Acoustic codes assure the intra and interspecific communication of vocal animals. They are composed by a sequence of nominal entities and by magnitude modulation confirming in such a way contemporarily a behavioural and ecological nature. The acoustic codes find evidence in the acoustic niche hypothesis by which species in order to reduce interspecific competition occupy a restricted portion of the available frequencies modulating very precise acoustic cues . Their evolution, like other aspect of biology, is under (...) control of the environmental conditions assuming the more favourable configurations. These nominal entities respond also to the amount of energy by which are emitted allowing to the eavesdropping individuals to range the distance at which a potential competitor is broadcasting a signal. Environmental alterations, especially if of anthropogenic origin, can produce severe consequence of the acoustic codes that in turn may affect the prey–predator balance and the complexity of communities. In fact acoustic codes under an environmental constraint like human noise intrusion can be modified in order to reduce a masking effect, demonstrating their phenological plasticity. The new ecological discipline of soundscape ecology offers the possibility to investigate the nature and the evolution of the acoustic codes in different environmental conditions. (shrink)

It has been known for long time that the cosmic sound wave was there since the early epoch of the Universe. Signatures of its existence are abound. However, such an acoustic model of cosmology is rarely developed fully into a complete framework from the notion of space, cancer therapy up to the sky. This paper may be the first attempt towards such a complete description of the Universe based on classical wave equation of sound. It is argued that one (...) can arrive at a consistent description of space, elementary particles, Sachs-Wolfe acoustic theorem, up to a novel approach for cancer therapy, starting from this simple classical wave equation of sound. We also discuss a plausible extension of Acoustic Sachs-Wolfe theorem based on its analogue with Klein-Gordon equation to become Acoustic Sachs-Wolfe-Christianto-Smarandache-Umniyati (ASWoCSU) equation. It is our hope that the new proposed equation can be verified with observation data. But we admit that our model is still in its infancy, more researches are needed to fill all the missing details. (shrink)

Although laughter plays an essential part in emotional vocal communication, little is known about the acoustical correlates that encode different emotional dimensions. In this study we examined the acoustical structure of laughter sounds differing along four emotional dimensions: arousal, dominance, sender's valence, and receiver-directed valence. Correlation of 43 acoustic parameters with individual emotional dimensions revealed that each emotional dimension was associated with a number of vocal cues. Common patterns of cues were found with emotional expression in speech, supporting the (...) hypothesis of a common underlying mechanism for the vocal expression of emotions. (shrink)

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant‐directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique (...) acoustic signature, and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language. (shrink)

Acoustic Technics, aware that digital and computer embedded technologies produce data that today can be transformed into acoustic images, notes the transformations these phenomena imply for a diverse set of practices, such as music, communication, medical diagnosis, and scientific knowledge.

In this essay we argue for the possibility to describe the co-presence of species in a community as a consortium built by acoustic codes, using mainly the examples of bird choruses. In this particular case, the consortium is maintained via the sound-tope that different bird species create by singing in a chorus. More generally, the formation of acoustic codes as well as cohesive communicative systems (the consortia) can be seen as a result of plastic adaptational behaviour of the (...) specimen who can solve and avoid conflicts both with conspecifics and with other species in the vicinity. Thus, sign-relations appear to resolve potential conflicts, and as a foundation for symbiotic aggregations. The spatio-temporal configuration of consortia—their chronotope—includes several eco-fields as respective to different functions of the participating organisms. Biological study is combined with a semiotic approach that, as we suggest, should be more often used together to effectively describe ecological processes. (shrink)

The origin of McLuhan’s notion of acoustic space is described. It is shown that his definition of acoustic space as having its center everywhere and its margin nowhere can be traced back to the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance dating as far back as the 12th Century.

