Martian Dust Devil Analogues in the Mojave Desert #ASA183

Identifying and characterizing dust devils on Earth can inform their formation and lifecycles on Mars, where dust storms can make or break missions.

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

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 7, 2022 – In the Mojave Desert, the sun beats down on the ground and makes pockets of low pressure. Cool air rushes into these areas, where it warms and rises, creating vortices that pick up dust. These types of dust devils aren’t limited to Earth: they are found on Mars at sizes reaching 1,600 meters in diameter.

A dust devil in the Arizona desert (left) and on Mars (right). Credit: NASA/U. of Michigan

Dust devils could play a large role in the Martian climate, and they are crucial to understand during missions to the red planet. Louis Urtecho of NASA JPL and the California Institute of Technology will describe efforts to identify the vortices using data from the Mojave Desert in his presentation, “Automated detection of dust-devil-induced pressure signatures.” The talk will take place on Dec. 7 at 10:40 a.m. Eastern U.S. in the Golden Pass room, as part of the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America running Dec. 5- 9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

“The abundance of dust devils on Mars could have implications for the lifetimes of many missions. In fact, dust devils have already played a role in past missions,” said Urtecho. “Opportunity and Spirit rovers’ lives were extended because friendly dust devils blew dust off their solar panels. But Opportunity eventually succumbed to a global dust storm on Mars, showing the importance of dust loading in the atmosphere.”

It is difficult to find and study dust devils on Mars, so Urtecho and his team hope to study them on Earth, then extend the analysis to scale for the different atmosphere. Based on microbarometer data from the Mojave Desert, they built an algorithm to look for the pressure activity indicative of a dust devil. The vortices have a distinct drop in pressure near their centers, and their pressure fluctuates to look like an electrocardiogram (EKG) signal over time.

“The hope is that with our dust devil detector we will be able to learn more about the formation characteristics of convective vortices and how they move across various landscapes,” said Urtecho. “This will improve the accuracy of Martian weather models, which has a direct impact not only in understanding dust cycles on Mars and the role they have played in its evolution, but also the operation of future robotic and possibly crewed missions.”

———————– 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/.

Cultivating a Music Studio to Sound Like an Indoor Forest #ASA183

Nashville’s Blackbird Studio C diffuses sound to create an immersive critical listening environment

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

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 6, 2022 – Blackbird Studio in Nashville has an impressive client list that includes Carrie Underwood, Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, and Johnny Cash, among many others. Part of its success may be because owners John and Martina McBride have focused on creating unique acoustic environments.

Blackbird Studio C uses diffusors on the walls and ceiling to create a unique sound environment. Credit: Marian Matthis/Blackbird Studio

At the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Dr. Peter D’Antonio of RPG Acoustical Systems and George Massenburg of McGill University will describe “The evolution of Blackbird Studio C,” a space designed to provide an accurate and immersive mixing and production environment. The presentation will take place on Dec. 6 at 5:20 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Summit A room, following a presentation by D’Antonio on a new Non-cuboid Iterative Room Optimizer (NIRO) at 5:00 p.m. Both talks are part of the conference running Dec. 5- 9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

Massenburg conceived the design and consulted with D’Antonio to collaborate and design the control room. After sound mixing in all known types of professional and experimental spaces, Massenburg wanted to create a unique, ambient anechoic space. Such a studio allows ambient sound to decay equally across different frequencies and is free from interfering reflections, making it sound like an indoor forest.

To achieve this and control all sound reflections in the room, the team covered the walls and ceiling with primitive root diffusers. Compared to a reflective surface, which bounces sound energy back in one direction, this technology causes sound energy to diffuse and radiate in many directions.

Musicians in the studio can hear and balance themselves without headphones or excessive amplification. Mixing engineers adapt quickly to the room and its ambience.

“In measuring the room, we noticed that the direct sound was followed immediately by reflections 30 decibels below the direct sound, which is what you find in an anechoic (echo-free) chamber,” said D’Antonio. “Yet the room did not exhibit the uncomfortable, ‘acoustically dead’ characteristics of an anechoic chamber. Quite the opposite! The room felt comfortably ambient, and hence we created the ambient-anechoic portmanteau: ambichoic.”

In the presentation, Massenburg and D’Antonio will also discuss user perceptions of the ambichoic studio and improvements to the room’s technology over time.

———————– 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/.

Why Those Sounds From Your Upstairs Neighbor Are So Annoying #ASA183

Laboratory experiments and online surveys seek to understand what characteristics make an impact noise irritating

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

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 6, 2022 – Most people have suffered through a noisy neighbor. Whether it’s the constant stomping of feet or the thump from dropping something, these sounds, known as “impact sounds”, are one of the main causes for complaints in multi-unit residential buildings and can negatively impact occupants’ health and work.

The team recorded impact sounds of objects dropping and people walking. Using different playback techniques and virtual reality, they presented the recordings to study participants to see what makes a sound annoying. Credit: Markus Müller-Trapet

In his presentation, “Noise from above: A summary of studies regarding the perceived annoyance due to impact sounds,” Markus Mueller-Trapet, of the National Research Council of Canada, will describe a series of experiments designed to simulate and measure the perceived annoyance experienced from a noisy neighbor. The presentation will take place on Dec. 6 at 11:05 a.m. Eastern U.S. in the Summit A room, as part of the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America running from Dec. 5-9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

According to Mueller-Trapet, long-term exposure to such unwanted sounds may potentially lead to cardiovascular problems and sleep disturbance. With the increased population density of urban areas over the last decades and the rise of working from home in early 2020, he believes the topic has become even more relevant.

Mueller-Trapet and an international team of researchers wanted to find the connection between standardized laboratory measurements and the perceived annoyance of a sound from impact sources.

They provided a living room-like situation and recorded impact sounds of objects dropping and people walking. Using different playback techniques and virtual reality, they presented the recordings to study participants. In addition to laboratory experiments, the group created an online survey to expand their sample. The survey will run from November 21, 2022 until March 31, 2023.

Impact sounds are impulsive, meaning that they consist of one or more almost distinct sounds of short duration. This likely makes impact sounds more annoying in general than continuous sounds, such as music or speech. Results suggest that the thudding sounds created by people walking barefoot are not captured by the current standardized performance metrics that are used in building codes. The challenge facing the research team is to integrate this new information with the existing metrics.

By continuing this work, the international research team hopes to provide guidance to architects and building code developers and make progress toward a more livable built environment.

———————– 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/.

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/.