Going Virtual Hurts Student Career Prospects

Students less likely to engage with virtual networking events, increasing turnover, burnout

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 24, 2022 – As in-person scientific meetings and gathering have been replaced by virtual meetings during the pandemic, students and young professionals are seeing career fairs and networking events transition into remote experiences that simply lack the same impact as getting together.

During the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, Ryan Harne, from Penn State University, will discuss how students and professionals can adapt to the virtual environment and increase networking opportunities. His presentation, “Ensuring the kids are alright: Ways to help students network with industry professionals in the age of virtual meetings and career fair disillusionment,” will take place May 24, at 4:15 p.m. Eastern U.S.

Many career professionals are also adapting to virtual events and working from home and prefer this over in-person meetings. Students still prefer face-to-face communication and are either uninterested in or unfamiliar with virtual interactions. The result is many networking opportunities are effectively closed to students and young professionals, limiting their ability to enter and thrive in their chosen fields.

“Students are familiar and adept at in-person communication and often do not accept virtual communication as a substitute in professional networking,” said Harne. “This trend can be linked to the decline of student participation in professional or society conferences when those meetings go virtual.”

Harne suggests the solution for companies looking to hire new talent is to reach students where they are by holding in-person career fairs and networking events on educational campuses. The goal for these organizations is to find new talent, and for students, they can be exposed to a variety of fields, helping them decide their career path, preparing them to enter the workforce, and reducing early career turnover.

This could prove challenging for many organizations that are seeking to transition permanently to a virtual environment. These companies may struggle to hire or retain young professionals who have little exposure to the careers they are beginning to enter.

“While remote or hybrid work environments are a sustainable solution for existing employees, they have the potential to provoke long-term high turnover of new hires who feel less inclined to ‘stick with it’ when there are lurches in their on-ramping due to the lack of rapport fostered by face-to-face engagement,” said Harne.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
USEFUL LINKS
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eventpilotadmin.com/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING22
Press Room: https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/

WORLDWIDE PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Worldwide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay language papers, which are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and video. You can visit the site during the meeting at https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, staff at media@aip.org can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

Ultrasound-Assisted Laser Technique Vaporizes Artery Plaque

Method avoids complications from using high-power lasers, extends to other medical applications

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 24, 2022 – Atherosclerosis, a buildup of plaque, can lead to heart disease, artery disease, and chronic kidney disease and is traditionally treated by inserting and inflating a balloon to expand the artery. Other treatments based on lasers can remove blockages rather than simply compressing them but are used infrequently, because they have a high risk of complication and low efficacy.

Rohit Singh, of the University of Kansas, and other researchers developed a method that combines a low-power laser with ultrasound to remove arterial plaque safely and efficiently. Singh will describe preliminary results in his presentation, “A novel ultrasound-assisted laser technique to remove atherosclerotic plaques,” at the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. The session will take place May 24 at 5:05 p.m. Eastern U.S. at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel.

High-power laser treatments direct thermal energy to vaporize water in the artery and create a vapor bubble, which expands and collapses to break the plaque. Similarly, the technology, pioneered by Xinmai Yang, doctoral advisor for the team, uses a low-power nanosecond pulsed laser to produce microbubbles. The addition of irradiation from ultrasound causes the microbubbles to expand, collapse, and disrupt the plaque.

“In conventional laser angioplasty, a high laser power is required for the entire cavitation process, whereas in our technology, a lower laser power is only required for initiating the cavitation process,” said Singh. “Overall, the combination of ultrasound and laser reduces the need for laser power and improves the efficiency of atherosclerotic plaque removal.”

Because it destroys rather than compresses the plaque, the combination technique will have a lower restenosis rate, or re-narrowing of the artery, compared to balloon angioplasty or stenting. The control provided by the ultrasound and the low-power laser will lower the risk of dissection and perforation in arteries.

The team performed ex vivo experiments on carotid artery plaque samples and pork belly samples, and they are currently planning to perform in vivo experiments. Both the laser and ultrasound techniques are commonly used by clinicians and should be easy to teach and implement following the in vivo studies.

Combining low-power lasers and ultrasound techniques is not limited to atherosclerosis treatments. Singh and collaborators are also using the methodology for photo-mediated ultrasound therapy and ultrasound-assisted endovascular laser thrombolysis. The former can be used to remove abnormal microvessels in the eye to prevent blindness, while the latter can dissolve blood clots in veins.

Singh will expand upon these additional applications in poster sessions at the ASA meeting, with “Analysis of cavitation induced stresses on blood vessel wall during photo-mediated ultrasound therapy using finite-element based numerical models” and “Combining ultrasound and endovascular laser for thrombolysis,” on May 25, 5-7 p.m. Eastern U.S.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
USEFUL LINKS
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eventpilotadmin.com/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING22
Press Room: https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/

WORLDWIDE PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Worldwide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay language papers, which are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and video. You can visit the site during the meeting at https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, staff at media@aip.org can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

Listening Can Be Exhausting for Older Cochlear Implant Users

Aging effects on listening effort in cochlear-implant users

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 24, 2022 – Degraded acoustic signals can make hearing difficult for anyone, but differences in cognitive abilities, age-related changes, and the use of cochlear implants may exacerbate the problem. If it is more challenging to hear, it is also exhausting to communicate.

