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Despite almost a century of studies dealing with traffic noise, researchers and practitioners still face old and new issues when designing a low-noise pavement. Given that, this manuscript aims at focusing on a number of unsolved questions, namely theoretical or technological. 1) Is it viable to balance diverse road-related needs (i.e., noise, expected life, texture levels, and friction)? 2) How much does the pavement material affect its acoustic performance (the remaining factors being constant)? 3) How much reliable is the relationship between road texture and mixture aggregate gradation? Based on the analysis of these issues, it emerges that: 1) optimal pavement design involves complex mix optimization and there are theoretical and practical bases to set up a balanced approach to address the complexity of pavement design; 2) high percentages of crumb rubber could optimise road acoustic response but this latter has a relationship with the tyre/road noise (expressed, for example, in terms of close proximity index) that calls for further investigation; 3) aggregate gradation appears to be a reliable basis to predict surface texture and therefore, under given boundary conditions, tyre/road noise; and 4) further studies and investigations are needed in terms of local calibration of deterioration curves and setting up of a sound method to assess the frequency response of asphalt concretes and to govern on-site noise indicators based on mixture properties.

Cellulose-based foams present a high potential for noise insulation applications. These materials are bio-degradable, eco-friendly by both embedded components and manufacturing process, have low density and high porosity, and are able to provide good noise insulation characteristics compared with available petroleum-based foams currently used on a large scale. This paper presents the results of some investigations performed by the authors in order to improve the functional characteristics in terms of free surface wettability and structural integrity. Native xylan and xylan-based derivatives (in terms of acetylated and hydrophobized xylan) were taken into account for surface treatment of cellulose foams, suggesting that hemicelluloses represent by-products of pulp and paper industry, and xylan polysaccharides are the most abundant hemicelluloses type. The investigations were mainly conducted in order to evaluate the level to which surface treatments have affected the noise insulation properties of basic cellulose foams. The results indicate that surface treatments with xylan derivatives have slowly affected the soundproofing characteristics of foams, but these clearly have to be taken into account because of their high decrease in wettability level and improving structural integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the significance of background noise in machine learning models assessing the GRBAS scale for voice disorders., Methods: A dataset of 1406 voice samples was collected from retrospective data, and a 5-layer 1D convolutional neural network (CNN) model was constructed using TensorFlow. The dataset was divided into training, validation, and test data. Gaussian noise was added to test samples at various intensities to assess the model's noise resilience. The model's performance was evaluated using accuracy, F1 score, and quadratic weighted Cohen's kappa score., Results: The model's performance on the GRBAS scale generally declined with increasing noise intensities. For the G scale, accuracy dropped from 70.9% (original) to 8.5% (at the highest noise), F1 score from 69.2% to 1.3%, and Cohen's kappa from 0.679 to 0.0. Similar declines were observed for the remaining RBAS components., Conclusion: The model's performance was affected by background noise, with substantial decreases in evaluation metrics as noise levels intensified. Future research should explore noise-tolerant techniques, such as data augmentation, to improve the model's noise resilience in real-world settings., Level of Evidence: This study evaluates a machine learning model using a single dataset without comparative controls. Given its non-comparative design and specific focus, it aligns with Level 4 evidence (Case-series) under the 2011 OCEBM guidelines Laryngoscope, 134:3537-3541, 2024., (© 2024 The Authors. The Laryngoscope published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society, Inc.)

