capture the present condition and project future vulnerabilities of biological resources is critical to sound environmental management. For this reason, the ORD's Ecological Research Program is developing genetic methodologies...

Sonic Kayaks: Environmental monitoring and experimental music by citizens.

PubMed

Griffiths, Amber G F; Kemp, Kirsty M; Matthews, Kaffe; Garrett, Joanne K; Griffiths, David J

2017-11-01

The Sonic Kayak is a musical instrument used to investigate nature and developed during open hacklab events. The kayaks are rigged with underwater environmental sensors, which allow paddlers to hear real-time water temperature sonifications and underwater sounds, generating live music from the marine world. Sensor data is also logged every second with location, time and date, which allows for fine-scale mapping of water temperatures and underwater noise that was previously unattainable using standard research equipment. The system can be used as a citizen science data collection device, research equipment for professional scientists, or a sound art installation in its own right.

Sonic Kayaks: Environmental monitoring and experimental music by citizens

PubMed Central

Kemp, Kirsty M.; Matthews, Kaffe; Garrett, Joanne K.; Griffiths, David J.

2017-01-01

The Sonic Kayak is a musical instrument used to investigate nature and developed during open hacklab events. The kayaks are rigged with underwater environmental sensors, which allow paddlers to hear real-time water temperature sonifications and underwater sounds, generating live music from the marine world. Sensor data is also logged every second with location, time and date, which allows for fine-scale mapping of water temperatures and underwater noise that was previously unattainable using standard research equipment. The system can be used as a citizen science data collection device, research equipment for professional scientists, or a sound art installation in its own right. PMID:29190283

A description of externally recorded womb sounds in human subjects during gestation

PubMed Central

Daland, Robert; Kesavan, Kalpashri; Macey, Paul M.; Zeltzer, Lonnie; Harper, Ronald M.

2018-01-01

Objective Reducing environmental noise benefits premature infants in neonatal intensive care units (NICU), but excessive reduction may lead to sensory deprivation, compromising development. Instead of minimal noise levels, environments that mimic intrauterine soundscapes may facilitate infant development by providing a sound environment reflecting fetal life. This soundscape may support autonomic and emotional development in preterm infants. We aimed to assess the efficacy and feasibility of external non-invasive recordings in pregnant women, endeavoring to capture intra-abdominal or womb sounds during pregnancy with electronic stethoscopes and build a womb sound library to assess sound trends with gestational development. We also compared these sounds to popular commercial womb sounds marketed to new parents. Study design Intra-abdominal sounds from 50 mothers in their second and third trimester (13 to 40 weeks) of pregnancy were recorded for 6 minutes in a quiet clinic room with 4 electronic stethoscopes, placed in the right upper and lower quadrants, and left upper and lower quadrants of the abdomen. These recording were partitioned into 2-minute intervals in three different positions: standing, sitting and lying supine. Maternal and gestational age, Body Mass Index (BMI) and time since last meal were collected during recordings. Recordings were analyzed using long-term average spectral and waveform analysis, and compared to sounds from non-pregnant abdomens and commercially-marketed womb sounds selected for their availability, popularity, and claims they mimic the intrauterine environment. Results Maternal sounds shared certain common characteristics, but varied with gestational age. With fetal development, the maternal abdomen filtered high (500–5,000 Hz) and mid-frequency (100–500 Hz) energy bands, but no change appeared in contributions from low-frequency signals (10–100 Hz) with gestational age. Variation appeared between mothers, suggesting a resonant chamber role for intra-abdominal space. Compared to commercially-marketed sounds, womb signals were dominated by bowel sounds, were of lower frequency, and showed more variation in intensity. Conclusions High-fidelity intra-abdominal or womb sounds during pregnancy can be recorded non-invasively. Recordings vary with gestational age, and show a predominance of low frequency noise and bowel sounds which are distinct from popular commercial products. Such recordings may be utilized to determine whether sounds influence preterm infant development in the NICU. PMID:29746604

A description of externally recorded womb sounds in human subjects during gestation.

PubMed

Parga, Joanna J; Daland, Robert; Kesavan, Kalpashri; Macey, Paul M; Zeltzer, Lonnie; Harper, Ronald M

2018-01-01

Reducing environmental noise benefits premature infants in neonatal intensive care units (NICU), but excessive reduction may lead to sensory deprivation, compromising development. Instead of minimal noise levels, environments that mimic intrauterine soundscapes may facilitate infant development by providing a sound environment reflecting fetal life. This soundscape may support autonomic and emotional development in preterm infants. We aimed to assess the efficacy and feasibility of external non-invasive recordings in pregnant women, endeavoring to capture intra-abdominal or womb sounds during pregnancy with electronic stethoscopes and build a womb sound library to assess sound trends with gestational development. We also compared these sounds to popular commercial womb sounds marketed to new parents. Intra-abdominal sounds from 50 mothers in their second and third trimester (13 to 40 weeks) of pregnancy were recorded for 6 minutes in a quiet clinic room with 4 electronic stethoscopes, placed in the right upper and lower quadrants, and left upper and lower quadrants of the abdomen. These recording were partitioned into 2-minute intervals in three different positions: standing, sitting and lying supine. Maternal and gestational age, Body Mass Index (BMI) and time since last meal were collected during recordings. Recordings were analyzed using long-term average spectral and waveform analysis, and compared to sounds from non-pregnant abdomens and commercially-marketed womb sounds selected for their availability, popularity, and claims they mimic the intrauterine environment. Maternal sounds shared certain common characteristics, but varied with gestational age. With fetal development, the maternal abdomen filtered high (500-5,000 Hz) and mid-frequency (100-500 Hz) energy bands, but no change appeared in contributions from low-frequency signals (10-100 Hz) with gestational age. Variation appeared between mothers, suggesting a resonant chamber role for intra-abdominal space. Compared to commercially-marketed sounds, womb signals were dominated by bowel sounds, were of lower frequency, and showed more variation in intensity. High-fidelity intra-abdominal or womb sounds during pregnancy can be recorded non-invasively. Recordings vary with gestational age, and show a predominance of low frequency noise and bowel sounds which are distinct from popular commercial products. Such recordings may be utilized to determine whether sounds influence preterm infant development in the NICU.

Physiological phenotyping of dementias using emotional sounds.

PubMed

Fletcher, Phillip D; Nicholas, Jennifer M; Shakespeare, Timothy J; Downey, Laura E; Golden, Hannah L; Agustus, Jennifer L; Clark, Camilla N; Mummery, Catherine J; Schott, Jonathan M; Crutch, Sebastian J; Warren, Jason D

2015-06-01

Emotional behavioral disturbances are hallmarks of many dementias but their pathophysiology is poorly understood. Here we addressed this issue using the paradigm of emotionally salient sounds. Pupil responses and affective valence ratings for nonverbal sounds of varying emotional salience were assessed in patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) (n = 14), semantic dementia (SD) (n = 10), progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) (n = 12), and AD (n = 10) versus healthy age-matched individuals (n = 26). Referenced to healthy individuals, overall autonomic reactivity to sound was normal in Alzheimer's disease (AD) but reduced in other syndromes. Patients with bvFTD, SD, and AD showed altered coupling between pupillary and affective behavioral responses to emotionally salient sounds. Emotional sounds are a useful model system for analyzing how dementias affect the processing of salient environmental signals, with implications for defining pathophysiological mechanisms and novel biomarker development.

Human emotions track changes in the acoustic environment

PubMed Central

Ma, Weiyi; Thompson, William Forde

2015-01-01

Emotional responses to biologically significant events are essential for human survival. Do human emotions lawfully track changes in the acoustic environment? Here we report that changes in acoustic attributes that are well known to interact with human emotions in speech and music also trigger systematic emotional responses when they occur in environmental sounds, including sounds of human actions, animal calls, machinery, or natural phenomena, such as wind and rain. Three changes in acoustic attributes known to signal emotional states in speech and music were imposed upon 24 environmental sounds. Evaluations of stimuli indicated that human emotions track such changes in environmental sounds just as they do for speech and music. Such changes not only influenced evaluations of the sounds themselves, they also affected the way accompanying facial expressions were interpreted emotionally. The findings illustrate that human emotions are highly attuned to changes in the acoustic environment, and reignite a discussion of Charles Darwin’s hypothesis that speech and music originated from a common emotional signal system based on the imitation and modification of environmental sounds. PMID:26553987

Recognition and characterization of unstructured environmental sounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chu, Selina

2011-12-01

Environmental sounds are what we hear everyday, or more generally sounds that surround us ambient or background audio. Humans utilize both vision and hearing to respond to their surroundings, a capability still quite limited in machine processing. The first step toward achieving multimodal input applications is the ability to process unstructured audio and recognize audio scenes (or environments). Such ability would have applications in content analysis and mining of multimedia data or improving robustness in context aware applications through multi-modality, such as in assistive robotics, surveillances, or mobile device-based services. The goal of this thesis is on the characterization of unstructured environmental sounds for understanding and predicting the context surrounding of an agent or device. Most research on audio recognition has focused primarily on speech and music. Less attention has been paid to the challenges and opportunities for using audio to characterize unstructured audio. My research focuses on investigating challenging issues in characterizing unstructured environmental audio and to develop novel algorithms for modeling the variations of the environment. The first step in building a recognition system for unstructured auditory environment was to investigate on techniques and audio features for working with such audio data. We begin by performing a study that explore suitable features and the feasibility of designing an automatic environment recognition system using audio information. In my initial investigation to explore the feasibility of designing an automatic environment recognition system using audio information, I have found that traditional recognition and feature extraction for audio were not suitable for environmental sound, as they lack any type of structures, unlike those of speech and music which contain formantic and harmonic structures, thus dispelling the notion that traditional speech and music recognition techniques can simply be used for realistic environmental sound. Natural unstructured environment sounds contain a large variety of sounds, which are in fact noise-like and are not effectively modeled by Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) or other commonly-used audio features, e.g. energy, zero-crossing, etc. Due to the lack of appropriate features that is suitable for environmental audio and to achieve a more effective representation, I proposed a specialized feature extraction algorithm for environmental sounds that utilizes the matching pursuit (MP) algorithm to learn the inherent structure of each type of sounds, which we called MP-features. MP-features have shown to capture and represent sounds from different sources and different ranges, where frequency domain features (e.g., MFCCs) fail and can be advantageous when combining with MFCCs to improve the overall performance. The third component leads to our investigation on modeling and detecting the background audio. One of the goals of this research is to characterize an environment. Since many events would blend into the background, I wanted to look for a way to achieve a general model for any particular environment. Once we have an idea of the background, it will enable us to identify foreground events even if we havent seen these events before. Therefore, the next step is to investigate into learning the audio background model for each environment type, despite the occurrences of different foreground events. In this work, I presented a framework for robust audio background modeling, which includes learning the models for prediction, data knowledge and persistent characteristics of the environment. This approach has the ability to model the background and detect foreground events as well as the ability to verify whether the predicted background is indeed the background or a foreground event that protracts for a longer period of time. In this work, I also investigated the use of a semi-supervised learning technique to exploit and label new unlabeled audio data. The final components of my thesis will involve investigating on learning sound structures for generalization and applying the proposed ideas to context aware applications. The inherent nature of environmental sound is noisy and contains relatively large amounts of overlapping events between different environments. Environmental sounds contain large variances even within a single environment type, and frequently, there are no divisible or clear boundaries between some types. Traditional methods of classification are generally not robust enough to handle classes with overlaps. This audio, hence, requires representation by complex models. Using deep learning architecture provides a way to obtain a generative model-based method for classification. Specifically, I considered the use of Deep Belief Networks (DBNs) to model environmental audio and investigate its applicability with noisy data to improve robustness and generalization. A framework was proposed using composite-DBNs to discover high-level representations and to learn a hierarchical structure for different acoustic environments in a data-driven fashion. Experimental results on real data sets demonstrate its effectiveness over traditional methods with over 90% accuracy on recognition for a high number of environmental sound types.

Tire Production and Pollution Control. Environmental Education Curriculum. Revised.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Topeka Public Schools, KS.

This unit was developed to introduce secondary students to the many facets of a typical, large manufacturing plant - the Topeka Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company - in an effort to increase awareness of sound environmental practices in industry. Its five major foci include the production of tires and quality control procedures; applications of…

Environmentally Sound Small-Scale Agricultural Projects: Guidelines for Planning. Revised Edition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Altieri, Miguel; Vukasin, Helen L., Ed.

Environmental planning requires more than finding the right technology and a source of funds. Planning involves consideration of the social, cultural, economic, and natural environments in which the project occurs. The challenge is to develop sustainable food systems that have reasonable production but do not degrade the resource base and upset…

Personal evaluation structure of environmental sounds: experiments of subjective evaluation using subjects' own terms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kawai, Keiji; Kojima, Takaya; Hirate, Kotaroh; Yasuoka, Masahito

2004-10-01

In this study, we conducted an experiment to investigate the evaluation structure that lies at the basis of peoples' psychological evaluation of environmental sounds. In the experiment, subjects were given cards on each of which a name of one of the environmental sounds in the specified context is written. Then they did the following three tasks: (1) to sort the cards into groups by the similarity of their impressions of the imagined sounds; (2) to name each group with the word that best represented their overall impression of the group; and (3) to evaluate all sounds on the cards using the words obtained in the previous task. These tasks were done twice: once assuming they heard the sounds at ease inside their homes and once while walking outside in a resort theme park. We analysed the similarity of imagined impression between the sounds with a cluster analysis and clusters of sounds were produced, namely, sounds labelled "natural," "transportation," and so on. A principal component analysis revealed the three major factors of the evaluation structure for both contexts and they were interpreted as preference, activity and sense of daily life.

Characterizing large river sounds: Providing context for understanding the environmental effects of noise produced by hydrokinetic turbines.

PubMed

Bevelhimer, Mark S; Deng, Z Daniel; Scherelis, Constantin

2016-01-01

Underwater noise associated with the installation and operation of hydrokinetic turbines in rivers and tidal zones presents a potential environmental concern for fish and marine mammals. Comparing the spectral quality of sounds emitted by hydrokinetic turbines to natural and other anthropogenic sound sources is an initial step at understanding potential environmental impacts. Underwater recordings were obtained from passing vessels and natural underwater sound sources in static and flowing waters. Static water measurements were taken in a lake with minimal background noise. Flowing water measurements were taken at a previously proposed deployment site for hydrokinetic turbines on the Mississippi River, where sounds created by flowing water are part of all measurements, both natural ambient and anthropogenic sources. Vessel sizes ranged from a small fishing boat with 60 hp outboard motor to an 18-unit barge train being pushed upstream by tugboat. As expected, large vessels with large engines created the highest sound levels, which were, on average, 40 dB greater than the sound created by an operating hydrokinetic turbine. A comparison of sound levels from the same sources at different distances using both spherical and cylindrical sound attenuation functions suggests that spherical model results more closely approximate observed sound attenuation.

Study of the Acoustic Effects of Hydrokinetic Tidal Turbines in Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Brian Polagye; Jim Thomson; Chris Bassett

2012-03-30

Hydrokinetic turbines will be a source of noise in the marine environment - both during operation and during installation/removal. High intensity sound can cause injury or behavioral changes in marine mammals and may also affect fish and invertebrates. These noise effects are, however, highly dependent on the individual marine animals; the intensity, frequency, and duration of the sound; and context in which the sound is received. In other words, production of sound is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for an environmental impact. At a workshop on the environmental effects of tidal energy development, experts identified sound produced by turbinesmore » as an area of potentially significant impact, but also high uncertainty. The overall objectives of this project are to improve our understanding of the potential acoustic effects of tidal turbines by: (1) Characterizing sources of existing underwater noise; (2) Assessing the effectiveness of monitoring technologies to characterize underwater noise and marine mammal responsiveness to noise; (3) Evaluating the sound profile of an operating tidal turbine; and (4) Studying the effect of turbine sound on surrogate species in a laboratory environment. This study focuses on a specific case study for tidal energy development in Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound, Washington (USA), but the methodologies and results are applicable to other turbine technologies and geographic locations. The project succeeded in achieving the above objectives and, in doing so, substantially contributed to the body of knowledge around the acoustic effects of tidal energy development in several ways: (1) Through collection of data from Admiralty Inlet, established the sources of sound generated by strong currents (mobilizations of sediment and gravel) and determined that low-frequency sound recorded during periods of strong currents is non-propagating pseudo-sound. This helped to advance the debate within the marine and hydrokinetics acoustic community as to whether strong currents produce propagating sound. (2) Analyzed data collected from a tidal turbine operating at the European Marine Energy Center to develop a profile of turbine sound and developed a framework to evaluate the acoustic effects of deploying similar devices in other locations. This framework has been applied to Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish Country's demonstration project in Admiralty Inlet to inform postinstallation acoustic and marine mammal monitoring plans. (3) Demonstrated passive acoustic techniques to characterize the ambient noise environment at tidal energy sites (fixed, long-term observations recommended) and characterize the sound from anthropogenic sources (drifting, short-term observations recommended). (4) Demonstrated the utility and limitations of instrumentation, including bottom mounted instrumentation packages, infrared cameras, and vessel monitoring systems. In doing so, also demonstrated how this type of comprehensive information is needed to interpret observations from each instrument (e.g., hydrophone data can be combined with vessel tracking data to evaluate the contribution of vessel sound to ambient noise). (5) Conducted a study that suggests harbor porpoise in Admiralty Inlet may be habituated to high levels of ambient noise due to omnipresent vessel traffic. The inability to detect behavioral changes associated with a high intensity source of opportunity (passenger ferry) has informed the approach for post-installation marine mammal monitoring. (6) Conducted laboratory exposure experiments of juvenile Chinook salmon and showed that exposure to a worse than worst case acoustic dose of turbine sound does not result in changes to hearing thresholds or biologically significant tissue damage. Collectively, this means that Chinook salmon may be at a relatively low risk of injury from sound produced by tidal turbines located in or near their migration path. In achieving these accomplishments, the project has significantly advanced the District's goals of developing a demonstration-scale tidal energy project in Admiralty Inlet. Pilot demonstrations of this type are an essential step in the development of commercial-scale tidal energy in the United States. This is a renewable resource capable of producing electricity in a highly predictable manner.« less

The Incongruency Advantage for Environmental Sounds Presented in Natural Auditory Scenes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gygi, Brian; Shafiro, Valeriy

2011-01-01

The effect of context on the identification of common environmental sounds (e.g., dogs barking or cars honking) was tested by embedding them in familiar auditory background scenes (street ambience, restaurants). Initial results with subjects trained on both the scenes and the sounds to be identified showed a significant advantage of about five…

Meaning From Environmental Sounds: Types of Signal-Referent Relations and Their Effect on Recognizing Auditory Icons

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Keller, Peter; Stevens, Catherine

2004-01-01

This article addresses the learnability of auditory icons, that is, environmental sounds that refer either directly or indirectly to meaningful events. Direct relations use the sound made by the target event whereas indirect relations substitute a surrogate for the target. Across 3 experiments, different indirect relations (ecological, in which…

Auditory and Cognitive Effects of Aging on Perception of Environmental Sounds in Natural Auditory Scenes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gygi, Brian; Shafiro, Valeriy

2013-01-01

Purpose: Previously, Gygi and Shafiro (2011) found that when environmental sounds are semantically incongruent with the background scene (e.g., horse galloping in a restaurant), they can be identified more accurately by young normal-hearing listeners (YNH) than sounds congruent with the scene (e.g., horse galloping at a racetrack). This study…

NUTRIENT AND HABITAT INDICATORS FOR CRITERIA DEVELOPMENT IN THE GREAT LAKES COASTAL WETLANDS

EPA Science Inventory

EPA?s National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL) has developed a national research program with the goal of demonstrating approaches for establishing scientifically sound nutrient and biological criteria for coastal ecosystems. Mid-Continent Ecology D...

Environmental Assessment: Installation Development at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-05-01

column, or in topographic depressions. Water is then utilized by plants and is respired, or it moves slowly into groundwater and/or eventually to surface...water bodies where it slowly moves through the hydrologic cycle. Removal of vegetation decreases infiltration into the soil column and thereby...School District JP-4 jet propulsion fuel 4 kts knots Ldn Day- Night Average Sound Level Leq equivalent noise level Lmax maximum sound level lb pound

Tribal Science Council

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The Tribal Science Council is a forum for interaction between Tribal and Agency representatives to work collaboratively on environmental science issues. It is committed to the development of sound scientific approaches to meet the needs of Tribes.

If a Tree Falls and Everybody Hears the Sound: Teaching Deep Ecology to Business Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kopnina, Helen

2015-01-01

This article will discuss the role of environmentalism in environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) in the context of ecopedagogy. Ecopedagogy calls for the remaking of capitalist practices and seeks to re-engage democracy to include multispecies interests in the face of our current global ecological crisis. In…

Phytoremediation: An Environmentally Sound Technology for Pollution Prevention, Control and Remediation in Developing Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Erakhrumen, Andrew Agbontalor

2007-01-01

The problem of environmental pollution has assumed an unprecedented proportion in many parts of the world especially in Nigeria and its Niger-Delta region in particular. This region is bedeviled with this problem perhaps owing to interplay of demographic and socio-economic forces coupled with the various activities that revolve round the…

The effects of auditive and visual settings on perceived restoration likelihood

PubMed Central

Jahncke, Helena; Eriksson, Karolina; Naula, Sanna

2015-01-01

Research has so far paid little attention to how environmental sounds might affect restorative processes. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of auditive and visual stimuli on perceived restoration likelihood and attitudes towards varying environmental resting conditions. Assuming a condition of cognitive fatigue, all participants (N = 40) were presented with images of an open plan office and urban nature, each under four sound conditions (nature sound, quiet, broadband noise, office noise). After the presentation of each setting/sound combination, the participants assessed it according to restorative qualities, restoration likelihood and attitude. The results mainly showed predicted effects of the sound manipulations on the perceived restorative qualities of the settings. Further, significant interactions between auditive and visual stimuli were found for all measures. Both nature sounds and quiet more positively influenced evaluations of the nature setting compared to the office setting. When office noise was present, both settings received poor evaluations. The results agree with expectations that nature sounds and quiet areas support restoration, while office noise and broadband noise (e.g. ventilation, traffic noise) do not. The findings illustrate the significance of environmental sound for restorative experience. PMID:25599752

Characterizing large river sounds: Providing context for understanding the environmental effects of noise produced by hydrokinetic turbines

DOE PAGES

Bevelhimer, Mark S.; Deng, Z. Daniel; Scherelis, Constantin C.

2016-01-06

Underwaternoise associated with the installation and operation of hydrokinetic turbines in rivers and tidal zones presents a potential environmental concern for fish and marine mammals. Comparing the spectral quality of sounds emitted by hydrokinetic turbines to natural and other anthropogenic sound sources is an initial step at understanding potential environmental impacts. Underwater recordings were obtained from passing vessels and natural underwater sound sources in static and flowing waters. Static water measurements were taken in a lake with minimal background noise. Flowing water measurements were taken at a previously proposed deployment site for hydrokinetic turbines on the Mississippi River, where soundsmore » created by flowing water are part of all measurements, both natural ambient and anthropogenic sources. Vessel sizes ranged from a small fishing boat with 60 hp outboard motor to an 18-unit barge train being pushed upstream by tugboat. As expected, large vessels with large engines created the highest sound levels, which were, on average, 40 dB greater than the sound created by an operating hydrokinetic turbine. As a result, a comparison of sound levels from the same sources at different distances using both spherical and cylindrical sound attenuation functions suggests that spherical model results more closely approximate observed sound attenuation.« less

Characterizing large river sounds: Providing context for understanding the environmental effects of noise produced by hydrokinetic turbines

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bevelhimer, Mark S.; Deng, Z. Daniel; Scherelis, Constantin

2016-01-01

Underwater noise associated with the installation and operation of hydrokinetic turbines in rivers and tidal zones presents a potential environmental concern for fish and marine mammals. Comparing the spectral quality of sounds emitted by hydrokinetic turbines to natural and other anthropogenic sound sources is an initial step at understanding potential environmental impacts. Underwater recordings were obtained from passing vessels of different sizes and other underwater sound sources in both static and flowing waters. Static water measurements were taken in a lake with minimal background noise. Flowing water measurements were taken at a previously proposed deployment site for hydrokinetic turbines onmore » the Mississippi River, where the sound of flowing water is included in background measurements. The size of vessels measured ranged from a small fishing boat with a 60 HP outboard motor to an 18-unit barge train being pushed upstream by tugboat. As expected, large vessels with large engines created the highest sound levels, and when compared to the sound created by an operating HK turbine were many times greater. A comparison of sound levels from the same sources at different distances using both spherical and cylindrical sound attenuation functions suggests that spherical model results more closely approximate observed values.« less

Repeated imitation makes human vocalizations more word-like.

PubMed

Edmiston, Pierce; Perlman, Marcus; Lupyan, Gary

2018-03-14

People have long pondered the evolution of language and the origin of words. Here, we investigate how conventional spoken words might emerge from imitations of environmental sounds. Does the repeated imitation of an environmental sound gradually give rise to more word-like forms? In what ways do these forms resemble the original sounds that motivated them (i.e. exhibit iconicity)? Participants played a version of the children's game 'Telephone'. The first generation of participants imitated recognizable environmental sounds (e.g. glass breaking, water splashing). Subsequent generations imitated the previous generation of imitations for a maximum of eight generations. The results showed that the imitations became more stable and word-like, and later imitations were easier to learn as category labels. At the same time, even after eight generations, both spoken imitations and their written transcriptions could be matched above chance to the category of environmental sound that motivated them. These results show how repeated imitation can create progressively more word-like forms while continuing to retain a resemblance to the original sound that motivated them, and speak to the possible role of human vocal imitation in explaining the origins of at least some spoken words. © 2018 The Author(s).

Worldwide Emerging Environmental Issues Affecting the U.S. Military. November 2005 Report

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-11-01

rapid development. At the program’s launch festivity, the need for developing an international e- waste recycling systems along with transparent...electronic equipment. Sources: Roadmap Set for the Environmentally Sound Management of Electronic Waste in Asia-Pacific under the Basel Convention...34 Tom Dunne, of the agency’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, wrote in an e-mail message. 4.5 Sunk Weapons Represent a Growing

A model for the perception of environmental sound based on notice-events.

PubMed

De Coensel, Bert; Botteldooren, Dick; De Muer, Tom; Berglund, Birgitta; Nilsson, Mats E; Lercher, Peter

2009-08-01

An approach is proposed to shed light on the mechanisms underlying human perception of environmental sound that intrudes in everyday living. Most research on exposure-effect relationships aims at relating overall effects to overall exposure indicators in an epidemiological fashion, without including available knowledge on the possible underlying mechanisms. Here, it is proposed to start from available knowledge on audition and perception to construct a computational framework for the effect of environmental sound on individuals. Obviously, at the individual level additional mechanisms (inter-sensory, attentional, cognitive, emotional) play a role in the perception of environmental sound. As a first step, current knowledge is made explicit by building a model mimicking some aspects of human auditory perception. This model is grounded in the hypothesis that long-term perception of environmental sound is determined primarily by short notice-events. The applicability of the notice-event model is illustrated by simulating a synthetic population exposed to typical Flemish environmental noise. From these simulation results, it is demonstrated that the notice-event model is able to mimic the differences between the annoyance caused by road traffic noise exposure and railway traffic noise exposure that are also observed empirically in other studies and thus could provide an explanation for these differences.

Scaling Watershed Models: Modern Approaches to Science Computation with MapReduce, Parallelization, and Cloud Optimization

EPA Science Inventory

Environmental models are products of the computer architecture and software tools available at the time of development. Scientifically sound algorithms may persist in their original state even as system architectures and software development approaches evolve and progress. Dating...

Understanding environmental sounds in sentence context.

PubMed

Uddin, Sophia; Heald, Shannon L M; Van Hedger, Stephen C; Klos, Serena; Nusbaum, Howard C

2018-03-01

There is debate about how individuals use context to successfully predict and recognize words. One view argues that context supports neural predictions that make use of the speech motor system, whereas other views argue for a sensory or conceptual level of prediction. While environmental sounds can convey clear referential meaning, they are not linguistic signals, and are thus neither produced with the vocal tract nor typically encountered in sentence context. We compared the effect of spoken sentence context on recognition and comprehension of spoken words versus nonspeech, environmental sounds. In Experiment 1, sentence context decreased the amount of signal needed for recognition of spoken words and environmental sounds in similar fashion. In Experiment 2, listeners judged sentence meaning in both high and low contextually constraining sentence frames, when the final word was present or replaced with a matching environmental sound. Results showed that sentence constraint affected decision time similarly for speech and nonspeech, such that high constraint sentences (i.e., frame plus completion) were processed faster than low constraint sentences for speech and nonspeech. Linguistic context facilitates the recognition and understanding of nonspeech sounds in much the same way as for spoken words. This argues against a simple form of a speech-motor explanation of predictive coding in spoken language understanding, and suggests support for conceptual-level predictions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of Listening to Music versus Environmental Sounds in Passive and Active Situations on Levels of Pain and Fatigue in Fibromyalgia.

PubMed

Mercadíe, Lolita; Mick, Gérard; Guétin, Stéphane; Bigand, Emmanuel

2015-10-01

In fibromyalgia, pain symptoms such as hyperalgesia and allodynia are associated with fatigue. Mechanisms underlying such symptoms can be modulated by listening to pleasant music. We expected that listening to music, because of its emotional impact, would have a greater modulating effect on the perception of pain and fatigue in patients with fibromyalgia than listening to nonmusical sounds. To investigate this hypothesis, we carried out a 4-week study in which patients with fibromyalgia listened to either preselected musical pieces or environmental sounds when they experienced pain in active (while carrying out a physical activity) or passive (at rest) situations. Concomitant changes of pain and fatigue levels were evaluated. When patients listened to music or environmental sounds at rest, pain and fatigue levels were significantly reduced after 20 minutes of listening, with no difference of effect magnitude between the two stimuli. This improvement persisted 10 minutes after the end of the listening session. In active situations, pain did not increase in presence of the two stimuli. Contrary to our expectations, music and environmental sounds produced a similar relieving effect on pain and fatigue, with no benefit gained by listening to pleasant music over environmental sounds. Copyright © 2015 American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Accuracy of assessing the level of impulse sound from distant sources.

PubMed

Wszołek, Tadeusz; Kłaczyński, Maciej

2007-01-01

Impulse sound events are characterised by ultra high pressures and low frequencies. Lower frequency sounds are generally less attenuated over a given distance in the atmosphere than higher frequencies. Thus, impulse sounds can be heard over greater distances and will be more affected by the environment. To calculate a long-term average immission level it is necessary to apply weighting factors like the probability of the occurrence of each weather condition during the relevant time period. This means that when measuring impulse noise at a long distance it is necessary to follow environmental parameters in many points along the way sound travels and also to have a database of sound transfer functions in the long term. The paper analyses the uncertainty of immission measurement results of impulse sound from cladding and destroying explosive materials. The influence of environmental conditions on the way sound travels is the focus of this paper.

Predicting Anthropogenic Noise Contributions to US Waters.

PubMed

Gedamke, Jason; Ferguson, Megan; Harrison, Jolie; Hatch, Leila; Henderson, Laurel; Porter, Michael B; Southall, Brandon L; Van Parijs, Sofie

2016-01-01

To increase understanding of the potential effects of chronic underwater noise in US waters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) organized two working groups in 2011, collectively called "CetSound," to develop tools to map the density and distribution of cetaceans (CetMap) and predict the contribution of human activities to underwater noise (SoundMap). The SoundMap effort utilized data on density, distribution, acoustic signatures of dominant noise sources, and environmental descriptors to map estimated temporal, spatial, and spectral contributions to background noise. These predicted soundscapes are an initial step toward assessing chronic anthropogenic noise impacts on the ocean's varied acoustic habitats and the animals utilizing them.

Toward a Sustainable Agriculture

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Future trends in population growth, energy use, climate change, and globalization will challenge agriculturists to develop innovative production systems that are highly productive and environmentally sound. Furthermore, future agricultural production systems must possess an inherent capacity to adap...

The influence of flooring on environmental stressors: a study of three flooring materials in a hospital.

PubMed

Harris, Debra D

2015-01-01

Three flooring materials, terrazzo, rubber, and carpet tile, in patient unit corridors were compared for absorption of sound, comfort, light reflectance, employee perceptions and preferences, and patient satisfaction. Environmental stressors, such as noise and ergonomic factors, effect healthcare workers and patients, contributing to increased fatigue, anxiety and stress, decreased productivity, and patient safety and satisfaction. A longitudinal comparative cohort study comparing three types of flooring assessed sound levels, healthcare worker responses, and patient Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) ratings over 42 weeks. A linear mixed model analysis was conducted to determine significant differences between the means for participant responses and objective sound meter data during all three phases of the study. A significant difference was found for sound levels between flooring type for equivalent continuous sound levels. Carpet tile performed better for sound attenuation by absorption, reducing sound levels 3.14 dBA. Preferences for flooring materials changed over the course of the study. The HCAHPS ratings aligned with the sound meter data showing that patients perceived the noise levels to be lower with carpet tiles, improving patient satisfaction ratings. Perceptions for healthcare staff and patients were aligned with the sound meter data. Carpet tile provides sound absorption that affects sound levels and influences occupant's perceptions of environmental factors that contribute to the quality of the indoor environment. Flooring that provides comfort underfoot, easy cleanability, and sound absorption influence healthcare worker job satisfaction and patient satisfaction with their patient experience. © The Author(s) 2015.

Molecular detection of native and invasive marine invertebrate larvae present in ballast and open water environmental samples collected in Puget Sound

USGS Publications Warehouse

Harvey, J.B.J.; Hoy, M.S.; Rodriguez, R.J.

2009-01-01

Non-native marine species have been and continue to be introduced into Puget Sound via several vectors including ship's ballast water. Some non-native species become invasive and negatively impact native species or near shore habitats. We present a new methodology for the development and testing of taxon specific PCR primers designed to assess environmental samples of ocean water for the presence of native and non-native bivalves, crustaceans and algae. The intergenic spacer regions (IGS; ITS1, ITS2 and 5.8S) of the ribosomal DNA were sequenced for adult samples of each taxon studied. We used these data along with those available in Genbank to design taxon and group specific primers and tested their stringency against artificial populations of plasmid constructs containing the entire IGS region for each of the 25 taxa in our study, respectively. Taxon and group specific primer sets were then used to detect the presence or absence of native and non-native planktonic life-history stages (propagules) from environmental samples of ballast water and plankton tow net samples collected in Puget Sound. This methodology provides an inexpensive and efficient way to test the discriminatory ability of taxon specific oligonucleotides (PCR primers) before creating molecular probes or beacons for use in molecular ecological applications such as probe hybridizations or microarray analyses. This work addresses the current need to develop molecular tools capable of diagnosing the presence of planktonic life-history stages from non-native marine species (potential invaders) in ballast water and other environmental samples. ?? 2008 Elsevier B.V.

Puget Sound Tidal Energy In-Water Testing and Development Project Final Technical Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Collar, Craig W

2012-11-16

Tidal energy represents potential for the generation of renewable, emission free, environmentally benign, and cost effective energy from tidal flows. A successful tidal energy demonstration project in Puget Sound, Washington may enable significant commercial development resulting in important benefits for the northwest region and the nation. This project promoted the United States Department of Energy's Wind and Hydropower Technologies Program's goals of advancing the commercial viability, cost-competitiveness, and market acceptance of marine hydrokinetic systems. The objective of the Puget Sound Tidal Energy Demonstration Project is to conduct in-water testing and evaluation of tidal energy technology as a first step towardmore » potential construction of a commercial-scale tidal energy power plant. The specific goal of the project phase covered by this award was to conduct all activities necessary to complete engineering design and obtain construction approvals for a pilot demonstration plant in the Admiralty Inlet region of the Puget Sound. Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County (The District) accomplished the objectives of this award through four tasks: Detailed Admiralty Inlet Site Studies, Plant Design and Construction Planning, Environmental and Regulatory Activities, and Management and Reporting. Pre-Installation studies completed under this award provided invaluable data used for site selection, environmental evaluation and permitting, plant design, and construction planning. However, these data gathering efforts are not only important to the Admiralty Inlet pilot project. Lessons learned, in particular environmental data gathering methods, can be applied to future tidal energy projects in the United States and other parts of the world. The District collaborated extensively with project stakeholders to complete the tasks for this award. This included Federal, State, and local government agencies, tribal governments, environmental groups, and others. All required permit and license applications were completed and submitted under this award, including a Final License Application for a pilot hydrokinetic license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The tasks described above have brought the project through all necessary requirements to construct a tidal pilot project in Admiralty Inlet with the exception of final permit and license approvals, and the selection of a general contractor to perform project construction.« less

Draft Environmental Statement For Physics and Astronomy Sounding Rocket, Balloon, and Airborne Research Programs

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1971-01-01

This document is a draft of an environmental impact statement, evaluating the effect on the environment of the use of sounding rockets, balloons and air borne research programs in studying the atmosphere.

A human-hearing-related prediction tool for soundscapes and community noise

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Genuit, Klaus

2002-11-01

There are several methods of calculation available for the prediction of the A-weighted sound-pressure level of environmental noise, which are, however, not suitable for a qualified prediction of the residents' annoyance and physiological strain. The subjectively felt noise quality does not only depend on the A-weighted sound-pressure level, but also on other psychoacoustical parameters, such as loudness, roughness, sharpness, etc. In addition to these physical and psychoacoustical aspects of noise, the so-called psychological or cognitive aspects have to be considered, too, which means that the listeners' expectations, their mental attitude, as well as the information content of the noise finally influence the noise quality perceived by the individual persons. Within the scope of a research project SVEN (Sound Quality of Vehicle Exterior Noise), which is promoted by the EC, a new tool has been developed which allows a binaural simulation and prediction of the environmental noise to evaluate the influence of different contributions by the sound events with respect to the psychoacoustical parameters, the spatial distribution, movement, and frequency. By means of this tool it is now possible to consider completely new aspects regarding the audible perception of noise when establishing a soundscape or when planning community noise.

FTA low-speed urban Maglev research program : updated lessons learned.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2012-11-01

In 1999, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) initiated the Low-Speed Urban Magnetic Levitation (Urban Maglev) Program to develop magnetic levitation technology that offers a cost-effective, reliable, and environmentally-sound transit option for ...

Perspectives About Personalization for mHealth Solutions Against Noise Pollution.

PubMed

Kepplinger, Sara; Liebetrau, Judith; Clauss, Tobias; Pharow, Peter

2017-01-01

Noise harms the environmental quality and can have negative effect on health and wellbeing. Providing silent areas and periods of rest is one way to improve the perceived environmental quality. However, realization is not easy in the day to day life. The usage of mHealth solutions which can provide information about the sound of a certain area and the respective effect on humans could be supportive. As the perception of sound is highly subjective, the prediction of the perceived acoustic environments is very difficult. This paper describes a course of action to develop an automatic estimation of an acoustic environment, based on the measurement of sound properties solely. The challenges of this endeavor are explained in detail. Possible application areas in mHealth are identified and presented. This future vision paper wants to draw the attention to different possibilities to cope with noise pollution either by personal behavior change or by using personalized data to reach out for a more general applicability for example through soundscape.

NESSTI: Norms for Environmental Sound Stimuli

PubMed Central

Hocking, Julia; Dzafic, Ilvana; Kazovsky, Maria; Copland, David A.

2013-01-01

In this paper we provide normative data along multiple cognitive and affective variable dimensions for a set of 110 sounds, including living and manmade stimuli. Environmental sounds are being increasingly utilized as stimuli in the cognitive, neuropsychological and neuroimaging fields, yet there is no comprehensive set of normative information for these type of stimuli available for use across these experimental domains. Experiment 1 collected data from 162 participants in an on-line questionnaire, which included measures of identification and categorization as well as cognitive and affective variables. A subsequent experiment collected response times to these sounds. Sounds were normalized to the same length (1 second) in order to maximize usage across multiple paradigms and experimental fields. These sounds can be freely downloaded for use, and all response data have also been made available in order that researchers can choose one or many of the cognitive and affective dimensions along which they would like to control their stimuli. Our hope is that the availability of such information will assist researchers in the fields of cognitive and clinical psychology and the neuroimaging community in choosing well-controlled environmental sound stimuli, and allow comparison across multiple studies. PMID:24023866

77 FR 57184 - Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for a Light Rail Operations and...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-09-17

... maintenance and storage needs of an expanded fleet of light rail vehicles identified in the Sound Transit 2... Environmental Impact Statement for a Light Rail Operations and Maintenance Satellite Facility, King and... planning to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Sound Transit's proposed new Light Rail...

Practical ranges of loudness levels of various types of environmental noise, including traffic noise, aircraft noise, and industrial noise.

PubMed

Salomons, Erik M; Janssen, Sabine A

2011-06-01

In environmental noise control one commonly employs the A-weighted sound level as an approximate measure of the effect of noise on people. A measure that is more closely related to direct human perception of noise is the loudness level. At constant A-weighted sound level, the loudness level of a noise signal varies considerably with the shape of the frequency spectrum of the noise signal. In particular the bandwidth of the spectrum has a large effect on the loudness level, due to the effect of critical bands in the human hearing system. The low-frequency content of the spectrum also has an effect on the loudness level. In this note the relation between loudness level and A-weighted sound level is analyzed for various environmental noise spectra, including spectra of traffic noise, aircraft noise, and industrial noise. From loudness levels calculated for these environmental noise spectra, diagrams are constructed that show the relation between loudness level, A-weighted sound level, and shape of the spectrum. The diagrams show that the upper limits of the loudness level for broadband environmental noise spectra are about 20 to 40 phon higher than the lower limits for narrowband spectra, which correspond to the loudness levels of pure tones. The diagrams are useful for assessing limitations and potential improvements of environmental noise control methods and policy based on A-weighted sound levels.

Environmentally Sound Small-Scale Forestry Projects. Guidelines for Planning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ffolliott, Peter F.; Thames, John L.

This manual, the third in a series of publications that address community development possibilities in developing nations, provides guidelines for small-scale forestry projects that are integrative and conservation-oriented. Chapters focus on: (1) users and uses (specifying targeted audience and general objectives); (2) planning process (including…

Frequency-Limiting Effects on Speech and Environmental Sound Identification for Cochlear Implant and Normal Hearing Listeners

PubMed Central

Chang, Son-A; Won, Jong Ho; Kim, HyangHee; Oh, Seung-Ha; Tyler, Richard S.; Cho, Chang Hyun

2018-01-01

Background and Objectives It is important to understand the frequency region of cues used, and not used, by cochlear implant (CI) recipients. Speech and environmental sound recognition by individuals with CI and normal-hearing (NH) was measured. Gradients were also computed to evaluate the pattern of change in identification performance with respect to the low-pass filtering or high-pass filtering cutoff frequencies. Subjects and Methods Frequency-limiting effects were implemented in the acoustic waveforms by passing the signals through low-pass filters (LPFs) or high-pass filters (HPFs) with seven different cutoff frequencies. Identification of Korean vowels and consonants produced by a male and female speaker and environmental sounds was measured. Crossover frequencies were determined for each identification test, where the LPF and HPF conditions show the identical identification scores. Results CI and NH subjects showed changes in identification performance in a similar manner as a function of cutoff frequency for the LPF and HPF conditions, suggesting that the degraded spectral information in the acoustic signals may similarly constraint the identification performance for both subject groups. However, CI subjects were generally less efficient than NH subjects in using the limited spectral information for speech and environmental sound identification due to the inefficient coding of acoustic cues through the CI sound processors. Conclusions This finding will provide vital information in Korean for understanding how different the frequency information is in receiving speech and environmental sounds by CI processor from normal hearing. PMID:29325391

Frequency-Limiting Effects on Speech and Environmental Sound Identification for Cochlear Implant and Normal Hearing Listeners.

PubMed

Chang, Son-A; Won, Jong Ho; Kim, HyangHee; Oh, Seung-Ha; Tyler, Richard S; Cho, Chang Hyun

2017-12-01

It is important to understand the frequency region of cues used, and not used, by cochlear implant (CI) recipients. Speech and environmental sound recognition by individuals with CI and normal-hearing (NH) was measured. Gradients were also computed to evaluate the pattern of change in identification performance with respect to the low-pass filtering or high-pass filtering cutoff frequencies. Frequency-limiting effects were implemented in the acoustic waveforms by passing the signals through low-pass filters (LPFs) or high-pass filters (HPFs) with seven different cutoff frequencies. Identification of Korean vowels and consonants produced by a male and female speaker and environmental sounds was measured. Crossover frequencies were determined for each identification test, where the LPF and HPF conditions show the identical identification scores. CI and NH subjects showed changes in identification performance in a similar manner as a function of cutoff frequency for the LPF and HPF conditions, suggesting that the degraded spectral information in the acoustic signals may similarly constraint the identification performance for both subject groups. However, CI subjects were generally less efficient than NH subjects in using the limited spectral information for speech and environmental sound identification due to the inefficient coding of acoustic cues through the CI sound processors. This finding will provide vital information in Korean for understanding how different the frequency information is in receiving speech and environmental sounds by CI processor from normal hearing.

Transfer of auditory perceptual learning with spectrally reduced speech to speech and nonspeech tasks: implications for cochlear implants.

PubMed

Loebach, Jeremy L; Pisoni, David B; Svirsky, Mario A

2009-12-01

The objective of this study was to assess whether training on speech processed with an eight-channel noise vocoder to simulate the output of a cochlear implant would produce transfer of auditory perceptual learning to the recognition of nonspeech environmental sounds, the identification of speaker gender, and the discrimination of talkers by voice. Twenty-four normal-hearing subjects were trained to transcribe meaningful English sentences processed with a noise vocoder simulation of a cochlear implant. An additional 24 subjects served as an untrained control group and transcribed the same sentences in their unprocessed form. All subjects completed pre- and post-test sessions in which they transcribed vocoded sentences to provide an assessment of training efficacy. Transfer of perceptual learning was assessed using a series of closed set, nonlinguistic tasks: subjects identified talker gender, discriminated the identity of pairs of talkers, and identified ecologically significant environmental sounds from a closed set of alternatives. Although both groups of subjects showed significant pre- to post-test improvements, subjects who transcribed vocoded sentences during training performed significantly better at post-test than those in the control group. Both groups performed equally well on gender identification and talker discrimination. Subjects who received explicit training on the vocoded sentences, however, performed significantly better on environmental sound identification than the untrained subjects. Moreover, across both groups, pre-test speech performance and, to a higher degree, post-test speech performance, were significantly correlated with environmental sound identification. For both groups, environmental sounds that were characterized as having more salient temporal information were identified more often than environmental sounds that were characterized as having more salient spectral information. Listeners trained to identify noise-vocoded sentences showed evidence of transfer of perceptual learning to the identification of environmental sounds. In addition, the correlation between environmental sound identification and sentence transcription indicates that subjects who were better able to use the degraded acoustic information to identify the environmental sounds were also better able to transcribe the linguistic content of novel sentences. Both trained and untrained groups performed equally well ( approximately 75% correct) on the gender-identification task, indicating that training did not have an effect on the ability to identify the gender of talkers. Although better than chance, performance on the talker discrimination task was poor overall ( approximately 55%), suggesting that either explicit training is required to discriminate talkers' voices reliably or that additional information (perhaps spectral in nature) not present in the vocoded speech is required to excel in such tasks. Taken together, the results suggest that although transfer of auditory perceptual learning with spectrally degraded speech does occur, explicit task-specific training may be necessary for tasks that cannot rely on temporal information alone.

Transfer of Auditory Perceptual Learning with Spectrally Reduced Speech to Speech and Nonspeech Tasks: Implications for Cochlear Implants

PubMed Central

Loebach, Jeremy L.; Pisoni, David B.; Svirsky, Mario A.

2009-01-01

Objective The objective of this study was to assess whether training on speech processed with an 8-channel noise vocoder to simulate the output of a cochlear implant would produce transfer of auditory perceptual learning to the recognition of non-speech environmental sounds, the identification of speaker gender, and the discrimination of talkers by voice. Design Twenty-four normal hearing subjects were trained to transcribe meaningful English sentences processed with a noise vocoder simulation of a cochlear implant. An additional twenty-four subjects served as an untrained control group and transcribed the same sentences in their unprocessed form. All subjects completed pre- and posttest sessions in which they transcribed vocoded sentences to provide an assessment of training efficacy. Transfer of perceptual learning was assessed using a series of closed-set, nonlinguistic tasks: subjects identified talker gender, discriminated the identity of pairs of talkers, and identified ecologically significant environmental sounds from a closed set of alternatives. Results Although both groups of subjects showed significant pre- to posttest improvements, subjects who transcribed vocoded sentences during training performed significantly better at posttest than subjects in the control group. Both groups performed equally well on gender identification and talker discrimination. Subjects who received explicit training on the vocoded sentences, however, performed significantly better on environmental sound identification than the untrained subjects. Moreover, across both groups, pretest speech performance, and to a higher degree posttest speech performance, were significantly correlated with environmental sound identification. For both groups, environmental sounds that were characterized as having more salient temporal information were identified more often than environmental sounds that were characterized as having more salient spectral information. Conclusions Listeners trained to identify noise-vocoded sentences showed evidence of transfer of perceptual learning to the identification of environmental sounds. In addition, the correlation between environmental sound identification and sentence transcription indicates that subjects who were better able to utilize the degraded acoustic information to identify the environmental sounds were also better able to transcribe the linguistic content of novel sentences. Both trained and untrained groups performed equally well (~75% correct) on the gender identification task, indicating that training did not have an effect on the ability to identify the gender of talkers. Although better than chance, performance on the talker discrimination task was poor overall (~55%), suggesting that either explicit training is required to reliably discriminate talkers’ voices, or that additional information (perhaps spectral in nature) not present in the vocoded speech is required to excel in such tasks. Taken together, the results suggest that while transfer of auditory perceptual learning with spectrally degraded speech does occur, explicit task-specific training may be necessary for tasks that cannot rely on temporal information alone. PMID:19773659

Effects of Soundscape on the Environmental Restoration in Urban Natural Environments.

PubMed

Zhang, Yuan; Kang, Jian; Kang, Joe

2017-01-01

According to the attention restoration theory, directed attention is a limited physiological resource and is susceptible to fatigue by overuse. Natural environments are a healthy resource, which allows and promotes the restoration of individuals within it from their state of directed attention fatigue. This process is called the environmental restoration on individuals, and it is affected both positively and negatively by environmental factors. By considering the relationship among the three components of soundscape, that is, people, sound and the environment, this study aims to explore the effects of soundscape on the environmental restoration in urban natural environments. A field experiment was conducted with 70 participants (four groups) in an urban natural environment (Shenyang, China). Directed attention was first depleted with a 50-min 'consumption' phase, followed by a baseline measurement of attention level. Three groups then engaged in 40 min of restoration in the respective environments with similar visual surroundings but with different sounds present, after which attention levels were re-tested. The fourth group did not undergo restoration and was immediately re-tested. The difference between the two test scores, corrected for the practice effect, represents the attention restoration of individuals exposed to the respective environments. An analysis of variance was performed, demonstrating that the differences between the mean values for each group were statistically significant [sig. = 0.027 (<0.050)]. The results showed that the mean values (confidence interval of 95%) of each group are as follows: 'natural sounds group' (8.4), 'traffic sounds group' (2.4) and 'machine sounds group' (-1.8). It can be concluded that (1) urban natural environments, with natural sounds, have a positive effect on the restoration of an individuals' attention and (2) the presence of different types of sounds has significantly divergent effects on the environmental restoration.

