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AbstractThe assumption of independent subvectors arises in many aspects of multivariate analysis. In most real-world applications, however, we lack prior knowledge about the number of subvectors and the specific variables within each subvector. Yet, testing all these combinations is not feasible. For example, for a data matrix containing 15 variables, there are already 1 382 958 545 possible combinations. Given that zero correlation is a necessary condition for independence, independent subvectors exhibit a block diagonal covariance matrix. This paper focuses on the detection of such block diagonal covariance structures in high-dimensional data and therefore also identifies uncorrelated subvectors. Our approach exploits the fact that the structure of the covariance matrix is mirrored by the structure of its eigenvectors. However, the true block diagonal structure is masked by noise in the sample case. To address this problem, we propose to use sparse approximations of the sample eigenvectors to reveal the sparse structure of the population eigenvectors. Notably, the right singular vectors of a data matrix with an overall mean of zero are identical to the sample eigenvectors of its covariance matrix. Using sparse approximations of these singular vectors instead of the eigenvectors makes the estimation of the covariance matrix obsolete. We demonstrate the performance of our method through simulations and provide real data examples. Supplementary materials for this article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Piezoelectric transducers are commonly used in acoustic well logging. However, the low frequency and narrow range of the acoustic waves limit the achievable detection accuracy. In addition, the low amplitude of the waves causes useful information to be easily masked by noise during detection, which affects the accuracy of geological identification and makes it difficult to detect formations tens of meters away. This paper proposes a microporous liquid–electric transmission transducer, in which the microporous electrode structure generates a powerful shock wave through a high-energy instantaneous discharge. First, a model of the liquid–electric microporous transmitting transducer was constructed by combining simulations with numerical calculations, and its electro-acoustic characteristics were analyzed. Then, based on the survey requirements, two innovative optimization schemes for the microporous electrode structure were proposed, namely a triangular pyramid microporous electrode structure and a rectangular microporous electrode structure, and their performances were compared. The results show that the newly optimized triangular pyramid microporous electrode liquid–electric transducer generates acoustic waves with higher amplitude and a wider frequency range than conventional piezoelectric transducers and other microporous structures. It maintains high energy while achieving high frequencies, enabling detection at distances of up to hundreds of meters and the precise characterization of small geological bodies. This has significant implications for applications in marine exploration, land exploration, clean energy, and new energy fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of high‐pitched auditory signals by species communicating alongside noisy streams has been often considered an adaptation, yet studies testing this hypothesis have yielded inconclusive results. The major challenge has been to quantify the proportion of across‐species signal variation that could be attributed to either common history (phylogenetic load) or adaptation. We further advance in this approach by comparing the phylogenetic load between different components of anuran calls. Because stream noise allegedly represents a stronger selective pressure for call frequency than for call temporal traits, we predicted a weaker phylogenetic signal in call frequency, particularly in the taxa that breed alongside streams. We first built a phylogenetic hypothesis using four mitochondrial genes on each of three clades: the genus Hyloscirtus and the family Centrolenidae, which call alongside streams and the subfamily Phyllomedusinae, known to call at lentic water bodies. In parallel, we compiled data on the advertisement calls of 154 species and used them to calculate Blomberg's K values as a proxy for the phylogenetic load (signal) of the call traits. The phylogenetic signal was weaker in spectral than in temporal call traits within the Hyloscirtus calls and weak or absent in both spectral and temporal components of Phyllomedusine calls. Against our expectations, the phylogenetic signal was strong in call frequency, but absent in call temporal components of the centrolenid calls. Our results support uncoupled evolution between spectral and temporal components of anuran calls. They also indicate that the selective role of abiotic noise varies among taxa and that other factors must be invoked to fully understand among‐species variation in advertisement calls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Automotive Digest is the property of Automotive Digest Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) triggers time‐locked cortical activity that can be recorded with electroencephalography (EEG). Transcranial evoked potentials (TEPs) are widely used to probe brain responses to TMS. Here, we systematically reviewed 137 published experiments that studied TEPs elicited from TMS to the human primary motor cortex (M1) in healthy individuals to investigate the impact of methodological choices. We scrutinized prevalent methodological choices and assessed how consistently they were reported in published papers. We extracted amplitudes and latencies from reported TEPs and compared specific TEP peaks and components between studies using distinct methods. Reporting of methodological details was overall sufficient, but some relevant information regarding the TMS settings and the recording and preprocessing of EEG data were missing in more than 25% of the included experiments. The published TEP latencies and amplitudes confirm the "prototypical" TEP waveform following stimulation of M1, comprising distinct N15, P30, N45, P60, N100, and P180 peaks. However, variations in amplitude were evident across studies. Higher stimulation intensities were associated with overall larger TEP amplitudes. Active noise masking during TMS generally resulted in lower TEP amplitudes compared to no or passive masking but did not specifically impact those TEP peaks linked to long‐latency sensory processing. Studies implementing independent component analysis (ICA) for artifact removal generally reported lower TEP magnitudes. In summary, some aspects of reporting practices could be improved in future TEP studies to enable replication. Methodological choices, including TMS intensity and the use of noise masking or ICA, introduce systematic differences in reported TEP amplitudes. Further investigation into the significance of these and other methodological factors and their interactions is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a safe and effective treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD); however, this treatment currently lacks reliable biomarkers of treatment response. TMS-evoked potentials (TEPs), measured using TMS-electroencephalography (TMS-EEG), have been suggested as potential biomarker candidates, with the N100 peak being one of the most promising. This study investigated the association between baseline N100 amplitude and 1 Hz right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (R-DLPFC) accelerated rTMS (arTMS) treatment in MDD. Baseline TMS-EEG sessions were performed for 23 MDD patients. All patients then underwent 40 sessions of 1 Hz R-DLPFC (F4) arTMS over 5 days and a follow-up TMS-EEG session one week after the end of theses arTMS sessions. Baseline N100 amplitude at F4 showed a strong positive association (p <.001) with treatment outcome. The association between the change in N100 amplitude (baseline to follow-up) and treatment outcome did not remain significant after Bonferroni correction (p =.06, corrected; p =.03, uncorrected). Furthermore, treatment responders had a significantly larger mean baseline F4 TEP amplitude during the N100 time frame compared to non-responders (p <.001). Topographically, after Bonferroni correction, F4 is the only electrode at which its baseline N100 amplitude showed a significant positive association (p <.001) with treatment outcome. Lack of control group and auditory masking. Baseline N100 amplitude showed a strong association with treatment outcome and thus demonstrated great potential to be utilized as a cost-effective and widely adoptable biomarker of rTMS treatment in MDD. • Baseline F4 N100 amplitude showed a strong association (p<.001) with 1Hz R-DLPFC rTMS treatment outcome. • Treatment responders had a larger mean F4 TEP amplitude during the N100 time frame compared to non-responders (p <.001). • N100 amplitude at F3 and F4 had the strongest association with outcome (F3: p = 0.015, uncorr.; F4 p <.001, corrected). • Our results suggest that N100 amplitude has great potential to be a cost-effective and widely-adoptable biomarker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuous active sonar is thought to mitigate severe acoustic impacts due to its lower sound pressure level compared to pulsed active sonar typically used by world navies. However, due to its almost continuous duty cycle, continuous active sonar could have a higher potential for auditory masking. Here, we evaluate the auditory masking potential of several noise types including a recording of continuous active sonar, amplitude modulated noise, and Gaussian noise, on signal detection in two