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.

High School Dougherty-sqr

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.

High School Lee-Park

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.

High School Cayanan-Gozun-Tongol

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.

High School Hillier

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!

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:

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.

Dec JASA Cover

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!

Don't forget that we make daily posts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn about the latest ASA Publications and other acoustics news. Join the conversation with other members of the field by liking, sharing, and commenting on our posts!

Most Downloaded Journal Articles of 2023

One of our favorite things to do in the Publications Office at the end of the year is to look back and see which articles ended up getting read the most over the course of the year. In that time, we publish hundreds of articles across our three journals, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA), JASA Express Letters, and The Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA). Publications span topics from all fourteen technical committees in the Acoustical Society of America, so it’s always a bit of a surprise to see which of the many diverse topics our journals cover end up piquing readers’ interest the most.

Today, we’d like to share the most downloaded articles with you, so you can see the research that’s currently making an impact in the field of acoustics. Here are the three most downloaded articles from each journal in 2023:

JASA

From the Special Issue on Reconsidering Classic Ideas in Speech Communication, this article points out the strengths and limitations of using intelligibility measures as metrics for speech perception.

This editorial introduces the special issue of the same name. (For an even more in-depth overview of the issue, check out this conversation we had with the editors on Across Acoustics!)

The third most-downloaded article from JASA this year is another Special Issue article, this time from the Special Issue on Fish Bioacoustics: Hearing and Sound Communication. This paper proposes an automated method for separating fish chorus from the environment, which could potentially help with research that will aid in the protection of vulnerable fish species.

JASA Express Letters

The most downloaded JASA Express Letters article for the year received quite a bit of attention for research into the noise of NASA’s Space Launch System, including a press release and an episode of Across Acoustics!

This Editor’s Pick analyzed the use of distributed acoustic sensing for monitoring the ocean.

This research exploring a central aspect to music mixing was featured in a press release and an episode of our podcast.

POMA

This article based on a presentation from the 184th ASA meeting in Chicago identified character defining acoustical differences between two historic churches.

This article from the 183rd ASA Meeting in Nashville discusses methods for measuring hearing aid microphones’ sensitivity to intrinsic vibration, which can cause feedback that is difficult to resolve.

This research presented at the Fourth Vienna Talk on Music Acoustics explored ways to produce deep-bass tones in pipe organs when you don’t have a space the size of a cathedral to house said organ.

We hope you enjoy these articles as much as we did! Thank you to our authors for a sharing their research with us this year, and thank you to our readers for turning to our publications to find the latest in theoretical and experimental research results in the broad interdisciplinary subject of sound.