bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The tongue dorsum activity in children with cleft palate and typically developing children
Authors: Hashemi Hosseinabad Hedieh , Cleland Joanne
Published: November 2021

Objective: Cleft palate speech is characterized by abnormal lingual articulation. To date, most articulatory information has been collected using electropalatography, which records the tongue-palate contact but not the tongue shape. The present study uses ultrasound tongue imaging for quantitative analysis of tongue function in speakers with cleft palate. Two measures aim to quantify overuse of tongue dorsum in cleft palate articulations were compared with typical speakers. The hypothesis is higher degrees of tongue dorsum activity in cleft palate speech. Measures: High-speed ultrasound tongue contour data synchronized with the acoustic signal were recorded. Data from three speakers of American English (11–13 years old) with speech disorders resulting from cleft palate and three typically developing speakers were analyzed. Annotation and tongue tracing from ultrasound images were carried out in Articulate Assistant Advanced software. One of the measures quantified the extent of tongue dorsum excursion (DEI), and the other measure represented the place of maximal excursion (TCPI). The stimuli included a range of consonants in consonant-vowel sequences, with the vowels /a/ and /i/. In total, 360 values were obtained for each index (six speakers × six consonants × two vowels × five repetitions). Further results will be discussed in the meeting.
Target localization in range and depth from a passive linear towed array
Authors: Roche Thibault , Bennaceur Iannis , Cristol Xavier , Gaonach Gilles
Published: November 2021

Stealthily estimating the range and depth of a sound source from a submarine passive sonar is of capital tactical importance: it allows to adopt the appropriate escape or attack strategy towards the threat. The main difficulty in passive localization is that the transmitted waveform is unknown. Nevertheless, array processing can reveal some features of the acoustic field allowing localization, such as the arrival angles of the multiple paths, and the time delays between them. In this paper, we have compared two methods. The first one is a direct method, which simulates the field features from a set of possible source locations, and compares them to the measured features. The second one, an indirect method, uses the measured features to backpropagate the acoustic field. The former method has already been tested on simulated and real data in (Bennaceur et al., in OCEANS’18 MTS/IEEE, Charleston) and (Bennaceur et al., in OCEANS 2021, Singapore-U.S. Gulf Coast). Here, both methods are applied on real signals from a linear towed array, using bearings only and both bearings and time delays. The main advantage of these methods is that they are automatic in the sense that no sonar operator is required to estimate the source location.
Passive acoustic ship detection performance near the Port of Sept-Îles, Quebec
Authors: Antipina Marina , Barclay David R. , Martin S. B. , Delarue Julien
Published: November 2021

An acoustic recorder was deployed near the Port of Sept-Îles, Quebec in the fall of 2020 and collected six months of data on a four-channel orthogonal array. The system, a JASCO C-lander, operated on a duty cycle consisting of 340s of data recorded at 32 kHz sampling rate, 1 min of data recorded at 256 kHz sampling rate followed by 500s of sleep. Data were stored on SD memory cards for post-retrieval analysis. Vessels were detected using narrowband tonals produced by their propulsion system and other rotating machinery and the sound pressure level (SPL) for each minute of data in the 40–315 Hz shipping frequency band was then computed. A 10min shoulder period before and after the detection was then searched for the highest 1 min SPL which was identified as closest point of approach (CPA) time for each acoustic contact. Vessel track data from the automatic identification system (AIS) were used to compute CPAs for vessels carrying an AIS transponder during the deployment period. A comparison of the two results was used to identify missed and false detections, and to assess the algorithm’s performance. Recommendations for implementing an improved detection approach will be discussed.
A comparison of EAR and SoundTrap performance for acoustic monitoring of resident killer whales
Authors: Emmons Candice , Hanson M. Bradley , Holt Marla M. , Brewer Arial
Published: November 2021