Anatomical Correlates of Non-Verbal Perception in Dementia Patients

PubMed Central

Lin, Pin-Hsuan; Chen, Hsiu-Hui; Chen, Nai-Ching; Chang, Wen-Neng; Huang, Chi-Wei; Chang, Ya-Ting; Hsu, Shih-Wei; Hsu, Che-Wei; Chang, Chiung-Chih

2016-01-01

Purpose: Patients with dementia who have dissociations in verbal and non-verbal sound processing may offer insights into the anatomic basis for highly related auditory modes. Methods: To determine the neuronal networks on non-verbal perception, 16 patients with Alzheimer’s dementia (AD), 15 with behavior variant fronto-temporal dementia (bv-FTD), 14 with semantic dementia (SD) were evaluated and compared with 15 age-matched controls. Neuropsychological and auditory perceptive tasks were included to test the ability to compare pitch changes, scale-violated melody and for naming and associating with environmental sound. The brain 3D T1 images were acquired and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to compare and correlated the volumetric measures with task scores. Results: The SD group scored the lowest among 3 groups in pitch or scale-violated melody tasks. In the environmental sound test, the SD group also showed impairment in naming and also in associating sound with pictures. The AD and bv-FTD groups, compared with the controls, showed no differences in all tests. VBM with task score correlation showed that atrophy in the right supra-marginal and superior temporal gyri was strongly related to deficits in detecting violated scales, while atrophy in the bilateral anterior temporal poles and left medial temporal structures was related to deficits in environmental sound recognition. Conclusions: Auditory perception of pitch, scale-violated melody or environmental sound reflects anatomical degeneration in dementia patients and the processing of non-verbal sounds are mediated by distinct neural circuits. PMID:27630558

Anatomical Correlates of Non-Verbal Perception in Dementia Patients.

PubMed

Lin, Pin-Hsuan; Chen, Hsiu-Hui; Chen, Nai-Ching; Chang, Wen-Neng; Huang, Chi-Wei; Chang, Ya-Ting; Hsu, Shih-Wei; Hsu, Che-Wei; Chang, Chiung-Chih

2016-01-01

Patients with dementia who have dissociations in verbal and non-verbal sound processing may offer insights into the anatomic basis for highly related auditory modes. To determine the neuronal networks on non-verbal perception, 16 patients with Alzheimer's dementia (AD), 15 with behavior variant fronto-temporal dementia (bv-FTD), 14 with semantic dementia (SD) were evaluated and compared with 15 age-matched controls. Neuropsychological and auditory perceptive tasks were included to test the ability to compare pitch changes, scale-violated melody and for naming and associating with environmental sound. The brain 3D T1 images were acquired and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to compare and correlated the volumetric measures with task scores. The SD group scored the lowest among 3 groups in pitch or scale-violated melody tasks. In the environmental sound test, the SD group also showed impairment in naming and also in associating sound with pictures. The AD and bv-FTD groups, compared with the controls, showed no differences in all tests. VBM with task score correlation showed that atrophy in the right supra-marginal and superior temporal gyri was strongly related to deficits in detecting violated scales, while atrophy in the bilateral anterior temporal poles and left medial temporal structures was related to deficits in environmental sound recognition. Auditory perception of pitch, scale-violated melody or environmental sound reflects anatomical degeneration in dementia patients and the processing of non-verbal sounds are mediated by distinct neural circuits.

The influence of acoustic emissions for underwater data transmission on the behaviour of harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) in a floating pen.

PubMed

Kastelein, R A; Verboom, W C; Muijsers, M; Jennings, N V; van der Heul, S

2005-05-01

To prevent grounding of ships and collisions between ships in shallow coastal waters, an underwater data collection and communication network is currently under development: Acoustic Communication network for Monitoring of underwater Environment in coastal areas (ACME). Marine mammals might be affected by ACME sounds since they use sounds of similar frequencies (around 12 kHz) for communication, orientation, and prey location. If marine mammals tend to avoid the vicinity of the transmitters, they may be kept away from ecologically important areas by ACME sounds. One marine mammal species that may be affected in the North Sea is the harbour porpoise. Therefore, as part of an environmental impact assessment program, two captive harbour porpoises were subjected to four sounds, three of which may be used in the underwater acoustic data communication network. The effect of each sound was judged by comparing the animals' positions and respiration rates during a test period with those during a baseline period. Each of the four sounds could be made a deterrent by increasing the amplitude of the sound. The porpoises reacted by swimming away from the sounds and by slightly, but significantly, increasing their respiration rate. From the sound pressure level distribution in the pen, and the distribution of the animals during test sessions, discomfort sound level thresholds were determined for each sound. In combination with information on sound propagation in the areas where the communication system may be deployed, the extent of the 'discomfort zone' can be estimated for several source levels (SLs). The discomfort zone is defined as the area around a sound source that harbour porpoises are expected to avoid. Based on these results, SLs can be selected that have an acceptable effect on harbour porpoises in particular areas. The discomfort zone of a communication sound depends on the selected sound, the selected SL, and the propagation characteristics of the area in which the sound system is operational. In shallow, winding coastal water courses, with sandbanks, etc., the type of habitat in which the ACME sounds will be produced, propagation loss cannot be accurately estimated by using a simple propagation model, but should be measured on site. The SL of the communication system should be adapted to each area (taking into account bounding conditions created by narrow channels, sound propagation variability due to environmental factors, and the importance of an area to the affected species). The discomfort zone should not prevent harbour porpoises from spending sufficient time in ecologically important areas (for instance feeding areas), or routes towards these areas.

FTA Low-speed urban maglev research program lessons learned : March 2009.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2009-03-01

In 1999, the Federal Transit Administration initiated the Low-Speed Urban Magnetic Levitation (UML) Program to develop magnetic levitation technology that offers a cost effective, reliable, and environmentally sound transit option for urban mass tran...

Integration of Marine Mammal Movement and Behavior into the Effects of Sound on the Marine Environment

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-09-30

environmental impact than do 5 historic approaches used in Navy environmental assessments (EA) and impact statements (EIS). Many previous methods...of Sound on the Marine Environment (ESME) program contributes to the ultimate goal of creating an environmental assessment tool for activities that...expand the species library available for use in 3MB, 2) continue incorporating the ability to project environmental influences on simulated animal

Improvement of acoustical characteristics : wideband bamboo based polymer composite

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Farid, M.; Purniawan, A.; Rasyida, A.; Ramadhani, M.; Komariyah, S.

2017-07-01

Environmental friendly and comfortable materials are desirable for applications in the automobile interior. The objective of this research was to examine and develop bamboo based polymer composites applied to the sound absorption materials of automobile door panels. Morphological analysis of the polyurethane/bamboo powder composite materials was carried out using scanning electron microscope to reveal the microscopic material behavior and followed by the FTIR and TGA testing. The finding demonstrated that this acoustical polymer composite materials provided a potential wideband sound absorption material. The range of frequency can be controlled between 500 and 4000 Hz with an average of sound absorption coefficient around 0.411 and it met to the door panels criteria.

An Overview of the NASA Sounding Rocket and Balloon Programs

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Eberspeaker, Philip J.; Smith, Ira S.

2003-01-01

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Sounding Rockets and Balloon Programs conduct a total of 50 to 60 missions per year in support of the NASA scientific community. These missions support investigations sponsored by NASA's Offices of Space Science, Life and Microgravity Sciences & Applications, and Earth Science. The Goddard Space Flight Center has management and implementation responsibility for these programs. The NASA Sounding Rockets Program provides the science community with payload development support, environmental testing, launch vehicles, and launch operations from fixed and mobile launch ranges. Sounding rockets continue to provide a cost-effective way to make in situ observations from 50 to 1500 km in the near-earth environment and to uniquely cover the altitude regime between 50 km and 130 km above the Earth's surface. New technology efforts include GPS payload event triggering, tailored trajectories, new vehicle configuration development to expand current capabilities, and the feasibility assessment of an ultra high altitude sounding rocket vehicle. The NASA Balloon Program continues to make advancements and developments in its capabilities for support of the scientific ballooning community. The Long Duration Balloon (LDB) is capable of providing flight durations in excess of two weeks and has had many successful flights since its development. The NASA Balloon Program is currently engaged in the development of the Ultra Long Duration Balloon (ULDB), which will be capable of providing flight times up to 100-days. Additional development efforts are focusing on ultra high altitude balloons, station keeping techniques and planetary balloon technologies.

A Trainable Hearing Aid Algorithm Reflecting Individual Preferences for Degree of Noise-Suppression, Input Sound Level, and Listening Situation.

PubMed

Yoon, Sung Hoon; Nam, Kyoung Won; Yook, Sunhyun; Cho, Baek Hwan; Jang, Dong Pyo; Hong, Sung Hwa; Kim, In Young

2017-03-01

In an effort to improve hearing aid users' satisfaction, recent studies on trainable hearing aids have attempted to implement one or two environmental factors into training. However, it would be more beneficial to train the device based on the owner's personal preferences in a more expanded environmental acoustic conditions. Our study aimed at developing a trainable hearing aid algorithm that can reflect the user's individual preferences in a more extensive environmental acoustic conditions (ambient sound level, listening situation, and degree of noise suppression) and evaluated the perceptual benefit of the proposed algorithm. Ten normal hearing subjects participated in this study. Each subjects trained the algorithm to their personal preference and the trained data was used to record test sounds in three different settings to be utilized to evaluate the perceptual benefit of the proposed algorithm by performing the Comparison Mean Opinion Score test. Statistical analysis revealed that of the 10 subjects, four showed significant differences in amplification constant settings between the noise-only and speech-in-noise situation ( P <0.05) and one subject also showed significant difference between the speech-only and speech-in-noise situation ( P <0.05). Additionally, every subject preferred different β settings for beamforming in all different input sound levels. The positive findings from this study suggested that the proposed algorithm has potential to improve hearing aid users' personal satisfaction under various ambient situations.

Operational Exploitation of Satellite-Based Sounding Data and Numerical Weather Prediction Models for Directed Energy Applications

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-12-01

Verification Tool for Laser Environmental Effects Definition and Reference (LEEDR) Development ................................... 45 3.5 Gap Filling with NWP... effective cloud cover for all cloud layers within the AIRS field-of-view. ......................................... 59 Figure 37. Average wind...IR Infrared JPL Jet Propulsion Lab LEEDR Laser Environmental Effects Definition and Reference LIDAR Light Detection and Ranging MODIS Moderate

A Submersible Holographic Camera for the Undisturbed Characterization of Optically Relevant Particles in Water (HOLOCAM)

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-09-30

environmental factors that impact toxic algal blooms in the Great Lakes, including their initiation, development, and senescence. The project is...integrated with existing harmful algal bloom monitoring and observational activities through the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory...holograms showing the orientation of Ditylum chains within a phytoplankton thin layer in East Sound, WA, 2013. IMPACT /APPLICATIONS The HOLOCAM

NRC says integrated approach needed to understand, protect environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kolb, Charles E.; Loehr, Raymond C.; Gopnik, Morgan

A recent study by the National Research Council (NRC) advocates a more comprehensive and integrated approach to our nation's environmental research and development (R&D) activities. Because we face environmental problems of unprecedented complexity, the study maintains that the traditional practice of studying isolated environmental problems and devising narrowly focused control or remediation strategies to manage them will no longer suffice.In the report, Building a Foundation for Sound Environmental Decisions [National Academy Press, 1997], an NRC committee highlighted the need for developing a deeper scientific understanding of ecosystems, as well as the sociological and economic aspects of human interactions with the environment. To achieve these goals, the committee recommended a core research agenda for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that has three components.

Puget Sound Dissolved Oxygen Modeling Study: Development of an Intermediate Scale Water Quality Model

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Khangaonkar, Tarang; Sackmann, Brandon S.; Long, Wen

2012-10-01

The Salish Sea, including Puget Sound, is a large estuarine system bounded by over seven thousand miles of complex shorelines, consists of several subbasins and many large inlets with distinct properties of their own. Pacific Ocean water enters Puget Sound through the Strait of Juan de Fuca at depth over the Admiralty Inlet sill. Ocean water mixed with freshwater discharges from runoff, rivers, and wastewater outfalls exits Puget Sound through the brackish surface outflow layer. Nutrient pollution is considered one of the largest threats to Puget Sound. There is considerable interest in understanding the effect of nutrient loads on themore » water quality and ecological health of Puget Sound in particular and the Salish Sea as a whole. The Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) contracted with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to develop a coupled hydrodynamic and water quality model. The water quality model simulates algae growth, dissolved oxygen, (DO) and nutrient dynamics in Puget Sound to inform potential Puget Sound-wide nutrient management strategies. Specifically, the project is expected to help determine 1) if current and potential future nitrogen loadings from point and non-point sources are significantly impairing water quality at a large scale and 2) what level of nutrient reductions are necessary to reduce or control human impacts to DO levels in the sensitive areas. The project did not include any additional data collection but instead relied on currently available information. This report describes model development effort conducted during the period 2009 to 2012 under a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cooperative agreement with PNNL, Ecology, and the University of Washington awarded under the National Estuary Program« less

Worldwide Emerging Environmental Issues Affecting the U.S. Military. January 2008 Report

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-01-01

around the San Juan Islands, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and all of Puget Sound . One of its aspects includes assessing and improving vessel traffic... Sound Orca Recovery Plan Released http://www.physorg.com/news120453628.html Salty shepherds. The Economist, Jan 24th 2008 http://www.economist.com...not want or cannot process in an environmentally sound way. The Revised Green List Regulation 1418/2007 AC/UNU Millennium Project www.millennium

How Lexical is the Lexicon? Evidence for Integrated Auditory Memory Representations

PubMed Central

Pufahl, April; Samuel, Arthur G.

2014-01-01

Previous research has shown that lexical representations must include not only linguistic information (what word was said), but also indexical information (how it was said, and by whom). The present work demonstrates that even this expansion is not sufficient. Seemingly irrelevant information, such as an unattended background sound, is retained in memory and can facilitate subsequent speech perception. We presented participants with spoken words paired with environmental sounds (e.g., a phone ringing), and had them make an “animate/inanimate” decision for each word. Later performance identifying filtered versions of the words was impaired to a similar degree if the voice changed or if the environmental sound changed. Moreover, when quite dissimilar words were used at exposure and test, we observed the same result when we reversed the roles of the words and the environmental sounds. The experiments also demonstrated limits to these effects, with no benefit from repetition. Theoretically, our results support two alternative possibilities: 1) Lexical representations are memory representations, and are not walled off from those for other sounds. Indexical effects reflect simply one type of co-occurrence that is incorporated into such representations. 2) The existing literature on indexical effects does not actually bear on lexical representations – voice changes, like environmental sounds heard with a word, produce implicit memory effects that are not tied to the lexicon. We discuss the evidence and implications of these two theoretical alternatives. PMID:24480453

Reports of Public Scoping Meetings for the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Designation of Dredged Material Disposal Sites in Eastern Long Island Sound

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

These reports provide summaries of the scoping meetings as part of the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) process for the designation of dredged material disposal sites in Eastern Long Island Sound.

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE ECOLOGICAL CONDITION OF LONG ISLAND SOUND 1990-1993

EPA Science Inventory

Data from the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) from 1990 to 1993 were used to assess the condition of the Long Island Sound (LIS) estuary. Ambient water, sediment and biota were collected during the summer months from ...

Quiet as an Environmental Value: A Contrast between Two Legislative Approaches

PubMed Central

Thorne, Robert; Shepherd, Daniel

2013-01-01

This paper examines the concept of “quiet” as an “environmental value” in terms of amenity and wellbeing from a legislative context. Critical review of two pieces of environmental legislation from Australia and New Zealand forms the basis of the paper. The Australian legislation is Queensland’s Environmental Protection Act, and the New Zealand legislation is that nation’s Resource Management Act. Quiet is part of the psychoacoustic continuum between a tranquil and an intrusively noisy sound environment. As such, quiet possesses intrinsic value in terms of overall sound within the environment (soundscape) and to individuals and communities. In both pieces of legislation, guidance, either directly or indirectly, is given to “maximum” sound levels to describe the acoustic environment. Only in Queensland is wellbeing and amenity described as environmental values, while in the New Zealand approach, amenity is identified as the core value to defend, but guidance is not well established. Wellbeing can be related to degrees of quietness and the absence of intrusive noise, the character of sound within an environment (“soundscape”), as well as the overall level of sound. The quality of life experienced by individuals is related to that person’s physical and mental health, sense of amenity and wellbeing. These characteristics can be described in terms of subjective and objective measures, though legislation does not always acknowledge the subjective. PMID:23823712

Demodulation processes in auditory perception

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Feth, Lawrence L.

1994-08-01

The long range goal of this project is the understanding of human auditory processing of information conveyed by complex, time-varying signals such as speech, music or important environmental sounds. Our work is guided by the assumption that human auditory communication is a 'modulation - demodulation' process. That is, we assume that sound sources produce a complex stream of sound pressure waves with information encoded as variations ( modulations) of the signal amplitude and frequency. The listeners task then is one of demodulation. Much of past. psychoacoustics work has been based in what we characterize as 'spectrum picture processing.' Complex sounds are Fourier analyzed to produce an amplitude-by-frequency 'picture' and the perception process is modeled as if the listener were analyzing the spectral picture. This approach leads to studies such as 'profile analysis' and the power-spectrum model of masking. Our approach leads us to investigate time-varying, complex sounds. We refer to them as dynamic signals and we have developed auditory signal processing models to help guide our experimental work.

Noise from high speed maglev systems: Noise sources, noise criteria, preliminary design guidelines for noise control, recommendations for acoustical test facility for maglev research. Final report, July 1991-October 1992

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hanson, C.E.; Abbot, P.; Dyer, I.

1993-01-01

Noise levels from magnetically-levitated trains (maglev) at very high speed may be high enough to cause environmental noise impact in residential areas. Aeroacoustic sources dominate the sound at high speeds and guideway vibrations generate noticeable sound at low speed. In addition to high noise levels, the startle effect as a result of sudden onset of sound from a rapidly moving nearby maglev vehicle may lead to increased annoyance to neighbors of a maglev system. The report provides a base for determining the noise consequences and potential mitigation for a high speed maglev system in populated areas of the United States.more » Four areas are included in the study: (1) definition of noise sources; (2) development of noise criteria; (3) development of design guidelines; and (4) recommendations for a noise testing facility.« less

40 CFR 211.206 - Methods for measurement of sound attenuation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 24 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Methods for measurement of sound attenuation. 211.206 Section 211.206 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED... measurement of sound attenuation. ...

40 CFR 211.206 - Methods for measurement of sound attenuation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 26 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Methods for measurement of sound attenuation. 211.206 Section 211.206 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED... measurement of sound attenuation. ...

40 CFR 211.206 - Methods for measurement of sound attenuation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 25 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Methods for measurement of sound attenuation. 211.206 Section 211.206 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED... measurement of sound attenuation. ...

40 CFR 211.206 - Methods for measurement of sound attenuation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 26 2012-07-01 2011-07-01 true Methods for measurement of sound attenuation. 211.206 Section 211.206 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED... measurement of sound attenuation. ...

40 CFR 211.206 - Methods for measurement of sound attenuation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 25 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Methods for measurement of sound attenuation. 211.206 Section 211.206 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED... measurement of sound attenuation. ...

OBSERVATIONS OF PHYTOPLANKTON SIZE STRUCTURE, NUTRIENTS, VARIABLE FLOURESCENCE, AND ALGAL PHOSPHATASE ACTIVITY IN A GULF COAST ESTUARY

EPA Science Inventory

During 2001, phytoplankton dynamics, physiology, and related environmental conditions were studied in Santa Rosa Sound, Florida, USA, at near-weekly intervals. Santa Rosa Sound is a component of the Pensacola Bay system located in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Environmental parame...

Land Ethics--Who Needs Them?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roberts, B.

1985-01-01

Identifies land degradation as Australia's most urgent environmental problem and recommends the development of a land ethic for soil conservation. Presents a 15-point conservation education plan that encourages a sustainable ecological basis for rural production and also cultivates ecologically sound habits toward nature. (ML)

Investigation of novel acoustic barrier concepts phase I: concept development and preliminary evaluation

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2003-06-01

In a previous research project [SQDH 2002-3; "Study of the Performance of Acoustic Barriers for Indiana Toll Roads,"] the influence of : environmental factors and of advanced sound barrier concepts was investigated. The presence of temperature gradie...

[Influence of environmental noise on sleep quality and sleeping disorders-implications for health].

PubMed

Kohlhuber, M; Bolte, G

2011-12-01

Environmental noise is a well-known risk factor influencing sleep-wake behavior and sleep quality. Epidemiologic studies have shown that environmental noise is regarded as the most annoying environmental factor. Noise causes modifications in physiologic and mental functions and may result in health outcomes like elevated blood pressure and ischemic heart disease. Reactions to high sound levels during sleep are decreased sleep intensity, arousals, and increased stress hormone secretion. Effects of poor sleep quality are reduced cognitive performance, tiredness, and psychosomatic symptoms. Long-term consequences of recurrent sleep loss due to environmental noise may be heart disease and increased medication intake. Arousals occur especially due to single noise events and intermittent noise. Laboratory and field studies showed no habituation of physiologic parameters to high sound levels. Sleep is especially sensitive to noise; therefore, sound levels during nighttime should be much lower than during daytime.

Environmentally Sound Processing Technology: JANNAF Safety and Environmental Protection Subcommittee and Propellant Development and Characterization Subcommittee Joint Workshop

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pickett, Lorri A. (Editor)

1995-01-01

Topics covered include: Risk assessment of hazardous materials, Automated systems for pollution prevention and hazardous materials elimination, Study design for the toxicity evaluation of ammonium perchlorate, Plasma sprayed bondable stainless surface coatings, Development of CFC-free cleaning processes, New fluorinated solvent alternatives to ozone depleting solvents, Cleaning with highly fluorinated liquids, Biotreatment of propyleneglycol nitrate by anoxic denitrification, Treatment of hazardous waste with white rot fungus, Hydrothermal oxidation as an environmentally benign treatment technology, Treatment of solid propellant manufacturing wastes by base hydrolysis, Design considerations for cleaning using supercritical fluid technology, and Centrifugal shear carbon dioxide cleaning.

Shellfish conflict in Baynes Sound: a strategic perspective.

PubMed

Hamouda, Luai; Hipel, Keith W; Kilgour, D Marc

2004-10-01

The shellfish aquaculture industry (SAI) has operated in Baynes Sound, British Columbia (BC) since the early 1900s. Recognizing the economic potential of the area, the industry has requested additional farming opportunities. However, Baynes Sound upland residents and many other stakeholders have expressed concerns that SAI activities are having a negative impact on the environment, quality of life, and other nonaquaculture resource uses in the area. In order to address these issues, the Action Plan was initiated by a BC government interagency project team in November 2001. To assist in assessing the strategic aspects of this conflict, the decision support system GMCR II is employed here to apply a new methodology, the graph model for conflict resolution, to systematically analyze the ongoing conflict over shellfish aquaculture development in Baynes Sound within a social, economic, and environmental framework. Valuable insights are procured to guide decision-makers toward sustainability of the shellfish industry.

Considering the influence of artificial environmental noise to study cough time-frequency features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Van Hirtum, A.; Berckmans, D.

2003-09-01

In general the study of the cough mechanism and sound in both animal and human is performed by eliciting coughing in a reproducible way by nebulization of an irritating substance. Due to ventilation the controlled evaporation-protocol causes artificial noises from a mechanical origin. The resulting environmental low-frequency noises complicate cough time-frequency features. In order to optimize the study of the cough-sound the research described in this paper attempts on the one hand to characterize and model the environmental noises and on the other hand to evaluate the influence of the noise on the time-frequency representation for the intended cough sounds by comparing different de-noising approaches. Free field acoustic sound is continuously registered during 30 min citric acid cough-challenges on individual Belgian Landrace piglets and during respiratory infection experiments, with a duration of about 10 days, where room-ventilation was present.

Let's Read Together: Tools for Early Literacy Development for All Young Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bruns, Deborah A.; Pierce, Corey D.

2007-01-01

Early literacy development is the gateway to reading and future academic success. Learning about sound-letter correspondence and basic decoding strategies are but two fundamental skills that have been found to support this later success. In addition, an emphasis on environmental print (e.g., McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Shell) and functional print (e.g.,…

Pure-tone audiometry outside a sound booth using earphone attentuation, integrated noise monitoring, and automation.

PubMed

Swanepoel, De Wet; Matthysen, Cornelia; Eikelboom, Robert H; Clark, Jackie L; Hall, James W

2015-01-01

Accessibility of audiometry is hindered by the cost of sound booths and shortage of hearing health personnel. This study investigated the validity of an automated mobile diagnostic audiometer with increased attenuation and real-time noise monitoring for clinical testing outside a sound booth. Attenuation characteristics and reference ambient noise levels for the computer-based audiometer (KUDUwave) was evaluated alongside the validity of environmental noise monitoring. Clinical validity was determined by comparing air- and bone-conduction thresholds obtained inside and outside the sound booth (23 subjects). Twenty-three normal-hearing subjects (age range, 20-75 years; average age 35.5) and a sub group of 11 subjects to establish test-retest reliability. Improved passive attenuation and valid environmental noise monitoring was demonstrated. Clinically, air-conduction thresholds inside and outside the sound booth, corresponded within 5 dB or less > 90% of instances (mean absolute difference 3.3 ± 3.2 SD). Bone conduction thresholds corresponded within 5 dB or less in 80% of comparisons between test environments, with a mean absolute difference of 4.6 dB (3.7 SD). Threshold differences were not statistically significant. Mean absolute test-retest differences outside the sound booth was similar to those in the booth. Diagnostic pure-tone audiometry outside a sound booth, using automated testing, improved passive attenuation, and real-time environmental noise monitoring demonstrated reliable hearing assessments.

Permeability of starch gel matrices and select films to solvent vapors

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The controlled release of volatile, agrochemicals is critical in developing approaches to pest control that are economically viable and environmentally sound. Dispensing systems that are made of materials that degrade in agricultural environments when they are spent offer distinct advantages over no...

Urban tree-planting programs — A model for encouraging environmentally protective behavior

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Summit, Joshua; Sommer, Robert

Efforts to increase environmentally sound behaviors and practices have in the past often focussed on consciousness-raising and attitude change. Research indicates that such efforts are less effective than interventions designed to make environmentally sound behaviors easier to engage in, or to make personal advantages resulting from such behaviors more clear to individuals. Four nonprofit tree planting organizations were studied as examples of successful environmental interventions. From these studies, as well as a review of the literature, several principles underlying successful behavioral interventions are identified. Implications of these principles for future environmental programs are discussed.

Integration of Marine Mammal Movement and Behavior into the Effects of Sound on the Marine Environment

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-09-30

capability to emulate the dive and movement behavior of marine mammals provides a significant advantage to modeling environmental impact than do historic...approaches used in Navy environmental assessments (EA) and impact statements (EIS). Many previous methods have been statistical or pseudo-statistical...Siderius. 2011. Comparison of methods used for computing the impact of sound on the marine environment, Marine Environmental Research, 71:342-350. [published

Culture and the environment in Ghana

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dyasi, Hubert M.

1985-03-01

The traditional culture of Ghana stressed a strong relationship with the environment, and a culturally acceptable environmental management resulted from strictures and taboos related to the land. Following its independence in 1957, Ghana has enacted laws that reflect an enlightened environmental policy. These are especially important because of the difficulties Ghana has had in its economic development using Western technology that has damaged the fragile tropical ecosystem. A key aspect of Ghana's policy is the attempt to marry scientific knowledge and traditional beliefs for environmentally sound management of Ghana's resources.

An Interactive Neural Network System for Acoustic Signal Classification

DTIC Science & Technology

1990-02-28

of environmental sounds. These include machinery noise ( Talamo , 1982), the sounds of metallic (Howard, 1983) and non-metallic impacts (Warren...backscattering of sound by spherical and elongated objects. JASA, 86, 1499-1510. Talamo , J. D. C. (1982). The perception of machinery indicator

TESPI (Tool for Environmental Sound Product Innovation): a simplified software tool to support environmentally conscious design in SMEs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Misceo, Monica; Buonamici, Roberto; Buttol, Patrizia; Naldesi, Luciano; Grimaldi, Filomena; Rinaldi, Caterina

2004-12-01

TESPI (Tool for Environmental Sound Product Innovation) is the prototype of a software tool developed within the framework of the "eLCA" project. The project, (www.elca.enea.it)financed by the European Commission, is realising "On line green tools and services for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs)". The implementation by SMEs of environmental product innovation (as fostered by the European Integrated Product Policy, IPP) needs specific adaptation to their economic model, their knowledge of production and management processes and their relationships with innovation and the environment. In particular, quality and costs are the main driving forces of innovation in European SMEs, and well known barriers exist to the adoption of an environmental approach in the product design. Starting from these considerations, the TESPI tool has been developed to support the first steps of product design taking into account both the quality and the environment. Two main issues have been considered: (i) classic Quality Function Deployment (QFD) can hardly be proposed to SMEs; (ii) the environmental aspects of the product life cycle need to be integrated with the quality approach. TESPI is a user friendly web-based tool, has a training approach and applies to modular products. Users are guided through the investigation of the quality aspects of their product (customer"s needs and requirements fulfilment) and the identification of the key environmental aspects in the product"s life cycle. A simplified check list allows analyzing the environmental performance of the product. Help is available for a better understanding of the analysis criteria. As a result, the significant aspects for the redesign of the product are identified.

REDUCED COST SEWER PIPE RELINING USING ULTRASONIC TAPE LAMINATION - PHASE II

EPA Science Inventory

During the Phase I program, Foster-Miller developed techniques based on Ultrasonic Tape Lamination (UTL) for joining of plasticized PVC sewer pipe liner. This effort was undertaken in response to a need for environmentally sound and cost-effective methods for rehabilitation of...

The Inner Urban Edge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferebee, Ann; Carpenter, Edward K.

1974-01-01

In this article, renewal of the inner urban edge is discussed. Norfolk (Virginia) is attempting to blur the difference between old and new neighbor hoods through zoning and architectural controls. Cincinnati (Ohio) is developing an environmentally sound hillside design. Reading (Pennsylvania) is utilizing old railyards for greenbelts of hiking and…

Framing sound: Using expectations to reduce environmental noise annoyance.

PubMed

Crichton, Fiona; Dodd, George; Schmid, Gian; Petrie, Keith J

2015-10-01

Annoyance reactions to environmental noise, such as wind turbine sound, have public health implications given associations between annoyance and symptoms related to psychological distress. In the case of wind farms, factors contributing to noise annoyance have been theorised to include wind turbine sound characteristics, the noise sensitivity of residents, and contextual aspects, such as receiving information creating negative expectations about sound exposure. The experimental aim was to assess whether receiving positive or negative expectations about wind farm sound would differentially influence annoyance reactions during exposure to wind farm sound, and also influence associations between perceived noise sensitivity and noise annoyance. Sixty volunteers were randomly assigned to receive either negative or positive expectations about wind farm sound. Participants in the negative expectation group viewed a presentation which incorporated internet material indicating that exposure to wind turbine sound, particularly infrasound, might present a health risk. Positive expectation participants viewed a DVD which framed wind farm sound positively and included internet information about the health benefits of infrasound exposure. Participants were then simultaneously exposed to sub-audible infrasound and audible wind farm sound during two 7 min exposure sessions, during which they assessed their experience of annoyance. Positive expectation participants were significantly less annoyed than negative expectation participants, while noise sensitivity only predicted annoyance in the negative group. Findings suggest accessing negative information about sound is likely to trigger annoyance, particularly in noise sensitive people and, importantly, portraying sound positively may reduce annoyance reactions, even in noise sensitive individuals. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

77 FR 35852 - Safety Zones; Multiple Firework Displays in Captain of the Port, Puget Sound Zone

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-06-15

... 13045, Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks. This rule is not an economically significant rule and does not create an environmental risk to health or risk to safety that may... 1625-AA00 Safety Zones; Multiple Firework Displays in Captain of the Port, Puget Sound Zone AGENCY...

Acoustic Tomographic Estimate of Ocean Advective Heat Flux: A Numerical Assessment in the Norwegian Sea

DTIC Science & Technology

1990-06-01

of transceivers used and the characteristics of the sound channel. In the assessment we use the General Digital Environmental Model ( GDEM ), a...sound channel. In the assessment we use the General Digital Environmental Model ( GDEM ), a climatological data base, to simulate an ocean area 550 x 550...34 3. GDEM Data Base

The role of soundscape in children's learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lubman, David; Sutherland, Louis C.

2002-11-01

The soundscapes of classroom and play areas influence children's behavior and learning. For example, the sustained high noise levels of shouting children frequently reported in day care centers are averse to behavior, learning, and teaching. To some extent this Lombard effect, or reflex to the reverberant buildup of room noise, can be tamed by generous application of sound absorption treatment to room surfaces. Low ambient noise allows children to perceive and enjoy quiet sounds, such as the subtle sounds of pets housed in classrooms. The benefits of improved interior soundscape may justify reducing reverberation time below the maximum value of 0.6 s permitted in the new classroom acoustics standard ANSI S12.60-2002. Exterior play areas are also vital to children's socialization, informal learning, and environmental awareness. Reducing noise in outdoor play areas will promote the development of soundscapes favorable to learning. This paper suggests uses of natural outdoor soundscapes to promote learning. Also shown are uses of acoustical technology for sound playgrounds, such as those pioneered by Bill and Mary Bucken. Using such devices as sound focusing structures and sound transission channels built into playground equipment, sonic playgrounds stimulate learning, increase sonic awareness, and provide experiential enjoyment of the soundscape.

Auditory performance in an open sound field

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fluitt, Kim F.; Letowski, Tomasz; Mermagen, Timothy

2003-04-01

Detection and recognition of acoustic sources in an open field are important elements of situational awareness on the battlefield. They are affected by many technical and environmental conditions such as type of sound, distance to a sound source, terrain configuration, meteorological conditions, hearing capabilities of the listener, level of background noise, and the listener's familiarity with the sound source. A limited body of knowledge about auditory perception of sources located over long distances makes it difficult to develop models predicting auditory behavior on the battlefield. The purpose of the present study was to determine the listener's abilities to detect, recognize, localize, and estimate distances to sound sources from 25 to 800 m from the listing position. Data were also collected for meteorological conditions (wind direction and strength, temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity) and background noise level for each experimental trial. Forty subjects (men and women, ages 18 to 25) participated in the study. Nine types of sounds were presented from six loudspeakers in random order; each series was presented four times. Partial results indicate that both detection and recognition declined at distances greater than approximately 200 m and distance estimation was grossly underestimated by listeners. Specific results will be presented.

Learning builds on learning: Infants' use of native language sound patterns to learn words

PubMed Central

Graf Estes, Katharine

2014-01-01

The present research investigated how infants apply prior knowledge of environmental regularities to support new learning. The experiments tested whether infants could exploit experience with native language (English) phonotactic patterns to facilitate associating sounds with meanings during word learning. Fourteen-month-olds heard fluent speech that contained cues for detecting target words; they were embedded in sequences that occur across word boundaries. A separate group heard the target words embedded without word boundary cues. Infants then participated in an object label-learning task. With the opportunity to use native language patterns to segment the target words, infants subsequently learned the labels. Without this experience, infants failed. Novice word learners can take advantage of early learning about sounds scaffold lexical development. PMID:24980741

The Incongruency Advantage for Environmental Sounds Presented in Natural Auditory Scenes

PubMed Central

Gygi, Brian; Shafiro, Valeriy

2011-01-01

The effect of context on the identification of common environmental sounds (e.g., dogs barking or cars honking) was tested by embedding them in familiar auditory background scenes (street ambience, restaurants). Initial results with subjects trained on both the scenes and the sounds to be identified showed a significant advantage of about 5 percentage points better accuracy for sounds that were contextually incongruous with the background scene (e.g., a rooster crowing in a hospital). Further studies with naïve (untrained) listeners showed that this Incongruency Advantage (IA) is level-dependent: there is no advantage for incongruent sounds lower than a Sound/Scene ratio (So/Sc) of −7.5 dB, but there is about 5 percentage points better accuracy for sounds with greater So/Sc. Testing a new group of trained listeners on a larger corpus of sounds and scenes showed that the effect is robust and not confined to specific stimulus set. Modeling using spectral-temporal measures showed that neither analyses based on acoustic features, nor semantic assessments of sound-scene congruency can account for this difference, indicating the Incongruency Advantage is a complex effect, possibly arising from the sensitivity of the auditory system to new and unexpected events, under particular listening conditions. PMID:21355664

WODA Technical Guidance on Underwater Sound from Dredging.

PubMed

Thomsen, Frank; Borsani, Fabrizio; Clarke, Douglas; de Jong, Christ; de Wit, Pim; Goethals, Fredrik; Holtkamp, Martine; Martin, Elena San; Spadaro, Philip; van Raalte, Gerard; Victor, George Yesu Vedha; Jensen, Anders

2016-01-01

The World Organization of Dredging Associations (WODA) has identified underwater sound as an environmental issue that needs further consideration. A WODA Expert Group on Underwater Sound (WEGUS) prepared a guidance paper in 2013 on dredging sound, including a summary of potential impacts on aquatic biota and advice on underwater sound monitoring procedures. The paper follows a risk-based approach and provides guidance for standardization of acoustic terminology and methods for data collection and analysis. Furthermore, the literature on dredging-related sounds and the effects of dredging sounds on marine life is surveyed and guidance on the management of dredging-related sound risks is provided.

Full Spatial Resolution Infrared Sounding Application in the Preconvection Environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, C.; Liu, G.; Lin, T.

2013-12-01

Advanced infrared (IR) sounders such as the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) provide atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles with high vertical resolution and high accuracy in preconvection environments. The derived atmospheric stability indices such as convective available potential energy (CAPE) and lifted index (LI) from advanced IR soundings can provide critical information 1 ; 6 h before the development of severe convective storms. Three convective storms are selected for the evaluation of applying AIRS full spatial resolution soundings and the derived products on providing warning information in the preconvection environments. In the first case, the AIRS full spatial resolution soundings revealed local extremely high atmospheric instability 3 h ahead of the convection on the leading edge of a frontal system, while the second case demonstrates that the extremely high atmospheric instability is associated with the local development of severe thunderstorm in the following hours. The third case is a local severe storm that occurred on 7-8 August 2010 in Zhou Qu, China, which caused more than 1400 deaths and left another 300 or more people missing. The AIRS full spatial resolution LI product shows the atmospheric instability 3.5 h before the storm genesis. The CAPE and LI from AIRS full spatial resolution and operational AIRS/AMSU soundings along with Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) Sounder derived product image (DPI) products were analyzed and compared. Case studies show that full spatial resolution AIRS retrievals provide more useful warning information in the preconvection environments for determining favorable locations for convective initiation (CI) than do the coarser spatial resolution operational soundings and lower spectral resolution GOES Sounder retrievals. The retrieved soundings are also tested in a regional data assimilation WRF 3D-var system to evaluate the potential assist in the NWP model.

Evaluation of Routine Atmospheric Sounding Measurements using Unmanned Systems (ERASMUS)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bland, Geoffrey

2016-06-30

The use of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) with miniature sensor systems for atmospheric research is an important capability to develop. The Evaluation of Routine Atmospheric Sounding Measurements using Unmanned Systems (ERASMUS) project, lead by Dr. Gijs de Boer of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES- a partnership of NOAA and CU-Boulder), is a significant milestone in realizing this new potential. This project has clearly demonstrated that the concept of sUAS utilization is valid, and miniature instrumentation can be used to further our understanding of the atmospheric boundary layer in the arctic.

Mississippi Sound Remote Sensing Study

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Atwell, B. H.

1973-01-01

The Mississippi Sound Remote Sensing Study was initiated as part of the research program of the NASA Earth Resources Laboratory. The objective of this study is development of remote sensing techniques to study near-shore marine waters. Included within this general objective are the following: (1) evaluate existing techniques and instruments used for remote measurement of parameters of interest within these waters; (2) develop methods for interpretation of state-of-the-art remote sensing data which are most meaningful to an understanding of processes taking place within near-shore waters; (3) define hardware development requirements and/or system specifications; (4) develop a system combining data from remote and surface measurements which will most efficiently assess conditions in near-shore waters; (5) conduct projects in coordination with appropriate operating agencies to demonstrate applicability of this research to environmental and economic problems.

78 FR 40196 - National Environmental Policy Act; Sounding Rockets Program; Poker Flat Research Range

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-07-03

...; Sounding Rockets Program; Poker Flat Research Range AGENCY: National Aeronautics and Space Administration... Sounding Rockets Program (SRP) at Poker Flat Research Range (PFRR), Alaska. SUMMARY: Pursuant to the... government agencies, and educational institutions have conducted suborbital rocket launches from the PFRR...

International Arid Lands Consortium: A synopsis of accomplishments

Treesearch

Peter F. Ffolliott; Jeffrey O. Dawson; James T. Fisher; Itshack Moshe; Timothy E. Fulbright; W. Carter Johnson; Paul Verburg; Muhammad Shatanawi; Jim P. M. Chamie

2003-01-01

The International Arid Lands Consortium (IALC) was established in 1990 to promote research, education, and training activities related to the development, management, and reclamation of arid and semiarid lands in the Southwestern United States, the Middle East, and elsewhere in the world. The Consortium supports the ecological sustainability and environmentally sound...

75 FR 34441 - Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools; Overview Information; Educational Facilities Clearinghouse...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-06-17

... priority. This priority is: Development and Dissemination of Information on Green Building Practices. Under... practices in constructing and maintaining environmentally sound educational facilities using green building practices. For the purposes of this competition the term ``green building,'' as defined by the U.S...

Building on Who We Are, One Step at a Time.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kurth, Felicity

2002-01-01

Describes cost-effective and environmentally sound programs at Turtle Mountain Community College (North Dakota), such as its data collection program, legal studies program, and the implementation of geothermal energy across campus. States that a printing company, bookstore and wellness center for the region are being developed, and that these…

Stand development and silviculture in bottomland hardwoods

Treesearch

J. Steven Meadows

1993-01-01

Silviculture for the production of high-quality timber in southern bottomland hardwood forests involves the application of environmentally sound practices in order to enhance the growth and quality of both individual trees and stands. To accomplish this purpose, silvicultural practices are typically used to regulate stand density, species composition, and stem quality...

Introducing Agronomy Students to the Concepts of Indigenous and Cultural Knowledge.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schafer, John

1993-01-01

Presents a role for indigenous knowledge in extension education and research programs. Defines indigenous knowledge and then predicts efforts to utilize indigenous knowledge to facilitate the development of agriculture systems that will be agronomically, environmentally, and economically sound and enhance acceptance by practitioners because of the…

A Comparison of Traditional Worksheet and Linear Programming Methods for Teaching Manure Application Planning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schmitt, M. A.; And Others

1994-01-01

Compares traditional manure application planning techniques calculated to meet agronomic nutrient needs on a field-by-field basis with plans developed using computer-assisted linear programming optimization methods. Linear programming provided the most economical and environmentally sound manure application strategy. (Contains 15 references.) (MDH)

Environmental Involvement. . . A Teacher's Guide (2nd Edition).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

1971

Presented in this teacher's guide are ideas and projects to help students develop an awareness and appreciation of their environment. Sharpening the senses is emphasized through activities dealing with water quality, sound qualities, and noise, air quality, solid waste control, and soil management. The text is divided into four levels roughly…

Washing Off Polyurethane Foam Insulation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Burley, Richard K.; Fogel, Irving

1990-01-01

Jet of hot water removes material quickly and safely. Simple, environmentally sound technique found to remove polyurethane foam insulation from metal parts. Developed for (but not limited to) use during rebuilding of fuel system of Space Shuttle main engine, during which insulation must be removed for penetrant inspection of metal parts.

Environmental Assessment for Proposed Construction Freight Transfer Facility, Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-06-01

construction at the Fitzsimons Redevelopment area. As a result, there could be a negligible cumulative adverse impact on the ambient soundscape . The... soundscape in conjunction with other plans and projects. However, the attenuation of sound over distance and the phasing of development activity

A Tool for Low Noise Procedures Design and Community Noise Impact Assessment: The Rotorcraft Noise Model (RNM)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Conner, David A.; Page, Juliet A.

2002-01-01

To improve aircraft noise impact modeling capabilities and to provide a tool to aid in the development of low noise terminal area operations for rotorcraft and tiltrotors, the Rotorcraft Noise Model (RNM) was developed by the NASA Langley Research Center and Wyle Laboratories. RNM is a simulation program that predicts how sound will propagate through the atmosphere and accumulate at receiver locations located on flat ground or varying terrain, for single and multiple vehicle flight operations. At the core of RNM are the vehicle noise sources, input as sound hemispheres. As the vehicle "flies" along its prescribed flight trajectory, the source sound propagation is simulated and accumulated at the receiver locations (single points of interest or multiple grid points) in a systematic time-based manner. These sound signals at the receiver locations may then be analyzed to obtain single event footprints, integrated noise contours, time histories, or numerous other features. RNM may also be used to generate spectral time history data over a ground mesh for the creation of single event sound animation videos. Acoustic properties of the noise source(s) are defined in terms of sound hemispheres that may be obtained from theoretical predictions, wind tunnel experimental results, flight test measurements, or a combination of the three. The sound hemispheres may contain broadband data (source levels as a function of one-third octave band) and pure-tone data (in the form of specific frequency sound pressure levels and phase). A PC executable version of RNM is publicly available and has been adopted by a number of organizations for Environmental Impact Assessment studies of rotorcraft noise. This paper provides a review of the required input data, the theoretical framework of RNM's propagation model and the output results. Code validation results are provided from a NATO helicopter noise flight test as well as a tiltrotor flight test program that used the RNM as a tool to aid in the development of low noise approach profiles.

[Environment and energy in hospitals: assessment of usage and impact of Health Facilities in the Lombardy Region].

PubMed

Brioschi, A; Capolongo, S; Buffoli, M

2010-01-01

The research moves from the current global and local context and from shared development strategies. From the observation and the analysis of contemporary environmental and energy issues and redefined directions of growth of human activity, it is addressing the question of environmental sustainability and energy conservation of building hospital systems. The work has developed a field survey relating the specific topic of energy saving and efficiency of the Park Hospital in the Italian Lombardy Region. This has been articulated in a diagnosis of technology and efficiency of regional hospitals, implemented through a census, and in a subsequent identification of interventional cases, in order to show its economic, environmental and health performance of the energy efficiency consumption and the environmentally sound.

Determination of Acoustic Effects on Marine Mammals and Sea Turtles for the Atlantic Fleet Training and Testing Environmental Impact Statement/Overseas Environmental Impact Statement

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-03-12

column than sounds with lower frequencies ( Urick , 1983). Additionally, these systems are generally operated in the vicinity of the sea floor, thus...Water,” TR-76-116, Naval Surface Weapons Center, White Oak, Silver Springs, MD. Urick , R. J. (1983), Principles of Underwater Sound, McGraw-Hill

78 FR 2868 - Draft Environmental Assessment for Rulemaking To Establish Minimum Sound Requirements for Hybrid...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-01-14

... require hybrid and electric passenger cars, light trucks, medium and heavy duty trucks and buses, low... Sound Requirements for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles AGENCY: National Highway Traffic Safety... minimum sound requirements for hybrid and electric vehicles. DATES: Comments must be received on or before...

77 FR 61642 - National Environmental Policy Act; Sounding Rockets Program; Poker Flat Research Range

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-10-10

...; Sounding Rockets Program; Poker Flat Research Range AGENCY: National Aeronautics and Space Administration... Sounding Rockets Program (SRP) at Poker Flat Research Range (PFRR), Alaska. SUMMARY: Pursuant to the... educational institutions have conducted suborbital rocket launches from the PFRR. While the PFRR is owned and...

A stability analysis of AVE-4 severe weather soundings

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Johnson, D. L.

1982-01-01

The stability and vertical structure of an average severe storm sounding, consisting of both thermodynamic and wind vertical profiles, were investigated to determine if they could be distinguished from an average lag sounding taken 3 to 6 hours prior to severe weather occurrence. The term average is defined here to indicate the arithmetic mean of a parameter, as a function of altitude, determined from a large number of available observations taken either close to severe weather occurrence, or else more than 3 hours before it occurs. The investigative computations were also done to help determine if a severe storm forecast or index could possibly be used or developed. These mean vertical profiles of thermodynamic and wind parameters as a function of severity of the weather, determined from manually digitized radar (MDR) categories are presented. Profile differences and stability index differences are presented along with the development of the Johnson Lag Index (JLI) which is determined entirely upon environmental vertical parameter differences between conditions 3 hours prior to severe weather, and severe weather itself.

Results from Field Testing the RIMFAX GPR on Svalbard.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hamran, S. E.; Amundsen, H. E. F.; Berger, T.; Carter, L. M.; Dypvik, H.; Ghent, R. R.; Kohler, J.; Mellon, M. T.; Nunes, D. C.; Paige, D. A.; Plettemeier, D.; Russell, P.

2017-12-01

The Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment - RIMFAX is a Ground Penetrating Radar being developed for NASÁs MARS 2020 rover mission. The principal goals of the RIMFAX investigation are to image subsurface structures, provide context for sample sites, derive information regarding subsurface composition, and search for ice or brines. In meeting these goals, RIMFAX will provide a view of the stratigraphic section and a window into the geological and environmental history of Mars. To verify the design an Engineering Model (EM) of the radar was tested in the field in the spring 2017. Different sounding modes on the EM were tested in different types of subsurface geology on Svalbard. Deep soundings were performed on polythermal glaciers down to a couple of hundred meters. Shallow soundings were used to map a ground water table in the firn area of a glacier. A combination of deep and shallow soundings was used to image buried ice under a sedimentary layer of a couple of meters. Subsurface sedimentary layers were imaged down to more than 20 meters in sand stone permafrost. This presentation will give an overview of the RIMFAX investigation, describe the development of the radar system, and show results from field tests of the radar.

Requirements for, and benefits of, environmentally sound and economically viable management of battery recycling in the Philippines in the wake of Basel Convention trade restrictions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hoffmann, U.; Wilson, B.

The ban on the export of used lead-acid batteries (ULAB) from Annex VII to non-Annex VII countries pursuant to decision III/1 of the Basel Convention reduced the availability of imported scrap feedstock for battery recycling in the Philippines. As ULAB supply from other developing countries becomes scarcer, the ban is likely to encourage and enhance collection and recuperation for domestically generated scrap. From a short-term perspective, this study explores the technological and managerial opportunities for improving the environmental and occupational health performance of the formal battery recycling sector and unregulated reconditioning. From a medium- and long-term point of view, the study investigates restructuring the informal ULAB's collection and recycling sector. The objective has been to make the smaller battery recyclers and reconditioners in the informal sector part of an effective and efficient collection infrastructure that supports an environmentally sound secondary lead sector. This approach gradually phases out uncontrolled, inefficient and environmentally unacceptable methods of secondary lead recovery. Due attention has also been paid to the logistical peculiarities of an archipelago, in particular the regional spread of collection infrastructure, collection and shipment costs as well as the assurance of environmentally safe transport.

Neonatal incubators: a toxic sound environment for the preterm infant?*.

