This paper presents a summary of research dedicated to the development of Active Noise Control (ANC) systems. The primary objective is to enable natural ventilation while effectively suppressing environmental noise intrusion—an increasingly critical issue in urban residential environments. A central contribution is the development of an acoustic curtain. This system integrates loudspeaker–microphone pairs around the window opening. Multiplecontrol strategies were investigated, including feedforward and feedback implementations of the FxLMS algorithm. Additionally, intensity-based control methods were evaluated to improve robustness and adaptive performance under realistic boundary conditions, such as airflow fluctuations, wind turbulence, and time-varying noise sources. Simulation studies and full-scale experiments validate the system behavior and assess the effectiveness of various control approaches under practical constraints. To address limitations related to physical integration a soundbar-like ANC module was developed. Another phase of the research involved the application of the ANC technologies to the HafenCity Window, an innovative façade-integrated window concept combining passive ventilation and acoustic comfort. This paper synthesizes the main technical findings, outlines key implementation challenges, provides an overview of ANC designs for the integration into building envelopes, and points toward future research directions in intelligent and adaptive acoustic control for buildings.
Dehydration is associated with significant risk of medical complications and is correlated with morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients. There is currently no existing gold standard to evaluate hydration status, and limited evidence on the effect of dehydration on communication performance. This study aims to investigate the effect of oral and nasal breathing on hydration in the oropharynx and larynx, and the impact of dehydration on voice production and speech motor control. We incorporate electroglottography for bioelectrical impedance analysis at the level of the vocal folds in order to characterize hydration measures localized to the oropharynx and larynx. Participants produced 10 trials of diadochokinetic utterances for 30 s in three hydration conditions. In between each condition, participants performed oral or nasal breathing for 10 min. Dehydration resulted in decreased loudness, compared to normohydration and rehydration. Although not significant, measures of salivary flow, pitch, breathiness, and strain trended similarly to loudness, such that dehydration was more different compared to the other two conditions. These findings suggest that mild dehydration may result in increased effort to produce phonated speech.
While Korean orthography allows stem-final consonant clusters, phonologically only a single consonant may occupy the coda position. As a result, consonant cluster simplification (CCS) is typically obligatory in spoken Korean. However, recent studies [Kang et al., 2004; Yun, 2023] have reported variation in production, including cases where both consonants appear to be retained. Most prior work has relied on perceptual or acoustic data, which provide limited insight into articulatory mechanisms. This study investigates whether CCS involves complete articulatory deletion or whether traces of the “deleted” consonant persist in tongue movement. Using ultrasound imaging, this study analyzed the /lk/ cluster by comparing malkta ‘clear’ (맑다) with control items makta (막다) and maltta (말따). Three native Korean speakers produced tokens in both isolated and sentential contexts. Tongue movement data were collected using the Articulate Assistant Advanced system and qualitatively analyzed. Results reveal gestural overlap, with tongue tip elevation for /l/ and dorsum raising for /k/ occurring sequentially or simultaneously in many tokens. These findings suggest that articulatory traces of both segments may persist even when one is not acoustically or perceptually realized, providing evidence for covert articulation in Korean CCS.
Previous research suggests that a speaker’s first language (L1) shapes how non-native phonological contrasts are perceived and learned. Tone-languagespeakers often outperform non-tone speakers in simple tone discrimination tasks, but this advantage can diminish in more complex learning contexts (e.g., Hwang et al., 2021; Perdomo & Kaan, 2021). This study investigates how prosodic differences within a single language family affect the learnability of tonal patterns. Using an Artificial Grammar Learning paradigm, we compare two Korean dialects: Kyeongsang Korean (KK; N = 30), a pitch-accent language, and Seoul Korean (SK; N = 22), an intonation language. Participants were trained to identify plural forms in an artificial language, where tone distinguished singular and plural. They were assigned to either a high-tone or low-tone learning group and tested on novel items. Preliminary results show that SK participants performed similarly across tone conditions, while KK participants learned significantly better in the low-tone group (p < 0.001). Interestingly, SK participants outperformed KK participants in the high-tone group, whereas the opposite was true in the low-tone group. Accuracy was highest when the tone of the singular form matched that of the plural reduplicant. These findings highlight how prosodic background shapes tone learning in subtle but systematic ways.
