Search

Copyright of Journal of Erciyes Communication / Erciyes İletişim Dergisi is the property of Erciyes University, Faculty of Communication / Erciyes Universitesi Iletism Fakultesi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The soundscape quality of urban parks can influence the mental and physical health of park visitors. This paper proposes strategies for optimizing soundscape quality by correlating the physical parameters to the human perception. The data has been gathered through a case study of Greenlake Park located in Kunming, China. The objective physical acoustic indexes and the subjective soundscape perception were analyzed using a combination of GIS spatial statistical analysis from 1224 pieces of environmental sound pressure level data and questionnaire data of human perception collected through soundwalks. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Compared with water bodies, lands perform better in absorbing and reducing the environmental sound pressure level with a decrease of 2.0 dB every 15 m in the terrestrial landscape of rich plant layers and high degree of enclosure, compared to a decrease of 1.5 dB every 15 m in the water landscape with lotus leaves, cruise ships or structures; (2) Sound pressure level and types of sound sources profoundly affect our soundscape perception. Acoustic environment evaluation, soundscape suitability, visual preferences, pleasure perception and relaxation perception are positively correlated with natural sound perception (p < 0.01), while significantly negatively correlated with sound pressure level, human activity and mechanical sound perception. In the end, the correlation between landscape elements and sound pressure level, sound sources and soundscape perception are discussed, and a soundscape optimization strategy for urban parks supported by research data is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deleterious effects of noise pollution on public health have been well documented, with traffic noise being identified as a significant contributor to stress and adverse impacts on the human body and mind. In this study, sound levels at 12 different points in Al-Oqailat Park in Buraydah, Saudi Arabia, were measured using a sound level meter (SLM), with the study's primary objective being to conduct this measurement. The experimental results were then compared with perception measurements collected from users who frequently visited Al-Oqailat park. Sound measurements were taken in four different zones (A, B, C, and D) during rush hours between 1:30 p.m. and 5:20 p.m. It was found that noise levels at point A1 peaked at 79 dBA at 4:40 p.m., while the lowest level recorded was 41.1 dBA at point D2 at 2:35 p.m. The range of noise levels varied between 79 and 41 dBA, with a rate of decline of 48.10%. Zones A and B seemed to have the highest noise levels during rush hours, since they were located closest to King Fahd Road and Al-Adl Street, while zone D exhibited the lowest noise levels due to its location as a parking lot for Buraydah Court. An intermediate noise level was found in zone C, in the middle of Al-Oqailat park. The people perception results, completed by 84 park visitors, showed that zone A was identified as having exceptionally high noise levels compared to the other zones, with zone D having the lowest levels. These results were consistent with the experimental findings and reflected that the points along King Fahd Road and Al-Adl Street had the highest noise levels. Overall, the research highlighted the dominance of car traffic and horns as the primary sources of noise pollution in and around Al-Oqailat Park, emphasizing the significance of meticulous site selection for parks in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro is the property of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article traces references to nature and naturalism (understood as an attempt to ground and legitimize art in natural phenomena) in Ligeti's writings, but also in selected aspects of his oeuvre. The references to nature recur here in various manifestations, with romantic depictions of nature appearing alongside more recent, modernist approaches. The concept of nature is associated with the romantic setting for human emotions, with the discovery of scientific laws, with listening to soundscape, with phenomena of auditory perception and with the spectral explorations of sound. Although nature is not a central, strategic concept for Ligeti, it remains a constant, even if hidden, context for his work, a point of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passive acoustic monitoring is usually presented as a complementary approach to monitoring wildlife communities and assessing ecosystem conditions. Automatic species detection methods support biodiversity monitoring and analysis by providing information on the presence–absence of species, which allows understanding the ecosystem structure. Therefore, different alternatives have been proposed to identify species. However, the algorithms are parameterized to identify specific species. Analysing multiple species would help to monitor and quantify biodiversity, as it includes the different taxonomic groups present