It is well known that suicidal rates vary considerably among European countries and the reasons for this are unknown, although several theories have been proposed. The effect of economic variables has been extensively studied but not that of climate. Data from 29 European countries covering the years 2000–2012 and concerning male and female standardized suicidal rates (according to WHO), economic variables (according World Bank) and climate variables were gathered. The statistical analysis included cluster and principal component analysis and categorical regression. The derived models explained 62.4 % of the variability of male suicidal rates. Economic variables alone explained 26.9 % and climate variables 37.6 %. For females, the respective figures were 41.7, 11.5 and 28.1 %. Male suicides correlated with high unemployment rate in the frame of high growth rate and high inflation and low GDP per capita, while female suicides correlated negatively with inflation. Both male and female suicides correlated with low temperature. The current study reports that the climatic effect (cold climate) is stronger than the economic one, but both are present. It seems that in Europe suicidality follows the climate/temperature cline which interestingly is not from south to north but from south to north-east. This raises concerns that climate change could lead to an increase in suicide rates. The current study is essentially the first successful attempt to explain the differences across countries in Europe; however, it is an observational analysis based on aggregate data and thus there is a lack of control for confounders.

A study of musical timbre semantics was conducted with listeners from two different linguistic groups. In two separate experiments, native Greek and English speaking participants were asked to describe 23 musical instrument tones of variable pitch using a predefined vocabulary of 30 adjectives. The common experimental protocol facilitated the investigation of the influence of language on musical timbre semantics by allowing for direct comparisons between linguistic groups. Data reduction techniques applied to the data of each group revealed three salient semantic dimensions that shared common conceptual properties between linguistic groups namely: luminance, texture, and mass. The results supported universality of timbre semantics. A correlation analysis between physical characteristics and semantic dimensions associated: i) texture with the energy distribution of harmonic partials, ii) thickness (a term related to either mass or luminance) and brilliance with inharmonicity and spectral centroid variation, and iii) F0 with mass or luminance depending on the linguistic group.

The current study expands our previous work on interlanguage musical timbre semantics by examining the relationship between semantics and perception of timbre. Following Zacharakis, Pastiadis, and Reiss (2014), a pairwise dissimilarity listening test involving participants from two separate linguistic groups (Greek and English) was conducted. Subsequent multidimensional scaling analysis produced a 3D perceptual timbre space for each language. The comparison between perceptual spaces suggested that timbre perception is unaffected by native language. Additionally, comparisons between semantic and perceptual spaces revealed substantial similarities which suggest that verbal descriptions can convey a considerable amount of perceptual information. The previously determined semantic labels “auditory texture” and “luminance” featured the highest associations with perceptual dimensions for both languages. “Auditory mass” failed to show any strong correlations. Acoustic analysis identified energy distribution of harmonic partials, spectral detail, temporal/spectrotemporal characteristics and the fundamental frequency as the most salient acoustic correlates of perceptual dimensions.

The present study was carried out to determine whether recorded musical tones played at various pitches on a clarinet, a flute, an oboe, and a trumpet are perceived as being equal in loudness when presented to listeners at the sameA-weighted level. This psychophysical investigation showed systematic effects of both instrument type and pitch that could be related to spectral properties of the sounds under consideration. Level adjustments that were needed to equalize loudness well exceeded typical values of JNDs for signal level, thus confirming the insufficiency ofA-weighting as a loudness predictor for musical sounds. Consequently, the use of elaborate computational prediction is stressed, in view of the necessity for thorough investigation of factors affecting the perception of loudness of musical sounds.

General Systems Theory (GST), as it was introduced by Karl Ludwig von Bertalannfy, had a significant, yet mostly unacknowledged influence on systems theory. The purpose of the current review is to highlight and assess the application of the aforementioned theory in the healthcare field and suggest a new approach to the public hearing healthcare sector. A systematic literature review has been conducted in the electronic databases of ScienceDirect, Pubmed and IEEEXplore covering the years of 2009-2019, following the PRISMA guidelines. The article selection was performed to identify GST-related frameworks in the healthcare field and was completed through a process of removing duplicates and non-available articles, analyzing the tittle and abstract, and then reviewing the full text of each selected article. In the final analysis, 47 studies were selected and were thoroughly analysed. Almost half of these articles showed a practical implementation of GST-inspired frameworks, following different types of research methodology. Analysis of these methodologies identified the limitations and positive effects of GST in the healthcare field. Although there is a significant number of references in GST in the healthcare field over the last 10 years, applications of it need to be further tested and explored before they are put into real-situation testing. Simulation models and evidence-based approaches on a micro-, meso- and macro-level of systems should be used to provide the contextual information needed for establishing GST as a driving force in the healthcare field. To this context, a paradigm of GST data framework applied to the hearing loss screening area is hereby presented and discussed. It is shown that a GST approach can be used to identify equilibria in all levels, to balance gain and prediction capacity over time and enhance public hearing health approaches for treatment and management strategies.