Sound Duration Research Articles

Acoustic features of labial and dental plosives in children with hypernasality

Cleft lip and palate (CLP) is a birth defect that can have negative effects on feeding, physical appearance, speech, hearing, and psychological development.VFI-induced hypernasality are high-pressure sounds such as plosives, fricatives, and affricates. In this study, the influence of hypernasality on plosive sounds was investigated. Six children with CLP with hypernasality and six children with typical development participated in this descriptive comparative study. All of the participants were between 10 and 12 years old and were native Turkish speakers. These two groups were matched by age and gender. For the acoustic analysis, the stop component, burst duration, and total duration of each target sound were calculated. Additionally, voice onset time (VOT) was assessed and contrasted between groups. A linear mixed-effects model was used for the statistical analysis. This study demonstrates that children with hypernasality have longer target sound durations. In addition, the burst duration of target sounds is determined to be prolonged in this group. Moreover, hypernasality is linked to a prolonged stop duration. Children without hypernasality experience a shortened duration of VOT than those with hypernasality. According to this study's findings, velofarengeal insufficiency has an effect on the duration of obstruent sounds. This explains the differences between the hypernasality group and the non-hypernasality group. This research suggests that CLP therapy for children may enhance their condition. Using acoustic measurements, this investigation generates theoretical results. Therapies' administration and evaluation could be combined.

Enhancing analysis of diadochokinetic speech using deep neural networks

Diadochokinetic speech tasks (DDK) involve the repetitive production of consonant-vowel syllables. These tasks are useful in detecting impairments, differential diagnosis, and monitoring progress in speech-motor impairments. However, manual analysis of those tasks is time-consuming, subjective, and provides only a rough picture of speech. This paper presents several deep neural network models working on the raw waveform for the automatic segmentation of stop consonants and vowels from unannotated and untranscribed speech. A deep encoder serves as a features extractor module, replacing conventional signal processing features. In this context, diverse deep learning architectures, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and large self-supervised models like HuBERT, are applied for the extraction process. A decoder model uses derived embeddings to identify frame types. Consequently, the paper studies diverse deep architectures, ranging from linear layers, LSTM, CNN, and transformers. These architectures are assessed for their ability to detect speech rate, sound duration, and boundary locations on a dataset of healthy individuals and an unseen dataset of older individuals with Parkinson’s Disease. The results reveal that an LSTM model performs better than all other models on both datasets and is comparable to trained human annotators.

A general model unifying the adaptive, transient and sustained properties of ON and OFF auditory neural responses.

Sounds are temporal stimuli decomposed into numerous elementary components by the auditory nervous system. For instance, a temporal to spectro-temporal transformation modelling the frequency decomposition performed by the cochlea is a widely adopted first processing step in today's computational models of auditory neural responses. Similarly, increments and decrements in sound intensity (i.e., of the raw waveform itself or of its spectral bands) constitute critical features of the neural code, with high behavioural significance. However, despite the growing attention of the scientific community on auditory OFF responses, their relationship with transient ON, sustained responses and adaptation remains unclear. In this context, we propose a new general model, based on a pair of linear filters, named AdapTrans, that captures both sustained and transient ON and OFF responses into a unifying and easy to expand framework. We demonstrate that filtering audio cochleagrams with AdapTrans permits to accurately render known properties of neural responses measured in different mammal species such as the dependence of OFF responses on the stimulus fall time and on the preceding sound duration. Furthermore, by integrating our framework into gold standard and state-of-the-art machine learning models that predict neural responses from audio stimuli, following a supervised training on a large compilation of electrophysiology datasets (ready-to-deploy PyTorch models and pre-processed datasets shared publicly), we show that AdapTrans systematically improves the prediction accuracy of estimated responses within different cortical areas of the rat and ferret auditory brain. Together, these results motivate the use of our framework for computational and systems neuroscientists willing to increase the plausibility and performances of their models of audition.

Noise-Induced Hearing Loss Awareness and Prevention: A Cross-Sectional Study Among the Population of the Southern Region of Saudi Arabia.

Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a prevalent and preventable health issue globally. This study aims to evaluate the symptoms, knowledge, beliefs, and preventive practices regarding NIHL among the general population of the southern region of Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional study was conducted from May to July 2024, using a self-administered, validated electronic questionnaire distributed in Arabic via social media platforms. The questionnaire assessed socio-demographic data, NIHL awareness, attitudes towardprevention, and personal practices regarding noise exposure. The sample included 400 participantsanalyzed using SPSS version 23 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY), with associations measured through the chi-square and Fisher's exact tests. Most participants were Saudi nationals (97%) and females (81.3%). Symptoms of NIHL, such as tinnitus and the need to increase TV or radio volume, were prevalent among participants. Most participants (88.5%) were aware that high sound levels affect hearing, yet only 9.5% correctly identified the minimum duration of exposure that could harm hearing. Social media was the primary source of information (51.3%). Positive preventive practices were noted, with 66% lowering device volumes and 55.3% recommending sound restrictions on tablets. Significant associations were found between better preventive practices and higher income as well as marital status. The study highlights the high basic awareness of NIHL but identifies critical knowledge gaps regarding the minimum sound level and duration that affect hearing negatively. Enhanced public health education and technological interventions are needed to improve prevention practices. Future research should include longitudinal studies and diverse populations to better understand and address NIHL.

Effectiveness of Sound Therapy Durations in Tinnitus Rehabilitation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Purpose: This systematic review aimed to conduct a statistical analysis comparing subjective evaluations from patients to determine the efficacy of sound therapy durations for tinnitus.Methods: After defining search terms and establishing inclusion and exclusion criteria, 15 research articles from PubMed, ScienceDirect, KCI, and the Cochrane Library met all qualifications through a vetting process involving two reviewers. Extracted data were organized by collection time and analyzed using the R program (R foundation, Vienna, Austra) to calculate the standard mean difference with 95% confidence intervals.Results: The analysis of sound therapy efficacy showed statistically significant improvement in tinnitus symptoms between pre-treatment and 3 months, and between 3 months and 6 months. However, improvement stagnated and stabilized beyond 6 months of treatment.Conclusion: Sound therapy was most effective in providing significant relief and improvement in tinnitus symptoms during the first 6 months of treatment. Longer durations did not further improve symptoms but helped maintain a lower annoyance level.

Letting Pulsars Sing: Sonification With Granular Synthesis

An astronomy sonification project has been initiated to create sound and music from the data of pulsars in space. Pulsars are formed when some stars burn out all of their fuel and emit electromagnetic radiation, which hits earth periodically as the pulsar rotates. Each pulsar has unique characteristics. The source of the data is the online Pulsar Catalog from the Australian National Telescope Facility. The first result is a stereo fixed media composition, From Orion to Cassiopeia, which reveals a sweep of much of the Milky Way, displaying audio for many of the known pulsars. Galactic longitude, rotation speed, pulse width, mean flux density, age, and distance are mapped to granular synthesis parameters. Sound event duration, amplitude, amount of reverberation, grain rate, grain duration, grain frequency, and panning are controlled by the data. The piece was created with the new SGRAN2() instrument in the RTcmix music programming language.

Localized and global representation of prior value, sensory evidence, and choice in male mouse cerebral cortex.

Adaptive behavior requires integrating prior knowledge of action outcomes and sensory evidence for making decisions while maintaining prior knowledge for future actions. As outcome- and sensory-based decisions are often tested separately, it is unclear how these processes are integrated in the brain. In a tone frequency discrimination task with two sound durations and asymmetric reward blocks, we found that neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex of male mice represented the additive combination of prior reward expectations and choices. The sensory inputs and choices were selectively decoded from the auditory cortex irrespective of reward priors and the secondary motor cortex, respectively, suggesting localized computations of task variables are required within single trials. In contrast, all the recorded regions represented prior values that needed to be maintained across trials. We propose localized and global computations of task variables in different time scales in the cerebral cortex.

Symphonies of Growth: Unveiling the Impact of Sound Waves on Plant Physiology and Productivity.

