October 21, 2010 — Experts in acoustics (the “science of
sound”) from around the world will gather in Cancun next month to
present their latest discoveries and innovations: cheap, clean
stoves for poor countries, ultrasound technologies that count the
heartbeats of a fetus, quieter wind turbines, measurements of whale
activity in the wake of the recent oil spill and investigations
into the origins of laughter.
The 2nd Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics, sponsored by
the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the Mexican Institute of
Acoustics (IMA), and the Iberoamerican Federation of Acoustics
(FIA), takes place November 15-19. Research topics to be covered
include architecture, animal communications, engineering,
oceanography, medicine, music and psychology.
This press release is the first of several highlighting
newsworthy talks and presentations. Journalists may receive
complimentary registration to this meeting using the information
found at the end of this release. Reporters who cannot attend in
person may cover the meeting remotely using ASA’s World Wide Press
Room, which will go live one week before the conference begins.
Preliminary Meeting Highlights
- Clean, Cheap Stoves for Poor Countries
- Aftermath of Deepwater Horizon Spill for Whales
- Hospital Noise Impacts Patients
- Drawing Energy from the Ocean
- Bugs Instant Message Using Plants
- Whales Sing Louder With Their Tails Up
- New Technology Counts Fetus Heartbeats
- Quieter Wind Turbine Blades Designed
- Hearing Aid Power Source Shrunk
- Is Laughter Learned?
- Sound-Absorbing Materials Made from Recycled Bottles
- Mayan Pyramids Provided Political Grand Stand
- Prehistoric Rock Band Revealed
- Quiet in the Theater
- Dolphins Hush When Killers Lurk
1) Clean, Cheap Stoves for Poor Countries “Recent
research demonstrates that fan aided combustion creates a
significant decrease in products of incomplete combustion that
degrades indoor air quality and exacerbates global warming. This
presentation will describe a very simple cogenerator prototype
… that can generate the few watts of electrical power
necessary to operate the fan and charge a battery.” See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa339.html
2) Aftermath of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill for Whales
“The area near the Deepwater Horizon incident was abundant with a
variety of marine mammals, including endangered sperm whales and
beaked whales. The baseline density estimations from acoustic data
for sperm and beaked whales in the vicinity of the incident are
presented and compared to available data derived from visual
surveys.” See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa506.html
3) Hospital Noise Impacts Patients
“This presentation will discuss a pilot study that focuses on the
relationships between acoustic measurements and patient physiology
in a Swedish medical surgical intensive care unit. The data
demonstrated a statistically significant relationship between the
recorded physiological responses and acoustic measurements.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa59.html
4) Drawing Energy from the Ocean
“A generic energy conversion device at the ocean surface is
considered. Knowledge of the maximum capture length enables a quick
assessment of whether any proposed wave energy farm will deliver a
desired amount of power.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa341.html
5) Bugs Instant Message Using Plants
“For plant-dwelling insects, substrate-borne sound signaling
remains the best solution for communication in dense vegetation
typical for the tropics. They communicate with vibratory signals of
the dominant frequency around 100 Hz, which travel through plants
with low attenuation, creating standing wave conditions in the
plant’s rod-like structures.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa575.html
6) Whales Sing Louder With Their Tails Up
“Male humpback whale song is thought to mediate inter and
intrasexual interactions and to have an important role in mating
strategies. This behavior was investigated on the Abrolhos bank off
Brazil. The results show that males increase the acoustic area of
their song by almost nine times singing underwater or in the tailup
posture and, for the lower frequency components of the song, the
tailup posture further increases sound transmission.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa800.html
7) New Technology Counts Fetus Heartbeats
“In utero, monitoring of fetal well being or suffering is today an
open challenge due to the high number of clinical parameters to be
considered. [Our] results are really encouraging, and they enable
us to plan the use of automatic classification techniques in order
to discriminate between healthy and suffering fetus.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa146.html
8) Quieter Wind Turbine Blades Designed
“As more turbines are installed near population centers, the
environmental impacts associated with these machines, such as
noise, are also becoming more obvious. Designs and preliminary
measurements of trailing edge modifications to the outboard airfoil
sections will be discussed as a means of partial noise
mitigation.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa56.html
9) Hearing Aid Power Source Shrunk
“We present a novel miniaturized ultrasonic transcutaneous energy
transmission system (TETS) for powering implantable hearing aids.