in the soundscape.We present an unsupervised methodology for multi‐species call recognition from ecological soundscapes. The proposal is based on a clustering algorithm, specifically the learning algorithm for multivariate data analysis (LAMDA) 3pi algorithm, which automatically suggests the number of clusters associated with the sonotypes. Emphasis was made on improving the segmentation of the audio to analyse the whole soundscape without parameterizing the algorithm according to each taxonomic group.To estimate the performance of our proposal, we used four datasets from different locations, years and habitats. These datasets contain sounds from the four major taxonomic groups that dominate terrestrial soundscapes (birds, amphibians, mammals and insects) in audible and ultrasonic spectra. The methodology presents performances between 75% and 96% in presence–absence species recognition.Using the clusters proposed by our methodology, the whole soundscape biodiversity was measured and compared with the estimate of four acoustic indices (ACI, NP, SO and BI). Our approach performs biodiversity assessments similar to acoustic indices with the advantage of providing information about acoustic communities without the need for prior knowledge of the species present in the audio recordings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the impact of various factors on environmental perception is crucial because humans live in an environment where these factors interact and blend. The thermal-acoustic environment is the major factor that affects the overall perception of urban parks. This study focuses on urban parks in the subtropical region, with Xihu Park in Fuzhou, China, as the research area. Through measurements and questionnaires, this study explores the effects of the thermal-acoustic environment in urban parks on subjective evaluation (thermal assessment, acoustic assessment, and overall environmental assessment). The results reveal that: (1) a higher temperature significantly increases the sensation of heat and lowers thermal comfort, heat acceptance, and overall thermal environment evaluation scores. The type of sound source has a significant positive impact on thermal assessment, and the higher the ranking of the sound source type, the greater its positive impact on thermal assessment. (2) Regarding acoustic evaluation, higher sound pressure level is associated with more negative subjective ratings of loudness, harshness, intensity, and excitement. In contrast, positive sound sources can enhance comfort, preference, disorder, coordination, and overall soundscape evaluation. Additionally, temperature increases tend to result in more negative harshness, intensity, and coordination ratings. The interaction between temperature and sound pressure level also significantly affects subjective loudness, harshness, and intensity. (3) Overall environmental evaluation is also affected by temperature, with increasing temperatures leading to decreased comfort and satisfaction while increasing irritation. High sound pressure environments result in worse overall irritation ratings, while positive sound sources can significantly enhance overall comfort, irritation, and satisfaction ratings. Furthermore, the interaction between temperature and sound pressure level significantly impacts overall irritation and satisfaction ratings. These findings are significant for managing and improving the park's thermal environment and soundscape, providing a practical framework for landscape architects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Film Quarterly / Kwartalnik Filmowy is the property of Kwartalnik Filmowy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Film Quarterly / Kwartalnik Filmowy is the property of Kwartalnik Filmowy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This is a field note from my research project that aims to study the practice of playing film music on the commuter buses operated by private owners in Kannur district of Kerala. The practice became prevalent during the early 2000s with the advent of compact discs and portable music libraries of film songs in MP3 format, despite the Kerala Motor Vehicles Rules (1989) prohibiting passenger buses from playing music or videos during daily commutes. This field note proposes that the practice of playing the songs becomes part of an aural network that places itself through its (mere) presence as something not to be consciously attentive to and be affected by. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intersection between sound and music computing and Virtual Reality (VR) has grown significantly over the past decades, amounting to an established area of research today. However, still scarce research has been conducted on the development of specific tools for sound design and composition. In this paper, we investigate a new way of exploring online sound repositories to retrieve sounds to be used in soundscape composition, which leverages the VR medium. Specifically, we created a VR system that allows users to search, download, and explore Freesound content in an immersive manner, as well as to use it for soundscape composition practices via a virtual digital audio workstation (DAW). The tags associated to a sound in the repository were converted into virtual objects and environments, which the user could navigate while listening to the sound. We conducted a user study with 16 composers where the developed system was compared against a conventional counterpart comprising the Freesound web version and the Audacity DAW. Overall, quantitative and qualitative results did not indicate a clear and generalized preference for a system over the other. The usability of the two systems along with their offered creativity support, cognitive workload and emotional impact were deemed to be at a comparable level. Nevertheless, the full potential of VR in creating novel compositional experiences also clearly emerged. Our study shows that VR is an effective medium to support users' creativity during the process of exploring and selecting sounds from an online repository as well as for composing a soundscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature is the property of Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of South Architecture / Nanfang Jianzhu is the property of South Architecture Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article discusses the twofold role of music as a means to manifest border-induced (cultural) difference and simultaneously foster alternative modes of belonging. The author draws on her ethnographic research, consisting of participant observation, desktop research, and interviews, and reflects on her auto-ethnographic recordings of engaging with refugee musicians. The discussion unfolds around vignettes that exemplify moments of musical encounters among refugees and between refugees and people from the host society. The vignettes are narrated from the refugee interlocutors' point of view, who are engaged in the musicking instances as listeners and musicians. The article discusses how they devise music to cope with their estrangement from home and to articulate narratives of belonging. It illuminates how refugees challenge stereotyped representations of themselves, reinforcing the terms under which they can become "visible" and "audible." Finally, the article argues that refugees' narratives suggest understandings of reality as a continuum in ways that challenge the linear reifications produced by nation-state bordering practices and displacement-induced ruptures These understandings are embedded in music's mobilities and their intersections with human movement, informal networks, and the cultural industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological conservation red line is an important initiative for ecological civilization construction in China. Studies and works have been conducted to delineate the ecological conservation red line using remote sensing and manual survey methods. However, the traditional ecological assessment methods ignore the impact of dynamic elements on the ecological environment, and a permanent monitoring system for ecological conservation red line is still necessary. Therefore, this paper aimed to build a daily monitoring system of the ecological conservation red line from the perspective of ecological soundscape, combining deep learning and traditional Geographic Information System (GIS) methods. We analyzed the main factors affecting the ecological soundscape to provide a benchmark for selecting sites for permanent soundscape monitoring. Initially, this study developed the first classification standard of soundscape elements for daily monitoring of ecological conservation red line concerning the "ecological-production-living spaces" concept and existing literature on soundscape and built a deep learning model for training, with training and validation accuracies of 89.88% and 72.41%, respectively. The identification results of this model confirmed that the solution of intelligent monitoring through soundscape is reliable in daily monitoring. Then, the deep learning model was employed to classify and predict the soundscape collected from the case sites and effectively identify the areas with severe ecological encroachment by calculating the proportion of ecological soundscape elements, performing the simulation of daily monitoring, which is important guidance for the actual ecological conservation red line monitoring. Finally, a regression model was used to analyze the spatial characteristics of ecologically vulnerable areas, with an R 2 of 0.472. The regression model showed that nighttime light intensity had the greatest influence on ecological soundscape, followed by the distance from residential areas, spatial centrality, and road distance. These factors should be considered when implementing permanent soundscape monitoring sites. In addition, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and topography were not significant in the regression model, which confirmed the shortcomings of considering only the ecological background and ignoring the dynamic biological elements. Daily monitoring should capture dynamic encroachments so that major ecological damage can be detected before it occurs. Therefore, the innovative integration of soundscape elements into the monitoring system meets the basic needs of monitoring ecological conservation red lines daily.

