Ten questions on the soundscapes of the built environment

Soundscape research represents a paradigm shift from noise control policies towards a new multidisciplinary approach as it involves not only physical measurements but also the cooperation of humanity and social sciences to account for the diversity of soundscapes across countries and cultures, with more focus on how people actually experience the acoustic environments; and it considers environmental sounds as a ‘resource’ rather than a ‘waste’. The ten questions presented in this paper range from the very basic definitions underlying the emerging soundscape ‘science’, to more applied topics about how to use soundscape as a design approach for the planning and management of the built environments. Although significant research activity has been conducted so far, there is still a need to systematically provide the underpinning science and practical guidance in soundscaping. Thus, the last question aims to identify the most crucial gaps in soundscape research and set the agenda for future advancements in the field

Towards an agile participatory urban soundscape planning framework

This paper presents an agile participatory urban soundscape planning process model, which is proposed as a prerequisite on which to build and reference the efficacy of urban soundscape planning. The model was developed through data synthesis and analysis and mapping engagement with diverse stakeholders across four applied soundscape projects in Brighton and Hove, UK. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the model is the first of its kind in applied soundscape practice. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and document analysis of published resources. The framework used for the analysis of the findings comprised four core urban planning stages: goals and objectives, engagement (e.g. prediction/modelling/design/planning), implications, evaluation. The study found that when integrating soundscape planning with core urban planning stages it was necessary to first identify the appropriate stakeholders in relation to the project context. It was found that these stakeholders could be wide-ranging and unexpected, thereby reinforcing the appropriateness of incorporating an agile approach in the resulting model. The study also found that users’ perceptions are central to soundscape practice and need to be considered at each stage of a planning process to produce an effective and sustainable outcome. A variety of specific events, appropriate to the requirements of the stakeholders, are important for engaging planning authorities, users and other stakeholders at different stages. This study also demonstrated that an evidence-based evaluation method is recommended in an agile participatory urban soundscape planning process to assess stakeholders’ engagement at each stage and to inform and guide subsequent steps in the planning process relevant to the local context(s)

Volume I. Introduction to DUNE

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early universe, the dynamics of the supernovae that produced the heavy elements necessary for life, and whether protons eventually decay—these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our universe, its current state, and its eventual fate. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions as it searches for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation, stands ready to capture supernova neutrino bursts, and seeks to observe nucleon decay as a signature of a grand unified theory underlying the standard model. The DUNE far detector technical design report (TDR) describes the DUNE physics program and the technical designs of the single- and dual-phase DUNE liquid argon TPC far detector modules. This TDR is intended to justify the technical choices for the far detector that flow down from the high-level physics goals through requirements at all levels of the Project. Volume I contains an executive summary that introduces the DUNE science program, the far detector and the strategy for its modular designs, and the organization and management of the Project. The remainder of Volume I provides more detail on the science program that drives the choice of detector technologies and on the technologies themselves. It also introduces the designs for the DUNE near detector and the DUNE computing model, for which DUNE is planning design reports. Volume II of this TDR describes DUNE\u27s physics program in detail. Volume III describes the technical coordination required for the far detector design, construction, installation, and integration, and its organizational structure. Volume IV describes the single-phase far detector technology. A planned Volume V will describe the dual-phase technology

Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), far detector technical design report, volume III: DUNE far detector technical coordination

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early universe, the dynamics of the supernovae that produced the heavy elements necessary for life, and whether protons eventually decay—these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our universe, its current state, and its eventual fate. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions as it searches for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation, stands ready to capture supernova neutrino bursts, and seeks to observe nucleon decay as a signature of a grand unified theory underlying the standard model. The DUNE far detector technical design report (TDR) describes the DUNE physics program and the technical designs of the single- and dual-phase DUNE liquid argon TPC far detector modules. Volume III of this TDR describes how the activities required to design, construct, fabricate, install, and commission the DUNE far detector modules are organized and managed. This volume details the organizational structures that will carry out and/or oversee the planned far detector activities safely, successfully, on time, and on budget. It presents overviews of the facilities, supporting infrastructure, and detectors for context, and it outlines the project-related functions and methodologies used by the DUNE technical coordination organization, focusing on the areas of integration engineering, technical reviews, quality assurance and control, and safety oversight. Because of its more advanced stage of development, functional examples presented in this volume focus primarily on the single-phase (SP) detector module

Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU

The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 10^3 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype

Acoustic characteristics of perforate liners in expansion chambers

SIGLELD:D49958/84 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Acoustic excitation of mechatronic systems

Within the specialty mechatronics a plurality of disciplines such as mechanics, electronics, software and control are combined to develop extremely accurate precision machinery. Examples are ultra-precise measuring equipment with nanometer accuracy, stages for lithography applications and stages for electron microscopes. The accuracy of mechatronic systems is rapidly increasing. Key in the development of such highly precise machinery is to control the disturbances affecting the accuracy of the machine. A systematic way to do so, is to define a "dynamic error budget" which is divided amongst the different disturbances. Many different disturbances need to be considered. To mention a few: floor vibrations, vibrations generated internally by the machine, acoustic excitation due to flow and/or cleanroom air-conditioning systems, etc. The latter disturbance, acoustic excitation, claims a significant part to the error budget, especially for extremely accurate precision machinery.In order to estimate the contribution to the dynamic error budget already in the design phase of the machine, it is necessary to predict the response of the system to acoustic excitation. In the design phase of a machine only approximate dimensions are available, which calls for approximate estimates of the machines sensitivity to acoustic excitation. The paper discusses such an approximate method, which considers rigid body motion of the machine only, excited by plane acoustic waves. The method uses an analytical model. The analytical model is derived, and the theory is validated by means of experiments