PubMed

Marik, Paul E; Fuller, Christopher; Levitov, Alexander; Moll, Elizabeth

2012-11-01

High sound pressure levels may be harmful to the maturing newborn. Current guidelines suggest that the sound pressure levels within a neonatal intensive care unit should not exceed 45 dB(A). It is likely that environmental noise as well as the noise generated by the incubator fan and respiratory equipment may contribute to the total sound pressure levels. Knowledge of the contribution of each component and source is important to develop effective strategies to reduce noise within the incubator. The objectives of this study were to determine the sound levels, sound spectra, and major sources of sound within a modern neonatal incubator (Giraffe Omnibed; GE Healthcare, Helsinki, Finland) using a sound simulation study to replicate the conditions of a preterm infant undergoing high-frequency jet ventilation (Life Pulse, Bunnell, UT). Using advanced sound data acquisition and signal processing equipment, we measured and analyzed the sound level at a dummy infant's ear and at the head level outside the enclosure. The sound data time histories were digitally acquired and processed using a digital Fast Fourier Transform algorithm to provide spectra of the sound and cumulative sound pressure levels (dBA). The simulation was done with the incubator cooling fan and ventilator switched on or off. In addition, tests were carried out with the enclosure sides closed and hood down and then with the enclosure sides open and the hood up to determine the importance of interior incubator reverberance on the interior sound levels With all the equipment off and the hood down, the sound pressure levels were 53 dB(A) inside the incubator. The sound pressure levels increased to 68 dB(A) with all equipment switched on (approximately 10 times louder than recommended). The sound intensity was 6.0 × 10(-8) watts/m(2); this sound level is roughly comparable with that generated by a kitchen exhaust fan on high. Turning the ventilator off reduced the overall sound pressure levels to 64 dB(A) and the sound pressure levels in the low-frequency band of 0 to 100 Hz were reduced by 10 dB(A). The incubator fan generated tones at 200, 400, and 600 Hz that raised the sound level by approximately 2 dB(A)-3 dB(A). Opening the enclosure (with all equipment turned on) reduced the sound levels above 50 Hz by reducing the revereberance within the enclosure. The sound levels, especially at low frequencies, within a modern incubator may reach levels that are likely to be harmful to the developing newborn. Much of the noise is at low frequencies and thus difficult to reduce by conventional means. Therefore, advanced forms of noise control are needed to address this issue.

Using therapeutic sound with progressive audiologic tinnitus management.

PubMed

Henry, James A; Zaugg, Tara L; Myers, Paula J; Schechter, Martin A

2008-09-01

Management of tinnitus generally involves educational counseling, stress reduction, and/or the use of therapeutic sound. This article focuses on therapeutic sound, which can involve three objectives: (a) producing a sense of relief from tinnitus-associated stress (using soothing sound); (b) passively diverting attention away from tinnitus by reducing contrast between tinnitus and the acoustic environment (using background sound); and (c) actively diverting attention away from tinnitus (using interesting sound). Each of these goals can be accomplished using three different types of sound-broadly categorized as environmental sound, music, and speech-resulting in nine combinations of uses of sound and types of sound to manage tinnitus. The authors explain the uses and types of sound, how they can be combined, and how the different combinations are used with Progressive Audiologic Tinnitus Management. They also describe how sound is used with other sound-based methods of tinnitus management (Tinnitus Masking, Tinnitus Retraining Therapy, and Neuromonics).

Representation of Sound Objects within Early-Stage Auditory Areas: A Repetition Effect Study Using 7T fMRI

PubMed Central

Da Costa, Sandra; Bourquin, Nathalie M.-P.; Knebel, Jean-François; Saenz, Melissa; van der Zwaag, Wietske; Clarke, Stephanie

2015-01-01

Environmental sounds are highly complex stimuli whose recognition depends on the interaction of top-down and bottom-up processes in the brain. Their semantic representations were shown to yield repetition suppression effects, i. e. a decrease in activity during exposure to a sound that is perceived as belonging to the same source as a preceding sound. Making use of the high spatial resolution of 7T fMRI we have investigated the representations of sound objects within early-stage auditory areas on the supratemporal plane. The primary auditory cortex was identified by means of tonotopic mapping and the non-primary areas by comparison with previous histological studies. Repeated presentations of different exemplars of the same sound source, as compared to the presentation of different sound sources, yielded significant repetition suppression effects within a subset of early-stage areas. This effect was found within the right hemisphere in primary areas A1 and R as well as two non-primary areas on the antero-medial part of the planum temporale, and within the left hemisphere in A1 and a non-primary area on the medial part of Heschl’s gyrus. Thus, several, but not all early-stage auditory areas encode the meaning of environmental sounds. PMID:25938430

Designing sound and visual components for enhancement of urban soundscapes.

PubMed

Hong, Joo Young; Jeon, Jin Yong

2013-09-01

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of audio-visual components on environmental quality to improve soundscape. Natural sounds with road traffic noise and visual components in urban streets were evaluated through laboratory experiments. Waterfall and stream water sounds, as well as bird sounds, were selected to enhance the soundscape. Sixteen photomontages of a streetscape were constructed in combination with two types of water features and three types of vegetation which were chosen as positive visual components. The experiments consisted of audio-only, visual-only, and audio-visual conditions. The preferences and environmental qualities of the stimuli were evaluated by a numerical scale and 12 pairs of adjectives, respectively. The results showed that bird sounds were the most preferred among the natural sounds, while the sound of falling water was found to degrade the soundscape quality when the road traffic noise level was high. The visual effects of vegetation on aesthetic preference were significant, but those of water features relatively small. It was revealed that the perceptual dimensions of the environment were different from the noise levels. Particularly, the acoustic comfort factor related to soundscape quality considerably influenced preference for the overall environment at a higher level of road traffic noise.

Concerning modeling of double-stage water evaporation cooling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shatskiy, V. P.; Fedulova, L. I.; Gridneva, I. V.

2018-03-01

The matter of need for setting technical norms for production, as well as acceptable microclimate parameters, such as temperature and humidity, at the work place, remains urgent. Use of certain units should be economically sound and that should be taken into account for construction, assembly, operation, technological, and environmental requirements. Water evaporation coolers are simple to maintain, environmentally friendly, and quite cheap, but the development of the most efficient solutions requires mathematical modeling of the heat and mass transfer processes that take place in them.

Environmental Predictors of Ice Seal Presence in the Bering Sea

PubMed Central

Miksis-Olds, Jennifer L.

2014-01-01

Ice seals overwintering in the Bering Sea are challenged with foraging, finding mates, and maintaining breathing holes in a dark and ice covered environment. Due to the difficulty of studying these species in their natural environment, very little is known about how the seals navigate under ice. Here we identify specific environmental parameters, including components of the ambient background sound, that are predictive of ice seal presence in the Bering Sea. Multi-year mooring deployments provided synoptic time series of acoustic and oceanographic parameters from which environmental parameters predictive of species presence were identified through a series of mixed models. Ice cover and 10 kHz sound level were significant predictors of seal presence, with 40 kHz sound and prey presence (combined with ice cover) as potential predictors as well. Ice seal presence showed a strong positive correlation with ice cover and a negative association with 10 kHz environmental sound. On average, there was a 20–30 dB difference between sound levels during solid ice conditions compared to open water or melting conditions, providing a salient acoustic gradient between open water and solid ice conditions by which ice seals could orient. By constantly assessing the acoustic environment associated with the seasonal ice movement in the Bering Sea, it is possible that ice seals could utilize aspects of the soundscape to gauge their safe distance to open water or the ice edge by orienting in the direction of higher sound levels indicative of open water, especially in the frequency range above 1 kHz. In rapidly changing Arctic and sub-Arctic environments, the seasonal ice conditions and soundscapes are likely to change which may impact the ability of animals using ice presence and cues to successfully function during the winter breeding season. PMID:25229453

Synthesis: Part I, Buildability.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pressman, Rob

This unit is designed to show the student how to pull together information on natural and man-managed systems to develop a coherent and environmentally sound plan of action. The material includes student guide sheets, reference material, and a tape script. Audiotapes are usually used with the materials. The unit assumes the student has studied a…

Satellite Remote Sensing of Chlorophyll a in Support of Nutrient Management in the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico River Estuaries

EPA Science Inventory

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission (EMC) has adopted as a water quality standard that chlorophyll a concentration should not exceed 40 ug/L in sounds, estuaries and other slow-moving waters. Exceedances require regulators to develop a Total Maximum Daily Limit...

Satellite remote sensing of chlorophyll a in support of nutrient management in the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico River (North Carolina) estuaries

EPA Science Inventory

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission (EMC) has adopted as a water quality standard that chlorophyll a concentration should not exceed 40 ug/L in sounds, estuaries and other slow-moving waters. Exceedances require regulators to develop a Total Maximum Daily Limit...

76 FR 38122 - Intent To Prepare a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Currituck Sound Ecosystem...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-06-29

... to develop and evaluate alternatives to restore and enhance ecosystem resources in a holistic... Management Act and the Endangered Species Act; and with the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office... Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, and with the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management to...

Animals Alive! An Ecological Guide to Animal Activities. Revised Edition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holley, Dennis

This guide is designed to help teachers develop an inquiry-oriented program for studying the animal kingdom in which live animals are collected locally, studied, observed, and then released completely unharmed back into their natural habitats. This book addresses such concerns of life science teachers as the environmental soundness of methods and…

A Multivariate Twin Study of Early Literacy in Japanese "Kana"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fujisawa, Keiko K.; Wadsworth, Sally J.; Kakihana, Shinichiro; Olson, Richard K.; DeFries, John C.; Byrne, Brian; Ando, Juko

2013-01-01

This first Japanese twin study of early literacy development investigated the extent to which genetic and environmental factors influence individual differences in prereading skills in 238 pairs of twins at 42 months of age. Twin pairs were individually tested on measures of phonological awareness, "kana" letter name/sound knowledge,…

Embarking on the Decade for Sustainable Development: A Swaziland View

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Allen, Irma

2005-01-01

Tucked between South Africa and Mozambique, and usually "gowned" in green, Swaziland is one of the smallest countries in Africa, but it has great variation in landscape, geology, and climate. It also has great diversity of fauna and flora. In recognition of the importance that sound environmental management plays in the course of…

Environment: A Learning Resource.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tasmanian Education Dept., Hobart (Australia).

The aim of this document is to give teachers in Tasmania an understanding of the importance and usefulness of the environment as a learning resource both as an immediate stimulus for learning and for the long term process of forming sound community values. The document provides schools with a basis for the development of environmental resources…

Geoelectrical characterization by joint inversion of VES/TEM in Paraná basin, Brazil

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bortolozo, C. A.; Couto, M. A.; Almeida, E. R.; Porsani, J. L.; Santos, F. M.

2012-12-01

For many years electrical (DC) and transient electromagnetic (TEM) soundings have been used in a great number of environmental, hydrological and mining exploration studies. The data of both methods are interpreted usually by individual 1D models resulting in many cases in ambiguous models. This can be explained by how the two different methodologies sample the subsurface. The vertical electrical sounding (VES) is good on marking very resistive structures, while the transient electromagnetic sounding (TEM) is very sensitive to map conductive structures. Another characteristic is that VES is more sensitive to shallow structures, while TEM soundings can reach deeper structures. A Matlab program for joint inversion of VES and TEM soundings, by using CRS algorithm was developed aiming explore the best of the both methods. Initially, the algorithm was tested with synthetic data and after it was used to invert experimental data from Paraná sedimentary basin. We present the results of a re-interpretation of 46 VES/TEM soundings data set acquired in Bebedouro region in São Paulo State - Brazil. The previous interpretation was based in geoelectrical models obtained by single inversion of the VES and TEM soundings. In this work we present the results with single inversion of VES and TEM sounding inverted by the Curupira Program and a new interpretation based in the joint inversion of both methodologies. The goal is increase the accuracy in determining the underground structures. As a result a new geoelectrical model of the region is obtained.

77 FR 59611 - Environmental Impacts Statements; Notice of Availability

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-09-28

...: Sandy Hurlocker 505-753-7331. EIS No. 20120308, Draft EIS (Tiering), NASA, AK, Sounding Rocket Program (SRP) at Poker Flat Research Range (PFRR), Continuing Sounding Rocket Launches, Alaska, Comment Period...

Communicating Earth Science Through Music: The Use of Environmental Sound in Science Outreach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brenner, C.

2017-12-01

The need for increased public understanding and appreciation of Earth science has taken on growing importance over the last several decades. Human society faces critical environmental challenges, both near-term and future, in areas such as climate change, resource allocation, geohazard threat and the environmental degradation of ecosystems. Science outreach is an essential component to engaging both policymakers and the public in the importance of managing these challenges. However, despite considerable efforts on the part of scientists and outreach experts, many citizens feel that scientific research and methods are both difficult to understand and remote from their everyday experience. As perhaps the most accessible of all art forms, music can provide a pathway through which the public can connect to Earth processes. The Earth is not silent: environmental sound can be sampled and folded into musical compositions, either with or without the additional sounds of conventional or electronic instruments. These compositions can be used in conjunction with other forms of outreach (e.g., as soundtracks for documentary videos or museum installations), or simply stand alone as testament to the beauty of geology and nature. As proof of concept, this presentation will consist of a musical composition that includes sounds from various field recordings of wind, swamps, ice and water (including recordings from the inside of glaciers).

A Review: Characteristics of Noise Absorption Material

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Amares, S.; Sujatmika, E.; Hong, T. W.; Durairaj, R.; Hamid, H. S. H. B.

2017-10-01

Noise is always treated as a nuisance to human and even noise pollution appears in the environmental causing discomfort. This also concerns the engineering design that tends to cultivate this noise propagation. Solution such as using material to absorb the sound have been widely used. The fundamental of the sound absorbing propagation, sound absorbing characteristics and its factors are minimally debated. Furthermore, the method in order to pertain sound absorbing related to the sound absorption coefficient is also limited, as many studies only contributes in result basis and very little in literature aspect. This paper revolves in providing better insight on the importance of sound absorption and the materials factors in obtaining the sound absorption coefficient.

Characterization of water-quality and bed-sediment conditions in Currituck Sound, North Carolina, prior to the Mid-Currituck Bridge construction, 2011–15

USGS Publications Warehouse

Wagner, Chad R.; Fitzgerald, Sharon; Antolino, Dominick J.

2015-12-24

The characterization of water-quality and bed-sediment chemistry in Currituck Sound along the proposed alignment of the Mid-Currituck Bridge summarized herein provides a baseline for determining the effect of bridge construction and bridge deck runoff on environmental conditions in Currituck Sound.

Understanding Emerging Impacts and Requirements Related to Utility-Scale Solar Development

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hartmann, Heidi M.; Grippo, Mark A.; Heath, Garvin A.

2016-09-01

Utility-scale solar energy plays an important role in the nation’s strategy to address climate change threats through increased deployment of renewable energy technologies, and both the federal government and individual states have established specific goals for increased solar energy development. In order to achieve these goals, much attention is paid to making utility-scale solar energy cost-competitive with other conventional energy sources, while concurrently conducting solar development in an environmentally sound manner.

Exterior sound level measurements of snowcoaches at Yellowstone National Park

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2010-04-01

Sounds associated with oversnow vehicles, such as snowmobiles and snowcoaches, are an important management concern at Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. The John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Centers Environmental Measurement a...

Notification: Review of Puget Sound Action Agenda Grants

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Project #OA-FY13-0341, June 26, 2013. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Inspector General, plans to begin preliminary research for an audit of Puget Sound Action Agenda grants in July 2013.

Onset and Maturation of Fetal Heart Rate Response to the Mother's Voice over Late Gestation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kisilevsky, Barbara S.; Hains, Sylvia M. J.

2011-01-01

Background: Term fetuses discriminate their mother's voice from a female stranger's, suggesting recognition/learning of some property of her voice. Identification of the onset and maturation of the response would increase our understanding of the influence of environmental sounds on the development of sensory abilities and identify the period when…

77 FR 16058 - Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, Pacific County, WA; Record of Decision for Final Environmental...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-03-19

... National Wildlife Refuge System, consistent with sound principles of fish and wildlife management... implementation. Alternative 2 is the foundation of our CCP. The CCP will guide our management and administration... management issues in our Draft and Final CCP/EIS. To address these issues, we developed and evaluated three...

50 Simple Things Kids Can Do To Save the Earth.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Earthworks Group, Berkeley, CA.

This book explains how specific objects in a child's environment are connected to the rest of the world; how using them affects the planet; and how the individual can develop positive habits through projects that are environmentally sound. The book is written for children. The material includes experiments, facts, and activities divided into eight…

Recycling Resources. [Student Handbook, Sound Filmstrips, 12-Inch Record, Pollution Simulation Game, Teacher's Manual

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hatch, C. Richard

A 15- to 20-hour course on materials recycling, teaching junior high school students about environmental problems and solutions, is developed in this set of materials. It attempts to stimulate them to participate in community efforts aimed at improving the environment. Items in the kit include: (1) teacher's manual, with lesson plans enumerating…

Strand IV Environmental and Community Health, Ecology and Epidemiology of Health, Grades 10, 11, and 12.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

New York State Education Dept., Albany. Bureau of Secondary Curriculum Development.

A frame of reference concerning health implications, based on the interaction of numerous factors in the physical, social, and biological environments, is provided in this prototype curriculum for grades 10-12. Development of sound techniques in problem solving is encouraged, resulting from the need to understand the nature and complexities of…

Auditory Task Irrelevance: A Basis for Inattentional Deafness

PubMed Central

Scheer, Menja; Bülthoff, Heinrich H.; Chuang, Lewis L.

2018-01-01

Objective This study investigates the neural basis of inattentional deafness, which could result from task irrelevance in the auditory modality. Background Humans can fail to respond to auditory alarms under high workload situations. This failure, termed inattentional deafness, is often attributed to high workload in the visual modality, which reduces one’s capacity for information processing. Besides this, our capacity for processing auditory information could also be selectively diminished if there is no obvious task relevance in the auditory channel. This could be another contributing factor given the rarity of auditory warnings. Method Forty-eight participants performed a visuomotor tracking task while auditory stimuli were presented: a frequent pure tone, an infrequent pure tone, and infrequent environmental sounds. Participants were required either to respond to the presentation of the infrequent pure tone (auditory task-relevant) or not (auditory task-irrelevant). We recorded and compared the event-related potentials (ERPs) that were generated by environmental sounds, which were always task-irrelevant for both groups. These ERPs served as an index for our participants’ awareness of the task-irrelevant auditory scene. Results Manipulation of auditory task relevance influenced the brain’s response to task-irrelevant environmental sounds. Specifically, the late novelty-P3 to irrelevant environmental sounds, which underlies working memory updating, was found to be selectively enhanced by auditory task relevance independent of visuomotor workload. Conclusion Task irrelevance in the auditory modality selectively reduces our brain’s responses to unexpected and irrelevant sounds regardless of visuomotor workload. Application Presenting relevant auditory information more often could mitigate the risk of inattentional deafness. PMID:29578754

Different categories of living and non-living sound-sources activate distinct cortical networks

PubMed Central

Engel, Lauren R.; Frum, Chris; Puce, Aina; Walker, Nathan A.; Lewis, James W.

2009-01-01

With regard to hearing perception, it remains unclear as to whether, or the extent to which, different conceptual categories of real-world sounds and related categorical knowledge are differentially represented in the brain. Semantic knowledge representations are reported to include the major divisions of living versus non-living things, plus more specific categories including animals, tools, biological motion, faces, and places—categories typically defined by their characteristic visual features. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify brain regions showing preferential activity to four categories of action sounds, which included non-vocal human and animal actions (living), plus mechanical and environmental sound-producing actions (non-living). The results showed a striking antero-posterior division in cortical representations for sounds produced by living versus non-living sources. Additionally, there were several significant differences by category, depending on whether the task was category-specific (e.g. human or not) versus non-specific (detect end-of-sound). In general, (1) human-produced sounds yielded robust activation in the bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci independent of task. Task demands modulated activation of left-lateralized fronto-parietal regions, bilateral insular cortices, and subcortical regions previously implicated in observation-execution matching, consistent with “embodied” and mirror-neuron network representations subserving recognition. (2) Animal action sounds preferentially activated the bilateral posterior insulae. (3) Mechanical sounds activated the anterior superior temporal gyri and parahippocampal cortices. (4) Environmental sounds preferentially activated dorsal occipital and medial parietal cortices. Overall, this multi-level dissociation of networks for preferentially representing distinct sound-source categories provides novel support for grounded cognition models that may underlie organizational principles for hearing perception. PMID:19465134

Wind turbines: is there a human health risk?

PubMed

Roberts, Jennifer D; Roberts, Mark A

2013-04-01

The term "Wind Turbine Syndrome" was coined in a recently self-published book, which hypothesized that a multitude of symptoms such as headache and dizziness resulted from wind turbines generating low frequency sound (LFS). The objective of this article is to provide a summary of the peer-reviewed literature on the research that has examined the relationship between human health effects and exposure to LFS and sound generated from the operation of wind turbines. At present, a specific health condition has not been documented in the peer-reviewed literature that has been classified as a disease caused by exposure to sound levels and frequencies generated by the operation of wind turbines. Communities are experiencing a heightened sense of annoyance and fear from the development and siting of wind turbine farms. High-quality research and effective risk communication can advance this course from one of panic to one of understanding and exemplification for other environmental advancements.

The influence of musical experience on lateralisation of auditory processing.

PubMed

Spajdel, Marián; Jariabková, Katarína; Riecanský, Igor

2007-11-01

The influence of musical experience on free-recall dichotic listening to environmental sounds, two-tone sequences, and consonant-vowel (CV) syllables was investigated. A total of 60 healthy right-handed participants were divided into two groups according to their active musical competence ("musicians" and "non-musicians"). In both groups, we found a left ear advantage (LEA) for nonverbal stimuli (environmental sounds and two-tone sequences) and a right ear advantage (REA) for CV syllables. Dichotic listening to environmental sounds was uninfluenced by musical experience. The total accuracy of recall for two-tone sequences was higher in musicians than in non-musicians but the lateralisation was similar in both groups. For CV syllables a lower REA was found in male but not female musicians in comparison to non-musicians. The results indicate a specific sex-dependent effect of musical experience on lateralisation of phonological auditory processing.

Exterior sound level measurements of over-snow vehicles at Yellowstone National Park.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2008-09-30

Sounds associated with oversnow vehicles, such as snowmobiles and snowcoaches, are an : important management concern at Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. The John A. : Volpe National Transportation Systems Centers Environmental Measureme...

Helium-Based Soundwave Chiller: Trillium: A Helium-Based Sonic Chiller- Tons of Freezing with 0 GWP Refrigerants

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

None

2010-09-01

BEETIT Project: Penn State is designing a freezer that substitutes the use of sound waves and environmentally benign refrigerant for synthetic refrigerants found in conventional freezers. Called a thermoacoustic chiller, the technology is based on the fact that the pressure oscillations in a sound wave result in temperature changes. Areas of higher pressure raise temperatures and areas of low pressure decrease temperatures. By carefully arranging a series of heat exchangers in a sound field, the chiller is able to isolate the hot and cold regions of the sound waves. Penn State’s chiller uses helium gas to replace synthetic refrigerants. Becausemore » helium does not burn, explode or combine with other chemicals, it is an environmentally-friendly alternative to other polluting refrigerants. Penn State is working to apply this technology on a large scale.« less

Sound Waste Management Plan environmental operations, and used oil management system: Restoration project 97115. Exxon Valdez oil spill restoration project final report: Volumes 1 and 2

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

NONE

1998-06-01

This project constitutes Phase 2 of the Sound Waste Management Plan and created waste oil collection and disposal facilities, bilge water collection and disposal facilities, recycling storage, and household hazardous waste collection and storage, and household hazardous waste collection and storage facilities in Prince William Sound. A wide range of waste streams are generated within communities in the Sound including used oil generated from vehicles and vessels, and hazardous wastes generated by households. This project included the design and construction of Environmental Operations Stations buildings in Valdez, Cordova, Whittier, Chenega Bay and Tatitlek to improve the overall management of oilymore » wastes. They will house new equipment to facilitate oily waste collection, treatment and disposal. This project also included completion of used oil management manuals.« less

Commencement Bay Cumulative Impact Study: Historic Review of Special Aquatic Sites

DTIC Science & Technology

1991-05-04

is generally defined as a geographic region of south Puget Sound in Washington State extending from Brown’s Point to Point Defiance. (Figure-10. it...amount of sediment load. 2 2 Area enlarged Commencement Bay Cumulative Impacts Study (U Puget Sound 0 0 3.0 600E,0 Point) Figureat 1. Study AreaMa...the Puget Sound Environmental Atlas was produced under funding from the Seattle District Corps of Engineers, EPA, and the Puget Sound Water Quality

Mapping Underwater Sound in the Dutch Part of the North Sea.

PubMed

Sertlek, H Özkan; Aarts, Geert; Brasseur, Sophie; Slabbekoorn, Hans; ten Cate, Carel; von Benda-Beckmann, Alexander M; Ainslie, Michael A

2016-01-01

The European Union requires member states to achieve or maintain good environmental status for their marine territorial waters and explicitly mentions potentially adverse effects of underwater sound. In this study, we focused on producing maps of underwater sound from various natural and anthropogenic origins in the Dutch North Sea. The source properties and sound propagation are simulated by mathematical methods. These maps could be used to assess and predict large-scale effects on behavior and distribution of underwater marine life and therefore become a valuable tool in assessing and managing the impact of underwater sound on marine life.

Underwater passive acoustic localization of Pacific walruses in the northeastern Chukchi Sea.

PubMed

Rideout, Brendan P; Dosso, Stan E; Hannay, David E

2013-09-01

This paper develops and applies a linearized Bayesian localization algorithm based on acoustic arrival times of marine mammal vocalizations at spatially-separated receivers which provides three-dimensional (3D) location estimates with rigorous uncertainty analysis. To properly account for uncertainty in receiver parameters (3D hydrophone locations and synchronization times) and environmental parameters (water depth and sound-speed correction), these quantities are treated as unknowns constrained by prior estimates and prior uncertainties. Unknown scaling factors on both the prior and arrival-time uncertainties are estimated by minimizing Akaike's Bayesian information criterion (a maximum entropy condition). Maximum a posteriori estimates for sound source locations and times, receiver parameters, and environmental parameters are calculated simultaneously using measurements of arrival times for direct and interface-reflected acoustic paths. Posterior uncertainties for all unknowns incorporate both arrival time and prior uncertainties. Monte Carlo simulation results demonstrate that, for the cases considered here, linearization errors are small and the lack of an accurate sound-speed profile does not cause significant biases in the estimated locations. A sequence of Pacific walrus vocalizations, recorded in the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska, is localized using this technique, yielding a track estimate and uncertainties with an estimated speed comparable to normal walrus swim speeds.

Using K-Nearest Neighbor Classification to Diagnose Abnormal Lung Sounds

PubMed Central

Chen, Chin-Hsing; Huang, Wen-Tzeng; Tan, Tan-Hsu; Chang, Cheng-Chun; Chang, Yuan-Jen

2015-01-01

A reported 30% of people worldwide have abnormal lung sounds, including crackles, rhonchi, and wheezes. To date, the traditional stethoscope remains the most popular tool used by physicians to diagnose such abnormal lung sounds, however, many problems arise with the use of a stethoscope, including the effects of environmental noise, the inability to record and store lung sounds for follow-up or tracking, and the physician’s subjective diagnostic experience. This study has developed a digital stethoscope to help physicians overcome these problems when diagnosing abnormal lung sounds. In this digital system, mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) were used to extract the features of lung sounds, and then the K-means algorithm was used for feature clustering, to reduce the amount of data for computation. Finally, the K-nearest neighbor method was used to classify the lung sounds. The proposed system can also be used for home care: if the percentage of abnormal lung sound frames is > 30% of the whole test signal, the system can automatically warn the user to visit a physician for diagnosis. We also used bend sensors together with an amplification circuit, Bluetooth, and a microcontroller to implement a respiration detector. The respiratory signal extracted by the bend sensors can be transmitted to the computer via Bluetooth to calculate the respiratory cycle, for real-time assessment. If an abnormal status is detected, the device will warn the user automatically. Experimental results indicated that the error in respiratory cycles between measured and actual values was only 6.8%, illustrating the potential of our detector for home care applications. PMID:26053756

Agriculture

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The EPA Agriculture Resource Directory offers comprehensive, easy-to-understand information about environmental stewardship on farms and ranches; commonsense, flexible approaches that are both environmentally protective and agriculturally sound.

Generalized auditory agnosia with spared music recognition in a left-hander. Analysis of a case with a right temporal stroke.

PubMed

Mendez, M F

2001-02-01

After a right temporoparietal stroke, a left-handed man lost the ability to understand speech and environmental sounds but developed greater appreciation for music. The patient had preserved reading and writing but poor verbal comprehension. Slower speech, single syllable words, and minimal written cues greatly facilitated his verbal comprehension. On identifying environmental sounds, he made predominant acoustic errors. Although he failed to name melodies, he could match, describe, and sing them. The patient had normal hearing except for presbyacusis, right-ear dominance for phonemes, and normal discrimination of basic psychoacoustic features and rhythm. Further testing disclosed difficulty distinguishing tone sequences and discriminating two clicks and short-versus-long tones, particularly in the left ear. Together, these findings suggest impairment in a direct route for temporal analysis and auditory word forms in his right hemisphere to Wernicke's area in his left hemisphere. The findings further suggest a separate and possibly rhythm-based mechanism for music recognition.

The effects of environmental variability and spatial sampling on the three-dimensional inversion problem.

PubMed

Bender, Christopher M; Ballard, Megan S; Wilson, Preston S

2014-06-01

The overall goal of this work is to quantify the effects of environmental variability and spatial sampling on the accuracy and uncertainty of estimates of the three-dimensional ocean sound-speed field. In this work, ocean sound speed estimates are obtained with acoustic data measured by a sparse autonomous observing system using a perturbative inversion scheme [Rajan, Lynch, and Frisk, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 82, 998-1017 (1987)]. The vertical and horizontal resolution of the solution depends on the bandwidth of acoustic data and on the quantity of sources and receivers, respectively. Thus, for a simple, range-independent ocean sound speed profile, a single source-receiver pair is sufficient to estimate the water-column sound-speed field. On the other hand, an environment with significant variability may not be fully characterized by a large number of sources and receivers, resulting in uncertainty in the solution. This work explores the interrelated effects of environmental variability and spatial sampling on the accuracy and uncertainty of the inversion solution though a set of case studies. Synthetic data representative of the ocean variability on the New Jersey shelf are used.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Not Available

Four years after its occurrence rocked the petroleum industry and revitalized the US environmental movement, the Exxon Valdez tanker oil spill off Alaska continues to stir controversy. Conflicting reports abound over whether there is long term damage to the Prince William Sound ecosystem resulting from the March 24, 1989, spill. Government scientists at recent conferences disclosed studies they contend show long term, significant damage to the sound. Exxon this month launched a counteroffensive, disclosing results of studies it funded that it claims show no credible scientific evidence of long term damage. At the same time, the company blasted as flawedmore » the government's data on assessing environmental damage to the sound and charged that test samples from the sound were mishandled. Meantime, Prince William Sound still shows lingering effects from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. But recovery has been so rapid that there is more controversy over how to use $900 million in natural resource recovery funds that Exxon paid than over how badly species are suffering. The paper describes Exxon's studies; faulty data; lingering damage; and an update on tanker safety.« less

Letter-Sound Knowledge: Exploring Gender Differences in Children When They Start School Regarding Knowledge of Large Letters, Small Letters, Sound Large Letters, and Sound Small Letters

PubMed Central

Sigmundsson, Hermundur; Eriksen, Adrian D.; Ofteland, Greta Storm; Haga, Monika

2017-01-01

This study explored whether there is a gender difference in letter-sound knowledge when children start at school. 485 children aged 5–6 years completed assessment of letter-sound knowledge, i.e., large letters; sound of large letters; small letters; sound of small letters. The findings indicate a significant difference between girls and boys in all four factors tested in this study in favor of the girls. There are still no clear explanations to the basis of a presumed gender difference in letter-sound knowledge. That the findings have origin in neuro-biological factors cannot be excluded, however, the fact that girls probably have been exposed to more language experience/stimulation compared to boys, lends support to explanations derived from environmental aspects. PMID:28951726

Correlation Between Resting Testosterone/Cortisol Ratio and Sound-Induced Vasoconstriction at Fingertip in Men

PubMed Central

Ooishi, Yuuki

2018-01-01

A sound-induced sympathetic tone has been used as an index for orienting responses to auditory stimuli. The resting testosterone/cortisol ratio is a biomarker of social aggression that drives an approaching behavior in response to environmental stimuli, and a higher testosterone level and a lower cortisol level can facilitate the sympathetic response to environmental stimuli. Therefore, it is possible that the testosterone/cortisol ratio is correlated with the sound-induced sympathetic tone. The current study investigated the relationship between the resting testosterone/cortisol ratio and vasoconstriction induced by listening to sound stimuli. Twenty healthy males aged 29.0 ± 0.53 years (mean ± S.E.M) participated in the study. They came to the laboratory for 3 days and listened to one of three types of sound stimuli for 1 min on each day. Saliva samples were collected for an analysis of salivary testosterone and cortisol levels on the day of each experiment. After the collecting the saliva sample, we measured the blood volume pulse (BVP) amplitude at a fingertip. Since vasoconstriction is mediated by the activation of the sympathetic nerves, the strength of the reduction in BVP amplitude at a fingertip was called the BVP response (finger BVPR). No difference was observed between the sound-induced finger BVPR for the three types of sound stimuli (p = 0.779). The correlation coefficient between the sound-induced finger BVPR and the salivary testosterone/cortisol ratio within participants was significantly different from no correlation (p = 0.011) and there was a trend toward a significance in the correlation between the sound-induced finger BVPR and the salivary testosterone/cortisol ratio between participants (r = 0.39, p = 0.088). These results suggest that the testosterone/cortisol ratio affects the difference in the sound-evoked sympathetic response. PMID:29559922

Correlation Between Resting Testosterone/Cortisol Ratio and Sound-Induced Vasoconstriction at Fingertip in Men.

PubMed

Ooishi, Yuuki

2018-01-01

A sound-induced sympathetic tone has been used as an index for orienting responses to auditory stimuli. The resting testosterone/cortisol ratio is a biomarker of social aggression that drives an approaching behavior in response to environmental stimuli, and a higher testosterone level and a lower cortisol level can facilitate the sympathetic response to environmental stimuli. Therefore, it is possible that the testosterone/cortisol ratio is correlated with the sound-induced sympathetic tone. The current study investigated the relationship between the resting testosterone/cortisol ratio and vasoconstriction induced by listening to sound stimuli. Twenty healthy males aged 29.0 ± 0.53 years (mean ± S.E.M) participated in the study. They came to the laboratory for 3 days and listened to one of three types of sound stimuli for 1 min on each day. Saliva samples were collected for an analysis of salivary testosterone and cortisol levels on the day of each experiment. After the collecting the saliva sample, we measured the blood volume pulse (BVP) amplitude at a fingertip. Since vasoconstriction is mediated by the activation of the sympathetic nerves, the strength of the reduction in BVP amplitude at a fingertip was called the BVP response (finger BVPR). No difference was observed between the sound-induced finger BVPR for the three types of sound stimuli ( p = 0.779). The correlation coefficient between the sound-induced finger BVPR and the salivary testosterone/cortisol ratio within participants was significantly different from no correlation ( p = 0.011) and there was a trend toward a significance in the correlation between the sound-induced finger BVPR and the salivary testosterone/cortisol ratio between participants ( r = 0.39, p = 0.088). These results suggest that the testosterone/cortisol ratio affects the difference in the sound-evoked sympathetic response.

ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING FOR PUBLIC ACCESS AND COMMUNITY TRACKING, EMPACT

EPA Science Inventory

This project seeks to apply sound science to the collection and presentation of environmental data on Human Exposure to the public so that the public can make informed decisions regarding activities that would affect their exposure to environmental pollutants. The Environmental ...

Operations & Maintenance Best Practices - A Guide to Achieving Operational Efficiency Release 3.0

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

None

This Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Best Practices Guide was developed under the direction of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP). The mission of FEMP is to facilitate the Federal Government’s implementation of sound, cost effective energy management and investment practices to enhance the nation’s energy security and environmental stewardship.

Development and evaluation of four molecular markers tightly linked to the Potato virus Y resistance gene Rychc in diploid potato populations

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

In the last 15 years, Potato virus Y (PVY) has been the main pathogen causing seed potato lot rejections in North America. The most efficient and environmentally sound method of limiting incidence and spread of PVY is the use virus resistant potato cultivars. Several genes for extreme resistance to ...

Spacecraft Internal Acoustic Environment Modeling

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chu, Shao-Sheng R.; Allen Christopher S.

2010-01-01

Acoustic modeling can be used to identify key noise sources, determine/analyze sub-allocated requirements, keep track of the accumulation of minor noise sources, and to predict vehicle noise levels at various stages in vehicle development, first with estimates of noise sources, later with experimental data. This paper describes the implementation of acoustic modeling for design purposes by incrementally increasing model fidelity and validating the accuracy of the model while predicting the noise of sources under various conditions. During FY 07, a simple-geometry Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) model was developed and validated using a physical mockup and acoustic measurements. A process for modeling the effects of absorptive wall treatments and the resulting reverberation environment were developed. During FY 08, a model with more complex and representative geometry of the Orion Crew Module (CM) interior was built, and noise predictions based on input noise sources were made. A corresponding physical mockup was also built. Measurements were made inside this mockup, and comparisons were made with the model and showed excellent agreement. During FY 09, the fidelity of the mockup and corresponding model were increased incrementally by including a simple ventilation system. The airborne noise contribution of the fans was measured using a sound intensity technique, since the sound power levels were not known beforehand. This is opposed to earlier studies where Reference Sound Sources (RSS) with known sound power level were used. Comparisons of the modeling result with the measurements in the mockup showed excellent results. During FY 10, the fidelity of the mockup and the model were further increased by including an ECLSS (Environmental Control and Life Support System) wall, associated closeout panels, and the gap between ECLSS wall and mockup wall. The effect of sealing the gap and adding sound absorptive treatment to ECLSS wall were also modeled and validated.

76 FR 76949 - Marine Mammals

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-12-09

....--Principal Investigator) has applied for an amendment to Scientific Research Permit No. 14534-01. DATES... during studies of sound production, diving, responses to sound, and other behavior. The research is... significant environmental impacts could result from issuance of the proposed scientific research permit. The...

Causal Uncertainty in the Identification of Environmental Sounds

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-11-01

importance of particular stimulus properties (Chaney & Webster, 1966; Howard, 1977; Mackie, Wylie, Ridihalgh, Shultz, & Seltzer, 1981; Talamo , 1982; Warren...207). Berlin: Abakon Verlagsgesellschaft, 183-207. Talamo , .J. D. C. (1982). The perception of machinery indicator sounds. ErgonoriS_ 225, 41-51

POLLUTION MONITORING OF PUGET SOUND WITH HONEY BEES

EPA Science Inventory

To show that honey bees are effective biological monitors of environmental contaminants over large geographic areas, beekeepers of Puget Sound, Washington, collected pollen and bees for chemical analysis. From these data, kriging maps of arsenic, cadmium, and fluoride were genera...

A City Looks at Itself and Acts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eriksen, Clyde H.

1974-01-01

Prompted by a continued environmental awareness, Claremont, California established an Environmental Resource Task Force to determine methods of operating an economically and environmentally sound city. This group of lay persons and professionals concluded that environmental quality is economically possible, and made recommendations on planning,…

Environmental impact assessment using a utility-based recursive evidential reasoning approach for structural flood mitigation measures in Metro Manila, Philippines.

PubMed

Gilbuena, Romeo; Kawamura, Akira; Medina, Reynaldo; Nakagawa, Naoko; Amaguchi, Hideo

2013-12-15

In recent years, the practice of environmental impact assessment (EIA) has created significant awareness on the role of environmentally sound projects in sustainable development. In view of the recent studies on the effects of climate change, the Philippine government has given high priority to the construction of flood control structures to alleviate the destructive effects of unmitigated floods, especially in highly urbanized areas like Metro Manila. EIA thus, should be carefully and effectively carried out to maximize or optimize the potential benefits that can be derived from structural flood mitigation measures (SFMMs). A utility-based environmental assessment approach may significantly aid flood managers and decision-makers in planning for effective and environmentally sound SFMM projects. This study proposes a utility-based assessment approach using the rapid impact assessment matrix (RIAM) technique, coupled with the evidential reasoning approach, to rationally and systematically evaluate the ecological and socio-economic impacts of 4 planned SFMM projects (i.e. 2 river channel improvements and 2 new open channels) in Metro Manila. Results show that the overall environmental effects of each of the planned SFMM projects are positive, which indicate that the utility of the positive impacts would generally outweigh the negative impacts. The results also imply that the planned river channel improvements will yield higher environmental benefits over the planned open channels. This study was able to present a clear and rational approach in the examination of overall environmental effects of SFMMs, which provides valuable insights that can be used by decision-makers and policy makers to improve the EIA practice and evaluation of projects in the Philippines. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Bearing Stake Exercise: Sound Speed and other Environmental Variability

DTIC Science & Technology

1978-09-01

for acoustic assessment. All bathymetric data analyzed by NORDA were corrected for the speed of sound in seawaer using thc tables of Matthews (1939... thc 1497- to 1520-m/sec isopleths at ranges greater than 50 nm (about 90 kin) followed b’ a mote gradual isopleth inclination at ranges greater than...irregular and clearly showed thc effects of intermixing of SSW, RSIW. and AA.W. VII. (U) ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABILITY AT SITE 5 (C) Site 5 laý at the

Environmental Analysis and Prediction of Transmission Loss in the Region of the New England Shelfbreak

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-09-01

Environmental Analysis and Prediction of Transmission Loss in the Region of the New England Shelfbreak By Heather Rend Hornick B.S., University of... Analysis and Prediction of Transmission Loss in the Region of the New England Shelfbreak 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER 5b. GRANT NUMBER 5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER... analysis of the ocean sound speed field defined a set of perturbations to the background sound speed field for each of the NEST Scanfish surveys

Separating acoustic deviance from novelty during the first year of life: a review of event-related potential evidence

PubMed Central

Kushnerenko, Elena V.; Van den Bergh, Bea R. H.; Winkler, István

2013-01-01

Orienting to salient events in the environment is a first step in the development of attention in young infants. Electrophysiological studies have indicated that in newborns and young infants, sounds with widely distributed spectral energy, such as noise and various environmental sounds, as well as sounds widely deviating from their context elicit an event-related potential (ERP) similar to the adult P3a response. We discuss how the maturation of event-related potentials parallels the process of the development of passive auditory attention during the first year of life. Behavioral studies have indicated that the neonatal orientation to high-energy stimuli gradually changes to attending to genuine novelty and other significant events by approximately 9 months of age. In accordance with these changes, in newborns, the ERP response to large acoustic deviance is dramatically larger than that to small and moderate deviations. This ERP difference, however, rapidly decreases within first months of life and the differentiation of the ERP response to genuine novelty from that to spectrally rich but repeatedly presented sounds commences during the same period. The relative decrease of the response amplitudes elicited by high-energy stimuli may reflect development of an inhibitory brain network suppressing the processing of uninformative stimuli. Based on data obtained from healthy full-term and pre-term infants as well as from infants at risk for various developmental problems, we suggest that the electrophysiological indices of the processing of acoustic and contextual deviance may be indicative of the functioning of auditory attention, a crucial prerequisite of learning and language development. PMID:24046757

Effects of Different Spectral Shapes and Amplitude Modulation of Broadband Noise on Annoyance Reactions in a Controlled Listening Experiment.

PubMed

Schäffer, Beat; Pieren, Reto; Schlittmeier, Sabine J; Brink, Mark

2018-05-19

Environmental noise from transportation or industrial infrastructure typically has a broad frequency range. Different sources may have disparate acoustical characteristics, which may in turn affect noise annoyance. However, knowledge of the relative contribution of the different acoustical characteristics of broadband noise to annoyance is still scarce. In this study, the subjectively perceived short-term (acute) annoyance reactions to different broadband sounds (namely, realistic outdoor wind turbine and artificial, generic sounds) at 40 dBA were investigated in a controlled laboratory listening experiment. Combined with the factorial design of the experiment, the sounds allowed for separation of the effects of three acoustical characteristics on annoyance, namely, spectral shape, depth of periodic amplitude modulation (AM), and occurrence (or absence) of random AM. Fifty-two participants rated their annoyance with the sounds. Annoyance increased with increasing energy content in the low-frequency range as well as with depth of periodic AM, and was higher in situations with random AM than without. Similar annoyance changes would be evoked by sound pressure level changes of up to 8 dB. The results suggest that besides standard sound pressure level metrics, other acoustical characteristics of (broadband) noise should also be considered in environmental impact assessments, e.g., in the context of wind turbine installations.

The Influence of refractoriness upon comprehension of non-verbal auditory stimuli.

PubMed

Crutch, Sebastian J; Warrington, Elizabeth K

2008-01-01

An investigation of non-verbal auditory comprehension in two patients with global aphasia following stroke is reported. The primary aim of the investigation was to establish whether refractory access disorders can affect non-verbal input modalities. All previous reports of refractoriness, a cognitive syndrome characterized by response inconsistency, sensitivity to temporal factors and insensitivity to item frequency, have involved comprehension tasks which have a verbal component. Two main experiments are described. The first consists of a novel sound-to-picture and sound-to-word matching task in which comprehension of environmental sounds is probed under conditions of semantic relatedness and semantic unrelatedness. In addition to the two stroke patients, the performance of a group of 10 control patients with non-vascular pathology is reported, along with evidence of semantic relatedness effects in sound comprehension. The second experiment examines environmental sound comprehension within a repetitive probing paradigm which affords assessment of the effects of semantic relatedness, response consistency and presentation rate. It is demonstrated that the two stroke patients show a significant increase in error rate across multiple probes of the same set of sound stimuli, indicating the presence of refractoriness within this non-verbal domain. The implications of the results are discussed with reference to our current understanding of the mechanisms of refractoriness.

40 CFR 201.22 - Measurement instrumentation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 25 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Measurement instrumentation. 201.22 Section 201.22 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) NOISE ABATEMENT... Criteria § 201.22 Measurement instrumentation. (a) A sound level meter or alternate sound level measurement...

40 CFR 201.22 - Measurement instrumentation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 26 2012-07-01 2011-07-01 true Measurement instrumentation. 201.22 Section 201.22 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) NOISE ABATEMENT... Criteria § 201.22 Measurement instrumentation. (a) A sound level meter or alternate sound level measurement...

40 CFR 201.22 - Measurement instrumentation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 26 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Measurement instrumentation. 201.22 Section 201.22 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) NOISE ABATEMENT... Criteria § 201.22 Measurement instrumentation. (a) A sound level meter or alternate sound level measurement...

Sound Naming in Neurodegenerative Disease

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chow, Maggie L.; Brambati, Simona M.; Gorno-Tempini, Maria Luisa; Miller, Bruce L.; Johnson, Julene K.

2010-01-01

Modern cognitive neuroscientific theories and empirical evidence suggest that brain structures involved in movement may be related to action-related semantic knowledge. To test this hypothesis, we examined the naming of environmental sounds in patients with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), two…

Concrete mixtures that incorporate inclusions to reduce the sound generated in Portland cement concrete pavements

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2004-01-01

Tire-pavement interaction noise is one of the significant environmental problem in highly populated urban areas situated near busy highways. Traditionally, this problem was reduced through the use of sound barriers ; but this method has limitations. ...

Zipf's Law in Short-Time Timbral Codings of Speech, Music, and Environmental Sound Signals

PubMed Central

Haro, Martín; Serrà, Joan; Herrera, Perfecto; Corral, Álvaro

2012-01-01

Timbre is a key perceptual feature that allows discrimination between different sounds. Timbral sensations are highly dependent on the temporal evolution of the power spectrum of an audio signal. In order to quantitatively characterize such sensations, the shape of the power spectrum has to be encoded in a way that preserves certain physical and perceptual properties. Therefore, it is common practice to encode short-time power spectra using psychoacoustical frequency scales. In this paper, we study and characterize the statistical properties of such encodings, here called timbral code-words. In particular, we report on rank-frequency distributions of timbral code-words extracted from 740 hours of audio coming from disparate sources such as speech, music, and environmental sounds. Analogously to text corpora, we find a heavy-tailed Zipfian distribution with exponent close to one. Importantly, this distribution is found independently of different encoding decisions and regardless of the audio source. Further analysis on the intrinsic characteristics of most and least frequent code-words reveals that the most frequent code-words tend to have a more homogeneous structure. We also find that speech and music databases have specific, distinctive code-words while, in the case of the environmental sounds, this database-specific code-words are not present. Finally, we find that a Yule-Simon process with memory provides a reasonable quantitative approximation for our data, suggesting the existence of a common simple generative mechanism for all considered sound sources. PMID:22479497

Metagenomic profiling of microbial composition and antibiotic resistance determinants in Puget Sound.

PubMed

Port, Jesse A; Wallace, James C; Griffith, William C; Faustman, Elaine M

2012-01-01

Human-health relevant impacts on marine ecosystems are increasing on both spatial and temporal scales. Traditional indicators for environmental health monitoring and microbial risk assessment have relied primarily on single species analyses and have provided only limited spatial and temporal information. More high-throughput, broad-scale approaches to evaluate these impacts are therefore needed to provide a platform for informing public health. This study uses shotgun metagenomics to survey the taxonomic composition and antibiotic resistance determinant content of surface water bacterial communities in the Puget Sound estuary. Metagenomic DNA was collected at six sites in Puget Sound in addition to one wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) that discharges into the Sound and pyrosequenced. A total of ~550 Mbp (1.4 million reads) were obtained, 22 Mbp of which could be assembled into contigs. While the taxonomic and resistance determinant profiles across the open Sound samples were similar, unique signatures were identified when comparing these profiles across the open Sound, a nearshore marina and WWTP effluent. The open Sound was dominated by α-Proteobacteria (in particular Rhodobacterales sp.), γ-Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes while the marina and effluent had increased abundances of Actinobacteria, β-Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. There was a significant increase in the antibiotic resistance gene signal from the open Sound to marina to WWTP effluent, suggestive of a potential link to human impacts. Mobile genetic elements associated with environmental and pathogenic bacteria were also differentially abundant across the samples. This study is the first comparative metagenomic survey of Puget Sound and provides baseline data for further assessments of community composition and antibiotic resistance determinants in the environment using next generation sequencing technologies. In addition, these genomic signals of potential human impact can be used to guide initial public health monitoring as well as more targeted and functionally-based investigations.

Geographic variation and acoustic structure of the underwater vocalization of harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) in Norway, Sweden and Scotland.

PubMed

Bjørgesaeter, Anders; Ugland, Karl Inne; Bjørge, Arne

2004-10-01

The male harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) produces broadband nonharmonic vocalizations underwater during the breeding season. In total, 120 vocalizations from six colonies were analyzed to provide a description of the acoustic structure and for the presence of geographic variation. The complex harbor seal vocalizations may be described by how the frequency bandwidth varies over time. An algorithm that identifies the boundaries between noise and signal from digital spectrograms was developed in order to extract a frequency bandwidth contour. The contours were used as inputs for multivariate analysis. The vocalizations' sound types (e.g., pulsed sound, whistle, and broadband nonharmonic sound) were determined by comparing the vocalizations' spectrographic representations with sound waves produced by known sound sources. Comparison between colonies revealed differences in the frequency contours, as well as some geographical variation in use of sound types. The vocal differences may reflect a limited exchange of individuals between the six colonies due to long distances and strong site fidelity. Geographically different vocal repertoires have potential for identifying discrete breeding colonies of harbor seals, but more information is needed on the nature and extent of early movements of young, the degree of learning, and the stability of the vocal repertoire. A characteristic feature of many vocalizations in this study was the presence of tonal-like introductory phrases that fit into the categories pulsed sound and whistles. The functions of these phrases are unknown but may be important in distance perception and localization of the sound source. The potential behavioral consequences of the observed variability may be indicative of adaptations to different environmental properties influencing determination of distance and direction and plausible different male mating tactics.

