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Simple Summary: We proposed a descriptive model of the dog soundscape composed of 79 sounds classified into six categories. In a survey, 620 dog owners scored the recurrence of each sound, from never to daily, in their dog's environment. The survey also revealed 25 sounds that are likely to elicit stress/fear, that is, negative emotional sensitivity, in dogs. The results indicate no beneficial effect of commonness and no deleterious effect of scarcity regarding sound events on sensitivity. For the sake of dog welfare, researchers, veterinarians, trainers, and owners may limit dogs' exposure to the sensitive sounds identified in this study during their dog observations and dog–human interactions. A corpus of 84 sounds was spectrally analyzed. At the lowest sound frequencies, where canine hearing is poorest, negative emotional sensitivity was generally low. At the middle and high sound frequencies, sensitivity greatly varied across the sounds, which is incompatible with the general assumption. How emotional sensitivity relates to pitch and dog hearing sensitivity remains undetermined. We suggest that future behavioral audiometric studies may maximize the spectral spread of each sound while minimizing the spectral overlap between sounds to reduce both the testing duration and the risk of unintentionally targeting or missing frequency-dependent hearing impairments. While numerous dog behavioral studies use environmental sounds, the dog soundscape remains undescribed. We proposed a list of 79 sounds classified into six categories: Dog, Dog accessories, Human, city and vehicles, Garden, countryside and weather, and Household. In a survey, 620 dog owners scored the frequency of their dog's exposure to, and thus, the recurrence of, each of the 79 sounds, from never to daily. The survey results also extended to about 25 sounds the number of acknowledged sounds that are likely to elicit stress or fear, that is, negative emotional sensitivity, in dogs. Sound recurrence and emotional sensitivity were not correlated, showing no beneficial effect of frequent exposure to, and no deleterious effect of scarcity of, sound events. We suggest that for the sake of dog welfare, researchers, veterinarians, trainers, and owners may limit dogs' exposure to the sensitive sounds identified in the study during their dog observations and dog–human interactions. A corpus of 84 sounds was collected. The sounds were spectrally analyzed by determining their F0 and 10 dB bandwidth parameters. At the lowest sound frequencies, where canine hearing is poorest, negative emotional sensitivity was generally low. At the middle and high sound center frequencies/F0s, sensitivity greatly varied from lowest to highest, which is incompatible with both the general assumption and dog auditory detection thresholds. How emotional sensitivity relates to F0 (pitch) and hearing sensitivity remains undetermined. Finally, we suggest that future behavioral audiometric studies of dogs may maximize the spectral spread of each sound while minimizing the spectral overlap between sounds so as to reduce both the testing duration and the risk of inadvertently targeting or, conversely, missing frequency-dependent hearing impairments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, the internal flow behaviour and characteristic pressure fluctuations of an axial pump with varying water conditions are analysed. The impact of tip vortex flow on the pattern of turbulent flow is simulated numerically by the application of the CFD technique and experimentally using an acoustics analysis method. The numerical CFD data are verified with an experimental test model for accuracy and reliability. Based on the results, the difference in pressure in the internal flow and at the surfaces of the blade can be impacted through tip leakage vortex regions, which leads to changes in internal flow. Subsequently, the flow in the clearance and tip leakage vortex regions is changed. Moreover, the results reveal that the suction wall upstream is more unsteady near the surface due to more mixing, secondary flow, and tip leakage vortices. Pressure fluctuation occurs near the tip of the blade, caused by the increasing vortex flow velocity and hence raising the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE). Using different monitoring points at the blade impeller reveals high values of the pulsation amplitude. Owing to the region of clearance backflow under low-water conditions, the axial pump displays larger fluctuations in pressure near the tip blade area. Because the leakage flow leaves the gap at a high flow rate, shear layers are formed quickly between the main flow and the leakage flow. Near the end wall, there is a negative-vorticity-induced vortex. Moreover, as the flow rate increases, the pump's amplitude decreases along with its main frequency. For the low-water flow, the results reveal that there is an important clearance backflow because the axial pump has large clearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: In a previous study, we found that Positive Reinforcement Training promoted relaxation in wolves