Hongjun Lin from New York University will present results on the acoustic characteristics of a physical model of the Parasaurolophus’ crest as part of the virtual 187th ASA Meeting. Lin created a physical setup made of tubes to represent a mathematical model that will allow researchers to discover what was happening acoustically inside the crest.
In a session of the 187th ASA Meeting, Michael Stocker of Ocean Conservation Research will present work examining the circumstances surrounding the whale deaths off the coast of New Jersey in the winter of 2022-23, which prompted concern that survey work in the area somehow contributed to their deaths.
Bożena Kostek from Gdańsk University of Technology is exploring how speech-to-text programs can be better used in the medical field. By studying how clear speech affects STT accuracy, she hopes to improve its usefulness for health care professionals. A detailed audio dataset was created with Polish medical terms spoken by doctors and specialists in areas like cardiology and pulmonology. This dataset was analyzed using an Automatic Speech Recognition model for transcription, and several metrics were used to evaluate the quality of the speech recognition.
Recent research by Joseph Vignola at the Catholic University of America is revolutionizing fresco assessment. Vignola and his team have applied laser Doppler vibrometry to locate delamination in the frescos of Constantino Brumidi in the U.S. Capitol building.
In July 1982, researchers in New Zealand recorded unidentifiable sounds as a part of an experiment to characterize the soundscape of the South Fiji Basin. The sound consisted of four short bursts resembling a quack, which inspired the name of the sound “Bio-Duck,” and researchers came to a consensus that the sounds had to be biological. Ross Chapman will present his work analyzing the mystery sounds as part of the virtual 187th ASA Meeting, presenting the waveform and spectrum of the recordings, as well as further evidence that the work was a conversation between multiple animals.
The pipe organ stands as a bastion in concert halls and church sanctuaries, and even when not in use, it affects the acoustical environment around it. Researchers performed a sine-sweep through loudspeakers facing the organ pipes and measured the response with a microphone at different positions. They verified experimentally that sympathetic resonance does occur in organ pipes during musical performances and speeches, and that the overall amplitude increases when the signal matches the resonance of one or more pipes.
Research by Lixian Guo at the University of Canterbury may make it possible to keep electronic devices powered with another piece of equipment you’re likely to bring with you while exploring the great outdoors: camping stoves. Guo’s work focuses on using the excess heat produced by stoves to create a thermoacoustic engine, which converts thermal energy into acoustic energy.
People with Alzheimer’s exhibit a loss of motor control along with cognitive decline, and one of the earliest signs of this decay can be spotted in involuntary eye movements known as saccades. These quick twitches of the eyes in Alzheimer’s patients are often slower, less accurate, or delayed compared to those in healthy individuals.
In this week’s Physics of Fluids, researchers study how Champatis roll and bounce down inclines. The authors released a heap of the seeds down an inclined plane while a camera recorded their descent to analyze their speed and the dynamics of their movement. The grains start to spread out slowly, then decrease quickly as they move downstream, akin to rock avalanches.
In this week’s Physics of Fluids, researchers employ machine learning to more accurately model the boundary layer wind field of tropical cyclones. Conventional approaches to storm forecasting involve large numerical simulations run on supercomputers incorporating mountains of observational data, and they still often result in inaccurate or incomplete predictions. In contrast, the author’s machine learning algorithm is equipped with atmospheric physics equations that can produce more accurate results faster and with less data.
Danielle Speller is the 2024 winner of the Joseph A Johnson award for her research on neutrinoless double beta decay and dark matter research, and for mentoring the next generation of aspiring physicists. Jessica Esquivel receives an Honorable Mention her work at Fermilab and for fostering equity, education, and community through the #BlackInPhysics social movement and Oyanova Enterprises.
In the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, an interdisciplinary team explored possible regularities in vocal emotional expressions by comparing expressive interjections, such as “wow,” to nonlinguistic vocalizations, such as screams and cries, from across the globe. The researchers analyzed vowels in interjections from 131 languages, comparing them with nearly 500 vowels from vocalizations produced in joyful, painful, or disgusting contexts. Each of the three emotions yielded consistent and distinct vowel signatures across cultures in vocalizations.
The airflow from an indoor badminton court’s HVAC system and cross ventilation can affect the path of a birdie and have a significant role in play, but research published in Physics of Fluids proposes that different roof configurations could help mitigate wind drift. The authors recommend that important badminton games be played on courts with a barrel roof and a ventilation opening. The team modeled the airflow in a barrel roof stadium with different ventilation opening directions and tested this against a simulation of a flat roof to understand the roof effects.
The Acoustical Society of America will host two virtual press conferences Monday, Nov. 18. ASA’s 187th meeting will be held online, and reporters are invited to join technical sessions Nov. 19-21. Media are invited to join the virtual press conferences for presentations on dinosaur acoustics, using camp stove waste for new outdoor power sources, predicting Alzheimer’s with in-ear microphones, and more.
In APL Bioengineering, researchers employed analysis tools and machine learning algorithms to identify two genes linked to rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis that could serve as diagnostic tools and potential targets for treatments. Drawing from a large database of genetic information, they gathered dozens of sequenced genomes from people with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis to look for any similarities, using recently developed computational methods to narrow down their search. They identified genes ATXN2L and MMP14 as significantly associated with the progression of both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis.
In this week’s Chaos, researchers used an electrophysiological computer model of the heart’s electrical circuits to examine the effect of the applied voltage field in multiple fibrillation-defibrillation scenarios. They discovered far less energy is needed than is currently used in state-of-the-art defibrillation techniques. The authors applied an adjoint optimization method and discovered adjusting the duration and the smooth variation in time of the voltage supplied by defibrillation devices is a more efficient mechanism that reduces the energy needed to stop fibrillation by three orders of magnitude.
Research published in Physics of Fluids shows that not all standing positions in airport smoking lounges are created equal. Scientists from the University of Hormozgan in Iran found that the thermal environment and positioning of smokers influences how particles settle in the room. Additionally, smokers seated farther from ventilation inlets experience the lowest levels of pollution in the room.
Disc golf is a sport growing in popularity, but there hasn’t been much research into the best techniques – until now. Researchers and disc golf enthusiasts have determined the best thumb position on a disc to maximize angular and translational speeds.
The Acoustical Society of America will host a virtual conference from Nov. 18-22.
The U.S. is ramping up plans for a major increase in offshore wind production, but the country needs to design turbines that can withstand the challenges of tropical storms. In the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, researchers examine tropical storm observation technology and review physics-based modeling and data-driven models that use AI and machine learning. Advanced modeling techniques are rapidly developing, such as deep neural networks that downscale existing regional data to point-scale data using super-resolution techniques. Another key advancement is using machine learning methods for dynamic warm potential predictions, which can better predict the intensity of a storm.
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