Curated News: Scientific Meetings

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As restaurants get noisier, the increasing noise levels could deter older patrons, especially those with mild to severe hearing loss. Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will discuss their work on investigating acceptable noise levels that won’t cause restaurant visitors to stay away from certain establishments. Identifying acceptable noise levels helps establish truly “age-friendly” communities. The session will take place as part of the 179th ASA Meeting.

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At a North Carolina beach, researchers have been poking and prodding the sand to study how moisture levels affect sounds as they move across the environment. Over short distances, even moderately wet sand reflects sound more like water does than as a solid surface does. Faith Cobb and her team are looking into if the same is true for long-range sound propagation. Their findings will be presented as a part of the 179th ASA Meeting.

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The unique partnership between root-dwelling microbes and the plants they inhabit can reduce drought stress.

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Using a trained neural network and data from the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey, a research team led by Los Alamos National Laboratory revealed the first direct observation of rupture propagation during a slow earthquake.

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With the ubiquity of masks due to the coronavirus pandemic, understanding speech has become difficult. This especially applies in classroom settings, where the presence of a mask and the acoustics of the room have an impact on students’ comprehension. Pasquale Bottalico has been studying the effects of masks on communication. He will discuss his findings on the best way to overcome hurdles in classroom auditory perception caused by facial coverings at the 179th ASA Meeting.

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Visual cues can change listeners’ perception of others’ accents, and people’s past exposure to varied speech can also impact their perception of accents. Ethan Kutlu will discuss his team’s work testing the impact that visual input and linguistic diversity has on listeners’ perceived accentedness judgments in two different locations: Gainesville, Florida, and Montreal, Canada. The session will take place Dec. 9 as part of the 179th ASA Meeting.

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A noninvasive method to measure the stiffness parameters along fibrous pathways within the brain is helping researchers explore traumatic brain injuries. The stiffness of these tissues can reveal clues about changes and pathologies within the brain’s gray and white matter. During the 179th ASA Meeting, Anthony J. Romano will describe the method known as waveguide elastography. Waveguide elastography merges magnetic resonance elastography and diffusion tensor imaging with a combination of isotropic and anisotropic inversion algorithms.

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Restoring science in the White House is the topic of the presidential roundtable discussion at that the Society for Risk Analysis’ (SRA) Virtual Annual Meeting, on Thursday, December 17 from 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. ET.

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Several acoustic studies have shown that the position of your eyes determines where your visual spatial attention is directed, which automatically influences your auditory spatial attention. Researchers are currently exploring its impact on speech intelligibility. During the 179th ASA Meeting, Virginia Best will describe her work to determine whether there is a measurable effect of eye position within cocktail party listening situations.

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As part of the 179th ASA Meeting, 25 sound scientists summarize their innovative research into 300-500 words for a general audience and provide helpful video, photos, and audio. These lay language papers are written for everyone, not just the scientific community. Acousticians are doing important work to make hospitals quieter, map the global seafloor, translate musical notes into emotion, and understand how the human voice changes with age.

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Antarctica’s next deep ice core, a 1.5-mile core reaching back to 130,000-year-old ice, will be carried out by a multi-institutional U.S. team led by UW’s Eric Steig. The site hundreds of miles from today’s coastline could provide clues to the most recent collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

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What if a commercial audio speaker could function like an autozoom projector does for light, and you could deliver the sound people want where they want it? Chinmay Rajguru, from the University of Sussex, will discuss his research team’s work creating a sound projector that can deliver spatial sound at a distance by forming a beam of audible sound at the 179th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Dec. 7-10.

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The COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. has been characterized by rapidly changing information, a high degree of uncertainty, and conflicting information about transmission, vulnerability and mitigation methods. Several studies focused on public perceptions of the pandemic and the impact of media will be presented during two sessions on December 15, from 2:30-4:00 during the Society for Risk Analysis virtual Annual Meeting, December 13-17, 2020.

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Stethoscopes are a ubiquitous and cost-effective tool for medical diagnosis, but they open the door to subjectivity and can experience high levels of environmental noise. This makes it difficult to properly diagnose lung abnormalities, like COVID-19, by listening to sounds from the body. James West, at Johns Hopkins University, has been developing a digital stethoscope equipped with artificial intelligence for accurate lung diagnoses. He will discuss its opportunities and obstacles at the 179th ASA Meeting.

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During tornado formation, sound waves are produced at very low frequencies. And if your name is GLINDA, you do not need to be in Oz to hear them. Brandon White, at Oklahoma State University, is part of an engineering team that developed the Ground-based Local Infrasound Data Acquisition (GLINDA) system for the acoustic measurement of weather phenomena. He will discuss its design and capabilities at the 179th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Dec. 7-10.

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Researchers in Poland have created smart road signs that use built-in Doppler radar, video, and acoustic radar and weather stations to monitor road traffic and conditions to warn drivers in real-time of hazards and prevent collisions on highways. During the 179th ASA Meeting, Dec. 7-10, Andrzej Czyzewski will describe his applied research project to develop autonomous road signs with built-in acoustic radar devices.

