Marcia Jenneth Epstein, Ph.D. has once again contributed to Acoustic Bulletin with this guest blog post. We appreciate your work, Marcia! Read more about our guest blogger and find her other post here. Hearing is our ”second sense”. Phrases used in Western culture to demonstrate understanding – at least in English – are often visual: […]
Last June 24th, Daniel de la Prida defended his PhD thesis [1] at the Technical University of Madrid (Spain). His research focused on the assessment of the subjective perception both in architectural and environmental acoustics. In the following, a summary of Daniel de la Prida’s research (mostly focused on room acoustics) is given. All the […]
The Subjective Experience Depending on Type of Acoustic Treatment Recently, PHD student Emma Arvidsson, published an article regarding different acoustic treatments in ordinary rooms and how they are perceived. The article concerns how people subjectively experience different acoustic environments and furthermore, if the experience was different depending on where in the room they were sitting. […]
Since March 2020, the coronavirus disease was formally characterized as a pandemic. Since that time, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a high demand for healthcare resources. Laboratory activities surged due to the rapid increase of testing. In hospitals or clinics, laboratories operate mainly in the domain of patient-related research and analyses. In private structures, […]
In offices, noise control should be a priority as unwanted sound causes stress. Continuously elevated stress levels are a health risk. Turku University of Applied Sciences and University of Turku have conducted the first Finnish medical study on the physiological, psychological, and performance effects of irrelevant speech. Office noise consists primarily of this kind of […]
How we perceive the sounds around us is dependent upon their inherent acoustic characteristics but also their associated meanings, context and our experience. We individuals shape the frame of reference. Exposure to unwanted, negative sounds (noise!) impacts our quality of life. Until now, our primary goal in acoustics has been to solely reduce the negative […]
“The soundscape of the average modern hospital is a cacophony of overlapping beeps, blats and pings from monitors, roaring ventilation systems, raucous bursts of conversation from visitors, patients and the nursing station, carts rumbling down hallways, televisions, phones. Sleep, essential to the healing process, is available primarily through medications. Even medicated sleep can be elusive, […]
The Nordic Acoustic Association and the Norwegian Acoustical Society invited scientists and engineers to attend the Baltic-Nordic Acoustic Meeting for 2021 this week and despite an online set-up the program consisted of keynote lectures, invited and contributed papers in structured parallel sessions. Some of the really interesting presentations are described here but you can find […]
One of our editors in the Czech Republic (CZ), Iveta Kralova, was recently part of an intervention study in an eye clinic in Hradec Kralove. Here follows her experience in a country where acoustic standards for healthcare are lacking and where a lot of buildings are too loud to heal. Many studies have already shown […]
Recover in noise A recent study published in Critical Care Explorations revealed potential relationship between acoustic interruptions and worsened perceived sleep quality. One of the results was that patients were exposed to 4,861 acoustic interruptions in total during the night! The conception that critically ill patients are too ill to reflect on their sound environment […]