English second language learners often experience difficulties in producing native-like English lexical stress. It is unknown which acoustic correlates, such as fundamental frequency (F0), duration, and intensity, are the most problematic for Chinese dialect speakers. The present study investigated the prosodic transfer effects of first language (L1) regional dialects on the production of English stress contrasts. Native English speakers (N = 20) and Chinese learners (N = 60) with different dialect backgrounds (Beijing, Changsha, and Guangzhou dialects) produced the same (...) stimulus including both trochaic and iambic patterns. Results showed that (a) all participants produced the stressed syllable with greater values of F0, duration, and intensity; (b) Native speakers of English employed an exquisite combination of F0, duration, and intensity, while the dialect groups transfer their native prosody into their production of English lexical stress, resulting in the deviation or abnormality of acoustic cues. Results suggest that L1 native dialect background is considered as a potentially influential factor which may transfer in L2 speech encoding and decoding process. (shrink)

Sound is an inherent component of the environment that provides conditions and information necessary for many animal activities. Soniferous species require specific acoustic and physical conditions suitable for their signals to be transmitted, received, and effectively interpreted to successfully identify and utilize resources in their environment and interact with conspecifics and other heterospecific organisms. We propose the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis to explain how the acoustic environment influences habitat selection of sound-dependent species. We postulate that sound-dependent species select (...) and occupy habitats with unique acoustic characteristics that are essential to their functional needs and conducive to the threshold of sound frequency they produce and detect. These acoustic habitats are based on the composition of biophony, geophony, and technophony in the soundscape and on the biosemiotics mechanisms described in the eco-field hypothesis. The Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis initiates questions of habitat selection that go beyond the physical attributes of the environment by applying ecoacoustics theory. We outline the theoretical basis of the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis and provide examples from the literature to support its assumptions. The concept of acoustic habitats has been documented in the literature for many years but here, we accurately and extensively define acoustic habitat and we put this concept into a unified theory. We also include perspectives on how the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis can stimulate a paradigm shift in conservation strategies for threatened and endangered species. (shrink)

The greatest challenge for Cultural Selection Theory, which holds that Darwinian natural selection contributes to cultural evolution, lies is the paucity of evidence for structural mechanisms in cultural systems that are sufficient for adaptation by natural selection. In part, clarification is required with respect to the interaction between cultural systems and their purported selective environments. Edmonds, Hull, and others have argued that Cultural Selection Theory requires simple, conclusive, unambiguous case studies in order to meet this challenge. To this end, I (...) am employing the songs of the Rufous-collared Sparrow, which seem to exhibit cultural adaptations that minimize signal degradation relative to local environments (Handford, et al.). Specifically, the more forested the habitat, the more the tail end of the song resembles a whistle rather than a trill; yet, variation in song is uncorrelated with genetic variation. I explore the mechanisms responsible for these putative acoustic adaptations through a series of computer simulations. I modify the framework of Alexander and Skyrms’ ‘Bargaining with Neighbours’: this dynamic evolutionary game theoretic framework is well-suited for my investigation because the local interactions between agents provide a basis for modeling song transmission from adults to fledglings. In the simplest version of the model, each bird adopts one of two song types – trill or whistle – and sings that song type for the duration of its life. These song strategies are communicated to other birds in neighboring territories, which are arranged as a grid composed of two acoustic habitats (forest and field). Birds have a set probability of dying in each year, and deceased birds are succeeded by fledglings. The likelihood that a fledgling adopts a particular song type depends on (i) the popularity of a particular song-type among neighboring birds and (ii) the relative ‘audibility’ of each signal, which is a joint function of the habitat and song type of the signaling bird. The main point of this research is not to test this model, but to demonstrate that models of this type have the resources to meet the outstanding challenges in Cultural Selection Theory. The benefits of this research are threefold. First, it will lend much needed empirical support to Cultural Selection Theory by clarifying the nature of the interaction between culture and environment. Second, it will support Alexander and Skyrms’ work by providing a set of empirically testable consequences for their model. Finally, it will contribute to evolutionary theory by clarifying the scope and limits of adaptation by natural selection. (shrink)

© 2016 Elsevier LtdJumping spiders are famous for their visually driven behaviors [1]. Here, however, we present behavioral and neurophysiological evidence that these animals also perceive and respond to airborne acoustic stimuli, even when the distance between the animal and the sound source is relatively large and with stimulus amplitudes at the position of the spider of ∼65 dB sound pressure level. Behavioral experiments with the jumping spider Phidippus audax reveal that these animals respond to low-frequency sounds by freezing—a (...) common anti-predatory behavior characteristic of an acoustic startle response. Neurophysiological recordings from auditory-sensitive neural units in the brains of these jumping spiders showed responses to low-frequency tones —recordings that also represent the first record of acoustically responsive neural units in the jumping spider brain. Responses persisted even when the distances between spider and stimulus source exceeded 3 m and under anechoic conditions. Thus, these spiders appear able to detect airborne sound at distances in the acoustic far-field region, beyond the near-field range often thought to bound acoustic perception in arthropods that lack tympanic ears [2]. Furthermore, direct mechanical stimulation of hairs on the patella of the foreleg was sufficient to generate responses in neural units that also responded to airborne acoustic stimuli—evidence that these hairs likely play a role in the detection of acoustic cues. We suggest that these auditory responses enable the detection of predators and facilitate an acoustic startle response. Video. (shrink)

