Annoyance caused by simultaneous impulse, road-traffic, and aircraft sounds: a quantitative model.

In this study, total annoyance caused by different simultaneous environmental sounds is investigated. In spite of a number of puzzling data in the literature, it is fairly well established that in combinations in which the annoyance of one source is considerably higher than that of another source, total annoyance is equal to the maximum annoyance of the separate sources. For combinations in which both sounds are about equally annoying, total annoyance seems to be higher than the maximum source-specific annoyance. The available data, however, are too rough to model total annoyance in these conditions. The present laboratory studies were therefore designed to explore further possible procedures to quantify total annoyance. Subjects rated the (total) annoyance caused by various combinations of impulse, road-traffic, and aircraft sounds. The results support a simple model which predicts the overall or total rating sound level L(t) for combinations of several types of sounds. Here, L(t) is numerically equal to the A-weighted equivalent sound level L(eq) of road-traffic sound with the same annoyance as caused by the combination of sounds. In the model, the sound exposure caused by the impulse and/or aircraft sounds is first expressed in the L(eq) of equally annoying road-traffic sound. With the help of source-specific dose-effect relationships, this is achieved by adding level-dependent penalties to the L(eq) of the respective sources. Weighted summation of the corrected L(eq)'s of the various sources then results in L(t). An optimal overall fit of the data from two separate experiments was obtained when the weighted summation of the corrected L(eq)'s was performed with the parameter k in k log(sigma 10(corrected L(eq) of source j)/k) set to 15. The standard deviation of the differences between the experimental results and the model predictions with k = 15 was equivalent to the small change in annoyance produced by a 1.5-dB shift in the L(eq) of road-traffic sound. Adoption of k = 15 implies that after correction, two equal L(eq)'s yield a total rating sound level which is 4.5 dB higher than each single-source corrected L(eq).     

Salt crystallization as damage mechanism in porous building materials--a nuclear magnetic resonance study

Salts can damage building materials by chemical reactions or crystallization, which is a serious threat to cultural heritage. In order to develop better conservation techniques, more knowledge of the crystallization processes is needed. In a porous material, the size of a salt crystal is limited by the sizes of the pores. It has been predicted that as a consequence, the solubility of a salt increases with decreasing pore size. This increase seems to be related to an increase of the stress generated by a crystal on the pore wall. It has been suggested that the resulting stress could become high enough to induce failure. We have studied the crystallization of salts in porous materials with well-defined pore sizes. Samples were saturated at 40 degrees C with saturated Na2SO4 and Na2CO3 solutions. Next we have cooled the samples to 0 degrees C and waited for nucleation. After nucleation occurred, the solubility in the porous material was measured with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) as a function of the temperature. The measurements on Na2CO3 indeed show an increase in solubility with a decrease in pore size. For Na2SO4, we did not observe a pore size-dependent solubility. However, we have to remark that these results show a metastable crystal phase. The results can be used to calculate the actual pressure exerted by the crystals onto the pore wall.     

Trends in aircraft noise annoyance: the role of study and sample characteristics

Recently, it has been suggested that the annoyance of residents at a given aircraft noise exposure level increases over the years. The objective of the present study was to verify the hypothesized trend and to identify its possible causes. To this end, the large database used to establish earlier exposure-response relationships on aircraft noise was updated with original data from several recent surveys, yielding a database with data from 34 separate airports. Multilevel grouped regression was used to determine the annoyance response per airport, after which meta-regression was used to investigate whether study characteristics could explain the heterogeneity in annoyance response between airports. A significant increase over the years was observed in annoyance at a given level of aircraft noise exposure. Furthermore, the type of annoyance scale, the type of contact, and the response percentage were found to be sources of heterogeneity. Of these, only the scale factor could statistically account for the trend, although other findings rule it out as a satisfactory explanation. No evidence was found for increased self-reported noise sensitivity. The results are of importance to the applicability of current exposure-annoyance relationships for aircraft noise and provide a basis for decisions on whether these need to be updated.     

Noise annoyance from stationary sources: relationships with exposure metric day-evening-night level (DENL) and their confidence intervals

Relationships between exposure to noise [metric: day-evening-night levels (DENL)] from stationary sources (shunting yards, a seasonal industry, and other industries) and annoyance are presented. Curves are presented for expected annoyance score, the percentage "highly annoyed" (%HA, cutoff at 72 on a scale from 0 to 100), the percentage "annoyed" (%A, cutoff at 50 on a scale from 0 to 100), and the percentage "(at least) a little annoyed" (%LA, cutoff at 28 on a scale from 0 to 100). The estimates of the parameters of the relations are based on the data from a field study (N=1875) at 11 locations (2 shunting yards, 1 seasonal industry, 8 other industries) in the Netherlands. With the same (yearly) DENL, the seasonal industry causes less annoyance than the other industries, while the other industries cause less annoyance than the shunting yards. It appears that annoyance caused by vibrations from shunting yards and annoyance caused by noise from through trains are (partly) responsible for the relatively high annoyance from shunting yards. The relatively low annoyance from the seasonal industry presumably is related to the presence of a relatively quiet period. Results for the two shunting yards and the seasonal industry are based on fewer data than the other industrial sources, and are indicative. The same patterns of influence of age and noise sensitivity that are generally found are also found in this study. For comparison, results regarding transportation sources are also given, including previously unpublished results for expected annoyance.     

Giant spin splitting through surface alloying

The long-range ordered surface alloy Bi/Ag(111) is found to exhibit a giant spin splitting of its surface electronic structure due to spin-orbit coupling, as is determined by angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. First-principles electronic structure calculations fully confirm the experimental findings. The effect is brought about by a strong in-plane gradient of the crystal potential in the surface layer, in interplay with the structural asymmetry due to the surface-potential barrier. As a result, the spin polarization of the surface states is considerably rotated out of the surface plane.     

Absence of zero-bias anomaly in spin-polarized vacuum tunneling in Co(0001)

In a joint experimental and theoretical study, we investigate the bias-voltage dependence of the tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) through a vacuum barrier. The TMR observed by spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy between an amorphous magnetic tip and a Co(0001) sample is almost independent of the bias voltage at large tip-sample separations. Whereas qualitative understanding is achieved by means of the electronic surface structure of Co, the experimental findings are compared quantitatively with bias-voltage dependent first-principles calculations for ballistic tunneling. At small tip-sample separations, a pronounced minimum in the experimental TMR was found at +200 mV bias.     

Quasi-periodic stability of normally resonant tori

We study quasi-periodic tori under a normal-internal resonance, possibly with multiple eigenvalues. Two non-degeneracy conditions play a role. The first of these generalizes invertibility of the Floquet matrix and prevents drift of the lower dimensional torus. The second condition involves a Kolmogorov-like variation of the internal frequencies and simultaneously versality of the Floquet matrix unfolding. We focus on the reversible setting, but our results carry over to the Hamiltonian and dissipative contexts.