and dogs. Here, we investigate aspects of the trainers' voices possibly involved in this effect. Dogs' great interest in high-pitched, intense speech has already been reported, but whether and how wolves respond similarly/differently to voice characteristics has never been studied. We analyzed 270 training sessions with nine mixed-breed dogs and nine wolves. We grouped human speech into three categories: nice, neutral, and reprehensive, and analyzed how their duration and their acoustic characteristics within training sessions were associated with animals' behavior and physiology. The longer the duration of nice speech during a session, the more often tail wagging was observed in both subspecies, while the opposite was found for reprehensive speech. The duration of reprehensive speech was also associated with a decrease in correct responses in dogs and with retreating in wolves, while a longer use of nice speech was associated with animals being next to the trainer for longer within a session. Sessions with a higher average pitch was more often associated to changes in dog behavior, while wolf behavior changes were more often associated to low intonations. Our results suggest that a friendly voice during training supports performance and positive emotional responses in wolves and dogs. The different response towards the pitch between the subspecies may be related to the domestication process, which selected, in dogs, characteristics that facilitate interaction with humans. In a previous study, we found that Positive Reinforcement Training reduced cortisol of wolves and dogs; however, this effect varied across trainer–animal dyads. Here we investigate whether and how the trainers' use of speech may contribute to this effect. Dogs' great interest in high-pitched, intense speech (also known as Dog Directed Speech) has already been reported, but whether and how wolves respond similarly/differently to voice characteristics has never been studied before. We analyzed 270 training sessions, conducted by five trainers, with nine mixed-breed dogs and nine wolves, all human-socialized. Through Generalized Linear Mixed Models, we analyzed the effects of (a) three speech categories (nice, neutral, reprehensive) and laugh; and (b) acoustic characteristics of trainers' voices on animals' responses (correct responses, latency, orientation, time at less than 1 m, non-training behaviors, tail position/movements, cortisol variation). In both subspecies, tail wagging occurred more often in sessions with longer durations of nice speech, and less often in sessions with reprehensive speech. For dogs, the duration of reprehensive speech within a session was also negatively related to correct responses. For wolves, retreat time was associated with more reprehensive speech, whereas duration of nice speech was positively associated with time spent within one meter from the trainer. In addition, most dog behavioral responses were associated with higher average intonations within sessions, while wolf responses were correlated with lower intonations within sessions. We did not find any effects of the variables considered on cortisol variation. Our study highlights the relevance of voice tone and speech in a training context on animals' performances and emotional reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While numerous dog behavioral studies use environmental sounds, the dog soundscape remains undescribed. We proposed a list of 79 sounds classified into six categories: Dog, Dog accessories, Human, city and vehicles, Garden, countryside and weather, and Household. In a survey, 620 dog owners scored the frequency of their dog’s exposure to, and thus, the recurrence of, each of the 79 sounds, from never to daily. The survey results also extended to about 25 sounds the number of acknowledged sounds that are likely to elicit stress or fear, that is, negative emotional sensitivity, in dogs. Sound recurrence and emotional sensitivity were not correlated, showing no beneficial effect of frequent exposure to, and no deleterious effect of scarcity of, sound events. We suggest that for the sake of dog welfare, researchers, veterinarians, trainers, and owners may limit dogs’ exposure to the sensitive sounds identified in the study during their dog observations and dog–human interactions. A corpus of 84 sounds was collected. The sounds were spectrally analyzed by determining their F0 and 10 dB bandwidth parameters. At the lowest sound frequencies, where canine hearing is poorest, negative emotional sensitivity was generally low. At the middle and high sound center frequencies/F0s, sensitivity greatly varied from lowest to highest, which is incompatible with both the general assumption and dog auditory detection thresholds. How emotional sensitivity relates to F0 (pitch) and hearing sensitivity remains undetermined. Finally, we suggest that future behavioral audiometric studies of dogs may maximize the spectral spread of each sound while minimizing the spectral overlap between sounds so as to reduce both the testing duration and the risk of inadvertently targeting or, conversely, missing frequency-dependent hearing impairments.

