Lay-language summaries of research at Acoustical Society meeting now online

Understanding the spoken word, acoustical tools to treat cancer, and harvesting sound for energy are just some of the nearly 60 lay-language versions of papers being presented at the 162nd Acoustical Society of America's (ASA) meeting in San Diego, Calif., Oct. 31-Nov. 4. These summaries are posted online in the ASA's Worldwide Pressroom; many contain evocative sounds, images, and animations.

Reporters attending the meeting or covering the sessions remotely now have access to a wide array of easily approachable summaries covering all aspects of the science of sound.

The following are excerpts of selected lay-language papers. The entire collection can be found here:

http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/lay_lang.html

Other research will be covered in a live media webcast on Monday, Oct. 31 at 8 a.m. PDT (11 a.m. EDT). Registration is at:

http://www.aipwebcasting.com

"A communication hearing protector has been developed that adaptively alters the characteristics of the communication channel based on the environmental noise. The system uses a modified active noise reduction algorithm that breaks the frequency range into a series of bands, called sub-bands, in order to better identify the power spectrum of the environmental noise underneath the ear cup. A similar filter breaks down the original communication signal to determine its power spectrum. This information is then used to select an appropriate gain for each frequency band to either reach an optimal SNR [signal-to-noise ratio] or limit the total power of the combined noise and speech signals. These gains are used to filter the original speech to provide a new communication signal that is presented to the user that improves speech intelligibility without providing excessive sound pressures that can lead to hearing loss." Paper 3pNS6 by Eric R. Bernstein and Anthony J. Brammer will be presented Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 2.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/Brammer_3pNS.html

"Speech is our primary communication system, and problems with speech perception (such as hearing speech in noise) can be very distressing, especially as we grow older. Can we do anything to preserve or even enhance our hearing as we grow older, apart from avoiding exposure to loud sounds? Surprisingly, recent research suggests that musical training (learning to play an instrument or sing) improves the brain's encoding of speech sounds." Paper 2pMUa by Aniruddh D. Patel will be presented Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 1.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/AniruddhPatel_2pMUa1.html

"The goal of our research is to learn from bats and mimic them to design a smart, dynamic structure to enhance the function of microphones. Some bat species can change the shape of their ears, which may help them to extract more information from incoming sounds. In contrast to this, typical microphones in use today do not make use of changing their physical shapes. Our research aims at introducing changes in physical shape to the design of microphones with enhanced sensing capabilities." Paper 5aAB14 by Mittu Pannala et al. will be presented Friday morning, Nov 4.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/Pannala_5aAB14.html

"In the game of ice hockey, most players no longer use wood hockey sticks. Instead, the vast majority of players prefer sticks made from carbon fiber composites. However, goalies have not followed this trend; the majority of goalies still use wood sticks, even though composite goalie sticks are available from a variety of manufacturers. Anecdotal information suggests that goalies prefer wood sticks because they sting less when impacted by a puck traveling at high speed. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether acoustic and vibration signatures of goalie sticks can help explain this preference." Paper 3aED5 Linda J. Hunt and Daniel A. Russell will be presented Wednesday morning, Nov. 3.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/Russell_3aED.html

"An interdisciplinary team of scientists and medical doctors from three Utah universities and the Huntsman Cancer Institute are developing advanced ultrasonic technology for surgical use that will assist surgeons in removing microscopic cancer from the breast during procedures such as lumpectomy. The new technique promises to reduce the high number of repeat surgeries after lumpectomy by detecting and identifying cancerous tissues along the edges, rapidly and in real-time. This will allow the surgeon to accurately remove enough tissue to ensure no cancer remains, while preserving as much unaffected tissue as possible." Paper 3aED1 by Kristina M. Sorensen et al. will be presented on Wednesday morning, Nov. 3.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/Sorensen_3aED1.html

"Have you heard moms and dads talk differently to their infants than to adults? Such speech is commonly called 'motherese' or infant-directed speech. A large body of research, mostly on the English language, has found evidence that infants prefer infant-directed speech to adult-directed speech. Therefore, we and other researchers are interested in understanding if and in what ways infant-directed speech might facilitate infant development." […] "Our preliminary results suggest that pitch patterns in infant-directed speech, as compared to adult-directed speech, may serve the joint purpose of conveying language structure as well as drawing attention and establishing emotional rapport; these goals are not necessarily at cross-purposes." Paper 5aSCa3 by Kristine M. Yu et al. will be presented on Friday morning, Nov. 4.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/Yu_5aSCa3.html

