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Air trapped with ice below glacier surfaces becomes a compressed bubble-ice mixture that builds pressure during the long passage to the glacier terminus. The glacier ice holds ancient bubbles of air that can be up to 20 atmospheres of pressure and generate detectable sounds when they are released as the ice melts. Scientists can listen to the release of the air and potentially use the sounds to help them gauge the impact of climate change on the ice floes.

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Killer whales will often travel to different areas to target varieties of prey. In a study including eight years of passive acoustic data, researchers monitored killer whale movements using acoustic tools, finding killer whales are spending more time than previously recorded in the Arctic Ocean, despite risks of ice entrapment there. Their readings indicate this change is directly following the decrease in sea ice in the area.

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To demonstrate the power of focused vibrations, researchers use speaker shakers to generate vibrations in a plate. They place Lego minifigures on the plate, choose a target, and measure the impulse response between each shaker and the target location. Playing that very response from the shakers, but reversed in time, creates sound waves that constructively interfere at the target minifigure. The focused energy knocks over the single Lego minifig without disrupting the surrounding minifigs.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins APL team aim to create an ideal baby monitor that alerts parents when their baby needs attention but does not transmit or amplify sound from other sources. The project uses open-source audio processing hardware, originally intended for hearing aids, to filter out unwanted noises that may lead parents to turn down their baby monitor volume and potentially miss infant cries. They plan to keep babies' whole frequency range in mind as they explore signal processing options.

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The Seattle Space Needle recently underwent a renovation to enhance the visitor experience, and acoustic designers were tasked with ensuring that the new design is a quiet one, incorporating designs targeted toward limiting unnecessary sound transmission and enhancing future visitor experience. They selected acoustic materials that complement the architectural concept for the spaces and provide effective reverberant sound control.

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During pandemic-induced isolation, researchers from the University of Minnesota surveyed older adults with vision loss, with hearing loss, or without either condition, asking the participants about their worries, well-being, and social isolation at six-week intervals. All three groups scored lower on a patient health questionnaire after the pandemic began; however, people with vision or hearing loss faced unique problems in lockdown. Disruptions to mobility systems affected people with low vision, and masks made conversations especially difficult for adults with hearing loss.

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Ocean predators cannot survive on average concentrations of food found in the water. Instead, they survive by exploiting small patches of food-rich areas peppered throughout the world's waterways. Using active acoustics, researchers found the ocean is widely populated with narrow hotspots of activity. Traditionally, these hotspots are missed with conventional sampling tools, but locating them can provide dynamic layered maps of ocean life. The findings signify ocean food and biota as patchy, varying with depth and location, suggesting animals must find and exploit small-scale aggregations of resources.

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Researchers observed a professional soprano singing with and without six types of masks and found masks effectively block aerosols, forcing the breath to exit at the sides. From there, the aerosols travel upward, rising with the upward flow of body heat from the singer. At low frequencies, masks reduced volume but did not have other effects on the singing. However, masks did reduce the power of higher frequencies, which made the enunciation of words less clear and altered the timbre. Masks had no effect on the pitch.

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Difficulty in understanding speech, especially in background noise, is a common concern for older adults. Using a word identification task in quiet and noisy conditions, researchers examined the impact of mild dementia on speech perception. They tested individuals with and without mild dementia and found that word identification scores of those without dementia were significantly better in all conditions, meaning people with mild dementia symptoms recalled fewer words in both quiet and noisy situations.

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Techniques in neuroimaging and neurocomputational modeling are leading to a much better understanding of brain function during speech and how stuttering arises. Inside the brain, one circuit initiates the desired speech in the basal ganglia, while another circuit coordinates the muscles needed to generate the speech. Stuttering stems from the initiation of speech, so only the first of the two circuits is impaired. This theory matches behavioral observations of stuttering.

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Bats use their acoustical abilities to create discrete echo snapshots and build representations of their environments, producing sounds for echolocation through contracting the larynx or clicking their tongues before analyzing the returning echoes. This acoustic information facilitates navigation and foraging, often in total darkness. Echo snapshots provide interrupted sensory information about target insect trajectory to build prediction models of prey location, and by amalgamating representations of prey echoes, bats can determine prey distance, size, shape, and density.

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Converting newly emptied office spaces into podcast studios poses noise challenges not previously realized before hybrid offices began. Offices are less busy and less noisy, meaning recording spaces can be used more often, and newly empty private offices can become podcast studios. But existing spaces present multiple acoustic challenges -- single-glazed windows, nearby noise sources, and limited available surface area, to name a few. Experts recommend considering location, nearby noise sources, and ways to absorb sound to make a studio effective.