Objectives: Understanding speech in noise (SIN) is the dominant complaint of individuals with hearing loss. For decades, the default test of speech perception in routine audiologic assessment has been monosyllabic word recognition in quiet (WRQ), which does not directly address patient concerns, leading some to advocate that measures of SIN should be integrated into routine practice. However, very little is known with regard to how SIN abilities are affected by different types of hearing loss. Here, we examine performance on clinical measures of WRQ and SIN in a large patient base consisting of a variety of hearing loss types, including conductive (CHL), mixed (MHL), and sensorineural (SNHL) losses., Design: In a retrospective study, we examined data from 5593 patients (51% female) who underwent audiometric assessment at the Stanford Ear Institute. All individuals completed pure-tone audiometry, and speech perception testing of monaural WRQ, and monaural QuickSIN. Patient ages ranged from 18 to 104 years (average = 57). The average age in years for the different classifications of hearing loss was 51.1 (NH), 48.5 (CHL), 64.2 (MHL), and 68.5 (SNHL), respectively. Generalized linear mixed-effect models and quartile regression were used to determine the relationship between hearing loss type and severity for the different speech-recognition outcome measures., Results: Patients with CHL had similar performance to patients with normal hearing on both WRQ and QuickSIN, regardless of the hearing loss severity. In patients with MHL or SNHL, WRQ scores remained largely excellent with increasing hearing loss until the loss was moderately severe or worse. In contrast, QuickSIN signal to noise ratio (SNR) losses showed an orderly systematic decrease as the degree of hearing loss became more severe. This effect scaled with the data, with threshold-QuickSIN relationships absent for CHL, and becoming increasingly stronger for MHL and strongest in patients with SNHL. However, the variability in these data suggests that only 57% of the variance in WRQ scores, and 50% of the variance in QuickSIN SNR losses, could be accounted for by the audiometric thresholds. Patients who would not be differentiated by WRQ scores are shown to be potentially differentiable by SIN scores., Conclusions: In this data set, conductive hearing loss had little effect on WRQ scores or QuickSIN SNR losses. However, for patients with MHL or SNHL, speech perception abilities decreased as the severity of the hearing loss increased. In these data, QuickSIN SNR losses showed deficits in performance with degrees of hearing loss that yielded largely excellent WRQ scores. However, the considerable variability in the data suggests that even after classifying patients according to their type of hearing loss, hearing thresholds only account for a portion of the variance in speech perception abilities, particularly in noise. These results are consistent with the idea that variables such as cochlear health and aging add explanatory power over audibility alone., Competing Interests: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Ear & Hearing is published on behalf of the American Auditory Society, by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

In the evolving domain of High Dynamic Range (HDR) display metrology, the precise definition and systematic characterization of input signals is important. Using input signals that include both spatially and temporally complex image sequences is beneficial to reflect properties of real‐world content as well as to cover corner cases. One challenge with using this kind of content is to verify if it is indeed suitable for the intended purpose. This paper introduces an automated framework employing a set of statistical measures to define and characterize content, which then can serve as an important steppingstone towards programmatic image sequences and testing workflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The Listen to Learn for Life (L3) Assessment Framework is a framework that outlines how to systematically assess the links between the classroom environment, listening, learning and well-being. The purpose of this paper is to review the published literature to understand what is known about the characterisation of activity component of the L3 Assessment Framework and determine what is not known and needs to be investigated in future research. Design/methodology/approach: Literature reviews (Web searches for systematic, scoping or general reviews; scoping reviews following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses extension for scoping reviews protocol; and extended Web searches) were conducted to characterise lecture, group work and independent work activities in terms of the perceptual setting, source degradation and transmission degradation. Findings: Most research that has been conducted is for classrooms in general and does not specify results specifically for lecture, group work and independent work, which is important for understanding how the learning environment changes with the different activities. What is known about the lecture, group work and independent work activities are discussed; however, it is noted that this often comes from only a few studies. Future research areas to contribute to this literature as well as fill current research gaps are proposed. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first review paper to synthesize previous research characterising the classroom environment for different activities using the L3 Assessment Framework. It provides an analysis of the limitations of existing literature and proposes future research to help fill in these gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reorganization of neonatal intensive care by introducing clinical microsystems may help to allocate nursing time more appropriately to the needs of patients. However, there is concern that cohorting infants according to acuity may enhance noise levels. This single-center study investigated the impact of reorganization of neonatal intensive care unit by implementing clinical microsystems in a Level III NICU on environmental noise. This prospective study measured 24-h noise levels over a period of 6 months during pre- and post-implementation of microsystems cohorting infants of similar acuity. Comparative analyses of the mixed acuity (i.e., before) and the cohorting (i.e., after) model were performed by creating daily profiles from continuous noise level measurements and calculating the length of exposure to predefined noise levels. Compared to baseline daytime measurements, noise levels were 3-6 dBA higher during physician handover. Noise levels were 2-3 dBA lower on weekends and 3-4 dBA lower at night, independent of the organizational model. The introduction of clinical microsystems slightly increased average noise levels for high-acuity pods (A and B) but produced a much more substantial decrease for low-acuity pods (E), leading to an overall reduction in unit-wide noise levels.    Conclusion: Our data show that noise levels are more driven by human behavior than by technical devices. Implementation of microsystems may help to reduce noise exposure in the lower acuity pods in a NICU. What is Known: • Excessive noise levels can lead to adverse effects on the health and development of premature infants and other critically ill newborns. • The reorganization of the neonatal intensive care unit following the clinical microsystems principles might improve quality of care but also affect noise exposure of staff and patients. What is New: • The transition from a mixed -acuity to cohorting model is associated with an overall reduction in noise levels, particularly in low-acuity pods requiring less nursing care. • Nevertheless, baseline noise levels in both models exceeded the standard permissible limits., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

