Publications by authors named "Reto Pieren"

Noise from unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as "drones," will likely shape our acoustic environment in the near future. Yet, reactions of the population to this new noise source are still little explored. The objective of this study was to investigate short-term noise annoyance reactions to drones in a controlled laboratory experiment.

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This paper introduces a methodology tailored to capture, post-process, and replicate audio-visual data of outdoor environments (urban or natural) for VR experiments carried out within a controlled laboratory environment. The methodology consists of 360 video and higher order ambisonic (HOA) field recordings and subsequent calibrated spatial sound reproduction with a spherical loudspeaker array and video played back via a head-mounted display using a game engine and a graphical user interface for a perceptual experimental questionnaire. Attention was given to the equalisation and calibration of the ambisonic microphone and to the design of different ambisonic decoders.

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Phased microphone array methods are increasingly used to localize and quantify noise sources of aircraft under flight condition. However, beamforming results suffer from loss of image resolution and corruption of sound levels due to atmospheric turbulence causing coherence loss between microphones. A synthesis method is presented that reproduces these effects in a virtual environment.

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Noise mitigation is the main advantage of semi-dense asphalt (SDA) pavements compared to traditional pavements such as stone-mastic asphalt (SMA), but noise is not quantitatively considered in traditional life cycle assessment (LCA). This article performs a comprehensive LCA for SMA and SDA including noise considerations. State-of-the-art sound emission and acoustical ageing models were used to determine the road traffic noise.

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Article Synopsis
  • Residents near airports experience noise from aircraft, prompting the development of quieter aircraft designs and flight procedures.
  • Auralization, or creating realistic sound simulations, helps in evaluating these designs by mimicking aircraft sounds during flyovers.
  • A new model that incorporates atmospheric turbulence effects improves the realism of these sound simulations, potentially leading to better assessments of future aircraft concepts by reducing unnatural noise effects.
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The number of operations of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), commonly referred to as "drones", has strongly increased in the past and is likely to further grow in the future. Therefore, drones are becoming a growing new source of environmental noise pollution, and annoyance reactions to drone noise are likely to occur in an increasing share of the population. To date, research on drone noise emission characteristics, and in particular also on health impacts, seems scarce, but systematic overviews on these topics are missing.

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Prospective evidence on the risk of depression in relation to transportation noise exposure and noise annoyance is limited and mixed. We aimed to investigate the associations of long-term exposure to source-specific transportation noise and noise annoyance with incidence of depression in the SAPALDIA (Swiss cohort study on air pollution and lung and heart diseases in adults) cohort. We investigated 4,581 SAPALDIA participants without depression in the year 2001/2002.

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Study Objectives: The present study aimed at assessing the temporal non-rapid eye movement (NREM) EEG arousal distribution within and across sleep cycles and its modifications with aging and nighttime transportation noise exposure, factors that typically increase the incidence of EEG arousals.

Methods: Twenty-six young (19-33 years, 12 women) and 16 older (52-70 years, 8 women) healthy volunteers underwent a 6-day polysomnographic laboratory study. Participants spent two noise-free nights and four transportation noise exposure nights, two with continuous and two characterized by eventful noise (average sound levels of 45 dB, maximum sound levels between 50 and 62 dB for eventful noise).

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Aims: Chronic exposure to nocturnal transportation noise has been linked to cardiovascular disorders with sleep impairment as the main mediator. Here we examined whether nocturnal transportation noise affects the main stress pathways, and whether it relates to changes in the macro and micro structure of sleep.

Methods And Results: Twenty-six young healthy participants (12 women, 24.

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This survey investigates the cross-sectional association between nighttime road, rail and aircraft noise exposure and the probability to be highly sleep disturbed (%HSD), as measured by self-report in postal and online questionnaires. As part of the Swiss SiRENE study, a total of 5592 survey participants in the entire country were selected based on a stratified random sample of their dwelling. Self-reported sleep disturbance was measured using an ICBEN-style 5-point verbal scale.

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It is unclear which noise exposure time window and noise characteristics during nighttime are most detrimental for sleep quality in real-life settings. We conducted a field study with 105 volunteers wearing a wrist actimeter to record their sleep during seven days, together with concurrent outdoor noise measurements at their bedroom window. Actimetry-recorded sleep latency increased by 5.

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Residents living in the vicinity of airports are exposed to noise from departing and approaching aircraft. Noise may be reduced by introducing novel aircraft technologies into vehicle retrofit, aircraft design and flight procedures. Nowadays, noise assessment and communication of noise are accomplished using conventional noise indicators that consider neither the perception of sound, nor its health effects.