Since 2006, a network of hydrophones has been deployed along the outer coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California to improve our understanding of endangered Southern Resident killer whale (SRKW) movements outside the inland waters of the Salish Sea and refine Critical Habitat designation. During this time period, improvements in methods and equipment have resulted in longer deployments, improved ability to detect resident killer whales (RKW) and monitor their acoustic behavior, and added the capability to characterize ambient and ship noise throughout SRKW range. It is important to understand how these changes might impact the results of long term studies on RKW movements and distribution. In this study, we co-located Ecological Acoustic Recorders (EARs) and SoundTraps at five locations along the Washington coast, analyzed each data set separately, and compared the results. Preliminary analysis of these data resulted in a 1.6 to 3.4 times increase in the number of days with RKW detections in the SoundTrap data compared to the EAR data depending on location. We will present the results of this comparison, investigate potential causes of the differences between recorder type, and highlight the implications of these differences to previous knowledge of RKW movements along the Washington coast.
Quantification of forearm muscle activation by ultrasound imaging and high-density electromyography
Authors: Sheng Zhiyu , Bedoy Ernesto , Weber Douglas J. , Dicianno Brad E. , Kim Kang
Published: November 2021

Assessment of skeletal muscle function is an active research area in rehabilitation and sports medicine. An effective assessment methodology can be used to evaluate muscle recovery or response to treatments or interventions, and for early diagnosis of skeletal muscle diseases when combined with corresponding biomarkers. The main objective of this study is to develop an engineering technique for detecting muscle activation by combined ultrasound imaging and high-density electromyography (HDEMG). An ultrasound speckle tracking algorithm was employed to measure the impulsive kinetic energy released by muscle contraction while the processed HDEMG depicted the spatial-temporal electrical response of the activated muscle. The location and time course of the muscle activation can then be quantified by detecting the precise onset of the mechanical and electrical signals from ultrasound imaging and HDEMG, respectively. To demonstrate the conceptual feasibility, experiments were performed, with synchronized dual-probe ultrasound imaging and HDEMG recorded, on the forearm of one human participant without an injury or disability. To test detections of different activation patterns, single electrical pulses were sent to the flexor carpi radialis (FCR), flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS) and the median nerve, respectively, to intentionally create cases where FCR and FDS can contract individually or simultaneously.
Externally induced shear waves in the right ventricular free wall during the cardiac cycle
Authors: Wei Luxi , Alipour Symakani Rahi , Caenen Annette , Keijzer Lana B. H. , Merkus Daphne , Bartelds Beatrijs , Taverne Yannick , van der Steen Antonius F. , Vos Hendrik , Strachinaru Mihai
Published: November 2021

Increased right ventricular (RV) diastolic stiffness is linked to adverse prognosis in pulmonary arterial hypertension. Currently, a non-invasive method for measuring RV stiffness is lacking. In the left ventricle, shear wave (SW) speed is related to diastolic stiffness. We show for the first time that SWs in the RV free wall (RVFW) can be induced and imaged transthoracically with ultrasound. SW imaging was performed using an L7-4 array (ATL, USA) with a Vantage 256 system (Verasonics, USA) in a 5-weeks-old Yorkshire-Landrace pig (±120 beats/min). SWs were induced by a push beam (f0 = 4.5MHz, push duration = 800μs) on the RVFW and its propagation was imaged (f0 = 5.2MHz) using plane wave compounding (-12 deg, 0 deg, +12 deg) at 3 kHz framerate. Three acquisitions of 1 s were performed, where fourteen SWs were sequentially induced during each acquisition. SW propagation speeds were calculated using a semi-automatic pipeline that includes tissue velocity estimation along a manually traced spline on the RVFW, and Radon transform to estimate SW speed. At least 85% of the waves were tracked successfully for all acquisitions. The SW velocities varied during the heart cycle as expected, ranging from 0.58 ± 0.09 m/s at end-diastole to 1.8 ± 0.2 m/s during systole. Pathological increase in stiffness may be demonstrated in longitudinal case/control studies.
Ultrasound measurement of fiber orientation and tissue strain in excised myocardium under biaxial tension
Authors: Cormack John M. , Simon Marc A. , Kim Kang
Published: November 2021

