Solar-Powered Balloons Detect Mysterious Sounds in the Stratosphere #ASA184

Inexpensive and easy to build, data collecting balloons capture low-frequency sound in the Earth’s atmosphere.

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

CHICAGO, May 11, 2023 – Imagine if sending your science experiment 70,000 ft in the air just took painter’s plastic, tape, a dash of charcoal dust, and plenty of sunlight.

Inflating a solar hot air balloon with an infrasound microbarometer payload. Photo credits: Darielle Dexheimer, Sandia National Laboratories.

Daniel Bowman of Sandia National Laboratories will present his findings using solar-powered hot air balloons to eavesdrop on stratospheric sounds at the upcoming 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 8-12 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel. His presentation will take place Thursday, May 11, at 2:50 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Purdue/Wisconsin room at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel.

The stratosphere is a relatively calm layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Rarely disturbed by planes or turbulence, microphones in the stratosphere pick up a variety of sounds unheard anywhere else. This includes natural sounds from colliding ocean waves and thunder, human-created sounds like wind turbines or explosions, and even sounds with unknown origins.

To reach the stratosphere, Bowman and his collaborators build balloons that span 6 to 7 meters across. Despite their large size and data collection capability, the balloons are relatively simple.

“Our balloons are basically giant plastic bags with some charcoal dust on the inside to make them dark. We build them using painter’s plastic from the hardware store, shipping tape, and charcoal powder from pyrotechnic supply stores. When the sun shines on the dark balloons, the air inside heats up and becomes buoyant. This passive solar power is enough to bring the balloons from the surface to over 20 km (66,000 ft) in the sky,” said Bowman. “Each balloon only needs about $50 worth of materials and can be built in a basketball court.”

The researchers collect data and detect low-frequency sound with microbarometers, which were originally designed to monitor volcanoes. After releasing the balloons, they track their routes using GPS – a necessary task since the balloons sometimes sail for hundreds of miles and land in hard-to-reach places. But, because the balloons are inexpensive and easy to construct and launch, they can release a lot of balloons and collect more data.

Along with the expected human and environmental sounds, Bowman and his team detected something they are not able to identify.

“[In the stratosphere,] there are mysterious infrasound signals that occur a few times per hour on some flights, but the source of these is completely unknown,” said Bowman.

Solar-powered balloons could also help explore other planets, such as observing Venus’ seismic and volcanic activity through its thick atmosphere.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING23&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/.

Fire Hydrant Hydrophones Find Water Leaks #ASA184

Locating leaks in water distribution networks is made easier with hydrant-mounted hydrophones and advanced algorithms.

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

CHICAGO, May 11, 2023 – Access to clean drinking water is essential for healthy communities, but delivering that water is growing increasingly difficult for many utilities. Corroding pipes and land shifts in aging water distribution networks can create frequent leaks, wasting water before it ever gets to the tap. Utilities in the U.S. lose about 6 billion gallons of water a day — enough to fill 9,000 swimming pools — due to leaks, in addition to wasted energy and resources spent in collecting and treating that water.

An overview of the methodology utilized for leak identification consisting of collecting acoustic data, extracting relevant features, and employing advanced machine learning and probabilistic models for leak detection and localization. Credit: Pranav Agrawal

Pranav Agrawal and Sriram Narasimhan from the University of California, Los Angeles will discuss an innovative acoustic solution to identify and track leaks in water distribution networks in their talk, “Maximum likelihood estimation for leak localization in water distribution networks using in-pipe acoustic sensing.” The presentation will take place Thursday, May 11, at 12:25 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Purdue/Wisconsin room, as part of the 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America running May 8-12 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel.

Detecting a leak in a single straight pipe is not a challenge, but large urban networks can be a grid of hundreds or thousands of pipes, and precisely locating a leak is no easy task. Acoustic monitoring is the go-to solution, as the sounds from leaks are unique and travel far in water, but even this method struggles in complex pipe networks.

“Localization of the leak is complex as it involves factors like hydrophone density, the frequency bandwidth of the leak sound, and material properties of the pipe,” said Agrawal. “It is impractical to have highly dense sensing that can localize leaks at any location in the network.”