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Press conferences at the 179th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of American will cover the latest in acoustical research, from the impact of face masks to the beating of mosquito wings, and will be held virtually Dec. 9-11. To ensure the safety of attendees, volunteers, and ASA staff, Acoustics Virtually Everywhere will be hosted entirely online.

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Shape, color, and gloss.

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Research shows nitrogen efficiency and productivity not a tradeoff

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The number of wildfires and the amount of land they consume in the western U.S. has substantially increased since the 1980s, a trend often attributed to ongoing climate change.

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The American Society for Cell Biology is pleased to present the Keith R. Porter Award to Anthony Hyman, given to an eminent cell biologist in memory of one of ASCB’s founding members. The Porter lecture will be presented on Wednesday, December 9 at 11:30 am ET in the virtual meeting platform.

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The rise of online hate speech is a disturbing, growing trend in countries around the world, with serious psychological consequences and the potential to impact, and even contribute to, real-world violence. A new paper offers a framework for studying the dynamics of online hate and counter speech, and offers the first large-scale classification of millions of instances such interactions on Twitter.

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A machine learning model developed by a team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists to aid in COVID-19 drug discovery efforts is a finalist for the Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research.

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A new kind of radar could make it possible for self-driving cars to navigate safely in bad weather. Electrical engineers at the University of California San Diego developed a clever way to improve the imaging capability of existing radar sensors so that they accurately predict the shape and size of objects in the scene. The system worked well when tested at night and in foggy conditions.

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Prachee Avasthi was selected by the Women in Cell Biology (WICB) of the American Society for Cell Biology for the WICB Junior Award for Excellence in Research. Avasthi is an associate professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College, though she noted that the work recognized by this award was done at the University of Kansas Medical Center, where she was until recently.

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MariaElena Zavala, professor of biology at California State University, Northridge, has been invited to present the 2020 Mentoring Keynote at Cell Bio Virtual 2020–an ASCB|EMBO online meeting. The title of her talk will be “Changing the Face of Science.” The talk will premiere on December 2 at 11:45 am on the virtual meeting platform.

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Argonne scientists will attend the virtual SC20 conference to share research advances in areas ranging from exascale computing and big data analysis to AI and quantum computing.

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People who exercise by walking at their own pace burn fat most efficiently, according to researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.

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As climate change influences our ecosystems, microbes may help crops and environmental management solutions succeed in stressful conditions

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Researchers have designed a smart fabric that can detect non-metallic objects ranging from avocadoes to credit cards, according to a study from Dartmouth College and Microsoft Research.

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The 4 R’s Advances in Primary Research of Nutrient Stewardship

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More than 7,000 gastroenterologists and other health care professionals so far will convene virtually for the premier clinical gastroenterology event—the American College of Gastroenterology’s 85th Annual Scientific Meeting and Postgraduate Course (Virtual ACG 2020)—to review the latest scientific advances in gastrointestinal research, treatment of digestive diseases, and clinical practice management.

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Artificial intelligence and simulation models use agricultural data for crop improvement

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Contaminated soils – and foods – influenced by soil factors

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While development of perennial Kernza wheat is successful, other crops may not be adaptable

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Symposium titled “Climate Smart Organic Agriculture” will be part of the ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting

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Cornell University researchers have invented an earphone that can continuously track full facial expressions by observing the contour of the cheeks – and can then translate expressions into emojis or silent speech commands.

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University of Washington researchers have developed a tiny sensor that can ride aboard a small drone or an insect, such as a moth, until it gets to its destination. Then the sensor can fall up to 72 feet and land on the ground without breaking.

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Symposium will highlight the development of cutting-edge strategies to enable precision breeding of the next generation of high-yielding and stress-resilient crops.

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Theme of the all-virtual meeting is Translating Visionary Science to Practice

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Agronomists, crop scientists, and soil scientists from around the world to meet virtually

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Upcoming 5G wireless networks that will provide faster cell phone service may lead to inaccurate weather forecasts, according to a Rutgers study on a controversial issue that has created anxiety among meteorologists.

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Researchers develop first-ever battery-free, energy-harvesting, interactive device

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APL scientists are working with the intelligence community to develop fundamentally new methods to inspect artificial intelligence for Trojans — vulnerabilities that deep networks are exposed to during the AI training process.

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Scientists are investigating how to equip quantum computers with artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches.

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The National Science Foundation has awarded a pair of professors at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, a nearly $500,000, three-year grant to develop a better way to wipe data from the solid-state drives (SSDs).

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A press conference on this topic will be held Tuesday, Aug. 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern time online at www.acs.org/fall2020pressconferences.

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A press conference on this topic will be held Tuesday, Aug. 20, at 9 a.m. Eastern time online at www.acs.org/fall2020pressconferences.