In early 2013, the Indian government introduced new rules governing the conduct of clinical trials involving human participants. Among other provisions, the law requires that sponsors of research compensate participants who are injured during the course of their research participation. This article examines the effects of India's compensation law and the efforts that policymakers in India have made to tailor the law since its passage. I use the legal concept of acoustic separation as a framework to explain and justify (...) the approach that India has taken in refining its regulation of research related injuries. I conclude that India's example may provide useful lessons for research sponsors and lawmakers in other regulatory states seeking to promote a well-regulated biomedical research industry. (shrink)

Summary Acoustic depth is an elusive indicator that touches the world of emergencies, or perceptual focus, in a peculiar way. The realm in which these forms of recognition operate indeed links media theory to perception theory and aesthetic reflection. Expressions such as acoustic scene, sound depth or sharpness, or acoustic image when discussing the receptive forms of various microphone models, are just a few cases where imaginative synthesis translates the sense of phenomena arising from the resistance of (...) sensory properties to the structures of linguistic formalization. The language of media is full of these references, which seem to refer to a common sense that emerges in the differentiation of perceptual channels, but is rarely made explicit in a clear manner. To understand acoustic depht’s nature, we can use the concept of emergence: every time we hear a sound, that acoustic process is always surrounded by a myriad of small sounds that interact with it. The notion of emergence can be applied to anything present in the surrounding environment. It can be applied to any configuration that breaks the homogeneity of a perceptual field. So, we can analyze the complexity of this synthetic formation by tracing it back to increasingly simpler synthetic planes. When talking about composition, synthesis, and association, it has already the results of compositional operations and which provided the ultimate or primary material – either term suffices, depending on the direction we choose to take. These are essential factors in spatial orientation processes, but they are structurally opaque: we’ll work on three examples taken from classical music, ethnomusicology, and hearing aids. (shrink)

The real impetus for the research in underwater acoustics was the German U-boat menace of World War I. Traditional naval methods were of little use against the submarine, and thus British scientists concentrated on underwater detection. This led to the development of the hydrophone , which was extensively used during the war. As this instrument had many drawbacks, a small British team started to investigate an ‘active’ detection device in 1917. This was instigated by the work of the French physicist (...) Paul Langevin, supported by his government, and was based on the reflection of underwater acoustic waves off a submarine's hull. The Royal Navy called this highly secret device ‘asdic’ . It did not become operational during World War I, and the embryo naval scientific service founded during the last year of the war, continued its development during the interwar years. The Admiralty's optimism concerning the potential effectiveness of asdics influenced British naval policy during these years.In this paper, the scientific, political and organisational factors that influenced the development of naval underwater acoustics will be discussed. World War I was the first war in which civilian scientists played an important part. Their involvement in the war had a great impact on the attitude of the Royal Navy towards scientific research, and their work on underwater acoustics was partly responsible in establishing a proper naval scientific service. Scientific development was now organised in the Navy, with the consequence of accelerating the introduction of new devices into the fleet. (shrink)

It is difficult for the conventional image compression method to achieve good compression effect in the underwater acoustic image, because the UWAI has large amount of noise and low correlation between pixel points. In this paper, fractal coding is introduced into UWAI compression, and a fractal coding algorithm based on interest region is proposed according to the importance of different regions in the image. The application problems of traditional quadtree segmentation in UWAIs was solved by the range block segmentation (...) method in the coding process which segmented the interest region into small size and the noninterest region into large size and balanced the compression ratio and the decoded image quality. This paper applies the classification, reduction codebook, and correlation coefficient matching strategy to narrow the search range of the range block in order to solve the problem of the long encoding time and the calculation amount of encoding process is greatly reduced. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm improves the compression ratio and encoding speed while ensuring the image quality of important regions in the UWAI. (shrink)