To tackle the problem, the researchers developed algorithms that operate on acoustic signals collected via hydrophones mounted on the most accessible parts of the pipe network: fire hydrants.

“We have developed algorithms which operate on acoustic data collected from state-of-the-art monitoring devices mounted on fire hydrants and ‘listen’ to the sound produced by leaks inside the water column,” said Agrawal. “This device is now commercially available through Digital Water Solutions and has been deployed in various locations in Canada and the U.S., including in ongoing demonstration trials at the Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center, Ventura County in California.”

Attaching their sensors to fire hydrants means the team can avoid costly excavation and reposition the devices as needed. Combined with novel probabilistic and machine-learning techniques to analyze the signals and pinpoint leaks, this technology could support water conservation efforts, especially in the Western U.S, where this is direly needed.

Reference in this release to the U.S. Navy Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center (NAVFAC-EXWC) does not imply endorsement of an individual contractor or solution by NAVFAC-EXWC, the U.S. Navy, or the U.S. Department of Defense.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING23&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/.

These Sounds Are Out of This World! #ASA184

Software program predicts environmental noise and modulates voices to simulate sound on other planets.

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

CHICAGO, May 11, 2023 – You may know how other planets look, like the rust orange, dusty surface of Mars or the vibrant teal of Uranus. But what do those planets sound like?

This illustration depicts Mars helicopter Ingenuity during a test flight on Mars. Ingenuity was taken to the red planet strapped to the belly of the Perseverance rover (seen in the background). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Timothy G. Leighton from the University of Southampton in the U.K. designed a software program that produces extraterrestrial environmental sounds and predicts how human voices might change in distant worlds. He will demonstrate his work at the upcoming 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 8-12 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel. His presentation will take place Thursday, May 11, at 12:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Chicago room.

The presentation is part of a special session that brings together the acoustics and planetary science communities. Acoustical studies became essential during the Huygens lander’s descent into Titan’s atmosphere in 2005 and in the more recent Mars InSight and Mars 2020 missions. These successful missions carried customized active and passive acoustic sensors operating over a wide spectrum, from very low frequencies (infrasound, below the human hearing threshold) to ultrasound (above human hearing).

“For decades, we have sent cameras to other planets in our solar system and learned a great deal from them. However, we never really heard what another planet sounded like until the very recent Mars Perseverance mission,” said Leighton.

Scientists can harness sound on other worlds to learn about properties that might otherwise require a lot of expensive equipment, like the chemical composition of rocks, how atmospheric temperature changes, or the roughness of the ground.

Extraterrestrial sounds could also be used in the search for life. At first glance, Jupiter’s moon Europa may seem a hostile environment, but below its shell of ice lies a potentially life-sustaining ocean.

“The idea of sending a probe on a seven-year trip through space, then drilling or melting to the seabed, poses mind-boggling challenges in terms of finance and technology. The ocean on Europa is 100 times deeper than Earth’s Arctic Ocean, and the ice cap is roughly 1,000 times thicker,” said Leighton. “However, instead of sending a physical probe, we could let sound waves travel to the seabed and back and do our exploring for us.”

Planets’ unique atmospheres impact sound speed and absorption. For example, the thin, carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere absorbs more sound than Earth’s, so distant noises appear fainter. Anticipating how sound travels is important for designing and calibrating equipment like microphones and speakers.

Hearing the sound from other planets is beneficial not just for scientific purposes, but also for entertainment. Science-fiction films contain vivid imagery to mimic the look of other worlds but often lack the immersive quality of how those worlds would sound.

Leighton’s software will showcase predictions of the sounds of other worlds at planetariums and museums. In the case of Mars, it will include actual sounds thanks to the U.S./European Perseverance team and China’s Zhurong mission.

The special session, chaired by Leighton and Andi Petculescu, is the third forum on acoustics in planetary science organized at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

“The success of the first two ASA special sessions on this subject has led to quite a few collaborations between the two communities, a trend that we hope will carry on,” said Petculescu.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING23&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/.

Songs of the Oceans Raise Environmental Awareness #ASA184

Oceanic data is transformed into hypnotic and impactful music that encourages reflection.

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

CHICAGO, May 10, 2023 – For many people, there are few sounds as relaxing as ocean waves. But the sound of the seas can also convey deeper emotions and raise awareness about pollution.

