Variety Of Sounds Research Articles

Landscape and Senses in a Portuguese Municipality on the Way of St. James: Potential Impacts on the Well-Being of Pilgrims.

The Portuguese Way of St. James is traveled by people seeking well-being, self-therapy, or answers to their personal and religious/spiritual issues. The evaluation of the landscape and its senses and how these may contribute to the well-being of pilgrims are subjects that have been little explored. This research was carried out to understand how the landscape can influence someone’s well-being and the senses it awakens. The municipality of Barcelos was the one chosen as representative territory to apply a new method, which includes a participant observation together with the visual documentation of 310 photographs of its main elements and the analysis of a grid of 22 variables. The main result from this method points out the relevance of diversified landscapes with a remarkable variation in colors and sounds. Some gaps in this method were also identified, including the need for improvements by local authorities to contribute to maximized health outcomes.

Video-rate full-ring ultrasound and photoacoustic computed tomography with real-time sound speed optimization.

Full-ring dual-modal ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging provide complementary contrasts, high spatial resolution, full view angle and are more desirable in pre-clinical and clinical applications. However, two long-standing challenges exist in achieving high-quality video-rate dual-modal imaging. One is the increased data processing burden from the dense acquisition. Another one is the object-dependent speed of sound variation, which may cause blurry, splitting artifacts, and low imaging contrast. Here, we develop a video-rate full-ring ultrasound and photoacoustic computed tomography (VF-USPACT) with real-time optimization of the speed of sound. We improve the imaging speed by selective and parallel image reconstruction. We determine the optimal sound speed via co-registered ultrasound imaging. Equipped with a 256-channel ultrasound array, the dual-modal system can optimize the sound speed and reconstruct dual-modal images at 10 Hz in real-time. The optimized sound speed can effectively enhance the imaging quality under various sample sizes, types, or physiological states. In animal and human imaging, the system shows co-registered dual contrasts, high spatial resolution (140 µm), single-pulse photoacoustic imaging (< 50 µs), deep penetration (> 20 mm), full view, and adaptive sound speed correction. We believe VF-USPACT can advance many real-time biomedical imaging applications, such as vascular disease diagnosing, cancer screening, or neuroimaging.

Lighting control of LEDs considering ambient sound variations to meet the requirements of smart cities

This study provides an innovative solution by including sound levels in the energy management of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). At the same time, this method increases the accuracy of individuals' decisions regarding the environmental parameters of light and sound. The introduced system determines the environment's activity level using sound sensors. By applying this strategy, the amount of light and the energy consumption of LED light sources is restricted under conditions where no activity occurs in the environment or the level of the performed activity is limited. The results of system simulation and implementation demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique. According to the findings, this method reduces energy consumption by more than 40% in the stated scenario when environmental activity is reduced. This approach is recommended as an innovative solution for the energy management of LED light sources to satisfy users' requirements in smart cities.

Sound variation by hypertrophy and atrophy sonic muscle in the male southern black drum (Pogonias courbina).

The male and female southern black drum possess highly specialized, bilateral, striated sonic muscles used in sound production during courtship by males and in the production of disturbance calls by both males and females. Androgen-driven hypertrophy of the sonic muscles in males during the late spring spawning period results in increased growth of sonic muscle mass followed by post-spawning atrophy of sonic muscles. We examined changes in sonic muscle morphology and in the sound characteristics of males and females underlying seasonal changes in sonic muscle mass and muscle contraction as measured by sound production. In males, the sound pressure level increased while sound pulse duration decreased with increasing sonic muscle mass, indicating that sonic muscle fibers contract with greater force and shorter duration during the spawning season. Interpulse interval and the total number of pulses varied seasonally with muscle mass, which suggests that the effects of steroids on male southern black drum sound characteristics are more pronounced peripherally than in the central nervous system. In females, no increase in sonic muscle mass was found, and therefore, a change was not observed in the acoustic variables analyzed. Seasonal sonic muscle hypertrophy in males likely functions as a secondary sexual characteristic that maximizes vocalization amplitude or loudness during the spawning period.