Biaxial mechanical testing is a useful tool for determining the mechanical properties of myocardium tissues, which are anisotropic due to their layered and fibrous microstructure. Mechanical properties of the tissue are largely determined by those of the laminar myofiber sheets, whose orientations vary in a helix throughout the tissue thickness. Fiber architecture of tested tissues is usually determined post hoc by destructive histological sectioning, and the contribution of fiber kinematics to tissue-level mechanical behavior is accomplished by assuming a continuum model for the myocardium. In this work is presented simultaneous ultrasound-based measurement of fiber orientation and tissue strain in excised myocardium under biaxial tension. Two-protocol (1:1 and 1:6) testing is employed in order to probe tissue anisotropy and fiber kinematics. An ultrasound linear array (15 MHz) is scanned by rotation about the imaging axis to obtain three-dimensional backscatter data from the tissue during quasi-static biaxial deformation, from which transmural fiber orientation and tissue strain are determined by backscatter tensor imaging and 3D speckle tracking, respectively. Results illustrate feasibility of the simultaneous measurement and future utility for studying fiber mechanics in diseased tissues. Fiber rotation and elongation measured directly from ultrasound is compared to that calculated under the continuum assumption.
Teaching acoustics through entertainment: Why and how?
Authors: Robin Olivier , Jaouen Luc
Published: November 2021

In our modern and highly connected world, we are fed with large and growing amounts of information. As an example, the yearly number of published scientific articles exceeded the astounding number of 1 500 000 papers.in 2015. More and more time is spent on numerical media or supports, with texts that tend to be scanned rather than read. The way we acquire knowledge is also deeply modified by these changes. In this communication, some alternatives to classical acoustics and vibration teaching materials are discussed, with corresponding perspectives for an effective information transmission. Among other examples, the presented works include video games, comics and reactive web documents that can be all used for educational purposes with entertainment as a keyword.
Knocking over LEGO minifigures with time reversal focused vibrations: Understanding the physics and developing a museum demonstration
Authors: Anderson Brian E. , Barnes Lucas A. , Le Bas Pierre-Yves , Kingsley Adam D. , Brown Aaron C. , Thomsen Henrik R.
Published: November 2021

Time reversal (TR) of impulse responses can be used to focus wave energy, even in a reverberant environment. A demonstration of TR focusing was developed to knock over a targeted LEGO minifigure, standing among other minifigures (who remain standing), by focusing plate vibrations under the target minifigure\rquote s feet. In order to achieve a high degree of repeatability, the physics of the demonstration needed to be understood. A laser Doppler vibrometer was used to compare the motion of the minifigure and the plate directly beneath it. Speaker shakers are used to generate motion of the plate. If their induced vibration was too large the minifigure loses contact with the plate prematurely, causing it to be in the air when the main focused vibrations arrive. If the minifigure is in contact with the plate when the focused vibrations arrive then the minifigure is launched into the air before toppling on its side. This demonstration was optimized to be a two-player-game museum exhibit in a wave propagation museum hosted by ETH Zurich in Switzerland. This demonstration illustrates the power of focused vibrations.
Sound of the city: Creating a balanced sound composition in urban green spaces
Authors: Gray Lauren
Published: November 2021

Sound in the landscape is an important and often-ignored aspect of the human experience. In urban landscapes, seemingly cacophonous sounds can create a symphony, combining the beloved sounds of nature and humans with the often less desirable, but no less important, sounds of traffic and sirens. The work of this thesis puts that symphony, and its relationship to the landscape, under a microscope. Investigations into the theories of composers John Cage and R. Murray Schafer led to the creation of a new design theory and a new methodology for surveying sound. The theory and method were applied to the re-making of an urban soundscape, allowing further exploration into the impact of sound on the perception of place and a close examination of the conscious, subconscious, beautiful, and necessary in the design of landscape.
Soundwalks in a botanical garden as a part of the planning process
Authors: Siebein Gary W. , Siebein Keely M. , Roa Marylin , Vetterick Matthew , Miller Jennifer , Paek Hyun , Jones Ian
Published: November 2021

Soundwalks were taken over a one-year period of time in an existing botanical garden and in the community surrounding the garden as part of the process for a planned expansion of the garden. Soundwalks were taken so that sounds propagating from special events and typical activities in the gardens could be experienced from the perspectives of guests at the gardens and residents who live nearby. Special events included a special Christmas celebration with music playing and large exhibits that lasted for several weeks as well as mock-ups of weddings, meetings and dinners at several locations where these would normally occur. A house sound system was designed to include monitoring of sound levels and controls over processors so that agreed upon sound levels could not be exceeded. Full scale aural mock-ups of sounds propagating from special events were conducted so that residents could sit on their patios and listen to sounds propagating from the gardens and then walk into the gardens to listen to the sound levels played in the event areas also. This process allowed a dialogue to begin between residents, planners and the gardens to develop sound control strategies for the planned expansion of the facilities.
David T. Blackstock’s Fundamentals of Physical Acoustics
Authors: Ohm Won-Suk
Published: November 2021

