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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.

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Detecting Unexploded Ordnance; Acoustical Archeology of the Renaissance; and Chimp and Human Speech Perception. Scientists will present some of the latest findings from the science of sound at a webcast press briefing at 8 a.m. PDT (11 a.m. EDT) on Monday, October 31, 2011.

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On the nanoscale, particles flow in unexpected ways; For diabetics, spectroscopy may replace painful pinpricks; Nanotechnology to the rescue: Biosensing tool to detect salmonella holds promise for preventing common food poisoning.

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The latest news and discoveries from the science of sound will be featured at the 162nd meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) held October 31 – November 4, 2011, at the Town and Country Hotel in San Diego, Calif. Experts in acoustics will present research spanning a diverse array of disciplines, including medicine, music, speech communication, noise, and marine ecology. Journalists working remotely are invited to participate in a webcast on Monday, October 31, at 11 a.m. EDT (8 a.m. PDT).

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The AVS 58th International Symposium & Exhibition will be held Oct. 30 - Nov. 4, 2011, at the Nashville Convention Center in Nashville, Tenn.

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Author George Musser receives AIP's Science Writing Award for article "Could Time End?" in Scientific American; author Vicki Oransky Wittenstein receives AIP’s Science Writing Award – Children's Category for Planet Hunter: Geoff Marcy and the Search for Other Earths.

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A new mathematical model explains patterns of human movement by considering the costs; X-ray camera makes A-grade particle detector; Point defects in super-chilled diamonds may offer stable candidates for quantum computing bits

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The Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced Tuesday, October 4. The prize is given for the most groundbreaking and influential research. Its history chronicles many of the discoveries that underpin not only modern technology, but also our understanding of the Universe and our place in the cosmos. To discuss in advance of this year’s announcement, the impact of the prizes and to help explain the scientific significance and societal implications of the Nobel in Physics, the American Institute of Physics (AIP) provides the following experts:

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Sneaking up on the glassy transition of water; E-textiles get fashion upgrade with memory-storing fiber; Scientists model the pathways of pain-blocking meds.

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The 162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) will include more than 1,000 presentations in the physical sciences, engineering, and medicine. Topics include: the evolution of speech; the science of music; the impact of noise on the natural world; and how sound – both pleasant and irritating – impacts the way we learn, work, and play. This meeting will take place October 31 - November 4 in San Diego, California, at the Town and Country Hotel.

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‘Oscar Madison’ approach to solar cells may outshine ‘Felix Unger’ design; Graphene may open the gate to future terahertz technologies; Bursting neurons follow the same beat, sometimes; Parabolic mirrors concentrate sunlight to power lasers.

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AVS International Symposium to feature frontier science from the world of materials, manufacturing, medicine, and more.

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Scientists put a new spin on traditional information technology; Magnetic memories manipulated by voltage, not heat; New microscope might see beneath skin in 4-D; What was that again? A mathematical model of language incorporates the need for repetition.

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In this issue: 1) Near-infrared imaging system shows promise as future pancreatic cancer diagnostic tool; 2) Research team achieves first two-color STED microscopy of living cells; 3) Cellular laser microsurgery illuminates research in vertebrate biology.

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In a new ranking of how well the states’ K-12 schools are preparing their students for science and engineering careers, Massachusetts leads the pack, while Mississippi trails behind as ‘worst in the United States.’ The rankings are reported in the summer issue of the Newsletter of the Forum on Education of the American Physical Society.

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When the current financial crisis hit, the failure of traditional economic doctrines to provide any sort of early warning shocked not only financial experts worldwide, but also governments and the general public, and we all began to question the effectiveness and validity of those doctrines. A research team based in Israel decided to investigate what went awry, searching for order in an apparently random system.

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The top twenty physics students in the United States are beginning ten days of rigorous academic training, interactive learning, and friendship building as they prepare to test themselves on the world stage.

