Musical instrument sounds have distinct timbral and emotional characteristics, and when audio processes are applied to them their timbral and emotional characteristics are changed. This paper investigates the effects of MP3 compression on the emotional characteristics of eight sustained instrument sounds using a listening test. We compared the compressed sounds pairwise over ten emotional categories at several bit rates. The results showed that MP3 compression strengthened neutral and negative emotional characteristics such as Mysterious, Shy, Scary, and Sad; and weakened positive emotional characteristics such as Happy, Heroic, Romantic, Comic, and Calm. Interestingly, Angry was relatively unaffected by MP3 compression. Probably, the background "growl" artifacts added by MP3 compression decreased positive emotional characteristics and increased negative characteristics such as Mysterious and Scary. For instruments, MP3 compression effected some instruments more and others less. The trumpet was the most effected and the horn by far the least.

An unintended consequence is that some freedom in the introduction of innovative composite connections has been removed. The innovative aspects of this connection are in the use of partial restraint connections between steel beams and concrete-filled tube columns that utilize a combination of low-carbon steel and shape memory alloy components. A refined finite element model with sophisticated three dimensional solid elements was developed to conduct numerical experiments on the proposed joints to obtain the global behavior of the connection and develop simplified models. The paper argues that careful analytical studies can replace the requirement for physical testing present in current steel codes.