Supersonic Travel, Without the Sonic Boom #ASA183

The NASA Quesst mission will fly a supersonic aircraft over various communities to test noise-mitigating technology.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 6, 2022 – Supersonic aircraft generate a series of shock waves that merge into two distinct booms. The planes drag these incredibly loud sounds along their flight path, creating unacceptable noise levels over land. So far, sonic booms have prevented commercial supersonic flight over land, but fixing the noise could cut flight times in half.

NASA’s X-59 aircraft will fly over communities to test supersonic flight without the sonic boom. Credit: NASA

At the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Gautam Shah of NASA Langley Research Center will present “NASA’s Quesst mission—Community Response Testing Plans,” in which he will discuss the plans to test a supersonic aircraft with technology to reduce sonic booms. The presentation will take place on Dec. 6 at 10:50 a.m. Eastern U.S. in the Summit B room, as part of the meeting running Dec. 5-9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

“NASA’s X-59 aircraft is intended to validate and demonstrate the design tools and technologies that make it possible to design an aircraft with a different shape that alters how supersonic shock waves behave,” said Shah. “Instead of coming together to be heard as a loud boom, the shock waves do not merge. They rapidly weaken, resulting in a sound more like a soft thump.”

NASA will conduct a series of flights over various communities across the U.S. Shah and his team will measure the sound of the aircraft and conduct public surveys to understand the public response to different noise levels. By providing this information to regulatory agencies, the group hopes to inform an overland supersonic sound standard.

The first flight will take place in 2023, followed by 18 months of testing to confirm the aircraft’s performance and safety. From 2025 through 2026, NASA intends to conduct a series of four to six community tests at locations across the country, eventually delivering the data to regulators in 2027.

More details can be found on the mission website. NASA has also developed a Quesst Mission Supersonic STEM Toolkit, which includes activities and educational material related to acoustics and flight.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff 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/.

3D-Printed Violins Bring Music into More Hands #ASA183

Modern materials and techniques can revolutionize music and provide access to low-cost instruments for music students.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 6, 2022 – There’s nothing quite like the sound of a Stradivarius violin. Building such a quality string instrument takes time, perfect materials, and a lot of skill, and the best ones can cost millions of dollars. Even mediocre violins can cost thousands, which puts them out of reach for most beginners and music classrooms.

Dr. Mary-Elizabeth Brown rehearses Harry Stafylakis’ concerto “Singularity” on an early iteration of the 3D printed violin. Credit: Shawn Peters

One group is looking to rectify this by 3D-printing low-cost, durable violins for music students. In the process, they explored the factors that result in the best violin sounds and performed a concerto composed specifically for 3D-printed instruments.

Mary-Elizabeth Brown, Director of the AVIVA Young Artists Program, will discuss the steps taken and the lessons learned in her presentation, “Old meets new: 3D printing and the art of violin-making.” The presentation will take place on Dec. 6 at 10:35 a.m. Eastern U.S. in the Golden Eagle B room, as part of the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America running Dec. 5- 9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

“The team’s inspiration roots in multiple places,” said Brown. “Our goals were to explore the new sound world created by using new materials, to leverage the new technology being used in other disciplines, and to make music education sustainable and accessible through the printing of more durable instruments.”

The 3D-printed violin was created in two sections. The violin’s body is made of a plastic polymer material, in the same manner as a traditional acoustic violin, and designed to produce a resonant tone, while the neck and fingerboard are printed in smooth ABS plastic to be comfortable in the musician’s hands. The result is a violin that produces a darker, more mellow sound than traditionally made instruments.

“The next step is to explore design modifications as well as efforts to lower the costs of production while making such instruments more widely available, especially in the realm of education,” said Brown.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff 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/.

Listen to the Toilet — It Could Detect Disease #ASA183

Microphone sensor and machine learning can classify excretion events, identify cholera or other bowel diseases, all without identifiable information.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 5, 2022 – Cholera, a bacterial disease that induces diarrhea, affects millions of people and results in about 150,000 deaths each year. Identifying potential communal disease spread for such an outbreak would alert health professionals early and improve the allocation of resources and aid. However, for obvious reasons, monitoring this and other bowel diseases is a sensitive matter.

The sensor in use over a toilet. Credit: Maia Gatlin

In her presentation, “The feces thesis: Using machine learning to detect diarrhea,” Maia Gatlin of the Georgia Institute of Technology will describe how a noninvasive microphone sensor could identify bowel diseases without collecting any identifiable information. The presentation will take place Dec. 5 at 4:35 p.m. Eastern U.S. in Summit C, as part of the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America running Dec. 5-9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

Gatlin and her team tested the technique on audio data from online sources. Each audio sample of an excretion event was transformed into a spectrogram, which essentially captures the sound in an image. Different events produce different features in the audio and the spectrogram. For example, urination creates a consistent tone, while defecation may have a singular tone. In contrast, diarrhea is more random.

