Lay-Language Summaries of Research at Acoustical Society Meeting Now Online

Newswise — Physics of the Blues, making hospitals quiet, and sound waves for planetary exploration are just some of the lay-language versions of papers being presented at the 164th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), held Oct. 22 – 26 in Kansas City, Missouri.

These summaries are posted online in the ASA’s Worldwide Pressroom; some contain sounds, images, and animations. The following are excerpts of selected lay-language papers. The entire collection can be found here: http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/lay_lang.html.

---------------------------------------------Lay-language Paper Highlights---------------------------------------------

1. Perception of Musical and Lexical Tones by Musicians and Non-musicians2. The Sound-absorbing City: New Ideas for Living Environments around Airports3. Relevance and Applicability of the Soundscape Concept to Physiological or Behavioral Effects Caused by Noise at Very Low Frequencies which May Not Be Audible4. Space Acoustics: Sound Waves in Planetary Exploration5. Monitoring of Corrosion in Pipelines Using Guided Waves and Permanently Installed Transducers6. Training Speakers of Other Languages to Hear the Sounds of English7. Acoustic Echolocation for Mobile Robots with Parametric Arrays8. Physics of the Blues: Scales, Harmony, and the Origin of Blues Piano Styles9. What Makes Some Musical Patterns More Pleasing Than Others? Uncovering the Psychological Nature of Musical Appeal10. Making Hospitals Quiet: Addressing the Ongoing Noise Problem in U.S. Hospitals11. Human Body Rhythms Motion Analogy in Music Sound12. The Evolution of Musical Instruments13. Ground Squirrels Have Voices that Are Similar to Those of Their Relatives

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1. Perception of Musical and Lexical Tones by Musicians and Non-musicians

“Pitch is a major auditory attribute of music. It is also used to distinguish words in many tone languages. Since pitch plays a prominent role in both music and language, an intriguing question is whether the ability to process musical pitch is associated with the ability to process linguistic pitch.” Paper 1aMU6 by Chao-Yang Lee et al. will be presented Monday morning, Oct. 22. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Lee_1aMU6.html 2. The Sound-absorbing City: New Ideas for Living Environments around Airports

“In the light of noise awareness and anti-noise-policy, it is surely fair to say that great efforts and progress have been made to provide noise protection measures in urban, suburban and rural environments. Regional and local noise action plans have been implemented in many countries that address the issues and outline specific requirements to reduce noise, including air traffic noise.” Paper 2aNS4 by Juergen Bauer will be presented Tuesday morning, Oct. 23. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Bauer_2aNS4.html

3. Relevance and Applicability of the Soundscape Concept to Physiological or BehavioralEffects Caused by Noise at Very Low Frequencies which May Not Be Audible

“Soundscaping and sound quality engineering, another discipline which also considers human receivers, are merging. The main consideration of both has been responses and attitudes toward audible sounds. Sound quality engineering has provided technical tools important to soundscaping (for example, psychoacoustic measures). It is appropriate and timely to include in the soundscaping sphere human physiological or behavioral effects reported from subliminally heard or even inaudible sound. If a person reports a bad or inappropriate sound or effect from sound, that is an objective measurement and must be taken seriously with triangulation to technical data.” Paper 2aNS6 by Wade Bray will be presented Tuesday morning, Oct. 23. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Bray_2aNS6.html

4. Space Acoustics: Sound Waves in Planetary Exploration

“It is […] important to know the depth of Titan's hydrocarbon seas. Therefore, a custom-made depth sounder (i.e., fish-finder) may be installed under a drifting probe to measure the time that it takes for an emitted pulse to bounce back from the sea floor. Converting the two-way travel time to depth requires knowledge of the speed of sound in Titan's seas. This speed was estimated to increase with depth (due mainly to increasing pressure) and to be generally much faster and less absorptive than in the Earth's oceans.” Paper 2aPA5 by Juan Arvelo and Ralph Lorenz will be presented Tuesday morning, Oct 23. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Arvelo_2aPA5.html

5. Monitoring of Corrosion in Pipelines Using Guided Waves and Permanently Installed Transducers

“Conventional ultrasonic and electromagnetic sensors detect the growth of damage such as corrosion by measuring the thickness of the pipe wall just below the sensor contact position. Therefore, impractically large numbers of permanently installed, remotely operated conventional sensors would be required to monitor damage growth in even short lengths of pipeline. Conversely, a single permanently installed ultrasonic guided wave sensor can monitor damage growth over many meters of pipe, and consequently represents a very advantageous option since it becomes practical to deploy enough sensors to monitor an entire pipeline.” Paper 2aSAb1 by Andrea Galvagni et al. will be presented on Tuesday morning, Oct. 23. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Lowe_2aSAb1.html

6. Training Speakers of Other Languages to Hear the Sounds of English

“Many adult learners of English have difficulty understanding English as spoken by native speakers. This is often true even though these adult learners of English have acquired basic or even advanced skills in reading and writing English. A commonly heard complaint is that native speakers of English ‘talk too fast.’ The problem faced by speakers of other languages learning to perceive spoken English is that early in life their brains have been trained to analyze sounds and cues used in their native languages that differ from those used in English. The differences between the sounds and cues used in various languages are subjects of continuing study as is the study of the development of first and second language perception (Best et al., 2011, Flege et al., 1997, Tsao, Liu, & Kuhl, 2004, Werker & Tees, 2002).” Paper 2aSC3 by Charles S. Watson et al. will be presented on Tuesday morning, Oct. 23. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Miller_2aSC3.html