One can hardly imagine that a book, written on a subject as complicated as physical acoustics, could serve as both an introductory text for beginning students and a serious reference for experts. Fundamentals of Physical Acoustics by David T. Blackstock is one such book. Nearly 40 years in the making, the book has its roots in the class notes that Blackstock had written for courses on acoustics throughout his academic career. Sitting in his Acoustics I course as a first-year graduate student at University of Texas at Austin in 1994, I was (gratefully in retrospect) one of those many guinea pigs whom Professor Blackstock tested his manuscript on. What came out of this long and arduous journey is a book that is not only battle tested and combat proven, but also praised nowadays as a modern classic in physical acoustics literature. In this talk, I share my experience with this book, now as a professor who has used the book for graduate-level acoustics courses for the last 14 years. Its pedagogical philosophy, unique structure, real-world drawn problems, adaptability to a MOOC (massive open online course), and last but not least, his lucid and elegant writing style will be highlighted.
Remote auditory testing: Test-retest and user impressions
Authors: Rink Kaitlin D. , Gallun Frederick J. , Diedesch Anna C.
Published: November 2021

The Portable Automated Rapid Testing (PART) application was developed to measure basic auditory processing abilities and has been shown to effectively measure these abilities in research and audiologic clinical settings. Here, the effect of testing environment and participant perception on testing location were evaluated comparing the performance of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired participants in their homes versus a clinical setting. Subjective data on participant impressions of testing environments was included to assess feasibility of testing outside a clinical setting, as patient comfort completing tests in environments without clinical supervision may play a role in their overall performance. An important component of implementing PART tests to the clinical test battery is preventing additional test time to an already lengthy audiologic clinical appointment. Though testing time in clinics is limited, the implementation of administering auditory tests from the PART test battery in the waiting room or at the patients’ home could provide critical additional information on their auditory processing ability while adding minimal time to appointments. Use of PART may enable access to a broader collection of testing that an audiologist can use to improve patients’ outcomes and address patients’ hearing concerns beyond a pure-tone hearing test without increasing current clinical test time.
Binaural amplitude modulation fusion as a function of modulation depth
Authors: Martinez Briana N. , Fan Langchen , Reiss Lina A.
Published: November 2021

Binaural fusion occurs when two different signals presented dichotically are perceived as one sound. In previous studies, binaural fusion was studied for stimuli differing in pitch. In this pilot study, binaural fusion was measured for amplitude-modulated tones differing in amplitude modulation (AM) depth in normal-hearing listeners. AM fusion ranges were measured with dichotic AM tones of matched carrier and AM rate but different modulation depths: specifically a reference signal with a fixed AM depth presented at the left ear, and a comparison signal with AM depth varied across trials presented at the right ear. Subjects were asked if they heard one or two sounds. AM fusion ranges were calculated as the range of comparison AM depths that fused with the reference AM depth. Carrier frequencies tested were 500 and 1600 Hz and AM rates tested were 16 and 64 Hz. Preliminary data showed that the closer the comparison depth is to the reference depth, the more likely the subject is to perceive one sound. In other words, the AM fusion range is centered on the reference AM depth. [This research was funded by NIH-NIDCD-R01-DC013307 and supported by the SURIEA program.]
The aperture problem for binaural hearing can explain ambiguous lateralization of complex binaural stimuli
Authors: Tollin Daniel J. , Goupell Matthew J. , Stecker G. Christopher
Published: November 2021

Although we perceive a spatially contiguous, integrated world, sensory systems sample information discretely via small spatial and narrow frequency receptive fields (RFs) in vision and audition, respectively. Undersampling of stimuli by narrow RFs produces ambiguous representations (e.g., the classic “aperture problem” that visual motion cannot be uniquely determined by one RF). Here, we posit a similar problem for encoding low-frequency (<1500 Hz) interaural time differences (ITDs). Current models of ITD processing propose large ensembles of ITD-sensitive neurons spanning wide ranges of preferred ITD and characteristic frequency (CF). To account for anomalous lateralization of narrowband but robust lateralization of broadband stimuli, such models require two paradoxical assumptions that have recently come into question; (1) the existence of neurons preferring larger than physiologically possible ITDs, and (2) population biases overemphasizing small ITDs. Here, we consider an alternative account based on a narrow and weighted ITDxCF aperture through which the stimuli are perceived. ITDs are bounded by ±π interaural phase difference and CFs by dominance weighting, where ∼600–750 Hz contributes most to lateralization. A more detailed consideration of this “binaural aperture” sheds light on how lateralization data emerge from limited ensembles of neurons constrained to physiologically relevant ranges of ITD and frequency.
A rapid measurement for the effect of interaural mismatch on interaural time difference sensitivity
Authors: Aronoff Justin M. , Staisloff Hannah E. , Soleimanifar Simin , Jawad Mona , Bernstein Leslie R.
Published: November 2021