"In clinical settings, people with speech disorders secondary to neurologic conditions […] are frequently trained to speak louder so that they sound more understandable to listeners. However, it is not yet clear why this strategy might yield better speech intelligibility. Do speakers over articulate in pronouncing vowels or produce dramatic pitch variations across stressed and unstressed sounds, or are louder speakers more intelligible simply because of the increased volume of speech? Maybe a combination of increased loudness and over articulation contributes to the increased understandability of high-volume speech. " Paper 4aSCb8 by Yunjung Kim will be presented on Thursday morning, Nov. 3.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/Kim_4aSCb8.html

"Microphones have been getting smaller. In recent years, advances in micromachining technology and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), have led to smaller microphones that can perform as well as larger traditional microphones. Microphone miniaturization is a challenge though, because generally as a microphone design is shrunk down, performance will naturally get worse as sensitivity tends to decrease while noise will typically increase. To get improved performance, designers have tried to overcome this challenge by using very thin films for the acoustic sensing diaphragms and carefully controlling the material properties." Paper 3aEA7 by Adam Mathias et al. will be presented on Wednesday morning, Nov. 2.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/Mathias_3aEA7.html

"High-amplitude tonal sound may appear inside duct systems due to excitation of acoustic resonances by unsteady heat release or vortex shedding in the presence of mean flow. Noise generation in ventilation systems and unstable combustion coupled with acoustic oscillations in rocket motors and industrial burners are examples of undesirable and often harmful phenomena. In thermoacoustic engines, acoustic waves are excited intentionally with the purpose of converting waste heat or solar radiation into useful forms of energy. The power of excited tonal sound in these systems can be harvested by electroacoustic transducers and applied for powering sensors and other small-scale devices, thus eliminating a need for battery replacement." Paper 4aEAa by Sungmin Jung et al. will be presented Thursday morning, Nov. 3.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/matveev-4aEAa.html

"Scientists from the Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center (LADC), a consortium of scientists from four Gulf State Universities, use sounds made by marine mammals to understand the impact of the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on the resident populations of these animals, particularly endangered sperm whales and beaked whales. Despite the fact that immediate effects may be difficult to assess, the long term impact can be significant and reflect environmental stresses on the whole deep-water ecosystem since whales are at the top of the ocean food chain." Paper 4aAB6 by Natalia Sidorovskaia et al. will be presented Thursday morning, Nov. 3.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/lay_lang.html

"Getting a hearing aid or cochlear implant is not like picking up a new set of eyeglasses. Hearing devices don't 'fix' your hearing instantly – people with hearing loss need to re-learn what sounds are and how to interpret them. This can be a long and difficult process, despite the best efforts of clinicians and hearing aid engineers. Recent research at the University of Maryland suggests that people with hearing impairment don't merely show lower success in listening to speech; they actually could take a whole different kind of listening strategy to hear – a hearing detour. These differences in listening strategies have implications for what we know about hearing loss and how to effectively treat it." Paper 2aSC4 by Matthew B. Winn et al. will be presented Tuesday morning, Nov. 1.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/162nd/Winn_2aSC4.html

The Town and Country Hotel is located at 500 Hotel Circle North, San Diego, California, 92108. Reservations: 1-800-772-8527; Main Number: 1-619-291-7131.

USEFUL LINKS:
Main meeting website: http://acousticalsociety.org/
Searchable index: http://asa.aip.org/asasearch.html
Hotel site: http://www.towncountry.com/index.cfm
Webcast registration and viewing: http://www.aipwebcasting.com

The Acoustical Society will grant free registration to credentialed full-time journalists and professional freelance journalists working on assignment for major news outlets. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact Charles E. Blue (cblue@aip.org, 301-209-3091), who can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world's leading journal on acoustics), Acoustics Today magazine, ECHOES newsletter, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. For more information about ASA, visit our website at http://www.acousticalsociety.org.