Humans have inherited from their remotest mammalian ancestors an integration of the sensory and motor systems that permits the exchange of signals and information, led by an instinctive response to harmonicity. The transition, from capacity for animal communication involving calls, facial expression and gestures, to modern human culture that embraces language, music, and dance, has resulted from anatomical adaptations such as upright posture, a distinct oro-facial and respiratory tract arrangement, and important changes in neural architecture, connectivity and plasticity. A key (...) development on which modern human vocal abilities depend was the achievement of a feedback loop between the perception and production of voiced sound that allows precise matching, imitation, and meaningful variation, of the acoustic properties: fundamental frequency, duration, amplitude, and timbre; all contributing to the capacity to coordinate simultaneous participation. These are the four specific properties that influence our sensations of sound. They play parallel and complementary roles in both language and vocal music, represented in blended synchrony such as unison song and collective speech as well as temporally organised and coordinated sequences such as call-and-response and polyphony. In turn, responding especially to the properties of the Harmonic Series, such features inform the musical employment of tools – musical instruments – that make use of materials available in the local environment (skin, bone, stone, bamboo, wood, etc.) to provide increased range and loudness as well as alternative timbres to those produced by the voice. We propose a framework by which the adaptations essential to such universal behaviours may have arisen, drawing on an extensive and varied literature to explore the potential of this position for illuminating the nature of human musicality and its relationship to language development. (shrink)

Summary Between the 1860s and the 1910s, British acoustics was transformed from an area of empirical research into a mathematically organized field. Musical motives—improving musical scales and temperaments, making better musical instruments, and understanding the nature of musical tones—were among the major driving forces of acoustical researchers in nineteenth-century Britain. The German acoustician, Helmholtz, had a major impact on British acousticians who also had extensive interactions with American and French acousticians. Rayleigh's acoustics, reflecting all these features, bore remarkable fruit in (...) his treatise The Theory of Sound, which successfully subjected empirical acoustics to analytical mathematics. His accomplishments made British acoustics a subfield of physics, thus distinguishing it from the ‘new acoustics’ in early twentieth-century America. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive translation of the expanded French version of E.F.F. Chladni's Traité d'Acoustique, using Chladni's 1802 Die Akustik for reference and clarification. Chladni's experiments and observations with sound and vibrations profoundly influenced the development of the field of Acoustics. The famous Chladni diagrams along with other observations are contained in Die Akustik, published in German in 1802 and Traité d'Acoustique, a greatly expanded version, published in French in 1809. The present translation was undertaken by Robert T. Beyer, (...) PhD (1920-2008), noted acoustician, Professor of Physics at Brown University, and Gold Medal recipient of the Acoustical Society of America. Along with many other projects completed over the course of his career, Dr. Beyer translated Von Neumann's seminal work, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics from the original German, spent 30 years translating Russian physics treatises and journals, served as editor of the English translation of the Soviet Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics, and also authored Sounds of our Times: Two Hundred Years of Acoustics. Represents the first comprehensive English translation of a seminal work in acoustics Translated by a prominent acoustician, and former Gold Medal recipient of the Acoustical Society of America In addition to the classic experiments with glass plates and violin bows, covers topics in music, architecture, and anatomy of human and animal hearing Appeals to a wide audience in physics, acoustics, and history of science. (shrink)

With Walter Benjamin's notion of the optical unconscious as its starting point, this monograph develops a theory of the acoustical unconscious that refers both to the broadening of acoustic apperception via radio and film, and to a particular mode.

Wind turbines produce sound that is capable of disturbing local residents and is reported to cause annoyance, sleep disturbance, and other health-related impacts. An acoustical study was conducted to investigate the presence of infrasonic and low-frequency noise emissions from wind turbines located in Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA. During the study, the investigating acousticians experienced adverse health effects consistent with those reported by some Falmouth residents. The authors conclude that wind turbine acoustic energy was found to be greater than or uniquely (...) distinguishable from the ambient background levels and capable of exceeding human detection thresholds. The authors emphasize the need for epidemiological and laboratory research by health professionals and acousticians concerned with public health and well-being to develop effective and precautionary setback distances for industrial wind turbines that protect residents from wind turbine sound. (shrink)