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The Annual Meeting of the American Crystallographic Association (ACA) will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana. Crystallography is the science devoted to exploring the arrangement of atoms in regular crystalline solids and in complicated molecules. The ACA is the largest professional society for crystallography in the United States, and this is its main meeting.

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For people with hearing problems, a cochlear implant can transform their world. The tiny computer chip is surgically implanted into the skull to simulate the work done by the busy hairs in the inner ear to process sounds—and the implants perform very well rendering spoken language. Melody perception, however, remains a challenge.

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How do babies decode all the spoken sounds they hear to learn words and their meanings? An “alien” language may provide a clue, according to new research to be presented at the 161st annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Seattle, Wash.

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Noisy classrooms aren’t just bad for harried teachers’ nerves—they can significantly affect the ability of students to listen and learn. Researchers at the Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, have built a unique simulated classroom to help measure the scope of those effects—and how they can be avoided.

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It is not uncommon for us to draw knee-jerk conclusions about people based on how they speak. Those snap judgments aren’t always inaccurate—even when based on less than a single word, according to a new study to be presented at this month’s Acoustical Society of America meeting in Seattle.

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‘Feeling’ sounds, muffling explosions and car exhaust, and ‘hearing’ damage to spacecraft are just some of the approximately 50 lay-language versions of papers being presented at the 161st Acoustical Society of America’s (ASA) meeting in Seattle, Wash., May 23-27. These summaries are posted online in the ASA’s Worldwide Pressroom; many contain evocative sounds, images, and animations.

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The American Physical Society has released a new assessment — Direct Air Capture of CO2 with Chemicals — to better inform the scientific community on the technical aspects of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

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The latest news and discoveries from the science of sound will be featured at the 161st meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) held May 23-27, 2011, at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel in Seattle, Wash. During the meeting, the world's foremost experts in acoustics will present research spanning a diverse array of disciplines, including medicine, music, psychology, engineering, speech communication, noise control, and marine biology.

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Ultraviolet light can safely sterilize food, water and medical equipment by disrupting the DNA and other reproductive molecules in harmful bacteria. Traditionally, mercury lamps have supplied this UV light, however mercury release from power generation and lamp disposal have generated discussion of harmful environmental impact. A potentially energy efficient and non-toxic alternative is the light-emitting diode, or LED, which can be made to emit at almost any desired wavelength.

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Gamma rays are the most energetic type of light wave and can penetrate through lead and other thick containers. A powerful new source of gamma rays will allow officials to search for hidden reactor fuel/nuclear bomb material.

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Invisibility appears to be the next possible advance in the use of Terahertz radiation in medicine, security, and communications. A research team from Northwestern and Oklahoma State universities claims to be first to cloak a three-dimensional object from view in a broad range of Terahertz frequency light, which lies between infrared and microwaves.

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Watching things disappear “is an amazing experience,” admits Joachim Fischer of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. But making items vanish is not the reason he creates invisibility cloaks. Rather, the magic-like tricks are attractive demonstrations of the fantastic capabilities that new optical theories and nanotechnology construction methods now enable.

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Sonic booms, the science of making music, the impact of noise on people and animals, and bursts of sound-induced light are just some of the intriguing topics that will be presented at the 161st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA).

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Using minute graphite particles 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, mechanical engineers at Arizona State University hope to boost the efficiency—and profitability—of solar power plants.

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Spider venom toxins are useful tools for exploring how ion channels operate in the body. These channels control the flow of ions across cell membranes, and are key components in a wide variety of biological processes and human diseases.

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Ten years ago, scientists seeking to understand how a certain type of feature on a cell called an L-type calcium channel worked created a knockout mouse missing both copies of the CACNA1D gene.

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Pacemaker cells in the sinoatrial node control heart rate, but what controls the ticking of these pacemaker cells? New research by Angelo Torrente and his colleagues of the M.E. Mangoni group’s, reveals, for the first time, a critical functional interaction between Cav1.3 calcium ion (Ca2+) channels and ryanodine-receptor (RyR) mediated Ca2+ signaling.