Cochlear implant (CI) users often have difficulties utilizing binaural cues such as interaural time difference (ITD) because of a mismatch in terms of the cochlear stimulation location in each ear. Methods for measuring this mismatch often rely on psychophysical approaches that can require hours of testing. The goal of this study was to evaluate a rapid method for measuring the effects of mismatch on ITD sensitivity. Seven normal hearing listeners were tested with a vocoder that simulated current spread. Participants were tested with a traditional adaptive ITD protocol and a rapid descending ITD protocol with fixed ITDs starting at 2000 μs and decreasing in two dB steps to approximately 50 μs. In both protocols, four stimuli were presented. The first and last stimuli always had an ITD of 0 μs. One of the two center stimuli had a non-zero ITD. Participants had to identify which had the non-zero ITD. The carriers were altered to simulate varying mismatch across ears. The preliminary results indicated a similar effect of mismatch for both protocols, with considerably shorter testing time for the descending ITD protocol. This suggests that the rapid descending ITD protocol is a valid method for assessing the effects of interaural mismatch.
Ultrasonic scattering predictions for metal additive manufacturing
Authors: Turner Joseph A. , Pratt Cody , Sotelo Luz D. , Ley Jazmin
Published: November 2021

Additive manufacturing (AM) of metals offers great promise for the creation of new engineering solutions because of the expanded design space offered by these new approaches. However, several challenges remain with respect to control of the spatial organization of the microstructure. The complex thermal cycles that drive the densification of material can result in dendritic grain growth, material texture, and residual stresses that must be quantified if a certified component is desired. Ultrasonic techniques have been shown to have the sensitivity and resolution necessary to play a major role in the metal AM inspections. The microstructural challenges present in AM samples have been examined, in many cases individually, but AM samples are especially complex. In this presentation, AM samples of 316 stainless steel created using laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) are studied ultrasonically in terms of their wave speed, attenuation, and diffuse backscatter characteristics. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) measurements are used to create digital synthetics with statistically equivalent properties. The synthetics are then used to make ultrasonic predictions that are compared with the measurements. Prospects for in situ sample validation are then discussed.
Neural processing of phoneme, affect, and gender information in spoken words: A cross-modal priming study
Authors: Zhang Yang , Lin Jo-fu Lotus , Tanaka Keita , Imada Toshiaki
Published: November 2021

Human speech contains not only the linguistic content but also important information about speaker identity and affect. This study employed whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine how brain activities were modulated by selective listening of phoneme, affect and gender information with different degrees of task difficulty. The participants were 10 male Japanese adults with normal hearing. The words were ‘right’ and ‘light’ recorded from native English speakers and binaurally presented at 50dB SL. The participants were asked to judge congruency between the visual prime and the spoken word for each trial. The experiment started with a familiarization phase, which was immediately followed by the test phase with 200 trials in each condition. Behavioral results confirmed an increasing order of difficulty from gender to affect to phoneme conditions. Significant priming effects were found only for the affect and gender conditions. In line with the behavioral results, the MEG data revealed distinct patterns of hemispheric and regional involvement and neural oscillatory activities for evaluating the cross-modal congruency in the three conditions. These results demonstrate the neural dynamics and complexity in processing linguistic and paralinguistic information in spoken words with differential influences of language experience.
Neural representations of speech: Decoding bottom-up acoustics and examining top-down effects using electroencephalography
Authors: Sarrett McCall E. , McMurray Bob , Toscano Joseph C.
Published: November 2021

