3aSC4 – Effects of two-talker child speech on novel word learning in preschool-age children

Tina M. Grieco-Calub, tina_griecocalub@rush.edu
Rush University Medical Center
Rush NeuroBehavioral Center

Popular version of 3aSC4 – Effects of two-talker child speech on novel word learning in preschool-age children
Presented Wednesday morning, May 25, 2022
182nd ASA Meeting in Denver, Colorado
Click here to read the abstract

One of the most important tasks for children during preschool and kindergarten is building vocabulary knowledge. This vocabulary is the foundation upon which later academic knowledge and reading skills are built. Children acquire new words through exposure to speech by other people including their parents, teachers, and friends. However, this exposure does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, these interactions often occur in situations where there are other competing sounds, including other people talking or environmental noise. Think back to a time when you tried to have a conversation with someone in a busy restaurant with multiple other conversations happening around you. It can be difficult to focus on the conversation of interest and ignore the other conversations in noisy settings.

Now, think about how a preschool- or kindergarten-aged child might navigate a similar situation, such as a noisy classroom. This child has less mature language and cognitive skills compared to you. Therefore, they have a harder time ignoring those irrelevant conversations to process what the teacher says. Also, children in classrooms must hear and understand the words they know and learn new words. Children who have a hard time ignoring the background noise can have a particularly hard time building essential vocabulary knowledge in classroom settings.

In this study, we are testing the extent to which background speech like what might occur in a preschool classroom influences word learning in preschool- and kindergarten-aged children. We are testing children’s ability to learn and remember unfamiliar words either in quiet and in a noise condition when two other children are talking in the background. In the noise condition, the volume of the teacher is slightly louder than the background talkers, like what a child would experience in a classroom. During the word learning task, children are first shown unfamiliar objects and are asked to repeat their names (e.g., This is a topin. You say topin; see attached movie clip). Children then receive training on the objects and their names. After training, children are asked to name each object. Children’s performance is quantified by how close their production of the object’s name is to the actual name. For example, a child might call the “topin” a “dobin”. Preliminary results suggest that children in quiet and in noise are fairly accurate at repeating the unfamiliar words:    they can focus on the teacher’s speech and repeat all the sounds of the word immediately regardless of condition. Children can also learn the words in both quiet and noise. However, children’s spoken productions of the words are less accurate when they are trained in noise than in quiet. These findings tentatively suggest that when there is background noise, children need more training to learn the precise sounds of words. We will be addressing this issue in future iterations of this study.

2aPAb – Ultrasound technology to remove kidney stones

Mohamed A. Ghanem – mghanem@uw.edu
Adam D.  Maxwell – amax38@uw.edu
Oleg A. Sapozhnikov – olegs@uw.edu
Michael R. Bailey – mbailey@uw.edu

University of Washington
1013 NE 40th St.
Seattle WA 98105

Popular version of 2aPAb – Designing an array for acoustic manipulation of kidney stones
Presented Tuesday morning, May 24, 2022
182nd ASA Meeting
Click here to read the abstract

Ultrasound technology is becoming an important treatment tool. For instance, sound waves can apply a radiation pressure that can displace an object. Multi-element arrays are complex ultrasound sources that consist of several small transducers that can be driven in sync or a specific order to output pressure waves with different shapes. Pressure wave shapes that have a doughnut shape or a long tube are useful as they can trap an object in the center and as we control the location of the doughnut the object follows. This technology can be used to trap small kidney stones or stone fragments and move them from the kidney collection areas toward the kidney exit without surgery. We have demonstrated the ability to move kidney stone models in the bladders transcutaneously in live pigs under anesthesia. We are currently designing a new multi-element array that will enable us to adapt this technology to move stones in the complex structure of the kidney over larger distances. This technology will reduce the surgery associated with kidney stone treatments by removing small stones or fragments before they become larger, which will lead to surgery, and eliminating emergency room visits by relieving blockages from these stones or fragments.

kidney stones

Controlled steering of kidney stones toward  the kidney exit with an ultrasound array.

