dBscale News (updated 03/04/2010)

18/06/2010

dBscale participated as local Growth Company to the World Innovation Summit (Hit Barcelona) 16-17 june 2010

11/06/2010

Participating to the technology venture event conference www.cutec.org , organised by the Cambridge University Technology and Enterprise Club

30/04/2010

The Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN) awards dBscale with the preliminary scientific and technological definition phase of the deep ocean observatory and the organization of international meetings on the subject.

10/11/2009

dBscale awarded R&D Grant by the Canary Islands Government to develop interoperable sensing technologies (ISOTER Project), in support to dBscale partnership in the ESONET Network of Excellence (EU FP7).

10/10/2009

New office opens at the ULPGC technopark, Gran Canaria Island. This area will be dedicated to liaise with the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria research teams in remote and in-situ sensing .

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15/05/2008

Presentation on global passive distributed ocean acoustic monitoring systems from a marine mammal tracking perspective at the Group on Earth Observations "GEOSS Sensor Web Enablement" workshop in Geneva. Download presentation

01/06/2007 Agent for ECA HYTEC Underwater Systems in Spain and Portugal

dBscale and ECA HYTEC Underwater systems sign a commercial partnership for the Spanish area. As a result dBscale will be agent for the peninsular area, Balearic Islands, and the Canary Islands. ECA HYTEC Underwater Systems manufactures remotely operated vehicles for both inspection and work, from 300m to 1000m depth. Hytec were the first to send an ROV on the Titanic with ROBIN in the eighties. They now equip the French Navy and are represented across the planet. They also manufacture their own imaging accessories, strobes, video and still cameras mounted on the submersibles.

12/03/2007 dBscale ESONET NoE Partner

dBscale signs contract as official partner of the European Seas Observatory Network NoE (ESONET Network of Excellence, PM6 Contract GOCE 036851). ESONET gathers 50 industrial and research partners across Europe to initiate the networking and the installation of deep-sea cabled observatories on the European Coasts. dBscale will act as an SME partner and be active in the realm of hardware amd software interoperability issues, as co-lead of the sensor interoperability task and will initiate links with its GEOSS-related activities.

Selected Biodiversity News

Biodiversity Holds the Key to Sustainable Biofuel Production

It has been reported that global biodiversity has decreased during the last centuries due to human activity. As the global population has increased, so forests and prairies have been cleared to meet the increasing demand for land for farmland planted with monocultures, buildings and roads. For more than 50 years, scientists have hypothesized that greater ecological diversity (diversity of plant and animal species) leads to a greater stability of the ecosystem that sustains it. To date, the only study to test such a theory lasted only 8 weeks and obtained mixed results.

A recent, well-designed study by American researchers, the longest of its type to date, has confirmed the diversity-stability theory. This study, resulting from 12 years of experiments, consisted in a long-term grassland biodiversity experiment that established 168 plots of land, each of which was randomly planted with 1 to 16 perennial prairie plant species.

The authors found that the year-to-year stability of the ecosystem was significantly greater at higher plant diversity levels and tended to increase as systems matured. Ecosystem stability was also positively dependant on root mass. The time period of the study allowed researchers to evaluate the average net effects of diversity on resistance to and recovery from year-to-year climate change, pests, disease and other disturbances. The more stable the ecosystem, the greater its capacity to maintain its productivity despite climatic variation and other disturbances.

Furthermore, the results of the study showed that ecosystems containing many different plant species are more productive than those containing only one of those species. In particular, diverse prairie grasslands were found to be more than 200 percent more productive than grasslands with a single prairie species. Thus, it could be more productive to grow many species together because such plantations will yield more total vegetation and do it more reliably than monocultures. These results suggest that the best source of biomass for the production of biofuels could be fields with a high diversity of plant species.

The current study suggests that biodiversity can be used to produce a sustainable supply of biomass for biofuels. Fields with high diversity may allow us to produce biofuels with low inputs, and this means that it may be possible to get more energy from a hectare of land. Consequently, biomass from diverse prairies can be used to make biofuels without the need for annual tilling, fertilizers and pesticides, which require energy and pollute the environment. Therefore, promoting field biodiversity may be a key to both meeting increasing energy demand and to restoring global ecosystems.

