Curated News:

Article ID: 713083

Last year, an estimated 18 million cancer cases existed worldwide. This year, an estimated 1.76 new cancer cases will be diagnosed and 606,000 cancer deaths will occur in the United States. The number of cancer survivors worldwide is also growing, with more than 15.5 million cancer survivors in the United States alone – a figure expected to double in the coming decades. Ongoing research is necessary to help prevent and treat cancer. This is a selection of related research that will be presented during ACSM's 66th Annual Meeting – May 28-June 1 in Orlando, Florida.

Article ID: 712667

Acoustics consultant Klaus Genuit says that new ISO guidelines for defining, measuring and evaluating soundscapes are a big step forward in guiding the creation of audibly fine restaurants. "A soup might be delicious or not, but you can't answer this by knowing the temperature of the soup. It is the same with restaurant soundscapes -- you need a lot more information than just noise level," he said. He will present an application of the new ISO restaurant soundscape standards at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

Article ID: 712672

Current treatments of Type 2 diabetes can help the body use insulin at various stages of the disease, but they can also be expensive and subject patients to lifelong medication regimens and side effects. Thanks to new therapeutic ultrasound technology, one promising alternative looks to reshape how early Type 2 diabetes is managed. A group of researchers has used ultrasound therapy to stimulate insulin release from mice on demand. The team will present their findings at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

Article ID: 713065

University of Washington researchers have defined for the first time what children mean when they say technology is “creepy.”

Article ID: 712664

Referees and others using whistles on the job need a simple way to determine whether it’s harmful to their hearing, so researchers set out to put it to the test and to provide some clarity and damage risk criteria for impulse noise exposures. To do this, the group carefully measured and analyzed the acoustic signature of 13 brands of whistles identified as the “most commonly used” by 300 sports officials -- both indoors and outdoors. They will present their findings during the 177th ASA Meeting.

Article ID: 712715

Every year, bald and golden eagles are killed when they inadvertently fly into wind turbine blades. One possible way to prevent these deaths is to chase the birds away with acoustic signals. To determine what types of sounds are most effective in deterring the birds, researchers tested the behavioral responses of bald eagles to a battery of both natural and synthetic acoustic stimuli. Auditory neuroscientist JoAnn McGee will present the results of those tests at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

Article ID: 712698

Screaming is well-studied in animals, but much less is known about how human screams function in communication, or how similar or different human screams are from those of other species. To help unlock the secrets of human screaming, researchers at Emory University have studied human vocal sounds, representing a broad acoustical range and array of emotional contexts, and studied what makes a sound a scream or not. They will describe the work in a presentation at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17, in Louisville.

Article ID: 712704

Wind turbines are a critical component in the strategy for energy independence, but these massive structures are also killing bats. Now, researchers from Texas A&M University are exploring a unique passive acoustic whistle mounted on turbine blades to warn bats of the deadly turbines using a sound they can easily hear and recognize. They will present the team’s research findings at the 177th ASA Meeting.

Article ID: 712654

Conversation is an important part of what makes us human. Previous research has shown that children begin to develop this skill at a young age. While many assume that mothers instigate communication with their children, new research suggests that children are the ones who get the conversation started. “I was surprised that kids were drivers of conversation,” said Mark VanDam, who will present his team’s research findings at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

Article ID: 712660

The different soundscapes of NICUs has recently attracted interest in how changes in what we hear in our earliest days might affect language development in the brain. One ongoing study is hoping to better understand these differences by painting a clearer picture of what kinds of sounds full-term infants are exposed to in the womb. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are conducting one of the first studies on how often full-term fetuses hear spoken language before birth. They will present their preliminary findings at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.