Objective: This study aims to compare the acoustic vocal analysis results of a group of transgender women relative to those of cisgender women.Methods: Thirty transgender women between the ages of 19 and 52 years old participated in the study. The control group was composed of 31 cisgender women between the ages of 20 and 48 years old. A standardized questionnaire was administered to collect general patient data to better characterize the participants. The vowel /a/ sounds of all participants were (...) collected and analyzed by the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program advanced system.Results: Statistically significant differences between cisgender and transgender women were found on 14 measures: fundamental frequency, maximum fundamental frequency, minimum fundamental frequency, standard deviation of fundamental frequency, absolute jitter, percentage or relative jitter, fundamental frequency relative average perturbation, fundamental frequency perturbation quotient, smoothed fundamental frequency perturbation quotient, fundamental frequency variation, absolute shimmer, relative shimmer, voice turbulence index, and soft phonation index. The mean fundamental frequency value was 159.046 Hz for the cases and 192.435 Hz for the controls.Conclusion: Through glottal adaptations, the group of transgender women managed to feminize their voices, presenting voices that were less aperiodic and softer than those of cisgender women. (shrink)

While acoustic analysis methods have become a commodity in voice emotion research, experiments that attempt not only to describe but to computationally manipulate expressive cues in emotional voice...

Kierkegaard steadily maintains, against Lessing, that Jesus’s contemporaries had no advantage as regards faith merely because they had personal experience of him. It is a view proposed both by Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus, as well as over Kierkegaard’s own signature; it is indirectly communicated and then directly communicated, and so the importance of becoming a true contemporary of Jesus can hardly be underestimated in the authorship, including the later journals. When Michel Henry considers this motif in his Phénoménologie matérielle he (...) says that it is one feature of what Kierkegaard calls “’the strange acoustics of the spiritual world’ [l’étrange acoustique du monde spirituel].” These acoustics are not those we learn about in physics: “the laws of being in common are not in fact those belonging to things and the laws of perception,” and this claim gives Henry an opportunity to continue a long standing argument with Husserl. For “here” and “there” in Henry’s account of inter-subjectivity have no relation to the intersubjectivity that is explored in the fifth of the Cartesian Meditations. Indeed, Henry goes on to say, “This spiritual acoustics, which defies the laws of perception, defines our concrete relation to the other”; that is, it gives the “how” of the relation rather than the “what” or “why.”. (shrink)

Authored by leading sound studies scholar Brandon LaBelle, this book focuses on questions of acoustics as the basis for challenging normative structures.

Drawing on the analogy between musical meaning-making and human subjectivity, this book develops the concept of the acoustic self, exploring the ways in which musical characterization and structure are related to issues of subject-representation in the modernist English novel. The volume is framed around three musical topics-the fugue, absolute music, and Gesamtkunstwerk-arguing that these three modes of musicalization address modernist dilemmas around selfhood and identity. Varga reflects on the manifestations of the acoustic self in examples from the works (...) of E.M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, and Virginia Woolf and such musicians as Bach, Beethoven, Handel, and Wagner. An additional chapter on jazz and electronic music supplements these inquiries, pursuing the acoustic self beyond modernism and thereby inciting further discussion and theorization of musical intermediality, as well as recent sonic practices. Probing the analogies in the complex interrelationship between music, representation, and language in fictional texts and the nature of human subjectivity, this book will appeal to scholars interested in the interface of language and music, in such areas as intermediality, multimodality, literary studies, critical theory, and modernist studies. (shrink)

In many communities around the world, speech to infants and small children has increased mean pitch, increased pitch range, increased vowel duration, and vowel hyper-articulation when compared to speech directed to adults. Some of these IDS and CDS features are also attested in foreigner-directed speech, which has been studied for a smaller range of languages, generally major national languages, spoken by millions of people. We examined vowel acoustics in CDS, conversational ADS, and monologues directed to a foreigner in the Towet (...) dialect of the Papuan language Nungon, spoken by 300 people in a remote region in northeastern Papua New Guinea. Previous work established that Nungon CDS entails optional use of consonant alteration, special nursery vocabulary, and special morphosyntax. This study shows that Nungon CDS to children aged 2;2–3;10 lacks vowel hyper-articulation, but still displays other common prosodic traits of CDS styles around the world: increased mean pitch and pitch range. A developmental effect was also attested, in that speech to 2-year-olds contained vowels that were significantly longer than those in speech to 3-year-olds, which in turn had vowels of similar duration to those in Nungon ADS. We also found that Nungon FDS vowel triangles, measured from monologues primarily directed to a non-native speaker, were significantly larger than those of either CDS or conversational ADS, indicating vowel hyper-articulation. The Nungon pattern may align with the patterns of vowels in Norwegian IDS, CDS, and FDS, where hyper-articulation is found in FDS, but not CDS or IDS. The languages of the New Guinea area constitute 20% of the world's languages, but neither an acoustic comparison of vowels in CDS and ADS, nor an acoustic study of FDS, has previously been completed for any language of New Guinea. The function of an FDS style in a small, closed community like those of much of New Guinea may differ from that in larger societies, since there are very few non-native speakers of Nungon. Thus, this study uses monologues recorded with a foreign researcher as interlocutor to study Nungon FDS. (shrink)

