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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The quickest way to decide if a watermelon is ripe or not is by tapping on it. And if you’re having trouble detecting the subtleties of the sound, listen to some Nigerian traditional music to get your ears attuned. Nigerian researcher Stephen Onwubiko has found a link between the sounds of drumming in traditional Nigerian music and the sound of fingers drumming on watermelons in the markets. His team will present the findings at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

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Children glean all kinds of information from the people around them. In particular, children mimic and learn speech patterns from their family. Previous work has shown that infants attend selectively to their mother’s voice over another female’s voice. But new research suggests that children learn new words best from other children. Yuanyuan Wang will present research findings from a collaborative work with Amanda Seidl from Purdue University at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

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If you’ve ever wished for a quieter commute, you may be in luck: The low-emission electric vehicles of tomorrow are expected to lower noise pollution as well as air pollution. The prospect of a future powered by environmentally friendly electric vehicles is leading experts to consider the benefits -- and the risks -- of quieter traffic. Two acoustics experts, Klaus Genuit and Rene Weinandy, will present their work studying acoustic vehicle alerting systems, or AVAS, at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

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Militaries have worked hard to develop technologies that simultaneously protect soldiers' hearing and aid in battlefield communication. However, these don’t help if a soldier takes it off to assess the location of incoming gunfire. A French researcher has developed a proof of concept that uses the microphones in a TCAPS system to capture a shooter’s acoustic information and transmit this to a soldier’s smartphone to display shooter location in real time. He will present his shooter location research at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

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Excessive noise is widely known to have negative effects on health, and children in neonatal intensive care units are among the most vulnerable. Researchers have conducted one of the first studies linking the quiet time soundscape inside NICUs with infant health. The study examined the effects of quiet time implementation in multiple NICUs on infants up to 18 months after implementation. They will present their findings at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

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During WWI, William Lawrence Bragg led the development of an acoustic method to locate enemy artillery, work that was so successful that it was soon used widely throughout the British army. The method, known as sound ranging, was also adopted by the U.S. Army when they joined the war, and earned Bragg a military decoration from the British armed forces. Bragg's story will be presented at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

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Press conferences for the 177th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America will be held Tuesday, May 14 in the Laffoon Room at the Galt House. The morning and afternoon press conferences will focus on research into human sounds and language learning, protecting wildlife from man-made obstacles and potentially helping authorities respond faster in an active shooting situation, as well as other discoveries in acoustics.

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The April 15 fire that devastated the roof of Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral left many people around the globe wondering whether it’s possible to rebuild it in a way that can recreate the cultural icon’s complex signature acoustics. Six years ago, acousticians obtained detailed measurements of the acoustics of the main space within Notre Dame, and Brian FG Katz is available to answer questions from reporters about their work and reconstructing the complex acoustics.

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The Acoustical Society of America will hold its 177th meeting May 13-17 at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. This major scientific conference brings together interdisciplinary groups of researchers from many far-flung fields, including physics, medicine, music, psychology, architecture and engineering, to discuss their latest research. It will feature nearly 1,000 presentations on sound and its applications

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Beatboxing is a musical art form in which performers use their vocal tract to create percussive sounds, and a team of researchers is using real-time MRI to study the production of beatboxing sounds. Timothy Greer will describe their work showing how real-time MRI can characterize different beatboxing styles and how video signal processing can demystify the mechanics of artistic style. Greer will present the study at the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9.

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Few things can delight an adult more easily than the uninhibited, effervescent laughter of a baby. Yet baby laughter, a new study shows, differs from adult laughter in a key way: Babies laugh as they both exhale and inhale, in a manner that is remarkably similar to nonhuman primates. The research will be described by Disa Sauter during a talk at the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9.

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Hearing has long been suspected as being "on" all the time -- even in our sleep. Sounds that occur during the night have a way of registering in the brain. Now scientists are reporting results on what is heard and not heard during sleep and what that might mean for a developing brain. At the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9, researchers from Vanderbilt University will present preliminary results from a study in which preschool children showed memory traces for sounds heard during nap time.

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Here's another reason you might be exhausted after that preschool birthday party: Your brain had to work to figure out who actually asked for more ice cream. "What we found with two-and-a-half-year-olds is that it's amazingly hard for adults to identify who's talking," said Angela Cooper, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto. Cooper's co-authored research will be presented in the poster session at the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9.

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To find ways to improve man-made active sensing, scientists worldwide study the sonar systems of bats and dolphins. During the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9, Laura Kloepper will compare bat and dolphin sonar systems, describing her work on how the two animals cope with acoustic interference. She'll use her findings to argue why bats have the superior system.

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Computer algorithms are playing a growing role in analyzing hydrophone audio data when monitoring marine life, but human listeners can complement and enhance these algorithms. A project known as Orcasound has produced a web application that will enable citizen scientists to listen to livestreaming audio from hydrophones near the San Juan Islands. Researchers will describe the new web app and the value of citizen science at the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9.