The acoustics of spoken language are highly variable, and yet most listeners easily extract meaningful information from the speech signal. Psycholinguistic work has revealed which acoustic dimensions are relevant when listeners categorize speech sounds, and how listeners use higher-level expectations to shift their categorization responses. However, the real-time neural mechanisms subserving such processes are not well understood. Two questions of interest include which perceptual distinctions are detectable in neural responses and whether higher-level information influences perceptual encoding directly. We present three electroencephalography (EEG) studies that address these issues. First, we examine perceptual encoding of speech sounds using machine learning techniques (N = 27). We contrast two approaches with machine learning and EEG and discuss methodological considerations for researchers using such techniques. We find that this approach can reveal neural sensitivity to phonetic contrasts that are indistinguishable in traditional EEG analyses. Second, we examine how top-down influences, such as sentence context (N = 31) or visual information (N = 33), affect perceptual encoding. We show that neural representations of speech sounds are influenced by listeners’ context-based expectations in limited cases, specifically, when acoustic cues are ambiguous. We compare how task design may impact linguistic processing, and how more naturalistic tasks may lead to richer processing dynamics.
The influence of sociophonetic knowledge on lexical encoding across dialects
Authors: Dossey Ellen
Published: November 2021

The goal of this study was to determine if the strength of lexical encoding differed between regional dialects as a function of the explicit social knowledge listeners held about the dialects or talkers. Participants heard lexical items produced in the Midland, Northern, and Southern dialects of American English in an explicit lexical recognition memory task. Some participants were told the regional backgrounds of the talkers while others were not. It was predicted that encoding would be most robust for tokens produced in the ideologically standard Midland dialect and would be more robust for the socially stereotyped Southern dialect compared with the non-stereotyped Northern dialect. Being told regional information about the talkers was predicted to increase the robustness of encoding. Analysis of response times provided some evidence of a standard dialect benefit across listeners from the three regions, though this effect varied depending on the vowel contained in the stimulus item. Interestingly, being given regional information about the talkers did not increase the robustness with which tokens were encoded; for some listeners, it hindered performance. These results indicate that social knowledge about linguistic varieties can be highly integrated with speech processing, but that it is not facilitative in all situations.
Comparing Levenshtein distance and dynamic time warping in predicting listeners’ judgements of accent distance
Authors: Lind-Combs Holly , Bent Tessa , Holt Rachael F. , Clopper Cynthia G.
Published: November 2021

Non-native accent ratings are related to segmental and holistic acoustic deviations from listeners’ home accents (Bartelds et al., 2020). This study builds on prior work by including both non-ambient native and nonnative accents, using a different perceptual task in which listeners ranked talkers based on their perceived distance from Standard American English, and employing analyses that account for collinearity between distance metrics. Listeners (n = 52) completed two rankings where all talkers produced the same sentence and one where each talker produced a unique sentence. Phonemic and holistic acoustic distances between the nine non-ambient accents and Midland American English were quantified using Levenshtein distances and dynamic time warping (DTW), respectively. Results from separate linear mixed effects models showed that both DTW and Levenshtein distances contributed to perceptual distance. Sentence and its interaction with DTW/Levenshtein distance were not significant. The model predicting perceptual rankings from DTW was a better fitting model than the model with Levenshtein distances. Because DTW captures both segmental and suprasegmental distance, it may better predict listeners’ similarity judgements among English varieties than a metric only capturing phonemic distance. [Funded by the National Science Foundation (1941691; 1941662) and The Ohio State University Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences.]
Social priming for nonnative-accented speech
Authors: McLaughlin Drew J. , Van Engen Kristin J.
Published: November 2021

Prior work indicates that a speaker’s race/ethnicity can prime a listener to expect native versus nonnative (foreign) accents. In the present study, we replicate the findings of McGowan (2015) and then address novel topics including the effect of social primes on perceptual adaptation. Using a matched-guise design, we examined the effect of race information on the perception of, and adaptation to, Mandarin Chinese-accented English in babble. Subjects randomly assigned an East Asian female’s face during the speech perception task showed an advantage over subjects assigned a White female’s face or a silhouette (control) face (as measured by transcription accuracy). Performance across trials indicated that although subjects in the control group initially perform worse than those in the East Asian prime group, they perceptually adapt more rapidly to the Mandarin accent, eventually reaching a similar level of performance. Subjects in the White prime group, however, do not adapt as rapidly as those in the control group. In a second experiment, we aim to expand on this work by examining similar priming effects for Arabic-accented English (with Middle Eastern, White, or control primes), and uncommon combinations of minority race/ethnicity primes with nonnative accents (e.g., an East Asian face with an Arabic accent).
Bayesian maximum entropy for geoacoustic inversion using ship-radiated noise
Authors: Escobar-Amado Christian D. , Badiey Mohsen , Knobles David P.
Published: November 2021