Listeners are able to quite accurately distinguish between different dialects of their native language, but little is known about the process of dialect identification and the phonetic cues listeners use to identify someone's regional origin. This study examines how different segments, acoustic between-dialect distance, and the listeners' knowledge about a dialect contribute to this process. Native speakers of Grison and Zurich German were asked to categorize isolated words spoken by eight speakers of Grison and eight speakers of Zurich German. (...) Stimuli contained either none, one, or two segmental cues to regional origin. The presence of one dialect-specific segment was enough to allow for an identification rate well above chance. Sensitivity measures and analysis of reaction time showed that the two dialect groups largely relied on the same segmental cues. Acoustic distance to the other dialect, quantified as Euclidean distance in the F1×F2 vowel space, generally facilitated dialect identification, but interacted with native speakers' general knowledge about the dialects: In segments which listeners explicitly associate with one of the two dialects, acoustic distance facilitated dialect recognition to a larger extent than in segments listeners are not aware of dialectal variation. The results suggest that, depending on the prior knowledge about a dialect, acoustic variation is weighted differently. Further analysis showed that Zurich listeners were more sensitive to the dialect differences, responded faster, and presented a more-marked own-dialect response bias than Grison listeners. These findings are in line with the status of Grison German as a marked and Zurich German as a neutral dialect and suggest that, depending on their own dialect's status, listeners used different decision strategies. (shrink)

Any account of “what is special about the human brain” (Passingham 2008) must specify the neural basis of our unique ability to produce speech and delineate how these remarkable motor capabilities could have emerged in our hominin ancestors. Clinical data suggest that the basal ganglia provide a platform for the integration of primate-general mechanisms of acoustic communication with the faculty of articulate speech in humans. Furthermore, neurobiological and paleoanthropological data point at a two-stage model of the phylogenetic evolution of (...) this crucial prerequisite of spoken language: (i) monosynaptic refinement of the projections of motor cortex to the brainstem nuclei that steer laryngeal muscles, presumably, as part of a “phylogenetic trend” associated with increasing brain size during hominin evolution; (ii) subsequent vocal-laryngeal elaboration of cortico-basal ganglia circuitries, driven by human-specificFOXP2mutations.;>This concept implies vocal continuity of spoken language evolution at the motor level, elucidating the deep entrenchment of articulate speech into a “nonverbal matrix” (Ingold 1994), which is not accounted for by gestural-origin theories. Moreover, it provides a solution to the question for the adaptive value of the “first word” (Bickerton 2009) since even the earliest and most simple verbal utterances must have increased the versatility of vocal displays afforded by the preceding elaboration of monosynaptic corticobulbar tracts, giving rise to enhanced social cooperation and prestige. At the ontogenetic level, the proposed model assumes age-dependent interactions between the basal ganglia and their cortical targets, similar to vocal learning in some songbirds. In this view, the emergence of articulate speech builds on the “renaissance” of an ancient organizational principle and, hence, may represent an example of “evolutionary tinkering” (Jacob 1977). (shrink)

Acoustic pollution is one of the main pollutants nowadays but it is not considered of great importance in the construction field, despite some studies showing that most of acoustic pollution is produced by buildings under construction and roads with high traffic. The aim of the paper is to compare the noise levels at different time of the day in two different buildings which have different characteristics and different construction materials. The goal is to understand how well sound isolated (...) civil buildings are and how engineers have calculated the noise levels based on the specific area. The buildings are located at “Zogu Zi”, Tirana, Albania. The case study area is an area that consistently harvests noise from heavy traffic. The impact of the noise and the sound insulation materials in the wellbeing of the inhabitance is going to be analyzed too. The aim of this paper is displaying a comparative study on the actual noise levels generated by this area. It indicates the acoustic properties of the current building materials followed by a more suitable soundproof insulation. (shrink)