7. Acoustic Echolocation for Mobile Robots with Parametric Arrays

“In order to perform useful tasks for us, robots must have the ability to notice, recognize, and respond to objects and events in their environment. For walking-speed robots, short-range sensors provide awareness of their immediate surroundings while long-range sensors allow them to avoid fast-moving threats such as oncoming traffic. No one sensor works well enough in all circumstances, for example, a picture taken outside during a clear day is much more useful than one taken on a foggy night. Combining data from active and passive sensors provides the most robust situational awareness, but also requires sophisticated signal and image processing to deal with large amounts of information. Our previous work used sonar backscatter and thermal imaging to identify and differentiate fixed landmarks such as trees, light poles, fences, walls, and hedges. In our current work, we are testing the combination of thermal infrared (IR) and nonlinear acoustic echolocation sensors to detect and classify oncoming vehicular traffic.” Paper 2pSPa5 by Eric A. Dieckman and Mark Hinders will be presented on Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 23. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Dieckman_2pSPa5.html

8. Physics of the Blues: Scales, Harmony, and the Origin of Blues Piano Styles

“The connection between science and art is more intimate than many realize -- both science and art rely on the creative impulse, but work within a rigorous framework of natural laws. The science of acoustics widely informs the design of musical instruments like the guitar, but less widely known is the degree to which science and mathematics influence the evolution of musical styles. ‘The blues’ is a great example.” Paper 3aMU1 by J. Murray Gibson will be presented on Monday morning, Oct. 24. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Gibson_3aMU1.html

9. What Makes Some Musical Patterns More Pleasing Than Others? Uncovering the Psychological Nature of Musical Appeal

“As far back as the time of the ancient Pythagoreans, researchers have suspected that certain acoustic regularities or patterns in sequences of sounds may account for differences in the way people judge their appeal. But the precise quantitative relationship between the nature of an acoustic pattern and what makes the pattern appealing has remained an open problem.” Paper 3aPP8 by Ronaldo Vigo et al. will be presented Wednesday morning, Oct. 24. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Vigo_3aPP8.html

10. Making Hospitals Quiet: Addressing the Ongoing Noise Problem in U.S. Hospitals

“The noise plague inside hospitals has persisted for over a century. Only recently has a perfect storm of incentives, including patient- and family-centered care, evidence-based design, public transparency of quality measures and cuts to Medicare financial reimbursements resulted in a growing focus to decrease noise.” Paper 4aAAb3 by Gary Madaras will be presented Thursday morning, Oct. 25. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Madaras_4aAAb3.html 11. Human Body Rhythms Motion Analogy in Music Sound

“Human movements study from walking in different signals (seismic, ultrasonic, and electromagnetic) initiated [the development of a] signal processing rhythm algorithm, which uses multiple times windows and band pass filters (BPFs) to detect periodic and quasi-periodic sequences in analyzed signals.” Paper 4aPA8 by Alexander Ekimov will be presented Thursday morning, Oct. 25.http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Ekimov_4aMUa2.html

12. The Evolution of Musical Instruments

“Musical instruments have been part of human culture throughout nearly all of our history. They began as pairs of sticks clapped together to provide a rhythmic accompaniment to songs or dances and then evolved to more sophisticated forms as technology became available. Wind instruments were some of the earliest melodic forms because of the availability of bamboo tubes and they imitated in some ways the songs of birds. This evolution continues today and we can guess at some of its future.” Paper 4aMU10 by Neville Fletcher will be presented Thursday morning, Oct. 25. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Fletcher_4pMU10.html

13. Ground Squirrels Have Voices that Are Similar to Those of Their Relatives

“Animal vocalizations contain information, such as the location and quality of a food source, the presence of predators, or even the identity of the caller (Blumstein and Munos, 2005; Bradbury and Vehrencamp, 1998). For example, male birds often sing their own distinct versions of a species' song; this fact has been used to census and monitor songbird populations for some time (McGregor and Peake, 1998). With the exceptions of whales, dolphins, and bats however, few studies have explored the potential of using the information in vocalizations to census and monitor mammalian populations (Hartwig 2005). Even relatively simple vocalizations, such as alarm calls, can contain several different types of information about the caller, including their identity (Slobodchikoff and Placer, 2006).” Paper 4pABb2 by Stacie Hooper et al. will be presented Thursday afternoon, Oct. 25. http://www.acoustics.org/press/164th/Hooper_4pABb2.html

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE 164th ASA MEETING

The Kansas City Marriott Downtown Hotel is located at 200 West 12th Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64105. The hotel main numbers are: 816-421-6800; fax: 816-855-4418.

USEFUL LINKSMain meeting website: http://acousticalsociety.org/meetings/kansas_cityMeeting Abstract Database: http://asa.aip.org/asasearch.htmlHotel site: https://resweb.passkey.com/Resweb.do?mode=welcome_ei_new&eventID=8120158

WORLD WIDE PRESS ROOMASA's World Wide Press Room (www.acoustics.org/press) contains additional tips about newsworthy stories and with lay-language papers, which are 300-1200 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio, and video.

PRESS REGISTRATIONASA 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 ([email protected], 301-209-3091), who can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

****************************This news release was prepared for the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICAThe 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.