killer whales. Signals were either a 1.5 kHz pure tone or a recording of a broadband burst-pulse killer whale call. For the 1.5 kHz tone, all noise types resulted in statistically significant masking, however, there was a release from masking of approximately 13 dB for the amplitude-modulated noise. When the killer whale call was the signal, the whales employed an off-frequency listening strategy where the whales were able to detect frequency components of the signal that did not directly overlap with the noise. However, this strategy was less useful for the continuous active sonar noise due to its broadband harmonic structure. Continuous active sonar has spectral features that considerably overlap with those of killer whale calls, making this type of noise an effective auditory masker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction The study of electrophysiological auditory measures with different types of masking makes it possible to understand temporal processing skills and the processes involved in speech recognition in noise situations. The use of modulated masking in cortical measures of hearing enables the obtainment of analysis parameters of the masking release and its impact on neural auditory processing. Objective To investigate the behavior of cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) with modulated masking in the normal hearing population. Data synthesis A total of 2,159 articles were identified in the initial search; of these, 12 were selected for full reading. After excluding studies that did not meet the eligibility criteria, six articles were included in the present systematic review. The results show that the type of masking has an influence on cortical auditory behavior, indicating a different effect on neural posture rergarding CAEP responses. Modulated noise as masking in the CAEP record generated statistically higher and earlier responses compared with non-modulated/steady noise, evidenced by the results obtained in the meta-analysis with subgroup analysis. These responses may indicate an influence of the type of noise in the neural auditory coding. Conclusion Better responses were observed in modulated masking in terms of the behavior of CAEPs. Decreased latency and increased amplitude of cortical measurements with the use of modulated noise indicate a lower masking effect of this noise in cortical auditory processing, evidencing the masking release phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern society, due to the influence of the 4th Industrial Revolution, image processing technology is used in various fields such as automated processes, smart farms, and intelligent CCTV. If noise occurs in the image used in such systems, unexpected problems may occur, so noise removal is used as a preprocessing process. In this paper, we propose a filtering algorithm based on multi-purge weights to restore images damaged by complex noise. The proposed algorithm performs impulse noise judgment on pixel values in a local mask, switches the filtering process, and sets multiple purge weights according to the reference value. The final output image is obtained by applying the fuzzy weights and noise classification mask to the local mask. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, we performed a simulation in comparison with conventional noise removal technologies and analyzed it using enlarged images and PSNR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of nighttime light (NTL) data is an important factor affecting the estimation of gross domestic product (GDP), but most studies do not use the latest NPP/VIIRS V2 annual composite product, and there is a lack of China's GDP estimation products in recent years. To address this problem, this paper studies the NPP/VIIRS remote sensing estimation method for the GDP in mainland China from 2013 to 2023. First, the remote sensing data are preprocessed, and the noise masking method is used to remove outliers. The total amount of NTL, average NTL value, and comprehensive NTL index data are extracted. Combined with the GDP data from the Statistical Yearbook, a fitting model of the GDP and NTL index is constructed. The differences between different GDP estimation models are compared and analyzed, and the optimal model is selected as the estimation model. In addition, through the optimal fitting model, GDP spatial estimation products from 2013 to 2023 are produced. Moreover, the spatiotemporal variation characteristics of the GDP in mainland China are analyzed, with a focus on the spatiotemporal variation of GDP decline regions and the changes in the GDP rankings of provinces and cities. The main conclusions include the following: (1) In the time regression analysis, the linear model MNL has a strong correlation with the GDP, with an R2 of 0.972. This model is selected as the optimal fitting model to calculate the spatial data of the GDP. (2) The spatial distribution of the GDP in mainland China is high in the east and low in the west, and it shows a characteristic of extending from the provincial capital to the surrounding cities. The connectivity between adjacent high-GDP areas continues to increase. (3) From 2013 to 2023, the GDP in most parts of China showed an upward trend, with 98.56% of pixels growing and only 0.99% of pixels declining. The declining pixels are mainly distributed in heavy industrial cities supported by fossil fuel resources, such as Ordos, Daqing, Aksu, etc. (4) Compared with statistical data, the overall difference of the GDP estimated by NTL data is not large, and the relative error is between 0.04% and 1.95%. From the perspective of the GDP ranking of each province, the ranking of most provinces is not much different, fluctuating between ±2. A small number of provinces have large ranking differences due to reasons such as dominant industries and power supply. By spatializing the GDP data of mainland China in the past 11 years, the spatiotemporal changes of the GDP within mainland China were analyzed. The research results can provide support for government economic decisions such as urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study investigates the effect of parallel stimulus presentation on the place specificity of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) in human listeners. Frequency-specific stimuli do not guarantee a response from the place on the cochlea corresponding only to that characteristic frequency — especially for brief and high-level stimuli. Adding masking noise yields responses that are more place specific, and our prior modeling study has suggested similar effects when multiple frequency-specific stimuli are presented in parallel. We tested this hypothesis experimentally here, comparing the place specificity of responses to serial and parallel stimuli at two stimulus frequencies and three stimulus rates. Methods: Parallel ABR (pABR) stimuli were presented alongside high-pass filtered noise with a varied cutoff frequency. Serial presentation was also tested by isolating and presenting single-frequency stimulus trains from the pABR ensemble. Latencies of the ABRs were examined to assess place specificity of responses. Response bands were derived by subtracting responses from different high-pass noise conditions. The response amplitude from each derived response band was then used to determine how much individual frequency regions of the auditory system were contributing to the overall response. Results: We found that parallel presentation improves place specificity of ABRs for the lower stimulus frequency and at higher stimulus rates. At a higher stimulus frequency, serial and parallel presentations were equally place specific. Conclusion: Parallel presentation can provide more place-specific responses than serial for lower stimulus frequencies. The improvement increases with higher stimulus rates and is in addition to the pABR's primary benefit of faster test times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that talkers reliably coordinate the timing of articulator movements across variation in production rate and syllable stress, and that this precision of inter-articulator timing instantiates phonetic structure in the resulting acoustic signal. We here tested the hypothesis that immediate auditory feedback helps regulate that consistent articulatory timing control. Talkers with normal hearing recorded 480 /tV#Cat/ utterances using electromagnetic articulography, with alternative V (/ɑ/-/ɛ/) and C (/t/-/d/), across variation in production rate (fast-normal) and stress (first syllable stressed-unstressed). Utterances were split between two listening conditions: unmasked and masked. To quantify the effect of immediate auditory feedback on the coordination between the jaw and tongue-tip, the timing of tongue-tip raising onset for C, relative to the jaw opening-closing cycle for V, was obtained in each listening condition. Across both listening conditions, any manipulation that shortened the jaw opening-closing cycle reduced the latency of tongue-tip movement onset, relative to the onset of jaw opening. Moreover, tongue-tip latencies were strongly affiliated with utterance type. During auditory masking, however, tongue-tip latencies were less strongly affiliated with utterance type, demonstrating that talkers use afferent auditory signals in real-time to regulate the precision of inter-articulator timing in service to phonetic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how the environment mediates an organism's ability to meet basic survival requirements is a fundamental goal of ecology. Vessel noise is a global threat to marine ecosystems and is increasing in intensity and spatiotemporal extent due to growth in shipping coupled with physical changes to ocean soundscapes from ocean warming and