Parkinson's disease produces motor impairments such as bradykinesia, rigidity, and different speech impairments, as same as non-motor symptoms like cognitive decline and depression disturbances. Most studies are focused on the analysis of motor symptoms, and only few works study non-motor impairments. Depression is one of the typical non-motor symptoms developed by many Parkinson's patients. Impairments in speech production together with depression produce negative effects in the communication capabilities and social interaction of patients. This study proposes a combination of speech analysis and natural language processing methods to extract features from spontaneous speech utterances and their transcripts. We consider state-of-the-art word-embedding methods like Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformer (BERT) to process the transcripts, and traditional acoustic features such as Bark band energies and Mel frequency cepstral coefficients to model the speech signals. The features are processed with supervectors generated by Gaussian Mixture Model-Universal Background Model (GMM-UBM) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers. The dataset consists of 60 Parkinson's patients divided into two classes according to the depression item of the MDS-UPDRS. The automatic classification of depressed and non-depressed Parkinson's patients showed F -scores of up to 0.77, which confirms that acoustic and linguistic information embedded in language production can be used for depression analysis in Parkinson's patients. We present one of the few studies that evaluates depression in Parkinson's patients considering the combination of acoustic and linguistic information. [Display omitted] • An approach based on speaker modeling using acoustic and linguistic features together with a Gaussian Mixture Models-Universal Backgrounds Models is proposed for the assessment of depression in Parkinson's patients. • An F -score of 0.77 is obtained using the proposed approach to discriminate between depressed vs. non-depressed Parkinson's patients. • The combination of acoustic and linguistic features improved the results by 7% and the proposed approach by 12%. • We present one of the few studies that evaluate depression in Parkinson's considering the combination of acoustic and linguistic information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous study, we found that Positive Reinforcement Training reduced cortisol of wolves and dogs; however, this effect varied across trainer–animal dyads. Here we investigate whether and how the trainers’ use of speech may contribute to this effect. Dogs’ great interest in high-pitched, intense speech (also known as Dog Directed Speech) has already been reported, but whether and how wolves respond similarly/differently to voice characteristics has never been studied before. We analyzed 270 training sessions, conducted by five trainers, with nine mixed-breed dogs and nine wolves, all human-socialized. Through Generalized Linear Mixed Models, we analyzed the effects of (a) three speech categories (nice, neutral, reprehensive) and laugh; and (b) acoustic characteristics of trainers’ voices on animals’ responses (correct responses, latency, orientation, time at less than 1 m, non-training behaviors, tail position/movements, cortisol variation). In both subspecies, tail wagging occurred more often in sessions with longer durations of nice speech, and less often in sessions with reprehensive speech. For dogs, the duration of reprehensive speech within a session was also negatively related to correct responses. For wolves, retreat time was associated with more reprehensive speech, whereas duration of nice speech was positively associated with time spent within one meter from the trainer. In addition, most dog behavioral responses were associated with higher average intonations within sessions, while wolf responses were correlated with lower intonations within sessions. We did not find any effects of the variables considered on cortisol variation. Our study highlights the relevance of voice tone and speech in a training context on animals’ performances and emotional reactions.

Although the performance of an Induction Motor (IM) can be maximized for any speed by use of an inverter, there is still room to contribute by optimizing the rotor slot shape while decreasing the mechanical disturbing effects and acoustic noise. This paper focuses on the effect of different individual rotor slot shapes on the performance of an IM including overall space harmonic, vibration and acoustic effects. A number of rotor slot shapes were implemented to the rotor of a commercial IM and efficiency of all designs were maximized for constant torque region by optimization. Afterwards, operational performance including starting, breakdown and rated operations; moreover, harmonic content and torque ripple were analyzed numerically in association with the mentioned rotor slot shapes. Best performing 4 rotor slot shapes in terms of chosen operational quantities were designated. Furthermore, the determined motors were carried out to vibration and acoustic noise analysis. Superposed acoustic disturbances in terms of sound power level for different harmonic frequencies were obtained and results are given in comparison. All-in-all, this paper contributes to associating the end-to-end disturbing effects to certain rotor slot shapes. This study determines disturbance and performance criterions for choosing an appropriate motor for an IM to be used in an electric vehicle. It was shown that rotor slot shape still deserves considerable attention to increase the performance of an IM while decreasing the adverse effects of space harmonics, mechanical vibration and acoustic disturbance.

The mangroves of Puerto Rico occupy a gradient of urbanization that offers a chance to test hypotheses on urban faunal communities. These hypotheses state that urban avifaunal communities have greater representation by generalists and that certain mangrove specialists can utilize urban landscapes. Much of this is said to be driven by food resources, with frugivores and nectarivores benefiting from abundant residential flowers and fruits, while insectivores are driven away by low food resources. This study used passive acoustic monitoring to identify the audible anuran and avifaunal species in mangroves across an urban gradient of Puerto Rico. Five anurans and thirty-one avian species were detected across all sites, with twenty-three species found at the most species rich site, and eight at the least rich site. Analyses on urban effects were conducted at an island-wide scale as well as a local scale with different results between the two. Island wide, the most urban faunal communities were more similar to each other in species composition relative to the least urban communities, and there was a significant difference in the community composition between the two. However, there were no differences in avian or anuran species richness between the least and most urban sites. Minimum canopy height was the strongest predictor of overall avian richness and avian invertivore richness, while the extent of mixed forest cover was the strongest predictor for increasing anuran richness. Some urban metrics, such as street density and the percent of surrounding urban and developed open space were strong predictors of certain avian feeding guilds and distribution groups. At the local scale, sites of maximum urbanness held 2–3 more bird species on average than corresponding sites of minimum urbanness at the same location, although there was no difference in anuran species and no differences in avian or anuran community composition between the two. Further, avian richness did increase significantly from the minimum to maximum urbanness site at six of the nine locations. These findings highlight that higher mangrove canopies are the strongest predictor of higher avian richness, but depending on the scale of observations, urbanness also plays a limited role in shaping mangrove faunal communities.

