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Celebrating Past Fellows and Inviting Applications for the James E. West Graduate Fellowship!

Informal portrait of James West. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740.

The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) established the Minority Fellowship in 1992 with the goal of supporting minority students in their pursuit of graduate-level degrees in acoustics. In 2018, the Minority Fellowship was renamed to recognize Dr. James E. West’s integral role in establishing the fellowship and advocating for underrepresented minorities in science and engineering. (Read more about Dr. West in Acoustic Today!) With the 2024 application cycle starting for the James E. West Graduate Fellowship for Minorities, let’s take a moment to reflect on the valuable contributions of past Fellows.

E.K. Ellington Scott; From the Musicians’ Perspective- A Brief History of Stage Acoustics. Acoustics Today. Winter 2023; 19 (4): 50–55. https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2023.19.4.50

This magazine article written by 2020 West Fellow, E.K. Scott, looks at the transformation of stage acoustics over the years from the musicians’ vantage point.

Douglas M. Photiadis, Mauricio Villa, Saikat Dey; Auxiliary superfield method for statistical predictions of complex, structural acoustics systems: Saddle point approximation for the mean field. Acoust. Soc. Am.1 June 2023; 153 (6): 3239–3257. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0019593

In this JASA article, Mauricio Villa, the 2016 Minority Fellow, and his coauthors introduce the auxiliary superfield method in the structural acoustics context.

Visar Berisha, Steven Sandoval, Rene Utianski, Julie Liss, Andreas Spanias; Characterizing the distribution of the quadrilateral vowel space area. Acoust. Soc. Am.1 January 2014; 135 (1): 421–427. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4829528

This JASA article coauthored by the 2014 Minority Fellow, Steven P. Sandoval, presents a detailed analysis of the statistical properties of the vowel space area.

Annamaria Izzi DeAngelis, Robert Valtierra, Sofie M. Van Parijs, Danielle Cholewiak; Using multipath reflections to obtain dive depths of beaked whales from a towed hydrophone array. Acoust. Soc. Am.1 August 2017; 142 (2): 1078–1087. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4998709

In JASA, Robert D. Valtierra, the 2012 Minority Fellow, and his coauthors demonstrate the potential for towed linear hydrophone array studies to obtain dive depths from a greater sample of groups and species.

Be sure to help inspire and encourage future and current graduate students pursuing acoustics; Applications are due 1 April 2024!

High School Brilliance in ASA Publications

In this post, we invite readers to look back at a few ASA articles that were written and/or co-written by authors who were still in high school at the time of publication, proving that age is merely a number in the pursuit of scientific excellence.

The author and her siblings (left to right) Brooke, Ross, and Morgan Dougherty

First up is Brooke Dougherty who reached out to the editor of Acoustics Today (AT) to pitch her article idea. Her passion and initiative resulted in the AT Sound Perspective piece, “The Sound Journey of a Future Acoustician” (DOI: 10.1121/AT.2021.17.4.70) where Brooke writes about Perfect Pitch Fluency—an accessible resource to master perfect pitch, delve into sound concepts, and explore the hidden world of frequency in music and beyond.

Experimental setup for testing the benefit of the metamaterial structure.

Next up, Joonyoung Lee and Mincheol Park, who received the ASA Second Award at the 2019 International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), also presented at the 2019 International Congress on Ultrasonics. Co-authored with Jong-Rim Lee, Younho Cho, and Young H. Kim, the Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA) publication, “Optimize ultrasound condition for water treatment by coiled-up space metamaterial” (DOI: 10.1121/2.0001123) explores the efficiency boost of ultrasonic waves for cleansing.

Flowchart of Making the Sound Absorption Materials

The 2019 ISEF ASA Honorable Mention team made up of Neil David C. Cayanan, Shaira C. Gozun, and E’van Relle M. Tongol presented their project at the 178th Meeting ASA Meeting and then published their work in POMA. Their publication, “Hibla: Acoustic fiber” (DOI: 10.1121/2.0001264), showcases their innovative thinking in creating high-performance sound absorption panels from Abacá, Bamboo, and Water hyacinth.

Spectrograms of the same utterance of “I know because I will” spoken by an adult female native English speaker.

After presenting their work at the Washington State Science and Engineering Fair in 2017, Adeline F. Hillier, Claire E. Hillier and their mentor, David A. Hillier, published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA). “A modified spectrogram with possible application as a visual hearing aid for the deaf” (DOI: 10.1121/1.5055224), describes how enhanced frequency resolution, optimized information clarity, and the elimination of distracting details is paving the way for a more intuitive and efficient interpretation of acoustic patterns.