acidification. Odontocetes rely on biosonar to forage, yet determining the consequences of vessel noise on foraging has been limited by the challenges of observing underwater foraging outcomes and measuring noise levels received by individuals. To address these challenges, we leveraged a unique acoustic and movement dataset from 25 animal‐borne biologging tags temporarily attached to individuals from two populations of fish‐eating killer whales (Orcinus orca) in highly transited coastal waters to (1) test for the effects of vessel noise on foraging behaviors—searching (slow‐click echolocation), pursuit (buzzes), and capture and (2) investigate the mechanism of interference. For every 1 dB increase in maximum noise level, there was a 4% increase in the odds of searching for prey by both sexes, a 58% decrease in the odds of pursuit by females and a 12.5% decrease in the odds of prey capture by both sexes. Moreover, all but one deep (≥75 m) foraging attempt with noise ≥110 dB re 1 μPa (15–45 kHz band; n = 6 dives by n = 4 whales) resulted in failed prey capture. These responses are consistent with an auditory masking mechanism. Our findings demonstrate the effects of vessel noise across multiple phases of odontocete foraging, underscoring the importance of managing anthropogenic inputs into soundscapes to achieve conservation objectives for acoustically sensitive species. While the timescales for recovering depleted prey species may span decades, these findings suggest that complementary actions to reduce ocean noise in the short term offer a critical pathway for recovering odontocete foraging opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current standard treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), is characterized by a low adherence rate due to various factors including circuit-dependent carbon dioxide (CO 2) rebreathing, which can exacerbated by disparate factors, such as low PAP, use of auto-titrating PAP or ramps. However, risk factors for rebreathing are often overlooked or poorly understood in clinical practice. Therefore, our objective was to evaluate the extent of rebreathing occurring with commonly used CPAP masks across varying PAPs, tidal volumes, and respiratory rates. In a bench study, we assessed the rebreathing rate of nine masks interfacing a CPAP with a lung simulator providing different breathing respiratory rates (15 or 20 breaths/min) and tidal volumes (400, 500, 600, 700 and 750 mL). Additionally, a theoretical model was developed to describe the likelihood of CO 2 rebreathing from four different masks at various breathing settings. Overall, all masks performed worse in situations characterized by low PAPs, high tidal volumes, and high respiratory rates. However, Dreamwear, Nuance, Siesta, Vitera, and particularly V2 masks exhibited greater susceptibility to rebreathing compared to F20, P10, Brevida, and Rio masks for the same variations of PAPs or ventilatory parameters. The mathematical model suggested that the risk of rebreathing for Rio, P10 and Nuance mask is negligible for respiratory rates of 10 breaths/min or below. Circuit-dependent CO 2 rebreathing can be a common occurrence and warrants careful mask selection upon CPAP therapy initiation for optimal clinical outcomes. • Circuit rebreathing may subtly affect CPAP adherence, yet is poorly investigated. • Mask models exhibit varied CO 2 rebreathing risks depending on different factors. • Higher rebreathing rates are at low PAPs, high tidal volumes/breathing frequencies. • Rebreathing risk is low for specific masks, perhaps apt for CPAP naïve patients. • Mask with higher rebreathing rates might be indicated for mask noise complaints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, self‐supervised procedures have advanced the field of seismic noise attenuation, due to not requiring a massive amount of clean labelled data in the training stage, an unobtainable requirement for seismic data. However, current self‐supervised methods usually suppress simple noise types, such as random and trace‐wise noise, instead of the complicated, aliased ground roll. Here, we propose an adaptation of a self‐supervised procedure, namely, blind‐fan networks, to remove aliased ground roll within seismic shot gathers without any requirement for clean data. The self‐supervised denoising procedure is implemented by designing a noise mask with a predefined direction to avoid the coherency of the ground roll being learned by the network while predicting one pixel's value. Numerical experiments on synthetic and field seismic data demonstrate that our method can effectively attenuate aliased ground roll. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details in birdsong parameters convey information about fitness, quality and motivational state of the signaller. Perception of these song details may affect decision making of receivers in territorial defence and mate choice. Whether the message in the song is perceived or not may have major consequences for the birds' reproductive success. Consequently, birds may suffer fitness consequences from masking by other sounds in the environment. We conducted two different playback experiments to test whether song consistency, a sexually selected performance trait expressed in the temporal and spectral parameters of song, is perceived under different noise conditions. In the first experiment, we found that blue tits, Cyanistes caeruleus , are less able to assess the performance levels of song, but still detect the song stimuli under experimentally high broadband noise levels. Blue tits also responded with more songs overall, independent of song stimulus variation to playback of song stimuli under noisy conditions. When song stimulus variants were exposed simultaneously with a narrow band of noise in the second experiment, blue tits showed reduced capacity to discriminate only when the band of noise overlapped in frequency with the song. Results from this experiment support the notion that it is indeed the masking, rather than nonauditory effects of noise that cause the change in behaviour. Overall, our results show that there are noisy conditions that do not affect detection but still affect perception of information in the detailed structure of songs. Not being able to respond appropriately to songs that differ in performance level is likely to have negative fitness consequences and contribute to a detrimental impact of anthropogenic noise on individuals and populations. • Blue tits were exposed to white noise and narrow-band noise conditions. • Detection of conspecific songs was not affected under any noise conditions. • Discrimination of variation in song performance was affected by high noise levels. • Discrimination of song performance was reduced only by spectrally overlapping noise. • Blue tits showed a stronger territorial response under higher noise levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In electrified vehicles, the masking noise behavior of internal combustion engines is absent, making the tonal excitation of the electric machine particularly noticeable in vehicle acoustics, which is perceived as disturbing by consumers. Due to manufacturing tolerances, the tonal NVH characteristics of the electric machine are significantly influenced at wide frequency ranges. This paper presents a systematic exploration of the influence of static eccentricity as one manufacturing tolerance on the NVH behavior of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines (PMSMs). The study utilizes a novel test bench setup enabling isolated variations in static eccentricity of up to 0.2 mm in one PMSM. Comparative analysis of acceleration signals reveals significant variations in the dominance of excitation orders with different eccentricity states, impacting critical operating points and dominant frequency rages of the electric machine. Despite experimentation, no linear correlation is observed between increased eccentricity and changes in acceleration behavior. Manufacturing eccentricity and deviations in rotor magnetization are discussed as potential contributors to the observed effects. The findings emphasize static eccentricity as a critical parameter in NVH optimization, particularly in electrified powertrains. However, the results indicate that further investigations are needed to explore the influence of eccentricities and magnetization deviations on NVH behavior comprehensively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transcranial ultrasonic stimulation (TUS) is rapidly emerging as a promising non-invasive neuromodulation technique. TUS is already well-established in animal models, providing foundations to now optimize neuromodulatory efficacy for human applications. Across multiple studies, one promising protocol, pulsed at 1000 Hz, has consistently resulted in motor cortical inhibition in humans (Fomenko et al., 2020). At the same time, a parallel research line has highlighted the potentially confounding influence of peripheral auditory stimulation arising from TUS pulsing at audible frequencies. In this study, we disentangle direct neuromodulatory and indirect auditory contributions to motor inhibitory effects of TUS. To this end, we include tightly matched control conditions across four experiments, one preregistered, conducted independently at three institutions. We employed a combined transcranial ultrasonic and magnetic stimulation paradigm, where TMS-elicited motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) served as an index of corticospinal excitability. First, we replicated motor inhibitory effects of TUS but showed through both tight controls and manipulation of stimulation intensity, duration, and auditory masking conditions that this inhibition was driven by peripheral auditory stimulation, not direct neuromodulation. Furthermore, we consider neuromodulation beyond driving overall excitation/inhibition and show preliminary evidence of how TUS might interact with ongoing neural dynamics instead. Primarily, this study highlights the substantial shortcomings in accounting for the auditory confound in prior TUS-TMS work where only a flip-over sham and no active control was used. The field must critically reevaluate previous findings given the demonstrated impact of peripheral confounds. Furthermore, rigorous experimental design via (in) active control conditions is required to make substantiated claims in future TUS studies. Only when direct effects are disentangled from those driven by peripheral confounds can TUS fully realize its potential for research and clinical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Computed tomography (CT) is widely in clinics and is affected by metal implants. Metal segmentation is crucial for metal artifact correction, and the common threshold method often fails to accurately segment metals. Purpose: This study aims to segment metal implants in CT images using a diffusion model and further validate it with clinical artifact images and phantom images of known size. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted on 100 patients who received radiation therapy without metal artifacts, and simulated artifact data were generated using publicly available mask data. The study utilized 11,280 slices for training and verification, and 2,820 slices for testing. Metal mask segmentation was performed using DiffSeg, a diffusion model incorporating conditional dynamic coding and a global frequency parser (GFParser). Conditional dynamic coding fuses the current segmentation mask and prior images at multiple scales, while GFParser helps eliminate high-frequency noise in the mask. Clinical artifact images and phantom images are also used for model validation. Results: Compared with the ground truth, the accuracy of DiffSeg for metal segmentation of simulated data was 97.89% and that of DSC was 95.45%. The mask shape obtained by threshold segmentation covered the ground truth and DSCs were 82.92% and 84.19% for threshold segmentation based on 2500 HU and 3000 HU. Evaluation metrics and visualization results show that DiffSeg performs better than other classical deep learning networks, especially for clinical CT, artifact data, and phantom data. Conclusion: DiffSeg efficiently and robustly segments metal masks in artifact data with conditional dynamic coding and GFParser. Future work will involve embedding the metal segmentation model in metal artifact reduction to improve the reduction effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing expansion of urban areas leads to the emergence of new noisy environments that can affect animal communication. Calls play a crucial role in the mating displays of anurans, and the negative impact of anthropogenic noise-induced auditory masking has been reported in several species. We investigated the acoustic variation in 96 males (n =  971 calls) of the treefrog Boana pulchella across acoustically undisturbed sites and different noise conditions, associated with urban areas (URBAN) and roads (ROAD), in Central Argentina. We analyzed the effect of anthropogenic noise conditions on 6 temporal (call duration [CD], intercall interval, first and second note duration, internote interval, and call rate) and 3 spectral (dominant frequency of first and second note, frequency difference between them) call properties. The effects of temperature and size on acoustical variables were controlled. We observed differences in all call attributes among the noise conditions, except for intercall interval. Males exposed to URBAN and ROAD exhibited significant changes in CD, dominant frequency of the second note, and frequency difference between them. URBAN males had longest internote interval, while ROAD individuals displayed increased first and second note duration and call rates. Interestingly, ROAD males exhibited immediate changes in call rate in direct response to passing heavy vehicles. Our study emphasizes the impact of anthropogenic noise on the acoustic characteristics of B. pulchella calls. Understanding how animals adapt to noisy environments is crucial in mitigating the adverse effects of urbanization on their communication systems. Future investigations should explore whether the observed call adjustments are effective in avoiding or mitigating the negative consequences of anthropogenic noise on reproductive success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficient fault detection (FD) of traction control systems (TCSs) is crucial for ensuring the safe operation of high-speed trains. Transient faults (TFs) can arise due to prolonged operation and harsh environmental conditions, often being masked by background noise, particularly during dynamic operating conditions. Moreover, acquiring a sufficient number of samples across the entire scenario presents a challenging task, resulting in imbalanced data for FD. To address these limitations, an unsupervised transfer learning (TL) method via federated Cycle-Flow adversarial networks (CFANs) is proposed to effectively detect TFs under various operating conditions. Firstly, a CFAN is specifically designed for extracting latent features and reconstructing data in the source domain. Subsequently, a transfer learning framework employing federated CFANs collectively adjusts the modified knowledge resulting from domain alterations. Finally, the designed federated CFANs execute transient FD by constructing residuals in the target domain. The efficacy of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through comparative experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote sensing image dehazing aims to enhance the visibility of hazy images and improve the quality of remote sensing imagery, which is essential for various applications such as object detection and classification. However, the lack of paired data in remote sensing image dehazing enhances the applications of unpaired image-to-image translation methods. Nonetheless, the considerable parameter size of such methods often leads to prolonged training times and substantial resource consumption. In this work, we propose SPRGAN, a novel approach leveraging Enhanced Perlin Noise-Based Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) with Rotation Invariance to address these challenges. Firstly, we introduce a Spatial-Spectrum Attention (SSA) mechanism with Skip-Attention (SKIPAT) to enhance the model's ability to interpret and process spectral information in hazy images. Additionally, we have significantly reduced computational overhead to streamline processing. Secondly, our approach combines Perlin Noise Masks in pre-training to simulate real foggy conditions, thereby accelerating convergence and enhancing performance. Then, we introduce a Rotation Loss (RT Loss) to ensure the model's ability to dehaze images from different angles uniformly, thus enhancing its robustness and adaptability to diverse scenarios. At last, experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of SPRGAN in remote sensing image dehazing, achieving better performance compared to state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chorusing animals constantly face the challenge of overcoming background noises. To minimize the masking of their own calls by conspecific or heterospecific calls, plasticity in call timing serves as an alternative tactic for chorusing animals. We examined how male rhacophorid treefrogs, Zhangixalus prasinatus , adjust their call timing in response to various noisy environments. When exposed to periodic white noise disturbances with brief silent intervals, the frogs accurately avoided overlapping with the noise and delivered their calls in the silent gaps. Moreover, they delivered long calls earlier than short calls during the silent periods to accommodate the longer duration within a brief silent gap. When exposed to noises of varying frequencies, the frogs specifically avoided medium-frequency noise, which closely matched their own call frequency. This phenomenon was also observed in experiments testing the aggregating behaviour of male frogs; they ceased to aggregate towards conspecific calls when interfered with by medium-frequency noise, whereas high-frequency and low-frequency noise interferences did not elicit the same behaviour. Compared to high-quality males, frogs with low SM i (scaled mass index) exhibited greater plasticity in call timing, indicating a condition-dependent tactic for energy allocation. Such behavioural plasticity in call timing was reflected in natural soundscape recordings. Our recordings revealed that, as a result of these adaptive strategies, males tended to avoid overlapping their calls with background noises in their natural habitats. Our research provides evidence that call plasticity is an effective strategy for chorusing animals to respond to noise at both individual and population levels. Furthermore, our study suggests that plasticity in call timing is a complex decision-making behaviour involving the consideration of noise properties and an individual's body condition. • Medium frequency interferes with frog calls and stops their aggregation behaviour. • Male treefrogs skillfully avoid noise interruption by adjusting call timing. • Low-quality frogs' calls are more plastic, revealing a condition-dependent tactic. • Call-timing plasticity effectively counters noise for individuals and populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noise from human activity is a global concern that threatens wildlife, including by disrupting acoustic communication. This disruption is often assumed to be caused by masking, where signals are