2aPAa6 – Boom Buh-Boom! A brief analysis of a Falcon-9 booster landing

J. Taggart Durrant – taggart.durrant@gmail.com
Kent L. Gee – kentgee@byu.edu
Mark C. Anderson – anderson.mark.az@gmail.com
Logan T. Mathews – loganmathews103@gmail.com
Grant W. Hart – grant_hart@byu.edu

Department of Physics and Astronomy
Brigham Young University
N283 ESC
Provo, UT 84602

Popular version of 2aPAa6 – Analysis of sonic booms from Falcon 9 booster landings
Presented Tuesday morning, May 24, 2022
182nd ASA Meeting
Read the article in Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics

It’s an understatement to say that rockets are loud. The high-speed exhaust rushing out of the nozzles mixes with the surrounding air, creating sound waves that can be heard over great distances. Even several miles away the sound waves can vibrate your whole body as the rocket lifts off and rides its pillar of fire into the cosmos.

If you watch a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch, you may be treated to another impressive experience: watching the rocket’s first-stage booster return to Earth in a “flyback” maneuver and land (see Figure 1). During flyback, the booster falls through the atmosphere at supersonic speeds, with increasing drag from an ever-thickening atmosphere gradually slowing its descent. Seconds before a would-be impact, a single rocket engine fires up again, landing legs deploy, and the rocket lands safely. Depending on your location, not only will you hear the engine firing during the landing, but it may also be preceded by a startling, rapid sequence of loud bangs. No, the rocket hasn’t exploded; this is the Falcon 9’s unique “triple sonic boom” caused by its unique geometry and flight profile while it was still high above you and falling at supersonic speeds.

Falcon-9 launch Falcon-9 booster landing

“Figure 1. Left: Photo of a Falcon 9 launch. Photo from NASA/Joel Kowsky, public domain. Right: Photo of a Falcon 9 booster landing. Photo from SpaceX Photos, public domain.”

Want to hear a Falcon 9 sonic boom created during flyback? Here are some examples on YouTube.

Considering how loud this “triple boom” is, let’s take a look at its pressure waveform in relation to the other launch and landing noise. Figure 2 shows a microphone recording of an entire Falcon 9 launch and landing at Vandenberg Space Force Base over a period of 10 minutes at a distance of 5 miles from the launch and landing pads. Also shown are half-second snippets of the waveform during each of three main phases. The launch noise, indicated in red, is littered with shocks (nearly instantaneous changes in pressure) while the landing noise, indicated in green, contains many shocks of smaller amplitude and lesser steepness. All three phases of noise contain shock-like content, but the sonic boom, indicated in blue, is much larger in amplitude.

Falcon-9 “Figure 2. A Falcon 9 launch recording, around 5 miles away from the launch and landing sites.”

In order to determine the “sound exposure” of ground observers, we can use the Sound Exposure Level (SEL) metric over each section of the recording, as it accounts for both the amplitude and duration of the recording. The launch phase, calculated over 150 seconds, has an SEL of 127 dB (re 400 pPa2 s). However, the sonic boom – less than 1 second long – has an SEL of 124 dB. Although the boom’s duration is shorter than the launch, the amplitude is much greater, resulting in a total SEL similar to that of the entire launch noise. Lastly, the landing noise after the sonic boom (19 seconds) has an SEL of 112 dB.

This brief analysis shows that the landing noise (including the sonic boom) contributes a large amount of noise, similar to that of the launch phase, and needs to be considered when studying the effects of rocket launches on communities and environments.

3aAB7 – Modeling the potential for vessel collision with Southern Resident killer whales

Dana Cusano1,*, Molly Reeve2, Michelle Weirathmueller2, Karlee Zammit3, Steven Connell1, David Zeddies2

1 JASCO Applied Sciences (Australia) Pty. Ltd., Capalaba, QLD, 4157, Australia
2 JASCO Applied Sciences (USA) Inc., Silver Spring, MD, 20910, USA
3 JASCO Applied Sciences (Canada) Ltd., Victoria, V8Z 7X8, Canada
* Lead author: dana.cusano@jasco.com

Popular version of 3aAB7 – Modeling the potential for vessel collision with southern resident killer whales
Presented Wednesday morning May 25, 2022
182nd ASA Meeting
Click here to read the abstract

With the rise in global shipping traffic, marine mammals are at an ever-increasing risk of vessel collision. These incidents may result in injury or mortality, which can be especially detrimental to endangered species. Predicting the risk of vessel collisions for a given species through modeling can be a useful way to determine whether protective measures are needed.

The risk of vessel collision is often assessed using statistical models that overlay the the density and distribution of animals with that of vessels. This approach does not typically account for the behavior of the animal, in part due to a lack of information on the specific responses of individual animals to vessels. This can include aversive behavior like moving away from the vessel or changing speed, which could have an important impact on collision estimates.