A computational engine for bringing environmental consequence analysis into aviation decision-making

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2010-04-21

This presentation looks at the methods for ambient masking of non-natural sounds. The masking of sounds is most effective when the masker spectrum overlaps the signal spectrum; more likely to occur if the masker is broadband in nature. Land vehicles ...

Composing Sound Identity in Taiko Drumming

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Powell, Kimberly A.

2012-01-01

Although sociocultural theories emphasize the mutually constitutive nature of persons, activity, and environment, little attention has been paid to environmental features organized across sensory dimensions. I examine sound as a dimension of learning and practice, an organizing presence that connects the sonic with the social. This ethnographic…

Historical trends in the accumulation of chemicals in Puget Sound. National status and trends program for marine environmental quality: Technical memo

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Lefkovitz, L.F.; Cullinan, V.I.; Crecelius, E.A.

The purpose of the study is to: (1) continue monitoring historical trends in the concentration of contaminants in Puget Sound sediments, and (2) quantify recent trends in the recovery of contaminated sediments. Results from this study can be compared with those obtained in the 1982 study to determine whether sediment quality is still improving and to estimate the rate of recovery. A statistically significant reduction in sediment contamination over the past 20 years would provide empirical evidence that environmental regulation has had a positive impact on the water quality in Puget Sound. Chemical trends were evaluated from six age-dated sedimentmore » cores collected from the main basin of Puget Sound. Chemical analyses included metals, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), PCBs and chlorinated pesticides, nutrients (total nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P)), butyl tins, and total organic carbon (TOC). Sedimentation (cm/yr) and deposition rates (g/sq cm/yr) were estimated using a steady-state Pb-210 dating technique.« less

Spatio-temporal distributions of piscivorous birds in a subarctic sound during the nonbreeding season

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stocking, Jessica; Bishop, Mary Anne; Arab, Ali

2018-01-01

Understanding bird distributions outside of the breeding season may help to identify important criteria for winter refuge. We surveyed marine birds in Prince William Sound, Alaska, USA over nine winters from 2007 to 2016. Our objectives were twofold: to examine the seasonal patterns of piscivorous species overwintering in Prince William Sound, and to explore the relationships between spatial covariates and bird distributions, accounting for inherent spatial structure. We used hurdle models to examine nine species groups of piscivorous seabirds: loons, grebes, cormorants, mergansers, large gulls, small gulls, kittiwakes, Brachyramphus murrelets, and murres. Seven groups showed pronounced seasonal patterns. The models with the most support identified water depth and distance to shore as key environmental covariates, while habitat type, wave exposure, sea surface temperature and seafloor slope had less support. Environmental associations are consistent with the available knowledge of forage fish distribution during this time, but studies that address habitat associations of prey fish in winter could strengthen our understanding of processes in Prince William Sound.

Relating large-scale climate variability to local species abundance: ENSO forcing and shrimp in Breton Sound, Louisiana, USA

USGS Publications Warehouse

Piazza, Bryan P.; LaPeyre, Megan K.; Keim, B.D.

2010-01-01

Climate creates environmental constraints (filters) that affect the abundance and distribution of species. In estuaries, these constraints often result from variability in water flow properties and environmental conditions (i.e. water flow, salinity, water temperature) and can have significant effects on the abundance and distribution of commercially important nekton species. We investigated links between large-scale climate variability and juvenile brown shrimp Farfantepenaeus aztecus abundance in Breton Sound estuary, Louisiana (USA). Our goals were to (1) determine if a teleconnection exists between local juvenile brown shrimp abundance and the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and (2) relate that linkage to environmental constraints that may affect juvenile brown shrimp recruitment to, and survival in, the estuary. Our results identified a teleconnection between winter ENSO conditions and juvenile brown shrimp abundance in Breton Sound estuary the following spring. The physical connection results from the impact of ENSO on winter weather conditions in Breton Sound (air pressure, temperature, and precipitation). Juvenile brown shrimp abundance effects lagged ENSO by 3 mo: lower than average abundances of juvenile brown shrimp were caught in springs following winter El Niño events, and higher than average abundances of brown shrimp were caught in springs following La Niña winters. Salinity was the dominant ENSO-forced environmental filter for juvenile brown shrimp. Spring salinity was cumulatively forced by winter river discharge, winter wind forcing, and spring precipitation. Thus, predicting brown shrimp abundance requires incorporating climate variability into models.

Natural resource workshop: Public/private partnership for sustainable use of natural resources

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

NONE

1995-07-01

As part of an effort to shape Federal policy for environmentally sound, sustainable economic development, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy sponsored a workshop in Boise, Idaho on February 1--2, 1995. The Boise Idaho workshop focused on the sustainable use of natural resources, a topic of considerable interest in Idaho. The workshop gave representatives from industry, academia, research, the public, and local and state government an opportunity to provide input to lawmakers and policymakers for establishing a National Environmental Technology Strategy to be issued by Earth Day, 1995.

Students' Conceptions of Sound Waves Resulting from the Enactment of a New Technology-Enhanced Inquiry-Based Curriculum on Urban Bird Communication

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Houle, Meredith E.; Barnett, G. Michael

2008-01-01

The emerging field of urban ecology has the potential to engage urban youth in the practices of scientists by studying a locally relevant environmental problem. To this end, we are developing curriculum modules designed to engage students in learning science through the use of emerging information technology. In this paper, we describe the impact…

Environmental Assessment of Installation Development at McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-05-01

characteristics of the noise source, distance between source and receptor, receptor sensitivity, weather , and time of day. Sound is measured with...bulk fuel storage and transfer, fuel dispensing, service stations , solvent degreasing, surface coating, and chemical usage/fugitive emissions. The...and weathered Permian bedrock. The deeper aquifer is within calcareous shales of the Wellington Formation. Groundwater flow follows the local

Ocean Basin Impact of Ambient Noise on Marine Mammal Detectability, Distribution, and Acoustic Communication

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-09-30

soundscapes , and unit of analysis methodology. The study has culminated in a complex analysis of all environmental factors that could be predictors of...regional soundscapes . To build the correlation matrices from ambient sound recordings, the raw data was first converted into a series of sound...sounds. To compare two different soundscape time periods, the correlation matrices for the two periods were then subtracted from each other

Exploring land developer perspectives on conservation subdivision design and environmentally sustainable land development.

PubMed

Göçmen, Z Aslıgül

2014-11-01

Insight into land developers' perspectives on alternative residential developments and the barriers they experience in trying to develop them can be crucial in efforts to change environmentally damaging low-density, large-lot, and automobile-dependent residential patterns. Using a semi-structured interview instrument followed by short surveys, I examined the views of 16 developers in Waukesha County, WI, USA, a county that has experienced significant development pressures and widespread implementation of conservation subdivision design. The land developer investigation focused on conservation subdivision design familiarity and implementation, and identified a number of barriers that developers experienced in implementing the design. While the majority of the developers appeared familiar with the design and had experience developing conservation subdivisions, their motivations for developing them varied, as did their on-site conservation practices. The barriers included the lack of land use regulations supporting the design, economic factors, community opposition, and a lack of knowledge about sustainable residential development practices. Strategies to promote more environmentally sustainable residential land development patterns include providing a more supportive institutional environment, enacting different regulations and guidelines for natural resources protection, and offering education on ecologically sound development and planning practices.

Exploring Land Developer Perspectives on Conservation Subdivision Design and Environmentally Sustainable Land Development

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Göçmen, Z. Aslıgül

2014-11-01

Insight into land developers' perspectives on alternative residential developments and the barriers they experience in trying to develop them can be crucial in efforts to change environmentally damaging low-density, large-lot, and automobile-dependent residential patterns. Using a semi-structured interview instrument followed by short surveys, I examined the views of 16 developers in Waukesha County, WI, USA, a county that has experienced significant development pressures and widespread implementation of conservation subdivision design. The land developer investigation focused on conservation subdivision design familiarity and implementation, and identified a number of barriers that developers experienced in implementing the design. While the majority of the developers appeared familiar with the design and had experience developing conservation subdivisions, their motivations for developing them varied, as did their on-site conservation practices. The barriers included the lack of land use regulations supporting the design, economic factors, community opposition, and a lack of knowledge about sustainable residential development practices. Strategies to promote more environmentally sustainable residential land development patterns include providing a more supportive institutional environment, enacting different regulations and guidelines for natural resources protection, and offering education on ecologically sound development and planning practices.

Memory for environmental sounds in sighted, congenitally blind and late blind adults: evidence for cross-modal compensation.

PubMed

Röder, Brigitte; Rösler, Frank

2003-10-01

Several recent reports suggest compensatory performance changes in blind individuals. It has, however, been argued that the lack of visual input leads to impoverished semantic networks resulting in the use of data-driven rather than conceptual encoding strategies on memory tasks. To test this hypothesis, congenitally blind and sighted participants encoded environmental sounds either physically or semantically. In the recognition phase, both conceptually as well as physically distinct and physically distinct but conceptually highly related lures were intermixed with the environmental sounds encountered during study. Participants indicated whether or not they had heard a sound in the study phase. Congenitally blind adults showed elevated memory both after physical and semantic encoding. After physical encoding blind participants had lower false memory rates than sighted participants, whereas the false memory rates of sighted and blind participants did not differ after semantic encoding. In order to address the question if compensatory changes in memory skills are restricted to critical periods during early childhood, late blind adults were tested with the same paradigm. When matched for age, they showed similarly high memory scores as the congenitally blind. These results demonstrate compensatory performance changes in long-term memory functions due to the loss of a sensory system and provide evidence for high adaptive capabilities of the human cognitive system.

Auditory agnosia.

PubMed

Slevc, L Robert; Shell, Alison R

2015-01-01

Auditory agnosia refers to impairments in sound perception and identification despite intact hearing, cognitive functioning, and language abilities (reading, writing, and speaking). Auditory agnosia can be general, affecting all types of sound perception, or can be (relatively) specific to a particular domain. Verbal auditory agnosia (also known as (pure) word deafness) refers to deficits specific to speech processing, environmental sound agnosia refers to difficulties confined to non-speech environmental sounds, and amusia refers to deficits confined to music. These deficits can be apperceptive, affecting basic perceptual processes, or associative, affecting the relation of a perceived auditory object to its meaning. This chapter discusses what is known about the behavioral symptoms and lesion correlates of these different types of auditory agnosia (focusing especially on verbal auditory agnosia), evidence for the role of a rapid temporal processing deficit in some aspects of auditory agnosia, and the few attempts to treat the perceptual deficits associated with auditory agnosia. A clear picture of auditory agnosia has been slow to emerge, hampered by the considerable heterogeneity in behavioral deficits, associated brain damage, and variable assessments across cases. Despite this lack of clarity, these striking deficits in complex sound processing continue to inform our understanding of auditory perception and cognition. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Investigation using data from ERTS-1 to develop and implement utilization of living marine resources. [availability and distribution of menhaden fish in Mississippi Sound and Gulf waters

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Stevenson, W. H. (Principal Investigator); Pastula, E. J., Jr.

1973-01-01

The author has identified the following significant results. This 15-month ERTS-1 investigation produced correlations between satellite, aircraft, menhaden fisheries, and environmental sea truth data from the Mississippi Sound. Selected oceanographic, meteorological, and biological parameters were used as indirect indicators of the menhaden resource. Synoptic and near real time sea truth, fishery, satellite imagery, aircraft acquired multispectral, photo and thermal IR information were acquired as data inputs. Computer programs were developed to manipulate these data according to user requirements. Preliminary results indicate a correlation between backscattered light with chlorophyll concentration and water transparency in turbid waters. Eight empirical menhaden distribution models were constructed from combinations of four fisheries-significant oceanographic parameters: water depth, transparency, color, and surface salinity. The models demonstrated their potential for management utilization in areas of resource assessment, prediction, and monitoring.

Impact of hospital-based environmental exposures on neurodevelopmental outcomes of preterm infants.

PubMed

Santos, Janelle; Pearce, Sarah E; Stroustrup, Annemarie

2015-04-01

Over 300,000 infants are hospitalized in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in the United States annually during a developmental period critical to later neurobehavioral function. Environmental exposures during the fetal period and infancy have been shown to impact long-term neurobehavioral outcomes. This review summarizes evidence linking NICU-based environmental exposures to neurodevelopmental outcomes of children born preterm. Preterm infants experience multiple exposures important to neurodevelopment during the NICU hospitalization. The physical layout of the NICU, management of light and sound, social interactions with parents and NICU staff, and chemical exposures via medical equipment are important to long-term neurobehavioral outcomes in this highly vulnerable population. Existing research documents NICU-based exposure to neurotoxic chemicals, aberrant light, excess sound, and restricted social interaction. In total, this creates an environment of co-existing excesses (chemicals, light, sound) and deprivation (touch, speech). The full impact of these co-exposures on the long-term neurodevelopment of preterm infants has not been adequately elucidated. Research into the importance of the NICU from an environmental health perspective is in its infancy, but could provide understanding about critical modifiable factors impacting the neurobehavioral health of hundreds of thousands of children each year.

Delineation and mapping of coastal shark habitat within a shallow lagoonal estuary.

PubMed

Bangley, Charles W; Paramore, Lee; Dedman, Simon; Rulifson, Roger A

2018-01-01

Estuaries function as important nursery and foraging habitats for many coastal species, including highly migratory sharks. Pamlico Sound, North Carolina, is one of the largest estuaries in the continental United States and provides a variety of potential habitats for sharks. In order to identify and spatially delineate shark habitats within Pamlico Sound, shark catch and environmental data were analyzed from the 2007-2014 North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (NCDMF) gillnet and longline surveys conducted within the estuary. Principal species were identified and environmental data recorded at survey sites (depth, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) distance, and inlet distance) were interpolated across Pamlico Sound to create seasonal environmental grids with a 90-m2 cell size. Boosted Regression Tree (BRT) analysis was used to identify the most important environmental factors and ranges associated with presence of each principal species, and the resulting models were used to predict shark capture probability based on the environmental values within the grid cells. The Atlantic Sharpnose Shark (Rhizoprionodon terraenovae), Blacktip Shark (Carcharhinus limbatus), Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas), Sandbar Shark (Carcharhinus plumbeus), Smooth Dogfish (Mustelus canis), and Spiny Dogfish (Squalus acanthias) were the principal species in Pamlico Sound. Most species were associated with proximity to the inlet and/or high salinity, and warm temperatures, but the Bull Shark preferred greater inlet distances and the Spiny Dogfish preferred lower temperatures than the other species. Extensive Smooth Dogfish habitat overlap with seagrass beds suggests that seagrass may be a critical part of nursery habitat for this species. Spatial delineation of shark habitat within the estuary will allow for better protection of essential habitat and assessment of potential interactions with other species.

Delineation and mapping of coastal shark habitat within a shallow lagoonal estuary

PubMed Central

Paramore, Lee; Dedman, Simon; Rulifson, Roger A.

2018-01-01

Estuaries function as important nursery and foraging habitats for many coastal species, including highly migratory sharks. Pamlico Sound, North Carolina, is one of the largest estuaries in the continental United States and provides a variety of potential habitats for sharks. In order to identify and spatially delineate shark habitats within Pamlico Sound, shark catch and environmental data were analyzed from the 2007–2014 North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (NCDMF) gillnet and longline surveys conducted within the estuary. Principal species were identified and environmental data recorded at survey sites (depth, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) distance, and inlet distance) were interpolated across Pamlico Sound to create seasonal environmental grids with a 90-m2 cell size. Boosted Regression Tree (BRT) analysis was used to identify the most important environmental factors and ranges associated with presence of each principal species, and the resulting models were used to predict shark capture probability based on the environmental values within the grid cells. The Atlantic Sharpnose Shark (Rhizoprionodon terraenovae), Blacktip Shark (Carcharhinus limbatus), Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas), Sandbar Shark (Carcharhinus plumbeus), Smooth Dogfish (Mustelus canis), and Spiny Dogfish (Squalus acanthias) were the principal species in Pamlico Sound. Most species were associated with proximity to the inlet and/or high salinity, and warm temperatures, but the Bull Shark preferred greater inlet distances and the Spiny Dogfish preferred lower temperatures than the other species. Extensive Smooth Dogfish habitat overlap with seagrass beds suggests that seagrass may be a critical part of nursery habitat for this species. Spatial delineation of shark habitat within the estuary will allow for better protection of essential habitat and assessment of potential interactions with other species. PMID:29649261

Noise Protection

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1980-01-01

Environmental Health Systems puts forth an increasing effort in the U.S. to develop ways of controlling noise, particularly in industrial environments due to Federal and State laws, labor union insistence and new findings relative to noise pollution impact on human health. NASA's Apollo guidance control system aided in the development of a noise protection product, SMART. The basis of all SMART products is SMART compound a liquid plastic mixture with exceptional energy/sound absorbing qualities. The basic compound was later refined for noise protection use.

Space Technology Game Changing Development Astrobee: ISS Robotic Free Flyer

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bualat, Maria Gabriele

2015-01-01

Astrobee will be a free-flying robot that can be remotely operated by astronauts in space or by mission controllers on the ground. NASA is developing Astrobee to perform a variety of intravehicular activities (IVA), such as operations inside the International Space Station. These IVA tasks include interior environmental surveys (e.g., sound level measurement), inventory and mobile camera work. Astrobee will also serve as a platform for robotics research in microgravity. Here we describe the Astrobee project objectives, concept of operations, development approach, key challenges, and initial design.

Sensitivity to Angular and Radial Source Movements as a Function of Acoustic Complexity in Normal and Impaired Hearing

PubMed Central

Grimm, Giso; Hohmann, Volker; Laugesen, Søren; Neher, Tobias

2017-01-01

In contrast to static sounds, spatially dynamic sounds have received little attention in psychoacoustic research so far. This holds true especially for acoustically complex (reverberant, multisource) conditions and impaired hearing. The current study therefore investigated the influence of reverberation and the number of concurrent sound sources on source movement detection in young normal-hearing (YNH) and elderly hearing-impaired (EHI) listeners. A listening environment based on natural environmental sounds was simulated using virtual acoustics and rendered over headphones. Both near-far (‘radial’) and left-right (‘angular’) movements of a frontal target source were considered. The acoustic complexity was varied by adding static lateral distractor sound sources as well as reverberation. Acoustic analyses confirmed the expected changes in stimulus features that are thought to underlie radial and angular source movements under anechoic conditions and suggested a special role of monaural spectral changes under reverberant conditions. Analyses of the detection thresholds showed that, with the exception of the single-source scenarios, the EHI group was less sensitive to source movements than the YNH group, despite adequate stimulus audibility. Adding static sound sources clearly impaired the detectability of angular source movements for the EHI (but not the YNH) group. Reverberation, on the other hand, clearly impaired radial source movement detection for the EHI (but not the YNH) listeners. These results illustrate the feasibility of studying factors related to auditory movement perception with the help of the developed test setup. PMID:28675088

Questionable sound exposure outside of the womb: frequency analysis of environmental noise in the neonatal intensive care unit.

PubMed

Lahav, Amir

2015-01-01

Recent research raises concerns about the adverse effects of noise exposure on the developing preterm infant. However, current guidelines for NICU noise remain focused on loudness levels, leaving the problem of exposure to potentially harmful sound frequencies largely overlooked. This study examined the frequency spectra present in a level-II NICU. Noise measurements were taken in two level-II open-bay nurseries. Measurements were taken over 5 days for a period of 24 h each. Spectral analysis was focused on comparing sound frequencies in the range of human speech during daytime (7 AM-7 PM) vs. night-time (7 PM-7 AM). On average, daytime noise levels (Leq = 60.05 dBA) were higher than night-time (Leq = 58.67 dBA). Spectral analysis of frequency bands (>50 dB) revealed that infants were exposed to frequencies <500 Hz 100% of the time and to frequencies >500 Hz 57% of the time. During daytime, infants were exposed to nearly 20% more sounds within the speech frequency range compared with night-time (p = 0.018). Measuring the frequency spectra of NICU sounds is necessary to attain a thorough understanding of both the noise levels and the type of sounds that preterm infants are exposed to throughout their hospital stay. The risk of high-frequency noise exposure in the preterm population is still unclear and warrants further investigation. © 2014 Foundation Acta Paediatrica. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Sensitivity to Angular and Radial Source Movements as a Function of Acoustic Complexity in Normal and Impaired Hearing.

PubMed

Lundbeck, Micha; Grimm, Giso; Hohmann, Volker; Laugesen, Søren; Neher, Tobias

2017-01-01

In contrast to static sounds, spatially dynamic sounds have received little attention in psychoacoustic research so far. This holds true especially for acoustically complex (reverberant, multisource) conditions and impaired hearing. The current study therefore investigated the influence of reverberation and the number of concurrent sound sources on source movement detection in young normal-hearing (YNH) and elderly hearing-impaired (EHI) listeners. A listening environment based on natural environmental sounds was simulated using virtual acoustics and rendered over headphones. Both near-far ('radial') and left-right ('angular') movements of a frontal target source were considered. The acoustic complexity was varied by adding static lateral distractor sound sources as well as reverberation. Acoustic analyses confirmed the expected changes in stimulus features that are thought to underlie radial and angular source movements under anechoic conditions and suggested a special role of monaural spectral changes under reverberant conditions. Analyses of the detection thresholds showed that, with the exception of the single-source scenarios, the EHI group was less sensitive to source movements than the YNH group, despite adequate stimulus audibility. Adding static sound sources clearly impaired the detectability of angular source movements for the EHI (but not the YNH) group. Reverberation, on the other hand, clearly impaired radial source movement detection for the EHI (but not the YNH) listeners. These results illustrate the feasibility of studying factors related to auditory movement perception with the help of the developed test setup.

Application of ERTS-1 imagery to the harvest model of the US Menhaden fishery

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Maughan, P. M.; Marmelstein, A. D.; Temple, O. R.

1973-01-01

Preliminary results of an experiment to demonstrate the utility of ERTS-1 imagery for providing significant information to the harvest model of the menhaden industry are reported. Fisheries and related environmental data were obtained discontinuously throughout the 1973 menhaden (a surface schooling, coastal species) fishing season in Mississippi Sound. The unexpected complexity of the physical environment in Mississippi Sound precluded simplistic analysis of fish/environment relationships. Preliminary indications are that an association does exist between fish availability and differences in water transparency (turbidity) within the Sound. A clearer relationship is developing between major turbid features, imaged by ERTS-1 and location of successful fishing attempts. On all occasions where relatively cloudfree ERTS-1 overflight days coincided with fishery activity, overlays of catch location of ERTS-1 images show an association of school position with interfaces between imaged turbid features. Analysis is currently underway to determine persistence of such associations in an attempt to define minimum satellite return time necessary to maintain continuity of associations.

Assessing underwater noise levels during pile-driving at an offshore windfarm and its potential effects on marine mammals.

PubMed

Bailey, Helen; Senior, Bridget; Simmons, Dave; Rusin, Jan; Picken, Gordon; Thompson, Paul M

2010-06-01

Marine renewable developments have raised concerns over impacts of underwater noise on marine species, particularly from pile-driving for wind turbines. Environmental assessments typically use generic sound propagation models, but empirical tests of these models are lacking. In 2006, two 5MW wind turbines were installed off NE Scotland. The turbines were in deep (>40m) water, 25km from the Moray Firth Special Area of Conservation (SAC), potentially affecting a protected population of bottlenose dolphins. We measured pile-driving noise at distances of 0.1 (maximum broadband peak to peak sound level 205dB re 1microPa) to 80km (no longer distinguishable above background noise). These sound levels were related to noise exposure criteria for marine mammals to assess possible effects. For bottlenose dolphins, auditory injury would only have occurred within 100m of the pile-driving and behavioural disturbance, defined as modifications in behaviour, could have occurred up to 50km away.

Deriving a dosage-response relationship for community response to high-energy impulsive noise

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Fidell, Sanford; Pearsons, Karl S.

1994-01-01

The inability to systematically predict community response to exposure to sonic booms (and other high energy impulsive sounds) is a major impediment to credible analyses of the environmental effects of supersonic flight operations. Efforts to assess community response to high energy impulsive sounds are limited in at least two important ways. First, a paucity of appropriate empirical data makes it difficult to infer a dosage-response relationship by means similar to those used in the case of general transportation noise. Second, it is unclear how well the 'equal energy hypothesis' (the notion that duration, number, and level of individual events are directly interchangeable determinants of annoyance) applies to some forms of impulsive noise exposure. Some of the issues currently under consideration by a CHABA working group addressing these problems are discussed. These include means for applying information gained in controlled exposure studies about different rates of growth of annoyance with impulsive and non-impulsive sound exposure levels, and strategies for developing a dosage-response relationship in a data-poor area.

Environmental development plan for transportation programs: FY80 update

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Saricks, C.L.; Singh, M.K.; Bernard, M.J. III

1980-09-01

This is the second annual update of the environmental development plan (EDP) for transportation programs. It has been prepared as a cooperative effort of the Assistant Secretaries for Conservation and Solar Energy (ASCS) Office of Transportation Programs (CS/TP) and the Environment (ASEV) Office of Environmental Assessments. EDPs identify the ecosystem, resource, physical environment, health, safety, socioeconomic, and environmental control concerns associated with DOE programs. The programs include the research, development, demonstration, and assessment (RDD and A) of 14 transportation technologies and several strategy implementation projects. This EDP update presents a research and assessment plan for resolving any potentially adverse environmentalmore » concerns arising from these programs. The EDP process provides a framework for: incorporating environmental concerns into CS/TP planning and decision processes early to ensure they are assigned the same importance as technological, fiscal, and institutional concerns in decision making; resolving environmental concerns concurrently with energy technology and strategy development; and providing a research schedule that mitigates adverse environmental effects through sound technological design or policy analysis. This EDP also describes the status of each environmental concern and the plan for its resolution. Much of ongoing DOE reseirch and technology development is aimed at resolving concerns identified in this EDP. Each EDP is intended to be so comprehensive that no concerns escape notice. Care is taken to include any CS/TP action that may eventually require an Environmental Impact Statement. Because technology demonstration and commercialization tend to raise more environmental concerns than other portions of the transportation program, most of this EDP addresses these concerns.« less

Regulatory Aspects on the Use of Fish Embryos in Environmental Toxicology

EPA Science Inventory

Animal alternative tests are gaining consideration in an array of environmental sciences, particularly as they relate to sound management of chemicals and wastewater discharges. The ILSI Health and Environmental Sciences Institute and the European Centre for Ecotoxicology and To...

A passive noise control approach utilizing air gaps with fibrous materials in the textile industry.

PubMed

Monazzam-Esmaeelpour, Mohammad Reza; Hashemi, Zahra; Golmohammadi, Rostam; Zaredar, Narges

2014-01-01

Noise pollution is currently a major risk factor in industries in both developed and developing countries.The present study assessed noise pollution in the knitting industry in Iran in 2009 and presented a control method to reduce the rate of noise generation. The overall noise level was estimated using the network environmental noise assessment method in Sina Poud textile mill in Hamadan. Then, frequency analysis was performed at indicator target stations in the linear network. Finally, a suitable absorbent was recommended for the ceilings, walls, and aerial panels at three phases according to the results found for the sound source and destination environment. The results showed that the highest sound pressure level was 98.5 dB and the lowest was 95.1 dB. The dominant frequency for the industry was 500 Hz. The highest and lowest sound suppression was achieved by intervention at 4000 Hz equivalent to 14.6 dB and 250 Hz in the textile industry. When noise control at the source is not available or insufficient because of the wide distribution of the acoustic field in the workplace, the best option is to increase the absorptive surface of the workplace using adsorbents such as polystyrene.

Sidescan sonar imagery and surficial geologic interpretation of the sea floor off Branford, Conneticut

USGS Publications Warehouse

Poppe, L.J.; Paskevich, V.F.; Moser, M.S.; DiGiacomo-Cohen, M. L.; Christman, E.B.

2004-01-01

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (CT DEP), Figure 1 - Map of Study Areahas produced detailed geologic maps of the sea floor in Long Island Sound, a major East Coast estuary surrounded by the most densely populated region of the United States. These studies have built upon cooperative research between the USGS and the State of Connecticut that was initiated in 1982. The current phase of this research program is directed toward studies of sea-floor sediment distribution, processes that control sediment distribution, nearshore environmental concerns, and the relation of benthic community structures to the sea-floor geology. Anthropogenic wastes, toxic chemicals, and changes in land-use patterns resulting from residential, commercial, and recreational development have stressed the environment of the Sound, causing degradation and potential loss of benthic habitats (Koppelman and others, 1976; Long Island Sound Study, 1994). Detailed maps of the sea floor are needed to help evaluate the extent of adverse impacts and to help wisely manage resources in the future. Therefore, in a continuing effort to better understand Long Island Sound, we are constructing and interpreting sidescan sonar mosaics (complete-coverage acoustic images of the sea floor) within specific areas of special interest (Poppe and Polloni, 1998). The mosaic presented herein, which was produced during survey H11043 by NOAA 's Atlantic Hydrographic Branch, covers approximately 41.1 km2 of the sea floor in north-central Long Island Sound off Branford, Connecticut. Shell bed provides shelter for juvenille skate.The mosaic and its interpretation serve many purposes, including: (1) defining the geological variability of the sea floor, which is one of the primary controls of benthic habitat diversity; (2) improving our understanding of the processes that control the distribution and transport of bottom sediments and the distribution of benthic habitats and associated infaunal community structures; and (3) providing a detailed framework for future research, monitoring, and management activities. The sidescan sonar mosaic also serves as a base map for subsequent sedimentological, geochemical, and biological observations, because precise information on environmental setting is important for selection of sampling sites and for appropriate interpretation of point measurements.

Puget Sound Dredged Disposal Analysis (PSDDA). Unconfined, Open-Water Disposal Sites for Dredged Material. Phase 1 (Central Puget Sound). National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)/State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA)

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-06-01

confined to a relatively small area. In 400 feet of water the descending cloud is approximately 250 feet in diameter (B. Trawle, personal communica- tion...when it hits the bottom, occuring 30 seconds after disposal is initiated. The collapsing cloud then spreads out in all directions. Ten minutes later...Compliance inspection6. Environ- mental monitorig an permin dp&nce insp ecti, arso part -disposal site management, are described in the MPR and the Management

Neuroanatomic organization of sound memory in humans.

PubMed

Kraut, Michael A; Pitcock, Jeffery A; Calhoun, Vince; Li, Juan; Freeman, Thomas; Hart, John

2006-11-01

The neural interface between sensory perception and memory is a central issue in neuroscience, particularly initial memory organization following perceptual analyses. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify anatomic regions extracting initial auditory semantic memory information related to environmental sounds. Two distinct anatomic foci were detected in the right superior temporal gyrus when subjects identified sounds representing either animals or threatening items. Threatening animal stimuli elicited signal changes in both foci, suggesting a distributed neural representation. Our results demonstrate both category- and feature-specific responses to nonverbal sounds in early stages of extracting semantic memory information from these sounds. This organization allows for these category-feature detection nodes to extract early, semantic memory information for efficient processing of transient sound stimuli. Neural regions selective for threatening sounds are similar to those of nonhuman primates, demonstrating semantic memory organization for basic biological/survival primitives are present across species.

[Tones and being tuned. Suggestions for the common origins of music therapy and hypnotherapy].

PubMed

Vas, József Pál

2013-01-01

Sound vibrations are viewed to play an important role in embryonic development. Before the cochlea evolves, the haptic and mechanic skin-receptors detect the amniotic fluid's pressure-waves produced by sounds in uterus. Touching and hearing are seen as primordial and the most relevant stimuli both of mother-fetus attunement and development of fetal nervous system. Man is attuned to environmental stimuli, mainly to human speaking since the embryonic period. Attunement is secured by energy zones (chakras) circling around body. It is considered to be base of our music capacity. Origin of hypnotic susceptibility is viewed as being in embryonic period as well. Movements, experiences supposed, bonding and communication patterns of both of fetus and hypnotized person are suggested to show similarities. Prenatal audio-somatosensory stimulating program facilitates newborn babies' cognitive, emotional and bonding capacities. As a matter of fact, by virtue of regressive fetus-like experiences, hypnotherapy contributes to the restart of personality development halted by trauma.

Psychoacoustical evaluation of natural and urban sounds in soundscapes.

PubMed

Yang, Ming; Kang, Jian

2013-07-01

Among various sounds in the environment, natural sounds, such as water sounds and birdsongs, have proven to be highly preferred by humans, but the reasons for these preferences have not been thoroughly researched. This paper explores differences between various natural and urban environmental sounds from the viewpoint of objective measures, especially psychoacoustical parameters. The sound samples used in this study include the recordings of single sound source categories of water, wind, birdsongs, and urban sounds including street music, mechanical sounds, and traffic noise. The samples are analyzed with a number of existing psychoacoustical parameter algorithmic models. Based on hierarchical cluster and principal components analyses of the calculated results, a series of differences has been shown among different sound types in terms of key psychoacoustical parameters. While different sound categories cannot be identified using any single acoustical and psychoacoustical parameter, identification can be made with a group of parameters, as analyzed with artificial neural networks and discriminant functions in this paper. For artificial neural networks, correlations between network predictions and targets using the average and standard deviation data of psychoacoustical parameters as inputs are above 0.95 for the three natural sound categories and above 0.90 for the urban sound category. For sound identification/classification, key parameters are fluctuation strength, loudness, and sharpness.

From environmental noise abatement to soundscape creation through strategic noise mapping in medium urban agglomerations in South Europe.

PubMed

Vogiatzis, Konstantinos; Remy, Nicolas

2014-06-01

In the framework of the European Directive 2002-49-EU, the medium sized cities of Volos and Larissa in central Greece recently completed (2012) their strategic noise maps and relevant action plans that define the main strategies to reduce noise exposure of residents and introduce and preserve "quite zones". For the first time in this framework, it has been decided to introduce, as well, a general study for five specific urban districts covering not only the measurement and modeling of environmental noise levels but also qualitative surveys on the sound perception by the residents and several analyses of the urban and architectural tissue. The districts (respectively four in Volos and one in Larissa with the two of them in the center of both agglomerations) were chosen as representatives of urban situations due to their proximity to transportation infrastructures (main road network, industrial harbor facilities and both regional and intercity train network) and also because they represent different urban typologies (residential district, downtown area with or without shops, more or less densely populated neighborhood, etc.…). Sociological surveys on sound and noise perception have been implemented on some 15% of the residents per district using opened questionnaires. Soundscape analysis was also conducted through qualitative criteria. A cross-analysis of these data explains in detail the physical reasons for the existence of sound qualities that contribute to the identity of each distinct neighborhood. This paper, in a strategic plan level, has introduced valuable recommendations in order not only to preserve the sound quality on the existing sites but also to authorize developers and decision makers (mayors, architects, town planners) to evolve them positively over time. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Passive Environmental ASW Prediction System (PEAPS)

DTIC Science & Technology

1975-03-01

Because the Frye and Pugh equation [1] for sound speed is dominated by temperature terms and requires relatively few program steps compared with...other speed of sound equations , it was used in the sound speed profile sub- program . The equation was modified to use the approximation ASS ASS AP • ASS AZ...in ppt (parts per thousand). 21 The SSP sub- program converts the input data to MKS units for use in the above equation and then converts the resultant

Enviromentally Sound Timber Extracting Techniques for Small Tree Harvesting

Treesearch

Lihai Wang

1999-01-01

Due to large area disturbed and great deal of energy cost during-its operations, introducing or applying the appropriate timber extracting techniques could significantly reduce the impact of timber extraction operations to forest environment while pursuing the reasonable operation costs. Four environmentally sound timber extraction techniques for small tree harvesting...

NORTH AMERICA'S SOUND MANAGEMENT OF CHEMICALS INITIATIVE: APPLICATION OF SELECTION CRITERIA TO DIOXINS/FURANS, HEXACHLOROBENZENE, AND HEXACHLOROCYCLOHEXANES

EPA Science Inventory

In October 1997, the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation finalized its process for identifying candidate substances for regional action under the Sound Management of Chemicals Initiative. Regional action plans will be prepared if substantive risk to human he...

75 FR 21571 - Marine Mammal Protection Act; Deterrence Guidelines

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-04-26

...: Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior. ACTION: Proposed rule; availability of draft environmental... bear-proof garbage containers to exclude polar bear access and limit food-conditioning and habituation... able to detect sounds down to 125 Hertz (Hz) (Bowles et al. 2008) and high- frequency sounds up to 22.5...

77 FR 1078 - San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Sonoma, Napa, and Solano Counties, CA; Final...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-01-09

... principles of sound fish and wildlife management. Based on the associated environmental assessment, this... contributing toward the mission of the National Wildlife Refuge System, consistent with sound principles of fish and wildlife management, conservation, legal mandates, and our policies. In addition to outlining...

Sound, Noise, and Vibration Control.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yerges, Lyle F.

This working guide on the principles and techniques of controlling acoustical environment is discussed in the light of human, environmental and building needs. The nature of sound and its variables are defined. The acoustical environment and its many materials, spaces and functional requirements are described, with specific methods for planning,…

40 CFR 205.54-1 - Low speed sound emission test procedures.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 26 2012-07-01 2011-07-01 true Low speed sound emission test procedures. 205.54-1 Section 205.54-1 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED.... Operating manuals or other literature furnished by the instrument manufacturer shall be referred to for both...

40 CFR 205.54-1 - Low speed sound emission test procedures.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 24 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Low speed sound emission test procedures. 205.54-1 Section 205.54-1 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) NOISE ABATEMENT PROGRAMS TRANSPORTATION EQUIPMENT NOISE EMISSION CONTROLS Medium and Heavy Trucks § 205...

School Solutions. Special Report: IAQ and Energy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Birr, Dave

1999-01-01

Discusses how energy service companies (ESCO) can help schools upgrade their indoor air quality and make them environmentally sound. How ESCO's help in arranging funding for indoor environmental improvements through energy performance contracts is discussed. Tips on energy-efficiency measures for improving indoor environmental quality are…

CHAPTER 9: PROTECTING ENVIRONMENTAL WELFARE: COMPARISON OF EMERGETIC AND ECONOMIC VALUATION

EPA Science Inventory

To protect human and environmental welfare, the US EPA aims to base environmental regulations and policies on sound scientific and, where possible, economic analyses. The EPA has accordingly conducted analysis of the economic impact of regulations for three decades but has yet ...

Development of small solid rocket boosters for the ILR-33 sounding rocket

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nowakowski, Pawel; Okninski, Adam; Pakosz, Michal; Cieslinski, Dawid; Bartkowiak, Bartosz; Wolanski, Piotr

2017-09-01

This paper gives an overview of the development of a 6000 Newton-class solid rocket motor for suborbital applications. The design configuration and results of interior ballistics calculations are given. The initial use of the motor as the main propulsion system of the H1 experimental in-flight test platform, within the Polish Small Sounding Rocket Program, is presented. Comparisons of theoretical and experimental performance are shown. Both on-ground and in-flight tests are discussed. A novel composite-case manufacturing technology, which enabled to reach high propellant mass fractions, was validated and significant cost-reductions were achieved. This paper focuses on the process of adapting the design for use as the booster stage of the ILR-33 sounding rocket, under development at the Institute of Aviation in Warsaw, Poland. Parallel use of two of the flight-proven rocket motors along with the main stage is planned. The process of adapting the rocket motor for booster application consists of stage integration, aerothermodynamics and reliability analyses. The separation mechanism and environmental impact are also discussed within this paper. Detailed performance analysis with focus on propellant grain geometry is provided. The evolution of the design since the first flights of the H1 rocket is covered and modifications of the manufacturing process are described. Issues of simultaneous ignition of two motors and their non-identical performance are discussed. Further applications and potential for future development are outlined. The presented results are based on the initial work done by the Rocketry Group of the Warsaw University of Technology Students' Space Association. The continuation of the Polish Small Sounding Rocket Program on a larger scale at the Institute of Aviation proves the value of the outcomes of the initial educational project.

The Blue Öresund Bridge of Knowledge

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hellström, Åsa; Palmgren, Michael

2017-04-01

The Blue Öresund Bridge of Knowledge (BÖBK) is a unique project between Malmö, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark around The Sound. BÖBK aims to educate the next generation to become active citizens who take part in creating a sustainable marine future. It is important that future generations are capable of responding to challenges generated in society. Through practical, creative and innovative learning programs we are working on giving the school children, and their teachers, the insight, skills and commitment needed to take on the fight for a clean environment, bright future and blue waters. Thirty years ago, the Sound was a dead, eutrophic and polluted sea. With joint efforts for those environmental issues and with greater understanding of our sea, from both countries, the water in The Sound has improved, fish stocks increased, and the seabed is healthy. Despite one of Europe's largest constructions works, The Öresund Bridge. The Sound is a unique ocean with strong currents and with varying salinity. Which means a rich, varied biological life. In BÖBK, which is a unique three-year project between the two municipalities, Malmö and Copenhagen and actors like Malmö Museum, Malmö Aquarium, SEA-U Marine Science Center in Sweden and The Blue Planet, Öresund Environmental School in Denmark, we work hands-on with students and teachers from the two schools, in Malmö and Copenhagen. The aim of the project is that the students, who are 13-15 years old, get a deeper understanding of our marine environment, The Sound, through its ecosystem services, and what human influence can do. Students also practice their action competence regarding own actions and lifestyle choices based on this knowledge. Students learn more about history, marine science and the biodiversity of The Sound. But also, how important fisheries have been in the region since the Middle Ages. Marine food has a prominent position in the project where students are taught to fish their own fish in a sustainable way, cook the catch of fish and algae and then the students together eating the food. Students will also examine how blue biomass from the sea (mussels and algae) can be used to produce biogas fuel for the city buses. In parallel with the curriculum, the project also has elements of language development, both in Swedish and Danish. Together we also work for The Sound to become a biosphere area within the UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme and with the support of the new marine science center, which will open later this fall, we build greater knowledge and skills of citizens around the Sound. BÖBK is build on the Öresund region's thoughts of becoming a metropolitan region in the future. Keywords: biodiversity, ecosystem services. education, involvement, sustainable future, youth, citizenship, collaboration, language development, ocean literacy, outdoor learning/education, place based learning, challenge based learning.

A Space Based Internet Protocol System for Launch Vehicle Tracking and Control

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bull, Barton; Grant, Charles; Morgan, Dwayne; Streich, Ron; Bauer, Frank (Technical Monitor)

2001-01-01

Personnel from the Goddard Space Flight Center Wallops Flight Facility (GSFC/WFF) in Virginia are responsible for the overall management of the NASA Sounding Rocket and Scientific Balloon Programs. Payloads are generally in support of NASA's Space Science Enterprise's missions and return a variety of scientific data as well as providing a reasonably economical means of conducting engineering tests for instruments and devices used on satellites and other spacecraft. Sounding rockets used by NASA can carry payloads of various weights to altitudes from 50 km to more than 1,300 km. Scientific balloons can carry a payload weighing as much as 3,630 Kg to an altitude of 42 km. Launch activities for both are conducted not only from established ranges, but also from remote locations worldwide requiring mobile tracking and command equipment to be transported and set up at considerable expense. The advent of low earth orbit (LEO) commercial communications satellites provides an opportunity to dramatically reduce tracking and control costs of these launch vehicles and Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by reducing or eliminating this ground infrastructure. Additionally, since data transmission is by packetized Internet Protocol (IP), data can be received and commands initiated from practically any location. A low cost Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) system is currently under development for sounding rockets that also has application to UAVs and scientific balloons. Due to relatively low data rate (9600 baud) currently available, the system will first be used to provide GPS data for tracking and vehicle recovery. Range safety requirements for launch vehicles usually stipulate at least two independent tracking sources. Most sounding rockets flown by NASA now carry GP receivers that output position data via the payload telemetry system to the ground station. The Flight Modem can be configured as a completely separate link thereby eliminating the requirement for tracking radar. The system architecture that integrates antennas, GPS receiver, commercial satellite packet data modem, and a single board computer with custom software is described along with the technical challenges and the plan for their resolution. These include antenna development, high Doppler rates, reliability, environmental ruggedness, hand over between satellites, and data security. An aggressive test plan is included which, in addition to environmental testing, measures bit error rate, latency and antenna patterns. Actual launches on a sounding rocket and various aircraft flights have taken place. Flight tests are planned for the near future on aircraft, long duration balloons and sounding rockets. These results, as well as the current status of the project, are reported.

Relation Between the Overall Impression of the Sound Environment and Types and Loudness of Environmental Sounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

KAWAI, K.; YANO, T.

2002-02-01

This paper reports an experimental study determining the effects of the type and loudness of individual sounds on the overall impression of the sound environment. Field and laboratory experiments were carried out. In each experiment, subjects evaluated the sound environment presented, which consisted of combinations of three individual sounds of road traffic, singing crickets and the murmuring of a river, with five bipolar adjective scales such as Good-Bad, Active-Calm and Natural-Artificial. Overall loudness had the strongest effect on most types of evaluations; relative SPL has a greater effect than overall loudness on a particular evaluation of the natural-artificial scale. The test sounds in the field experiment were generally evaluated as more good and more natural than those in the laboratory. The results of comparisons between laboratory and field sounds indicate a difference in the trend between them. This difference may be explained by the term of selective listening but that needs further investigation.

Spatio-Temporal Evolution of Sound Speed Channels on the Chukchi Shelf

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Eickmeier, J.; Badiey, M.; Wan, L.

2017-12-01

The physics of an acoustic waveguide are influenced by various boundary conditions as well as spatial and temporal fluctuations in temperature and salinity profiles the water column. The shallow water Canadian Basin Acoustic Propagation Experiment (CANAPE) experiment was designed to study the effect of oceanographic variability on the acoustic field. A pilot study was conducted in the summer of 2015, full deployment of acoustic and environmental moorings took place in 2016, and recovery will occur in late 2017. An example of strong oceanographic variability in the SW region is depicted in Figure 1. Over the course of 7 days, warm Bering Sea water arrived on the Chukchi Shelf and sank in the water column to between 25 m and 125 m depth. This warm water spread to a range of 10 km and a potential eddy of warm water formed causing an increase in sound speed between 15 km and 20 km range in Fig. 1(b). Due to the increased sound speed, a strong sound channel evolved between 100 m and 200 m for acoustic waves arriving from off the shelf, deep water sources. In Fig. 1(a), the initial formation of the acoustic channel is only evident in 50 m to 100 m of water out to a range of 5 km. Recorded environmental data will be used to study fluctuations in sound speed channel formation on the Chukchi Shelf. Data collected in 2015 and 2016 have shown sound duct evolution over 7 days and over a one-month period. Analysis is projected to show sound channel formation over a new range of spatio-temporal scales. This analysis will show a cycle of sound channels opening and closing on the shelf, where this cycle strongly influences the propagation path, range and attenuation of acoustic waves.

Fish sound production in the presence of harmful algal blooms in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

PubMed

Wall, Carrie C; Lembke, Chad; Hu, Chuanmin; Mann, David A

2014-01-01

This paper presents the first known research to examine sound production by fishes during harmful algal blooms (HABs). Most fish sound production is species-specific and repetitive, enabling passive acoustic monitoring to identify the distribution and behavior of soniferous species. Autonomous gliders that collect passive acoustic data and environmental data concurrently can be used to establish the oceanographic conditions surrounding sound-producing organisms. Three passive acoustic glider missions were conducted off west-central Florida in October 2011, and September and October 2012. The deployment period for two missions was dictated by the presence of red tide events with the glider path specifically set to encounter toxic Karenia brevis blooms (a.k.a red tides). Oceanographic conditions measured by the glider were significantly correlated to the variation in sounds from six known or suspected species of fish across the three missions with depth consistently being the most significant factor. At the time and space scales of this study, there was no detectable effect of red tide on sound production. Sounds were still recorded within red tide-affected waters from species with overlapping depth ranges. These results suggest that the fishes studied here did not alter their sound production nor migrate out of red tide-affected areas. Although these results are preliminary because of the limited measurements, the data and methods presented here provide a proof of principle and could serve as protocol for future studies on the effects of algal blooms on the behavior of soniferous fishes. To fully capture the effects of episodic events, we suggest that stationary or vertically profiling acoustic recorders and environmental sampling be used as a complement to glider measurements.

Fish Sound Production in the Presence of Harmful Algal Blooms in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico

PubMed Central

Wall, Carrie C.; Lembke, Chad; Hu, Chuanmin; Mann, David A.

2014-01-01

This paper presents the first known research to examine sound production by fishes during harmful algal blooms (HABs). Most fish sound production is species-specific and repetitive, enabling passive acoustic monitoring to identify the distribution and behavior of soniferous species. Autonomous gliders that collect passive acoustic data and environmental data concurrently can be used to establish the oceanographic conditions surrounding sound-producing organisms. Three passive acoustic glider missions were conducted off west-central Florida in October 2011, and September and October 2012. The deployment period for two missions was dictated by the presence of red tide events with the glider path specifically set to encounter toxic Karenia brevis blooms (a.k.a red tides). Oceanographic conditions measured by the glider were significantly correlated to the variation in sounds from six known or suspected species of fish across the three missions with depth consistently being the most significant factor. At the time and space scales of this study, there was no detectable effect of red tide on sound production. Sounds were still recorded within red tide-affected waters from species with overlapping depth ranges. These results suggest that the fishes studied here did not alter their sound production nor migrate out of red tide-affected areas. Although these results are preliminary because of the limited measurements, the data and methods presented here provide a proof of principle and could serve as protocol for future studies on the effects of algal blooms on the behavior of soniferous fishes. To fully capture the effects of episodic events, we suggest that stationary or vertically profiling acoustic recorders and environmental sampling be used as a complement to glider measurements. PMID:25551564

International E-Waste Management Network (IEMN)

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

EPA and the Environmental Protection Administration Taiwan (EPAT) have collaborated since 2011 to build global capacity for the environmentally sound management of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), which is commonly called e-waste.

Environmentally adaptive processing for shallow ocean applications: A sequential Bayesian approach.

PubMed

Candy, J V

2015-09-01

The shallow ocean is a changing environment primarily due to temperature variations in its upper layers directly affecting sound propagation throughout. The need to develop processors capable of tracking these changes implies a stochastic as well as an environmentally adaptive design. Bayesian techniques have evolved to enable a class of processors capable of performing in such an uncertain, nonstationary (varying statistics), non-Gaussian, variable shallow ocean environment. A solution to this problem is addressed by developing a sequential Bayesian processor capable of providing a joint solution to the modal function tracking and environmental adaptivity problem. Here, the focus is on the development of both a particle filter and an unscented Kalman filter capable of providing reasonable performance for this problem. These processors are applied to hydrophone measurements obtained from a vertical array. The adaptivity problem is attacked by allowing the modal coefficients and/or wavenumbers to be jointly estimated from the noisy measurement data along with tracking of the modal functions while simultaneously enhancing the noisy pressure-field measurements.

Environmental Assessment: Installation Development at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-04-01

intensity, frequency, and duration. Sound is created by acoustic energy, which produces minute pressure waves that travel through a medium, like...acoustic energy increases, the intensity or amplitude of these pressure waves increase, and the ear senses louder noise. The unit used to measure the...shale, siltstone, sandstone, limestone, and dolomite ranging in age from Cambrian-Ordovician through Permian. These sedimentary units rest upon the Pre

Toxicology in Australia: a key component of environmental health.