difficult to hear in the presence of noise of similar frequency to the signals. However, other mechanisms can also lead to reduced responses to signals: animals may be distracted by noise and so miss the signal, or noise may increase their vigilance and so lead them to use personal information instead of responding to signals from others. Previous experimental work on superb fairy-wrens, Malurus cyaneus , found evidence that masking disrupted responses to conspecific alarm calls but could not rule out distraction. We therefore designed experiments using responses to heterospecific alarm calls to distinguish masking from distraction. We tested responses to low- and high-frequency heterospecific alarm calls during low- and high-frequency noise. Fairy-wrens responded to both heterospecific alarm calls during nonoverlapping noise, but not during overlapping noise, regardless of noise frequency, and vigilance was similar during the two types of noise. We conclude that the alarm call response was compromised by masking, not distraction or increased vigilance. Overall, the assessment of mechanisms helps predict the consequences of noise pollution and provides suggestions on managing anthropogenic noise at the community level, such as avoiding noise whose frequency overlaps either conspecific or heterospecific calls. • Noise might stop animals responding to calls via masking, distraction or vigilance. • We tested mechanisms using playback of heterospecific bird alarm calls and noise. • Masking stopped response during noise that overlapped calls in frequency. • Neither distraction nor changes in vigilance affected responses. • Masking could affect community function by stopping response to critical signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Control Theory & Applications / Kongzhi Lilun Yu Yinyong is the property of Editorial Department of Control Theory & Applications and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Cook Inlet beluga (CIB), Delphinapterus leucas, have not recovered from subsistence overharvest despite conservation efforts initiated in 2000. Reasons for this lack of recovery are still unclear with anthropogenic noise identified as a high threat in this population's recovery plan. Baseline information on CIB habitat use and soundscape characterization is crucial in evaluating impacts from anthropogenic activities. Using passive acoustic monitoring, we documented the seasonality and foraging occurrence of CIB, together with killer whale (Orcinus orca), harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) and humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), for one year in Chinitna and Tuxedni bays and rivers, two historically important but recently overlooked areas of their critical habitat in western lower Cook Inlet, Alaska. This area's ecological interest converges with planned mining, marine renewable energy, offshore oil and gas production, and commercial shipping. Results revealed higher presence of harbor porpoise, killer whale, and humpback whale in Chinitna compared to Tuxedni but much lower CIB presence. CIB were not detected in Chinitna Bay but were in the river on 21 days September-February and one day in June. However, CIB were never detected feeding in Chinitna River. CIB acoustic crypsis and preferential use of very shallow habitat in Chinitna revealed a perceived predation risk from killer whales. In contrast, CIB were recorded foraging in both Tuxedni Bay and River and were detected September-April on 127 days making it an important winter foraging ground. Low levels of anthropogenic noise disturbance were quantified in both bays making them some of the most undisturbed sections of their critical habitat, but at the same time highly sensitive to further noise disturbance. Commercial shipping was the main noise source likely causing acoustic disturbance to CIB due to communication masking despite current low levels of temporal overlap with beluga presence. We recommend that applicable regulators consider restricting high sound producing anthropogenic activities in and adjacent to Tuxedni Bay from September 1st to May 15th when CIB are actively using this area. Managing future anthropogenic activities to minimize habitat degradation and acoustic disturbance in this winter foraging refuge will be a key component to support the recovery of this endangered population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenic noise is rising and may interfere with natural acoustic cues used by organisms to recruit. Newly developed acoustic technology provides enriched settlement cues to boost recruitment of target organisms navigating to restoration sites, but can it boost recruitment in noise-polluted sites? To address this dilemma, we coupled replicated aquarium experiments with field experiments. Under controlled and replicated laboratory conditions, acoustic enrichment boosted recruitment by 2.57 times in the absence of anthropogenic noise, but yielded comparable recruitment in its presence (i.e. no boosting effect). Using the same technique, we then tested the replicability of these responses in real-world settings where independently replicated 'sites' are unfeasible owing to the inherent differences in soundscapes. Again, acoustic enrichment increased recruitment where anthropogenic noise was low (by 3.33 times), but had no effect at a site of noise pollution. Together, these coupled laboratory-to-field outcomes indicate that anthropogenic noise can mask the signal of acoustic enrichment. While noise pollution may reduce the effectiveness of acoustic enrichment, some of our reported observations suggest that anthropogenic noise per se might also provide an attractive cue for oyster larvae to recruit. These findings underscore the complexity of larval behavioural responses to acoustic stimuli during recruitment processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Training complex deep neural networks can result in overfitting when the networks are trained from random weight initialization on small datasets. Augmentation helps to reduce the negative effects of overfitting. The findings in computer vision and audio recognition research reveals that the performance of machine learning classifiers is significantly improved when augmentation is used. In the context of ecology, researchers conduct field surveys whereby microphones are placed in some location and audio data is recorded over a period of time. There is however no guarantee that the particular species of interest in the field survey will vocalize frequently near the microphone. Thus, the amount of data captured for the species of interest might be limited, and it may then be the source of overfitting. The main contribution of this paper is in performing experiments with time and frequency masking, and noise addition augmentation techniques in training a visual convolutional neural networks (CNN) repurposed for pattern recognition in acoustic spectrograms. These techniques increased the audio examples for the pin-tailed whydah and the Cape robin-chat to create a robust audio vocalization classifiers. To evaluate the performance of the augmentation techniques we conducted a comparison between experiments run with and without augmentation. We chose to use CNN as our classifier given that they are state-of-the-art in audio recognition tasks and they have revealed good performance. In the used augmentation techniques; time masking achieved 90.2% as the highest testing accuracy while pink noise is the most successful best classifier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anxiety and depression are two of the most impactful diseases on quality of life and cause significant disability to patients. It burdens the medical system even as a stand-alone pathology or a secondary condition. These conditions can occur secondarily after a patient suffers from other illnesses, such as upper motor neuron lesions. Binaural beats are a new and emerging type of technology that can be used as an adjunct therapy for anxiety and depression as well as in neurologic conditions to some extent. We searched through the MEDLINE, PsychINFO, EMBASE, CENTRAL, ISRCTN, and ICTRP databases to identify studies using binaural beats as therapy for anxiety and depression. Twelve articles were declared eligible to be included in this review. Binaural beats, whether used in the form of pure beats or masked by another sound, have shown better results in alleviating symptoms of anxiety and depression compared to control conditions such as no music or the use of noise-canceling headphones alone. The results suggest that using binaural beats could be a promising and easy-to-use method to help alleviate the symptoms of anxiety and depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Vision‐based bolt defect detection methods based on feature changes have been reported. However, the robustness of key feature extraction and bolt detection requires improvement. This paper proposes a robust missing and loose bolt defect detection approach. The key features—reference points for perspective correction and the straight lines of the bolt edges—are extracted from the masks obtained by semantic segmentation models. The true and false bolt discrimination approach based on the mask shape can help improve bolt object detection accuracy. Overlapping between the bolt bounding boxes in the reference and detection images indicates missing bolts. The rotation angles reveal loosened bolts. The proposed approach was tested on fabricated bolted joint specimens and a steel railway bridge. The results suggest that these improvements ensure defect detection accuracy, with a miss rate of only 1% for missing bolt detection. Moreover, a loosened bolt with only 3° rotation is successfully detected. This approach