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Moths are a mainstay food source for bats, which use echolocation to hunt their prey. Scientists are studying how moths have evolved passive defenses over millions of years to resist their primary predators. While some moths have evolved ears that detect the ultrasonic calls of bats, many types of moths remain deaf. In those moths, researchers have found that the insects developed types of “stealth coating” that serve as acoustic camouflage to evade hungry bats. Neil will describe his work during the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9.

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With thousands of fans, college basketball games can be almost deafeningly loud. Some arenas have decibel meters, which can provide some indication of the noise generated. Researchers at Brigham Young University wanted to see whether machine learning algorithms could pick out patterns within the raw acoustical data that indicated the crowd’s mood, thereby providing clues as to what was happening in the game itself. They’ll present at the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9.

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Some conversations are forgotten as soon as they are over, while other exchanges may leave lasting imprints. Researchers want to understand why and how listeners remember some spoken utterances more clearly than others. They’re specifically looking at ways in which clarity of speaking style can affect memory. They will describe their work at the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9.

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Next month, Rodney Rountree, “The Fish Listener,” will talk about his work with Francis Juanes of the University of Victoria, to document calls made by fish in the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve in Peru in a presentation at the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9. These calls may be useful for tracking piranha populations through passive acoustic monitoring.

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One concern with the increase vessel transits in the western Canadian Arctic is how noise pollution can detrimentally affect marine animals -- including Arctic cod -- given the critical importance of these fish in the arctic food web. Researchers at the University of Victoria, WCS Canada and JASCO Applied Sciences have found that the negative impact of noise from shipping vessels can be mitigated by reducing the ship's speed. They will present their research at the Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, Nov. 5-9.

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The Acoustical Society of America's 176th Meeting, to be held in conjunction with the Canadian Acoustical Association's 2018 Acoustics Week in Canada, will take place next month, Nov. 5-9, 2018, at the Victoria Conference Centre in Victoria, Canada. It will be largest gathering of acoustical experts anywhere in the world this year and the premiere meeting on the science of sound.

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Scientists are now working to take cloaking devices from the dramatic realm of science fiction and make them real. Amanda D. Hanford, at Pennsylvania State University, is taking the introductory steps to make acoustic ground cloaks. These materials redirect approaching waves around an object without scattering the wave energy, concealing the object from the sound waves. During the 175th ASA Meeting, Hanford will describe the physics behind an underwater acoustic shield designed in her lab.

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Sorry, new parents -- even though your infants appreciate your coos, they prefer to hear sounds from their peers -- other babies. Even at the pre-babbling stage, infants recognize vowel-like sounds, but they tend to dwell on these sounds when from the mouths of babes. At the 175th ASA Meeting, researchers will present from a new line of research focusing on one aspect of infant speech development: how babies perceive speech with infant vocal properties.

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New technologies for mobile devices may use ultrasonic sound waves, and these devices have varying effects on different subsets of the population. Regulation of these technologies is in many ways “the wild west,” according to Timothy Leighton, who wrote a guide for moving forward in today’s new world of ultrasonic exposure. He will describe his work uncovering the strange history and uncertain future of the use of ultrasonic sound waves during the 175th ASA Meeting.

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Locating and discriminating sound sources is extremely complex because the brain must process spatial information from many, sometimes conflicting, cues. Using virtual reality and other immersive technologies, researchers can use new methods to investigate how we make sense of the word with sound. At the 175th ASA Meeting, G. Christopher Stecker will survey his team’s use of virtual reality and augmented auditory reality to study how people use explicit and implicit sound cues.

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Fossil primates provide important clues about human evolution, but the sounds they made and the soft tissue involved in making those sounds weren’t preserved. So chimpanzees can provide important points of comparison for inferring the sorts of sounds our early ancestors may have made. During the 175th ASA Meeting, Michael Wilson, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota, will present his group’s work searching for similarities between the vocal communications of chimpanzees and humans.

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Humans communicate their intentions, feelings and desires verbally, so voice disorders can have devastating personal and professional consequences. A perceived voice abnormality may lead to a negative assessment of the speaker’s intelligence, health and personality. During the 175th ASA Meeting, researchers will describe their work on voice perception and what it means for a voice to sound “normal.”

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Using both ears to hear increases speech recognition and improves sound localization. Ruth Litovsky, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wants to bring this advantage to people who use cochlear implants. During the 175th ASA Meeting, Litovsky will present data showing a new technique that synchronizes the cochlear signals that stimulate the brain in a way that is similar to people who can hear normally.

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While it is obvious that things like boats can be heard by marine life under the water, what about human activities like swimming, canoeing and scuba diving? During the 175th ASA Meeting, Christine Erbe, director of the Centre for Marine Science & Technology at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia, will describe her work exploring the impact of man-made underwater noise on marine life.