PubMed

Priestly, Brian G; Di Marco, Peter; Sim, Malcolm; Moore, Michael R; Langley, Andrew

2007-10-01

Managing public concerns relating to chemical exposures can consume substantial public health resources, particularly as the scientific basis around these issues is often contentious. Toxicology remains underrecognized as a public health discipline in Australia, although Australian toxicologists are making significant contributions from academia, government, and the commercial sector toward assessing the level of risk and protecting the community from environmental hazards. Internationally, the growth of environmental toxicology and the promotion of sound science in risk assessment as a basis for making regulatory decisions have been, to some extent, driven by the outcomes of the 1992 UNCED Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio Summit) and its Chapter 19 Agenda 21 activities. The promotion of safe chemical management practices and the need for global strengthening of capabilities in toxicology are among the initiatives of the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS), which was formed after the Rio Summit to manage these programs. This article describes some of the initiatives in capacity building that marked the development of environmental toxicology in Australia since 1992 in response to these international environmental health initiatives.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Daniel F. Ancona III; Kathryn E. George; Richard P. Bowers

This study, supported by the US Department of Energy, Wind Powering America Program, Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Chesapeake Bay Foundation, analyzed barriers to wind energy development in the Mid-Atlantic region along with options for overcoming or mitigating them. The Mid-Atlantic States including Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia, have excellent wind energy potential and growing demand for electricity, but only two utility-scale projects have been installed to date. Reasons for this apathetic development of wind resources were analyzed and quantified for four markets. Specific applications are: 1) Appalachian mountain ridgeline sites, 2) on coastal plains and peninsulas, 3)more » at shallow water sites in Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, and 4) at deeper water sites off the Atlantic coast. Each market has distinctly different opportunities and barriers. The primary barriers to wind development described in this report can be grouped into four categories; state policy and regulatory issues, wind resource technical uncertainty, economic viability, and public interest in environmental issues. The properties of these typologies are not mutually independent and do interact. The report concluded that there are no insurmountable barriers to land-based wind energy projects and they could be economically viable today. Likewise potential sites in sheltered shallow waters in regional bay and sounds have been largely overlooked but could be viable currently. Offshore ocean-based applications face higher costs and technical and wind resource uncertainties. The ongoing research and development program, revision of state incentive policies, additional wind measurement efforts, transmission system expansion, environmental baseline studies and outreach to private developers and stakeholders are needed to reduce barriers to wind energy development.« less

Managing the Environment for Older Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gelwicks, Louis E.; Weinstock, Ruth

1980-01-01

The environmental adjustments required to make campuses responsive to the needs of older persons are seen as tending to fall in the realm of environmental management. Security, orientation, sight, sound, ambient temperature, seating, time, transportation, lounges, and campus residence halls are some environmental needs which are discussed. (MLW)

A Space Based Internet Protocol System for Sub-Orbital Tracking and Control

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bull, Barton; Grant, Charles; Morgan, Dwayne; Streich, Ron; Bauer, Frank (Technical Monitor)

2001-01-01

Personnel from the Goddard Space Flight Center Wallops Flight Facility (GSFC/WFF) in Virginia are responsible for the overall management of the NASA Sounding Rocket Program. Payloads are generally in support of NASA's Space Science Enterprise's missions and return a variety of scientific data as well as providing a reasonably economical means of conducting engineering tests for instruments and devices used on satellites and other spacecraft. The fifteen types of sounding rockets used by NASA can carry payloads of various weights to altitudes from 50 km to more than 1,300 km. Launch activities are conducted not only from established missile ranges, but also from remote locations worldwide requiring mobile tracking and command equipment to be transported and set up at considerable expense. The advent of low earth orbit (LEO) commercial communications satellites provides an opportunity to dramatically reduce tracking and control costs of launch vehicles and Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by reducing or eliminating this ground infrastructure. Additionally, since data transmission is by packetized Internet Protocol (IP), data can be received and commands initiated from practically any location. A low cost Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) system is currently under development for sounding rockets which also has application to UAVs and scientific balloons. Due to relatively low data rate (9600 baud) currently available, the system will first be used to provide GPS data for tracking and vehicle recovery. Range safety requirements for launch vehicles usually stipulate at least two independent tracking sources. Most sounding rockets flown by NASA now carry GPS receivers that output position data via the payload telemetry system to the ground station. The Flight Modem can be configured as a completely separate link thereby eliminating requirement for tracking radar. The system architecture which integrates antennas, GPS receiver, commercial satellite packet data modem, and a single board computer with custom software is described along with the technical challenges and the plan for their resolution. These include antenna development, high Doppler rates, reliability, environmental ruggedness, hand over between satellites and data security. An aggressive test plan is included which in addition to environmental testing measures bit error rate, latency and antenna patterns. Actual flight tests are planned for the near future on aircraft, long duration balloons and sounding rockets and these results as well as the current status of the project are reported.

The modulation of auditory novelty processing by working memory load in school age children and adults: a combined behavioral and event-related potential study

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background We investigated the processing of task-irrelevant and unexpected novel sounds and its modulation by working-memory load in children aged 9-10 and in adults. Environmental sounds (novels) were embedded amongst frequently presented standard sounds in an auditory-visual distraction paradigm. Each sound was followed by a visual target. In two conditions, participants evaluated the position of a visual stimulus (0-back, low load) or compared the position of the current stimulus with the one two trials before (2-back, high load). Processing of novel sounds were measured with reaction times, hit rates and the auditory event-related brain potentials (ERPs) Mismatch Negativity (MMN), P3a, Reorienting Negativity (RON) and visual P3b. Results In both memory load conditions novels impaired task performance in adults whereas they improved performance in children. Auditory ERPs reflect age-related differences in the time-window of the MMN as children showed a positive ERP deflection to novels whereas adults lack an MMN. The attention switch towards the task irrelevant novel (reflected by P3a) was comparable between the age groups. Adults showed more efficient reallocation of attention (reflected by RON) under load condition than children. Finally, the P3b elicited by the visual target stimuli was reduced in both age groups when the preceding sound was a novel. Conclusion Our results give new insights in the development of novelty processing as they (1) reveal that task-irrelevant novel sounds can result in contrary effects on the performance in a visual primary task in children and adults, (2) show a positive ERP deflection to novels rather than an MMN in children, and (3) reveal effects of auditory novels on visual target processing. PMID:20929535

Species Profiles: Life Histories and Environmental Requirements of Coastal Fishes and Invertebrates (Pacific Northwest). Chinook Salmon.

DTIC Science & Technology

1983-10-01

river and tidal currents during Islands. Certain races of chinook ebb tide. Miller et al. (1967) ob- salmon, such as the Puget Sound black- served...65.6-ft) depth level, to five-year-old chinook salmon com- between mid-May and September in Puget prised the bulk of the troll catch in Sound . the...in Puget Sound and concluded that (Leitritz and Lewis 1980). Whitmore the bulk of this interaction occurred et al. (1960) described a marked avoid

Draft Detailed Project Report and Draft Environmental Assessment. Neah Bay Navigation Improvements, Neah Bay, Washington

DTIC Science & Technology

1993-11-01

navigation improvements for Neah Bay, Clallam Bay, and Port Angeles was begun under the Puget Sound and Adjacent Waters, General Investigations authority. The...Regonnaissance Report and Plan of Study. Puget Sound and Adjacent Waters. Washington. Northern Olympic Peninsula Shallow-Draft Naviaation Study, August 1983...operators from having to make long trips from the fishing grounds near Neah Bay to ports farther east in the Strait of Juan de Fuca or in Puget Sound . 9 9

Lummi Bay Marina, Whatcom County, Washington. Draft Detailed Project Report and Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

DTIC Science & Technology

1983-12-01

observations of qray whales from the waters inside of Wasbington including the eastern Strait of Juan de ruca, the San Juan Islands, Puget Sound , and Hood...waters in winter. in the North Pacific this E.ecies is presently estimated tc number about 17,000 animals. One fin whale was pursued in Puget Sound i...owns submerged lands from tideland elevation -4.5 feet MLLW to deep water in Puget Sound . The Lummi Tribe (local sponsor) owns Reservation lands above

Carrier Battle Group (CVBG) Homeporting in the Puget Sound Area, Washington State. Technical Appendices.

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-11-01

whales , sei whales , sperm whales and leatherback sea turtles within t e inland waters of Puget Sound clearly indicates that the...AL)-A175 114 CARRIER BATTLE GROUP CCVBG) HOKEPORTING In THE PUGET In SOUND AREA WASHINGTON STATE TECHNICAL APPENDICESeu) CORPS OF ENGINEERS SEATTLE...34 , ,’ ’, ’ , % ". ". ", ." , , -,, ". ", . ,,, ’. .. ". -"’. -".’-".’,. Final Supplemental to U.S. Navy/ Environmental Impact Statement Carrier Battle Group

Lessons from the great egret: Cosmopolitan species as environmental guides

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lewis, Celia

This dissertation is an experiment in environmental learning. The cosmopolitan species, the great egret (Egretta alba), is used as a guide to learning about local environmental history and local ecology in four places: Long Island Sound, USA; Delaware Bay, USA; Neusiedler See, Austria; and the Hunter River Valley in New South Wales, Australia. It is also used as a guide to the development of a cosmopolitan environmental perspective. The development of this broad perspective is based on the thesis that knowledge of the ecology of species mobility and cosmopolitanism may bring to light ecological connections within and between places, and that human migration and cultural mobility are also part of the ecological history of the environment. The concept of species guides is reviewed in nature literature, including examples from the works of Richard Nelson, Robert Michael Pyle, Terry Tempest Williams, Scott Weidensaul, and Peter Matthiessen. The author visits egret colonies, interviews biologists working at these sites, and develops narratives about the environmental history and the cultural history of each site, and the connections between egrets and humans in those places. Parallels are drawn between the migrant and cosmopolitan nature of great egrets and other species, and of the human species, and how recognition of these similarities can lead to a cosmopolitan environmental perspective.

Environmental Measurement in Schools: Electronics in Field Studies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crellin, J. R.

1978-01-01

The use of environmental meters designed to measure conductivity, light level, oxygen, pH, sound, and temperature are discussed. Criteria for choosing suitable equipment are suggested and, where possible, cheaper alternatives are mentioned. (Author/BB)

Characterization of Sheep Wool as a Sustainable Material for Acoustic Applications

PubMed Central

Uris, Antonio; Candelas, Pilar

2017-01-01

In recent years, natural materials are becoming a valid alternative to traditional sound absorbers due to reduced production costs and environmental protection. This paper reports the acoustical characterization of sheep wool. Measurements on normal incidence and diffuse-incidence sound absorption coefficients of different samples are reported. The airflow resistance has also been measured. The results prove that sheep wool has a comparable sound absorption performance to that of mineral wool or recycled polyurethane foam. An empirical model is used to calculate the sound absorption of sheep wool samples. A reasonable agreement on the acoustic absorption of all sheep wool samples is obtained. PMID:29112133

Characterization of Sheep Wool as a Sustainable Material for Acoustic Applications.

PubMed

Del Rey, Romina; Uris, Antonio; Alba, Jesús; Candelas, Pilar

2017-11-07

In recent years, natural materials are becoming a valid alternative to traditional sound absorbers due to reduced production costs and environmental protection. This paper reports the acoustical characterization of sheep wool. Measurements on normal incidence and diffuse-incidence sound absorption coefficients of different samples are reported. The airflow resistance has also been measured. The results prove that sheep wool has a comparable sound absorption performance to that of mineral wool or recycled polyurethane foam. An empirical model is used to calculate the sound absorption of sheep wool samples. A reasonable agreement on the acoustic absorption of all sheep wool samples is obtained.

Population diversity in Pacific herring of the Puget Sound, USA.

PubMed

Siple, Margaret C; Francis, Tessa B

2016-01-01

Demographic, functional, or habitat diversity can confer stability on populations via portfolio effects (PEs) that integrate across multiple ecological responses and buffer against environmental impacts. The prevalence of these PEs in aquatic organisms is as yet unknown, and can be difficult to quantify; however, understanding mechanisms that stabilize populations in the face of environmental change is a key concern in ecology. Here, we examine PEs in Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) in Puget Sound (USA) using a 40-year time series of biomass data for 19 distinct spawning population units collected using two survey types. Multivariate auto-regressive state-space models show independent dynamics among spawning subpopulations, suggesting that variation in herring production is partially driven by local effects at spawning grounds or during the earliest life history stages. This independence at the subpopulation level confers a stabilizing effect on the overall Puget Sound spawning stock, with herring being as much as three times more stable in the face of environmental perturbation than a single population unit of the same size. Herring populations within Puget Sound are highly asynchronous but share a common negative growth rate and may be influenced by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The biocomplexity in the herring stock shown here demonstrates that preserving spatial and demographic diversity can increase the stability of this herring population and its availability as a resource for consumers.

PHYTOPLANKTON DYNAMICS IN A GULF OF MEXICO ESTUARY: TIME SERIES OF SIZE STRUCTURE, NUTRIENTS, VARIABLE FLUORESCENCE AND ALGAL PHOSPHATASE ACTIVITY

EPA Science Inventory

Relationships between phytoplankton dynamics and physiology, and environmental conditions were studied in Santa Rosa Sound, Florida, USA, at near-weekly intervals during 2001. Santa Rosa Sound is a component of the Pensacola Bay estuary in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Parameters ...

Children's Moral and Ecological Reasoning about the Prince William Sound Oil Spill.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kahn, Peter H., Jr.; Friedman, Batya

This study investigated children's moral and ecological conceptions and values about an actual, environmentally destructive accident, the large oil spill that occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1989. Sixty children from second, fifth, and eighth grades were interviewed on children's reasoning and understandings about the oil spill which…

Enhanced Sidescan-Sonar Imagery, North-Central Long Island Sound

USGS Publications Warehouse

McMullen, K.Y.; Poppe, L.J.; Schattgen, P.T.; Doran, E.F.

2008-01-01

The U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection have been working cooperatively to map the sea-floor geology within Long Island Sound. Sidescan-sonar imagery collected during three NOAA hydrographic surveys (H11043, H11044, and H11045) was used to interpret the surficial-sediment distribution and sedimentary environments within the Sound. The original sidescan-sonar imagery generated by NOAA was used to evaluate hazards to navigation, which does not require consistent tonal matching throughout the survey. In order to fully utilize these data for geologic interpretation, artifacts within the imagery, primarily due to sidescan-system settings (for example, gain changes), processing techniques (for example, lack of across-track normalization) and environmental noise (for example, sea state), need to be minimized. Sidescan-sonar imagery from surveys H11043, H11044, and H11045 in north-central Long Island Sound was enhanced by matching the grayscale tones between adjacent sidescan-sonar lines to decrease the patchwork effect caused by numerous artifacts and to provide a more coherent sidescan-sonar image for use in geologic interpretation.

Adding sound to theory of mind: Comparing children's development of mental-state understanding in the auditory and visual realms.

PubMed

Hasni, Anita A; Adamson, Lauren B; Williamson, Rebecca A; Robins, Diana L

2017-12-01

Theory of mind (ToM) gradually develops during the preschool years. Measures of ToM usually target visual experience, but auditory experiences also provide valuable social information. Given differences between the visual and auditory modalities (e.g., sights persist, sounds fade) and the important role environmental input plays in social-cognitive development, we asked whether modality might influence the progression of ToM development. The current study expands Wellman and Liu's ToM scale (2004) by testing 66 preschoolers using five standard visual ToM tasks and five newly crafted auditory ToM tasks. Age and gender effects were found, with 4- and 5-year-olds demonstrating greater ToM abilities than 3-year-olds and girls passing more tasks than boys; there was no significant effect of modality. Both visual and auditory tasks formed a scalable set. These results indicate that there is considerable consistency in when children are able to use visual and auditory inputs to reason about various aspects of others' mental states. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Data-driven Inquiry in Environmental Restoration Studies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zalles, D. R.; Montgomery, D. R.

2008-12-01

Place-based field work has been recognized as an important component of geoscience education programs for engaging students. Field work helps students appreciate the spatial extent of data and the systems operating in a locale. Data collected in a place has a temporal aspect that can be explored through representations such as photographs and maps and also though numerical data sets that capture characteristics of place. Yet, experiencing authentic geoscience research in an educational setting requires going beyond fieldwork: students must develop data literacy skills that will enable them to connect abstract representations of spatio-temporal data with place. Educational researchers at SRI International led by Dr. Daniel Zalles, developer of inquiry-based geoscience curricula, and geoscientists at the University of Washington (UW) led by Dr. David Montgomery, Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, are building educational curriculum modules that help students make these connections. The modules concern the environmental history of the Puget Sound area in Washington State and its relevance for the American Indians living there. This collaborative project relies on environmental data collected in the Puget Sound Regional Synthesis Model (PRISM) and Puget Sound River History Project. The data sets are being applied to inquiry-based geoscience investigations at the undergraduate and high school level. The modules consist of problem-based units centered on the data sets, plus geographic and other data representations. The modules will rely on educational "design patterns" that characterize geoscientific inquiry tasks. Use of design patterns will enable other modules to be built that align to the modes of student thinking and practice articulated in the design patterns. The modules will be accompanied by performance assessments that measure student learning from their data investigations. The design principles that drive this project have already been used effectively in a prior SRI project reported about at AGU 2007 called Data Sets and Inquiry in Geoscience Education. The modules are being readied for pilot-testing with undergraduate students in a new environmental history course at the University of Washington and with students taking science courses in high schools serving American Indian students in the Puget Sound area. This NSF-funded project is contributing to our knowledge base about how students can become more engaged and more skilled in geoscience inquiry and data analysis and what variations in educational supports and expectations need to exist to build successful experiences for the students with the materials. It is also expanding our knowledge of how to better connect place-based education to inquiry tasks that expand students" quantitative reasoning skills. Lastly, it is providing a model of how scientists can work effectively with educational researchers to provide educational outlets for their research. We will report on the progress of the project so far, which is in its first year of funding.

The effect of spatial distribution on the annoyance caused by simultaneous sounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vos, Joos; Bronkhorst, Adelbert W.; Fedtke, Thomas

2004-05-01

A considerable part of the population is exposed to simultaneous and/or successive environmental sounds from different sources. In many cases, these sources are different with respect to their locations also. In a laboratory study, it was investigated whether the annoyance caused by the multiple sounds is affected by the spatial distribution of the sources. There were four independent variables: (1) sound category (stationary or moving), (2) sound type (stationary: lawn-mower, leaf-blower, and chain saw; moving: road traffic, railway, and motorbike), (3) spatial location (left, right, and combinations), and (4) A-weighted sound exposure level (ASEL of single sources equal to 50, 60, or 70 dB). In addition to the individual sounds in isolation, various combinations of two or three different sources within each sound category and sound level were presented for rating. The annoyance was mainly determined by sound level and sound source type. In most cases there were neither significant main effects of spatial distribution nor significant interaction effects between spatial distribution and the other variables. It was concluded that for rating the spatially distrib- uted sounds investigated, the noise dose can simply be determined by a summation of the levels for the left and right channels. [Work supported by CEU.

Neighing, barking, and drumming horses-object related sounds help and hinder picture naming.

PubMed

Mädebach, Andreas; Wöhner, Stefan; Kieseler, Marie-Luise; Jescheniak, Jörg D

2017-09-01

The study presented here investigated how environmental sounds influence picture naming. In a series of four experiments participants named pictures (e.g., the picture of a horse) while hearing task-irrelevant sounds (e.g., neighing, barking, or drumming). Experiments 1 and 2 established two findings, facilitation from congruent sounds (e.g., picture: horse, sound: neighing) and interference from semantically related sounds (e.g., sound: barking), both relative to unrelated sounds (e.g., sound: drumming). Experiment 3 replicated the effects in a situation in which participants were not familiarized with the sounds prior to the experiment. Experiment 4 replicated the congruency facilitation effect, but showed that semantic interference was not obtained with distractor sounds which were not associated with target pictures (i.e., were not part of the response set). The general pattern of facilitation from congruent sound distractors and interference from semantically related sound distractors resembles the pattern commonly observed with distractor words. This parallelism suggests that the underlying processes are not specific to either distractor words or distractor sounds but instead reflect general aspects of semantic-lexical selection in language production. The results indicate that language production theories need to include a competitive selection mechanism at either the lexical processing stage, or the prelexical processing stage, or both. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Sound levels in modern rodent housing rooms are an uncontrolled environmental variable with fluctuations mainly due to human activities

PubMed Central

Lauer, Amanda M.; May, Bradford J.; Hao, Ziwei Judy; Watson, Julie

2009-01-01

Noise in animal housing facilities is an environmental variable that can affect hearing, behavior and physiology in mice. The authors measured sound levels in two rodent housing rooms (room 1 and room 2) during several periods of 24 h. Room 1, which was subject to heavy personnel traffic, contained ventilated racks and static cages that housed large numbers of mice. Room 2 was accessed by only a few staff members and contained only static cages that housed fewer mice. In both rooms, background sound levels were about 80 dB, and transient noises caused sound levels to temporarily rise 30–40 dB above the baseline level; such peaks occurred frequently during work hours (8:30 AM to 4:30 PM) and infrequently during non-work hours. Noise peaks during work hours in room 1 occurred about two times as often as in room 2 (P = 0.01). Use of changing stations located in the rooms caused background noise to increase by about 10 dB. Loud noise and noise variability were attributed mainly to personnel activity. Attempts to reduce noise should concentrate on controlling sounds produced by in-room activities and experimenter traffic; this may reduce the variability of research outcomes and improve animal welfare. PMID:19384312

Effects of Perforation on Rigid PU Foam Plates: Acoustic and Mechanical Properties

PubMed Central

Lin, Jia-Horng; Chuang, Yu-Chun; Li, Ting-Ting; Huang, Chen-Hung; Huang, Chien-Lin; Chen, Yueh-Sheng; Lou, Ching-Wen

2016-01-01

Factories today are equipped with diverse mechanical equipment in response to rapid technological and industrial developments. Industrial areas located near residential neighborhoods cause massive environmental problems. In particular, noise pollution results in physical and psychological discomfort, and is a seen as invisible and inevitable problem. Thus, noise reduction is a critical and urgent matter. In this study, rigid polyurethane (PU) foam plates undergo perforation using a tapping machine. The mechanical and acoustic properties of these perforated plates as related to perforation rate and perforation depth are evaluated in terms of compression strength, drop-weight impact strength, and sound absorption coefficient. Experimental results indicate that applying the perforation process endows the rigid PU foaming plates with greater load absorption and better sound absorption at medium and high frequencies. PMID:28774119

Effects of Perforation on Rigid PU Foam Plates: Acoustic and Mechanical Properties.

PubMed

Lin, Jia-Horng; Chuang, Yu-Chun; Li, Ting-Ting; Huang, Chen-Hung; Huang, Chien-Lin; Chen, Yueh-Sheng; Lou, Ching-Wen

2016-12-09

Factories today are equipped with diverse mechanical equipment in response to rapid technological and industrial developments. Industrial areas located near residential neighborhoods cause massive environmental problems. In particular, noise pollution results in physical and psychological discomfort, and is a seen as invisible and inevitable problem. Thus, noise reduction is a critical and urgent matter. In this study, rigid polyurethane (PU) foam plates undergo perforation using a tapping machine. The mechanical and acoustic properties of these perforated plates as related to perforation rate and perforation depth are evaluated in terms of compression strength, drop-weight impact strength, and sound absorption coefficient. Experimental results indicate that applying the perforation process endows the rigid PU foaming plates with greater load absorption and better sound absorption at medium and high frequencies.

Reduced hazard chemicals for solid rocket motor production

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Caddy, Larry A.; Bowman, Ross; Richards, Rex A.

1995-01-01

During the last three years. the NASA/Thiokol/industry team has developed and started implementation of an environmentally sound manufacturing plan for the continued production of solid rocket motors. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and Thiokol Corporation have worked with other industry representatives and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prepare a comprehensive plan to eliminate all ozone depleting chemicals from manufacturing processes and reduce the use of other hazardous materials used to produce the space shuttle reusable solid rocket motors. The team used a classical approach for problem-solving combined with a creative synthesis of new approaches to attack this challenge.

Dross treatment in a rotary arc furnace with graphite electrodes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Drouet, Michel G.; Handfield, My; Meunier, Jean; Laflamme, Claude B.

1994-05-01

Aluminum baths are always covered with a layer of dross resulting from the aluminum surface oxidation. This dross represents 1-10% of the melt and may contain up to 75wt.% aluminum. Since aluminum production is highly energy intensive, dross recycling is very attractive from both energy and economic standpoints. The conventional recycling process using salt rotary furnaces is thermally inefficient and environmentally unacceptable because of the production of salt slags. Hydro-Quebec has developed a new technology using a rotary arc furnace with graphite electrodes. This process provides aluminum recovery rates of 80-90%, using a highly energy efficient, environmentally sound production method.

Metagenomic Profiling of Microbial Composition and Antibiotic Resistance Determinants in Puget Sound

PubMed Central

Port, Jesse A.; Wallace, James C.; Griffith, William C.; Faustman, Elaine M.

2012-01-01

Human-health relevant impacts on marine ecosystems are increasing on both spatial and temporal scales. Traditional indicators for environmental health monitoring and microbial risk assessment have relied primarily on single species analyses and have provided only limited spatial and temporal information. More high-throughput, broad-scale approaches to evaluate these impacts are therefore needed to provide a platform for informing public health. This study uses shotgun metagenomics to survey the taxonomic composition and antibiotic resistance determinant content of surface water bacterial communities in the Puget Sound estuary. Metagenomic DNA was collected at six sites in Puget Sound in addition to one wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) that discharges into the Sound and pyrosequenced. A total of ∼550 Mbp (1.4 million reads) were obtained, 22 Mbp of which could be assembled into contigs. While the taxonomic and resistance determinant profiles across the open Sound samples were similar, unique signatures were identified when comparing these profiles across the open Sound, a nearshore marina and WWTP effluent. The open Sound was dominated by α-Proteobacteria (in particular Rhodobacterales sp.), γ-Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes while the marina and effluent had increased abundances of Actinobacteria, β-Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. There was a significant increase in the antibiotic resistance gene signal from the open Sound to marina to WWTP effluent, suggestive of a potential link to human impacts. Mobile genetic elements associated with environmental and pathogenic bacteria were also differentially abundant across the samples. This study is the first comparative metagenomic survey of Puget Sound and provides baseline data for further assessments of community composition and antibiotic resistance determinants in the environment using next generation sequencing technologies. In addition, these genomic signals of potential human impact can be used to guide initial public health monitoring as well as more targeted and functionally-based investigations. PMID:23144718

PROTAX-Sound: A probabilistic framework for automated animal sound identification

PubMed Central

Somervuo, Panu; Ovaskainen, Otso

2017-01-01

Autonomous audio recording is stimulating new field in bioacoustics, with a great promise for conducting cost-effective species surveys. One major current challenge is the lack of reliable classifiers capable of multi-species identification. We present PROTAX-Sound, a statistical framework to perform probabilistic classification of animal sounds. PROTAX-Sound is based on a multinomial regression model, and it can utilize as predictors any kind of sound features or classifications produced by other existing algorithms. PROTAX-Sound combines audio and image processing techniques to scan environmental audio files. It identifies regions of interest (a segment of the audio file that contains a vocalization to be classified), extracts acoustic features from them and compares with samples in a reference database. The output of PROTAX-Sound is the probabilistic classification of each vocalization, including the possibility that it represents species not present in the reference database. We demonstrate the performance of PROTAX-Sound by classifying audio from a species-rich case study of tropical birds. The best performing classifier achieved 68% classification accuracy for 200 bird species. PROTAX-Sound improves the classification power of current techniques by combining information from multiple classifiers in a manner that yields calibrated classification probabilities. PMID:28863178

PROTAX-Sound: A probabilistic framework for automated animal sound identification.

PubMed

de Camargo, Ulisses Moliterno; Somervuo, Panu; Ovaskainen, Otso

2017-01-01

Autonomous audio recording is stimulating new field in bioacoustics, with a great promise for conducting cost-effective species surveys. One major current challenge is the lack of reliable classifiers capable of multi-species identification. We present PROTAX-Sound, a statistical framework to perform probabilistic classification of animal sounds. PROTAX-Sound is based on a multinomial regression model, and it can utilize as predictors any kind of sound features or classifications produced by other existing algorithms. PROTAX-Sound combines audio and image processing techniques to scan environmental audio files. It identifies regions of interest (a segment of the audio file that contains a vocalization to be classified), extracts acoustic features from them and compares with samples in a reference database. The output of PROTAX-Sound is the probabilistic classification of each vocalization, including the possibility that it represents species not present in the reference database. We demonstrate the performance of PROTAX-Sound by classifying audio from a species-rich case study of tropical birds. The best performing classifier achieved 68% classification accuracy for 200 bird species. PROTAX-Sound improves the classification power of current techniques by combining information from multiple classifiers in a manner that yields calibrated classification probabilities.

On-Board Sound Intensity (OBSI) study, phase 2 : [summary].

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2014-05-01

To many people, environmental issues might : suggest air pollution, water pollution, or similar : ideas. But an environmental issue of growing : concern is noise pollution, which many cities : in Florida are encountering as they grow, and : nei...

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in China: policies and recommendations for sound management of plastics from electronic wastes.

PubMed

Ni, Kun; Lu, Yonglong; Wang, Tieyu; Shi, Yajuan; Kannan, Kurunthachalam; Xu, Li; Li, Qiushuang; Liu, Shijie

2013-01-30

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), used as flame retardants (BFRs), are incorporated in plastics of most electronic equipment. Among BFR mixtures, deca-BDE is the most widely used commercial additive in the polymer industry and the use of deca-BDE is currently not subject to any restrictions in China. However, debate over environmental and health risks associated with deca-BDE still remains. Regulatory agencies in developed countries have adopted and/or established environmentally sound strategies for the management of potential threat posed by PBDEs to the environment and human health. No regulations or management policies for PBDEs currently exist in China at either central or provincial government levels. Large amounts of plastics containing PBDEs are still in use and must be disposed of after their lifetimes, creating outdoor reservoirs for the future dispersal of PBDEs into the environment. Concerted action is needed not only to regulate the production and use of PBDEs but also to find ways to effectively manage waste electrical and electronic products that contain PBDEs. This article is the first to investigate the policy issues and current problems related to the use of PBDEs in China. In addition, we estimate the mass flows of PBDEs contained in Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) in China. We suggest alternatives to PBDEs and sound management of plastics used in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) that contain PBDEs. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The influence of underwater data transmission sounds on the displacement behaviour of captive harbour seals (Phoca vitulina).

PubMed

Kastelein, Ronald A; van der Heul, Sander; Verboom, Willem C; Triesscheijn, Rob J V; Jennings, Nancy V

2006-02-01

To prevent grounding of ships and collisions between ships in shallow coastal waters, an underwater data collection and communication network (ACME) using underwater sounds to encode and transmit data is currently under development. Marine mammals might be affected by ACME sounds since they may use sound of a similar frequency (around 12 kHz) for communication, orientation, and prey location. If marine mammals tend to avoid the vicinity of the acoustic transmitters, they may be kept away from ecologically important areas by ACME sounds. One marine mammal species that may be affected in the North Sea is the harbour seal (Phoca vitulina). No information is available on the effects of ACME-like sounds on harbour seals, so this study was carried out as part of an environmental impact assessment program. Nine captive harbour seals were subjected to four sound types, three of which may be used in the underwater acoustic data communication network. The effect of each sound was judged by comparing the animals' location in a pool during test periods to that during baseline periods, during which no sound was produced. Each of the four sounds could be made into a deterrent by increasing its amplitude. The seals reacted by swimming away from the sound source. The sound pressure level (SPL) at the acoustic discomfort threshold was established for each of the four sounds. The acoustic discomfort threshold is defined as the boundary between the areas that the animals generally occupied during the transmission of the sounds and the areas that they generally did not enter during transmission. The SPLs at the acoustic discomfort thresholds were similar for each of the sounds (107 dB re 1 microPa). Based on this discomfort threshold SPL, discomfort zones at sea for several source levels (130-180 dB re 1 microPa) of the sounds were calculated, using a guideline sound propagation model for shallow water. The discomfort zone is defined as the area around a sound source that harbour seals are expected to avoid. The definition of the discomfort zone is based on behavioural discomfort, and does not necessarily coincide with the physical discomfort zone. Based on these results, source levels can be selected that have an acceptable effect on harbour seals in particular areas. The discomfort zone of a communication sound depends on the sound, the source level, and the propagation characteristics of the area in which the sound system is operational. The source level of the communication system should be adapted to each area (taking into account the width of a sea arm, the local sound propagation, and the importance of an area to the affected species). The discomfort zone should not coincide with ecologically important areas (for instance resting, breeding, suckling, and feeding areas), or routes between these areas.

Evaluative Conditioning Induces Changes in Sound Valence

PubMed Central

Bolders, Anna C.; Band, Guido P. H.; Stallen, Pieter Jan

2012-01-01

Through evaluative conditioning (EC) a stimulus can acquire an affective value by pairing it with another affective stimulus. While many sounds we encounter daily have acquired an affective value over life, EC has hardly been tested in the auditory domain. To get a more complete understanding of affective processing in auditory domain we examined EC of sound. In Experiment 1 we investigated whether the affective evaluation of short environmental sounds can be changed using affective words as unconditioned stimuli (US). Congruency effects on an affective priming task for conditioned sounds demonstrated successful EC. Subjective ratings for sounds paired with negative words changed accordingly. In Experiment 2 we investigated whether extinction occurs, i.e., whether the acquired valence remains stable after repeated presentation of the conditioned sound without the US. The acquired affective value remained present, albeit weaker, even after 40 extinction trials. These results provide clear evidence for EC effects in the auditory domain. We will argue that both associative as well as propositional processes are likely to underlie these effects. PMID:22514545

How pleasant sounds promote and annoying sounds impede health: a cognitive approach.

PubMed

Andringa, Tjeerd C; Lanser, J Jolie L

2013-04-08

This theoretical paper addresses the cognitive functions via which quiet and in general pleasurable sounds promote and annoying sounds impede health. The article comprises a literature analysis and an interpretation of how the bidirectional influence of appraising the environment and the feelings of the perceiver can be understood in terms of core affect and motivation. This conceptual basis allows the formulation of a detailed cognitive model describing how sonic content, related to indicators of safety and danger, either allows full freedom over mind-states or forces the activation of a vigilance function with associated arousal. The model leads to a number of detailed predictions that can be used to provide existing soundscape approaches with a solid cognitive science foundation that may lead to novel approaches to soundscape design. These will take into account that louder sounds typically contribute to distal situational awareness while subtle environmental sounds provide proximal situational awareness. The role of safety indicators, mediated by proximal situational awareness and subtle sounds, should become more important in future soundscape research.

Auditory agnosia associated with bilateral putaminal hemorrhage: A case report of clinical course of recovery.

PubMed

Tokida, Haruki; Kanaya, Yuhei; Shimoe, Yutaka; Imagawa, Madoka; Fukunaga, Shinya; Kuriyama, Masaru

2017-08-31

A 45-year-old right-handed man with a past history (10 years) of putaminal hemorrage presented with auditory agnosia associated with left putaminal hemorrhage. It was suspected that the auditory agnosia was due to bilateral damage in the acoustic radiations. Generalized auditory agnosia, verbal and non-verbal (music and environmental), was diagnosed by neuropsychological examinations. It improved 4 months after the onset. However, the clinical assessment of attention remained poor. The cognition for speech sounds improved slowly, but once it started to improve, the progress of improvement was rapid. Subsequently, the cognition for music sounds also improved, while the recovery of the cognition for environmental sounds remained delayed. There was a dissociation in recovery between these cognitions. He was able to return to work a year after the onset. We also reviewed the literature for cases with auditory agnosia and discuss their course of recovery in this report.

Snapping shrimp sound production patterns on Caribbean coral reefs: relationships with celestial cycles and environmental variables

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lillis, Ashlee; Mooney, T. Aran

2018-06-01

The rich acoustic environment of coral reefs, including the sounds of a variety of fish and invertebrates, is a reflection of the structural complexity and biological diversity of these habitats. Emerging interest in applying passive acoustic monitoring and soundscape analysis to measure coral reef habitat characteristics and track ecological patterns is hindered by a poor understanding of the most common and abundant sound producers on reefs—the snapping shrimp. Here, we sought to address several basic biophysical drivers of reef sound by investigating acoustic activity patterns of snapping shrimp populations on two adjacent coral reefs using a detailed snap detection analysis routine to a high-resolution 2.5-month acoustic dataset from the US Virgin Islands. The reefs exhibited strong diel and lunar periodicity in snap rates and clear spatial differences in snapping levels. Snap rates peaked at dawn and dusk and were higher overall during daytime versus nighttime, a seldom-reported pattern in earlier descriptions of diel snapping shrimp acoustic activity. Small differences between the sites in snap rate rhythms were detected and illustrate how analyses of specific soundscape elements might reveal subtle between-reef variation. Snap rates were highly correlated with environmental variables, including water temperature and light, and were found to be sensitive to changes in oceanographic forcing. This study further establishes snapping shrimp as key players in the coral reef chorus and provides evidence that their acoustic output reflects a combination of environmental conditions, celestial influences, and spatial habitat variation. Effective application of passive acoustic monitoring in coral reef habitats using snap rates or snapping-influenced acoustic metrics will require a mechanistic understanding of the underlying spatial and temporal variation in snapping shrimp sound production across multiple scales.

SoundProof: A Smartphone Platform for Wireless Monitoring of Wildlife and Environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lukac, M.; Monibi, M.; Lane, M. L.; Howell, L.; Ramanathan, N.; Borker, A.; McKown, M.; Croll, D.; Terschy, B.

2011-12-01

We are developing an open-source, low-cost wildlife and environmental monitoring solution based on Android smartphones. Using a smartphone instead of a traditional microcontroller or single board computer has several advantages: smartphones are single integrated devices with multiple radios and a battery; they have a robust software interface which enables customization; and are field-tested by millions of users daily. Consequently, smartphones can improve the cost, configurability, and real-time access to data for environmental monitoring, ultimately replacing existing monitoring solutions which are proprietary, difficult to customize, expensive, and require labor-intensive maintenance. While smartphones can radically change environmental and wildlife monitoring, there are a number of technical challenges to address. We present our smartphone-based platform, SoundProof, discuss the challenges of building an autonomous system based on Android phones, and our ongoing efforts to enable environmental monitoring. Our system is built using robust off-the-shelf hardware and mature open-source software where available, to increase scalability and ease of installation. Key features include: * High-quality acoustic signal collection from external microphones to monitor wildlife populations. * Real-time data access, remote programming, and configuration of the field sensor via wireless cellular or WiFi channels, accessible from a website. * Waterproof packaging and solar charger setup for long-term field deployments. * Rich instrumentation of the end-to-end system to quickly identify and debug problems. * Supplementary mesh networking system with long-range wireless antennae to provide coverage when no cell network is available. We have deployed this system to monitor Rufous Crowned Sparrows on Anacapa Island, Chinese Crested Turns on the Matsu Islands in Taiwan, and Ashy Storm Petrels on South East Farallon Island. We have testbeds at two UC Natural Reserves to field-test new or exploratory features before deployment. Side-by-side validation data collected in the field using SoundProof and state-of-the-art wildlife monitoring solutions, including the Cornell ARU and Wildlife Acoustic's Songmeter, demonstrate that acoustic signals collected with cellphones provide sufficient data integrity for measuring the success of bird conservation efforts, measuring bird relative abundance and detecting elusive species. We are extending this platform to numerous other areas of environmental monitoring. Recent developments such as the Android Open Accessory, the IOIO Board, MicroBridge, Amarino, and Cellbots enable microcontrollers to talk with Android applications, making it affordable and feasible to extend our platform to operate with the most common sensors.

Feasibility of Audio Training for Identification of Auditory Signatures of Small Arms Fire

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-12-01

and M14) were presented through headphones. Participants were allowed to train at their own pace, were tested using the recorded material ; and were...properties (e.g., barrel length, round type), environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, wind speed, reverberant properties of the sound field; proximal...developed, training materials can be presented in a comprehensive CD-based course that can be completed in several hours and reviewed when needed. 2

Behavioral semantics of learning and crossmodal processing in auditory cortex: the semantic processor concept.

PubMed

Scheich, Henning; Brechmann, André; Brosch, Michael; Budinger, Eike; Ohl, Frank W; Selezneva, Elena; Stark, Holger; Tischmeyer, Wolfgang; Wetzel, Wolfram

2011-01-01

Two phenomena of auditory cortex activity have recently attracted attention, namely that the primary field can show different types of learning-related changes of sound representation and that during learning even this early auditory cortex is under strong multimodal influence. Based on neuronal recordings in animal auditory cortex during instrumental tasks, in this review we put forward the hypothesis that these two phenomena serve to derive the task-specific meaning of sounds by associative learning. To understand the implications of this tenet, it is helpful to realize how a behavioral meaning is usually derived for novel environmental sounds. For this purpose, associations with other sensory, e.g. visual, information are mandatory to develop a connection between a sound and its behaviorally relevant cause and/or the context of sound occurrence. This makes it plausible that in instrumental tasks various non-auditory sensory and procedural contingencies of sound generation become co-represented by neuronal firing in auditory cortex. Information related to reward or to avoidance of discomfort during task learning, that is essentially non-auditory, is also co-represented. The reinforcement influence points to the dopaminergic internal reward system, the local role of which for memory consolidation in auditory cortex is well-established. Thus, during a trial of task performance, the neuronal responses to the sounds are embedded in a sequence of representations of such non-auditory information. The embedded auditory responses show task-related modulations of auditory responses falling into types that correspond to three basic logical classifications that may be performed with a perceptual item, i.e. from simple detection to discrimination, and categorization. This hierarchy of classifications determine the semantic "same-different" relationships among sounds. Different cognitive classifications appear to be a consequence of learning task and lead to a recruitment of different excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms and to distinct spatiotemporal metrics of map activation to represent a sound. The described non-auditory firing and modulations of auditory responses suggest that auditory cortex, by collecting all necessary information, functions as a "semantic processor" deducing the task-specific meaning of sounds by learning. © 2010. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Cell type-specific suppression of mechanosensitive genes by audible sound stimulation.

PubMed

Kumeta, Masahiro; Takahashi, Daiji; Takeyasu, Kunio; Yoshimura, Shige H

2018-01-01

Audible sound is a ubiquitous environmental factor in nature that transmits oscillatory compressional pressure through the substances. To investigate the property of the sound as a mechanical stimulus for cells, an experimental system was set up using 94.0 dB sound which transmits approximately 10 mPa pressure to the cultured cells. Based on research on mechanotransduction and ultrasound effects on cells, gene responses to the audible sound stimulation were analyzed by varying several sound parameters: frequency, wave form, composition, and exposure time. Real-time quantitative PCR analyses revealed a distinct suppressive effect for several mechanosensitive and ultrasound-sensitive genes that were triggered by sounds. The effect was clearly observed in a wave form- and pressure level-specific manner, rather than the frequency, and persisted for several hours. At least two mechanisms are likely to be involved in this sound response: transcriptional control and RNA degradation. ST2 stromal cells and C2C12 myoblasts exhibited a robust response, whereas NIH3T3 cells were partially and NB2a neuroblastoma cells were completely insensitive, suggesting a cell type-specific response to sound. These findings reveal a cell-level systematic response to audible sound and uncover novel relationships between life and sound.

Cell type-specific suppression of mechanosensitive genes by audible sound stimulation

PubMed Central

Takahashi, Daiji; Takeyasu, Kunio; Yoshimura, Shige H.

2018-01-01

Audible sound is a ubiquitous environmental factor in nature that transmits oscillatory compressional pressure through the substances. To investigate the property of the sound as a mechanical stimulus for cells, an experimental system was set up using 94.0 dB sound which transmits approximately 10 mPa pressure to the cultured cells. Based on research on mechanotransduction and ultrasound effects on cells, gene responses to the audible sound stimulation were analyzed by varying several sound parameters: frequency, wave form, composition, and exposure time. Real-time quantitative PCR analyses revealed a distinct suppressive effect for several mechanosensitive and ultrasound-sensitive genes that were triggered by sounds. The effect was clearly observed in a wave form- and pressure level-specific manner, rather than the frequency, and persisted for several hours. At least two mechanisms are likely to be involved in this sound response: transcriptional control and RNA degradation. ST2 stromal cells and C2C12 myoblasts exhibited a robust response, whereas NIH3T3 cells were partially and NB2a neuroblastoma cells were completely insensitive, suggesting a cell type-specific response to sound. These findings reveal a cell-level systematic response to audible sound and uncover novel relationships between life and sound. PMID:29385174

Puget Sound Shorelines and the Impacts of Armoring-Proceedings of a State of the Science Workshop, May 2009

USGS Publications Warehouse

Shipman, Hugh; Dethier, Megan N.; Gelfenbaum, Guy R.; Fresh, Kurt L.; Dinicola, Richard S.

2010-01-01

The widespread extent and continued construction of seawalls and bulkheads on Puget Sound's beaches has emerged as a significant issue in shoreline management and coastal restoration in the region. Concerns about the impacts of shoreline armoring and managing the potential risks to coastal property are in many ways similar to those in other places, but Puget Sound also poses unique challenges related to its sheltered setting, glacially formed geology, rich estuarine ecology, and historical development pattern. The effects of armoring on shorelines are complex, involving both physical and biological science and requiring consideration of the cumulative impacts of small-scale activities over large scales of space and time. In addition, the issue is controversial, as it often places strongly held private interests in protecting shoreline property against broad public mandates to preserve shorelines for public uses and to protect environmental resources. Communities making difficult decisions about regulating shoreline activities and prioritizing restoration projects need to be informed by the best science available. To address these issues, a scientific workshop was convened in May 2009, specifically to bring local and national experts together to review the state of the science regarding the physical and biological impacts of armoring on sheltered shorelines such as those of Puget Sound.

Global patterns of changes in underwater sound transmission caused by ocean acidification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ilyina, T.; Zeebe, R. E.; Brewer, P. G.

2009-04-01

Oceanic uptake of man-made CO2 leads to a decrease in the ocean pH and carbonate saturation state. This processes, known as ocean acidification is expected to have adverse effects on a variety of marine organisms. A surprising consequence of ocean acidification, which has gone widely unrecognized, is its effect on underwater sound transmission. Low-frequency sound absorption in the ocean occurs due to chemical relaxation of the pH-dependent boric acid-borate ion reaction. As ocean pH drops, sound absorption in the audible range decreases. The decreased sound absorption will amplify ambient noise levels, and enhance long distance sound transmission, although its exact environmental impact is uncertain. Changes in the underwater sound absorption will affect the operation of scientific, commercial, and naval applications that are based on ocean acoustics, with yet unknown consequences for marine life. We project these changes using a global biogeochemical model (HAMOCC), which is forced by the anthropogenic CO2 emissions during the years 1800-2300. Based on model projections, we quantify when and where in the ocean these ocean chemistry induced perturbations in sound absorption will occur.

Emotional processing modulates attentional capture of irrelevant sound input in adolescents.

PubMed

Gulotta, B; Sadia, G; Sussman, E

2013-04-01

The main goal of this study was to investigate how emotional processing modulates the allocation of attention to irrelevant background sound events in adolescence. We examined the effect of viewing positively and negatively valenced video clips on components of event-related brain potentials (ERPs), while irrelevant sounds were presented to the ears. All sounds evoked the P1, N1, P2, and N2 components. The infrequent, randomly occurring novel environmental sounds evoked the P3a component in all trial types. The main finding was that the P3a component was larger in amplitude when evoked by salient, distracting background sound events when participants were watching negatively charged video clips, compared to when viewing of the positive or neutral video clips. The results suggest that the threshold for involuntary attention to the novel sounds was lowered during viewing of the negative movie contexts. This indicates a survival mechanism, which would be needed for more automatic processing of irrelevant sounds to monitor the unattended environment in situations perceived as more threatening. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Auditory agnosia as a clinical symptom of childhood adrenoleukodystrophy.

PubMed

Furushima, Wakana; Kaga, Makiko; Nakamura, Masako; Gunji, Atsuko; Inagaki, Masumi

2015-08-01

To investigate detailed auditory features in patients with auditory impairment as the first clinical symptoms of childhood adrenoleukodystrophy (CSALD). Three patients who had hearing difficulty as the first clinical signs and/or symptoms of ALD. Precise examination of the clinical characteristics of hearing and auditory function was performed, including assessments of pure tone audiometry, verbal sound discrimination, otoacoustic emission (OAE), and auditory brainstem response (ABR), as well as an environmental sound discrimination test, a sound lateralization test, and a dichotic listening test (DLT). The auditory pathway was evaluated by MRI in each patient. Poor response to calling was detected in all patients. Two patients were not aware of their hearing difficulty, and had been diagnosed with normal hearing by otolaryngologists at first. Pure-tone audiometry disclosed normal hearing in all patients. All patients showed a normal wave V ABR threshold. Three patients showed obvious difficulty in discriminating verbal sounds, environmental sounds, and sound lateralization and strong left-ear suppression in a dichotic listening test. However, once they discriminated verbal sounds, they correctly understood the meaning. Two patients showed elongation of the I-V and III-V interwave intervals in ABR, but one showed no abnormality. MRIs of these three patients revealed signal changes in auditory radiation including in other subcortical areas. The hearing features of these subjects were diagnosed as auditory agnosia and not aphasia. It should be emphasized that when patients are suspected to have hearing impairment but have no abnormalities in pure tone audiometry and/or ABR, this should not be diagnosed immediately as psychogenic response or pathomimesis, but auditory agnosia must also be considered. Copyright © 2014 The Japanese Society of Child Neurology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Reducing sound and light exposure to improve sleep on the adult intensive care unit: An inclusive narrative review.

PubMed

Bion, Victoria; Lowe, Alex Sw; Puthucheary, Zudin; Montgomery, Hugh

2018-05-01

Sleep disturbance is common in intensive care units. It is associated with detrimental psychological impacts and has potential to worsen outcome. Irregular exposure to sound and light may disrupt circadian rhythm and cause frequent arousals from sleep. We sought to review the efficacy of environmental interventions to reduce sound and light exposure with the aim of improving patient sleep on adult intensive care units. We searched both PubMed (1966-30 May 2017) and Embase (1974-30 May 2017) for all relevant human (adult) studies and meta-analyses published in English using search terms ((intensive care OR critical care), AND (sleep OR sleep disorders), AND (light OR noise OR sound)). Bibliographies were explored. Articles were included if reporting change in patient sleep in response to an intervention to reduce disruptive intensive care unit sound /light exposure. Fifteen studies were identified. Nine assessed mechanical interventions, four of which used polysomnography to assess sleep. Five studies looked at environmental measures to facilitate sleep and a further two (one already included as assessing a mechanical intervention) studied the use of sound to promote sleep. Most studies found a positive impact of the intervention on sleep. However, few studies used objective sleep assessments, sample sizes were small, methodologies sometimes imperfect and analysis limited. Data are substantially derived from specialist (neurosurgical, post-operative, cardiothoracic and cardiological) centres. Patients were often at the 'less sick' end of the spectrum in a variety of settings (open ward beds or side rooms). Simple measures to reduce intensive care unit patient sound/light exposure appear effective. However, larger and more inclusive high-quality studies are required in order to identify the measures most effective in different patient groups and any impacts on outcome.

Collaborative science, policy development and program implementation in the transboundary Georgia Basin/Puget Sound ecosystem.

PubMed

Fraser, David A; Gaydos, Joseph K; Karlsen, Erik; Rylko, Michael S

2006-02-01

The transboundary Georgia Basin Puget Sound ecosystem is situated in the southwest corner of British Columbia and northwest comer of Washington State. While bountiful and beautiful, this international region is facing significant threats to its marine and freshwater resources, air quality, habitats and species. These environmental challenges are compounded by rapid population growth and attendant uiban sprawl. As ecosystem stresses amplified and partnerships formed around possible solutions, it became increasingly clear that the shared sustainability challenges in the Georgia Basin and Puget Sound required shared solutions. Federal, state and provincial institutional arrangements were made between jurisdictions, which formalized small scale interest in transboundary management of this ecosystem. Formal agreements, however, can only do so much to further management of an ecosystem that spans international boarders. A transboundary regional research meeting, the 2003 GB/PS Research Conference, opened the doors for large-scale informal cross-boarder cooperation and management. In addition to cooperation, continued efforts to stem toxic pollution, contain urban growth, and protect and restore ecosystems, require a commitment from scientists, educators and policy makers to better integrate research and science with decision-making.