Abstract Soundscape heritage records the cultural connotations of different ethnic groups, the destruction, and the disappearance of certain heritage makes its preservation urgent. This work aims to explore the influence of audio-visual different sensory stimuli on the subjective cognition, perceptual dimension and value evaluation of the Grand Song of the Dong soundscape heritage. We have conducted an audio-visual interaction experiment, using 2D video and high-fidelity audio systems to show typical visual elements and cultural scenes of the Grand Song of the Dong, and combined them with questionnaires to collect subjective data. The results show that the visual stimuli have no effect on the subjective evaluation of the Grand Song of the Dong soundscape, and that the different social characteristics of the participants are the main reason for the variations. The influence of audio-visual interaction on the perception of the of the Grand Song of the Dong soundscape is greater, with an enhanced perceptual dimension than the single auditory sensory, i.e., the scale dimension, indicating that visual stimuli can enhance the sensing of spatial limitation. The introduction of the visual element results in higher scores for each heritage value than the auditory element alone, indicating a positive impact on the value evaluation. The results of these studies provide a theoretical basis for the living transmission and holistic conservation of the Grand Song of the Dong and their scenes.

This essay addresses the sounds of Brazilian mining, focusing on the State of Minas Gerais, where two recent catastrophes occurred as a result of the collapse of mining tailings dams: Mariana and Brumadinho. The purpose of this article is to develop a sound cartography that articulates different dimensions of the exploratory processes of extractivism, an economic model that has become central in Brazil since colonial times, and which establishes a relationship with the Earth as an inexhaustible supplier of natural resources. Mining structures complex relationships that range from endless perforations of the Earth and the opening of monstrous craters that ravage entire ecosystems to capital flows that enrich the stock market, but keep the population's basic needs unmet. The path followed in this text crosses multiple aspects that make up the sounds of mining and that are symbols of the predatory action that humans have continually exerted on their surroundings. The human species has forgotten that it is ontologically a constitutive part of the environment and that its actions result in ever-increasing changes in the fine fabric that connects beings and forms the biosphere. Mining is one of these actions and a symbol of a way of life that has led us to the critical moment we are in.

Schools in urban areas are often located in areas with high traffic and noise pollution that affect the overall and sonic quality of the external spaces. Due to this, teachers and students are exposed to high noise levels, this condition could have an impact on the perceptive-cognitive and neurobehavioral aspects, determining auditory and extra-auditory effects from exposure to noise. The BRiC - ID14 project, funded by INAIL, investigates the extra-auditory effects of noise exposure on primary and secondary school teachers and students.

Görsel ve işitsel değerleri kapsayan kaliteli tasarımların gerçekleştirilmesi için ses peyzajı kavramı, bileşenleri ve çalışma yöntemleri hakkında araştırmaların yapılması gerekmektedir. İdeal bir ses peyzajının ortaya çıkarılabilmesi için, akustik ilkelere dayalı olması ve mekânsal olarak doğru bir peyzaj tasarımın yapılması oldukça önemlidir. Bu bağlamda, “İdeal bir ses peyzajın bileşenleri ve tasarlama adımları nelerdir?” biçiminde araştırma soruları sorulmaktadır. Sözü edilen konu ile ilgili şimdiye kadar yapılan çalışmalarda, akustik boyutun değerlendirilmesi yerine daha çok fiziksel tasarıma odaklanılmıştır. Bu çalışmada, literatürde mevcut çalışmalar ve bu çalışmalarda kullanılan araştırma modelleri incelenerek, ses peyzajının değerlendirmesi ve tasarlaması için bir çerçeve sunulmuştur. Araştırma, betimsel-analitik bir yöntem kullanarak ideal bir ses peyzajı tasarımı için gerekli bilgi ve verilerin açıklanmasını ortaya koymuştur. Çalışma sonucunda, ses peyzaj için yeniden tasarım çalışmalarında sadece nicel veya nitel bir yönteme bağlı kalınmamakla birlikte, sesin fiziksel boyutları, bireylerin algısal nitelikleri ve sesli olmayan faktörlerin incelenmesinin de göz önünde bulundurması gerektiği önerilmiştir.