Adaptive correlated color temperature control of LEDs considering ambient sound variations as a novel strategy to meet the requirements of inhabitants of smart cities

In order to adapt the correlated color temperature (CCT) of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to the type of application and the desired level of awareness of individuals in an environment, this study presents an innovative solution considering ambient sound variations. The strong interaction between hearing and sight senses is the basis for this selection. The application of this system is in environments with ambient sound variation, including urban transportation, industrial settings, healthcare facilities, and so on. This system increases people's awareness regarding sound events and deals with individuals and the surrounding environment. The proposed method benefits from two types of warm white and cool white LEDs and their input power control to adjust the luminous flux and resulting correlated color temperature of light-emitting diodes. The simulation findings confirm the performance of the introduced method. This technique is recommended as a novel strategy, especially to meet the requirements of inhabitants of smart cities.

Popular Phonetic Mapping in The Qur’an and Its Implications on Teaching Arabic for Non-Native Speakers

The advantages of Arabic as the language of the Qur’an are its variety of sounds in each word with derivations in various forms and meanings. This study aimed to map popular phonetics with repetition rate in the Qur'an in order to build implicative concepts in Arabic learning for non-native speakers. The research used a qualitative approach with the type of literature research. As a preliminary research, data were obtained through documentary techniques from the Qur'an and Surah al-Wāqi'ah was taken as a data sourcebecause it represented the criteria as a popular surah. The analysis used a content analysis approach through the stages of condensation, presentation and conclusions. The results of the study was found that popular phonetics had vocal repetitions of 1,015 short vowels, 246 long vowels and 1,512 consonants. The results showed that the frequency of repetition of both vowels and consonants in the Qur’an had a phonetic sequence pattern from front to back, which was in line with Chomsky’s universal rules and the natural order hypothesis of Krashen. In addition, the results were complemented by the hypothetical presupposition of the implications in Arabic learning for non-native speakers, both linguistically, psychologically, and pedagogically.

Chinese music therapy to treat depression in children and adolescents: The BARIT-Model

Depression is broadly considered a global epidemic. In China it ranks among the most prevalent mental disorders and is seriously affecting the younger generation (prevalence between 4% and 41%), hence the necessity to foster health education and sustainable resilience. Meta-synthetic construction resulted in a music-based model of educational therapy comprising five principles, beauty, activation, responsiveness, immersion and transformation, hence the name ‘BARIT-model’: (i) referring to anthropological, psychological and neuroscientific aesthetics, the approach benefits from the healing power of aesthetic experience, (ii) behavioural activation is widely regarded as an efficient approach to treat depression. Different from conventional cognitive behavioural therapy, the BARIT-model involves artistic activities such as music improvisation, sound scene improvisation, vocal experiments or creative variations of Chinese martial arts, (iii) responsiveness concerns the qualitative similarity of emotion and music, alongside the patients’ feeling of being ‘understood’ by what they are listening to, (iv) while depressive mood tends to occupy the whole person, music immersion can help to escape that ‘pathological cage’, (v) finally, traumatic roots of depression need therapeutic processing, such as artistic symbolisation, intermodal transformation and relabelling of traumata as potential source of creative performance. The BARIT-model is part of a comprehensive project to improve mental health in Chinese children and adolescents through arts-based methods for classroom education, which encompasses ‒ in addition to depression ‒ attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, oppositional defiant disorders, anxiety disorders, stress-related disorders and burnout syndromes, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or binge eating, as well as disorders related to the COVID-19 pandemic, e.g. developmental syndromes caused by lockdown and social distancing.

Osing Dialect in Term of Place, Situation, and Consumer in Banyuwangi, East Java

Dialect is a part of language variation in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary to sound variation. Indonesia has many of variation and diversity of dialect and one of them is Osing dialect or Basa Osing in Banyuwangi, East Java. There are some of differences using Osing dialect in term of place, situation, and consumer. The form of Osing dialect based on place, situation and consumer will be displayed in this study is dialect in real environment of local people. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze Basa Osing in Banyuwangi, East Java using descriptive qualitative research. The participant of this research is local people of Osing. Collecting the data in this study is conducted by observation and interview. The structured interview is used to obtain the information from the respondent that already set the needs by researcher. The researcher observes their conversation with the local people and listen how they was talking each other. After that the research tapped the pronunciation about their conversation that carried out by the local people. The result of these observation is recorded and noted by the researcher. The findings of this study are that the use of Osing dialect varies depending on each term of place, situation, and consumer.