Source: David Tilman, Peter B. Reich and Johannes M. H. Knops (2006) « Biodiversity and ecosystem stability in a decade-long grassland experimen », Nature 441: 629-632.
Contact: tilman@umn.edu

Selected Environmental Acoustic News

Aircraft Noise Affects Cognitive Performance in Children

While the effects of air pollution are well known, less attention has been paid to the effects of environmental noise on health. Noise is a public health issue because it can produce annoyance, reduces environmental quality, and may affect health and cognition. In particular, very little is known about the effects of environmental noise in child health. Children are especially vulnerable because noise could interfere with learning at a critical stage of their development.

Under the EU-funded research project RANCH ¹, a team of European researchers has assessed the effects of road traffic and aircraft noise on children's cognitive development and health. Over 2800 children, aged 9-10 years, from 89 primary schools located near three major airports in Europe (Schiphol in the Netherlands , Barajas in Spain , and Heathrow in the UK ) participated in the study. The authors evaluated aircraft and road traffic noise levels around the schools using external noise measurements, and compared these levels to the results of cognitive tests and health questionnaires administered in the classroom. They also used a questionnaire to obtain information from parents about their socioeconomic status, education, and the ethnic group.

The results of the study showed that:

·	Exposure to aircraft noise impaired reading comprehension and recognition memory. Reading age in children exposed to high levels of aircraft noise was delayed to 2 months in the UK and to 1 month in the Netherlands for a 5 decibel change in noise exposure.
·	Neither exposure to road traffic noise nor aircraft noise were found to affect sustained attention, self-reported health, or mental health.
·	Long-term exposure to both aircraft and road traffic noise was associated with increased annoyance, which may imply a reduced well-being and quality of life in children.

The authors recommend that further research should be performed on the effects of exposure to noise at home and schools, the interaction with the classroom acoustics, the potential protective effects of classroom insulation against noise, and the measures that can be taken to help teachers and children to overcome noise-related effects.

This study demonstrates that schools exposed to high levels of aircraft noise are not healthy educational environments. The obtained results are relevant for the design and placement of schools in relation to airports, to the formulation of policy on noise and child health, and to a wider consideration of the effect of environmental stressors on children's cognitive development.

¹ The RANCH project (Road Traffic & Aircraft Noise & Children's Cognition & Health) is funded by the European Community (QLRT-2000-00197) in the 5th research framework programme under the specific programme 'Quality of life and management of living resources' For more information see http://ec.europa.eu/comm/environment/noise/

Source: Stansfeld S.A. et al.(2005) « Aircraft and road traffic noise and children's cognition and health: a cross-national study », The Lancet, 365(9475): 1942-1949.
Contact: S.A.Stansfeld@qmul.ac.uk

Theme(s): Noise, health

Additional information: A recent project by the City of Graz (LIFE00 ENV/A/000240) co-funded by the EU LIFE programme developed and implemented an innovative action plan linking health, noise, mobility and the environment. For more information see the project web site, project summary and layman's report. Another recent LIFE project (LIFE02 ENV/F/000295) is developing a GIS based tool to help municipal authorities take into account all aspects of environmental noise in their town planning. For more information see the project web site and project summary.

Noise Increases the Risk of Heart Diseases

Noise from transportation activities, and especially road transport noise, is certainly one of the most widespread and growing environmental issues in Europe . Extensively studied effects of noise pollution on human health include hearing loss, various degrees of annoyance related to sleep loss, distraction and productivity loss.

Furthermore, the epidemiologic studies on the relationships between heart diseases and noise pollution suggest a higher risk of heart attack in persons exposed to high levels of traffic noise. However, since the majority of these studies have low statistical power, more evidence is needed to firmly state that chronic exposure to traffic noise increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

On this background, German researchers endeavoured a major epidemiological study assessing the risk of heart attacks related to traffic noise exposure. The study covered the entire city of Berlin , included a larger set of potentially confounding factors and improved methods of exposure assessment.

