Update Noise Regulations to Protect Seals, Porpoises

Update Noise Regulations to Protect Seals, Porpoises

Harbor porpoises engaged in experiment where its hearing sensitivity is measured by means of electrodes attached with suction cups to the skin. CREDIT: Solvin Zankel, Fjord&Belt, Kerteminde, Denmark

Harbor porpoise engaged in experiment where its hearing sensitivity is measured by means of electrodes attached with suction cups to the skin. CREDIT: Solvin Zankel, Fjord&Belt, Kerteminde, Denmark

WASHINGTON, June 28, 2022 – Noise produced by pile drivers building offshore wind turbines can damage the hearing of porpoises, seals, and other marine life. Regulations are in place, but guidance on this difficult topic requires regular revisits to incorporate results from…click to read more

From the Journal: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Article: Thresholds for noise induced hearing loss in harbor porpoises and phocid seals
DOI: 10.1121/10.0011560

‘Urban Canyons’ Prolong Sonic Booms in Cities

‘Urban Canyons’ Prolong Sonic Booms in Cities

sonic booms

Propagation of an N-wave sonic boom above (a) an isolated building and (b) multiple buildings. CREDIT: Didier Dragna

WASHINGTON, June 7, 2022 – Twenty years after the retirement of the Concorde, several industrial and research projects want to make supersonic flight a reality again. However, supersonic planes produce sonic booms loud enough to warrant noise concerns and regulations, limiting…click to read more

From the Journal: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Article: Sonic boom reflection over an isolated building and multiple buildings
DOI: 10.1121/10.0010452

Machine Learning Improves Human Speech Recognition

Machine Learning Improves Human Speech Recognition

Machine Learning

Overview of the human speech recognition model CREDIT: Jana Roßbach

WASHINGTON, March 1, 2022 — Hearing loss is a rapidly growing area of scientific research as the number of baby boomers dealing with hearing loss continues to increase as they age. To understand how hearing loss impacts…click to read more

From the Journal: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Link to article: A model of speech recognition for hearing-impaired listeners based on deep learning
DOI: 10.1121/10.0009411

Can We Perceive Gender from Children’s Voices?

Can We Perceive Gender from Children’s Voices?

Classification rates for individual talkers (ages 5-11), with numbers indicating talker age (males in circles). Voices in shaded quadrants were identified correctly based on both sentences and isolated syllables. CREDIT: Barreda and Assmann

WASHINGTON, November 23, 2021 — The perception of gender in children’s voices is of special interest to researchers, because voices of young boys and girls are very similar before the age of puberty. Adult male and female voices are often quite different acoustically, making gender…click to read more

From the Journal: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Link to article: Perception of gender in children’s voices
DOI: 10.1121/10.0006785

To Better Understand Speech, Focus on Who Is Talking

To Better Understand Speech, Focus on Who Is Talking

Seeing a talker’s face improves your ability to perceive speech, but only if the face and voice come from the same location in space. CREDIT: Justin Fleming

WASHINGTON, October 26, 2021 — Seeing a person’s face as we are talking to them greatly improves our ability to understand their speech. While previous studies indicate that the timing of words-to-mouth movements across the senses is critical to this audio-visual speech benefit, whether it also depends on…click to read more

From the Journal: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Link to article: Spatial alignment between faces and voices improves selective attention to audio-visual speech
DOI: 10.1121/10.0006415