The application of sound wave technology to different plant species has revealed that variations in the Hz, sound pressure intensity, treatment duration, and type of setup of the sound source significantly impact the plant performance. A study conducted on cotton plants treated with Plant Acoustic Frequency Technology (PAFT) highlighted improvements across various growth metrics. In particular, the treated samples showed increases in the height, size of the fourth expanded leaf from the final one, count of branches carrying bolls, quantity of bolls, and weight of individual bolls. Another study showed how the impact of a 4 kHz sound stimulus positively promoted plant drought tolerance. In other cases, such as in transgenic rice plants, GUS expression was upregulated at 250 Hz but downregulated at 50 Hz. In the same way, sound frequencies have been found to enhance the osmotic potential, with the highest observed in samples treated with frequencies of 0.5 and 0.8 kHz compared to the control. Furthermore, a sound treatment with a frequency of 0.4 kHz and a sound pressure level (SPL) of 106 dB significantly increased the paddy rice germination index, as evidenced by an increase in the stem height and relative fresh weight. This paper presents a complete, rationalized and updated review of the literature on the effects of sound waves on the physiology and growth parameters of sound-treated plants.

An apparatus and procedure for studying discounting of real outcomes of money and aversive sound.

We developed and examined a laboratory preparation with adult humans that pits shorter term avoidance over longer term positive reinforcement and may serve as a useful laboratory functional analogue of problematic behavior. Participants were exposed to choices between (1) avoiding an aversive sound and acquiring no money or (2) listening to an aversive sound for a set duration and then receiving money. The first choice, avoiding an aversive sound and acquiring no money, was conceptualized as immediate negative reinforcement and no positive reinforcement, whereas the latter choice, listening to an aversive sound for a set duration and then receiving money, was conceptualized as a potential positive punisher paired with a larger later positive reinforcer. We manipulated the duration of the sound and the magnitude of money to identify the point at which individual participants' choices changed from avoiding the sound to choosing the sound plus money. As the sound duration increased, the choice of listening to the sound and receiving money decreased. Similar functions were observed with two different monetary magnitudes. The model has potential applicability to real-world problems such as smoking, addiction, gambling, anxiety disorders, and other impulse control disorders.

Перцептивно разпознаване на трайността на африкатите и фрикативите в сръбския език

The acoustic features are the phonetic system’s inherent features of the language. The characteristics of each speech sound have their variation field within which its realizations are perceived as typical. Sound is perceived as atypical pronunciation out-side the acoustic feature typical boundaries. The objectives of this study were to determine the boundaries on the typical/atypical basis of the identification functions of the probability of perceptual recognition of the duration and their comparison between voicing and voiceless speech sounds in the group of affricate and fricatives. Based on the analysis of the selected speech sounds: / c /, / č /, / dž /, / š /, / ž /, the boundaries of typical and atypical were defined, and they served for the synthesis of stimuli used in perceptive experiments. According to the given procedure, 6300 stimuli were formed. Then they presented to the listeners, who were asked to identify and mark the stimulus based on typical and atypical (extended/shortened) duration. The data analysis found the identification functions of the probability of perceptual recognition of the typical/atypical duration for the examined speech sounds at the initial position in words, by which the limits of the typical/atypical duration of the stated speech sounds were determined. The results have shown the existence of categorical perception through the emergence of a higher sensitivity of the perceptive mechanism to a reduction in duration (a greater inclination of the identification function of the probability of perceptual recognition of typical/atypical duration) than of prolonging the duration of the voice, which demonstrated that the label of duration could be a good indicator of deviation in articulation. In addition, it has been shown that there have been differences in the function of the probability of perceptual recognition of the duration of voicing and voiceless speech sounds, which explanation requires further research.

Size matters: Variability in the acoustic parameters during feeding activity of Penaeus vannamei in different size classes

