INVESTIGATION OF PATIENT PERCEPTION OF HOSPITAL NOISE AND SOUND LEVEL MEASUREMENTS: BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER RENOVATIONS OF A HOSPITAL WING

Acoustic conditions in hospitals have been shown to influence a patient’s physical and psychological health. Noise levels in an Omaha, Nebraska, hospital were measured and compared between various times: before, during, and after renovations of a hospital wing. The renovations included cosmetic changes and the installation of new in-room patient audio-visual systems. Sound pressure levels were logged every 10-seconds over a four-day period in three different locations: at the nurses' station, in the hallway, and in a nearby patient’s room. The resulting data were analyzed in terms of the hourly A-weighted equivalent sound pressure levels (

Acoustic Detections of Singing Humpback Whales in Deep Waters Off The British Isles

From October 1996 through September 1998, we used bottom-mounted hydrophone arrays to monitor deep-water areas north and west of the British Isles for songs of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). Singing humpbacks were consistently detected between October and March from the Shetland- Faroe Islands south to waters west of the English Channel. Temporal and geographic patterns of song detections, and movements of individually tracked whales, exhibited a southwesterly trend over this period, but with no corresponding northward trend between April and September. These results, together with a review of historical data from this area, suggest that the offshore waters of the British Isles represent a migration corridor for humpbacks, at least some of which summer in Norwegian (and possibly eastern Icelandic) waters. The migratory destination of the detected animals remains unknown, but the limited data suggest that these whales are bound primarily for the West Indies rather than historical breeding areas off the northwestern coast of Africa. Humpbacks detected in British waters after early to mid- March probably do not undertake a full migration to the tropics. These data provide further evidence that singing is not confined to tropical waters in winter, but occurs commonly on migration even in high latitudes.