Species Profiles. Life Histories and Environmental Requirements of Coastal Fishes and Invertebrates (Pacific Southwest). Dungeness Crab

DTIC Science & Technology

1989-12-01

to 1983, divided by State and Province (Figure 6), show that landings in Washington (except Puget Sound ), Oregon, and California generally follow ed...sim ilar trends. Landings from Puget 1 94. ... 4-55 59-4 64, 65 69.7n . 4.75 S 79 Sound and British Columbia are lower and show less annual variation...tides that ranged from -0.60 to is given in the life history section. -0.74 m. Aerial surveys made over Puget Sound beaches using Williams’ (1979) survey

Puget Sound Dredged Disposal Analysis (PSDDA). Final Environmental Impact Statement Unconfined Open-Water Disposal for Dredged Material, Phase 2. (North and South Puget Sound)

DTIC Science & Technology

1989-09-01

flathead sole, rex sole, and rock sole all showed indications of blood worm infestations. One liver tumor was found in a rex sole during spring in the ZSF...concentrations Hainly in invertebrates; some trations (.01 ppb) in waters (from lOx to 42Ox reference) in fish livers ; rarely in fish of Puget Sound central...Eagle Harbor, and Sinclair fish livers , and birds in Inlet. Highest elevation industrialized ’-ban areas. along Ruston-Point Defiance Copper is a natural

Environmental Assessment for Atlantic White Cedar Restoration Project at Dare County Range, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-12-23

bond of$5,000 with ENR running to Stale of NC: conditional that n Permit to drill exploratory oil or gas well m1y well opened by drill operator shall...Native American Consultation B – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Consultation C – Greenhouse Gas Estimates D – Air Emissions...on the north by the Albemarle Sound, on the west by the Alligator River, on the east by the Croatan Sound, and on the southeast by the Pamlico Sound

VES/TEM 1D joint inversion by using Controlled Random Search (CRS) algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bortolozo, Cassiano Antonio; Porsani, Jorge Luís; Santos, Fernando Acácio Monteiro dos; Almeida, Emerson Rodrigo

2015-01-01

Electrical (DC) and Transient Electromagnetic (TEM) soundings are used in a great number of environmental, hydrological, and mining exploration studies. Usually, data interpretation is accomplished by individual 1D models resulting often in ambiguous models. This fact can be explained by the way as the two different methodologies sample the medium beneath surface. Vertical Electrical Sounding (VES) is good in marking resistive structures, while Transient Electromagnetic sounding (TEM) is very sensitive to conductive structures. Another difference is VES is better to detect shallow structures, while TEM soundings can reach deeper layers. A Matlab program for 1D joint inversion of VES and TEM soundings was developed aiming at exploring the best of both methods. The program uses CRS - Controlled Random Search - algorithm for both single and 1D joint inversions. Usually inversion programs use Marquadt type algorithms but for electrical and electromagnetic methods, these algorithms may find a local minimum or not converge. Initially, the algorithm was tested with synthetic data, and then it was used to invert experimental data from two places in Paraná sedimentary basin (Bebedouro and Pirassununga cities), both located in São Paulo State, Brazil. Geoelectric model obtained from VES and TEM data 1D joint inversion is similar to the real geological condition, and ambiguities were minimized. Results with synthetic and real data show that 1D VES/TEM joint inversion better recovers simulated models and shows a great potential in geological studies, especially in hydrogeological studies.

The development and application of multi-criteria decision-making tool with consideration of uncertainty: the selection of a management strategy for the bio-degradable fraction in the municipal solid waste.

PubMed

El Hanandeh, Ali; El-Zein, Abbas

2010-01-01

A modified version of the multi-criteria decision aid, ELECTRE III has been developed to account for uncertainty in criteria weightings and threshold values. The new procedure, called ELECTRE-SS, modifies the exploitation phase in ELECTRE III, through a new definition of the pre-order and the introduction of a ranking index (RI). The new approach accommodates cases where incomplete or uncertain preference data are present. The method is applied to a case of selecting a management strategy for the bio-degradable fraction in the municipal solid waste of Sydney. Ten alternatives are compared against 11 criteria. The results show that anaerobic digestion (AD) and composting of paper are less environmentally sound options than recycling. AD is likely to out-perform incineration where a market for heating does not exist. Moreover, landfilling can be a sound alternative, when considering overall performance and conditions of uncertainty.

Impact of Late Holocene climate variability and anthropogenic activities on Biscayne Bay (Florida, U.S.A.): evidence from diatoms

USGS Publications Warehouse

Wachnicka, Anna; Gaiser, Evelyn; Wingard, Lynn; Briceño, Henry; Harlem, Peter

2013-01-01

Shallow marine ecosystems are experiencing significant environmental alterations as a result of changing climate and increasing human activities along coasts. Intensive urbanization of the southeast Florida coast and intensification of climate change over the last few centuries changed the character of coastal ecosystems in the semi-enclosed Biscayne Bay, Florida. In order to develop management policies for the Bay, it is vital to obtain reliable scientific evidence of past ecological conditions. The long-term records of subfossil diatoms obtained from No Name Bank and Featherbed Bank in the Central Biscayne Bay, and from the Card Sound Bank in the neighboring Card Sound, were used to study the magnitude of the environmental change caused by climate variability and water management over the last ~ 600 yr. Analyses of these records revealed that the major shifts in the diatom assemblage structures at No Name Bank occurred in 1956, at Featherbed Bank in 1966, and at Card Sound Bank in 1957. Smaller magnitude shifts were also recorded at Featherbed Bank in 1893, 1942, 1974 and 1983. Most of these changes coincided with severe drought periods that developed during the cold phases of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), or when AMO was in warm phase and PDO was in the cold phase. Only the 1983 change coincided with an unusually wet period that developed during the warm phases of ENSO and PDO. Quantitative reconstructions of salinity using the weighted averaging partial least squares (WA-PLS) diatom-based salinity model revealed a gradual increase in salinity at the three coring locations over the last ~ 600 yr, which was primarily caused by continuously rising sea level and in the last several decades also by the reduction of the amount of freshwater inflow from the mainland. Concentration of sediment total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP) and total organic carbon (TOC) increased in the second half of the 20th century, which coincided with the construction of canals, landfills, marinas and water treatment plants along the western margin of Biscayne Bay. Increased magnitude and rate of the diatom assemblage restructuring in the mid- and late-1900s, suggest that large environmental changes are occurring more rapidly now than in the past.

Mid-Atlantic Wind - Overcoming the Challenges

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Daniel F. Ancona III; Kathryn E. George; Lynn Sparling

2012-06-29

This study, supported by the US Department of Energy, Wind Powering America Program, Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Chesapeake Bay Foundation, analyzed barriers to wind energy development in the Mid-Atlantic region along with options for overcoming or mitigating them. The Mid-Atlantic States including Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia, have excellent wind energy potential and growing demand for electricity, but only two utility-scale projects have been installed to date. Reasons for this apathetic development of wind resources were analyzed and quantified for four markets. Specific applications are: 1) Appalachian mountain ridgeline sites, 2) on coastal plains and peninsulas, 3)more » at shallow water sites in Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, and 4) at deeper water sites off the Atlantic coast. Each market has distinctly different opportunities and barriers. The primary barriers to wind development described in this report can be grouped into four categories; state policy and regulatory issues, wind resource technical uncertainty, economic viability, and public interest in environmental issues. The properties of these typologies are not mutually independent and do interact. The report concluded that there are no insurmountable barriers to land-based wind energy projects and they could be economically viable today. Likewise potential sites in sheltered shallow waters in regional bay and sounds have been largely overlooked but could be viable currently. Offshore ocean-based applications face higher costs and technical and wind resource uncertainties. The ongoing research and development program, revision of state incentive policies, additional wind measurement efforts, transmission system expansion, environmental baseline studies and outreach to private developers and stakeholders are needed to reduce barriers to wind energy development.« less

MOLECULAR DYNAMICS MODELING OF SORPTION OF PESTICIDES ONTO THE SURFACES OF KAOLINITE

EPA Science Inventory

To accurately predict the fate of contaminants in the environment and to make sound decisions about environmental remediation, we must accurately understand sorption mechanisms and surface reactivity of environmental particles. Sorption of selected pesticides on kaolinite surface...

Science Around the Corner.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lunetta, Vincent N.; And Others

1984-01-01

Advocates including environmental issues balanced with basic science concepts/processes to provide a sound science foundation. Suggests case studies of regional environmental issues to sensitize/motivate students while reflecting complex nature of science/society issues. Issues considered include: fresh water quality, earthquake predication,…

Research Contributing to Improvements in Controlling Florida's Mosquitoes and Mosquito-borne Diseases.

PubMed

Tabachnick, Walter J

2016-09-28

Research on mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases has contributed to improvements in providing effective, efficient, and environmentally proper mosquito control. Florida has benefitted from several research accomplishments that have increased the state's mosquito control capabilities. Research with Florida's mosquitoes has resulted in the development of ecologically sound management of mosquito impoundments on Florida's east coast. This strategy, called Rotational Impoundment Management (RIM), has improved the ability to target the delivery of pesticides and has helped to reduce non-target effects and environmental damage. Research has led to the development of an arbovirus surveillance system which includes sentinel chicken surveillance, real time use of environmental contributing factors like meteorology and hydrology to target mosquito control, as well as public health efforts to mitigate disease outbreaks to areas with risk of disease. These research driven improvements have provided substantial benefits to all of Florida. More research is needed to meet the future challenges to reduce emerging pathogens like Zika virus and the consequences of environmental changes like global climate change that are likely to influence the effects of mosquito-borne pathogens on human health and well-being.

Test Area C-64 Range Environmental Assessment, Revision 1

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-10-01

DOI U.S. Department of the Interior DNL Day–Night Average Sound Level DU Depleted Uranium EBD Environmental Baseline Document EIAP Environmental...vulnerability, burning sensitivity, drop tests, bullet impact tests, sympathetic detonation tests, advanced warhead design tests, and depleted uranium (DU...land back to range use. Source: U.S. Air Force, 2009 DU = depleted uranium ; ERP = Environmental Restoration Program; LUC = land use control; RW

An auditory analog of the picture superiority effect.

PubMed

Crutcher, Robert J; Beer, Jenay M

2011-01-01

Previous research has found that pictures (e.g., a picture of an elephant) are remembered better than words (e.g., the word "elephant"), an empirical finding called the picture superiority effect (Paivio & Csapo. Cognitive Psychology 5(2):176-206, 1973). However, very little research has investigated such memory differences for other types of sensory stimuli (e.g. sounds or odors) and their verbal labels. Four experiments compared recall of environmental sounds (e.g., ringing) and spoken verbal labels of those sounds (e.g., "ringing"). In contrast to earlier studies that have shown no difference in recall of sounds and spoken verbal labels (Philipchalk & Rowe. Journal of Experimental Psychology 91(2):341-343, 1971; Paivio, Philipchalk, & Rowe. Memory & Cognition 3(6):586-590, 1975), the experiments reported here yielded clear evidence for an auditory analog of the picture superiority effect. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that sounds were recalled better than the verbal labels of those sounds. Experiment 2 also showed that verbal labels are recalled as well as sounds when participants imagine the sound that the word labels. Experiments 3 and 4 extended these findings to incidental-processing task paradigms and showed that the advantage of sounds over words is enhanced when participants are induced to label the sounds.

Underwater sound of rigid-hulled inflatable boats.

PubMed

Erbe, Christine; Liong, Syafrin; Koessler, Matthew Walter; Duncan, Alec J; Gourlay, Tim

2016-06-01

Underwater sound of rigid-hulled inflatable boats was recorded 142 times in total, over 3 sites: 2 in southern British Columbia, Canada, and 1 off Western Australia. Underwater sound peaked between 70 and 400 Hz, exhibiting strong tones in this frequency range related to engine and propeller rotation. Sound propagation models were applied to compute monopole source levels, with the source assumed 1 m below the sea surface. Broadband source levels (10-48 000 Hz) increased from 134 to 171 dB re 1 μPa @ 1 m with speed from 3 to 16 m/s (10-56 km/h). Source power spectral density percentile levels and 1/3 octave band levels are given for use in predictive modeling of underwater sound of these boats as part of environmental impact assessments.

Discovery of Sound in the Sea (DOSITS) Website Development

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-03-04

life affect ocean sound levels? • Science of Sound > Sounds in the Sea > How will ocean acidification affect ocean sound levels? • Science of Sound...Science of Sound > Sounds in the Sea > How does shipping affect ocean sound levels? • Science of Sound > Sounds in the Sea > How does marine

Earth Science

NASA Image and Video Library

1994-03-08

Workers at the Astrotech processing facility in Titusville prepared for a news media showing of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-1 (GOES-1). GOES-1 was the first in a new generation of weather satellites deployed above Earth. It was the first 3-axis, body-stabilized meteorological satellite to be used by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA. These features allowed GOES-1 to continuously monitor the Earth, rather than viewing it just five percent of the time as was the case with spin-stabilized meteorological satellites. GOES-1 also has independent imaging and sounding instruments which can operate simultaneously yet independently. As a result, observations provided by each instrument will not be interrupted. The imager produces visual and infrared images of the Earth's surface, oceans, cloud cover and severe storm development, while the prime sounding products include vertical temperature and moisture profiles, and layer mean moisture.

Material sound source localization through headphones

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dunai, Larisa; Peris-Fajarnes, Guillermo; Lengua, Ismael Lengua; Montaña, Ignacio Tortajada

2012-09-01

In the present paper a study of sound localization is carried out, considering two different sounds emitted from different hit materials (wood and bongo) as well as a Delta sound. The motivation of this research is to study how humans localize sounds coming from different materials, with the purpose of a future implementation of the acoustic sounds with better localization features in navigation aid systems or training audio-games suited for blind people. Wood and bongo sounds are recorded after hitting two objects made of these materials. Afterwards, they are analysed and processed. On the other hand, the Delta sound (click) is generated by using the Adobe Audition software, considering a frequency of 44.1 kHz. All sounds are analysed and convolved with previously measured non-individual Head-Related Transfer Functions both for an anechoic environment and for an environment with reverberation. The First Choice method is used in this experiment. Subjects are asked to localize the source position of the sound listened through the headphones, by using a graphic user interface. The analyses of the recorded data reveal that no significant differences are obtained either when considering the nature of the sounds (wood, bongo, Delta) or their environmental context (with or without reverberation). The localization accuracies for the anechoic sounds are: wood 90.19%, bongo 92.96% and Delta sound 89.59%, whereas for the sounds with reverberation the results are: wood 90.59%, bongo 92.63% and Delta sound 90.91%. According to these data, we can conclude that even when considering the reverberation effect, the localization accuracy does not significantly increase.

A Green Soundscape Index (GSI): The potential of assessing the perceived balance between natural sound and traffic noise.

PubMed

Kogan, Pablo; Arenas, Jorge P; Bermejo, Fernando; Hinalaf, María; Turra, Bruno

2018-06-13

Urban soundscapes are dynamic and complex multivariable environmental systems. Soundscapes can be organized into three main entities containing the multiple variables: Experienced Environment (EE), Acoustic Environment (AE), and Extra-Acoustic Environment (XE). This work applies a multidimensional and synchronic data-collecting methodology at eight urban environments in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. The EE was assessed by means of surveys, the AE by acoustic measurements and audio recordings, and the XE by photos, video, and complementary sources. In total, 39 measurement locations were considered, where data corresponding to 61 AE and 203 EE were collected. Multivariate analysis and GIS techniques were used for data processing. The types of sound sources perceived, and their extents make up part of the collected variables that belong to the EE, i.e. traffic, people, natural sounds, and others. Sources explaining most of the variance were traffic noise and natural sounds. Thus, a Green Soundscape Index (GSI) is defined here as the ratio of the perceived extents of natural sounds to traffic noise. Collected data were divided into three ranges according to GSI value: 1) perceptual predominance of traffic noise, 2) balanced perception, and 3) perceptual predominance of natural sounds. For each group, three additional variables from the EE and three from the AE were applied, which reported significant differences, especially between ranges 1 and 2 with 3. These results confirm the key role of perceiving natural sounds in a town environment and also support the proposal of a GSI as a valuable indicator to classify urban soundscapes. In addition, the collected GSI-related data significantly helps to assess the overall soundscape. It is noted that this proposed simple perceptual index not only allows one to assess and classify urban soundscapes but also contributes greatly toward a technique for separating environmental sound sources. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Microfaunal analysis of late Quaternary deposits of the northern Bering Sea.

USGS Publications Warehouse

McDougall, K.

1982-01-01

Holocene microfaunal associations and distribution patterns define three inner-shelf (1-20m) biofacies in Norton Sound, northern Bering Sea. The Holocene facies relations are the basis for interpreting early Holocene and late Pleistocene environmental conditions in the NE Bering Sea area. Norton Sound cores provide evidence of two marine transgressions and a varying river input.-from Author

Camelot 3: Habitability criteria space research and design studio

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Arroyo, F.; Budet, O.; Garcia, A.; Lee, J.; Lopez, R.; Lugo, R.; Mateo, A.; Mellado, R.; Mendez, H.; Ortiz, N.

1989-01-01

Acknowledging the importance of human beings on a mission to Mars, the University of Puerto Rico studied both psychological and physiological aspects. Different conditions necessary for human health and well-being were considered. As a result, habitability criteria were developed. The criteria are as follows: personal identification; social interaction; unpredictable conditions; contact with nature; mental landscapes; privacy; equalitarian conditions; variety; functionality; sensory stimulation; music and environmental sound; stability and security; comfort; and sense of orientation.

Evolutionary conservation and neuronal mechanisms of auditory perceptual restoration.

PubMed

Petkov, Christopher I; Sutter, Mitchell L

2011-01-01

Auditory perceptual 'restoration' occurs when the auditory system restores an occluded or masked sound of interest. Behavioral work on auditory restoration in humans began over 50 years ago using it to model a noisy environmental scene with competing sounds. It has become clear that not only humans experience auditory restoration: restoration has been broadly conserved in many species. Behavioral studies in humans and animals provide a necessary foundation to link the insights being obtained from human EEG and fMRI to those from animal neurophysiology. The aggregate of data resulting from multiple approaches across species has begun to clarify the neuronal bases of auditory restoration. Different types of neural responses supporting restoration have been found, supportive of multiple mechanisms working within a species. Yet a general principle has emerged that responses correlated with restoration mimic the response that would have been given to the uninterrupted sound of interest. Using the same technology to study different species will help us to better harness animal models of 'auditory scene analysis' to clarify the conserved neural mechanisms shaping the perceptual organization of sound and to advance strategies to improve hearing in natural environmental settings. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Environmental and occupational health and human rights.

PubMed

Slatin, Craig

2011-01-01

Modern environmental- and occupational-related morbidities and mortality are determined by the power relations inherent in our existing capitalist systems of production and consumption. These systems thwart human public health rights because of the priority to maximize profit for the systems' owners rather than to establish ecologically sound and socially just development for all. The international public health community must return to its primary prevention roots and take action to eliminate the potential for population morbidities that result from hazardous substance exposures in work and community environments. The 1988 Adelaide Recommendations on Healthy Public Policy provide us with guidelines that incorporate a human rights approach and build on several decades of international public health declarations and charters. To succeed, public health must work with the labor movement. A human rights approach to environmental public health can help us make a transition to sustainable modes of production and consumption. The environmental justice movement's strategy for an economic greening that sets as a priority "pathways out of poverty" can help to advance environmental public health rights.

Integrating spatial support tools into strategic planning-SEA of the GMS North-South Economic Corridor Strategy and Action Plan

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ramachandran, Pavit, E-mail: pramachandran@adb.org; Linde, Lothar, E-mail: lothar.linde@yahoo.de

The GMS countries, supported by the Asian Development Bank, have adopted a holistic, multidimensional approach to strengthen infrastructural linkages and facilitate cross border trade through (i) the establishment of a trans-boundary road connecting two economic nodes across marginalised areas, followed by 2) facilitation of environmentally and socially sound investments in these newly connected areas as a means to develop livelihoods. The North-South Economic Corridor is currently in its second phase of development, with investment opportunities to be laid out in the NSEC Strategy and Action Plan (SAP). It targets the ecologically and culturally sensitive border area between PR China's Yunnanmore » Province, Northern Lao PDR, and Thailand. A trans-boundary, cross-sectoral Strategic Environmental Assessment was conducted to support the respective governments in assessing potential environmental and social impacts, developing alternatives and mitigation options, and feeding the findings back into the SAP writing process. Given the spatial dimension of corridor development-both with regard to opportunities and risks-particular emphasis was put in the application of spatial modelling tools to help geographically locate and quantify impacts as a means to guide interventions and set priorities.« less

Quantifying benthic nitrogen fluxes in Puget Sound, Washington: a review of available data

USGS Publications Warehouse

Sheibley, Richard W.; Paulson, Anthony J.

2014-01-01

Understanding benthic fluxes is important for understanding the fate of materials that settle to the Puget Sound, Washington, seafloor, as well as the impact these fluxes have on the chemical composition and biogeochemical cycles of marine waters. Existing approaches used to measure benthic nitrogen flux in Puget Sound and elsewhere were reviewed and summarized, and factors for considering each approach were evaluated. Factors for selecting an appropriate approach for gathering information about benthic flux include: availability of resources, objectives of projects, and determination of which processes each approach measures. An extensive search of literature was undertaken to summarize known benthic nitrogen fluxes in Puget Sound. A total of 138 individual flux chamber measurements and 38 sets of diffusive fluxes were compiled for this study. Of the diffusive fluxes, 35 new datasets were located, and new flux calculations are presented in this report. About 65 new diffusive flux calculations are provided across all nitrogen species (nitrate, NO3-; nitrite, NO2-; ammonium, NH4+). Data analysis of this newly compiled benthic flux dataset showed that fluxes beneath deep (greater than 50 meters) water tended to be lower than those beneath shallow (less than 50 meters) water. Additionally, variability in flux at the shallow depths was greater, possibly indicating a more dynamic interaction between the benthic and pelagic environments. The overall range of bottom temperatures from studies in the Puget Sound area were small (5–16 degrees Celsius), and only NH4+ flux showed any pattern with temperature. For NH4+, flux values and variability increased at greater than about 12 degrees Celsius. Collection of additional study site metadata about environmental factors (bottom temperature, depth, sediment porosity, sediment type, and sediment organic matter) will help with development of a broader regional understanding benthic nitrogen flux in the Puget Sound.

[Status and actualization of tasks to improve the scientific-methodological and regulatory frameworks in the field of human ecology and environmental health].

PubMed

Rakhmanin, Iu A; Sinitsyna, O O

2013-01-01

Contemporary factors that affect the health of the population have been analyzed. There was shown the growing activity of chemical pollution of the environment. Therefore, in order to prevent the growth of negative health and environment consequences caused by increased levels of exposure to chemicals preventive potential for solutions of this complex problem and all strenuous efforts to assist possibly of the sound management of the chemicals should be enhanced. Problematic issues of harmonization of the Russian normative and guidance documents have been actualized. Perspective directions of science development in the field of human ecology and environmental health are suggested.

Compensating for environmental variability in the thermal inertia approach to remote sensing of soil moisture

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Idso, S. B.; Jackson, R. D.; Reginato, R. J.

1976-01-01

A procedure is developed for removing data scatter in the thermal-inertia approach to remote sensing of soil moisture which arises from environmental variability in time and space. It entails the utilization of nearby National Weather Service air temperature measurements to normalize measured diurnal surface temperature variations to what they would have been for a day of standard diurnal air temperature variation, arbitrarily assigned to be 18 C. Tests of the procedure's basic premise on a bare loam soil and a crop of alfalfa indicate it to be conceptually sound. It is possible that the technique could also be useful in other thermal-inertia applications, such as lithographic mapping.

Visual Presentation Effects on Identification of Multiple Environmental Sounds

PubMed Central

Masakura, Yuko; Ichikawa, Makoto; Shimono, Koichi; Nakatsuka, Reio

2016-01-01

This study examined how the contents and timing of a visual stimulus affect the identification of mixed sounds recorded in a daily life environment. For experiments, we presented four environment sounds as auditory stimuli for 5 s along with a picture or a written word as a visual stimulus that might or might not denote the source of one of the four sounds. Three conditions of temporal relations between the visual stimuli and sounds were used. The visual stimulus was presented either: (a) for 5 s simultaneously with the sound; (b) for 5 s, 1 s before the sound (SOA between the audio and visual stimuli was 6 s); or (c) for 33 ms, 1 s before the sound (SOA was 1033 ms). Participants reported all identifiable sounds for those audio–visual stimuli. To characterize the effects of visual stimuli on sound identification, the following were used: the identification rates of sounds for which the visual stimulus denoted its sound source, the rates of other sounds for which the visual stimulus did not denote the sound source, and the frequency of false hearing of a sound that was not presented for each sound set. Results of the four experiments demonstrated that a picture or a written word promoted identification of the sound when it was related to the sound, particularly when the visual stimulus was presented for 5 s simultaneously with the sounds. However, a visual stimulus preceding the sounds had a benefit only for the picture, not for the written word. Furthermore, presentation with a picture denoting a sound simultaneously with the sound reduced the frequency of false hearing. These results suggest three ways that presenting a visual stimulus affects identification of the auditory stimulus. First, activation of the visual representation extracted directly from the picture promotes identification of the denoted sound and suppresses the processing of sounds for which the visual stimulus did not denote the sound source. Second, effects based on processing of the conceptual information promote identification of the denoted sound and suppress the processing of sounds for which the visual stimulus did not denote the sound source. Third, processing of the concurrent visual representation suppresses false hearing. PMID:26973478

ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIALECONOMIC BENEFITS OF RESTORING AND-IMPAIRED STREAMS: EMERGY-BASED VALUATION

EPA Science Inventory

Sound environmental decisions require an integrated, systemic method of valuation that accurately accounts for environmental and social, as well as economic, costs and benefits. More inclusive methods are particularly needed for assessing ecological benefits because these are so...

Development of a Student-Centered Instrument to Assess Middle School Students' Conceptual Understanding of Sound

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eshach, Haim

2014-01-01

This article describes the development and field test of the Sound Concept Inventory Instrument (SCII), designed to measure middle school students' concepts of sound. The instrument was designed based on known students' difficulties in understanding sound and the history of science related to sound and focuses on two main aspects of sound: sound…

Influence of urban shapes on environmental noise: a case study in Aracaju-Brazil.

PubMed

Guedes, Italo C Montalvão; Bertoli, Stelamaris R; Zannin, Paulo H T

2011-12-15

This paper discusses the results of a study about the influence of urban shapes on environmental noise in the city of Aracaju (Brazil). The study, which involved in situ measurements and acoustic simulations using SoundPLAN software, began with an analysis of the current acoustic scenario, followed by the creation and simulation of hypothetical scenarios in as yet unoccupied sectors of the region under study. The acoustic modeling and simulations were based on measurements of equivalent-continuous sound pressure level, LAeq, and vehicle flow data, and on the region's geometrics. The results reveal that the physical characteristics of the urban shape, such as construction density, the existence of open spaces, and the shape and physical position of buildings exert a significant influence on environmental noise. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Evidence of damage to pink salmon inhabiting Prince William Sound, Alaska, three generations after the Exxon Valdez oil spill

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bue, B.G.; Miller, G.D.; Seeb, J.E.

1995-12-31

Investigations into the environmental effects of the 1 989 Exxon Valdez oil spill lead us to conclude that chronic damage occurred in some pink salmon populations. Differences in survival between streams contaminated by oil and uncontaminated streams have been observed annually since the spill for pink salmon embryos incubating in the intertidal portions of Prince William Sound. The authors assessed the environmental influence on these findings by collecting gametes from both contaminated and uncontaminated streams, transporting them to a hatchery where intra-stream crosses were made, and incubating the resulting embryos under identical conditions. Lower survival was detected in the embryosmore » originating from the oil-contaminated streams indicating that the agent responsible for the differences detected in the field was genetic rather than environmental.« less

How Pleasant Sounds Promote and Annoying Sounds Impede Health: A Cognitive Approach

PubMed Central

Andringa, Tjeerd C.; Lanser, J. Jolie L.

2013-01-01

This theoretical paper addresses the cognitive functions via which quiet and in general pleasurable sounds promote and annoying sounds impede health. The article comprises a literature analysis and an interpretation of how the bidirectional influence of appraising the environment and the feelings of the perceiver can be understood in terms of core affect and motivation. This conceptual basis allows the formulation of a detailed cognitive model describing how sonic content, related to indicators of safety and danger, either allows full freedom over mind-states or forces the activation of a vigilance function with associated arousal. The model leads to a number of detailed predictions that can be used to provide existing soundscape approaches with a solid cognitive science foundation that may lead to novel approaches to soundscape design. These will take into account that louder sounds typically contribute to distal situational awareness while subtle environmental sounds provide proximal situational awareness. The role of safety indicators, mediated by proximal situational awareness and subtle sounds, should become more important in future soundscape research. PMID:23567255

Behavioral response of manatees to variations in environmental sound levels

USGS Publications Warehouse

Miksis-Olds, Jennifer L.; Wagner, Tyler

2011-01-01

Florida manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris) inhabit coastal regions because they feed on the aquatic vegetation that grows in shallow waters, which are the same areas where human activities are greatest. Noise produced from anthropogenic and natural sources has the potential to affect these animals by eliciting responses ranging from mild behavioral changes to extreme aversion. Sound levels were calculated from recordings made throughout behavioral observation periods. An information theoretic approach was used to investigate the relationship between behavior patterns and sound level. Results indicated that elevated sound levels affect manatee activity and are a function of behavioral state. The proportion of time manatees spent feeding and milling changed in response to sound level. When ambient sound levels were highest, more time was spent in the directed, goal-oriented behavior of feeding, whereas less time was spent engaged in undirected behavior such as milling. This work illustrates how shifts in activity of individual manatees may be useful parameters for identifying impacts of noise on manatees and might inform population level effects.

Environmental Assessment for QSEU116038 - Lower Pattern Altitude at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-04-01

flight rules ( IFR ) overhead flight patterns. The 2,000-foot AGL VFR overhead flight pattern is associated with the previous Moody AFB training mission...EA Environmental Assessment EIS environmental impact statement IFR instrument flight rules Lmax maximum sound level NEPA National Environmental...airspace only (airspace immediately surrounding the Moody AFB airfield) and would not affect instrument flight rules ( IFR ) overhead flight patterns

SETAC-U.S. EPA WET INITIATIVES: ALL WET AND NOTHING BUT WET

EPA Science Inventory

To ensure that sould scientific principles and sound science are applied to the challenging issues in t he Whole Effluent Toxicity (WET) process, the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Foundation for Environmental Education was awarded a cooperative agreem...

Environmental Topics for Introductory Physics Courses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hodges, Laurent

1974-01-01

Presents selected environmental references with comparatively detailed descriptions for the purpose of helping high school and college physics teachers in selecting materials for their course. The topics include thermal pollution, space heating and cooling, atmospheric temperature distribution, radiation balance of the earth, sound and noises, and…

The Tympanic Membrane Motion in Forward and Reverse Middle-Ear Sound Transmission

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cheng, Jeffrey Tao; Harrington, Ellery; Horwitz, Rachelle; Furlong, Cosme; Rosowski, John J.

2011-11-01

Sound-induced displacement of the tympanic membrane (TM) is the first stage in the forward transformation of environmental sound to sound within the inner ear, while displacement of the TM induced by mechanical motions of the ossicular chain is the last stage in the reverse transformation of sound generated within the inner ear to clinically valuable otoacoustic emissions (OAEs). In this study, we use stroboscopic holographic interferometry to study motions of the human cadaveric TM evoked by both forward and reverse stimuli. During forward acoustic stimulation, pure tones from 500 to 10000 Hz are used to stimulate the TM, while reverse stimulation is produced by direct mechanical stimulation of the ossicular chain. The TM surface motions in response to both forward and reverse stimuli show differences and similarities, including the modal motion patterns at specific frequencies as well as the presence and directions of traveling waves on the TM surface.

Adult Learning in New Social Movements: Environmental Protest and the Struggle for the Clayoquot Sound Rainforest

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walter, Pierre

2007-01-01

During the summer of 1993, some 10,000 people, young and old, joined logging road blockades to protest the clear-cutting of old-growth temperate rainforest in Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, Canada. By the end of the summer, more than 900 protestors had been arrested for acts of civil disobedience in refusing to leave the road. In subsequent…

Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES): R series hyperspectral environmental suite (HES) overview

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Martin, Gene; Criscione, Joseph C.; Cauffman, Sandra A.; Davis, Martin A.

2004-11-01

The Hyperspectral Environmental Suite (HES) instrument is currently under development by the NASA GOES-R Project team within the framework of the GOES Program to fulfill the future needs and requirements of the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) Office. As part of the GOES-R instrument complement, HES will provide measurements of the traditional temperature and water vapor vertical profiles with higher accuracy and vertical resolution than obtained through current sounder technologies. HES will provide measurements of the properties of the shelf and coastal waters and back up imaging (at in-situ resolution) for the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). The HES team is forging the future of remote environmental monitoring with the development of an operational instrument with high temporal, spatial and spectral-resolution and broad hemispheric coverage. The HES development vision includes threshold and goal requirements that encompass potential system solutions. The HES team has defined tasks for the instrument(s) that include a threshold functional complement of Disk Sounding (DS), Severe Weather/Mesoscale Sounding (SW/M), and Shelf and Coastal Waters imaging (CW) and a goal functional complement of Open Ocean (OO) imaging, and back up imaging (at in-situ resolution) for the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). To achieve the best-value procurement, the GOES-R Project has base-lined a two-phase procurement approach to the HES design and development; a Formulation/study phase and an instrument Implementation phase. During Formulation, currently slated for the FY04-05 timeframe, the developing team(s) will perform Systems Requirements Analysis and evaluation, System Trade and Requirements Baseline Studies, Risk Assessment and Mitigation Strategy and complete a Preliminary Conceptual Design of the HES instrument. The results of the formulation phase will be leveraged to achieve an effective and efficient system solution during the Implementation Phase scheduled to begin FY05 for a resultant FY12 launch. The magnitude of complexity of the HES development requires an appreciation of the technologies required to achieve the functional objectives. To this end, the GOES-R project team is making available all NASA developed technologies to potential HES vendors, including, the NASA New Millennium Program"s (NMP) Earth Observing-3, Geostationary Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (GIFTS) instrument developed technologies, as applicable. It is anticipated that the instrument(s) meeting the HES requirements will be either a dispersive spectrometer or an interferometric spectrometer or perhaps a combination. No instrument configuration is preferred or favored by the Government. This paper outlines the HES development plan; including an overview of current requirements, existing partnerships and the GOES-R project methodologies to achieve the advanced functional objectives of the GOES Program partnership.

Objective evaluation of interior noise booming in a passenger car based on sound metrics and artificial neural networks.

PubMed

Lee, Hyun-Ho; Lee, Sang-Kwon

2009-09-01

Booming sound is one of the important sounds in a passenger car. The aim of the paper is to develop the objective evaluation method of interior booming sound. The development method is based on the sound metrics and ANN (artificial neural network). The developed method is called the booming index. Previous work maintained that booming sound quality is related to loudness and sharpness--the sound metrics used in psychoacoustics--and that the booming index is developed by using the loudness and sharpness for a signal within whole frequency between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. In the present paper, the booming sound quality was found to be effectively related to the loudness at frequencies below 200 Hz; thus the booming index is updated by using the loudness of the signal filtered by the low pass filter at frequency under 200 Hz. The relationship between the booming index and sound metric is identified by an ANN. The updated booming index has been successfully applied to the objective evaluation of the booming sound quality of mass-produced passenger cars.

Assessment of spatial and physical neighborhood characteristics that influence sound quality and herewith well-being and health

PubMed Central

Devilee, Jeroen; van Kempen, Elise; Swart, Wim; van Kamp, Irene; Ameling, Caroline

2017-01-01

Environmental noise and health studies seldom address the positive effect of environments with high acoustic quality. Sound quality, in turn, is influenced by a large number of factors, including the spatial–physical characteristics of a neighborhood. In general, these characteristics cannot be retrieved from existing databases. In this article, we describe the design of an audit instrument and demonstrate its value for gathering information about these characteristics of neighborhoods. The audit instrument used was derived from research in other fields than environmental health. The instrument was tested in 33 neighborhoods in the Dutch cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Arnhem. In these neighborhoods, more or less homogeneous subareas were identified that were subject of the audit. The results show that the audit approach is suitable to gather neighborhood data that are relevant for the sound quality of neighborhoods. Together with survey data, they provide information that could further the field of soundscape and health. Several suggestions for improvement of the audit instrument were made. PMID:28615546

Combustion-derived substances in deep basins of Puget Sound: historical inputs from fossil fuel and biomass combustion.

PubMed

Kuo, Li-Jung; Louchouarn, Patrick; Herbert, Bruce E; Brandenberger, Jill M; Wade, Terry L; Crecelius, Eric

2011-04-01

Reconstructions of 250 years historical inputs of two distinct types of black carbon (soot/graphitic black carbon (GBC) and char-BC) were conducted on sediment cores from two basins of the Puget Sound, WA. Signatures of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were also used to support the historical reconstructions of BC to this system. Down-core maxima in GBC and combustion-derived PAHs occurred in the 1940s in the cores from the Puget Sound Main Basin, whereas in Hood Canal such peak was observed in the 1970s, showing basin-specific differences in inputs of combustion byproducts. This system showed relatively higher inputs from softwood combustion than the northeastern U.S. The historical variations in char-BC concentrations were consistent with shifts in climate indices, suggesting an influence of climate oscillations on wildfire events. Environmental loading of combustion byproducts thus appears as a complex function of urbanization, fuel usage, combustion technology, environmental policies, and climate conditions. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Erosion Control Management Plan for Army Training Lands

DTIC Science & Technology

1990-07-01

Functional Appropriateness of Control Appropriateness of Control for Natural Conditions Environmental Impact Considerations Appropriateness of Control...construction, maintenance, and repair projects are often related to environmental protection standards and natural resource guidelines. In such cases...SEP 17 90" The Army faces major land management issues in SEP 1 9O maintaining its training areas to be environmentally sound and support the mission

Coal: special report number 2

USGS Publications Warehouse

Keenlyne, Kent D.

1977-01-01

The Fish and Wildlife Service has extensive biological expertise within the Department of Interior and exerts national leadership in the management and protection of the nation's fish and wildlife resources, their habitat, and environment. Specifically, the Office of Biological Services obtains and assimilates biological and environmental data and identifies additional informational needs and means to provide environmental and biological input into major natural resource decisions. Coal Coordinators assist in carrying out Fish and Wildlife Service involvement in the Interior Department Coal Leasing Program through a multi-stage process designed to assemble existing fish and wildlife inventory data and to prioritize fish and wildlife values in areas subject to coal leasing and associated development. This report is designed to identify possible areas of concern for wildlife and its habitat in Wyoming in the development of coal and the associate implication of land use changes. This report summarizes past and present development of the coal resource in Wyoming in anticipation of future identification of data needs for making sound resource decisions in the development of coal.

Development of innovative architecture of the organizational and economic mechanism for the nature protection management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mikhailov, V. G.; Kiseleva, T. V.; Karasev, V. A.; Mikhailov, G. S.; Skukin, V. A.

2017-05-01

The problems of the efficient functioning of environmental and economic systems of various levels on the basis of the adequate organizational and economic management mechanism are considered in the article. The purpose of the study is the analysis and development of theoretical provisions for the formation of a modern, innovative organizational and economic mechanism of the nature protection management. The compliance matrix of the innovative elements presented in the structure of the organizational and economic mechanism of the nature protection management is developed. The main result of the study is the improvement of the existing management mechanism to minimize the negative impact on the environment, including through the incentive system, and to improve the financial performance of the economic entity. The practical component of the study conducted can be recommended to municipal, regional and federal authorities, as well as the industrial enterprises, to support the adoption of the effective, environmentally sound management decisions that are consistent with the global concept of sustainable development.

Evaluation of environmental impact assessment system in Pakistan

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Nadeem, Obaidullah; Hameed, Rizwan

2008-11-15

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) was first introduced in Pakistan based on the Environmental Protection Ordinance 1983. The EIA process was further strengthened under the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997, which became operational under EIA Regulations 2000. Despite a sound legal basis and comprehensive guidelines, evidence suggests that EIA has not yet evolved satisfactorily in Pakistan. An evaluation of the EIA system against systematic evaluation criteria, based on interviews with EIA approval authorities, consulting firms and experts, reveals various shortcomings of the EIA system. These mainly include; inadequate capacity of EIA approval authorities, deficiencies in screening and scoping, poor EIA quality,more » inadequate public participation and weak monitoring. Overall, EIA is used presently as a project justification tool rather than as a project planning tool to contribute to achieving sustainable development. Whilst shortcomings are challenging, central government has recently shown a high degree of commitment to the environmental protection by making EIA compulsory for all the public sector projects likely to have adverse environmental impacts. The paper identifies opportunities for taking advantage of the current environment for strengthening the EIA process.« less

Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, annual technical progress report of ecological research for the year ending June 30, 1998

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wein, G.; Rosier, B.

1998-12-31

This report provides an overview of the research programs and program components carried out by the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Research focused on the following: advanced analytical and spectroscopic techniques for developing novel waste isolation and stabilization technologies as well as cost-effective remediation strategies; ecologically sound management of damaged and remediation of ecological systems; ecotoxicology, remediation, and risk assessment; radioecology, including dose assessments for plants and animals exposed to environmental radiation; and other research support programs.

Draft Environmental Impact Statement Reuse of Naval Station Puget Sound, Sand Point, Seattle, Washington. Volume 2. (Appendixes A through M)

DTIC Science & Technology

1996-11-01

have to be performed on the pavement in order to determine actual longevity and pavement thickness for future use. The road system must provide...Sand Point with firm service by late 1995, if this would prove cost- effective in the long run. Reuse Plan Eventually, individual heating systems ...development was built there was some initial concern, but it did not last long nor did it effect rent or property values. LAMB HANSON LAMB APPRAISAL

Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, annual technical progress report of ecological research for the year ending June 30, 1997

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wein, G.; Rosier, B.

1997-12-31

This report provides an overview of the research programs and program components carried out by the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Research focused on the following: advanced analytical and spectroscopic techniques for developing novel waste isolation and stabilization technologies as well as cost-effective remediation strategies; ecologically sound management of damaged and remediation of ecological systems; ecotoxicology, remediation, and risk assessment; radioecology, including dose assessments for plants and animals exposed to environmental radiation; and other research support programs.

Impact of NICU design on environmental noise.

PubMed

Szymczak, Stacy E; Shellhaas, Renée A

2014-04-01

For neonates requiring intensive care, the optimal sound environment is uncertain. Minimal disruptions from medical staff create quieter environments for sleep, but limit language exposure necessary for proper language development. There are two models of neonatal intensive care units (NICUs): open-bay, in which 6-to-10 infants are cared for in a single large room; and single-room, in which neonates are housed in private, individual hospital rooms. We compared the acoustic environments in the two NICU models. We extracted the audio tracks from video-electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring studies from neonates in an open-bay NICU and compared the acoustic environment to that recorded from neonates in a new single-room NICU. From each NICU, 18 term infants were studied (total N=36; mean gestational age 39.3±1.9 weeks). Neither z-scores of the sound level variance (0.088±0.03 vs. 0.083±0.03, p=0.7), nor percent time with peak sound variance (above 2 standard deviations; 3.6% vs. 3.8%, p=0.6) were different. However, time below 0.05 standard deviations was higher in the single-room NICU (76% vs. 70%, p=0.02). We provide objective evidence that single-room NICUs have equal sound peaks and overall noise level variability compared with open-bay units, but the former may offer significantly more time at lower noise levels.

Analysis of environmental sounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Keansub

Environmental sound archives - casual recordings of people's daily life - are easily collected by MPS players or camcorders with low cost and high reliability, and shared in the web-sites. There are two kinds of user generated recordings we would like to be able to handle in this thesis: Continuous long-duration personal audio and Soundtracks of short consumer video clips. These environmental recordings contain a lot of useful information (semantic concepts) related with activity, location, occasion and content. As a consequence, the environment archives present many new opportunities for the automatic extraction of information that can be used in intelligent browsing systems. This thesis proposes systems for detecting these interesting concepts on a collection of these real-world recordings. The first system is to segment and label personal audio archives - continuous recordings of an individual's everyday experiences - into 'episodes' (relatively consistent acoustic situations lasting a few minutes or more) using the Bayesian Information Criterion and spectral clustering. The second system is for identifying regions of speech or music in the kinds of energetic and highly-variable noise present in this real-world sound. Motivated by psychoacoustic evidence that pitch is crucial in the perception and organization of sound, we develop a noise-robust pitch detection algorithm to locate speech or music-like regions. To avoid false alarms resulting from background noise with strong periodic components (such as air-conditioning), a new scheme is added in order to suppress these noises in the domain of autocorrelogram. In addition, the third system is to automatically detect a large set of interesting semantic concepts; which we chose for being both informative and useful to users, as well as being technically feasible. These 25 concepts are associated with people's activities, locations, occasions, objects, scenes and sounds, and are based on a large collection of consumer videos in conjunction with user studies. We model the soundtrack of each video, regardless of its original duration, as a fixed-sized clip-level summary feature. For each concept, an SVM-based classifier is trained according to three distance measures (Kullback-Leibler, Bhattacharyya, and Mahalanobis distance). Detecting the time of occurrence of a local object (for instance, a cheering sound) embedded in a longer soundtrack is useful and important for applications such as search and retrieval in consumer video archives. We finally present a Markov-model based clustering algorithm able to identify and segment consistent sets of temporal frames into regions associated with different ground-truth labels, and at the same time to exclude a set of uninformative frames shared in common from all clips. The labels are provided at the clip level, so this refinement of the time axis represents a variant of Multiple-Instance Learning (MIL). Quantitative evaluation shows that the performance of our proposed approaches tested on the 60h personal audio archives or 1900 YouTube video clips is significantly better than existing algorithms for detecting these useful concepts in real-world personal audio recordings.

Personal significance is encoded automatically by the human brain: an event-related potential study with ringtones.

PubMed

Roye, Anja; Jacobsen, Thomas; Schröger, Erich

2007-08-01

In this human event-related brain potential (ERP) study, we have used one's personal--relative to another person's--ringtone presented in a two-deviant passive oddball paradigm to investigate the long-term memory effects of self-selected personal significance of a sound on the automatic deviance detection and involuntary attention system. Our findings extend the knowledge of long-term effects usually reported in group-approaches in the domains of speech, music and environmental sounds. In addition to the usual mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a component elicited by deviants in contrast to standard stimuli, we observed a posterior ERP deflection directly following the MMN for the personally significant deviant only. This specific impact of personal significance started around 200 ms after sound onset and involved neural generators that were different from the mere physical deviance detection mechanism. Whereas the early part of the P3a component was unaffected by personal significance, the late P3a was enhanced for the ERPs to the personal significant deviant suggesting that this stimulus was more powerful in attracting attention involuntarily. Following the involuntary attention switch, the personally significant stimulus elicited a widely-distributed negative deflection, probably reflecting further analysis of the significant sound involving evaluation of relevance or reorienting to the primary task. Our data show, that the personal significance of mobile phone and text message technology, which have developed as a major medium of communication in our modern world, prompts the formation of individual memory representations, which affect the processing of sounds that are not in the focus of attention.

Remote Sensing of Suspended Sediment Dynamics in the Mississippi Sound

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Merritt, D. N.; Skarke, A. D.; Silwal, S.; Dash, P.

2016-02-01

The Mississippi Sound is a semi-enclosed estuary between the coast of Mississippi and a chain of offshore barrier islands with relatively shallow water depths and high marine biodiversity that is wildly utilized for commercial fishing and public recreation. The discharge of sediment-laden rivers into the Mississippi Sound and the adjacent Northern Gulf of Mexico creates turbid plumes that can extend hundreds of square kilometers along the coast and persist for multiple days. The concentration of suspended sediment in these coastal waters is an important parameter in the calculation of regional sediment budgets as well as analysis of water-quality factors such as primary productivity, nutrient dynamics, and the transport of pollutants as well as pathogens. The spectral resolution, sampling frequency, and regional scale spatial domain associated with satellite based sensors makes remote sensing an ideal tool to monitor suspended sediment dynamics in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Accordingly, the presented research evaluates the validity of published models that relate remote sensing reflectance with suspended sediment concentrations (SSC), for similar environmental settings, with 51 in situ observations of SSC from the Mississippi Sound. Additionally, regression analysis is used to correlate additional in situ observations of SSC in Mississippi Sound with coincident observations of visible and near-infrared band reflectance collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor aboard the Aqua satellite, in order to develop a site-specific empirical predictive model for SSC. Finally, specific parameters of the sampled suspended sediment such as grain size and mineralogy are analyzed in order to quantify their respective contributions to total remotely sensed reflectance.

United States Department of Energy Environmental Restoration and Waste Management: Comment Response Document

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Not Available

IN 1989, Secretary of Energy James Watkins called for a fundamental change in the way US Department of Energy (DOE) meets its environmental responsibilities. Whereas DOE had long subordinated environmental concerns to the higher priority of weapons production, the Department's mission was restructured to place less emphasis on defense-related production and much greater emphasis on sound environmental management and restoration of its weapons complex. To carry out this new mission, the Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (EM) was created. Secretary Watkins further stressed that DOE's new commitment to environmental values will be carried out under a new DOEmore » culture-one of openness, responsiveness, and accountability. The Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Five-Year Plan is the key planning document that embodies both the new DOE emphasis on environmental management and the Department's commitment to involving the public in its planning process. Updated annually, the Five-Year Plan guides EM's efforts to clean up DOE facilities and manage its waste -- its accomplishments, goals, and planned activities -- and reinforces DOE's commitment to the culture change by involving the general public in its development.« less

United States Department of Energy Environmental Restoration and Waste Management: Comment Response Document. Five-Year Plan, Fiscal Years 1993--1997

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Not Available

IN 1989, Secretary of Energy James Watkins called for a fundamental change in the way US Department of Energy (DOE) meets its environmental responsibilities. Whereas DOE had long subordinated environmental concerns to the higher priority of weapons production, the Department`s mission was restructured to place less emphasis on defense-related production and much greater emphasis on sound environmental management and restoration of its weapons complex. To carry out this new mission, the Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (EM) was created. Secretary Watkins further stressed that DOE`s new commitment to environmental values will be carried out under a new DOEmore » culture-one of openness, responsiveness, and accountability. The Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Five-Year Plan is the key planning document that embodies both the new DOE emphasis on environmental management and the Department`s commitment to involving the public in its planning process. Updated annually, the Five-Year Plan guides EM`s efforts to clean up DOE facilities and manage its waste -- its accomplishments, goals, and planned activities -- and reinforces DOE`s commitment to the culture change by involving the general public in its development.« less

The Influence of Sound Cues on the Maintenance of Temporal Organization in the Sprague-Dawley Rat

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Winget, C. M.; Moeller, K. A.; Holley, D. C.; Souza, Kenneth A. (Technical Monitor)

1994-01-01

Temporal organization is a fundamental property of living matter. From single cells to complex animals including man, most physiological systems undergo daily periodic changes in concert with environmental cues (e.g., light, temperature etc.). It is known that pulsed Environmental synchronizers, zeitgebers, (e.g. light) can modify rhythm parameters. Rhythm stability is a necessary requirement for most animal experiments. The extent to which sound can influence the circadian system of laboratory rats is poorly understood. This has implications to animal habitats in the novel environments of the Space-Laboratory or Space Station. A series of three white noise (88+/-0.82 db) zeitgeber experiments were conducted (n=6/experiment).The sound cue was introduced in the circadian free-running phase (DD-NQ) and in one additional case sound was added to the usual photoperiod (12L:12D) to determine masking effects. Circadian rhythm parameters of drinking frequency, feeding frequency, and gross locomotor activity were continuously monitored. Data analysis for these studies included macroscopic and microscopic methods. Raster plots to visually detect entrainment versus free-running period, were plotted for each animal, for all three parameters, during all sound perturbation tested. These data were processed through a series of detrending (robust locally weighted regression analyses) and complex demodulation analyses. In summary, these findings show that periodic "white" noise "influences" the rats circadian system but does not "entrain" the feeding, drinking or locomotor activity rhythms.