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Researchers have created the first mouse models of human MYH9 genetic disorders, which cause several problems -- including enlarged platelets and sometimes fatal kidney disease.

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Scientists in Israel and California have developed an instrument for rapidly analyzing molecular interactions that take place viruses and the cells they infect. By helping to identify interactions between proteins made by viruses like HIV and hepatitis and proteins made by the human cells these viruses infect, the device may help scientists develop new ways of disrupting these interactions and find new drugs for treating those infections.

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Viruses can penetrate every part of the body, making them potentially good tools for gene therapy or drug delivery. But with our immune system primed to seek and destroy these foreign invaders, delivering therapies with viruses is currently inefficient and can pose a significant danger to patients.

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Researchers at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Lisbon, Portugal and the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are making major strides toward understanding the life cycle of flaviviruses, which include some of the most virulent human pathogens: yellow fever virus, Dengue virus, and the West Nile Virus, among others.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 8, 2011) -- In work that is pushing the "diffraction barrier" associated with microscopic imaging of living cells, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM demonstrated the power of a new super-resolution microscopy technique called Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM), which can simultaneously image multiple molecules in living immune cells.

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Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Texas at Dallas are reporting today at the 55th Annual Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD how they are using a novel 3D cell imaging method for studying the complex spatial-temporal dynamics of protein transport, providing a solution to this fundamental problem in cell biology.

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All our daily activities, from driving to work to solving a crossword puzzle, depend on signals carried along the body's vast network of neurons. Propagation of these signals is, in turn, dependent on myriad small molecules within nerve cells -- receptors, ion channels, and transmitters -- turning on and off in complex cascades. Until recently, the study of these molecules in real time has not been possible, but researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Munich have attached light-sensing modules to neuronal molecules, resulting in molecules that can be turned on and off with simple flashes of light.

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From grinding heavy metal to soothing ocean waves, the sounds we hear are all perceptible thanks to the vibrations felt by tiny molecular motors in the hair cells of the inner ear. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have now identified the mechanism by which a single amino acid change can disrupt the normal functioning of one of the critical components of that physiology -- a molecular motor protein called myo1c, which resides in the cochlea of the inner ear.

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New findings from researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto may shed light on the mechanisms that regulate the organization of receptors on the cell surface, a critical aspect of cell signaling not well understood at this time.

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A team of physicists has taken a big step toward the development of useful graphene spintronic devices. The physicists, from the City University of Hong Kong and the University of Science and Technology of China, present their findings in the American Institute of Physics journal Applied Physics Letters.

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A development described in the journal Applied Physics Letters may soon revolutionize handheld electronics, flat-panel displays, touch panels, electronic ink, and solar cells. Physicists in Iran have created a spintronic device based on "armchair" graphene nanoribbons that could one day replace more expensive indium tin oxide.

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The Biophysical Society's 55th Annual Meeting takes place from March 5-9, 2011 at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, MD. There, more than 6,500 scientists will gather to discuss the latest advances in understanding and breakthroughs in technology at every level of biophysics -- from atoms and molecules to cells, organisms, and environments.

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A straightforward new way to calculate, compile, and graphically present solar radiation measurements in a format that is accessible to decision makers and the general public has been developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and is described in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.

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High energy costs are one drawback of making clean water from waste effluents. According to an article in the journal Biomicrofluidics, a new system that combines two different technologies proposes to break down contaminants using the cheapest possible energy source, sunlight.

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A new twist on spectroscopy, described in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, allows for an unprecedented level of such filtering, one that could transform everything from the search for extraterrestrial intelligence to super-sensitive spy gear to scan hotel rooms for hidden microphones or cameras.

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Researchers in Australia have developed a new method to analyze the effect of fatigue on the central nervous system. In this month's issue of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, they describe how sustained wakefulness slows speech and diminishes variations in pitch and tone -- findings relevant to public safety officials, military leaders, and employers concerned with fatigue among their workers.