Discovering Lexical Similarity Using Articulatory Feature-Based Phonetic Edit Distance

Lexical Similarity (LS) between two languages uncovers many interesting linguistic insights such as genetic relationship, mutual intelligibility, and the usage of one's vocabulary into other. There are various methods through which LS is evaluated. In the same regard, this paper presents a method of Phonetic Edit Distance (PED) that uses a soft comparison of letters using the articulatory features associated with them. The system converts the words into the corresponding International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), followed by the conversion of IPA into its set of articulatory features. Later, the lists of the set of articulatory features are compared using the proposed method. As an example, PED gives edit distance of German word vater and Persian word pidar as 0.82; and similarly, Hebrew word shalom and Arabic word salaam as 0.93, whereas for a juxtapose comparison, their IPA based edit distances are 4 and 2 respectively. Experiments are performed with six languages (Arabic, Hindi, Marathi, Persian, Sanskrit, and Urdu). In this regard, we extracted part of speech wise word-lists from the Universal Dependency corpora and evaluated the LS for every pair of language. Thus, with the proposed approach, we find the genetic affinity, similarity, and borrowing/loan-words despite having script differences and sound variation phenomena among these languages.

Quantifying Soundscapes in the Ross Sea, Antarctica Using Long-Term Autonomous Hydroacoustic Monitoring Systems

Deployment of long-term, continuously recording passive-acoustic sensors in the ocean can provide insights into sound sources related to ocean dynamics, air–sea interactions, and biologic and human activities, all which contribute to shaping ocean soundscapes. In the polar regions, the changing ocean climate likely contributes to seasonal and long-term variation in cryogenic sounds, adding to the complexity of these soundscapes. The Korea Polar Research Institute and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have jointly operated two arrays of autonomous underwater hydrophones in the Southern Ocean, one in the Terra Nova Bay Polynya (TNBP) during December 2015–January 2019 and the other in the Balleny Islands (BI) region during January 2015–March 2016, to monitor changes in ocean soundscapes. In the BI region, we found distinct seasonal variations in the cryogenic signals that were attributed to collisions and thermal/mechanical fracturing of the surface sea ice. This is consistent with sea-ice patterns due to annual freeze–thaw cycles, which are not clearly observed in TNBP, where frequent blowing out of sea ice by katabatic winds and icequakes from nearby ice shelves generate strong noise even in austral winters. Another advantage of passive acoustic recordings is that they provide opportunities to measure biodiversity from classifying spectral characteristics of marine mammals: we identified 1. Leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx; 200–400 Hz), most abundant in the BI region and TNBP in December; 2. Antarctic blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus; distinctive vocalization at 18 and 27 Hz), strong signals in austral winter and fall in the BI region and TNBP; 3. Fin whales (B. physalus; fundamental frequency in the 15–28 Hz and overtones at 80 and 90 Hz), maximum presence in the BI region during the austral summer and spring months; 4. Antarctic minke whales (B. bonaerensis; 100–200 Hz), strongest signals from June to August in the BI region; 5. Humpback whales in TNBP; 6. Unidentified whales (long-duration downsweeping from 75 to 62 Hz), detected in TNBP. Long-term soundscape monitoring can help understand the spatiotemporal changes in the Southern Ocean and cryosphere and provide a means of assessing the status and trends of biodiversity in the Ross Sea Region Marine Protected Area.

