ABSTRACT Following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS), Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council began Long-Term Environmental Monitoring Program (LTEMP) in 1993 to track hydrocarbon chemistry of recovering sediments and mussel tissues along path (PWS) across Northern Gulf Alaska (NGOA) region. The program also samples sites near Alyeska Marine Terminal (AMT) within Port Vald...

Recent mass strandings of marine mammals, mostly Cuvier’s beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris) from the family of ziphiidae, have occurred coincident in space and time with human production of high levels of underwater sound. Three of these events, the May 1996 mass stranding along the Greek coast, the Bahamas mass stranding event in March 2000 and the September 2002 event in the Canary Islands,...

It is accepted that noise pollution has a major impact on health, such as physical, physiological, psychological and performance related effects, all over the world. This study aims to evaluate noise pollution in four urban parks located in Sanandaj City, Iran and to zone it in GIS environment. Sound pressure level (SPL) and maximum sound level (Lmax) were measured at 45 points (each point was ...

Objectives: Conducting field tests of a vibrotactile aid for deaf/deafblind persons for detection, identification and directional perception of environmental sounds. Methods: Five deaf (3F/2M, 22–36 years) individuals tested the aid separately in a home environment (kitchen) and in a traffic environment. Their eyes were blindfolded and they wore a headband and holding a vibrator for sound id...

A sound-induced sympathetic tone has been used as an index for orienting responses to auditory stimuli. The resting testosterone/cortisol ratio is a biomarker of social aggression that drives an approaching behavior in response to environmental stimuli, and a higher testosterone level and a lower cortisol level can facilitate the sympathetic response to environmental stimuli. Therefore, it is p...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES It is important to understand the frequency region of cues used, and not used, by cochlear implant (CI) recipients. Speech and environmental sound recognition by individuals with CI and normal-hearing (NH) was measured. Gradients were also computed to evaluate the pattern of change in identification performance with respect to the low-pass filtering or high-pass filter...

Humans can recognize categories of environmental sounds, including vocalizations produced by humans and animals and the sounds of man-made objects. Most neuroimaging investigations of environmental sound discrimination have studied subjects while consciously perceiving and often explicitly recognizing the stimuli. Consequently, it remains unclear to what extent auditory object processing occurs...

A red tide rolls ashore in Puget Sound, Washington. Environmental changes, heightened awareness, and improved detection have increased the number of HABs reported each year.

Identifying the quantitative relationship between the sound pressure level and noise annoyance for environmental noises is important from the viewpoint of noise assessment. In this study, a method for predicting the probabilistic evaluation quantities like Lx ((100−x) percentile level) and LAeq (equivalent A-weighted sound pressure level) of the noise environment is proposed by introducing a no...