has promising potential applicability in automatically detecting bolt defects in large steel structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many bird species, nestling begging signals play a key role in the interaction between parents and their offspring during development. The information conveyed by begging calls can be disrupted by anthropogenic noise, which is one of the major threats to biodiversity in increasingly urbanized landscapes. Here, we describe the developmental change in acoustic structure of begging calls in nestling Eurasian Blue Tits Cyanistes caeruleus; begging calls are pure‐tone, low‐frequency, soft calls during the first days of development and gradually turn into white‐noise, hiss‐like, powerful calls of broadband frequency. This strong developmental variation highlights the importance of an extended sampling scheme in developmental studies. Furthermore, we pinpoint two phases where begging calls could be most vulnerable to masking by anthropogenic noise. First, during early development, begging calls are very soft and low‐pitched, closer to high‐intensity noise bands of traffic noise. Secondly, around day 11, begging calls show reduced tonality, which implies higher degradation, and relatively low amplitude, which implies reduced signal range. We encourage future research to describe acoustic development of begging calls in other species, to provide a robust foundation that will make noise mitigation policies more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is a powerful tool for studying ecosystems. However, its effective application in tropical environments, particularly for insects, poses distinct challenges. Neotropical katydids produce complex species-specific calls, spanning mere milliseconds to seconds and spread across broad audible and ultrasonic frequencies. However, subtle differences in inter-pulse intervals or central frequencies are often the only discriminatory traits. These extremities, coupled with low source levels and susceptibility to masking by ambient noise, challenge species identification in PAM recordings. This study aimed to develop a deep learning-based solution to automate the recognition of 31 katydid species of interest in a biodiverse Panamanian forest with over 80 katydid species. Besides the innate challenges, our efforts were also encumbered by a limited and imbalanced initial training dataset comprising domain-mismatched recordings. To overcome these, we applied rigorous data engineering, improving input variance through controlled playback re-recordings and by employing physics-based data augmentation techniques, and tuning signal-processing, model and training parameters to produce a custom well-fit solution. Methods developed here are incorporated into Koogu, an open-source Python-based toolbox for developing deep learning-based bioacoustic analysis solutions. The parametric implementations offer a valuable resource, enhancing the capabilities of PAM for studying insects in tropical ecosystems. This article is part of the theme issue 'Towards a toolkit for global insect biodiversity monitoring'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quick correction mechanism of the tongue has been formerly experimentally observed in speech posture stabilization in response to a sudden tongue stretch perturbation. Given its relatively short latency (< 150 ms), the response could be driven by somatosensory feedback alone. The current study assessed this hypothesis by examining whether this response is induced in the absence of auditory feedback. We compared the response under two auditory conditions: with normal versus masked auditory feedback. Eleven participants were tested. They were asked to whisper the vowel /e/ for a few seconds. The tongue was stretched horizontally with step patterns of force (1 N during 1 s) using a robotic device. The articulatory positions were recorded using electromagnetic articulography simultaneously with the produced sound. The tongue perturbation was randomly and unpredictably applied in one-fifth of trials. The two auditory conditions were tested in random order. A quick compensatory response was induced in a similar way to the previous study. We found that the amplitudes of the compensatory responses were not significantly different between the two auditory conditions, either for the tongue displacement or for the produced sounds. These results suggest that the observed quick correction mechanism is primarily based on somatosensory feedback. This correction mechanism could be learned in such a way as to maintain the auditory goal on the sole basis of somatosensory feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of the dolphin auditory system to recognize and classify noise signals according to certain invariant characteristics under the influence of noise interference and in conditions of spatial uncertainty of the simultaneous presentation of positive and negative signals was investigated. Bottlenose dolphins trained to differentiate such signals had to solve this problem in conditions simulating real sea conditions, when the perception of a useful noise signal occurs against a background of similar signals and against a noise interference background. First, noise signals were sequentially presented to the animal against a background of white masking noise. Subsequently, the dolphin had to identify a signal of a positive class from several simultaneously sounding sound sources. The animal's performance was assessed at several specified noise interference levels. In this case, the actual noise interference was both white noise and simultaneously sounding negative signals. It has been shown that the efficiency and noise immunity of the dolphin's auditory system depends on the degree of alternativeness of the spatial uncertainty of the simultaneous presentation of signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: In professional environments, communication errors can facilitate the occurrence of accidents. Professionals working in noisy environments may have difficulty understanding speech in noise. This may be due to the masking effect of noise, but also due to auditory lesions caused by regular exposure to noise. The current audiologic tools in occupational medicine are insufficient to both assess difficulties in understanding speech in noise and monitor workers' hearing. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationships between different variables thought to relate to speech in noise understanding, and to identify the most important variables. Hearing thresholds at 12,500 Hz, a frequency higher than those measured with conventional audiometry, were found to be strongly related to the ability to understand speech in noise. Regular monitoring of such extended high-frequency audiometry could therefore make it possible to offer appropriate care before auditory function deteriorates critically. Understanding speech in noise is particularly difficult for individuals occupationally exposed to noise due to a mix of noise-induced auditory lesions and the energetic masking of speech signals. For years, the monitoring of conventional audiometric thresholds has been the usual method to check and preserve auditory function. Recently, suprathreshold deficits, notably, difficulties in understanding speech in noise, has pointed out the need for new monitoring tools. The present study aims to identify the most important variables that predict speech in noise understanding in order to suggest a new method of hearing status monitoring. Physiological (distortion products of otoacoustic emissions, electrocochleography) and behavioral (amplitude and frequency modulation detection thresholds, conventional and extended high-frequency audiometric thresholds) variables were collected in a population of individuals presenting a relatively homogeneous occupational noise exposure. Those variables were used as predictors in a statistical model (random forest) to predict the scores of three different speech-in-noise tests and a self-report of speech-in-noise ability. The extended high-frequency threshold appears to be the best predictor and therefore an interesting candidate for a new way of monitoring noise-exposed professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The aim of this study was to test the possibility of masking boar taint or skatole levels by adding dried Origanum vulgare or Allium sativum in two experiments and to evaluate the sensory preferences towards the skatole concentration in different carcass parts (longissimus lumborum; semimembranosus; neck chop and subcutaneous fat). The results of the first experiment showed that the percentages of samples with low (0.069 µg/g) and medium (0.269 µg/g) concentrations of skatole differed significantly between the control group and the groups treated with Origanum vulgare or Allium sativum. According to the results of the second experiment, meat samples from leaner parts, such as the semimembranosus, longissimus lumborum, and neck chop not treated with Allium sativum and Origanum vulgare for masking, were significantly worse in terms of the occurrence of boar taint or abnormal odour. No significant differences were found between the two masking methods. With increasing efforts to ban surgical castration, it is important to find ways to mask the level of boar taint in meat. The aim of this study was to test the possibility of masking boar taint or skatole levels by adding dried Origanum vulgare or Allium sativum and to evaluate consumer sensory preferences towards the skatole concentration in different carcass parts (longissimus lumborum; semimembranosus; neck chop and subcutaneous fat) and the masking strategy (addition of Allium sativum or Origanum vulgare). In the first experiment, the