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Electric vehicles are so quiet they can create a safety concern. To address this, many governments have mandated artificial sounds be added. In the U.S., regulations require vehicle sounds to be detectable at certain distances for various speeds, and researchers have tested how well people detect electric vehicle sounds in terms of these requirements. Participants in the study were seated adjacent to a lane of the test facility and pressed a button upon hearing an approaching electric vehicle. This allowed the researchers to measure the probability of detection versus distance from the vehicle.

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Filtering and removing the microplastics from water is a difficult task, but acoustic waves may provide a solution. Researchers have developed a filtration prototype that uses two speakers to create acoustic waves. The force produced by the waves separates the microplastics from the water by creating pressure on a tube of inflowing water. As the tube splits into three channels, the microplastic particles are pressed toward the center as the clean water flows toward the two outer channels.

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Researchers have developed microbubbles to acoustically detect blood oxygen levels, since the microbubble shells are altered by structural hemoglobin changes in response to oxygen. The gas filling of the microbubbles causes them to oscillate and vibrate when ultrasound is applied, scattering energy and generating an acoustic response that can be detected by a clinical ultrasound scanner. Preliminary results show a strong correlation between oxygen concentration and the acoustic bubble response.

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AIP Publishing is pleased to announce the winners of the 2021 APL Materials Excellence in Research Award, who were selected for their work on crystal growth, bulk metallic glasses, and memristive devices. As a distinction for young researchers, the award is given to authors who publish exceptional science in the journal and are under 40 years of age. First place was awarded to Matthew Barone, of Cornell University; second place to Chao Zhou, of Yale University; and third to Jan Rieck, of the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

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If an automobile is moving at a steady speed over a hill in the shape of a vertical circular arc, what is the maximum speed it can attain without losing contact with the road at the crest of the hill? In The Physics Teacher, Carl Mungan demonstrates that, despite numerous textbook references stating otherwise, a car will leave the ground on the downside of a peak. The study presents three cases to illustrate the nuances of the different physics principles at play and Mungan ultimately presents a compelling argument, dispelling the long-held notion a car can leave the road at the top of a smooth hill.

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AIP and APS announce Krzysztof Gawędzki and Antti Kupiainen as the recipients of the 2022 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics. The prize is awarded annually to recognize significant contributions to the field of mathematical physics. The citation on their award reads: "for fundamental contributions to quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, and fluid dynamics using geometric, probabilistic, and renormalization group ideas." The prize will be presented at either the APS March Meeting in Chicago or the APS April Meeting in New York City.

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Researchers have developed a technique for assembling optoelectrodes that looks to offer the best of silicon-based electrodes and polymer-based electrodes. In Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B, the scientists demonstrated it is possible to efficiently create a semiflexible light-emitting electrode by removing the stiff silicon material from underneath the tip of the probe. The resulting device can study deep brain tissues with high resolution to record signals from individual nerve cells and stimulate small groups of neurons with state-of-the-art techniques such as optical waveguides.

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In Applied Physics Reviews, researchers categorize origami- and kirigami-based mechanical metamaterials, artificially engineered materials with unusual mechanical properties, and subdivided them into rigid or deformable categories based on the elastic energy landscape. The researchers want to discover new designs, especially curved origami designs, hybrid origami-kirigami designs, modular designs, and hierarchical designs; to design for real-world applications, it will be helpful to explore materials with different properties such as thin or thick, soft or hard, and elastic or plastic.

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In the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, researchers report developing a database of speech samples from children ages 5 to 18 to explore two questions: What types of changes occur in children's voices as they become adults, and how do listeners adjust to the enormous variability in acoustic patterns across speakers? When they presented listeners with both syllables and sentences from different speakers, gender identification improved for sentences. They said this supports the stylistic elements of speech that highlight gender differences and come across better in sentences.

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AIP is pleased to welcome Jovonni Spinner as its diversity, equity and belonging officer. She will spearhead and expand AIP's efforts to lead the physical sciences community toward an impactful understanding of how to be more welcoming to and supportive of diverse physical scientists throughout their careers and work alongside Arlene Modeste Knowles, who has been leading the TEAM-UP project, by developing and rolling out implementation strategies to build on the TEAM-UP recommendations.

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Press conferences at the 181st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America will be held Wednesday, Dec. 1, in room 505 at the Hyatt Regency Seattle. The media availabilities will focus on wide range of newsworthy sessions at the upcoming meeting from killer whales spending more time in the Arctic Ocean to knocking over Lego minifigures with time reversal focused vibration. For more information, contact AIP Media.

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A coalition involving AIP, the European Science Federation, International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, and physical science organizations from 13 countries signed the global call to action regarding the role of physics to mitigate the climate crisis and embrace the idea of a green, environmentally sustainable economy. The organizations pledge to continue international collaboration in research, evolve physics education, focus engagement with governments to promote physics-based solutions, and welcome minoritized, excluded, and marginalized peoples to build careers in physics.