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Helicopter noise exhibits distinctive acoustical characteristics (e.g., pulsation) compared to noise from propeller-driven aircraft which contains tonal components.

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The aim of the present study is to establish exposure-response relationships reflecting the percentage highly annoyed (%HA) as functions of road traffic, railway, and aircraft noise exposure, measured as day-evening-night level (Lden), as well as to elucidate the degree to which the acoustic indicator Intermittency Ratio (IR), which reflects the "eventfulness" of a noise situation, predicts noise annoyance. We conducted a mixed-mode representative population survey in a stratified random sample of 5592 residents exposed to transportation noise all over Switzerland. Source-specific noise exposure was calculated for each floor and each façade based on comprehensive traffic data.

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Background: Epidemiological research on transportation noise uses different exposure assessment strategies based on façade point estimates or regulatory noise maps. The degree of exposure measurement error and subsequent potentially biased risk estimates related to exposure definition is unclear. We aimed to evaluate associations between transportation noise exposure and myocardial infarction (MI) mortality considering: assumptions about residential floor, façade point selection (loudest, quietest, nearest), façade point vs.

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Background: Epidemiological evidence indicates an association between transportation noise exposure and a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Sleep disturbances are thought to be one of the mechanisms as it is well established that a few nights of short or poor sleep impair glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in healthy good sleepers.

Objectives: The present study aimed to determine the extent to which exposure to nocturnal transportation noise affects glucose metabolism, and whether it is related to noise-induced sleep alterations.

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Aims: The present study aimed to disentangle the risk of the three major transportation noise sources-road, railway, and aircraft traffic-and the air pollutants NO2 and PM2.5 on myocardial infarction (MI) mortality in Switzerland based on high quality/fine resolution exposure modelling.

Methods And Results: We modelled long-term exposure to outdoor road traffic, railway, and aircraft noise levels, as well as NO2 and PM2.

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The contribution of different transportation noise sources to metabolic disorders such as obesity remains understudied. We evaluated the associations of long-term exposure to road, railway and aircraft noise with measures of obesity and its subphenotypes using cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. We assessed 3796 participants from the population-based Swiss Cohort Study on Air Pollution and Lung and Heart Diseases (SAPALDIA), who attended the visits in 2001 (SAP2) and 2010/2011 (SAP3) and who were aged 29-72 at SAP2.

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Transportation noise leads to sleep disturbance and to psychological and physiological sustained stress reactions, which could impact respiratory health. However, epidemiologic evidence on associations of objective transportation noise exposure and also perceived noise annoyance with respiratory morbidity is limited. We investigated independent associations of transportation noise exposure and noise annoyance with prevalent respiratory symptoms and incident asthma in adults.

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Environmental noise from transportation or industrial infrastructure typically has a broad frequency range. Different sources may have disparate acoustical characteristics, which may in turn affect noise annoyance. However, knowledge of the relative contribution of the different acoustical characteristics of broadband noise to annoyance is still scarce.

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Study Objectives: Nighttime transportation noise elicits awakenings, sleep-stage changes, and electroencephalographic (EEG) arousals. Here, we investigated the potential sleep-protective role of sleep spindles on noise-induced sleep alterations.

Methods: Twenty-six young (19-33 years, 12 women) and 18 older (52-70 years, 9 women) healthy volunteers underwent a repeated measures polysomnographic 6-day laboratory study.

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Background: Most epidemiological noise studies consider 24 h average noise exposure levels. Our aim was to exploratively analyze the impact of noise exposure at different time windows during day and night on cardiovascular mortality.

Methods: We generated Switzerland-wide exposure models for road traffic, railway and aircraft noise for different time windows for the year 2001.

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Traffic noise has been linked to diabetes, with limited understanding of its mechanisms. We hypothesize that night-time road traffic noise (RTN) may impair glucose homeostasis through circadian rhythm disturbances. We prospectively investigated the relationship between residential night-time RTN and subsequent eight-year change in glycosylated hemoglobin (ΔHbA1c) in 3350 participants of the Swiss Cohort Study on Air Pollution and Lung and Heart Diseases in Adults (SAPALDIA), adjusting for diabetes risk factors and air pollution levels.

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This article presents empirically derived conversion rules between the environmental noise exposure metrics Leq24h, LDay, LEvening, LNight, Ldn, and Lden for the noise sources road, rail and air traffic. It caters to researchers that need to estimate the value of one (unknown) noise metric from the value of another (known) metric, e.g.

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