The next time you come across a scientific publication, remember – it might just be the work of the next generation of acousticians, who penned their groundbreaking insights while still navigating the halls of high school!

New Across Acoustics Episode: What is silence?

More precisely, is silence the absence of sound? (What is sound, anyway?) In this episode, we get a little philosophical, discussing with Bill Yost (Arizona State University) about what sound is and the role perception plays in our understanding of sound and silence.

Like the episode? Check out the related article!

December 2023 JASA Cover

The December cover of JASA is now available! Check it out:

The cover image is Figures 2, panel c, of “Assessment of modal density and free path distribution in central-planned halls,” by Giulia Fratoni, Massimo Garai, and Dario D’Orazio. ASA Editor-in-Chief Jim Lynch says about the feature article:

“Having recently heard an excellent lecture on ‘The Bells of Falmouth’ by retired Woods Hole Oceanographic engineer Ken Peal (yes, that’s the correct name), I became again interested in the modal patterns of bells and nearly circular reflecting rooms. The article ‘Assessment of modal density and free path distribution in central-planned halls,’ by Fratoni et al fits in that category, and presents an interesting acoustic study of three historic nearly circular rooms using both ray and mode theory. This should be a fun article for all acousticians to read.”

Some other research was also highlighted on the December JASA cover:

From Animal Bioacoustics, “Acoustic recording tags provide insight into the springtime acoustic behavior of sei whales in Massachusetts Bay,” by Dana A. Cusano, David Wiley, Julia M. Zeh, Iain Kerr, Alicia Pensarosa, Chris Zadra, K. Alex Shorter, and Susan E. Parks
From Engineering Acoustics, “Bandwidth extension of the Tonpilz transducer using high-order longitudinal vibrations,” by Bocheng Ji, Yu Lan, Gang Qiao, and Mindi Wang
From Psychological and Physiological Acoustics, “Practical utility of a head-mounted gaze-directed beamforming system,” by John F. Culling, Emilie F. C. D’Olne, Bryn D. Davies, Niamh Powell, and Patrick A. Naylor
From Speech Communication, “Fathers’ unmodulated prosody in child-directed speech,” by Maria V. Kondaurova, Mark VanDam, Qi Zheng, and Bianca Welikson

All the articles from the cover are free to read for a month after the cover is released, so be sure to check them out! You can find the whole issue at https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/issue/154/6.

Most liked publications social media content

If you’ve been reading the last couple Propagations posts, you know the ASA Publications Office likes to do end of year reviews looking at what content the acoustics community enjoyed. We’ve shared our most popular Across Acoustics podcast episodes as well as the most downloaded ASA publications. Now we’re going to share some of the most liked publications content across our social media accounts. Even though we share the same content on all our social media accounts, some posts get more likes on specific platforms. Check out which posts users on different platforms like the most.

Source separation with an acoustic vector sensor for terrestrial bioacoustics

This Technical Area Pick for Signal Processing was the most liked JASA content posted across our social platforms, specifically on Facebook and X. Check it out to read the authors’ proposed a solution for the challenge of separating overlapping calls and environmental noise in the passive acoustic monitoring of complex soundscapes.

Irina Tolkova, Holger Klinck; Source separation with an acoustic vector sensor for terrestrial bioacoustics. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 August 2022; 152 (2): 1123. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0013505

Distributed acoustic sensing recordings of low-frequency whale calls and ship noise offshore Central Oregon

In JASA Express Letters, this Editors Pick about the potential of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) for low-frequency acoustic monitoring was the most liked JASA EL content posted across our platforms. In particular users on LinkedIn and X liked it. Be sure to give it a read!

William S. D. Wilcock, Shima Abadi, Bradley P. Lipovsky; Distributed acoustic sensing recordings of low-frequency whale calls and ship noise offshore Central Oregon. JASA Express Lett. 1 February 2023; 3 (2): 026002. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0017104

Low-frequency directional characteristics of a gamelan gong

Samuel David Bellows, Dallin T. Harwood, Kent L. Gee, Timothy W. Leishman; Low-frequency directional characteristics of a gamelan gong. Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 5 December 2022; 50 (1): 035003. https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001722

This paper was the most liked POMA content posted across our platforms, notably Facebook and Instagram.

Were any of these popular posts surprising to you? What publications would you like us to post in the coming year? We’d love to hear your thoughts!