Production of: Foghorn Requiem

Richard Hollinshead was invited by the National Trust to develop a high-profile temporary artwork for Souter Lighthouse, South Shields. In response to this opportunity he developed an Artists’ Brief and curated a proposal by artists Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway. Their proposal Foghorn Requiem became a major site-specific project, and on June 22nd 2013 more than 50 ships gathered on the North Sea to perform an ambitious musical score by composer Orlando Gough, marking the disappearance of the sound of the foghorn from the UK’s coastal landscape. Specially tuned shipshorns and air supply systems installed on those vessels were accompanied by the Foghorn at Souter and three Championship-level brass bands, and Foghorn Requiem was performed to an audience of 8000

Long-term exposure to air pollution and stroke incidence:A Danish Nurse cohort study

Ambient air pollution has been linked to stroke, but few studies have examined in detail stroke subtypes and confounding by road traffic noise, which was recently associated with stroke. Here we examined the association between long-term exposure to air pollution and incidence of stroke (overall, ischemic, hemorrhagic), adjusting for road traffic noise. In a nationwide Danish Nurse Cohort consisting of 23,423 nurses, recruited in 1993 or 1999, we identified 1,078 incident cases of stroke (944 ischemic and 134 hemorrhagic) up to December 31, 2014, defined as first-ever hospital contact. The full residential address histories since 1970 were obtained for each participant and the annual means of air pollutants (particulate matter with diameter < 2.5 μm and < 10 μm (PM2.5 and PM10), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx)) and road traffic noise were determined using validated models. Time-varying Cox regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HR) (95% confidence intervals (CI)) for the associations of one-, three, and 23-year running mean of air pollutants with stroke adjusting for potential confounders and noise. In fully adjusted models, the HRs (95% CI) per interquartile range increase in one-year running mean of PM2.5 and overall, ischemic, and hemorrhagic stroke were 1.12 (1.01–1.25), 1.13 (1.01–1.26), and 1.07 (0.80–1.44), respectively, and remained unchanged after adjustment for noise. Long-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 was associated with the risk of stroke independent of road traffic noise

Development of a Model to Predict the Likelihood of Complaints due to Assorted Tone-in-Noise Combinations

This paper develops a model to predict if listeners would be likely to complain due to annoyance when exposed to a certain noise signal with a prominent tone, such as those commonly produced by heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems. Twenty participants completed digit span tasks while exposed in a controlled lab to noise signals with differing levels of tones, ranging from 125 to 1000 Hz, and overall loudness. After completing the digit span tasks under each noise signal, from which task accuracy and speed of completion were captured, subjects were asked to rate level of annoyance and indicate the likelihood of complaining about the noise. Results show that greater tonality in noise has statistically significant effects on task performance by increasing the time it takes for participants to complete the digit span task; no statistically significant effects were found on task accuracy. A logistic regression model was developed to relate the subjective annoyance responses to two noise metrics, the stationary Loudness and Tonal Audibility, selected for the model due to high correlations with annoyance responses. The percentage of complaints model showed better performance and reliability over the percentage of highly annoyed or annoyed

Outdoor sound propagation in moutainous areas: comparison of reference and engineering models

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