Subject Areas
The principal subject areas of the 14th ICBEN Congress are:
1. Noise-induced hearing loss
- Hearing loss, tinnitus, and balance problems associated with noise
- Occupational noise and hearing loss
- Leisure noise/ noise from portable music players and hearing loss
- Screening, clinical evaluation and treatment of noise-induced hearing loss
- Molecular genetics of noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus
2. Noise and communication
- Speech perception in noise
- Situational awareness in noise
- Effects of hearing protection on speech perception and situational awareness
- Auditory performance in noisy workplaces
- Speech privacy
- Speech understanding in the classroom
- Speech communication and speech intelligibility
- Speech communication with auditory impairment
- Perception and localization of warning sounds
- Communication aids
3. Non-auditory health effects of noise
- Effects of noise on long term health outcomes, morbidity and mortality
- Cardiovascular effects of noise
- Physiological and endocrinological effects of noise
- Mental health effects of noise
- Effects of noise on birth outcomes and early child development
- Hospital noise effects on staff performance and patient rehabilitation
4. Effects of noise on cognition, performance and behaviour
- Effects of noise on cognition, performance and behaviour with special focus on workplaces (e.g., schools, offices and hospitals), public places or dwellings
- Field and laboratory studies, behavioural and questionnaire studies on cognitive and behavioural noise effects
- Coping with noise and adaptive behaviour to noise
- Occupant satisfaction surveys for evaluation of building acoustics
- Methods to explore noise effects on behaviour
- Developing and evaluating methods to reduce the negative impact of noise on cognition, performance, behaviour and well-being (e.g., restorative sounds, sound masking, sound design of soundscapes)
- Basic research on how and why cognitive performance (e.g. attention, short-term memory, reasoning, writing, reading) is affected by certain background sounds and noise characteristics, respectively
5. Effects of noise on sleep
- Exposure-response relationships for noise-induced sleep disturbances
- Laboratory and field studies on the effects of noise on sleep
- Individual differences in reactions to noise during sleep
- Substantiation of night-time noise protection concepts
- Vibration effects on sleep and other health outcomes
- Methods and instrumentation for the study of noise effects on sleep
- Long term impacts of night-time noise exposure on health and wellbeing
6. Community response to noise and noise annoyance
- Community response to noise
- Noise annoyance and noise disturbance
- Effects of noise on health-related quality of life (HRQOL)
- Response to noise exposure changes
- Connection between community response to noise and noise policies
- Community response to noise and annoyance in developing countries
- Cross-cultural studies of noise annoyance
- Effects of vibration on annoyance
7. Low frequency noise and vibration
- Sources of infrasound, low frequency noise (LFN) and vibration
- Detection, measurement and analysis of LFN including wind turbine noise
- Propagation of infrasound and LFN in the atmosphere and in buildings
- Propagation of vibration in the ground and in structures
- Hand-arm vibration, whole-body vibration, vibroacoustic disease (VAD)
- Interaction of LFN and vibration
- Vibrations caused by noise
- Radiation of noise from vibrating surfaces
- Problems and solutions in the domain of LFN
- Control of LFN and vibration by passive and active methods
- Technical applications of LFN and vibration
- Regulations and guidelines on LFN and vibration
- Infrasound effects on humans
8. Combined effect of noise and other agents
- Interactions between noise and other physical, chemical and biological agents
9. Noise policy and economics
- Local, regional and global noise policies
- Passive and active noise abatement and its effects
- Environmental noise management
- Cost-benefit analysis of environmental noise management
- Sustainable urban development and environmental noise
- Economic impact of noise, external costs of noise
10. Other topics
- Effects of noise on animals
- Ultrasound
- Noise exposure assessment
- Noise mapping