Penaeid shrimp emit click sounds during feeding activity generated by the collision of mandibles. These sounds have been used as a basis for research of feeding behavior and acoustic-based automatic feeders in shrimp farming. However, the use of automatic feeders is generally recommended for shrimp larger than 2 g or more. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the click acoustic parameters during feeding activity of Penaeus vannamei from post-larvae up to 12 g in laboratory. Twelve progressive weight classes (0.01 to 12 g) along nursery and grow-out phases were recorded in tanks internally covered with an acoustic foam. Recordings were carried out using an omnidirectional SoundTrap 300 STD hydrophone (sampling rate: 288 kHz; 16 bits). At the end of the recordings, shrimp were measured (body weight and cephalothorax length) and had their mandibles dissected for length measurements. The clicks emitted by shrimp during acoustic recordings were automatically detect using Raven® software, and 100 clicks per weight class were randomly selected for acoustic sound characterization (low, high and peak frequency, maximum power and duration time). The clicks start to be emitted by P. vannamei at the average weight of 0.01 g, with a band frequency between 15.4 and 70.5 kHz and low maximum power (23.2 dB). The low and peak frequency showed an abrupt decrease until shrimp reached 1.16 g, while maximum power and high frequency presented an opposite pattern. The click sound duration time did not show a clear variation among the different weight classes evaluated. Acoustic parameters showed a significant linear relationship with mandible length, indicating a direct influence of this structure on sound emission. The regression derivative analysis estimated that click maximum power stabilized from 1.48 g onwards, while low, high and peak frequency stabilized from 3.08 g shrimp onwards. The results suggest that it would be possible to anticipate and optimize the use of acoustic-based automatic feeders in P. vannamei farming.

Auditory prediction errors in sound frequency and duration generated different cortical activation patterns in the human brain: an ECoG study.

Sound frequency and duration are essential auditory components. The brain perceives deviations from the preceding sound context as prediction errors, allowing efficient reactions to the environment. Additionally, prediction error response to duration change is reduced in the initial stages of psychotic disorders. To compare the spatiotemporal profiles of responses to prediction errors, we conducted a human electrocorticography study with special attention to high gamma power in 13 participants who completed both frequency and duration oddball tasks. Remarkable activation in the bilateral superior temporal gyri in both the frequency and duration oddball tasks were observed, suggesting their association with prediction errors. However, the response to deviant stimuli in duration oddball task exhibited a second peak, which resulted in a bimodal response. Furthermore, deviant stimuli in frequency oddball task elicited a significant response in the inferior frontal gyrus that was not observed in duration oddball task. These spatiotemporal differences within the Parasylvian cortical network could account for our efficient reactions to changes in sound properties. The findings of this study may contribute to unveiling auditory processing and elucidating the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders.

The neurology of creativity: 2023 Hower lecture

AbstractThe neurology of creativity implies network activity; no singular cerebral area is invoked. A clinician‐scientist can develop a creative research project from a single patient, combined with critical scientific alliances, careful observations, and correlations. The developing nervous system poses additional complexity, as changes are expected over time in physiologic circumstances, to which must be added compensatory responses to underlying pathology. The arts represent an especially productive area to study the neurology of creativity, especially with functional imaging, tractography, and intracranial electrophysiology. Music activates widespread bilateral areas, including temporal, orbitofrontal, insular, fusiform, and cerebellar cortex. There are different neuronal clusters for different levels of sound volume, duration, timbre, and pitch. Heschl's gyrus and the arcuate fasciculus correlate with pitch. The orbitofrontal cortex is involved in expectancy generation and appears to be active with no music and then deactivates with music, as if the cortex has an editing function. This appears to correlate with the default mode network being key during improvisation, whereas the central executive network is invoked in effortful, repetitive playing. Furthermore, plasticity is associated with music, from the pathologic development of musicogenic seizures, to protection from musician's dystonia in pianists who begin lessons before age 9 years, to benefits of increased temporal cortex in older adults taking piano lessons after six months. Creativity, reducing negativity bias, and juggling life s priorities are key to countering burnout and building resilience.

Simultaneous in-air versus in-water measurements of humpback whale breathing sounds

Humpback whales produce an assortment of sounds ranging from moans and songs to surface-breaching, breathing, and foreflipper flaps. During a sea trial of Northeastern University’s coherent hydrophone array at the Great South Channel in US Northeastern coastal waters, the HF subaperture consisting of 32 hydrophone elements at 0.375 m spacings was deployed vertically with half of the hydrophones in air and the other half submerged underwater on September 6th, 2021. Many instances of humpback whale breathing sounds were recorded over several hours of observation. Visual sightings and video recordings were used to coregister sounds recorded on individual hydrophones of the HF subaperture. Here, we examine and compare the simultaneously recorded humpback whale breathing sound spectra, bandwidth, and duration for in-air versus underwater hydrophones. Whale distances to the vertical HF subaperture could be calculated from curved time of arrival differences due to close proximity of the array. These distances are applied to correct the received underwater sound pressure level for transmission loss and estimate underwater recorded whale breathing sound source level. A consistent broadband dip in the measured underwater sound spectra with null centered at 15 kHz is investigated by propagation modelling, considering both modal interference and attenuation from loud bubbles.