Metering Best Practices, A Guide to Achieving Utility Resource Efficiency, Release 2.0

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sullivan, Greg; Hunt, W. D.; Pugh, Ray

2011-08-31

This release is an update and expansion of the information provided in Release 1.0 of the Metering Best Practice Guide that was issued in October 2007. This release, as was the previous release, was developed under the direction of the U.S. Department of Energy's Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP). The mission of FEMP is to facilitate the Federal Government's implementation of sound cost-effective energy management and investment practices to enhance the nation's energy security and environmental stewardship. Each of these activities is directly related to achieving requirements set forth in the Energy Policy Acts of 1992 and 2005, the Energymore » Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, and the goals that have been established in Executive Orders 13423 and 13514 - and also those practices that are inherent in sound management of Federal financial and personnel resources.« less

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Weaver, Douglas James

The mission of Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is to demonstrate the safe, environmentally sound, cost effective, permanent disposal of Transuranic (TRU) waste left from production of nuclear weapons.

Involuntary and persistent environmental noise influences health and hearing in Beirut, Lebanon.

PubMed

Fooladi, Marjaneh M

2012-01-01

This study was conducted to assess the effects of involuntary and persistent noise exposure on health and hearing among Lebanese adults in Beirut, Lebanon, where people are exposed to noise from construction sites, power generators, honking cars, and motorcycles. Using a descriptive and exploratory design with mixed methods, participants were surveyed, interviewed, and tested for hearing while street noise levels were measured near their residents and work places. Self-reports of 83 Lebanese adult, who lived and worked in Beirut, helped identify common patterns in experiences such as irritability, anger, headaches, and sleep disturbances due to noise annoyance. Of those tested, 30% suffered from high-frequency hearing impairment. Our results showed that environmental sound dB had increased by 12% and sound intensity by 400% above the maximum standard level when compared to the WHO report of 1999. Environmental noise contributes to premature hearing loss and potentiates systemic diseases among Lebanese.

Parameterizing Sound: Design Considerations for an Environmental Sound Database

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-04-01

Accordion Car backfire Crushing a metal can Aerosol can Car crash Crushing a tin can Alarm clock Car ignition Crushing egg shells Alloette...top Coffee perking Eggs beaten in a bowl with a whisk Bowling Coffee pot whistling Elastic (snap) Bread cutting Coin dropping Electric...Bus Combination lock Female speaking Bus air break Cooking with fat Ferry Bus stop and go Cuckoo clock Ferry horn Camera Corduroy

Behind Start of Take-Off Roll Aircraft Sound Level Directivity Study - Revision 1

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lau, Michael C.; Roof, Christopher J.; Fleming, Gregg G.; Rapoza, Amanda S.; Boeker, Eric R.; McCurdy, David A.; Shepherd, Kevin P.

2015-01-01

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Langley Research Center (LaRC) and the Environmental Measurement and Modeling Division of the Department of Transportation's Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe) conducted a noise measurement study to examine aircraft sound level directivity patterns behind the start-of-takeoff roll. The study was conducted at Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) from October 4 through 20, 2004.

Auditory hedonic phenotypes in dementia: A behavioural and neuroanatomical analysis

PubMed Central

Fletcher, Phillip D.; Downey, Laura E.; Golden, Hannah L.; Clark, Camilla N.; Slattery, Catherine F.; Paterson, Ross W.; Schott, Jonathan M.; Rohrer, Jonathan D.; Rossor, Martin N.; Warren, Jason D.

2015-01-01

Patients with dementia may exhibit abnormally altered liking for environmental sounds and music but such altered auditory hedonic responses have not been studied systematically. Here we addressed this issue in a cohort of 73 patients representing major canonical dementia syndromes (behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), semantic dementia (SD), progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) amnestic Alzheimer's disease (AD)) using a semi-structured caregiver behavioural questionnaire and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) of patients' brain MR images. Behavioural responses signalling abnormal aversion to environmental sounds, aversion to music or heightened pleasure in music (‘musicophilia’) occurred in around half of the cohort but showed clear syndromic and genetic segregation, occurring in most patients with bvFTD but infrequently in PNFA and more commonly in association with MAPT than C9orf72 mutations. Aversion to sounds was the exclusive auditory phenotype in AD whereas more complex phenotypes including musicophilia were common in bvFTD and SD. Auditory hedonic alterations correlated with grey matter loss in a common, distributed, right-lateralised network including antero-mesial temporal lobe, insula, anterior cingulate and nucleus accumbens. Our findings suggest that abnormalities of auditory hedonic processing are a significant issue in common dementias. Sounds may constitute a novel probe of brain mechanisms for emotional salience coding that are targeted by neurodegenerative disease. PMID:25929717

Do you remember where sounds, pictures and words came from? The role of the stimulus format in object location memory.

PubMed

Delogu, Franco; Lilla, Christopher C

2017-11-01

Contrasting results in visual and auditory spatial memory stimulate the debate over the role of sensory modality and attention in identity-to-location binding. We investigated the role of sensory modality in the incidental/deliberate encoding of the location of a sequence of items. In 4 separated blocks, 88 participants memorised sequences of environmental sounds, spoken words, pictures and written words, respectively. After memorisation, participants were asked to recognise old from new items in a new sequence of stimuli. They were also asked to indicate from which side of the screen (visual stimuli) or headphone channel (sounds) the old stimuli were presented in encoding. In the first block, participants were not aware of the spatial requirement while, in blocks 2, 3 and 4 they knew that their memory for item location was going to be tested. Results show significantly lower accuracy of object location memory for the auditory stimuli (environmental sounds and spoken words) than for images (pictures and written words). Awareness of spatial requirement did not influence localisation accuracy. We conclude that: (a) object location memory is more effective for visual objects; (b) object location is implicitly associated with item identity during encoding and (c) visual supremacy in spatial memory does not depend on the automaticity of object location binding.

15 CFR 291.4 - National industry-specific pollution prevention and environmental compliance resource centers.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

..., external evaluation for assessing outcomes of the activity, and “customer satisfaction” measures of... requirements. (d) Project customers. (1) The customers for this center will be the businesses in the industrial...) The center should assist the customer in choosing the most cost- effective, environmentally sound...

48 CFR 2923.271 - Purchase and use of environmentally sound and energy efficient products and services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... the Government Through Leadership in Environmental Management Systems, dated April 21, 2000. This... to maximize cost efficient energy management: (a) The GSA Federal Supply Schedule Products Guide...) Executive Order 13123, Greening the Government Through Efficient Energy Management, dated June 8, 1999...

[Environmental Education the Organic Way.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

1972

Interdisciplinary teaching resources for environmental studies at all educational levels are combined in this set of materials. Items include: (1) teaching aids for science, health, and nature study entitled: (a) "Insects--Here to Help You and the Environment," an 18-minute color filmstrip, cassette sound track and accompanying teacher's guide for…

Magic From the Woods. A Teacher's Handbook for Environmental Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Warren, Mark

This workbook contains suggestions for environmental learning adventures for elementary school children in a forest. The activities are classified under various concepts such as sound, growth, adaptation, force, variety, water, habitat, design time, and conservation. The concept is first defined. Then a preparation exercise to get the students…

Environmental Noise

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rumberg, Martin

Environmental noise may be defined as unwanted sound that is caused by emissions from traffic (roads, air traffic corridors, and railways), industrial sites and recreational infrastructures, which may cause both annoyance and damage to health. Noise in the environment or community seriously affects people, interfering with daily activities at school, work and home and during leisure time.

76 FR 40368 - Federal Acquisition Regulation; Submission for OMB Review; Environmentally Sound Products

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-07-08

... Services Administration (GSA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). ACTION: Notice of... Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) (42 U.S.C. 6962). RCRA requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA... program. The items for which EPA has designated minimum recovered material content standards are grouped...

76 FR 17127 - Federal Acquisition Regulation; Information Collection; Environmentally Sound Products

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-03-28

... Administration (GSA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). ACTION: Notice of request for... Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) (42 U.S.C. 6962). RCRA requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA... program. The items for which EPA has designated minimum recovered material content standards are grouped...

From Soybean residue to advanced supercapacitors

PubMed Central

Ferrero, G. A.; Fuertes, A. B.; Sevilla, M.

2015-01-01

Supercapacitor technology is an extremely timely area of research with fierce international competition to develop cost-effective, environmentally friendlier EC electrode materials that have real world application. Herein, nitrogen-doped carbons with large specific surface area, optimized micropore structure and surface chemistry have been prepared by means of an environmentally sound hydrothermal carbonization process using defatted soybean (i.e., Soybean meal), a widely available and cost-effective protein-rich biomass, as precursor followed by a chemical activation step. When tested as supercapacitor electrodes in aqueous electrolytes (i.e. H2SO4 and Li2SO4), they demonstrate excellent capacitive performance and robustness, with high values of specific capacitance in both gravimetric (250–260 and 176 F g−1 in H2SO4 and Li2SO4 respectively) and volumetric (150–210 and 102 F cm−3 in H2SO4 and Li2SO4 respectively) units, and remarkable rate capability (>60% capacitance retention at 20 A g−1 in both media). Interestingly, when Li2SO4 is used, the voltage window is extended up to 1.7 V (in contrast to 1.1 V in H2SO4). Thus, the amount of energy stored is increased by 50% compared to H2SO4 electrolyte, enabling this environmentally sound Li2SO4-based supercapacitor to deliver ~12 Wh kg−1 at a high power density of ~2 kW kg−1. PMID:26568473

From Soybean residue to advanced supercapacitors.

PubMed

Ferrero, G A; Fuertes, A B; Sevilla, M

2015-11-16

Supercapacitor technology is an extremely timely area of research with fierce international competition to develop cost-effective, environmentally friendlier EC electrode materials that have real world application. Herein, nitrogen-doped carbons with large specific surface area, optimized micropore structure and surface chemistry have been prepared by means of an environmentally sound hydrothermal carbonization process using defatted soybean (i.e., Soybean meal), a widely available and cost-effective protein-rich biomass, as precursor followed by a chemical activation step. When tested as supercapacitor electrodes in aqueous electrolytes (i.e. H2SO4 and Li2SO4), they demonstrate excellent capacitive performance and robustness, with high values of specific capacitance in both gravimetric (250-260 and 176 F g(-1) in H2SO4 and Li2SO4 respectively) and volumetric (150-210 and 102 F cm(-3) in H2SO4 and Li2SO4 respectively) units, and remarkable rate capability (>60% capacitance retention at 20 A g(-1) in both media). Interestingly, when Li2SO4 is used, the voltage window is extended up to 1.7 V (in contrast to 1.1 V in H2SO4). Thus, the amount of energy stored is increased by 50% compared to H2SO4 electrolyte, enabling this environmentally sound Li2SO4-based supercapacitor to deliver ~12 Wh kg(-1) at a high power density of ~2 kW kg(-1).

From Soybean residue to advanced supercapacitors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ferrero, G. A.; Fuertes, A. B.; Sevilla, M.

2015-11-01

Supercapacitor technology is an extremely timely area of research with fierce international competition to develop cost-effective, environmentally friendlier EC electrode materials that have real world application. Herein, nitrogen-doped carbons with large specific surface area, optimized micropore structure and surface chemistry have been prepared by means of an environmentally sound hydrothermal carbonization process using defatted soybean (i.e., Soybean meal), a widely available and cost-effective protein-rich biomass, as precursor followed by a chemical activation step. When tested as supercapacitor electrodes in aqueous electrolytes (i.e. H2SO4 and Li2SO4), they demonstrate excellent capacitive performance and robustness, with high values of specific capacitance in both gravimetric (250-260 and 176 F g-1 in H2SO4 and Li2SO4 respectively) and volumetric (150-210 and 102 F cm-3 in H2SO4 and Li2SO4 respectively) units, and remarkable rate capability (>60% capacitance retention at 20 A g-1 in both media). Interestingly, when Li2SO4 is used, the voltage window is extended up to 1.7 V (in contrast to 1.1 V in H2SO4). Thus, the amount of energy stored is increased by 50% compared to H2SO4 electrolyte, enabling this environmentally sound Li2SO4-based supercapacitor to deliver ~12 Wh kg-1 at a high power density of ~2 kW kg-1.

Environmental potentials of policy instruments to mitigate nutrient emissions in Chinese livestock production.

PubMed

Zheng, Chaohui; Liu, Yi; Bluemling, Bettina; Mol, Arthur P J; Chen, Jining

2015-01-01

To minimize negative environmental impact of livestock production, policy-makers face a challenge to design and implement more effective policy instruments for livestock farmers at different scales. This research builds an assessment framework on the basis of an agent-based model, named ANEM, to explore nutrient mitigation potentials of five policy instruments, using pig production in Zhongjiang county, southwest China, as the empirical filling. The effects of different policy scenarios are simulated and compared using four indicators and differentiating between small, medium and large scale pig farms. Technology standards, biogas subsidies and information provisioning prove to be the most effective policies, while pollution fees and manure markets fail to environmentally improve manure management in pig livestock farming. Medium-scale farms are the more relevant scale category for a more environmentally sound development of Chinese livestock production. A number of policy recommendations are formulated as conclusion, as well as some limitations and prospects of the simulations are discussed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Designing and examining e-waste recycling process: methodology and case studies.

PubMed

Li, Jinhui; He, Xin; Zeng, Xianlai

2017-03-01

Increasing concerns on resource depletion and environmental pollution have largely obliged electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) should be tackled in an environmentally sound manner. Recycling process development is regarded as the most effective and fundamental to solve the e-waste problem. Based on global achievements related to e-waste recycling in the past 15 years, we first propose a theory to design an e-waste recycling process, including measuring e-waste recyclability and selection of recycling process. And we summarize the indicators and tools in terms of resource dimension, environmental dimension, and economic dimension, to examine the e-waste recycling process. Using the sophisticated experience and adequate information of e-waste management, spent lithium-ion batteries and waste printed circuit boards are chosen as case studies to implement and verify the proposed method. All the potential theory and obtained results in this work can contribute to future e-waste management toward best available techniques and best environmental practices.

Memory for pictures and sounds: independence of auditory and visual codes.

PubMed

Thompson, V A; Paivio, A

1994-09-01

Three experiments examined the mnemonic independence of auditory and visual nonverbal stimuli in free recall. Stimulus lists consisted of (1) pictures, (2) the corresponding environmental sounds, or (3) picture-sound pairs. In Experiment 1, free recall was tested under three learning conditions: standard intentional, intentional with a rehearsal-inhibiting distracter task, or incidental with the distracter task. In all three groups, recall was best for the picture-sound items. In addition, recall for the picture-sound stimuli appeared to be additive relative to pictures or sounds alone when the distracter task was used. Experiment 2 included two additional groups: In one, two copies of the same picture were shown simultaneously; in the other, two different pictures of the same concept were shown. There was no difference in recall among any of the picture groups; in contrast, recall in the picture-sound condition was greater than recall in either single-modality condition. However, doubling the exposure time in a third experiment resulted in additively higher recall for repeated pictures with different exemplars than ones with identical exemplars. The results are discussed in terms of dual coding theory and alternative conceptions of the memory trace.

Microplastics: addressing ecological risk through lessons learned.

PubMed

Syberg, Kristian; Khan, Farhan R; Selck, Henriette; Palmqvist, Annemette; Banta, Gary T; Daley, Jennifer; Sano, Larissa; Duhaime, Melissa B

2015-05-01

Plastic litter is an environmental problem of great concern. Despite the magnitude of the plastic pollution in our water bodies, only limited scientific understanding is available about the risk to the environment, particularly for microplastics. The apparent magnitude of the problem calls for quickly developing sound scientific guidance on the ecological risks of microplastics. The authors suggest that future research into microplastics risks should be guided by lessons learned from the more advanced and better understood areas of (eco) toxicology of engineered nanoparticles and mixture toxicity. Relevant examples of advances in these two fields are provided to help accelerate the scientific learning curve within the relatively unexplored area of microplastics risk assessment. Finally, the authors advocate an expansion of the "vector effect" hypothesis with regard to microplastics risk to help focus research of microplastics environmental risk at different levels of biological and environmental organization. © 2015 SETAC.

Exporting dams: China's hydropower industry goes global.

PubMed

McDonald, Kristen; Bosshard, Peter; Brewer, Nicole

2009-07-01

In line with China's "going out" strategy, China's dam industry has in recent years significantly expanded its involvement in overseas markets. The Chinese Export-Import Bank and other Chinese financial institutions, state-owned enterprises, and private firms are now involved in at least 93 major dam projects overseas. The Chinese government sees the new global role played by China's dam industry as a "win-win" situation for China and host countries involved. But evidence from project sites such as the Merowe Dam in Sudan demonstrates that these dams have unrecognized social and environmental costs for host communities. Chinese dam builders have yet to adopt internationally accepted social and environmental standards for large infrastructure development that can assure these costs are adequately taken into account. But the Chinese government is becoming increasingly aware of the challenge and the necessity of promoting environmentally and socially sound investments overseas.

Wastes and by-products - alternatives for agricultural use

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Boles, J.L.; Craft, D.J.; Parker, B.R.

1994-10-01

Top address a growing national problem with generation of wastes and by-products, TVA has been involved for several years with developing and commercializing environmentally responsible practices for eliminating, minimizing, or utilizing various wastes/by-products. In many cases, reducing waste generation is impractical, but the wastes/by-products can be converted into other environmentally sound products. In some instances, conversion of safe, value-added agricultural products in the best or only practical alternative. TVA is currently involved with a diversity of projects converting wastes/by-products into safe, economical, and agriculturally beneficial products. Environmental improvement projects have involved poultry litter, cellulosic wastes, used battery acid, ammonium sulfatemore » fines, lead smelting effluents, deep-welled sulfuric acid/ammonium bisulfate solutions, wood ash, waste magnesium ammonium sulfate slurry from recording tape production, and ammunition plant waste sodium nitrate/ammonium nitrate streams.« less

Pressure sound level measurements at an educational environment in Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Costa, J. J. L.; do Nascimento, E. O.; de Oliveira, L. N.; Caldas, L. V. E.

2018-03-01

In this work, 25 points located on the ground floor of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Goias - IFG - Campus Goiânia, were analyzed in morning periods of two Saturdays. The pressure sound levels were measured at internal and external environments during routine activities seeking to perform an environmental monitoring at this institution. The initial hypothesis was that an amusement park (Mutirama Park) was responsible for originating noise pollution in the institute, but the results showed, within the campus environment, sound pressure levels in accordance with the Municipal legislation of Goiânia for all points.

Design and Clinical Feasibility of Personal Wearable Monitor for Measurement of Activity and Environmental Exposure

PubMed Central

Ribón Fletcher, Richard; Oreskovic, Nicolas M.; Robinson, Alyssa I.

2015-01-01

Human exposure to specific environmental factors (e.g. air quality, lighting, and sound) is known to play an important role in the pathogenesis of many chronic diseases (e.g. asthma) and mental health disorders (e.g. anxiety). However, conventional fixed environmental monitoring stations are sparsely located and, despite environmental models, cannot adequately assess individual exposure levels. New forms of low-cost portable monitors have begun to emerge that enable the collection of higher spatial density “crowd sourced” data; however, the first generation of these low-cost environmental monitors have generally not been suitable for clinical environmental health studies due to practical challenges such as calibration, reproducibility, form factor, and battery life. In this paper, we present a wearable environmental monitor that overcomes these challenges and can be used in clinical studies The new device, called “Eco-Mini,” can be used without a smart phone and is capable of locally sampling and recording a variety of environmental parameters (Ozone, Sulfur Dioxide, Volatile Organic Compounds, humidity, temperature, ambient light color balance, and sound level) as well as individual activity (3-axis accelerometer) and location (GPS). In this paper, we also report findings and discuss lessons learned from a feasibility study conducted for one week with pediatric patients as part of an ongoing asthma research study. PMID:25570098

Research Contributing to Improvements in Controlling Florida’s Mosquitoes and Mosquito-Borne Diseases

PubMed Central

Tabachnick, Walter J.

2016-01-01

Research on mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases has contributed to improvements in providing effective, efficient, and environmentally proper mosquito control. Florida has benefitted from several research accomplishments that have increased the state’s mosquito control capabilities. Research with Florida’s mosquitoes has resulted in the development of ecologically sound management of mosquito impoundments on Florida’s east coast. This strategy, called Rotational Impoundment Management (RIM), has improved the ability to target the delivery of pesticides and has helped to reduce non-target effects and environmental damage. Research has led to the development of an arbovirus surveillance system which includes sentinel chicken surveillance, real time use of environmental contributing factors like meteorology and hydrology to target mosquito control, as well as public health efforts to mitigate disease outbreaks to areas with risk of disease. These research driven improvements have provided substantial benefits to all of Florida. More research is needed to meet the future challenges to reduce emerging pathogens like Zika virus and the consequences of environmental changes like global climate change that are likely to influence the effects of mosquito-borne pathogens on human health and well-being. PMID:27690112

Development of an alarm sound database and simulator.

PubMed

Takeuchi, Akihiro; Hirose, Minoru; Shinbo, Toshiro; Imai, Megumi; Mamorita, Noritaka; Ikeda, Noriaki

2006-10-01

The purpose of this study was to develop an interactive software package of alarm sounds to present, recognize and share problems about alarm sounds among medical staff and medical manufactures. The alarm sounds were recorded in variable alarm conditions in a WAV file. The alarm conditions were arbitrarily induced by modifying attachments of various medical devices. The software package that integrated an alarm sound database and simulator was used to assess the ability to identify the monitor that sounded the alarm for the medical staff. Eighty alarm sound files (40MB in total) were recorded from 41 medical devices made by 28 companies. There were three pairs of similar alarm sounds that could not easily be distinguished, two alarm sounds which had a different priority, either low or high. The alarm sound database was created in an Excel file (ASDB.xls 170 kB, 40 MB with photos), and included a list of file names that were hyperlinked to alarm sound files. An alarm sound simulator (AlmSS) was constructed with two modules for simultaneously playing alarm sound files and for designing new alarm sounds. The AlmSS was used in the assessing procedure to determine whether 19 clinical engineers could identify 13 alarm sounds only by their distinctive sounds. They were asked to choose from a list of devices and to rate the priority of each alarm. The overall correct identification rate of the alarm sounds was 48%, and six characteristic alarm sounds were correctly recognized by beetween 63% to 100% of the subjects. The overall recognition rate of the alarm sound priority was only 27%. We have developed an interactive software package of alarm sounds by integrating the database and the alarm sound simulator (URL: http://info.ahs.kitasato-u.ac.jp/tkweb/alarm/asdb.html ). The AlmSS was useful for replaying multiple alarm sounds simultaneously and designing new alarm sounds interactively.

Tribal Waste Management Program

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The EPA’s Tribal Waste Management Program encourages environmentally sound waste management practices that promote resource conservation through recycling, recovery, reduction, clean up, and elimination of waste.

Auditory object salience: human cortical processing of non-biological action sounds and their acoustic signal attributes

PubMed Central

Lewis, James W.; Talkington, William J.; Tallaksen, Katherine C.; Frum, Chris A.

2012-01-01

Whether viewed or heard, an object in action can be segmented as a distinct salient event based on a number of different sensory cues. In the visual system, several low-level attributes of an image are processed along parallel hierarchies, involving intermediate stages wherein gross-level object form and/or motion features are extracted prior to stages that show greater specificity for different object categories (e.g., people, buildings, or tools). In the auditory system, though relying on a rather different set of low-level signal attributes, meaningful real-world acoustic events and “auditory objects” can also be readily distinguished from background scenes. However, the nature of the acoustic signal attributes or gross-level perceptual features that may be explicitly processed along intermediate cortical processing stages remain poorly understood. Examining mechanical and environmental action sounds, representing two distinct non-biological categories of action sources, we had participants assess the degree to which each sound was perceived as object-like versus scene-like. We re-analyzed data from two of our earlier functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task paradigms (Engel et al., 2009) and found that scene-like action sounds preferentially led to activation along several midline cortical structures, but with strong dependence on listening task demands. In contrast, bilateral foci along the superior temporal gyri (STG) showed parametrically increasing activation to action sounds rated as more “object-like,” independent of sound category or task demands. Moreover, these STG regions also showed parametric sensitivity to spectral structure variations (SSVs) of the action sounds—a quantitative measure of change in entropy of the acoustic signals over time—and the right STG additionally showed parametric sensitivity to measures of mean entropy and harmonic content of the environmental sounds. Analogous to the visual system, intermediate stages of the auditory system appear to process or extract a number of quantifiable low-order signal attributes that are characteristic of action events perceived as being object-like, representing stages that may begin to dissociate different perceptual dimensions and categories of every-day, real-world action sounds. PMID:22582038

A Survey on the Feasibility of Sound Classification on Wireless Sensor Nodes

PubMed Central

Salomons, Etto L.; Havinga, Paul J. M.

2015-01-01

Wireless sensor networks are suitable to gain context awareness for indoor environments. As sound waves form a rich source of context information, equipping the nodes with microphones can be of great benefit. The algorithms to extract features from sound waves are often highly computationally intensive. This can be problematic as wireless nodes are usually restricted in resources. In order to be able to make a proper decision about which features to use, we survey how sound is used in the literature for global sound classification, age and gender classification, emotion recognition, person verification and identification and indoor and outdoor environmental sound classification. The results of the surveyed algorithms are compared with respect to accuracy and computational load. The accuracies are taken from the surveyed papers; the computational loads are determined by benchmarking the algorithms on an actual sensor node. We conclude that for indoor context awareness, the low-cost algorithms for feature extraction perform equally well as the more computationally-intensive variants. As the feature extraction still requires a large amount of processing time, we present four possible strategies to deal with this problem. PMID:25822142

Listening to the environment: hearing differences from an epigenetic effect in solitarious and gregarious locusts.

PubMed

Gordon, Shira D; Jackson, Joseph C; Rogers, Stephen M; Windmill, James F C

2014-11-22

Locusts display a striking form of phenotypic plasticity, developing into either a lone-living solitarious phase or a swarming gregarious phase depending on population density. The two phases differ extensively in appearance, behaviour and physiology. We found that solitarious and gregarious locusts have clear differences in their hearing, both in their tympanal and neuronal responses. We identified significant differences in the shape of the tympana that may be responsible for the variations in hearing between locust phases. We measured the nanometre mechanical responses of the ear's tympanal membrane to sound, finding that solitarious animals exhibit greater displacement. Finally, neural experiments signified that solitarious locusts have a relatively stronger response to high frequencies. The enhanced response to high-frequency sounds in the nocturnally flying solitarious locusts suggests greater investment in detecting the ultrasonic echolocation calls of bats, to which they are more vulnerable than diurnally active gregarious locusts. This study highlights the importance of epigenetic effects set forth during development and begins to identify how animals are equipped to match their immediate environmental needs.

Environmental Modeling, Technology, and Communication for Land Falling Tropical Cyclone/Hurricane Prediction

PubMed Central

Tuluri, Francis; Reddy, R. Suseela; Anjaneyulu, Y.; Colonias, John; Tchounwou, Paul

2010-01-01

Katrina (a tropical cyclone/hurricane) began to strengthen reaching a Category 5 storm on 28th August, 2005 and its winds reached peak intensity of 175 mph and pressure levels as low as 902 mb. Katrina eventually weakened to a category 3 storm and made a landfall in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, Gulf of Mexico, south of Buras on 29th August 2005. We investigate the time series intensity change of the hurricane Katrina using environmental modeling and technology tools to develop an early and advanced warning and prediction system. Environmental Mesoscale Model (Weather Research Forecast, WRF) simulations are used for prediction of intensity change and track of the hurricane Katrina. The model is run on a doubly nested domain centered over the central Gulf of Mexico, with grid spacing of 90 km and 30 km for 6 h periods, from August 28th to August 30th. The model results are in good agreement with the observations suggesting that the model is capable of simulating the surface features, intensity change and track and precipitation associated with hurricane Katrina. We computed the maximum vertical velocities (Wmax) using Convective Available Kinetic Energy (CAPE) obtained at the equilibrium level (EL), from atmospheric soundings over the Gulf Coast stations during the hurricane land falling for the period August 21–30, 2005. The large vertical atmospheric motions associated with the land falling hurricane Katrina produced severe weather including thunderstorms and tornadoes 2–3 days before landfall. The environmental modeling simulations in combination with sounding data show that the tools may be used as an advanced prediction and communication system (APCS) for land falling tropical cyclones/hurricanes. PMID:20623002

Measuring Young Children's Alphabet Knowledge: Development and Validation of Brief Letter-Sound Knowledge Assessments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Piasta, Shayne B.; Phillips, Beth M.; Williams, Jeffrey M.; Bowles, Ryan P.; Anthony, Jason L.

2016-01-01

Early childhood teachers are increasingly encouraged to support children's development of letter-sound abilities. Assessment of letter-sound knowledge is key in planning for effective instruction, yet the letter-sound knowledge assessments currently available and suitable for preschool-age children demonstrate significant limitations. The purpose…

Learning Pathways in Environmental Science Education: The case of hazardous household items

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Malandrakis, George N.

2006-11-01

The present study draws on environmental science education to explore aspects of children’s conceptual change regarding hazardous household items. Twelve children from a fifth-grade class attended a 30-h teaching module of environmentally oriented science activities aimed at assessing their awareness about the environmental and health hazards posed by several typical household products. In-depth interviews before, 2 weeks after, and 1 year after, the teaching intervention revealed that children followed three pathways of conceptual change ranging from the substantial alterations of their initial ideas to the qualitative enrichment of those ideas to the complete rejection of the new knowledge. Two components of the instructional intervention—the use of living organisms in classroom experiments, and group learning activities—along with the development of children’s situated metacognitive ideas facilitated their learning and increased the durability of the acquired knowledge. Additionally, sound indications concerning the situated nature and the social construction of the new knowledge were observed, as well as that in environmental education moral and value issues are closely related to knowledge.

[Preventive effects of sound insulation windows on the indoor noise levels in a street residential building in Beijing].

PubMed

Guo, Bin; Huang, Jing; Guo, Xin-biao

2015-06-18

To evaluate the preventive effects of sound insulation windows on traffic noise. Indoor noise levels of the residential rooms (on both the North 4th ring road side and the campus side) with closed sound insulation windows were measured using the sound level meter, and comparisons with the simultaneously measured outdoor noise levels were made. In addition, differences of indoor noise levels between rooms with closed sound insulation windows and open sound insulation windows were also compared. The average outdoor noise levels of the North 4th ring road was higher than 70 dB(A), which exceeded the limitation stated in the "Environmental Quality Standard for Noise" (GB 3096-2008) in our country. However, with the sound insulation windows closed, the indoor noise levels reduced significantly to the level under 35 dB(A) (P<0.05), which complied with the indoor noise level standards in our country. The closed or open states of the sound insulation windows had significant influence on the indoor noise levels (P<0.05). Compared with the open state of the sound insulation window, when the sound insulation windows were closed, the indoor noise levels reduced 18.8 dB(A) and 8.3 dB(A) in residential rooms facing North 4th ring road side and campus side, respectively. The results indicated that installation of insulation windows had significant noise reduction effects on street residential buildings especially on the rooms facing major traffic roads. Installation of the sound insulation windows has significant preventive effects on indoor noise in the street residential building.

Sound Propagation in Shallow Water. Volume 2. Unclassified Papers

DTIC Science & Technology

1974-11-15

and 22°. The component of the sound pressure normal to the sea-bottom has been received by a movable, motor -driven hydrophone (LC 10...the motor , the operation-status of which was controlled by magnetic relays. The total measuring interval was 44.5 cm. 16 NATO UNCLASSIFIED jmm...Then one may hope to learn , which criteria make different sea areas acoustically similar. To estimate the hierarchy of the environmental influences, a

Coastal Habitats in Puget Sound: A Research Plan in Support of the Puget Sound Nearshore Partnership

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-11-01

of these are Chinook ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), Coho (O. kisutch), chum (O. keta), pink (O. gorbuscha), and sockeye salmon (O. nerka ), anadromous...pink salmon ( Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) embryos. Environmental Science and Technology. 18:494-503. Hood, G. in press. Deepwater slough restoration...Ylitalo, J. Labenia, T. Collier, and N. Scholz. 2003. High rates of pre-spawn mortality in Coho Salmon ( Oncorhynchus kisutch) from urban streams in the

Environmental Assessment for Ongoing and Future Operations at U.S. Navy Dabob Bay and Hood Canal Military Operating Areas

DTIC Science & Technology

2002-05-01

well as being cultivated in aquaculture operations in Puget Sound, including Hood Canal and Dabob Bay (Figure 3.4-2). Pacific oysters (Crassostrea...gigas) are widely cultivated in aquaculture operations in Puget Sound. Commercial oyster beds exist in Dabob Bay, mostly at the north end. Dabob Bay... Ecotoxicology of metals in aquatic sediments: binding and release, bioavailability, risk assessment, and remediation. Canadian Journal of

Pollution monitoring of puget sound with honey bees.

PubMed

Bromenshenk, J J; Carlson, S R; Simpson, J C; Thomas, J M

1985-02-08

To show that honey bees are effective biological monitors of environmental contaminants over large geographic areas, beekeepers of Puget Sound, Washington, collected pollen and bees for chemical analysis. From these data, kriging maps of arsenic, cadmium, and fluoride were generated. Results, based on actual concentrations of contaminants in bee tissues, show that the greatest concentrations of contaminants occur close to Commencement Bay and that honey bees are effective as large-scale monitors.

Developing an Environmental Decision Support System for Stream Management: the STREAMES Experience

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Riera, J.; Argerich, A.; Comas, J.; Llorens, E.; Martí, E.; Godé, L.; Pargament, D.; Puig, M.; Sabater, F.

2005-05-01

Transferring research knowledge to stream managers is crucial for scientifically sound management. Environmental decision support systems are advocated as an effective means to accomplish this. STREAMES (STream REAach Management: an Expert System) is a decision tree based EDSS prototype developed within the context of an European project as a tool to assist water managers in the diagnosis of problems, detection of causes, and selection of management strategies for coping with stream degradation issues related mostly to excess nutrient availability. STREAMES was developed by a team of scientists, water managers, and experts in knowledge engineering. Although the tool focuses on management at the stream reach scale, it also incorporates a mass-balance catchment nutrient emission model and a simple GIS module. We will briefly present the prototype and share our experience in its development. Emphasis will be placed on the process of knowledge acquisition, the design process, the pitfalls and benefits of the communication between scientists and managers, and the potential for future development of STREAMES, particularly in the context of the EU Water Framework Directive.

Recent Progress on the Conversion of Surplus Picric Acid/Explosive D to Higher Value Products

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

R.Mitchell, A; Hsu, P C; Coburn, M D

2004-07-06

The global demilitarization of nuclear and conventional munitions is producing millions of pounds of surplus energetic materials. Historically, energetic materials (high explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics) have been disposed of by open burning/open detonation (OB/OD). The use of OB/OD is becoming unacceptable due to public concerns and increasingly stringent environmental regulations. Clearly, there is a great need to develop environmentally sound and cost-effective alternatives to OB/OD. The conversion of surplus picric acid and/or ammonium picrate (Explosive D) to1,3,5-triamino-2,4,6- trinitrobenzene (TATB) has been subject of extensive process development studies at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). LLNL, under the direction and sponsorship ofmore » the U.S. Army Defense Ammunition Center (DAC), is developing a process for the conversion of picric acid to TATB on a larger scale. In FY 03, a 10 g per batch process was developed with good results. Development for a one pound per batch system is required as part of overall scale up process for producing TATB from the surplus feedstocks.« less

200 kHz Commercial Sonar Systems Generate Lower Frequency Side Lobes Audible to Some Marine Mammals

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Deng, Zhiqun; Southall, Brandon; Carlson, Thomas J.

2014-04-15

The spectral properties of pulses transmitted by three commercially available 200 kHz echo sounders were measured to assess the possibility that sound energy in below the center (carrier) frequency might be heard by marine mammals. The study found that all three sounders generated sound at frequencies below the center frequency and within the hearing range of some marine mammals and that this sound was likely detectable by the animals over limited ranges. However, at standard operating source levels for the sounders, the sound below the center frequency was well below potentially harmful levels. It was concluded that the sounds generatedmore » by the sounders could affect the behavior of marine mammals within fairly close proximity to the sources and that that the blanket exclusion of echo sounders from environmental impact analysis based solely on the center frequency output in relation to the range of marine mammal hearing should be reconsidered.« less

Reorganization in processing of spectral and temporal input in the rat posterior auditory field induced by environmental enrichment

PubMed Central

Jakkamsetti, Vikram; Chang, Kevin Q.

2012-01-01

Environmental enrichment induces powerful changes in the adult cerebral cortex. Studies in primary sensory cortex have observed that environmental enrichment modulates neuronal response strength, selectivity, speed of response, and synchronization to rapid sensory input. Other reports suggest that nonprimary sensory fields are more plastic than primary sensory cortex. The consequences of environmental enrichment on information processing in nonprimary sensory cortex have yet to be studied. Here we examine physiological effects of enrichment in the posterior auditory field (PAF), a field distinguished from primary auditory cortex (A1) by wider receptive fields, slower response times, and a greater preference for slowly modulated sounds. Environmental enrichment induced a significant increase in spectral and temporal selectivity in PAF. PAF neurons exhibited narrower receptive fields and responded significantly faster and for a briefer period to sounds after enrichment. Enrichment increased time-locking to rapidly successive sensory input in PAF neurons. Compared with previous enrichment studies in A1, we observe a greater magnitude of reorganization in PAF after environmental enrichment. Along with other reports observing greater reorganization in nonprimary sensory cortex, our results in PAF suggest that nonprimary fields might have a greater capacity for reorganization compared with primary fields. PMID:22131375

Effects of Ambient Environmental Factors on the Stereotypic Behaviors of Giant Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca).

PubMed

Liu, He; Duan, Hejun; Wang, Cheng

2017-01-01

Stereotypies are commonly observed in zoo animals, and it is necessary to better understand whether ambient environmental factors contribute to stereotypy and how to affect animal welfare in zoo settings. This study investigated the relationships between stereotypic behaviors and environmental factors including ambient temperatures, humidity, light intensity, sound intensity and number of visitors. Seven giant pandas were observed in three indoor enclosures and three outdoor enclosures. Environmental factors were measured for both indoor and outdoor enclosures and the effect they had on stereotypical behaviors was investigated. Our research found that light intensity significantly correlated with all stereotypies behaviors. Higher environmental temperature reduced the duration of pacing but increased the frequency of pacing, the duration and frequency of door-directed, meanwhile the duration of head-toss. However, we found no noticeable effect of humidity on stereotypic behaviors except for the frequency of head-toss. We also found that sound intensity was not correlated with stereotypies. Finally, the growth of visitors was negatively associated with the duration of door-directed. These results demonstrated that various environmental factors can have significant effects on stereotypic behaviors causing the expression of various stereotypies. Thus, stereotypies in zoo animals may not simply represent suboptimal welfare, but rather might be adopted as a means of coping with an aversive environment.

Effects of Ambient Environmental Factors on the Stereotypic Behaviors of Giant Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)

PubMed Central

Liu, He; Duan, Hejun; Wang, Cheng

2017-01-01

Stereotypies are commonly observed in zoo animals, and it is necessary to better understand whether ambient environmental factors contribute to stereotypy and how to affect animal welfare in zoo settings. This study investigated the relationships between stereotypic behaviors and environmental factors including ambient temperatures, humidity, light intensity, sound intensity and number of visitors. Seven giant pandas were observed in three indoor enclosures and three outdoor enclosures. Environmental factors were measured for both indoor and outdoor enclosures and the effect they had on stereotypical behaviors was investigated. Our research found that light intensity significantly correlated with all stereotypies behaviors. Higher environmental temperature reduced the duration of pacing but increased the frequency of pacing, the duration and frequency of door-directed, meanwhile the duration of head-toss. However, we found no noticeable effect of humidity on stereotypic behaviors except for the frequency of head-toss. We also found that sound intensity was not correlated with stereotypies. Finally, the growth of visitors was negatively associated with the duration of door-directed. These results demonstrated that various environmental factors can have significant effects on stereotypic behaviors causing the expression of various stereotypies. Thus, stereotypies in zoo animals may not simply represent suboptimal welfare, but rather might be adopted as a means of coping with an aversive environment. PMID:28107477

Environmental Science: Activities with Plants of the Southwest.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hackley, Sharon; Hackley, Mike

In this book for students of all ages, the author introduces unusual recipe ideas for the prickly, odd, and pestiferous plants of the American southwestern desert. Students are involved in cooking activities designed to spark interest in ecology, trigger logical thinking, utilize math skills, and build sound environmental concepts. Care was taken…

76 FR 20715 - National Environmental Policy Act; Sounding Rockets Program; Poker Flat Research Range

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-04-13

...), and NASA's NEPA policy and procedures (14 CFR part 1216, subpart 1216.3), NASA intends to prepare an... to apprise interested agencies, organizations, tribal governments, and individuals of NASA's intent... significant environmental issues to be evaluated in the EIS. In cooperation with BLM, UAF, and USFWS, NASA...

Final Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement. Cullinan Ranch Specific Plan. Chapter 11. Appendix IV.

DTIC Science & Technology

1984-05-01

growth toward lands already annexed and away from agricultural * lands until needed demands a sound basis upon which to render judgment. For the City...for Bureau of Land Management. Johnson, Patti 3. 1978 Patwin. In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 8, California. Robert F. Heizer , ed

76 FR 45515 - Second Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement Related to Two Joint State...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-07-29

... Resource Management Plans for Puget Sound Hatchery Programs and Reopening of Comment Period AGENCY... prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for two hatchery Resource Management Plans and appended Hatchery and Genetic Management Plans (HGMPs) jointly proposed by the Washington Department of Fish and...

The Demonology of Pollution.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Landsberg, Hans H.

This paper offers a fresh perspective on causes of and solutions to environmental problems, and would be useful as an initiator of classroom discussions. The author argues that in our pursuit of a society based on environmentally sound principles, we have perhaps misidentified the villains, and have latched into solutions that may be either naive,…

Compost: Brown gold or toxic trouble?

USGS Publications Warehouse

Kovacic, D.A.; Cahill, R.A.; Bicki, T.J.

1992-01-01

Limited data are available regarding the occurrence of potentially hazardous constituents in raw, uncomposted yard wastes, partially composted yard wastes, and finished compost (15, 16). Environmental monitoring at composting operations or facilities is lacking, and currently published research on the environmental fate of composted yard waste constituents is extremely limited. The cost of thoroughly investigating the fate of toxicants in yard waste may seem needlessly expensive, but it is much less than the cost of cleaning up contaminated sites and groundwater. Could yard waste compost sites become Superfund sites? The cost of a thorough testing program throughout the United States may be several million dollars, but that is only a fraction of the funds spent initiating and developing yard waste composting facilities, let alone the potentially much greater cost of environmental remediation. There is still time to address these problems and to develop sound state and federal guidelines for siting and operating yard waste compost facilities. The rush to implement landfill alternatives such as composting should not be the major driving force in determining legislation governing solid waste management. ?? 1991 American Chemical Society.

Turbine Sound May Influence the Metamorphosis Behaviour of Estuarine Crab Megalopae

PubMed Central

Pine, Matthew K.; Jeffs, Andrew G.; Radford, Craig A.

2012-01-01

It is now widely accepted that a shift towards renewable energy production is needed in order to avoid further anthropogenically induced climate change. The ocean provides a largely untapped source of renewable energy. As a result, harvesting electrical power from the wind and tides has sparked immense government and commercial interest but with relatively little detailed understanding of the potential environmental impacts. This study investigated how the sound emitted from an underwater tidal turbine and an offshore wind turbine would influence the settlement and metamorphosis of the pelagic larvae of estuarine brachyuran crabs which are ubiquitous in most coastal habitats. In a laboratory experiment the median time to metamorphosis (TTM) for the megalopae of the crabs Austrohelice crassa and Hemigrapsus crenulatus was significantly increased by at least 18 h when exposed to either tidal turbine or sea-based wind turbine sound, compared to silent control treatments. Contrastingly, when either species were subjected to natural habitat sound, observed median TTM decreased by approximately 21–31% compared to silent control treatments, 38–47% compared to tidal turbine sound treatments, and 46–60% compared to wind turbine sound treatments. A lack of difference in median TTM in A. crassa between two different source levels of tidal turbine sound suggests the frequency composition of turbine sound is more relevant in explaining such responses rather than sound intensity. These results show that estuarine mudflat sound mediates natural metamorphosis behaviour in two common species of estuarine crabs, and that exposure to continuous turbine sound interferes with this natural process. These results raise concerns about the potential ecological impacts of sound generated by renewable energy generation systems placed in the nearshore environment. PMID:23240063

Oyster Larvae Settle in Response to Habitat-Associated Underwater Sounds

PubMed Central

Lillis, Ashlee; Eggleston, David B.; Bohnenstiehl, DelWayne R.

2013-01-01

Following a planktonic dispersal period of days to months, the larvae of benthic marine organisms must locate suitable seafloor habitat in which to settle and metamorphose. For animals that are sessile or sedentary as adults, settlement onto substrates that are adequate for survival and reproduction is particularly critical, yet represents a challenge since patchily distributed settlement sites may be difficult to find along a coast or within an estuary. Recent studies have demonstrated that the underwater soundscape, the distinct sounds that emanate from habitats and contain information about their biological and physical characteristics, may serve as broad-scale environmental cue for marine larvae to find satisfactory settlement sites. Here, we contrast the acoustic characteristics of oyster reef and off-reef soft bottoms, and investigate the effect of habitat-associated estuarine sound on the settlement patterns of an economically and ecologically important reef-building bivalve, the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica). Subtidal oyster reefs in coastal North Carolina, USA show distinct acoustic signatures compared to adjacent off-reef soft bottom habitats, characterized by consistently higher levels of sound in the 1.5–20 kHz range. Manipulative laboratory playback experiments found increased settlement in larval oyster cultures exposed to oyster reef sound compared to unstructured soft bottom sound or no sound treatments. In field experiments, ambient reef sound produced higher levels of oyster settlement in larval cultures than did off-reef sound treatments. The results suggest that oyster larvae have the ability to respond to sounds indicative of optimal settlement sites, and this is the first evidence that habitat-related differences in estuarine sounds influence the settlement of a mollusk. Habitat-specific sound characteristics may represent an important settlement and habitat selection cue for estuarine invertebrates and could play a role in driving settlement and recruitment patterns in marine communities. PMID:24205381

Oyster larvae settle in response to habitat-associated underwater sounds.

PubMed

Lillis, Ashlee; Eggleston, David B; Bohnenstiehl, DelWayne R

2013-01-01

Following a planktonic dispersal period of days to months, the larvae of benthic marine organisms must locate suitable seafloor habitat in which to settle and metamorphose. For animals that are sessile or sedentary as adults, settlement onto substrates that are adequate for survival and reproduction is particularly critical, yet represents a challenge since patchily distributed settlement sites may be difficult to find along a coast or within an estuary. Recent studies have demonstrated that the underwater soundscape, the distinct sounds that emanate from habitats and contain information about their biological and physical characteristics, may serve as broad-scale environmental cue for marine larvae to find satisfactory settlement sites. Here, we contrast the acoustic characteristics of oyster reef and off-reef soft bottoms, and investigate the effect of habitat-associated estuarine sound on the settlement patterns of an economically and ecologically important reef-building bivalve, the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica). Subtidal oyster reefs in coastal North Carolina, USA show distinct acoustic signatures compared to adjacent off-reef soft bottom habitats, characterized by consistently higher levels of sound in the 1.5-20 kHz range. Manipulative laboratory playback experiments found increased settlement in larval oyster cultures exposed to oyster reef sound compared to unstructured soft bottom sound or no sound treatments. In field experiments, ambient reef sound produced higher levels of oyster settlement in larval cultures than did off-reef sound treatments. The results suggest that oyster larvae have the ability to respond to sounds indicative of optimal settlement sites, and this is the first evidence that habitat-related differences in estuarine sounds influence the settlement of a mollusk. Habitat-specific sound characteristics may represent an important settlement and habitat selection cue for estuarine invertebrates and could play a role in driving settlement and recruitment patterns in marine communities.

Turbine sound may influence the metamorphosis behaviour of estuarine crab megalopae.

PubMed

Pine, Matthew K; Jeffs, Andrew G; Radford, Craig A

2012-01-01

It is now widely accepted that a shift towards renewable energy production is needed in order to avoid further anthropogenically induced climate change. The ocean provides a largely untapped source of renewable energy. As a result, harvesting electrical power from the wind and tides has sparked immense government and commercial interest but with relatively little detailed understanding of the potential environmental impacts. This study investigated how the sound emitted from an underwater tidal turbine and an offshore wind turbine would influence the settlement and metamorphosis of the pelagic larvae of estuarine brachyuran crabs which are ubiquitous in most coastal habitats. In a laboratory experiment the median time to metamorphosis (TTM) for the megalopae of the crabs Austrohelice crassa and Hemigrapsus crenulatus was significantly increased by at least 18 h when exposed to either tidal turbine or sea-based wind turbine sound, compared to silent control treatments. Contrastingly, when either species were subjected to natural habitat sound, observed median TTM decreased by approximately 21-31% compared to silent control treatments, 38-47% compared to tidal turbine sound treatments, and 46-60% compared to wind turbine sound treatments. A lack of difference in median TTM in A. crassa between two different source levels of tidal turbine sound suggests the frequency composition of turbine sound is more relevant in explaining such responses rather than sound intensity. These results show that estuarine mudflat sound mediates natural metamorphosis behaviour in two common species of estuarine crabs, and that exposure to continuous turbine sound interferes with this natural process. These results raise concerns about the potential ecological impacts of sound generated by renewable energy generation systems placed in the nearshore environment.

Conservation and renewable energy technologies for transportation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

1990-11-01

The Office of Transportation Technologies (OTT) is charged with long-term, high-risk, and potentially high-payoff research and development of promising transportation technologies that are unlikely to be undertaken by the private sector alone. OTT activities are designed to develop an advanced technology base within the U.S. transportation industry for future manufacture of more energy-efficient, fuel-flexible, and environmentally sound transportation systems. OTT operations are focused on three areas: advanced automotive propulsion systems including gas turbines, low heat rejection diesel, and electric vehicle technologies; advanced materials development and tribology research; and research, development, demonstration, test, and evaluation (including field testing in fleet operations) of alternative fuels. Five papers describing the transportation technologies program have been indexed separately for inclusion on the data base.