effect of the masking strategy was evaluated at three different skatole concentrations (0.069, 0.269 and 0.463 µg/g). The results showed that the samples with low and medium skatole levels were significantly different between the control group and the groups treated with Origanum vulgare or Allium sativum. In both cases, the addition of Allium sativum and Origanum vulgare had a positive effect on the parameters of abnormal odour and pleasantness of odour (p < 0.05). According to the results of the second experiment, meat samples from leaner parts, such as the neck chop semimembranosus and longissimus lumborum, not treated with Allium sativum and Origanum vulgare for masking, were significantly (p < 0.05) worse in terms of the occurrence of boar taint or abnormal odour than the masked samples. No significant differences were found between the two masking methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens when disturbances in precision measurement instruments are indecipherable to physicists despite extensive review of the instruments and their outputs? How do physicists parse instrument outputs to discern sought-after signals from noise that originates from the surrounding natural and built environments, either masking or mimicking these desired signals? I argue that given the extreme sensitivity of the laser interferometers used by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) to detect minute length deformations caused by gravitational waves, physicists reconceptualized their traditional laboratory spaces to include the surrounding natural and built environments. Discerning signal from noise in instruments operating close to their low noise floors necessitate an epistemic shift that combines the laboratory with the surrounding natural and built environments beyond its walls through the epistemic space of the "expanded laboratory environment." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its creation, the coordinate response measure (CRM) corpus has been applied in hundreds of studies to explore the mechanisms of informational masking in multi-talker situations, but also in speech-in-noise or auditory attentional tasks. Here, we present its French version, with equivalent content to the original version in English. Furthermore, an evaluation of speech-on-speech intelligibility in French shows informational masking with similar result patterns to the original data in English. This validation of the French CRM corpus allows to propose the use of the CRM for intelligibility tests in French, and for comparisons with a foreign language under masking conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selective attention is a crucial ability of the auditory system. Computationally, following an auditory object can be illustrated as tracking its acoustic properties, e.g., pitch, timbre, or location in space. The difficulty is related to the fact that in a complex auditory scene, the information about the tracked object is not available in a clean form. The more cluttered the sound mixture, the more time and frequency regions where the object of interest is masked by other sound sources. How does the auditory system recognize and follow acoustic objects based on this fragmentary information? Numerous studies highlight the crucial role of top-down processing in this task. Having in mind both auditory modeling and signal processing applications, we investigated how computational methods with and without top-down processing deal with increasing sparsity of the auditory features in the task of estimating instantaneous voice states, defined as a combination of three parameters: fundamental frequency F0 and formant frequencies F1 and F2. We found that the benefit from top-down processing grows with increasing sparseness of the auditory data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a method adjustable audio watermarking approach with high auditory quality by exploiting the Spread Spectrum (SS) and the psychoacoustic modeling-based Discrete Wavelet Packet Transform (DWPT). The psychoacoustic model is used to shape the amplitude of the watermark signal during the embedding phase, ensuring a high level of imperceptibility. The approach based DWPT carefully mimics the multi- resolution properties of the human ear and incorporates simultaneous and temporal auditory masking. This paper aims to increase data payload and security. The watermark bits positions in the watermarking domain are determined by the logistic chaotic map in a random manner ensuring a high security level. The watermark used is an audio signal in parametric representation using Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) to accomplish a higher data payload. The LPC technique predicts a small number of coefficients, which represent different speech parameters, that are then applied in digital filters to create a synthetic version of the original speech signal. Various host audio signals are examined under various watermarking threats to assess the performance of the watermarking system. Experimental results expose that the introduced scheme provides a good measure of imperceptibility and robustness which are evaluated by the Objective Difference Grade (ODG) and the Bit Error Rate (BER%) respectively. The ODG's values were between -0.74 and -2.75, while the BER was in the range of 0 to 7.54%. The comparison introduced between the standard psychoacoustic model-1 (Standard PM) and the enhanced psychoacoustic model-1 based DWPT (Enhanced PM) for audio watermarking shows that Enhanced PM enhances the status of insufficient time-frequency resolution. A comparison of the proposed method to other state-of-the-art audio watermarking algorithms shows that it is a feasible alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crop row detection is one of the essential steps for autonomous guidance in agriculture. Conventional methods only detect the center lines of crop rows, without providing information about their widths and shapes, which cannot meet the growing demands. Instance segmentation, which segments each object with an individual pixel-wise mask, seems to be a more appropriate solution. However, universal instance segmentation methods usually detect with noise masks belonging to other crops or weeds. To address this issue, we propose a customized instance segmentation framework consisting of two steps. First, an adaptive deep neural network transforms the image into an approximate aerial view, in which the crop rows resemble parallelograms. Subsequently, we propose an instance segmentation approach called Parallelogram Mask (PlgMask) to segment the crop rows within the transformed image. We train and evaluate our method on the CRBD dataset Vidovíc et al. (Pattern Recognit 55:68–86, 2016), and the results show that it can accurately detect crop rows without noise masks. Additionally, we evaluate our method under the zero-shot setting, which demonstrates that the proposed method can achieve great performance even on an unseen dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many animal species depend on sound to communicate with conspecifics. However, human‐generated (anthropogenic) noise may mask acoustic signals and so disrupt behavior. Animals may use various strategies to circumvent this, including shifts in the timing of vocal activity and changes to the acoustic parameters of their calls. We tested whether pied tamarins (Saguinus bicolor) adjust their vocal behavior in response to city noise. We predicted that both the probability of occurrence and the number of long calls would increase in response to anthropogenic noise and that pied tamarins would temporally shift their vocal activity to avoid noisier periods. At a finer scale, we anticipated that the temporal parameters of tamarin calls (e.g., call duration and syllable repetition rate) would increase with noise amplitude. We collected information on the acoustic environment and the emission of long calls in nine wild pied tamarin groups in Manaus, Brazil. We found that the probability of long‐call occurrence increased with higher levels of anthropogenic noise, though the number of long calls did not. The number of long calls was related to the time of day and the distance from home range borders—a proxy for the distance to neighboring groups. Neither long‐call occurrence nor call rate was related to noise levels at different times of day. We found that pied tamarins decreased their syllable repetition rate in response to anthropogenic noise. Long calls are important for group cohesion and intergroup communication. Thus, it is possible that the tamarins emit one long call with lower syllable repetition, which might facilitate signal reception. The occurrence and quantity of pied tamarin' long calls, as well as their acoustic proprieties, seem to be governed by anthropogenic noise, time of the day, and social mechanisms such as proximity to neighboring groups. Highlights: Anthropogenic noise may mask animal sounds and to circumvent this, animals may use various behavioral strategies.Pied tamarins increase call occurrence and reduce syllable repetition rate in response to anthropogenic noise.The number of calls emitted was not related to anthropogenic noise levels, but the time of day and the distance from the border of their home ranges, proxy for the distance to neighboring groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medial olivocochlear (MOC) efferents modulate outer hair cell motility through specialized nicotinic acetylcholine receptors to support encoding of signals in noise. Transgenic mice lacking the alpha9 subunits of these receptors (α9KOs) have normal hearing in quiet and noise, but lack classic cochlear suppression effects and show abnormal temporal, spectral, and spatial processing. Mice