Malloy with the oil drum used for his musical performances. Credit: Colin Malloy

At the upcoming 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Colin Malloy of Ocean Network Canada will present his method to transform ocean data into captivating, solo percussion songs. The talk, “Sonification of ocean data in art-science,” will take place Wednesday, May 10, at 3:25 p.m. in the Indiana/Iowa room. The meeting will run May 8-12 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel.

To construct his compositions, Malloy employs sound from underwater microphones, called hydrophones, and introduces elements inspired by ocean-related data such as temperature, acidity, and oxygenation. Listeners can find performances of Malloy’s music on YouTube.

In his piece, Oil & Water, Malloy represents the impact of oil production on the oceans. He plays an eerily catchy melody on steel drums and inserts noise to represent oil production over the past 120 years. The interjections increase throughout the piece to mimic the increased production in recent years. Near the end of the song, he uses oil consumption data as the oscillator of a synthesizer.

By representing data in this way, he hopes his music encourages listeners to reflect on the meaning and the medium.

“Art helps people digest information on an emotional level that typical science communication may not,” Malloy said. “I hope that in listening to these pieces, people use them as a space to reflect on what each piece is trying to portray. Ultimately, I’d like for them to help create awareness of the various issues surrounding the oceans.”

The aptly named field ArtScience encourages scientists and artists to learn from each other about communication, connection, and science. Ocean Network Canada’s artist-in-residence program recruits artists to work with scientists, engage with research, and connect to a larger cultural audience.

Malloy, who has an educational background in mathematics, computer science, and music, believes working in the balance of science and art provides him with a unique perspective.

“There is a lot of art in science and a lot of science to art — more than most people realize for either direction,” said Malloy.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING23&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/.

Achieving Linguistic Justice for African American English #ASA184

African American English varies systematically and is internally consistent; a proper understanding of this variation prevents the misdiagnosis of speech and language disorder.

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

CHICAGO, May 10, 2023 – African American English (AAE) is a variety of English spoken primarily, though not exclusively, by Black Americans of historical African descent. Because AAE varies from white American English (WAE) in a systematic way, it is possible that speech and hearing specialists unfamiliar with the language variety could misidentify differences in speech production as speech disorder. Professional understanding of the difference between typical variation and errors in the language system is the first step for accurately identifying disorder and establishing linguistic justice for AAE speakers.

(left) 5-year-old AAE girl’s production of “elephant.” When the /t/ sound in /nt/ is produced the AAE speaker produces less aspiration noise. The /t/ sound exists for a shorter period in time relative to the WAE /t/ production. The duration of the word is 740 milliseconds (.74 seconds). (right) 5-year-old WAE girl’s production of “elephant.” When the /t/ sound in /nt/ is produced the WAE speaker produces a lot of aspiration noise. The /t/ sound exists for a longer period in time relative to the AAE /t/ production. The duration of the entire word is 973 milliseconds (.97) seconds. Both girls have intelligible productions of the word “elephant.”

In her presentation, “Kids talk too: Linguistic justice and child African American English,” Yolanda Holt of East Carolina University will describe aspects of the systematic variation between AAE and WAE speech production in children. The talk will take place Wednesday, May 10, at 10:50 a.m. Eastern U.S. in the Los Angeles/Miami/Scottsdale room, as part of the 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America running May 8-12 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel.

Common characteristics of AAE speech include variation at all linguistic levels, from sound production at the word level to the choice of commentary in professional interpersonal interactions. A frequent feature of AAE is final consonant reduction/deletion and final consonant cluster reduction. Holt provided the following example to illustrate word level to interpersonal level linguistic variation.

“In the professional setting, if one AAE-speaking professional woman wanted to compliment the attire of the other, the exchange might sound something like this: [Speaker 1] ‘I see you rockin’ the tone on tone.’ [Speaker 2] ‘Frien’, I’m jus’ tryin’ to be like you wit’ the fully executive flex.’’’

This example, in addition to using common aspects of AAE word shape, shows how the choice to use AAE in a professional setting is a way for the two women to share a message beyond the words.

“This exchange illustrates a complex and nuanced cultural understanding between the two speakers. In a few words, they communicate professional respect and a subtle appreciation for the intricate balance that African American women navigate in bringing their whole selves to the corporate setting,” said Holt.