Evaluation of the uniformity of sound-masking systems in an open-plan office

Many open-plan offices adopt an electronic sound masking system in order to reduce distraction from background noises, primarily intruding speech. Sound masking systems should uniformly generate a masking sound over the entire office area to homogenize the speech privacy whilst minimising occupant perception of the masking sound. This study evaluates the spatial uniformity of the masking sound field in an example open-plan office, where the masking system was set up to represent supposedly optimal installation conditions; 1-speaker zones, individually-calibration of each zone to match the specified curve precisely, and smaller zones than typically specified. Sound level measurements performed as per ASTM E1573-18 were made at each workstation, as well as every 0.6 m across the office, for a total of 117 measurements. Measurement results show that tolerance of ± 0.5 dB for the overall A-weighted level is only achievable at 61% of measurement locations, whilst ± 1 dB is achievable at 99% of locations. For one-third-octave band sound pressure levels between 250 Hz and 4 kHz, ± 2 dB is achieved only 55% of the time, and tolerance of ± 3.5 dB is required to achieve 95% compliance with the specified curve. By using calibrated computer simulations, the study also examined parameters that can influence spatial uniformity in open-plan offices. It was found that the number of sound masking loudspeakers, partition height, and the scattering and absorption coefficient of the ceiling all affect the uniformity of the masking sound. Speech intelligibility was assessed by calculating the Articulation Index (AI) to determine an acceptable tolerance for masking sound variation. Increasing the number of loudspeakers was the most effective way to improve the uniformity of the masking sound. The AI results suggest ± 2 dB, when including octave band sound pressure levels, is a minimum required tolerance for a sound masking sound field in an open office to provide AI values within ± 0.1 of the targeted value across the office area.

Kemampuan Pemelajar Bahasa Jepang dalam Melafalkan Bunyi Nasal /n/ yang Diikuti Konsonan Bilabial /p/

Japanese has a variety of sounds with very interesting features, but these features can cause mispronunciation, especially by foreign students. This study aims to determine the ability of Indonesian Japanese learners to pronounce the nasal consonant /n/ when followed by a bilabial consonant (両唇音) especially /p/. This study uses the descriptive qualitative method, conducted to 10 Japanese language students at Brawijaya University by analyzing their voices using Praat when reciting 3 Japanese sentences which contains [shinpai], [tenpura], and [kanpeki]. We also recorded the voice of Japanese native speakers when reciting the same sentences and use it as a research guide during data analyzing process. From the analysis of pronunciation by native speaker, it is found that the nasal sound produced is a labiodental nasal sound /ɱ/, and there was a stop without vibration when the mouth was closed or in Japanese known as “heisa” (閉鎖) which caused a bilabial popping sound when pronouncing the /p/ sound after the nasal. While for students, it is found that they had several pronunciations similar to the native speaker, but most of them are different pronunciations. The different pronunciations were found in the form of nasal sounds pronounced /n/ only or /m/ only. Some even spell /ng/, and some did not produce pops at the bilabial sound /p/, and other distinct pronunciation were also found in this research.

Development of a Finger-Ring-Shaped Hybrid Smart Stethoscope for Automatic S1 and S2 Heart Sound Identification.

Cardiac auscultation is one of the most popular diagnosis approaches to determine cardiovascular status based on listening to heart sounds with a stethoscope. However, heart sounds can be masked by visceral sounds such as organ movement and breathing, and a doctor’s level of experience can more seriously affect the accuracy of auscultation results. To improve the accuracy of auscultation, and to allow nonmedical staff to conduct cardiac auscultation anywhere and anytime, a hybrid-type personal smart stethoscope with an automatic heart sound analysis function is presented in this paper. The device was designed with a folding finger-ring shape that can be worn on the finger and placed on the chest to measure photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals and acquire the heart sound simultaneously. The measured heart sounds are detected as phonocardiogram (PCG) signals, and the boundaries of the heart sound variation and the peaks of the PPG signal are detected in preprocessing by an advanced Shannon entropy envelope. According to the relationship between PCG and PPG signals, an automatic heart sound analysis algorithm based on calculating the time interval between the first and second heart sounds (S1, S2) and the peak of the PPG was developed and implemented via the manufactured prototype device. The prototype device underwent accuracy and usability testing with 20 young adults, and the experimental results showed that the proposed smart stethoscope could satisfactorily collect the heart sounds and PPG signals. In addition, within the developed algorithm, the device was as accurate in start-points of heart sound detection as professional physiological signal-acquisition systems. Furthermore, the experimental results demonstrated that the device was able to identify S1 and S2 heart sounds automatically with high accuracy.