deficient for both the alpha9 and alpha10 receptor subunits (α9α10KOs) may exhibit more severe MOC-related phenotypes. Like α9KOs, α9α10KOs have normal auditory brainstem response (ABR) thresholds and weak MOC reflexes. Here, we further characterized auditory function in α9α10KO mice. Wild-type (WT) and α9α10KO mice had similar ABR thresholds and acoustic startle response amplitudes in quiet and noise, and similar frequency and intensity difference sensitivity. α9α10KO mice had larger ABR Wave I amplitudes than WTs in quiet and noise. Other ABR metrics of hearing-in-noise function yielded conflicting findings regarding α9α10KO susceptibility to masking effects. α9α10KO mice also had larger startle amplitudes in tone backgrounds than WTs. Overall, α9α10KO mice had grossly normal auditory function in quiet and noise, although their larger ABR amplitudes and hyperreactive startles suggest some auditory processing abnormalities. These findings contribute to the growing literature showing mixed effects of MOC dysfunction on hearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most bats hunt insects on the wing at night using echolocation as their primary sensory modality, but nevertheless maintain complex eye anatomy and functional vision. This raises the question of how and when insectivorous bats use vision during their largely nocturnal lifestyle. Here, we test the hypothesis that the small insectivorous bat, Myotis daubentonii, relies less on echolocation, or dispenses with it entirely, as visual cues become available during challenging acoustic noise conditions. We trained five wild-caught bats to land on a spherical target in both silence and when exposed to broad-band noise to decrease echo detectability, while light conditions were manipulated in both spectrum and intensity. We show that during noise exposure, the bats were almost three times more likely to use multiple attempts to solve the task compared to in silent controls. Furthermore, the bats exhibited a Lombard response of 0.18 dB/dBnoise and decreased call intervals earlier in their flight during masking noise exposures compared to in silent controls. Importantly, however, these adjustments in movement and echolocation behaviour did not differ between light and dark control treatments showing that small insectivorous bats maintain the same echolocation behaviour when provided with visual cues under challenging conditions for echolocation. We therefore conclude that bat echolocation is a hard-wired sensory system with stereotyped compensation strategies to both target range and masking noise (i.e. Lombard response) irrespective of light conditions. In contrast, the adjustments of call intervals and movement strategies during noise exposure varied substantially between individuals indicating a degree of flexibility that likely requires higher order processing and perhaps vocal learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hepatitis C, a particularly dangerous form of viral hepatitis caused by hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, is a major socio-economic and public health problem. Due to the rapid development of deep learning, it has become a common practice to apply deep learning to the healthcare industry to improve the effectiveness and accuracy of disease identification. In order to improve the effectiveness and accuracy of hepatitis C detection, this study proposes an improved denoising autoencoder (IDAE) and applies it to hepatitis C disease detection. Conventional denoising autoencoder introduces random noise at the input layer of the encoder. However, due to the presence of these features, encoders that directly add random noise may mask certain intrinsic properties of the data, making it challenging to learn deeper features. In this study, the problem of data information loss in traditional denoising autoencoding is addressed by incorporating the concept of residual neural networks into an enhanced denoising autoencoder. In our experimental study, we applied this enhanced denoising autoencoder to the open-source Hepatitis C dataset and the results showed significant results in feature extraction. While existing baseline machine learning methods have less than 90% accuracy and integrated algorithms and traditional autoencoders have only 95% correctness, the improved IDAE achieves 99% accuracy in the downstream hepatitis C classification task, which is a 9% improvement over a single algorithm, and a nearly 4% improvement over integrated algorithms and other autoencoders. The above results demonstrate that IDAE can effectively capture key disease features and improve the accuracy of disease prediction in hepatitis C data. This indicates that IDAE has the potential to be widely used in the detection and management of hepatitis C and similar diseases, especially in the development of early warning systems, progression prediction and personalised treatment strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work has found that individuals with aphasia demonstrate impaired performance, relative to controls, on listening tasks where target speech is masked by other intelligible speech (Villard & Kidd, 2019). While this deficit may be due in part to impaired cognitive skills (e.g., attention, memory), the current study examined whether impaired linguistic-semantic processing could be a contributing factor as well. This study compared the effect of semantic relatedness between target and masker words on performance on a speech-on-speech masking task, in listeners with aphasia vs. age-matched controls. Additionally, the study compared performance on a remote vs. an in-lab version of the experiment, with the goal of establishing the validity of remote listening experiments in these populations. Eight persons with aphasia (PWA) and eight age-matched controls (AMC) participated in the remote version of the experiment; similarly, eight PWA and eight AMC participated in the in-lab version of the experiment. In both versions, participants listened to short target sentences while ignoring maskers. Maskers consisted of either intelligible speech from the same semantic category as the target (e.g., target and maskers were all fruits), intelligible speech from a distant semantic category from the target (e.g., target was a fruit; maskers were articles of clothing), or speech-shaped, speech envelope-modulated noise. Procedures and stimuli were kept as similar as possible between the remote and in-lab versions of the experiment. In-lab results revealed a significant effect of group, such that PWA performed more poorly than AMC, as well as a significant effect of masking condition, such that participants performed more poorly on speech masking vs. noise masking conditions. No significant differences between same-category and different-category maskers were observed. A comparison of remote vs. in-lab results revealed similar patterns of performance between the two settings but suggested that remote testing resulted in overall noisier data. These findings add to the existing body of knowledge about auditory masking in aphasia. Furthermore, they help lead to a clearer understanding of barriers to social engagement and community participation in PWA by characterizing challenges associated with communicating in noisy settings. The study also provided qualified support for the use of remote testing paradigms for listening experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, myriad factors contributed to disagreements around the use of masks to curb the public health crisis. Against this backdrop, this study spotlights how interactional processes predict masking compliance following an interpersonal discussion. The sample included 345 U.S. adults who were requested to put on a face mask in a conversation. The results showed control variables, such as gender, political orientation, and attitude toward masking, are associated with post-interaction masking compliance. Controlling for these factors, involvement and reactance both reduced compliance; involvement amplified the negative impact of reactance on compliance, supporting the general intensifier hypothesis in relational framing theory. The discussion advocates for a close examination of interpersonal conversations as a result of health campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban expansion has increased pollution, including both physical (e.g., exhaust, litter) and sensory (e.g., anthropogenic noise) components. Urban avian species tend to increase the frequency and/or amplitude of songs to reduce masking by low-frequency noise. Nevertheless, song propagation to the receiver can also be constrained by the environment. We know relatively little about how this propagation may be altered across species that (1) vary in song complexity and (2) inhabit areas along an urbanization gradient. We investigated differences in song amplitude, attenuation, and active space, or the maximum distance a receiver can detect a signal, in two human-commensal species: the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and house finch (Haemorhous mexicanus). We described urbanization both discretely and quantitatively to investigate the habitat characteristics most responsible for propagation changes. We found mixed support for our hypothesis of urban-specific degradation of songs. Urban songs propagated with higher amplitude; however, urban song fidelity was species-specific and showed lowered active space for urban house finch songs. Taken together, our results suggest that urban environments may constrain the propagation of vocal signals in species-specific manners. Ultimately, this has implications for the ability of urban birds to communicate with potential mates or kin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]