P345 Application of bowel sound computational analysis in inflammatory bowel disease

Abstract Background Inflammatory bowel disease(IBD) is a chronic disease. Although colonscopy is the gold standard for assessing activity, itcarries a considerable discomfort. We evaluate the value of bowel sound computational analysis (BSCA) as a tool in assist diagnosis and severity in Crohn’s disease(CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Methods We used homemade BSCA as a tool in assist bowel sound(BS). Five minutes recordings were taken for patients. The BS activity, sound duration, peak frequency (Hz) and bowel sound index (SI) was recorded. Results We enrolled 16 CD, 22 UC and 20 healthy controls. In CD patients, BS peak frequency was significantly higher than UC and controls (p=0.01). In UC patients, BS SI was significantly higher than CD and controls (mean 2024 V/min vs 1687 and 1181, p=0.04 and 0.01, respectively). We further evaluated the relation between these two parameters and the degree of severity. In CD patients, BS peak frequency were higher in patients with CDAI over 150 than CDAI under 150 (mean 370.7 Hz vs 358.2 Hz, p=0.045). In UC patients, BS SI was significantly higher in patients with mayo score(MS) larger than 6,compare to MS 3-5, MS 0-2, and controls (mean 2269 V/min vs 1863,1638, and1181, P all=0.01). Conclusion CD patients had higher BS peak frequency and UC patients had higher bowel sound index. These characteristic of BS changes seemed correlated to the severity of IBD.

Polyphonic sound event localization and detection based on Multiple Attention Fusion ResNet.

Sound event localization and detection have been applied in various fields. Due to the polyphony and noise interference, it becomes challenging to accurately predict the sound event and their occurrence locations. Aiming at this problem, we propose a Multiple Attention Fusion ResNet, which uses ResNet34 as the base network. Given the situation that the sound duration is not fixed, and there are multiple polyphonic and noise, we introduce the Gated Channel Transform to enhance the residual basic block. This enables the model to capture contextual information, evaluate channel weights, and reduce the interference caused by polyphony and noise. Furthermore, Split Attention is introduced to the model for capturing cross-channel information, which enhances the ability to distinguish the polyphony. Finally, Coordinate Attention is introduced to the model so that the model can focus on both the channel information and spatial location information of sound events. Experiments were conducted on two different datasets, TAU-NIGENS Spatial Sound Events 2020, and TAU-NIGENS Spatial Sound Events 2021. The results demonstrate that the proposed model significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods under multiple polyphonic and noise-directional interference environments and it achieves competitive performance under a single polyphonic environment.

Do letters matter? The influence of spelling on acoustic duration.

The present article describes a modified and extended replication of a corpus study by Brewer (2008. Phonetic reflexes of orthographic characteristics in lexical representation. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona PhD thesis) which reports differences in the acoustic duration of homophonous but heterographic sounds. The original findings point to a quantity effect of spelling on acoustic duration, i.e.,the more letters are used to spell a sound, the longer the sound's duration. Such a finding would have extensive theoretical implications and necessitate more research on how exactly spelling would come to influence speech production. However, the effects found by Brewer (2008) did not consistently reach statistical significance and the analysis did not include many of the covariates which are known by now to influence segment duration, rendering the robustness of the results at least questionable. Employing a more nuanced operationalization of graphemic units and a more advanced statistical analysis, the current replication fails to find the reported effect of letter quantity. Instead, we find an effect of graphemic complexity. Speakers realize consonants that do not have a visible graphemic correlate with shorter durations: the /s/ in tux is shorter that the /s/ in fuss. The effect presumably resembles orthographic visibility effects found in perception. In addition, our results highlight the need for a more rigorous approach to replicability in linguistics.

The relationship between body size and stridulatory sound production in loricariid catfishesa).

