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Leveraging Lay Language Papers for Publication

For over 25 years, the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) has been at the forefront of bringing the captivating world of acoustics to a broader audience through their Lay Language Papers (LLP) program. These concise, jargon-free summaries have been instrumental in making complex acoustic research more accessible to science writers, educators, reporters, and anyone curious about the realm of sound. What many authors may not know is that crafting an engaging LLP can be your secret step towards getting published in the Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA). Let’s delve into how writing an LLP can open the door to POMA and explore real-world examples that have successfully made this connection.

Authors who master the art of creating compelling LLPs often find themselves well-prepared for the world of academic publishing. These “bite-sized” papers serve as an excellent steppingstone for researchers looking to transition their research from a lay audience to a more specialized readership. The process of writing an LLP encourages the author to think about the story they are trying to tell about their research, and how to convey that story in a clear, concise fashion. That structure can then be expanded upon with more details and data to develop a POMA.

Here are real-world examples that showcase the bridge between LLPs and POMA:

LLPs are not limited to text; they also serve as a convenient digital space for hosting multimedia content such as audio files, videos, or images. This multimedia content can be cross-referenced in your other published work, enhancing the depth and richness of your research presentations. For instance, author David M. F. Chapman used his LLP to provide audio examples for his article published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA): “The tones of the kalimba (African thumb piano).”

By writing an LLP, you do more than just make your research accessible to a wider audience; you also take the initial steps towards learning how to present your research effectively for eventual publication. Consider your ASA Lay Language Paper as the first building block in your journey towards a publication in POMA. It’s a strategic move that combines effective communication with broader accessibility, setting you on the path to sharing your acoustic discoveries with the world.

So, the next time you present at an ASA Meeting, seize the opportunity to write an LLP—it might just be your secret step towards seeing your research published in an ASA journal!

Read more about the LLP program in Acoustics Today and be sure to submit your own LLP in for the185th ASA meeting, Acoustics 2023 Sydney!

New Across Acoustics Episode: Optimizing Concrete Floors for Building Acoustics

The manufacturing and production of concrete construction building materials creates roughly 10% of global carbon emissions. As a result, architectural engineers are trying to find new ways to reduce the amount of concrete used in their buildings. Less concrete, though, can lead to some major ramifications in terms of the acoustics of a built space. In this episode of Across Acoustics, we talk to Jonathan Michael Broyles (Penn State) about techniques for optimizing the design of concrete slabs used in floors to reduce materials while improving acoustic performance.

(Like the episode? Read the article!)

Announcing the Winners of the Chicago POMA Student Paper Competition: 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America

Helen Wall Murray

POMA Manuscript Manager

helenwallmurray@acousticalsociety.org

The POMA Editorial Board is proud to announce that the 3rd society-wide student paper competition has come to completion with five papers chosen from the largest pool of POMA Student Paper Competition (PSPC) submissions to date. The papers span across ten technical areas, ranging from Architectural to Signal Processing, Musical to Computational to Physical and Psychological Acoustics. The core purpose of the competition is to highlight the relevant and cutting-edge research happening across the many disciplines of the ASA, and to draw attention, specifically, to the achievements of young acousticians. Ultimately, we hope this initiative will continue to increase involvement with POMA across the membership and provide an efficient, speedy and valuable path to publication for many first-time authors.

According to POMA Editor Megan Ballard, “All the papers were quite good and also so different in terms of technical content and style. It was difficult to rank them because they were all high quality and excelled in different ways.”

Each winning student author will receive an award of USD $300 and the opportunity to appear on the ASA publications podcast, Across Acoustics. Additionally, a special designation will be added to the cover pages, articles will be be featured on ASA social media accounts, and the winners will receive a formal certificate signed by the ASA President and the POMA Editor. In the near future, all of the winners from the three competitions and all subsequent competitions will be featured in perpetuity on the POMA Homepage.

We look forward to promoting all of the excellent papers submitted over the next several weeks in upcoming email and social media campaigns.

On behalf of the ASA and the POMA Editorial Board we congratulate the following student authors:

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Speech Communication

When clear speech does not enhance memory: Effects of speaking style, voice naturalness, and listener age
Nicholas B. Aoki and Georgia Zellou
Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 51, 060002 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001766

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Architectural Acoustics

Predicting the reverberation time of concert halls by use of a random forest regression model
Jonathan Michael Broyles and Zane Tyler Rusk
Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 51, 015004 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001751

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Computational Acoustics

A gradient-based optimization approach for underwater acoustic source localization
Dariush Kari and Andrew C. Singer
Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 51, 022002 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001753

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Musical Acoustics

Examination of the static and dynamic bridge force components of a bowed string
Alessio Lampis, Alexander Mayer, Montserrat Pàmies-Vilà and Vasileios Chatziioannou
Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 51, 022002 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001755

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Noise

An overview of acoustical measurements made of the Atlas V JPSS-2 rocket launch
Logan T. Mathews, Mark C. Anderson, Carson D. Gardner, Bradley W. McLaughlin, Brooke M. Hinds, Megan R. McCullah-Boozer, Lucas K. Hall and Kent L. Gee
Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 51, 040003 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001768

Calling all Sydney-bound Students!

The next student paper competition will commence after the close of the 185th Meeting of the Acoustical Society in Sydney, Australia. Student presenters are invited to submit a corresponding paper by the competition deadline, which is 30 days after the conclusion of the meeting. In this case, 8 January 2024. For more information about the POMA Student Paper Competition (PSPC), please contact the POMA Editorial Office – poma@acousticalsociety.org or review this recent blog post that details the qualifications and guidelines – https://acoustics.org/poma-captures-meeting-momentum/.

We look forward to receiving your Sydney submissions!

Smartphone Apps and Acoustics

During the 174th ASA Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, Gregory S. Farber and past president Lily M. Wang reported on an exploratory, large-scale noise survey of sound levels of restaurants and bars in New York City using an app called SoundPrint. The related proceedings paper* states that SoundPrint encourages the public to collect and crowdsource sound level data. Furthermore, this information can help users visit locations based on their loudness (or quietness).

Since publishing, Farber has started a campaign to promote hearing health called the SoundPrint Find Your Quiet Place Challenge. Beginning October 1, 2023, participants are asked to take sound measurements and submit them to the SoundPrint database. The collection of sound level data will enable SoundPrint to advocate for safe noise levels, help communities find quieter places, and protect the public’s hearing health. Participants can even win prizes! For complete details, visit the FYQP webpage.

Want to explore further? Other tools and apps crowdsource sound data and educate people about acoustics. For example, the NoiseCapture app lets anyone measure their sound environment and share their geolocated measurements with the community in order to build a collective noise map. In The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) article, NoiseCapture smartphone application as pedagogical support for education and public awareness, authors describe how the app was used in educational settings to help students and teachers learn the basic knowledge of environmental acoustics and noise mapping.

You might be curious if smartphone apps are actually good enough to gather such sound data. Researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) had similar questions resulting in two JASA publications about the accuracy of smartphone sound measurement applications; Evaluation of smartphone sound measurement applications and Evaluation of smartphone sound measurement applications (apps) using external microphones—A follow-up study. These studies, along with others, lead NIOSH to create the NIOSH Sound Level Meter App, which measures occupational noise exposure similar to professional instruments.

Let us know if you use any of these apps or other acoustics apps on your phone!

*Gregory S. Farber, Lily M Wang; Analyses of crowd-sourced sound levels of restaurants and bars in New York City. Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 4 December 2017; 31 (1): 040003. https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0000674