We have developed an ultrasonic TETS that offers comparable
efficiency (>30%)to electromagnetic links in a device that, at
less than 5 mm diameter, is more than an order of magnitude
smaller.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa36.html
10) Is Laughter Learned?
“Vocalizations like screams and laughs are used to communicate
affective states, but what acoustic cues in these signals require
vocal learning and which ones are innate? This study investigated
the role of auditory learning in the production of nonverbal
emotional vocalizations by examining the vocalizations produced by
people born deaf.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa837.html
11) Sound-Absorbing Material Made from Plastic
Bottles
“In controlling environmental noise, a lot of effort is put in
place to optimize noise barriers. However, in doing so, the noise
barriers are usually made of materials that are difficult to
recycle. In this work, alternative polyester wool obtained through
processing the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) from recycled
plastic bottles is presented.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa424.html
12) Mayan Pyramids Provided Political Grand Stand
“Ancient pyramids were employed by priests and politicians as a
high basement in order to make his voice heard in the distance,
addressing their people, during the religious ceremonies and
sometimes by the government or for social events or to promote a
war or a defensive action; this was done when public address
systems were not available, so it was a good medium to communicate
with large audiences.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa265.html
13) Prehistoric Rock Band Revealed
“The extended millenary galleries of rock art are among the
prehistorical treasures in Portugal, a vast territory to explore.
In search of the known but elusive proofs of music making, we have
encountered specific types of ceremonial rocks that have been
silent, with no memory of their use. For the first time, an
approach has been made for studying the special little holes rocks,
or rochas com covinhas, with an innovative systematic
methodology.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa396.html
14) Quiet in the Theater
“The application of impulse response theory with architectural
design principles provides a foundation for the acoustical design
of drama theaters, linking the perceptions of the audience,
acoustical measurements made in completed rooms, and acoustical
modeling and simulations of rooms being designed.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa7.html
15) Dolphins Hush When Killers Lurk
“Research has suggested killer whale predation may affect cetacean
vocal behavior; however, few data exist to test this hypothesis.
Data collected for 19,609 km of visual and acoustic shipboard
surveys in the tropical Pacific Ocean were examined to determine if
changes in dolphin vocal activity could be attributed to the
presence of killer whales. These surveys included 346 detections of
three highly vocal dolphin species (genus Stenella),whose whistles
can be detected at ranges over 4.6 km.”
See:
https://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov10/asa580.html
More Information about the 2nd Pan-American/Iberian Meeting
on Acoustics
The 2nd Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics takes place at
the Fiesta Americana Grand Coral Beach Hotel in Cancun, Mexico,
Monday through Friday, November 15-19, 2010. The Fiesta Americana
Grand Coral Beach Hotel is located at Blvd. Kukulcán km.
9.5, Cancún Hotel Zone, Cancún, Q.R., 77500. The
hotel’s main numbers are +52 (998) 881 32 00 and, toll-free,
1-888-830-9008.
Useful Links
- Main meeting website: https://asa.aip.org/cancun/cancun.html
- Full meeting program: https://asa.aip.org/cancun/program.html
- Searchable index: https://asa.aip.org/asasearch.html
- Hotel site:
https://www.fiestamericanagrand.com/portal/p/es_MX/FAG/FCB/1/0/Availability/showMinisitioM2.do?showContenido=/descripcionhotel/FCBdescripcionhotel_M2.html&idioma=en_MX
World Wide Press Room
In the coming weeks, ASA’s World Wide Press Room
(www.acoustics.org/press) will be updated with additional tips on
dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay-language papers, which
are 300-1200 word summaries of presentations written by scientists
for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and
video.
Press Registration
We will grant free registration to credentialed full-time
journalists and professional freelance journalists working on
assignment for major news outlets. If you are a reporter and would
like to attend, please contact Jason Bardi (
jbardi@aip.org, 301-209-3091), who can also help with setting
up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background
information.