An alternative approach to measuring the risk of vessel collision is modeling the individual behavior of the animals around the vessels. This type of modeling is often used to estimate the sound exposure of simulated animals, called ‘animats’, that move within computed sound fields. For this study, we built on such a model, the JASCO Animal Simulation Model Including Noise Exposure, which is used primarily for estimating the sound exposure of individual animals. A vessel collision framework was developed for Southern Resident killer whales (SRKWs), an endangered species with a small and declining population size. We chose to model an area in Boundary Pass, British Columbia. This is an important habitat for this species that also encompasses a busy shipping lane. In the model, we included the movement data of real vessels that traveled through the area as well as the modeled sound fields of those vessels. We then incorporated animats into the model, which were programmed to behave like SRKWs based on published high-resolution animal movement data. Lastly, we allowed our simulated animals to avert away from vessels based on factors known to initiate a response in this species: the loudness of vessels, the distance to those vessels, and the total number of vessels. Including aversion allowed the animats to respond increasingly to louder, closer, and multiple vessels by changing their heading, speed, and behavioral state. Animats were considered to be involved in a vessel collision if they got within a calculated encounter area of a modeled vessel despite any aversive reactions.

vessel collision

Conceptual diagram of the sources of disturbance (colored shapes) and their magnitude (color gradient) used to predict the level of aversion that an animat experiences at any time step. The Southern resident killer whale in the diagram represents a snapshot of one time-step in the model.

Animats were mostly able to avoid vessel collision, however a small number came within the encounter area of a vessel and were thus considered to be struck by that vessel. We are now investigating whether there are any patterns in the combinations of factors that lead to these collisions. The next steps in developing the model further will be to incorporate uncertainty, investigate the sensitivity of the behavioral parameters, and incorporate additional data on aversive behavior in SRKWs. The goal of this approach is to determine the scenarios where SRKWs are most at risk of vessel collision. Ultimately, this model can be generalized to model collision risk in other species.

 

2pUW2 – Pacific Echo: A deep ocean collaborative experiment

Ross Chapman – chapman@uvic.ca
University of Victoria
3800 Finnerty Road
Victoria, BC V8P 5C2
Canada

Popular version of 2pUW2- Pacific Echo: A deep ocean collaborative experiment
Presented Tuesday afternoon, May 24, 2022
182nd ASA Meeting
Click here to read the abstract

The ocean bottom in large regions of the Pacific Ocean consists of a thin layer of deep ocean sediment on top of oceanic crust (Figure 1).  Crustal rock created at deep ocean fractures at spreading zones moves slowly away outward over millions of years, generating a rugged crustal layer of increasing geological age with increasing distance from the spreading zone.  The presence of solid basalt crustal rock close to the sea floor creates a strikingly different ocean bottom environment compared to most other ocean regions.

Pacific Echo

Figure 1.  The ocean bathymetry in a region of the older Pacific Echo crust sites.  Ocean depth is ~5400 m.

In the latter stages of the Cold War, researchers in navy laboratories carried out a series of experiments at sea to study the impact of this solid rock ocean bottom on sound propagation and underwater target detection.  The experimental programme, Pacific Echo, was a collaboration between researchers at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and the Canadian Defence Research Establishment Pacific in Victoria.  Four sea trials were carried out between 1986 and 1992 at various deep water Pacific sites.  The research objective was to understand the physics of sound interaction with the solid rock ocean bottom, where the dominant reflection of sound was from an interface beneath the sea floor.  Interaction of sound with the rock generates an additional energy loss due to shear waves that propagate in the rock.  This type of energy loss is not significant in other ocean bottom environments that consist of layers of unconsolidated sediment where shear waves in the sediment material are very weak.

Figure 2. Deploying the hydrophone line array from the stern of CFAV Endeavour at sea.

The experimental plan in Pacific Echo involved measurements of the ocean bottom reflection coefficient using a towed horizontal hydrophone line array (Figure 2).  A new technique, the broadside reflectivity measurement (BRM), was developed for efficient acquisition of high quality data.  The BRM method involved two ships, USNS DeSteiguer deployed sound sources while CFAV Endeavour towed the hydrophone array along headings shown in Figure 3.  The array acts as a directional receiver to enable separation of the specular or mirror-like reflection from unwanted contributions arising from basalt outcrop features.