Investigating the accuracy of co-registered ionoacoustic and ultrasound images in pulsed proton beams

The sharp spatial and temporal dose gradients of pulsed ion beams result in an acoustic emission (ionoacoustics), which can be used to reconstruct the dose distribution from measurements at different positions. The accuracy of range verification from ionoacoustic images measured with an ultrasound linear array configuration is investigated both theoretically and experimentally for monoenergetic proton beams at energies relevant for pre-clinical studies (20 and 22 MeV). The influence of the linear sensor array arrangement (length up to 4 cm and number of elements from 5 to 200) and medium properties on the range estimation accuracy are assessed using time-reversal reconstruction. We show that for an ideal homogeneous case, the ionoacoustic images enable a range verification with a relative error lower than 0.1%, however, with limited lateral dose accuracy. Similar results were obtained experimentally by irradiating a water phantom and taking into account the spatial impulse response (geometry) of the acoustic detector during the reconstruction of pressures obtained by moving laterally a single-element transducer to mimic a linear array configuration. Finally, co-registered ionoacoustic and ultrasound images were investigated using silicone inserts immersed in the water phantom across the proton beam axis. By accounting for the sensor response and speed of sound variations (deduced from co-registration with ultrasound images) the accuracy is improved to a few tens of micrometers (relative error less than to 0.5%), confirming the promise of ongoing developments for ionoacoustic range verification in pre-clinical and clinical proton therapy applications.

Subtraction Analysis for Predicting the Propagation Effects of Aircraft Noise

In 2013, the Federal Aviation Administration and Volpe National Transportation System Center conducted a series of acoustic measurements with a propeller driven aircraft operating in the regions near Houston, Texas. The recorded data on octave band sound levels, aircraft locations, temperature and wind speed profiles were used in the current study to quantify the uncertainties for predicting the propagation effects of aircraft noise. Use of the Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT) was explored for its accuracy and validity in real world scenarios offered by the dataset. The sound exposure level (SEL) data for each section of a flight path was used instead of the time history data for reducing the directivity effect of the sound source due to the change in its relative positions with the receivers. A subtraction-based method was introduced to analyze the propagation effect in which the SELs between two receiver locations were compared. The use of the subtraction method reduces the possible influences of the sound power variations along the flight paths. The measured data for a spiral and a level flight event were presented and the AEDT predictions on the propagation effects were examined in this paper.

Phonological system of dentong dialect

This study examines the phonological system of the Dentong dialect in Cenrana District, Maros Regency, South Sulawesi. The results of research on the phonological system, it is found: (1) the vowel phoneme of the Dentong dialect is the same as the vowel phoneme in Bugis, namely /i/, /e/, /?/, /a/, /u/, and /o/ and the consonant phonemes, namely /b/, /c/, /d/, /g/, /h/, /j/, /k/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /r/, /s/, /t/, and /? /, nevertheless the phonemes /w/ and /y/ are not found; (2) The consonant sequences are /?k/, /nd/, /mb/, /?g/, /nj/, /nr/, and /??/; (3) Geminations of consonants in the form of phonemes are /kk/, /ll/, /mm/, /nn/, /pp/, /rr/, and /ss/; (4) sound variations, namely apheresis of eliminating phonemes /m/ at the beginning of a word, syncope of eliminating phonemes /ma/ in the middle of a word, epenthesis of inserting phonemes /h/ in the middle of words, prosthesis of adding phonemes /b/ at the beginning of words, and paragog of adding phoneme /?/ at the end of a word; and (5) the symptom of sound found accompanying articulation, namely labialization in the form of sound /w/ labia-dental consonant and palatalization in the form a/y sound.

Comparative bioacoustics: a roadmap for quantifying and comparing animal sounds across diverse taxa.