In particular, the study included 2,000 heart attack patients that were compared with over 2,000 control patients from 32 hospitals in Berlin between 1998 and 2001. The outdoor traffic noise level was determined for each patient based on noise maps of the city. Standardized interviews were conducted to assess possible confounding factors and the annoyance from various noise sources.

Overall, the results of the study support the hypothesis that chronic exposure to traffic noise actually increases the risk for heart diseases by boosting cardiovascular risk factors such as general stress conditions However, differences in effects exist between men and women. While noise-exposed women were not at higher risk of heart attacks, men exposed to sound levels that equalled or exceeded 70 dB(A) during the day showed an increase in risk of heart attack compared with those who lived in streets where the sound level did not exceed 60 dB(A).

Moreover, this risk for men increased when the years of residence at the same address with higher levels of noise exposure were considered. These data show that chronic noise induces physiological stress that eventually leads to the manifestation of pathologic changes. In other words, on the long run, the physiological stress caused by noise could prompt increased levels of stress hormones in the body that could increase blood pressure and levels of blood lipids leading to heart attack.

The findings of this major study suggest that more caution is needed when it comes to protecting people from both environment and workplace noise, especially for the persons with existing cardiovascular diseases. For example, the researchers suggest that the current level requiring ear protection could be lowered from 85dB(A), widely used in western Europe, to somewhere between 65 and 75dB(A).

Source: Babisch W, Beule B, Schust M, Kersten N, Ising H. (2005) "Traffic noise and risk of myocardial infarction", Epidemiology, 16(1):33-40.

Various studies in Europe suggest that about half of all EU residents live in zones that do not ensure acoustical comfort. At night, it is estimated that over 30% of EU residents are exposed to noise levels that are sufficient to disturb sleep. Indeed, sleep disturbance is a major effect of environmental noise, but the present state of knowledge on the effects of noise from experiments performed in the field and laboratory do not constitute a sufficient base for the establishment of a reliable exposure-effect relationship.

In the past, studies on the effects of noise on sleep were performed only in the laboratory. Nowadays, the development of new technical equipment allows observations of sleep disturbances induced by noise in the home environment. However, discrepancies between the results of field studies and laboratory experiments have raised the question about the accuracy of results from laboratory experiments. They have also put in to question the usefulness of laboratory experiments in evaluation of the impacts of possible abatement strategies that aim to reduce the noise pollution effects on human and environmental health.

As a part of a large research programme, a team of Swedish researchers have assessed the effects of noise on the sleep of individuals who were chronically exposed to road traffic noise. The aim of the study was to investigate whether there are any differences in effects between sleep studies performed in the laboratory and in the home environment with equal road traffic noise exposure.

To this end, fourteen persons, living along the same street with a relatively high load of road traffic, slept four nights at home and four nights in a “sleep laboratory” where they were exposed to played back “home road traffic noise”. The average exposure level was L(A)_eq 33 dB with maximum levels of L(A)_max 50 dB which is above the WHO guidelines for sound level inside bedrooms (30 and 45 dB, respectively). The effects on sleep were evaluated by questionnaires and wrist-actigraphy, a method used to evaluate sleep efficiency by recording movement made during sleeping hours.

The results show that with subjects used to sleeping with noise from road traffic noise, no significant differences were found between sleep in the laboratory and at home with the same traffic noise exposure when sleep was assessed by questionnaires and actigraphy. According to the authors, a plausible interpretation of the results from this study is that laboratory experiments do not exaggerate the effects of road traffic noise on sleep provided that sleep is assessed with the same methods and that a homelike environment is created in the laboratory.

Consequently, the laboratory experiments conducted in such homelike environment could play an important role in assessing the efficiency of different noise abatement strategies used to achieve a more acceptable acoustic environment in residential areas.

Source: Skånberg, A and Öhrström E. (2006) « Sleep disturbances from road traffic: A comparison between laboratory and field settings », Journal of Sound and Vibration, 271(1-2): 279-296.