In her presentation, “Aging effects on listening effort in cochlear-implant users,” Kristina DeRoy Milvae will discuss the results of two experiments that examined impacts on listening effort. The session will take place May 24 at 12:50 p.m. Eastern U.S. at the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel.

The first experiment measured how changes in acoustic signal degradation affected listening effort in younger and older adults with normal hearing. Pupil dilation was used as a proxy for listening effort. As people age, highly degraded signals can result in listeners needing to exert even more effort.

In the second experiment, Milvae and her team tested how individual differences in working memory scores affected listening effort in cochlear implant users. Lower working memory scores did not predict increased listening effort.

“A better understanding of listening effort gives a more holistic picture of how we hear,” said Milvae. “Measures of listening effort can help us to better understand the cochlear implant listening experience and help the scientific community to work toward evidence-based approaches to improve listening effort in populations with hearing loss.”

The team’s results emphasize the importance of developing practices to reduce listening effort. Milvae sees three potential paths forward: technological advances in cochlear implants to improve signal clarity, secondary cochlear implants for some users, and aural rehabilitation measures.

“With a cochlear implant, one may be able to better communicate in a noisy restaurant than without. It may take some effort, but with that effort comes the social interaction that was not possible before,” she said. “What is clinically important is to help those who are constantly in a state of high listening effort, which could lead to fatigue and reduced quality of life, because they will want to avoid these social situations.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
USEFUL LINKS
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eventpilotadmin.com/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING22
Press Room: https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/

WORLDWIDE PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Worldwide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay language papers, which are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and video. You can visit the site during the meeting at https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, staff at media@aip.org can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

Diverse Social Networks Reduce Accent Judgments

Perception in context: How racialized identities impact speech perception

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 24, 2022 – Everyone has an accent. But the intelligibility of speech doesn’t just depend on that accent; it also depends on the listener. Visual cues and the diversity of the listener’s social network can impact their ability to understand and transcribe sentences after listening to the spoken word.

Ethan Kutlu, of the University of Iowa, will discuss this social phenomenon in his presentation, “Perception in context: How racialized identities impact speech perception,” which will take place May 24 at 12:15 p.m. Eastern U.S. as part of the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel.

Kutlu and his team paired American, British, and Indian varieties of English with images of white and South Asian faces. While the accents differed, they were all normalized to have the same base intelligibility. They played these voices for listeners from a low-diverse (Gainesville, Florida) and high-diverse environment (Montreal, Quebec).

“Racial and linguistic diversity in our social networks and in our surrounding environments impact how we engage in perceiving speech. Encountering new voices and accents that are different from our own improves our ability to attend to speech that varies from our own,” said Kutlu. “We all have accents and embracing this is not hurting our own or others’ speech perception. On the contrary, it helps all of us.”

A participant’s ability to transcribe sentences decreased and they rated voices as more accented whenever the speech was paired with a South Asian face – no matter the English variety of the spoken word. Indian English paired with white faces was judged as heavily accented when compared to British and American English.

However, these results varied greatly by the listener’s social network and geographic context. Montreal participants, residents of a dual language city, were overall more accurate when transcribing speech. They did not change their judgments based on the faces they saw on the screen.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
USEFUL LINKS
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eventpilotadmin.com/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING22
Press Room: https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/

WORLDWIDE PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Worldwide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay language papers, which are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and video. You can visit the site during the meeting at https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, staff at media@aip.org can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

Sidekick Microbubbles Carry Anti-Cancer Drugs, Damage Tumor Vessels

Ultrasound-stimulated, drug-loaded bubbles for cancer therapy

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 24, 2022 – Microbubbles can assist with localized drug delivery in a patient’s body by popping at a target site to create enhanced permeability of tumor blood vessels. By temporarily increasing the porosity of the blood vessels, the microbubbles can create a means for coinjected anti-cancer drugs to preferentially leak into the tumor for treatment.

Naomi Matsuura, of the University of Toronto, and her team are adapting microbubbles to become more potent tools for cancer therapy. By shrinking the bubbles and directly loading them with anti-cancer drugs, the bubbles can lower the dose of free drug that is injected and diffuses into nontumor tissue in the body. This results in more targeted treatment and fewer side effects for the patient.

Matsuura will discuss her team’s results in her presentation, “Ultrasound-stimulated, drug-loaded bubbles for cancer therapy,” as part of the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel. The session will take place May 24 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern U.S.

The team loaded taxanes, a commonly used anti-cancer drug, onto the bubbles. Because the drug is hydrophobic, it avoids water and sticks to the bubble easily, avoiding any leakage into the bloodstream or surrounding tissue until the bubble is stimulated by ultrasound.

They plan to extend the bubbles to carry other types of drugs as well, but the drug loading tends to be lower and less stable for hydrophilic materials.

“We are also modifying the pattern of the sound waves in a way that makes the anti-cancer drug more potent in comparison to a regular intravenous drug injection,” said Matsuura.

“If we can combine lower side effects from direct drug loading with a more potent effect of the drug by modifying systems that are already in place for patients, we have a chance to make an impact on the outcomes of cancer patients in a relatively short period of time.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
USEFUL LINKS
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eventpilotadmin.com/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING22
Press Room: https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/

WORLDWIDE PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Worldwide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay language papers, which are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and video. You can visit the site during the meeting at https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, staff at media@aip.org can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.