Animals produce a wide array of sounds with highly variable acoustic structures. It is possible to understand the causes and consequences of this variation across taxa with phylogenetic comparative analyses. Acoustic and evolutionary analyses are rapidly increasing in sophistication such that choosing appropriate acoustic and evolutionary approaches is increasingly difficult. However, the correct choice of analysis can have profound effects on output and evolutionary inferences. Here, we identify and address some of the challenges for this growing field by providing a roadmap for quantifying and comparing sound in a phylogenetic context for researchers with a broad range of scientific backgrounds. Sound, as a continuous, multidimensional trait can be particularly challenging to measure because it can be hard to identify variables that can be compared across taxa and it is also no small feat to process and analyse the resulting high-dimensional acoustic data using approaches that are appropriate for subsequent evolutionary analysis. Additionally, terminological inconsistencies and the role of learning in the development of acoustic traits need to be considered. Phylogenetic comparative analyses also have their own sets of caveats to consider. We provide a set of recommendations for delimiting acoustic signals into discrete, comparable acoustic units. We also present a three-stage workflow for extracting relevant acoustic data, including options for multivariate analyses and dimensionality reduction that is compatible with phylogenetic comparative analysis. We then summarize available phylogenetic comparative approaches and how they have been used in comparative bioacoustics, and address the limitations of comparative analyses with behavioural data. Lastly, we recommend how to apply these methods to acoustic data across a range of study systems. In this way, we provide an integrated framework to aid in quantitative analysis of cross-taxa variation in animal sounds for comparative phylogenetic analysis. In addition, we advocate the standardization of acoustic terminology across disciplines and taxa, adoption of automated methods for acoustic feature extraction, and establishment of strong data archival practices for acoustic recordings and data analyses. Combining such practices with our proposed workflow will greatly advance the reproducibility, biological interpretation, and longevity of comparative bioacoustic studies.

Pesquisa Estética e Materialidade fílmica no documentário musical: Música e Imagem Tecendo Fevereiros

This paper intends to analyze the documentary film Fevereiros (Februaries), by Marcio Debellian, and its themes - such as the relationship singer Maria Bethania has with African-Brazilian and popular catholicism religiosities, with sacred and profane festivities, and with the Estação Primeira de Mangueira samba school - using as a starting point the critical debates about documentary cinema and Brazilian musical documentary film. Taking into account the issues involving filmic materiality, the present analysis intends to apprehend the invisible thread that the variety of sounds and music interweaves, in the musical documentary genre, with images and other resources available in the cinematic language.

Gait Variability and IEMG Variation in Gastrocnemius and Medial Hamstring Muscles on Inclined Even and Uneven Planes

ObjectivesThe deviation in gait cycle due to trunk acceleration and muscle activity on even and uneven inclined planes should be analyzed for the design of lower limb exoskeletons. This study compares the gait variability of gastrocnemius and medial hamstring muscle activity variation of twenty young male adults on inclined even and uneven planes. Material and methodsThe individuals walked on a long, 10° inclined even and uneven plane in both up-the-plane and down-the-plane directions at their preferred speed (average speed is 1.2 m/s). Gait variability during walking was calculated using an average standard deviation of trunk acceleration and the significance of change was calculated using two-way-ANOVA. For studying the difference between integrated electromyography (IEMG) values of walking on even and uneven planes, two parameters Normalized IEMG Percentage (NIP) and IEMG Variation Percentage (IVP) were chosen for the analysis. ResultsThe results strongly agree with the hypothesis that gait variability hikes in the vertical direction of subject with a p-value of 0.04. The IEMG range of medial-hamstring muscle while walking on even and uneven plane is not highly significant for swing (0.44) as well as stance phase (0.47). While walking on an inclined uneven plane, the response of gastrocnemius muscle indicated the variation of NIP between 14.31% to 64.63%. It was observed that NIP and IEMG values of medial-hamstring muscles during backward walking have a resemblance. ConclusionTrunk variability had a significant change in the vertical direction (V) and was insignificant in medial-lateral (ML) and anterior-posterior (AP) orientations for both even and uneven inclined planes during forward and reverse walking. The muscle activity of gastrocnemius and medial-hamstring muscles does not have sound variations while walking on the inclined uneven plane.

Language Reading and Its Implications on Learners’ Pronunciation: a Case Study of a Pakistani school in Oman

Pakistani schools in Sultanate of Oman use the whole word approach in the practices of English language reading instructions and lack phonetics’ knowledge of. Regardless, whether the approach is practical or not, teaching reading skills through these practices at an early age is questionable. This paper will focus on observation and evaluation as research tools, and will concentrate on a phonetics and a phonological analysis of a first -grade learner as a case study. The learner’s reading of a text is compared with the reading of a native speaker. The focus of the paper is on two main characteristics of pronunciation; segmental and super-segmental. The analysis demonstrates a significant variation in speech sounds of the learner. The training opportunities in spoken language and reading skills for the teachers may fix the problem.