Noise in the built environment symposium (Thursday 29 April 2010 – Friday 30 April 2010) is organised jointly by the Association of Belgian Acoustical Association and Institute of Acoustics, and supported by the European Acoustics Association as an EAA Symposium. Amongst many interesting topics will be: Classroom acoustics; Andrew Parkin, RPS Group discussing BB93: past, […]
research
The ICU patient room – a healing environment study
This year will be the start of a doctoral study to be performed at Södra Älvsborgs Sjukhus in Borås, Sweden in an ICU patient room ICU patient room The aim of the project is to study if a holistically designed patient room in a general intensive care unit affects (supports the well-being of) the occupants […]
Comparison of two primary school classrooms before and after acoustical treatment
Arianna Astolfi Arianna Astolfi, from researcher in Building Physics and building services at Politecnico di Torino, Italy, was presenting the results on speech intelligibility and measurements performed in a primary laboratory-classroom before and after a sound absorption acoustical treatment. She concluded that the correlation between speech intelligibility and objective parameters are obtained for children of […]
Ecophon Healthcare conference
Ecophon Healthcare conference Approximately 60 people attended the Ecophon Healthcare Conference on 9th September 2009 at The King’s Fund HO in London. Host for the day, Anthony Thomas, concept developer at Ecophon UK, brought together an appealing range of topics specifically aiming to support a good design of our Healthcare premises. Prominent speakers were among […]
Zebrafish might save human hearing!
The most common cause of hearing loss is damage to the hair cells in the inner ear. Once hair cells die, humans (like other mammals) aren’t able to grow new ones. Zebrafish, unlike humans, are able to regenerate their damaged hair cells. US researchers hope knowledge about this can help humans in the future. A […]
Acoustics in Healthcare at the IOA conference
Acoustics in Healthcare Environments On Tuesday, June 16th around 50 delegates participated in a conference in Manchester called “Acoustics in Healthcare Environments”. The conference, organized by the Institute of Acoustics in the UK, was hosted by Adrian Popplewell, Ramboll UK. Seven papers were presented during the day. One of the speakers, Anthony Thomas of Ecophon […]
Open-plan offices – An intervention study
The increased number of people working in open-plan offices has revealed the lack of knowledge regarding how to design an acoustical environment that’s supporting the activities going on there. Challenges in open-plan office design are to create an environment both for concentration and communication without disturbances between different working groups. In a Nordic Innovation Centre […]
Swedish study on hearing impairment and tinnitus among school staff
This investigation show an increased occurrence of hearing impairment among school and preschool (kindergarten) staff. Since the noise exposure in schools is indeed high, it seems important to decease sound levels in Swedish schools. (Summary in Swedish) (another summary in Swedish) The goal with this investigation (Carl Hogstedt, Greta Smedje, Robert Wålinder, Akademiska Hospital, Uppsala, […]
Patients risk sleep problems from noise in Critical Care units
Critical care unit (CCU) noise may put patients at risk of sleep problems The study, by M Topf and M Bookman at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, says that technological advances in CCUs are contributing to this problem and that the results provide support for the hypothesis that critical care unit sound levels […]
The Essex School Study – optimum classroom acoustics
The Essex study ran for 5 months during the academic year 2007/8 during which period classrooms were repeatedly modified acoustically. Many objective and subjective measures were obtained and initial findings have been described as ‘very powerful’! Multiple perspectives are always important when considering the impact of the acoustic environment on a system as complicated as […]