Environmental noise can negatively affect people’s health and quality of life as it interferes with basic activities such as sleeping, resting, studying, and communicating. Noise has an important cost for society. Some European countries estimate that the social cost of road noise pollution is about 1% of their GDP. The possible effects of noise depend not only on the physical characteristics of the noise itself (sound pressure level, temporal evolution, frequency spectrum, etc.), but also on subjective parameters inherent to each person. The European Directive on Environmental Noise, adopted in June 2002, indicates that future noise maps should include action plans with financial information concerning cost-effectiveness assessments. In Spain, as in other Member States, very few studies focus on the valuation of noise, despite its increasing importance in the decision-making process in fields such as transport, health care, urbanism or education.

A recent Spanish study compared objective noise measurements to the annoyance reported by the public in order to evaluate the dose-effect relationship in a medium-sized city in Spain. The researchers also analysed how the population evaluates noise reduction from an economic and social point of view. To this end, the authors distributed a survey to a sample of people living near locations where in situ measurements for a city noise map had been performed and data was available.

The findings of this study in terms of the amount of money that people are willing to pay is in line with previous studies in other countries. For example, in a similar study in France, 38% of the population surveyed were in favour of paying higher taxes to reduce noise pollution, and the amount they were willing to pay was 73€ per family per year.

This study provides useful insights into the social and economical valuation of noise that could be valuable when considering noise reduction measures.

Source: M.A. Martín et al. (2006) « Exposure–effect relationships between road traffic noise annoyance and noise cost valuations in Valladolid, Spain» , Applied Acoustics 67: 945-958.
Contact: maruchi@sid.eup.uva.es

Additional information: The EC’s LIFE-Environment programme has funded several projects to support noise reduction and management in Europe. These include the GOAL project (LIFE00 ENV/A/000240) which set up a mobile ‘noise-awareness laboratory’ and trained more than 550 bus and taxi drivers in Graz, Austria, in ‘low-noise’ driving styles (see project summary, website and layman's report). By combining clean vehicle technologies and advanced transport telematics as well as management technologies, the Greek IMMACULATE project (LIFE02 ENV/GR/000359) successfully demonstrated ways of improving air quality and reducing noise levels in Thessalonica. (see project summary, website and layman's report). The French project DIAPASON (LIFE97 ENV/F/000193) developed a prototype software tool which provides global indicators for describing the noise environment related to each specific urban zone (see project summary).The Sylvie project (LIFE99 ENV/A/000394) demonstrated a consultative noise reduction process in inner city residential areas. Selected sites were analysed and solutions were worked out in co-operation with the noise polluter and the affected population (see project summary and layman's report).

	Of the different possible sources of noise, “general traffic noise” was identified as the source that causes the greatest annoyance. Forty-one per cent of the people interviewed were said to be “highly disturbed” by traffic noise.
	People prefer to live in quiet environments, even if this means living in a property of lower economic value (54% of the surveyed population), further from their workplace (80% of the surveyed population), or even paying a higher price for the house (52% of the surveyed population).
	Fifty per cent of the population would be willing to pay to reduce noise contamination. The average quantity considered is 7.22 € per person per year. This amount is higher, 9.81 € per person per year, when only those people highly disturbed by noise were taken into account.
	Citizens believe that the local authorities (town halls) should spend up to 9.54 € per person and per year to decrease noise pollution. This amount would represent 12.66% of the environmental budget of the city where the survey was conducted and 1.38% of the total city budget.
	Regarding the actions suggested by the citizens to reduce noise pollution, the majority suggested diverting road traffic, while people living in the centre preferred building more pedestrian streets, and those living near a railway line chose building acoustic barriers as their preferred solution.
	People highly disturbed by noise have already started to react actively in order to improve their noise problem, either by complaining to the authorities, reporting it to the police, or by modifying their homes. For example, 29% of the people interviewed have improved the sound insulation in their homes and 30% have lodged a complaint against the source of the disturbance.