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Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and rising air pollution levels, incidence of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is anticipated to rise, urgently increasing the need for strong model systems. In APL Bioengineering, researchers describe a 3D cell culturing platform that allows study of lung fibroblasts and their microenvironment. The platform enables measurement of cell behaviors and microenvironment changes involved in the disease progression of IPF, and the platform's size and simplicity make it suitable for use in high-throughput drug screening protocols.

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In the journal Chaos, climate scientists identify abrupt transitions in climate records that may have been caused by the climate system crossing a tipping point. They devised a statistical method to determine whether these transitions are simply noise or evidence of a more significant change. Their method is less error-prone than previous methods, since it doesn't rely on human determination. It also allows comparing different records consistently and can identify important events that may have been overlooked in older studies.

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The American Institute of Physics and the National Society of Black Physicists are pleased to announce that physicist Serena Eley is the recipient of the 2021 Joseph A. Johnson III Award for Excellence. The award, now in its second year, is given by AIP and NSBP in recognition of an early career scientist who exemplifies the values of Joseph A. Johnson, a renowned experimental physicist, impactful mentor, and founder of NSBP.

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In Review of Scientific Instruments, researchers have developed a laboratory to simulate comets in space-like conditions. The goal of the Comet Physics Laboratory is to understand the internal structure of comets, as well as how their constituent materials form and react. Many of the lab's future experiments will involve creating sample comet materials with differing compositions. By testing those materials in the space-like chamber, the researchers can compare each sample to what has been observed on actual comets.

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In the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory describe results from a techno-economic analysis aimed at identifying pathways to 100% renewable power systems. By analyzing readily available supply and demand strategies within specific U.S. regions, the team found a combination of resource diversification, excess generation, building efficiency, and demand flexibility improvements could reduce or even eliminate the need for long-duration energy storage in some regions.

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In Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Caltech report using catalytic pyrolysis to turn plastic wastes into a valuable fuel source. They focused on recycling plastic and upgrading plastic into other products or converting it to a vapor with heat, which met a catalyst and turned into the desired fuel-like product.

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As we approach two full years of the COVID-19 pandemic, we now know it spreads primarily through airborne transmission. The virus rides inside tiny microscopic droplets or aerosol ejected from our mouths when we speak, shout, sing, cough, or sneeze. It then floats within the air, where it can be inhaled by and transmitted. This inspired researchers in India to explore how we can better understand and engineer airflow to mitigate the transmission of COVID-19.

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After more than a year of virtual conferences, the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is holding its 181st meeting in person in Seattle, Washington, at the Hyatt Regency Seattle from Nov. 29 through Dec. 3. This major scientific conference brings together interdisciplinary groups of acoustics professionals, spanning many fields, including physics, medicine, music, psychology, wildlife biology, and engineering, to discuss the latest advancements. Follow conference highlights with social media hashtag #ASA181.

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Common semiconductor materials for solar cells, such as silicon, must be grown via an expensive process to avoid defects within their crystal structure that affect functionality. But metal-halide perovskite semiconductors are emerging as a cheaper, alternative material class, with excellent and tunable functionality as well as easy processability.

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Meteorologists and emergency workers continue to contest the popular thinking that waiting out a tornado under an overpass is safe. According to the National Weather Service, doing so could actually increase the risk of death, in part because the wind from a tornado is thought to accelerate as it flows under the overpass, in what's known as the wind tunnel effect.

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Accurate forecasting of epidemic scenarios is critical to implementing effective public health intervention policies. In Chaos, researchers from France and Italy use dynamical stochastic modeling techniques to reveal that infection and recovery rate fluctuations play a critical role in determining peak times for epidemics. Using a susceptible-infected-recovered epidemic model that incorporates daily fluctuations on control parameters, the study applies probability theory calculations to infection counts at the beginning of an epidemic wave and at peak times for populations in Italy.

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In Applied Physics Letters, researchers outline how a robot could be taught to navigate through a maze by electrically stimulating a culture of brain nerve cells connected to the machine. These nerve cells were grown from living cells and acted as the physical reservoir for the computer to construct coherent signals. These findings suggest goal-directed behavior can be generated without any additional learning by sending disturbance signals to an embodied system.

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Researchers have found that matching the locations of faces with the speech sounds they are producing significantly improves our ability to understand them, especially in noisy areas where other talkers are present. In the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, they outline a set of online experiments that mimicked aspects of distracting scenes to learn more about how we focus on one audio-visual talker and ignore others.