Figure 3. Schematic diagram of ship tracks during the BRM measurement.

The measured reflection coefficients, as in the example shown in Figure 4, revealed large energy loss at low grazing angles less than ~55°.  This loss, due to shear waves generated in the rock, confirmed the hypothesis of reflectivity dominated by the oceanic crust.

Figure 4.  Reflection coefficient measured at one of the older sites in Pacific Echo.

The Pacific Echo data also provided new information about an underlying research question in marine geophysics related to the aging process in oceanic crust.  Estimates of sound speed in basalt derived from the Pacific Echo data revealed sound speeds as low as ~2500 m/s in very young basalt (0-3 million years old), increasing to ~3600 m/s at the oldest sites (~70 million years old).  These results gave support to the research hypothesis that sound speed in oceanic crust increased with the age of the basalt.

2aBAb1 – Using ultrasound imaging to predict type1 diabetes development

Richard KP Benninger – richard.benninger@cuanschutz.edu
University of Colorado Anschutz medical campus
1775 Aurora Ct
Aurora, CO. 80045

Popular version of 2aBAb1 – Applying ultrasound phase-change contrast agents to guide therapeutic intervention in type 1 diabetes
Presented Tuesday morning, May 24th, 2022
182nd ASA Meeting
Click here to read the abstract

Type1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas are destroyed. As a result people with type1 diabetes have to take insulin for the rest of their life. This is not a cure, and as well as the significant patient burden there are still risks for complications of diabetes that include eye, kidney and heart damage, as well as potentially falling into a coma from insulin overdose and low blood sugar. Strategies have been developed to prevent type1 diabetes through immune therapies that stop the destruction of insulin producing cells. Treatment early in the disease process, before significant destruction of insulin producing cells will be needed. However it is challenging to predict if an individual will get type1 diabetes and when, limiting the ability to intervene early.

Imaging approaches have been explored to detect the presence of autoimmune disease and concurrent inflammation in the pancreas, and loss of the insulin-producing cells. However there have been limited successes. A potential approach is based on the blood vessels become leaky during the autoimmune disease and inflammation in the pancreas. Thus small particles below 1um diameter can leak and accumulate in the diseased tissue. We have proposed to leverage the inherent advantages of ultrasound imaging that include deployability, cost-effectiveness and safety profile. Ultrasound contrast agents consist of gas filled bubbles (microbubbles). However the size of thee microbubbles means that they cannot access diseased tissue and are restricted to blood vessels. We have utilized a novel phase-change ultrasound contrast agent that consists of a condensed liquid droplet that is stable at body temperature and in circulation. However the acoustic beam from an ultrasound transducer can vaporize these droplets into microbubbles that provide ultrasound contrast. Thus these phase-change agents serve as circulating microbubble precursors that can access diseased tissue.

We tested whether these ultrasound phase change agents can access the injured tissue in the pancreas resulting from autoimmune disease, and whether accumulation of the contrast agents could be detected in ultrasound imaging. We found in pre-clinical models of type1 diabetes that significant accumulation of ultrasound phase change agents were observed in the pancreas, which was measurable by ultrasound (Figure 1). This accumulation correlated with the presence of autoimmune disease and decline in insulin-producing cells. Importantly the accumulation and ultrasound contrast was only present in the pancreas in models of diabetes: no accumulation was observed in non-diseased tissues. Further the accumulation of ultrasound phase change agents and ultrasound contrast correlated with the development of diabetes: models that developed diabetes rapidly or lacked therapeutic prevention showed a much higher contrast than those models that  developed diabetes slowly or showed therapeutic prevention of diabetes. Most importantly elevated contrast was measured very early in the disease process, earlier than the current gold standard measurement of circulating insulin autoantibodies.

diabetes

Figure 1: Conventional B-mode and contrast mode images before and after infusion and activation of phase-change ultrasound contrast agent. P=Pancreas, K=Kidney, S=Spleen.

As such the use of phase-change ultrasound contrast agents shows significant promise for detecting and tracking the presence of autoimmune disease and inflammation in the pancreas that heralds the development of type1 diabetes (Figure 2). Such a measurement would guide therapeutic intervention to prevent type1 diabetes, as well as assess the efficacy of such a treatment. Successful disease prevention will avoid the need for lifelong insulin therapy and complications of diabetes.

diabetes

Figure 2: Schematic illustrating use of phase-change ultrasound contrast agents to detect autoimmune disease in the pancreas.