Introduction: In the steel industry,air blowers used to supply compressed air are considered as sources of annoying noise. This study aims to acoustics analysis of theairblower workroomand sound source characteristics in order to present noise controlmeasuresinthe steel industry. .Material and Method: Measurement of noiselevel and its frequency analysis was performed usingsound levelmetermodelof CASELLA-Cell.450. Distribution of noise level in the investigated workroom in form of noise map was provided using Surfer software. In addition, acoustic analysis of workroom and control room was performed in view point of soundabsorption andinsulation. Redesignofdoor and window of controlroom and installation of soundabsorbing materialson theceiling of the workroom were proposed and the efficiency of these interventionswasestimated. .Result: The totalsound pressurelevelin the blower workroom was 95.4 dB(L) and the dominant frequency was 2000Hz. Sound pressure level inside the room control was 80.1dB(A). The average absorption coefficient and reverberation time in the blower workroom was estimated equal to 0.082 Sab.m2 and 3.9 seconds respectively. These value in control room was 0.04 Sab.m2 and 3/4 seconds respectively. In control room, sound transmission loss between the two parts of the wall dividing was 13.7 dB(A). The average of noise dose in blower operators was 230%. With the installation of sound absorber on ceiling of workroom, average of absorption coefficient can increase to 0.33 Sab.m2 and sound transmission loss of the new designed door and window was estimated equal to 20dB. . Conclusion: The main cause of noise leakage in the control room was insufficient insulation properties of door and windows. By replacing the door and window and installation of sound absorbing on ceiling of workroom, the noise dose can reduce to 49.6%. New Improved door and window of control room can reduce noise dose to 69.65% solely.

The mangroves of Puerto Rico occupy a gradient of urbanization that offers a chance to test hypotheses on urban faunal communities. These hypotheses state that urban avifaunal communities have greater representation by generalists and that certain mangrove specialists can utilize urban landscapes. Much of this is said to be driven by food resources, with frugivores and nectarivores benefiting from abundant residential flowers and fruits, while insectivores are driven away by low food resources. This study used passive acoustic monitoring to identify the audible anuran and avifaunal species in mangroves across an urban gradient of Puerto Rico. Five anurans and thirty-one avian species were detected across all sites, with twenty-three species found at the most species rich site, and eight at the least rich site. Analyses on urban effects were conducted at an island-wide scale as well as a local scale with different results between the two. Island wide, the most urban faunal communities were more similar to each other in species composition relative to the least urban communities, and there was a significant difference in the community composition between the two. However, there were no differences in avian or anuran species richness between the least and most urban sites. Minimum canopy height was the strongest predictor of overall avian richness and avian invertivore richness, while the extent of mixed forest cover was the strongest predictor for increasing anuran richness. Some urban metrics, such as street density and the percent of surrounding urban and developed open space were strong predictors of certain avian feeding guilds and distribution groups. At the local scale, sites of maximum urbanness held 2-3 more bird species on average than corresponding sites of minimum urbanness at the same location, although there was no difference in anuran species and no differences in avian or anuran community composition between the two. Further, avian richness did increase significantly from the minimum to maximum urbanness site at six of the nine locations. These findings highlight that higher mangrove canopies are the strongest predictor of higher avian richness, but depending on the scale of observations, urbanness also plays a limited role in shaping mangrove faunal communities., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

During pregnancy, voice quality disorders may occur in form of: edema, dryness, nervousness. The aim of the study is subjective and objective evaluation of voice quality in pregnant women. The study included 20 women in the third trimester of pregnancy, age of 20-31 diagnosed at the Department of Clinical Phonoaudiology and Logopedics, Medical University of Bialystok. Subjective assessment has been based on the GRBAS scale. Objective assessment of the vocal organ used the HSDI technique (High Speed Digital Imaging). In the laryngeal visualization, high-speed camera (HS) using rigid endoscope with 90 ° optics has been used. Vibration of vocal folds has been recorded during phonation of vowel "e" at 4000 frames / sec. The glottal closure (GTs), symmetry, regularity and synchronization of vocal folds vibration have been assessed. In estimating the degree of glottal insufficiency, kymography of the larynx has been performed by analyzing the value of Open Quotient (OQ). Objective acoustic evaluation of voice has been also conducted using DiagnoScope Specjalista Program. Hoarseness has been observed in 15 pregnant women, whereas voice fatigability in 20 patients. Using HSDI, the edema of vocal folds in part of the group has been observed. Decreased MPT has been found in all examined women in the third trimester of pregnancy. Hoarseness and fatigability of voice are the most frequent subjective symptoms of voice organ in the third trimester of pregnancy. Decreased MPT is recorded objectively, as well as edema and insufficiency of vocal folds using HSDI technique.