Holt and her team examined final consonant cluster reduction (e.g., expressing “shift” as “shif’”) in 4- and 5-year-old children. Using instrumental acoustic phonetic analysis, they discovered that the variation in final consonant production in AAE is likely not a wholesale elimination of word endings but is perhaps a difference in aspects of articulation.

“This is an important finding because it could be assumed that if a child does not fully articulate the final sound, they are not aware of its existence,” said Holt. “By illustrating that the AAE-speaking child produces a variation of the final sound, not a wholesale removal, we help to eliminate the mistaken idea that AAE speakers don’t know the ending sounds exist.”

Holt believes the fields of speech and language science, education, and computer science should expect and accept such variation in human communication. Linguistic justice occurs when we accept variation in human language without penalizing the user or defining their speech as “wrong.”

“Language is alive. It grows and changes over each generation,” said Holt. “Accepting the speech and language used by each generation and each group of speakers is an acceptance of the individual, their life, and their experience. Acceptance, not tolerance, is the next step in the march towards linguistic justice. For that to occur, we must learn from our speakers and educate our professionals that different can be typical. It is not always disordered.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING23&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/.

Listening to the Largest Tree on Earth #ASA184

Hydrophones record the sounds of the massive Pando aspen grove, from its leaves to its roots.

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

CHICAGO, May 10, 2023 – Spread across 106 acres in southcentral Utah, the Pando aspen grove resembles a forest but is actually a single organism with more than 47,000 genetically identical aspen stems connected at the root. Pando is the world’s largest tree by weight and land mass. Research suggests Pando has been regenerating for 9,000 years, making it one of the oldest organisms on Earth.

As part of the 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Jeff Rice and Lance Oditt will describe their work to reveal a unique acoustic portrait of this botanical wonder. Their presentation, “Beneath the tree: The sounds of a trembling giant,” will take place Wednesday, May 10, at 10:30 a.m. Eastern U.S. in the Great America 1/2 room, as part of the meeting running May 8-12 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel.

“Pando challenges our basic understanding of the world,” said presenter Jeff Rice, a sound artist from Seattle. “The idea that this giant forest could be a single organism defies our concept of the individual. Its vastness humbles our sense of space.”

After recording Pando’s leaves for The New York Times Magazine’s special issue “Listen to the World” in 2018, Rice returned in July 2022 as an artist-in-residence for the nonprofit group, Friends of Pando, which Oditt founded in 2019. Rice used a variety of microphones to record Pando’s leaves, birds, and weather.

“The sounds are beautiful and interesting, but from a practical standpoint, natural sounds can be used to document the health of an environment,” he said. “They are a record of the local biodiversity, and they provide a baseline that can be measured against environmental change.”

Rice was particularly captivated by the sound of vibrations passing through the tree during a windstorm. He wanted to see if they could record the sound of Pando’s root system, which can reach depths of 90 feet by some accounts. Oditt, executive director of Friends of Pando, identified several potential recording locations below the surface.

“Hydrophones don’t just need water to work,” said Rice. “They can pick up vibrations from surfaces like roots as well, and when I put on my headphones, I was instantly surprised. Something was happening. There was a faint sound.”

That sound is not conclusively from Pando’s root system. But a handful of experiments support the idea. Rice and Oditt were able to show that vibrations can pass from tree to tree through the ground. When they banged lightly on a branch 90 feet away, the hydrophone registered with a low thump. Rice compares this to the classic tin can telephone.

“It’s similar to two cans connected by a string,” he said. “Except there are 47,000 cans connected by a huge root system.”

A similar phenomenon occurred during a thunderstorm. As leaves moved more intensely in the wind, the signal recorded by the hydrophone also increased.

“The findings are tantalizing. While it started as art, we see enormous potential for use in science. Wind, converted to vibration (sound) and traveling the root system, could also reveal the inner workings of Pando’s vast hidden hydraulic system in a nondestructive manner,” said Oditt. “Friends of Pando plans to use the data gathered as the basis for additional studies on water movement, how branch arrays are related to one another, insect colonies, and root depth, all of which we know little about today.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING23&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/.