This study investigates the acoustic comfort of shopping malls related to the standards and people's emotions. The soundscape is vital in shopping malls to attract more visitors. This research studied the soundscapes of two shopping malls in Yogyakarta, focusing on the effect of noise on the environmental perceptions of hedonic and utilitarian consumers. The research took on-site noise measurements to create soundscapes maps. There were also interviews to explore their opinions about the noise inside malls. Data were statistically analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Science. The results showed that only some soundscape elements affected arousal emotions among hedonic consumers, concerning a more extensive period of mall visits. No soundscape element affected pleasure emotions among utilitarian consumers with the length of stay in malls. Socio-cultural backgrounds of shopping culture (in traditional and modern markets) and soundscape conditions were also considered. The excessive soundscapes did not directly impact the health negatively of those who spent long periods in malls. The subsequent studies may continue to find the relation between acoustic comfort and the difference with the regulation.

The goal of estimating a soundscape index, aimed at evaluating the contribution of the environmental sound components, is to provide an accurate "acoustic quality" assessment of a complex habitat. Such an index can prove to be a powerful ecological tool associated with both rapid on-site and remote surveys. The soundscape ranking index (SRI), introduced by us recently, can empirically account for the contribution of different sound sources by assigning a positive weight to natural sounds (biophony) and a negative weight to anthropogenic ones. The optimization of such weights was performed by training four machine learning algorithms (decision tree, DT; random forest, RF; adaptive boosting, AdaBoost; support vector machine, SVM) over a relatively small fraction of a labeled sound recording dataset. The sound recordings were taken at 16 sites distributed over an area of approximately 22 hectares at Parco Nord (Northern Park) of the city Milan (Italy). From the audio recordings, we extracted four different spectral features: two based on ecoacoustic indices and the other two based on mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs). The labeling was focused on the identification of sounds belonging to biophonies and anthropophonies. This preliminary approach revealed that two classification models, DT and AdaBoost, trained by using 84 extracted features from each recording, are able to provide a set of weights characterized by a rather good classification performance (F1-score = 0.70, 0.71). The present results are in quantitative agreement with a self-consistent estimation of the mean SRI values at each site that was recently obtained by us using a different statistical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tackles the challenging task of automatically predicting the floor of a balcony based on a sound bound of two minutes recorded on that balcony. The sound fragments are typical of the environment, as nothing out of the usual can be heard in them. However, there is a good probability that, when hearing a fragment in quiet surroundings with consistent metropolitan background noise, it would not be straightforward to determine or estimate the floor height. In our experiments, it was found that sound chunks lasting 5 s can be identified with high accuracy even with a small number of training samples. In addition, when using a late fusion strategy to combine the outputs of classifiers trained on two modalities of the sound tracks, the floors of these bands are perfectly correctly classified. This result was consistent throughout all twenty tests when training and test sets were chosen at random, supporting the viability of the suggested method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing restorative green areas is important, especially in the city, where the level of stress and noise is relatively high. Therefore, green areas, such as urban parks, should provide coherent audio–visual stimuli to achieve positive perception by the residents. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the potential for psychological regeneration in urban parks in terms of visual and soundscape assessment as well as to assess the role of the intensity of different types of sound contributing to the positive perception of the soundscape. In order to achieve this aim, we chose eight urban parks in the city of Wrocław to provide audio and visual stimuli and used a group of young adults as survey respondents. The results show that visual stimuli are perceived as undoubtedly more important than the soundscape, and that talking, footsteps, music, children (playing), birds, and vehicles are the most significant types of sound that contribute to the perception of soundscape depending on the level of intensity of the sound (with children and vehicles being beneficial if they are completely inaudible). We conclude that the quality of the soundscape is essential to improve the restorative potential of urban parks and, in consequence, to improve the well-being and health of the city dwellers, and there is a necessity for strategies and development plans including sensually coherent and inclusive public parks in the city of Wrocław. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) provides new opportunities to characterise zoonotic and vector-borne disease dynamics in changing landscapes. Acoustic data can inform our understanding of variables that drive transmission risk, including human and wildlife occupancy over space and time and changes in habitat quality. With low-cost hardware, cloud-based computing, and open-source platforms, acoustic data collection and analysis methods are increasingly accessible to nonspecialist users. Key considerations for epidemiologists include the availability of complementary data sources and the technical requirements for acoustic data storage and analysis. Acoustic monitoring is a cost-effective, noninvasive tool which could be effectively combined with existing data to strengthen early warning systems and integrated disease surveillance. Emerging infectious diseases continue to pose a significant burden on global public health, and there is a critical need to better understand transmission dynamics arising at the interface of human activity and wildlife habitats. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), more typically applied to questions of biodiversity and conservation, provides an opportunity to collect and analyse audio data in relative real time and at low cost. Acoustic methods are increasingly accessible, with the expansion of cloud-based computing, low-cost hardware, and machine learning approaches. Paired with purposeful experimental design, acoustic data can complement existing surveillance methods and provide a novel toolkit to investigate the key biological parameters and ecological interactions that underpin infectious disease epidemiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green areas in urban environments, such as urban parks and urban gardens, are known to provide benefits called "ecosystem services" to the urban community. Green recreational spaces offer opportunities for physical activity, leading to improved physical and mental health of residents. For this reason, the presence and the quality of such areas has to be considered and promoted in sustainable urban planning, especially in the context of contributing to the achievement sustainable cities. As the biodiversity of an area is an indication of its quality, soundecological indicators have been used to assess the biodiversity in natural areas. Due to the presence of anthropogenic sounds in urban areas, the use of these indicators to determine the quality of urban areas can be questioned. However, the vocal activity of collectively singing birds during the dawn chorus contributes to the urban soundscape, and results in a prominent biophonic component of this soundscape, as can be clearly seen in its yearly pattern. The use of soundecological indicators through the estimation of the Bird Dawn Chorus Strength has the potential to provide a means of assessing the quality of urban green spaces. To demonstrate this potential, a pilot study is presented here on the annual temporal scale of the soundscape of a typical urban green space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have performed a detailed analysis of the soundscape inside an urban park (located in the city of Milan) based on simultaneous sound recordings at 16 locations within the park. The sound sensors were deployed over a regular grid covering an area of about 22 hectares, surrounded by a variety of anthropophonic sources. The recordings span 3.5 h each over a period of four consecutive days. We aimed at determining a soundscape ranking index (SRI) evaluated at each site in the grid by introducing 4 unknown parameters. To this end, a careful aural survey from a single day was performed in order to identify the presence of 19 predefined sound categories within a minute, every 3 minutes of recording. It is found that all SRI values fluctuate considerably within the 70 time intervals considered. The corresponding histograms were used to define a dissimilarity function for each pair of sites. Dissimilarity was found to increase significantly with the inter-site distance in space. Optimal values of the 4 parameters were obtained by minimizing the standard deviation of the data, consistent with a fifth parameter describing the variation of dissimilarity with distance. As a result, we classify the sites into three main categories: "poor", "medium" and "good" environmental sound quality. This study can be useful to assess the quality of a soundscape in general situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) has emerged as a transformative tool for applied ecology, conservation and biodiversity monitoring, but its potential contribution to fundamental ecology is less often discussed, and fundamental PAM studies tend to be descriptive, rather than mechanistic.Here, we chart the most promising directions for ecologists wishing to use the suite of currently available acoustic methods to address long‐standing fundamental questions in ecology and explore new avenues of research. In both terrestrial and aquatic habitats, PAM provides an opportunity to ask questions across multiple spatial scales and at fine temporal resolution, and to capture phenomena or species that are difficult to observe. In combination with traditional approaches to data collection, PAM could release ecologists from myriad limitations that have, at times, precluded mechanistic understanding.We discuss several case studies to demonstrate the potential contribution of PAM to biodiversity estimation, population trend analysis, assessing climate change impacts on phenology and distribution, and understanding disturbance and recovery dynamics. We also highlight what is on the horizon for PAM, in terms of near‐future technological and methodological developments that have the potential to provide advances in coming years.Overall, we illustrate how ecologists can harness the power of PAM to address fundamental ecological questions in an era of ecology no longer characterised by data limitation. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of soundscape has a history of over 20 years to this day. Based on the CNKI database, a contact graph of authors in the field of soundscape is drawn using Cite Space software, and the number of core authors in the field of soundscape is determined to be 30. Based on the number of papers and the evolution of keywords over the years, the development of soundscape research is divided into three stages; exploration stage (1995 - 2006), pre development stage (2007 - 2015), and post development stage (2016 -- present). The research direction is divided into three categories; soundscape perception, soundscape evaluation, and soundscape design. According to various graph analysis, with the continuous development of science and technology, soundscape research fields and methods are gradually diversified, and fields such as soundscape evaluation, soundscape, landscape architecture, soundscape perception and sound stroll have gradually become hot spots in soundscape research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems remain largely unexplored. The aim of this study was to determine how the acoustic fish biodiversity varied depending on the depth and the type of island in six Polynesian islands. The link between benthic cover and fish sound diversity was established. In most islands, acoustic fish α-diversity decreased between 20 and 60 m but not between 60 and 120 m. Fish sound types community composition was more driven by depth, likely due to benthic coral cover differences, than by the type of island. These results show fish sounds exhibit a bathymetric stratification and can reflect different habitat features. It opens perspectives in the monitoring of mesophotic coral ecosystems using passive acoustics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world population is aging and more and more people suffer from dementia, which makes remembering and orientation in time and space difficult. Moreover dementia has a strong negative effect on the quality of living of the people suffering from it, but also of their relatives. In this paper, we investigate if and how the playback of carefully chosen and recognizable sounds, such as music, a clock tower, or nature sounds, can help these people and have a positive effect on the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). The selection and playback of these sounds, augmenting the existing soundscape, is performed in a personalized manner, since sounds can elicit a different response in different people. Caregivers can provide feedback on the soundscape based on the resident's behavior and response to hearing the sounds. This allows a continuous adaptation of the soundscape. The soundscape system was tested with 19 people suffering from dementia and resident of 6 different nursing homes. Comparison of the nursing home environment before and after installation of the soundscape system showed that most residents (13/19) experienced this as an improvement of the sound environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sound exerts wide‐ranging influence on humans. The quality of that influence depends on the sound source and context in which it is perceived, but nature sounds are generally preferred by people and associated with health and well‐being benefits.In many environments, sounds are highly mixed giving rise to a multi‐source 'soundscape' that may vary through days or seasons. The complex and dynamic nature of soundscapes makes them challenging to quantify or classify to rigorously compare them and their contributing sources quantitatively through space and time.We address this challenge by developing an analytical procedure resulting in a generalized soundscape classification framework that (i) elucidates dominant sound sources (e.g. biophony vs. anthrophony) and (ii) can be used to improve our understanding of spatial and temporal variation in soundscapes across different contexts.We also address a knowledge gap in urban sound research by describing the soundscapes of urban informal settlements in Fiji and Indonesia. Despite the growing emphasis on improving the physical design and quality of life in urban informal settlements, little is known about soundscapes in these settings or their relationship to human health and well‐being.We identified seven soundscape classes representing relative dominance by (i) sustained geophony, biophony dominated by (ii) insect stridulation or (iii) bird song, anthrophony dominated by (iv) machines, (v) vehicles, (vi) human voices or (vii) a mixture of the former. These classes were applicable in both Indonesia and Fiji but differed in their prevalence between the countries, times of day and seasons in expected ways. Future automatic sorting of new sound data into this classification framework is provided by a supervised classification model that attained an overall testing accuracy of 94% and Cohen's kappa of 0.93.Our procedure yields broadly applicable, informative soundscape classes indicative of dominant sound sources, including natural sounds, that are known to have different effects on human health. Therefore, our soundscape classification framework can be used in conjunction with health, well‐being, or economic data, to aid the development, assessment and scaling of sustainable design solutions for liveable cities and especially for improving urban informal settlement environments. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]