In the field of deep matching, a large amount of noisy data in Chinese long texts affects the matching effect. Most long-form text matching models use all text data indiscriminately, which results in a large amount of noisy data, and thus the PageRank algorithm is combined with Transformer to filter noise. For sentence-level noise detection, after calculating the overlap rate of words to evaluate the similarity, a sentence-level relationship graph is constructed and filtered by using the PageRank algorithm; for word-level noise detection, based on the attention score in Transformer, a word graph is established, then the PageRank algorithm is executed on graph, combined with self-attention weights, to select keywords to highlight topic relevance, the noisy words are filtered sequentially at different layers in the module, layer by layer. In addition, during the model training, PolyLoss is applied to replace the traditional binary Cross-Entropy loss function, thus reducing the difficulty of hyperparameter tuning. Finally, a better filtering strategy is proposed and experiments are conducted to verify it on two Chinese long-form text matching datasets. The result shows that the matching model based on the noise filtering strategy of this paper can better filter the noise and capture the matching signal more accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noise exposure has reached an alarming degree over the years because of rapid growth in the industry, transportation, and urbanization. Therefore, it is a dire need to provide awareness of the sources and mitigation strategies of noise, and to highlight the health, and socio-economic impacts of noise. A few research studies have documented this emerging issue; however, there is no comprehensive document describing all types of noise, their impacts on living organisms, and control strategies. This review article summarizes the sources of noise; their effects on industrial workers, citizens, and animals; and the value of property in noisy areas. The plethora of literature is showing an increased level of noise in various cities of the world, which have various health consequences such as high blood pressure, insomnia, nausea, heart attack, exhaustion, dizziness, headache, and triggered hearing loss. Apart from humans, noise also affects animal habitat, preying, and reproduction ability; increases heart rate and hearing loss to even death and loss in property value; and impairs the hospital environment. Finally, we have discussed the possible strategies to mitigate the noise problem, policy statements, and regulations to be followed, with future research directions based on the identified research gaps., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

In most of the following references, the author's name is followed by the title of the paper or book in boldface, the journal, the volume number in boldface, the issue number in parentheses, the page reference, and lastly, in parentheses, the year. Where reference is made to abstract journals that number their abstracts, the abstract number is given instead of a page reference. Abstracts in Annales des Tèlècommunications are in French and those for Referativnyi Zhurnal, Fizika (three series, E, I, Zh) are in Russian [where, e.g., Ref. Zh. Fiz. 7 E425 (1979) means: July issue, E, abstract no. 425, year 1979.] When possible, the abbreviations for the names of the journals follow those in Bibliographic Guide for Editors & Authors (1974). A number preceded by the letters AD, DE, PB, or N refers to the accession/report number of the Government Reports Announcements & Index. The numbers to the left of the sections and sub-sections in this volume correspond to those that appear in the Classification of Subjects preceding the index in the June 1983 issue of JASA. Compiled from various sources. For many of the journals referred to here, those interested will find their addresses in either the semi-annual Author Index of Physics Abstracts or the annual Physics Briefs: List of Abstracted Periodical and Serial Publications.