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To make open offices less noisy, researchers are creating small “acoustic islands” using high-back chairs and retroreflective ceilings to direct sound to help you hear your own conversations -- not others’ -- better. During the 175th ASA Meeting, Manuj Yadav, at the University of Sydney, will present his and his colleagues’ work toward solutions to the speech distraction problem in open-plan offices.

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Science promises to sound more exciting than ever at this year's Acoustical Society of America meeting. Presenters will reveal the latest in acoustics research with insight into topics like how new materials could control acoustic waves, improving audio in virtual reality, acoustic levitation, and how certain insects use acoustics to attract a mate, as well as much more.

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Vocoded speech, or distorted speech that imitates voice transduction by a cochlear implant, is used throughout acoustic and auditory research to explore speech comprehension under various conditions. Researchers evaluated whether musicians had an advantage in understanding and reciting degraded speech as compared to nonmusicians, and they will present their work on the effect of musical experience on the ability to understand vocoded speech at the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8, 2017.

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If you have looked closely at a microwave’s warnings or have experienced an accidental explosion, you know that certain foods pose a risk due to an increase in their internal pressure, and potatoes and hard-boiled eggs are among the most common culprits. Researchers from Charles M. Salter Associates will present their research on the sound pressures generated by exploding eggs at the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Marine invertebrates are impacted by the rising levels of underwater noise produced by humans, but the production of underwater noise is not only difficult to control, but the direct effect on marine invertebrates can be challenging to observe or measure. Researchers will present results on the use of a standing wave tube to simulate and measure the effects of anthropogenic noise on marine invertebrates at the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans.

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Spending a night in the hospital is not only stressful, but also loud. The constant beeps, whirrs and alarms ascend to a cacophony that produces anything but a relaxing, restful environment. Researchers will summarize the limited number of studies available on hospital noise and discuss the different approaches health care facilities are taking to bring restful repose to patients across the country during the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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The acoustics of political speech are known to be a powerful influencer of voter preferences, but vocal disorders can change the qualities of a person’s speech, and voice scientists in France have found that this alters politicians’ perceived charisma. The researchers examined two cases of politicians with vocal disorders -- Umberto Bossi and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva -- and will present the findings at the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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The hauntingly beautiful “wailing” sounds of early New Orleans jazz clarinets, often featured in brass bands or jazz funerals, are one of the most distinctive instrument styles in American music. The unique sound begs the question: What’s behind incredible their range of sound and tonal variety? During the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans, Michael G. White will deliver a special presentation about the distinguishing characteristics of the clarinet in early New Orleans jazz.

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Listening requires sensitive hearing and the ability to process information into cohesive meaning. Add everyday background noise and constant interruptions, and the ability to comprehend what is heard becomes that much more difficult. Audiology researchers at Auburn University have found that in such demanding environments, both children and adults depend more on their right ear for processing and retaining what they hear. They will present their work at the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8.

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The classic sparkling wine that has rung in countless new years with a bang may have more to its bubbles. Champagne is notable for its iconic cork popping, but the bubble acoustics also play a key role in determining how expensive that bottle should be. Investigators from the University of Texas at Austin, will be presenting their research the acoustical measurements of champagne bubbles during the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans.

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Low-emission vehicles are considered too quiet for hearing-impaired pedestrians, so the European Union is mandating that they be equipped with acoustic vehicle alerting systems. With these alert systems would come a marked increase in the amount of noise on the roads across Europe. During the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans, researchers will present their work assessing the effectiveness of acoustic vehicle alerting systems and their downsides.

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Most volcanoes erupt beneath the ocean, but scientists know little about them compared to what they know about volcanoes that eject their lava on dry land. Researchers think that with improved monitoring, they can learn more about these submarine eruptions, which threaten travel and alter the ocean soundscape. During the 174th ASA meeting, held Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans, Gabrielle Tepp of the USGS will discuss the challenges and benefits of remote monitoring and what it can teach about submarine volcanoes.

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Acoustical waves and vibrations allow us to hear and experience the world with fuller sensory stimulation. Acoustics has applications that cover a broad spectrum of topics including anthropogenic noise in marine environments, the dangers of hospital noise, and auditory sensitivity after drinking. The Acoustical Society of America’s fall meeting this year will showcase the diversity of sound and its applications, held Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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One popular theory about the Paleolithic cave paintings proposes that sites were chosen based on the acoustics in the caves. The originators of the theory reported a causal connection between the “points of resonance” in three French caves and the position of Paleolithic cave paintings. David Lubman, an acoustic scientist and fellow of ASA, will share some of the insights from his research during Acoustics ’17 Boston, held June 25-29, in Boston, Massachusetts.

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Devoted runners suffer from a surprisingly high rate of injury. One reason for these injuries is that runners endure many shocks from the impact of running, and these cause vibrations that travel from the foot throughout the entire body. Delphine Chadefaux, a post-doctoral researcher who focuses on acoustics and biomechanics, studies these repetitive shocks and investigates how runners adapt their running patterns according to running conditions and will share some of the insights from her research during Acoustics ’17 Boston.