Sound production capabilities and characteristics in Loricariidae, the largest catfish family, have not been well examined. Sounds produced by three loricariid catfish species, Otocinclus affinis, Pterygoplichthys gibbiceps, and Pterygoplichthys pardalis, were recorded. Each of these species produces pulses via pectoral-fin spine stridulation by rubbing the ridged condyle of the dorsal process of the pectoral-fin spine base against a matching groove-like socket in the pectoral girdle. Light and scanning electron microscopy were used to examine the dorsal process of the pectoral-fin spines of these species. Mean distances between dorsal process ridges of O. affinis, P. gibbiceps, and P. pardalis were 53, 161, and 329 μm, respectively. Stridulation sounds occurred during either abduction (type A) or adduction (type B). O. affinis produced sounds through adduction only and P. pardalis through abduction only, whereas P. gibbiceps often produced pulse trains alternating between abduction and adduction. In these species, dominant frequency was an inverse function of sound duration, fish total length, and inter-ridge distance on the dorsal process of the pectoral-fin spine and sound duration increased with fish total length. While stridulation sounds are used in many behavioral contexts in catfishes, the functional significance of sound production in Loricariidae is currently unknown.

From noise to sound: Setting the base of packaging sound design for cosmetics by physical, sensory and cognitive characterization of lipstick closing sounds

When envisioning a tube of lipstick, the initial impressions are typically centered around its visual appearance and fragrance. Its sound, specifically the sound of closing the tube, is unlikely to be the first perception to be spontaneously imagined. Even so, consciously or not, a beauty experience is multisensorial, and the overall perception is a weighted combination of all sensory dimensions. Lipstick closing is defined as a noise as it comes from a side effect of packaging produced by the interaction between the packaging conception and the closing gesture. However, this “noise” can become a sound if it is designed specifically to carry functional or emotional cues. This study aims to support sound design for packaging in cosmetics. It consists of a combination of three approaches to better understand the mental categories associated with lipstick closing sounds. Through this combined approach of 1) a Sequential Agglomerative Sorting task with consumers, 2) a sensory decoding by a panel and 3) physical analyses of the sounds, this study provides new evidence of how the sound is perceived with an emphasis on cultural similarities and differences. The results show clear perceptual differences between lipstick sounds but no strong cultural difference between France and China. The description of sound by physical and sensorial measurement highlights the key role of sound duration and frequency in sound discrimination. The goal of this work is to influence the design of lipstick and, more globally, product design by introducing the sound dimension as an essential consideration.

Endemic fish calling: Acoustics and reproductive behaviour of the Neretva dwarf goby Orsinigobius croaticus.

The Neretva dwarf goby Orsinigobius croaticus (Gobiiformes, Gobionellidae) is an endemic fish native to the freshwaters of the Adriatic Basin in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, a Mediterranean Biodiversity Hotspot. Due to its limited distribution range, specific karst habitat and endangered status, laboratory studies on reproductive biology are scarce but crucial. Herein, we investigated the sound production and acoustic behaviour of the endangered O. croaticus during reproductive intersexual laboratory encounters, utilising an interdisciplinary approach. We also performed dissections and micro-computed tomography (μCT) scanning of the pectoral girdle to explore its potential involvement in sound production. Finally, comparative acoustic analysis was conducted on sounds produced by previously recorded soniferous sand gobies to investigate whether acoustic features are species-specific. The endemic O. croaticus is a soniferous species. Males of this species emit pulsatile sounds composed of a variable number of short (~15 ms) consecutive pulses when interacting with females, usually during the pre-spawning phase in the nest, but also during courtship outside the nest. Pulsatile sounds were low-frequency and short pulse trains (~140 Hz, <1000 ms). Male visual behaviour rate was higher when co-occurring with sounds and females entered the male's nest significantly more frequently when sounds were present. Characteristic body movements accompanied male sound production, such as head thrust and fin spreading. Furthermore, μCT scans and dissections suggest that O. croaticus shares certain anatomical similarities of the pectoral girdle (i.e. osseous elements and arrangement of levator pectoralis muscles) to previously studied sand gobies that could be involved in sound production. Multivariate comparisons, using sounds produced by eight soniferous European sand gobies, effectively distinguished soniferous (and sympatric) species based on their acoustic properties. However, the discrimination success decreased when temperature-dependent features (sound duration and pulse repetition rate) were excluded from the analysis. Therefore, we suggest both spectral and temporal features are important for the acoustic differentiation of sand gobies.