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Nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as isolation, quarantines, and lockdowns, have been implemented in an effort to contain the pandemic, but these are often disruptive and costly. In Chaos, researchers identify new and sustainable interventions to contain outbreaks while minimizing the economic and social costs. They built a data-driven mobility model to simulate COVID-19 spreading in Hong Kong, by combining synthetic population, human behavior patterns, and a viral transmission model, and found that by controlling a small percentage of grids, the virus could be largely contained.

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While most of the COVID-19 vaccines are designed as a two-dose regimen, some countries have prioritized vaccinating as many people as possible with a single dose before giving out an additional dose. In the journal Chaos, researchers illustrate the conditions under which a "prime first" vaccine campaign is most effective at stopping the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The team found the vaccine waning rate to be a critically important factor in the decision.

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In Physics of Fluids, researchers examine the dynamics of social distancing practices, common defense against the spread of COVID-19, through the lens of particle-based flow simulations. The study models social distance as the distance at which particles, representing pedestrians, repel fellow particles and sheds light on the relationship between social distancing and pedestrian flow dynamics in corridors by illustrating how adherence to social distancing protocols affects two-way pedestrian movement in a shared space.

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Researchers have long suspected a connection between information and the physical universe, with various paradoxes and thought experiments used to explore how or why information could be encoded in physical matter. In AIP Advances, a University of Portsmouth researcher attempts to shed light on exactly how much of this information is out there and presents a numerical estimate for the amount of encoded information in all the visible matter in the universe -- approximately 6 times 10 to the power of 80 bits of information.

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It has long been theorized that hydrogen, helium, and lithium were the only chemical elements in existence during the Big Bang, and that supernova explosions are responsible for transmuting these elements into heavier ones. Researchers are now challenging this and in AIP Advances propose an alternative model for the formation of nitrogen, oxygen, and water based on the history of Earth's atmosphere. They postulate that the 25 elements with atomic numbers smaller than iron were created via an endothermic nuclear transmutation of two nuclei, carbon and oxygen.

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In underwater acoustics, deep learning may improve sonar systems to help detect ships and submarines in distress or in restricted waters. However, noise interference can be a challenge. In the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, researchers explore an attention-based deep neural network to tackle this problem. They tested two ships, comparing their results with a typical deep neural network, and found the ABNN increases its predictions considerably as it gravitates toward the features closely correlated with the training goals.

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As the delta variant continues to spread, guidelines from the CDC recommend even the vaccinated wear masks indoors to prevent exposure and transmission, though it is less clear what people should do when outside. In Physics of Fluids, researchers use a large eddy simulation to model cough jets in breezy and calm conditions. They found when a person coughs outdoors, wind flowing in the same direction can propagate the virus faster over longer distances than in calm conditions.

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In recent years, much progress has been made in the wind energy industry as the cost of development has declined significantly with emerging technologies and incentive policies. Nevertheless, wind farms can be made more efficient. In Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, researchers examine diurnal and seasonal patterns of wind speeds and their impact on the adequacy of energy production. The results helped them develop a seasonal adequacy assessment procedure.

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The Journal of Chemical Physics is showcasing research from leading women in physical chemistry and chemical physics through a collection of papers that highlight great scientific accomplishments in the fields and honor the women who inspired the scientists. The "Special Collection in Honor of Women in Chemical Physics and Physical Chemistry" received more than 250 submissions; most include a dedication to specific women in the field, past or present.

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The move to electric vehicles calls for more reliable and cost-effective lithium batteries. Next-generation cathodes look to provide such advances soon. In APL Materials, researchers provide a road map for the field to improve on technology and techniques geared toward identifying new cathodes for electric vehicles. They outline the strides in recent years, including protective coatings and additives that extend battery lifetime and improve ion transport, approaches to building cathodes optimized for high-density storage, and delivery of electrode designs resistant to fracture.

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The 2021 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi. Manabe and Hasselmann were honored for trying to explain the complexities of the Earth's climate, while Parisi was honored for his work examining the changing landscape of material states. To help journalists and the public understand the context of this work, AIP is compiling a Nobel Prize resources page featuring relevant scientific papers and articles, quotes from experts, photos, multimedia, and other resources.

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Trying to find the right image for a scientific story can be daunting. The Niels Bohr Library & Archives is making it easier to locate that visual impact for a news piece. More than 28,000 digital images from the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives are available for free to anyone who is searching for historic images of labs and researchers, headshots, and candid photos of physical scientists with their co-workers, families, and friends. The new, searchable location of the photos also houses manuscripts, publications, audiovisual materials, and more.

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The Nobel Prize committee is scheduled to physics award the honor Tuesday, Oct. 5, and AIP is ready to help reporters and outlets be prepared for the auspicious occasion. A list of scientific resources and contacts will be filled with relevant information pertaining to the winners and their scientific achievements and AIP will provide interview opportunities, multimedia choices, and in-depth coverage.