Spectrogram images were fed to a machine learning algorithm that learned to classify each event based on its features. The algorithm’s performance was tested against data with and without background noises to make sure it was learning the right sound features, regardless of the sensor’s environment.

“The hope is that this sensor, which is small in footprint and noninvasive in approach, could be deployed to areas where cholera outbreaks are a persistent risk,” said Gatlin. “The sensor could also be used in disaster zones (where water contamination leads to spread of waterborne pathogens), or even in nursing/hospice care facilities to automatically monitor bowel movements of patients. Perhaps someday, our algorithm can be used with existing in-home smart devices to monitor one’s own bowel movements and health!”

In the future, Gatlin and her colleagues plan to gather real-world acoustic data so that their machine learning model can adapt to work in a variety of bathroom environments.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff 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/.

Machine Learning Diagnoses Pneumonia by Listening to Coughs #ASA183

A new algorithm could spot early signs of respiratory diseases in hospitals and at home.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 5, 2022 – Pneumonia is one of the world’s leading causes of death and affects over a million people a year in the United States. The disease disproportionately impacts children, older adults, and hospitalized patients. To give them the greatest chance at recovery, it is crucial to catch and treat it early. Existing diagnosis methods consist of a range of blood tests and chest scans, and a doctor needs to suspect pneumonia before ordering them.

A machine learning algorithm identifies cough sounds and determines whether the subject is suffering from pneumonia. Credit: Jin Yong Jeon

Jin Yong Jeon of Hanyang University will discuss a technique to diagnose pneumonia through passive listening in his session, “Pneumonia diagnosis algorithm based on room impulse responses using cough sounds.” The presentation will take place Dec. 5 at 4:20 p.m. Eastern U.S. in Summit C, as part of the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America running Dec. 5-9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

Jeon and fellow researchers developed a machine learning algorithm to identify cough sounds and determine whether the subject was suffering from pneumonia. Because every room and recording device is different, they augmented their recordings with room impulse responses, which measure how the acoustics of a space react to different sound frequencies. By combining this data with the recorded cough sounds, the algorithm can work in any environment.

“Automatically diagnosing a health condition through information on coughing sounds that occur continuously during daily life will facilitate non-face-to-face treatment,” said Jeon. “It will also be possible to reduce overall medical costs.”

Currently, one company has plans to apply this algorithm for remote patient monitoring. The team is also looking to implement it as an app for in-home care, and they plan to make the experience simpler and more user-friendly.

“Our research team is planning to automate each step-by-step process that is currently performed manually to improve convenience and applicability,” said Jeon.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff 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/.

Can a Playlist be Your Therapist? Balancing Emotions Through Music #ASA183

Music app provides therapy by consoling, relaxing, uplifting users

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 5, 2022 – Music has the potential to change emotional states and can distract listeners from negative thoughts and pain. It has also been proven to help improve memory, performance, and mood.

The Emotion Equalization App surveys your mood and energy to create a corresponding therapeutic playlist. Credit: Man Hei Law

At the upcoming meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Man Hei Law of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology will present an app that creates custom playlists to help listeners care for their emotions through music. The presentation, “Emotion equalization app: A first study and results,” will take place at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel on Dec. 5 at 3:15 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Rail Head room, as part of ASA’s 183rd meeting running Dec. 5-9.

“As humanity’s universal language, music can significantly impact a person’s physical and emotional state,” said Law. “For example, music can help people to manage pain. We developed this app as an accessible first aid strategy for balancing emotions.”

The app could be used by people who may not want to receive counseling or treatment because of feelings of shame, inadequacy, or distrust. By taking listeners on an emotional roller-coaster ride, the app aims to leave them in a more positive and focused state than where they began.

Users take three self-led questionnaires in the app to measure their emotional status and provide the information needed to create a playlist. Current emotion and long-term emotion status are gauged with a pictorial assessment tool that helps identify emotions in terms of energy level and mood. Energy level can run from high, medium, to low and mood can register as positive, neutral, or negative. A Patient Health Questionnaire and a General Anxiety Disorder screening are also used to establish personalized music therapy treatments.

By determining the emotional state of the user, the app creates a customized and specifically sequenced playlist of songs using one of three strategies: consoling, relaxing, or uplifting. Consoling music reflects the energy and mood of the user, while relaxing music provides a positive, low energy. Uplifting music is also positive but more high energy.

“In our experiments, we found out that relaxing and uplifting methods can significantly move listeners from negative to more positive emotional states. Especially, when listeners are at a neutral mood, all three proposed methods can change listeners’ emotions to more positive,” said Law.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff 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/.