Audio-guided audiovisual data segmentation, indexing, and retrieval

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Tong; Kuo, C.-C. Jay

1998-12-01

While current approaches for video segmentation and indexing are mostly focused on visual information, audio signals may actually play a primary role in video content parsing. In this paper, we present an approach for automatic segmentation, indexing, and retrieval of audiovisual data, based on audio content analysis. The accompanying audio signal of audiovisual data is first segmented and classified into basic types, i.e., speech, music, environmental sound, and silence. This coarse-level segmentation and indexing step is based upon morphological and statistical analysis of several short-term features of the audio signals. Then, environmental sounds are classified into finer classes, such as applause, explosions, bird sounds, etc. This fine-level classification and indexing step is based upon time- frequency analysis of audio signals and the use of the hidden Markov model as the classifier. On top of this archiving scheme, an audiovisual data retrieval system is proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed approach has an accuracy rate higher than 90 percent for the coarse-level classification, and higher than 85 percent for the fine-level classification. Examples of audiovisual data segmentation and retrieval are also provided.

Gender Gaps in Letter-Sound Knowledge Persist Across the First School Year

PubMed Central

Sigmundsson, Hermundur; Dybfest Eriksen, Adrian; Ofteland, Greta S.; Haga, Monika

2018-01-01

Literacy is the cornerstone of a primary school education and enables the intellectual and social development of young children. Letter-sound knowledge has been identified as critical for developing proficiency in reading. This study explored the development of letter-sound knowledge in relation to gender during the first year of primary school. 485 Norwegian children aged 5–6 years completed assessment of letter-sound knowledge, i.e., uppercase letters- name; uppercase letter -sound; lowercase letters- name; lowercase letter-sound. The children were tested in the beginning, middle, and end of their first school year. The results revealed a clear gender difference in all four variables in favor of the girls which were relatively constant over time. Implications for understanding the role of gender and letter-sound knowledge for later reading performance are discussed. PMID:29662461

Assessment of Reduced Tolerance to Sound (Hyperacusis) in University Students.

PubMed

Yilmaz, Sule; Taş, Memduha; Bulut, Erdoğan; Nurçin, Elçin

2017-01-01

Hyperacusis is defined as a reduction in tolerance to ordinary environmental sounds. Hyperacusis can occur in individuals of all age groups, making daily life difficult for the sufferers. Although there is no objective test to accurately diagnose hyperacusis, questionnaires are useful for the assessment of hyperacusis. The aim of this study was to explore the reduced sound tolerance in university students using a hyperacusis questionnaire (HQ). A total of 536 university students (300 females and 236 males) aged between 18 and 25 years, with a mean age of 21.34 ± 1.87 years, were assessed using an HQ developed by Khalfa. The mean total score of all the participants was 16.34 ± 7.91, and 5.78% of the participants had total scores indicating hyperacusis, where a majority of them were females. Females had significantly higher scores than men in terms of both the total and the attentional and emotional dimensions. The scores of the participants who reported noise exposure or a decrease in their tolerance to noise were significantly higher than those of the other participants. Even among young adults, there was a group of participants suffering from some problems related to decreased tolerance to everyday sounds. Although the Turkish translation of the HQ seems to be a reliable tool for evaluating hyperacusis in young adults, further work with various populations of different age groups is required to establish validity and to assess the psychometric qualities of the Turkish form.

Adaptive Noise Suppression of Pediatric Lung Auscultations With Real Applications to Noisy Clinical Settings in Developing Countries

PubMed Central

Emmanouilidou, Dimitra; McCollum, Eric D.; Park, Daniel E.

2015-01-01

Goal Chest auscultation constitutes a portable low-cost tool widely used for respiratory disease detection. Though it offers a powerful means of pulmonary examination, it remains riddled with a number of issues that limit its diagnostic capability. Particularly, patient agitation (especially in children), background chatter, and other environmental noises often contaminate the auscultation, hence affecting the clarity of the lung sound itself. This paper proposes an automated multiband denoising scheme for improving the quality of auscultation signals against heavy background contaminations. Methods The algorithm works on a simple two-microphone setup, dynamically adapts to the background noise and suppresses contaminations while successfully preserving the lung sound content. The proposed scheme is refined to offset maximal noise suppression against maintaining the integrity of the lung signal, particularly its unknown adventitious components that provide the most informative diagnostic value during lung pathology. Results The algorithm is applied to digital recordings obtained in the field in a busy clinic in West Africa and evaluated using objective signal fidelity measures and perceptual listening tests performed by a panel of licensed physicians. A strong preference of the enhanced sounds is revealed. Significance The strengths and benefits of the proposed method lie in the simple automated setup and its adaptive nature, both fundamental conditions for everyday clinical applicability. It can be simply extended to a real-time implementation, and integrated with lung sound acquisition protocols. PMID:25879837

An Alexandrium Spp. Cyst Record from Sequim Bay, Washington State, USA, and its Relation to Past Climate Variability(1).

PubMed

Feifel, Kirsten M; Moore, Stephanie K; Horner, Rita A

2012-06-01

Since the 1970s, Puget Sound, Washington State, USA, has experienced an increase in detections of paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs) in shellfish due to blooms of the harmful dinoflagellate Alexandrium. Natural patterns of climate variability, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and changes in local environmental factors, such as sea surface temperature (SST) and air temperature, have been linked to the observed increase in PSTs. However, the lack of observations of PSTs in shellfish prior to the 1950s has inhibited statistical assessments of longer-term trends in climate and environmental conditions on Alexandrium blooms. After a bloom, Alexandrium cells can enter a dormant cyst stage, which settles on the seafloor and then becomes entrained into the sedimentary record. In this study, we created a record of Alexandrium spp. cysts from a sediment core obtained from Sequim Bay, Puget Sound. Cyst abundances ranged from 0 to 400 cysts · cm(-3) and were detected down-core to a depth of 100 cm, indicating that Alexandrium has been present in Sequim Bay since at least the late 1800s. The cyst record allowed us to statistically examine relationships with available environmental parameters over the past century. Local air temperature and sea surface temperature were positively and significantly correlated with cyst abundances from the late 1800s to 2005; no significant relationship was found between PDO and cyst abundances. This finding suggests that local environmental variations more strongly influence Alexandrium population dynamics in Puget Sound when compared to large-scale changes. © 2012 Phycological Society of America.

Prenatal complex rhythmic music sound stimulation facilitates postnatal spatial learning but transiently impairs memory in the domestic chick.

PubMed

Kauser, H; Roy, S; Pal, A; Sreenivas, V; Mathur, R; Wadhwa, S; Jain, S

2011-01-01

Early experience has a profound influence on brain development, and the modulation of prenatal perceptual learning by external environmental stimuli has been shown in birds, rodents and mammals. In the present study, the effect of prenatal complex rhythmic music sound stimulation on postnatal spatial learning, memory and isolation stress was observed. Auditory stimulation with either music or species-specific sounds or no stimulation (control) was provided to separate sets of fertilized eggs from day 10 of incubation. Following hatching, the chicks at age 24, 72 and 120 h were tested on a T-maze for spatial learning and the memory of the learnt task was assessed 24 h after training. In the posthatch chicks at all ages, the plasma corticosterone levels were estimated following 10 min of isolation. The chicks of all ages in the three groups took less (p < 0.001) time to navigate the maze over the three trials thereby showing an improvement with training. In both sound-stimulated groups, the total time taken to reach the target decreased significantly (p < 0.01) in comparison to the unstimulated control group, indicating the facilitation of spatial learning. However, this decline was more at 24 h than at later posthatch ages. When tested for memory after 24 h of training, only the music-stimulated chicks at posthatch age 24 h took a significantly longer (p < 0.001) time to traverse the maze, suggesting a temporary impairment in their retention of the learnt task. In both sound-stimulated groups at 24 h, the plasma corticosterone levels were significantly decreased (p < 0.001) and increased thereafter at 72 h (p < 0.001) and 120 h which may contribute to the differential response in spatial learning. Thus, prenatal auditory stimulation with either species-specific or complex rhythmic music sounds facilitates spatial learning, though the music stimulation transiently impairs postnatal memory. 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Auditory object perception: A neurobiological model and prospective review.

PubMed

Brefczynski-Lewis, Julie A; Lewis, James W

2017-10-01

Interaction with the world is a multisensory experience, but most of what is known about the neural correlates of perception comes from studying vision. Auditory inputs enter cortex with its own set of unique qualities, and leads to use in oral communication, speech, music, and the understanding of emotional and intentional states of others, all of which are central to the human experience. To better understand how the auditory system develops, recovers after injury, and how it may have transitioned in its functions over the course of hominin evolution, advances are needed in models of how the human brain is organized to process real-world natural sounds and "auditory objects". This review presents a simple fundamental neurobiological model of hearing perception at a category level that incorporates principles of bottom-up signal processing together with top-down constraints of grounded cognition theories of knowledge representation. Though mostly derived from human neuroimaging literature, this theoretical framework highlights rudimentary principles of real-world sound processing that may apply to most if not all mammalian species with hearing and acoustic communication abilities. The model encompasses three basic categories of sound-source: (1) action sounds (non-vocalizations) produced by 'living things', with human (conspecific) and non-human animal sources representing two subcategories; (2) action sounds produced by 'non-living things', including environmental sources and human-made machinery; and (3) vocalizations ('living things'), with human versus non-human animals as two subcategories therein. The model is presented in the context of cognitive architectures relating to multisensory, sensory-motor, and spoken language organizations. The models' predictive values are further discussed in the context of anthropological theories of oral communication evolution and the neurodevelopment of spoken language proto-networks in infants/toddlers. These phylogenetic and ontogenetic frameworks both entail cortical network maturations that are proposed to at least in part be organized around a number of universal acoustic-semantic signal attributes of natural sounds, which are addressed herein. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

PRSEUS Acoustic Panel Fabrication

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nicolette, Velicki; Yovanof, Nicolette P.; Baraja, Jaime; Mathur, Gopal; Thrash, Patrick; Pickell, Robert

2011-01-01

This report describes the development of a novel structural concept, Pultruded Rod Stitched Efficient Unitized Structure (PRSEUS), that addresses the demanding fuselage loading requirements for the Hybrid Wing or Blended Wing Body (BWB) airplane configuration with regards to acoustic response. A PRSEUS panel was designed and fabricated and provided to NASA-LaRC for acoustic response testing in the Structural Acoustics Loads and Transmission (SALT) facility). Preliminary assessments of the sound transmission characteristics of a PRSEUS panel subjected to a representative Hybrid Wing Body (HWB) operating environment were completed for the NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Program.

Improvement of impact noise in a passenger car utilizing sound metric based on wavelet transform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Sang-Kwon; Kim, Ho-Wuk; Na, Eun-Woo

2010-08-01

A new sound metric for impact sound is developed based on the continuous wavelet transform (CWT), a useful tool for the analysis of non-stationary signals such as impact noise. Together with new metric, two other conventional sound metrics related to sound modulation and fluctuation are also considered. In all, three sound metrics are employed to develop impact sound quality indexes for several specific impact courses on the road. Impact sounds are evaluated subjectively by 25 jurors. The indexes are verified by comparing the correlation between the index output and results of a subjective evaluation based on a jury test. These indexes are successfully applied to an objective evaluation for improvement of the impact sound quality for cases where some parts of the suspension system of the test car are modified.

Development of a student-centered instrument to assess middle school students' conceptual understanding of sound

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Eshach, Haim

2014-06-01

This article describes the development and field test of the Sound Concept Inventory Instrument (SCII), designed to measure middle school students' concepts of sound. The instrument was designed based on known students' difficulties in understanding sound and the history of science related to sound and focuses on two main aspects of sound: sound has material properties, and sound has process properties. The final SCII consists of 71 statements that respondents rate as either true or false and also indicate their confidence on a five-point scale. Administration to 355 middle school students resulted in a Cronbach alpha of 0.906, suggesting a high reliability. In addition, the average percentage of students' answers to statements that associate sound with material properties is significantly higher than the average percentage of statements associating sound with process properties (p <0.001). The SCII is a valid and reliable tool that can be used to determine students' conceptions of sound.

Characterization of post-disaster environmental management for Hazardous Materials Incidents: Lessons learnt from the Tianjin warehouse explosion, China.

PubMed

Zhang, Hui; Duan, Huabo; Zuo, Jian; Song, MingWei; Zhang, Yukui; Yang, Bo; Niu, Yongning

2017-09-01

Hazardous Materials Incidents (HMIs) have attracted a growing public concern worldwide. The health risks and environmental implications associated with HMIs are almost invariably severe, and underscore the urgency for sound management. Hazardous Materials Explosion incidents (HMEIs) belong to a category of extremely serious HMIs. Existing studies placed focuses predominately on the promptness and efficiency of emergency responses to HMIs and HMEIs. By contrast, post-disaster environmental management has been largely overlooked. Very few studies attempted to examine the post-disaster environmental management plan particularly its effectiveness and sufficiency. In the event of the Tianjin warehouse explosion (TWE), apart from the immediate emergency response, the post-disaster environmental management systems (P-EMSs) have been reported to be effective and sufficient in dealing with the environmental concerns. Therefore, this study aims to critically investigate the P-EMSs for the TWE, and consequently to propose a framework and procedures for P-EMSs in general for HMIs, particularly for HMEIs. These findings provide a useful reference to develop P-EMSs for HMIs in the future, not only in China but also other countries. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Acoustic deterrence of bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) to a broadband sound stimulus

USGS Publications Warehouse

Vetter, Brooke J.; Murchy, Kelsie; Cupp, Aaron R.; Amberg, Jon J.; Gaikowski, Mark P.; Mensinger, Allen F.

2017-01-01

Recent studies have shown the potential of acoustic deterrents against invasive silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix). This study examined the phonotaxic response of the bighead carp (H. nobilis) to pure tones (500–2000 Hz) and playbacks of broadband sound from an underwater recording of a 100 hp outboard motor (0.06–10 kHz) in an outdoor concrete pond (10 × 5 × 1.2 m) at the U.S. Geological Survey Upper Midwest Environmental Science Center in La Crosse, WI. The number of consecutive times the fish reacted to sound from alternating locations at each end of the pond was assessed. Bighead carp were relatively indifferent to the pure tones with median consecutive responses ranging from 0 to 2 reactions away from the sound source. However, fish consistently exhibited significantly (P < 0.001) greater negative phonotaxis to the broadband sound (outboard motor recording) with an overall median response of 20 consecutive reactions during the 10 min trials. In over 50% of broadband sound tests, carp were still reacting to the stimulus at the end of the trial, implying that fish were not habituating to the sound. This study suggests that broadband sound may be an effective deterrent to bighead carp and provides a basis for conducting studies with wild fish.

Localizing semantic interference from distractor sounds in picture naming: A dual-task study.

PubMed

Mädebach, Andreas; Kieseler, Marie-Luise; Jescheniak, Jörg D

2017-10-13

In this study we explored the locus of semantic interference in a novel picture-sound interference task in which participants name pictures while ignoring environmental distractor sounds. In a previous study using this task (Mädebach, Wöhner, Kieseler, & Jescheniak, in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43, 1629-1646, 2017), we showed that semantically related distractor sounds (e.g., BARKING dog ) interfere with a picture-naming response (e.g., "horse") more strongly than unrelated distractor sounds do (e.g., DRUMMING drum ). In the experiment reported here, we employed the psychological refractory period (PRP) approach to explore the locus of this effect. We combined a geometric form classification task (square vs. circle; Task 1) with the picture-sound interference task (Task 2). The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the tasks was systematically varied (0 vs. 500 ms). There were three central findings. First, the semantic interference effect from distractor sounds was replicated. Second, picture naming (in Task 2) was slower with the short than with the long task SOA. Third, both effects were additive-that is, the semantic interference effects were of similar magnitude at both task SOAs. This suggests that the interference arises during response selection or later stages, not during early perceptual processing. This finding corroborates the theory that semantic interference from distractor sounds reflects a competitive selection mechanism in word production.

The Efficacy of a Brief Nature Sound Intervention on Muscle Tension, Pulse Rate, and Self-Reported Stress: Nature Contact Micro-Break in an Office or Waiting Room.

PubMed

Largo-Wight, Erin; O'Hara, Brian K; Chen, W William

2016-10-01

There is a growing recognition that environmental design impacts health and well-being. Nature contact is a design feature or exposure that is especially important in public health and healthcare. To date, there are limited findings on the impact of nature sounds. This experimental study was designed to examine the effect of nature sounds on physiological and psychological stress. Participants were randomized into one of three groups-silence (n = 9), nature sound (n = 17), and classical music (n = 14)-and listened to the assigned sound for 15 min in an office or waiting room-like environment. Pre- and postdata were collected including muscle tension (electromyogram), pulse rate, and self-reported stress. With the exception of pulse rate, there were no statistical differences in baseline or demographics among groups. A paired t-test by group showed a decrease in muscle tension, pulse rate, and self-reported stress in the nature group and no significant differences in the control or the classical music groups. The significant reduction in muscle tension occurred at least by 7 min of listening to the nature sound. This study highlights the potential benefit of even very brief (less than 7 min) exposure to nature sounds. Brief nature sound "booster breaks" are a promising area for future research with important practical implications. © The Author(s) 2016.

Encoding of Natural Sounds at Multiple Spectral and Temporal Resolutions in the Human Auditory Cortex

PubMed Central

Santoro, Roberta; Moerel, Michelle; De Martino, Federico; Goebel, Rainer; Ugurbil, Kamil; Yacoub, Essa; Formisano, Elia

2014-01-01

Functional neuroimaging research provides detailed observations of the response patterns that natural sounds (e.g. human voices and speech, animal cries, environmental sounds) evoke in the human brain. The computational and representational mechanisms underlying these observations, however, remain largely unknown. Here we combine high spatial resolution (3 and 7 Tesla) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with computational modeling to reveal how natural sounds are represented in the human brain. We compare competing models of sound representations and select the model that most accurately predicts fMRI response patterns to natural sounds. Our results show that the cortical encoding of natural sounds entails the formation of multiple representations of sound spectrograms with different degrees of spectral and temporal resolution. The cortex derives these multi-resolution representations through frequency-specific neural processing channels and through the combined analysis of the spectral and temporal modulations in the spectrogram. Furthermore, our findings suggest that a spectral-temporal resolution trade-off may govern the modulation tuning of neuronal populations throughout the auditory cortex. Specifically, our fMRI results suggest that neuronal populations in posterior/dorsal auditory regions preferably encode coarse spectral information with high temporal precision. Vice-versa, neuronal populations in anterior/ventral auditory regions preferably encode fine-grained spectral information with low temporal precision. We propose that such a multi-resolution analysis may be crucially relevant for flexible and behaviorally-relevant sound processing and may constitute one of the computational underpinnings of functional specialization in auditory cortex. PMID:24391486

The sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis for language acquisition and language evolution

PubMed Central

Imai, Mutsumi; Kita, Sotaro

2014-01-01

Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We review evidence that, contrary to the traditional view in linguistics, sound symbolism is an important design feature of language, which affects online processing of language, and most importantly, language acquisition. We propose the sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis, claiming that (i) pre-verbal infants are sensitive to sound symbolism, due to a biologically endowed ability to map and integrate multi-modal input, (ii) sound symbolism helps infants gain referential insight for speech sounds, (iii) sound symbolism helps infants and toddlers associate speech sounds with their referents to establish a lexical representation and (iv) sound symbolism helps toddlers learn words by allowing them to focus on referents embedded in a complex scene, alleviating Quine's problem. We further explore the possibility that sound symbolism is deeply related to language evolution, drawing the parallel between historical development of language across generations and ontogenetic development within individuals. Finally, we suggest that sound symbolism bootstrapping is a part of a more general phenomenon of bootstrapping by means of iconic representations, drawing on similarities and close behavioural links between sound symbolism and speech-accompanying iconic gesture. PMID:25092666

Short-term plasticity in auditory cognition.

PubMed

Jääskeläinen, Iiro P; Ahveninen, Jyrki; Belliveau, John W; Raij, Tommi; Sams, Mikko

2007-12-01

Converging lines of evidence suggest that auditory system short-term plasticity can enable several perceptual and cognitive functions that have been previously considered as relatively distinct phenomena. Here we review recent findings suggesting that auditory stimulation, auditory selective attention and cross-modal effects of visual stimulation each cause transient excitatory and (surround) inhibitory modulations in the auditory cortex. These modulations might adaptively tune hierarchically organized sound feature maps of the auditory cortex (e.g. tonotopy), thus filtering relevant sounds during rapidly changing environmental and task demands. This could support auditory sensory memory, pre-attentive detection of sound novelty, enhanced perception during selective attention, influence of visual processing on auditory perception and longer-term plastic changes associated with perceptual learning.

Pollution monitoring of Puget Sound with honey bees

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bromenshenk, J.J.; Carlson, S.R.; Simpson, J.C.

To show that honey bees are effective biological monitors of environmental contaminants over large geographic areas, beekeepers of Puget Sound, Washington, collected pollen and bees for chemical analysis. From these data, kriging maps of arsenic, cadmium, and fluoride were generated. Results, based on actual concentrations of contaminants in bee tissues, show that the greatest concentrations of contaminants occur close to Commencement Bay and that honey bees are effective as large-scale monitors. 27 references, 2 figures.

Noise Abatement

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1983-01-01

SMART, Sound Modification and Regulated Temperature compound, is a liquid plastic mixture with exceptional energy and sound absorbing qualities. It is derived from a very elastic plastic which was an effective noise abatement material in the Apollo Guidance System. Discovered by a NASA employee, it is marketed by Environmental Health Systems, Inc. (EHS). The product has been successfully employed by a diaper company with noisy dryers and a sugar company with noisy blowers. The company also manufactures an audiometric test booth and acoustical office partitions.

Ups and Downs in Auditory Development: Preschoolers' Sensitivity to Pitch Contour and Timbre

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Creel, Sarah C.

2016-01-01

Much research has explored developing sound representations in language, but less work addresses developing representations of other sound patterns. This study examined preschool children's musical representations using two different tasks: discrimination and sound--picture association. Melodic contour--a musically relevant property--and…

Tinnitus is associated with reduced sound level tolerance in adolescents with normal audiograms and otoacoustic emissions

PubMed Central

Sanchez, Tanit Ganz; Moraes, Fernanda; Casseb, Juliana; Cota, Jaci; Freire, Katya; Roberts, Larry E.

2016-01-01

Recent neuroscience research suggests that tinnitus may reflect synaptic loss in the cochlea that does not express in the audiogram but leads to neural changes in auditory pathways that reduce sound level tolerance (SLT). Adolescents (N = 170) completed a questionnaire addressing their prior experience with tinnitus, potentially risky listening habits, and sensitivity to ordinary sounds, followed by psychoacoustic measurements in a sound booth. Among all adolescents 54.7% reported by questionnaire that they had previously experienced tinnitus, while 28.8% heard tinnitus in the booth. Psychoacoustic properties of tinnitus measured in the sound booth corresponded with those of chronic adult tinnitus sufferers. Neither hearing thresholds (≤15 dB HL to 16 kHz) nor otoacoustic emissions discriminated between adolescents reporting or not reporting tinnitus in the sound booth, but loudness discomfort levels (a psychoacoustic measure of SLT) did so, averaging 11.3 dB lower in adolescents experiencing tinnitus in the acoustic chamber. Although risky listening habits were near universal, the teenagers experiencing tinnitus and reduced SLT tended to be more protective of their hearing. Tinnitus and reduced SLT could be early indications of a vulnerability to hidden synaptic injury that is prevalent among adolescents and expressed following exposure to high level environmental sounds. PMID:27265722

A comparison of electronic waste recycling in Switzerland and in India

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sinha-Khetriwal, Deepali; Kraeuchi, Philipp; Schwaninger, Markus

2005-07-15

Electronic waste, commonly known as e-waste, is comprised of discarded computers, television sets, microwave ovens and other such appliances that are past their useful lives. As managing e-waste becomes a priority, countries are being forced to develop new models for the collection and environmentally sound disposal of this waste. Switzerland is one of the very few countries with over a decade of experience in managing e-waste. India, on the other hand, is only now experiencing the problems that e-waste poses. The paper aims to give the reader insight into the disposal of end-of-life appliances in both countries, including appliance collectionmore » and the financing of recycling systems as well as the social and environmental aspects of the current practices.« less

Sonic morphology: Aesthetic dimensional auditory spatial awareness

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Whitehouse, Martha M.

The sound and ceramic sculpture installation, " Skirting the Edge: Experiences in Sound & Form," is an integration of art and science demonstrating the concept of sonic morphology. "Sonic morphology" is herein defined as aesthetic three-dimensional auditory spatial awareness. The exhibition explicates my empirical phenomenal observations that sound has a three-dimensional form. Composed of ceramic sculptures that allude to different social and physical situations, coupled with sound compositions that enhance and create a three-dimensional auditory and visual aesthetic experience (see accompanying DVD), the exhibition supports the research question, "What is the relationship between sound and form?" Precisely how people aurally experience three-dimensional space involves an integration of spatial properties, auditory perception, individual history, and cultural mores. People also utilize environmental sound events as a guide in social situations and in remembering their personal history, as well as a guide in moving through space. Aesthetically, sound affects the fascination, meaning, and attention one has within a particular space. Sonic morphology brings art forms such as a movie, video, sound composition, and musical performance into the cognitive scope by generating meaning from the link between the visual and auditory senses. This research examined sonic morphology as an extension of musique concrete, sound as object, originating in Pierre Schaeffer's work in the 1940s. Pointing, as John Cage did, to the corporeal three-dimensional experience of "all sound," I composed works that took their total form only through the perceiver-participant's participation in the exhibition. While contemporary artist Alvin Lucier creates artworks that draw attention to making sound visible, "Skirting the Edge" engages the perceiver-participant visually and aurally, leading to recognition of sonic morphology.

Applying State-of-the-Art Technologies to Reduce Escape Times from Fires Using Environmental Sensing, Improved Occupant Egress Guidance, and Multiple Communication Protocols

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-02-06

that could monitor sensors, evaluate environmental 4 conditions, and control visual and sound devices was conducted. The home automation products used...the prototype system. Use of off-the-shelf home automation products allowed the implementation of an egress control prototype suitable for test and

BPA Facts Pocket Edition

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

None

BPA will be an engine of the Northwest’s economic prosperity and environmental sustainability. BPA’s actions advance a Northwest power system that is a national leader in providing: • high reliability; • low rates consistent with sound business principles; • responsible environmental stewardship; and • accountability to the region. We deliver on these public responsibilities through a commercially successful business.

Environmental stewardship footprint research: linking human agency and ecosystem health in the Puget Sound region

Treesearch

Kathleen L. Wolf; Dale J. Blahna; Weston Brinkley; Michele Romolini

2013-01-01

Urbanization processes challenge ecosystem health in many metropolitan areas. New policy and program approaches are needed to restore and sustain natural systems as public agencies and organizations face greater demands and declining budgets. Environmental stewardship is an often overlooked intervention strategy, and the full potential of civic engagement by citizens...

24 CFR 203.28 - Economic soundness of projects.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 24 Housing and Urban Development 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Economic soundness of projects. 203.28 Section 203.28 Housing and Urban Development Regulations Relating to Housing and Urban Development... § 203.28 Economic soundness of projects. The mortgage must be executed with respect to a project which...

24 CFR 203.28 - Economic soundness of projects.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 24 Housing and Urban Development 2 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false Economic soundness of projects. 203.28 Section 203.28 Housing and Urban Development Regulations Relating to Housing and Urban Development... § 203.28 Economic soundness of projects. The mortgage must be executed with respect to a project which...

24 CFR 203.28 - Economic soundness of projects.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 24 Housing and Urban Development 2 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Economic soundness of projects. 203.28 Section 203.28 Housing and Urban Development Regulations Relating to Housing and Urban Development... § 203.28 Economic soundness of projects. The mortgage must be executed with respect to a project which...

24 CFR 203.28 - Economic soundness of projects.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... 24 Housing and Urban Development 2 2013-04-01 2013-04-01 false Economic soundness of projects. 203.28 Section 203.28 Housing and Urban Development Regulations Relating to Housing and Urban Development... § 203.28 Economic soundness of projects. The mortgage must be executed with respect to a project which...

24 CFR 203.28 - Economic soundness of projects.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 24 Housing and Urban Development 2 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false Economic soundness of projects. 203.28 Section 203.28 Housing and Urban Development Regulations Relating to Housing and Urban Development... § 203.28 Economic soundness of projects. The mortgage must be executed with respect to a project which...

Auditory cortex controls sound-driven innate defense behaviour through corticofugal projections to inferior colliculus.

PubMed

Xiong, Xiaorui R; Liang, Feixue; Zingg, Brian; Ji, Xu-ying; Ibrahim, Leena A; Tao, Huizhong W; Zhang, Li I

2015-06-11

Defense against environmental threats is essential for animal survival. However, the neural circuits responsible for transforming unconditioned sensory stimuli and generating defensive behaviours remain largely unclear. Here, we show that corticofugal neurons in the auditory cortex (ACx) targeting the inferior colliculus (IC) mediate an innate, sound-induced flight behaviour. Optogenetic activation of these neurons, or their projection terminals in the IC, is sufficient for initiating flight responses, while the inhibition of these projections reduces sound-induced flight responses. Corticocollicular axons monosynaptically innervate neurons in the cortex of the IC (ICx), and optogenetic activation of the projections from the ICx to the dorsal periaqueductal gray is sufficient for provoking flight behaviours. Our results suggest that ACx can both amplify innate acoustic-motor responses and directly drive flight behaviours in the absence of sound input through corticocollicular projections to ICx. Such corticofugal control may be a general feature of innate defense circuits across sensory modalities.

Algorithm Development for a Real-Time Military Noise Monitor

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-03-24

Duration ESLM Enhanced Sound Level Meter ERDC-CERL Engineer Research and Development Center/Construction Engineering Research Laboratory FFT...Fast Fourier Transform FTIG Fort Indiantown Gap Kurt Kurtosis LD Larson Davis Leq Equivalent Sound Level L8eq 8-hr Equivalent...Sound Level Lpk Peak Sound Level m Spectral Slope MCBCL Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune Neg Number of negative samples NI National

Taiwan Space Programs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Jann-Yenq

Taiwan space programs consist of FORMOSAT-1, -2, and -3, sounding rockets, and international cooperation. FORMOSAT-1, a low-earth-orbit (LEO) scientific experimental satellite, was launched on January 26, 1999. It circulates with an altitude of 600 km and 35 degree inclination around the Earth every 97 minutes, transmitting collected data to Taiwan's receiving stations approximately six times a day. The major mission of FORMOSAT-1 includes three scientific experiments for measuring the effects of ionospheric plasma and electrodynamics, taking the ocean color image and conducting Ka-band communication experiment. The FORMOSAT- 1 mission was ended by June 15, 2004. FORMOSAT-2, launched on May 21, 2004 onto the Sun-synchronous orbit located at 891 km above ground. The main mission of FORMOSAT-2 is to conduct remote sensing imaging over Taiwan and on terrestrial and oceanic regions of the entire earth. The images captured by FORMOSAT-2 during daytime can be used for land distribution, natural resources research, environmental protection, disaster prevention and rescue work etc. When the satellite travels to the eclipsed zone, it observes natural phenomena of lighting in the upper atmosphere. FORMOSAT-3 is an international collaboration project between Taiwan and the US to develop advanced technology for the real-time monitoring of the global climate. This project is also named Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate, or FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC for short. Six micro-satellites were launched on 15 April 2007 and eventually placed into six different orbits at 700 800 kilometer above the earth ground. These satellites orbit around the earth to form a LEO constellation that receives signals transmitted by the 24 US GPS satellites. The satellite observation covers the entire global atmosphere and ionosphere, providing over 2,500 global sounding data per day. These data distribute uniformly over the earth's atmosphere. The global climate information collection and analysis can be completed in three hours while the sounding data is updated every 90 minutes for updating weather forecast. In addition, this system can also be used as the long-term climate change research, interactive ionosphere monitoring, global space weather forecast, and earth gravity research. From 1997 to 2003, there are three launches of sounding rockets. To compliment the second phase of Taiwan's national space technology long-term development plan, the sounding rocket space exploration project was established. The timeframe of the second phase sounding rocket project is 15 years, from January 2004 to December 2018, and 10 15 sounding rockets will be launched during this time period. In this paper, the current status and results of the programs are presented in detail.

Regional Science and Technology (RS&T) Organizations

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

EPA’s RS&T Organizations perform analytical and other work that: practices sound science, implements the principles of environmental protection, and promotes partnerships with states, Indian Nations, and local governments.

An experimental investigation of thermoacoustic lasers operating in audible frequency range

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kolhe, Sanket Anil

Thermoacoustic lasers convert heat from a high-temperature heat source into acoustic power while rejecting waste heat to a low temperature sink. The working fluids involved can be air or noble gases which are nontoxic and environmentally benign. Simple in construction due to absence of moving parts, thermoacoustic lasers can be employed to achieve generation of electricity at individual homes, water-heating for domestic purposes, and to facilitate space heating and cooling. The possibility of utilizing waste heat or solar energy to run thermoacoustic devices makes them technically promising and economically viable to generate large quantities of acoustic energy. The research presented in this thesis deals with the effects of geometric parameters (stack position, stack length, tube length) associated with a thermoacoustic laser on the output sound wave. The effects of varying input power on acoustic output were also studied. Based on the experiments, optimum operating conditions were identified and qualitative and/or quantitative explanations were provided to justify our observations. It was observed that the maximum sound pressure level was generated for the laser with the stack positioned at a distance of quarter lengths of a resonator from the closed end. Higher sound pressure levels were recorded for the laser with longer stack lengths and longer resonator lengths. Efforts were also made to develop high-frequency thermoacoustic lasers.

Market applications of Resistivity, Induced Polarisation, Magnetic Resonance and Electromagnetic methods for Groundwater Investigations, Mining Exploration, Environmental and Engineering Surveys

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bernard, J.

2012-12-01

The Manufacturers of geophysical instruments have been facing these past decades the fast evolution of the electronics and of the computer sciences. More automatisms have been introduced into the equipment and into the processing and interpretation software which may let believe that conducting geophysical surveys requires less understanding of the method and less experience than in the past. Hence some misunderstandings in the skills that are needed to make the geophysical results well integrated among the global information which the applied geologist needs to acquire to be successful in his applications. Globally, the demand in geophysical investigation goes towards more penetration depth, requiring more powerful transmitters, and towards a better resolution, requiring more data such as in 3D analysis. Budgets aspects strongly suggest a high efficiency in the field associated to high speed data processing. The innovation is required in all aspects of geophysics to fit with the market needs, including new technological (instruments, software) and methodological (methods, procedures, arrays) developments. The structures in charge of the geophysical work can be public organisations (institutes, ministries, geological surveys,…) or can come from the private sector (large companies, sub-contractors, consultants, …), each one of them getting their own constraints in the field work and in the processing and interpretation phases. In the applications concerning Groundwater investigations, Mining Exploration, Environmental and Engineering surveys, examples of data and their interpretation presently carried out all around the world will be presented for DC Resistivity (Vertical Electrical Sounding, 2D, 3D Resistivity Imaging, Resistivity Monitoring), Induced Polarisation (Time Domain 2D, 3D arrays for mining and environmental), Magnetic Resonance Sounding (direct detection and characterisation of groundwater) and Electromagnetic (multi-component and multi-spacing Frequency Domain Sounding and Profiling technique). The place that Geophysics takes in the market among the other investigation techniques is, and will remain, dependant on the quality of the results obtained, despite the uncertainties linked to the field (noise aspects) and to the interpretation (equivalence aspects), under the control of budget decisions.Resistivity Imaging measurements for groundwater investigations

Health and environmental impacts of increased generation of coal ash and FGD sludges. Report to the Committee on Health and Ecological Effects of Increased Coal Utilization.

PubMed Central

Santhanam, C J; Lunt, R R; Johnson, S L; Cooper, C B; Thayer, P S; Jones, J W

1979-01-01

This paper focuses on the incremental impacts of coal ash and flue gas desulfurization (FGD) wastes associated with increased coal usage by utilities and industry under the National Energy Plan (NEP). In the paper, 1985 and 2000 are the assessment points using the baseline data taken from the Annual Environmental Analysis Report (AEAR, September 1977). In each EPA region, the potential mix of disposal options has been broadly estimated and impacts assessed therefrom. In addition, future use of advanced combustion techniques has been taken into account. The quantities of coal ash and FGD wastes depend on ash and sulfur content of the coal, emission regulations, the types of ash collection and FGD systems, and operating conditions of the systems and boiler. The disposal of these wastes is (or will be) subject to Federal and State regulations. The one key legal framework concerning environmental impact on land is the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). RCRA and related Federal and State laws provide a sufficient statutory basis for preventing significant adverse health and environmental impacts from coal ash and FGD waste disposal. However, much of the development and implementation of specific regulations lie ahead. FGD wastes and coal ash and FGD wastes are currently disposed of exclusively on land. The most common land disposal methods are inpoundments (ponds) and landfills, although some mine disposal is also practiced. The potential environmental impacts of this disposal are dependent on the characteristics of the disposal site, characteristics of the coal ash and FGD wastes, control method and the degree of control employed. In general, the major potential impacts are ground and surface water contamination and the "degradation" of large quantities of land. However, assuming land is available for disposal of these wastes, control technology exists for environmentally sound disposal. Because of existing increases in coal use, the possibility of significant environmental impacts, both regionally and nationally, exists regardless of whether the NEP scenario develops or not. Existing baseline data indicate that with sound control technology and successful development and implementation of existing regulatory framework, regional scale impacts are likely to be small; however, site-specific impacts could be significant and need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Both Federal and privately-funded programs are developing additional data and information on disposal of FGD sludges and coal ash. Continuation of these programs will provide additional vital information in the future. However, further information in several areas if desirable: further data on levels of radionuclides and trace metals in these wastes: studies on biological impacts of trace metals; and completion of current and planned studies on disposal problems associated with advanced combustion techniques like fluid bed combustion. PMID:540614

The sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis for language acquisition and language evolution.

PubMed

Imai, Mutsumi; Kita, Sotaro

2014-09-19

Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We review evidence that, contrary to the traditional view in linguistics, sound symbolism is an important design feature of language, which affects online processing of language, and most importantly, language acquisition. We propose the sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis, claiming that (i) pre-verbal infants are sensitive to sound symbolism, due to a biologically endowed ability to map and integrate multi-modal input, (ii) sound symbolism helps infants gain referential insight for speech sounds, (iii) sound symbolism helps infants and toddlers associate speech sounds with their referents to establish a lexical representation and (iv) sound symbolism helps toddlers learn words by allowing them to focus on referents embedded in a complex scene, alleviating Quine's problem. We further explore the possibility that sound symbolism is deeply related to language evolution, drawing the parallel between historical development of language across generations and ontogenetic development within individuals. Finally, we suggest that sound symbolism bootstrapping is a part of a more general phenomenon of bootstrapping by means of iconic representations, drawing on similarities and close behavioural links between sound symbolism and speech-accompanying iconic gesture. © 2014 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Comparison of measured and calculated sound pressure levels around a large horizontal axis wind turbine generator

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shepherd, Kevin P.; Willshire, William L., Jr.; Hubbard, Harvey H.

1989-01-01

Results are reported from a large number of simultaneous acoustic measurements around a large horizontal axis downwind configuration wind turbine generator. In addition, comparisons are made between measurements and calculations of both the discrete frequency rotational harmonics and the broad band noise components. Sound pressure time histories and noise radiation patterns as well as narrow band and broadband noise spectra are presented for a range of operating conditions. The data are useful for purposes of environmental impact assessment.

Emergent categorical representation of natural, complex sounds resulting from the early post-natal sound environment

PubMed Central

Bao, Shaowen; Chang, Edward F.; Teng, Ching-Ling; Heiser, Marc A.; Merzenich, Michael M.

2013-01-01

Cortical sensory representations can be reorganized by sensory exposure in an epoch of early development. The adaptive role of this type of plasticity for natural sounds in sensory development is, however, unclear. We have reared rats in a naturalistic, complex acoustic environment and examined their auditory representations. We found that cortical neurons became more selective to spectrotemporal features in the experienced sounds. At the neuronal population level, more neurons were involved in representing the whole set of complex sounds, but fewer neurons actually responded to each individual sound, but with greater magnitudes. A comparison of population-temporal responses to the experienced complex sounds revealed that cortical responses to different renderings of the same song motif were more similar, indicating that the cortical neurons became less sensitive to natural acoustic variations associated with stimulus context and sound renderings. By contrast, cortical responses to sounds of different motifs became more distinctive, suggesting that cortical neurons were tuned to the defining features of the experienced sounds. These effects lead to emergent “categorical” representations of the experienced sounds, which presumably facilitate their recognition. PMID:23747304

Estimating effects of tidal power projects and climate change on threatened and endangered marine species and their food web.

PubMed

Busch, D Shallin; Greene, Correigh M; Good, Thomas P

2013-12-01

Marine hydrokinetic power projects will operate as marine environments change in response to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. We considered how tidal power development and stressors resulting from climate change may affect Puget Sound species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) and their food web. We used risk tables to assess the singular and combined effects of tidal power development and climate change. Tidal power development and climate change posed risks to ESA-listed species, and risk increased with incorporation of the effects of these stressors on predators and prey of ESA-listed species. In contrast, results of a model of strikes on ESA-listed species from turbine blades suggested that few ESA-listed species are likely to be killed by a commercial-scale tidal turbine array. We applied scenarios to a food web model of Puget Sound to explore the effects of tidal power and climate change on ESA-listed species using more quantitative analytical techniques. To simulate development of tidal power, we applied results of the blade strike model. To simulate environmental changes over the next 50 years, we applied scenarios of change in primary production, plankton community structure, dissolved oxygen, ocean acidification, and freshwater flooding events. No effects of tidal power development on ESA-listed species were detected from the food web model output, but the effects of climate change on them and other members of the food web were large. Our analyses exemplify how natural resource managers might assess environmental effects of marine technologies in ways that explicitly incorporate climate change and consider multiple ESA-listed species in the context of their ecological community. Estimación de los Efectos de Proyectos de Energía de las Mareas y el Cambio Climático sobre Especies Marinas Amenazadas y en Peligro y su Red Alimentaria. © 2013 Society for Conservation Biology No claim to original US government works.

Environment in pediatric wards: light, sound, and temperature.

PubMed

Oliveira, Lia; Gomes, Cláudia; Bacelar Nicolau, Leonor; Ferreira, Luís; Ferreira, Rosário

2015-09-01

The mutual relationship between sleep and disease is well known, becoming more relevant whenever the disease leads to hospitalization. We intend to describe patterns of environmental factors of some pediatric wards, and to verify if these are in line with those recommended. As a secondary aim, we characterize sleep quality during hospitalization. Five pediatric wards of a tertiary-level hospital were included. Light, sound, and temperature were measured and assessed through descriptive statistics. The following recommended values were considered: maximum light 100 Lux, maximum sound 45 dB, and optimal temperature 20-24 °C. A questionnaire was prepared to assess children's sleep, and it was completed by a caregiver. Light values were within the desirable limits for 86% of evaluated time. In all wards, the intensity of sound was much higher than desirable, being above 45 dB during 85% of evaluated time. The temperature was above 24 °C during 78% of total time. Based on 34 answered questionnaires (out of 50 distributed), almost half of the respondents believe that sleep quality and restlessness are worse at the hospital. Most children slept for a longer time at home. Eighteen children awoke more times at the hospital, and those awakenings were mostly attributed to noise. The sound and temperature were higher than recommended. The different values between these wards may be due to different levels of care, but this shows that there are no standard rules on this matter. A worse quality and shorter duration of sleep at hospital were reported. Comprehensive studies are necessary to evaluate the impact of environmental factors on disease recovery. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Community Response to Multiple Sound Sources: Integrating Acoustic and Contextual Approaches in the Analysis

PubMed Central

Lercher, Peter; De Coensel, Bert; Dekonink, Luc; Botteldooren, Dick

2017-01-01

Sufficient data refer to the relevant prevalence of sound exposure by mixed traffic sources in many nations. Furthermore, consideration of the potential effects of combined sound exposure is required in legal procedures such as environmental health impact assessments. Nevertheless, current practice still uses single exposure response functions. It is silently assumed that those standard exposure-response curves accommodate also for mixed exposures—although some evidence from experimental and field studies casts doubt on this practice. The ALPNAP-study population (N = 1641) shows sufficient subgroups with combinations of rail-highway, highway-main road and rail-highway-main road sound exposure. In this paper we apply a few suggested approaches of the literature to investigate exposure-response curves and its major determinants in the case of exposure to multiple traffic sources. Highly/moderate annoyance and full scale mean annoyance served as outcome. The results show several limitations of the current approaches. Even facing the inherent methodological limitations (energy equivalent summation of sound, rating of overall annoyance) the consideration of main contextual factors jointly occurring with the sources (such as vibration, air pollution) or coping activities and judgments of the wider area soundscape increases the variance explanation from up to 8% (bivariate), up to 15% (base adjustments) up to 55% (full contextual model). The added predictors vary significantly, depending on the source combination. (e.g., significant vibration effects with main road/railway, not highway). Although no significant interactions were found, the observed additive effects are of public health importance. Especially in the case of a three source exposure situation the overall annoyance is already high at lower levels and the contribution of the acoustic indicators is small compared with the non-acoustic and contextual predictors. Noise mapping needs to go down to levels of 40 dBA,Lden to ensure the protection of quiet areas and prohibit the silent “filling up” of these areas with new sound sources. Eventually, to better predict the annoyance in the exposure range between 40 and 60 dBA and support the protection of quiet areas in city and rural areas in planning sound indicators need to be oriented at the noticeability of sound and consider other traffic related by-products (air quality, vibration, coping strain) in future studies and environmental impact assessments. PMID:28632198

Eddy Generation and Shedding in a Tidally Energetic Channel

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McIlvenny, J.; Gillibrand, P. A.; Walters, R. A.

2016-02-01

The Pentland Firth in northern Scotland, and its subsidiary channel the Inner Sound, are currently under scrutiny as the first tidal energy array in the world is installed during 2016. The tidal flows in the channel and sound have been intensively observed and modelled in recent years, and the turbulent nature of the flow, with features of eddy generation and shedding, is becoming increasingly well known. Turbulence and eddies pose potential risks to the turbine infrastructure through enhanced stress on the blades, while understanding environmental effects of energy extraction also requires accurate simulation of the hydrodynamics of the flow. Here, we apply a mixed finite element/finite volume hydrodynamic model to the northern Scottish shelf, with a particular focus on flows through the Pentland Firth and the Inner Sound. We use an unstructured grid model, which allows the open boundaries to be far removed from the region of interest, while still allowing a grid spacing of 40m in the Inner Sound. The model employs semi-implicit techniques to solve the momentum and free surface equations, and semi-Lagrangian methods to solve the material derivative in the momentum equation, making it fast, robust and accurate and suitable for simulating flows in irregular coastal ocean environments. The model is well suited to address questions relating to tidal energy potential. We present numerical simulations of tidal currents in The Pentland Firth and Inner Sound. Observed velocities in the Inner Sound, measured by moored ADCP deployments, reach speeds of up to 5 m s-1 and the model successfully reproduces these strong currents. In the simulations, eddies are formed by interactions between the strong flow and the northern and southern headlands on the island of Stroma; some of these eddies are trapped and remain locked in position, whereas others are shed and transported away from the generation zone. We track the development and advection of eddies in relation to the site of the tidal energy farm, and we compare the simulated locations of eddies with observed seabed sediment distributions in the Inner Sound. Simulations with and without the presence of tidal turbines in the Inner Sound are presented, and the potential impact of the turbines on sediment dynamics is considered.

Theoretical orientations in environmental planning: An inquiry into alternative approaches

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Briassoulis, Helen

1989-07-01

In the process of devising courses of action to resolve problems arising at the society-environment interface, a variety of planning approaches are followed, whose adoption is influenced by—among other things—the characteristics of environmental problems, the nature of the decision-making context, and the intellectual traditions of the disciplines contributing to the study of these problems. This article provides a systematic analysis of six alternative environmental planning approaches—comprehensive/rational, incremental, adaptive, contingency, advocacy, and participatory/consensual. The relative influence of the abovementioned factors is examined, the occurrence of these approaches in real-world situations is noted, and their environmental soundness and political realism is evaluated. Because of the disparity between plan formulation and implementation and between theoretical form and empirical reality, a synthetic view of environmental planning approaches is taken and approaches in action are identified, which characterize the totality of the planning process from problem definition to plan implementation, as well as approaches in the becoming, which may be on the horizon of environmental planning of tomorrow. The suggested future research directions include case studies to verify and detail the presence of the approaches discussed, developing measures of success of a given approach in a given decision setting, and an intertemporal analysis of environmental planning approaches.

Auditory Confrontation Naming in Alzheimer’s Disease

PubMed Central

Brandt, Jason; Bakker, Arnold; Maroof, David Aaron

2010-01-01

Naming is a fundamental aspect of language and is virtually always assessed with visual confrontation tests. Tests of the ability to name objects by their characteristic sounds would be particularly useful in the assessment of visually impaired patients, and may be particularly sensitive in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We developed an Auditory Naming Task, requiring the identification of the source of environmental sounds (i.e., animal calls, musical instruments, vehicles) and multiple-choice recognition of those not identified. In two separate studies, mild-to-moderate AD patients performed more poorly than cognitively normal elderly on the Auditory Naming Task. This task was also more difficult than two versions of a comparable Visual Naming Task, and correlated more highly with Mini-Mental State Exam score. Internal consistency reliability was acceptable, although ROC analysis revealed auditory naming to be slightly less successful than visual confrontation naming in discriminating AD patients from normal subjects. Nonetheless, our Auditory Naming Test may prove useful in research and clinical practice, especially with visually-impaired patients. PMID:20981630

Characterizing the 3-D atmosphere with NUCAPS sounding products from multiple platforms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barnet, C. D.; Smith, N.; Gambacorta, A.; Wheeler, A. A.; Sjoberg, W.; Goldberg, M.

2017-12-01

The JPSS Proving Ground and Risk Reduction (PGRR) Program launched the Sounding Initiative in 2014 to develop operational applications that use 3-D satellite soundings. These are near global daily swaths of vertical atmospheric profiles of temperature, moisture and trace gas species. When high vertical resolution satellite soundings first became available, their assimilation into user applications was slow: forecasters familiar with 2-D satellite imagery or 1-D radiosondes did not have the technical capability nor product knowledge to readily ingest satellite soundings. Similarly, the satellite sounding developer community lacked wherewithal to understand the many challenges forecasters face in their real time decision-making. It took the PGRR Sounding Initiative to bring these two communities together and develop novel applications that now depend on NUCAPS soundings. NUCAPS - the NOAA Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System - is platform agnostic and generates satellite soundings from measurements made by infrared and microwave sounder pairs on the MetOp (IASI/AMSU) and Suomi NPP (CrIS/ATMS) polar-orbiting platforms. We highlight here three new applications developed under the PGRR Sounding Initiative. They are, (i) aviation: NUCAPS identifies cold air "blobs" that causes jet fuel to freeze, (ii) severe weather: NUCAPS identifies areas of convective initiation, and (iii) air quality: NUCAPS identifies stratospheric intrusions and tracks long-range transport of biomass burning plumes. The value of NUCAPS being platform agnostic will become apparent with the JPSS-1 launch. NUCAPS soundings from Suomi NPP and JPSS-1, being 50 min apart, could capture fast-changing weather events and together with NUCAPS soundings from the two MetOp platforms ( 4 hours earlier in the day than JPSS) could characterize diurnal cycles. In this paper, we will summarize key accomplishments and assess whether NUCAPS maintains enough continuity in its sounding products from multiple platforms to sufficiently characterize atmospheric evolution at localized scales. With this we will address one of the primary data requirements that emerged in the Sounding Initiative, namely the need for a time sequence of satellite sounding products.