Several acoustic signals from merchant ships, also known as ships of opportunity (SOOs), are employed for geacoustic inversion of the seabed on the New England Mud Patch Area using a Bayesian maximum entropy (BME) approach. The SOOs were recorded by three vertical line arrays deployed at different locations in the Seabed Characterization Experiment in 2017 (SBCEX2017). An effective seabed composed of a mud layer on top of a sandy layer is used for this work. For each SOO, the space of possible hypotheses H is uniformly sampled using Monte Carlo. For each hypothesis in H containing a set of geoacoustic parameters, a SOO spectrogram is simulated using the range independent normal mode model ORCA where the squared error between the measured and simulated SOO is calculated. BME is then applied to compute the marginal conditional posterior probability distribution of the geoacoustic parameters where the probability density function (PDF) provides the current state of knowledge. The inferred PDFs are consistent across all the measured SOOs used for this research and agree with previous geoacoustic inversions in the SBCEX2017 [Work supported by ONR Contract No. N00014-19-C-2001.]
International Year of Sound 2020–2021: History and objectives
Authors: Burgess Marion , Taroudakis Michael
Published: November 2021

The International Commission for Acoustics considered that the proclamation of an International Year of Sound (IYS) would create a worldwide awareness of the importance of sound in our world. Sound is an integral part of culture and society from the basic requirements for communication, awareness of our environment, and expression of our culture through to sophisticated scientific and technological research and applications. After a decade of preparation, the ICA decided to organize the International Year of Sound 2020. The moto of the IYS 2020 was “Importance of Sound for Society and the World” and the IYS was associated with the UNESCO Charter of Sound and resolution 39C/59 on the ‘’Importance of sound in today’s world—Promoting best practices.” The French Organization “La Semaine du Son” became partner in this initiative. The ICA planned a number of central activities and the majority of the ICA member organisations embraced the opportunity to organize local and regional events during 2020. Of course the arrival of the Covid 19 pandemic curtailed the majority of the planned events but the enthusiasm remained to adapt to virtual activities and develop more resources. In response to the continued enthusiasm the ICA Board agreed the IYS should become a two years celebration. This resulted to the new reference as International Year of Sound 2020–2021 (IYS 2020–21)
A jumping-off point—Sound and listening as means of contemplating our world
Authors: Giegold Carl P. , Pfeiffer Scott
Published: November 2021

Our connection to the World through our ears is spatial, temporal, and emotive. In this way, it is no different from our sense of sight, but the parallels and capabilities are inadequately celebrated. The Year of Sound was an opportunity to do just that, and it caused us to ponder ourselves as part of the Universe’s way of knowing itself. We thought in terms of boundaries, identity, protest, time and anachronism, uniqueness of place, the extension of ourselves to places and points of view we cannot reach in person. This talk presents some of those musings, for the simple pleasure of it.
The International Year of Sound: A worldwide student competition
Authors: Bartalucci Chiara , Luzzi Sergio , Pulella Paola , Delle Macchie Sara , Natale Rossella
Published: November 2021

In the frame of the International Year of Sound (IYS), the global initiative recognized under the UNESCO Charter of Sound No. 39C/59, a Competition for students from around the world on the theme of “My World of Sounds” has been organized by the International Commission for Acoustics. Primary and middle school students produced and sent drawings, images, patchwork, collages and similar related to their world of sounds. High school students wrote and sent verses of the song entitled “The sound of the world.” By 30 April 2021, respectively, 39 items for the first Competition category and 33 items for the second one have been sent to the Competition office, as national finalists from overall 16 countries. An experts’ jury expressed its preferences about the items answering to three questions concerning coherency, originality, inspiration and a web jury voted the preferred items on the official IYS facebook page. The IYS Competition office has then worked to combine votes from both juries and to declare the winners. As final output, a short movie and a long one will summarize the IYS story, its global initiatives and they will focus on the Student Competition.
Spatial variation in acoustic field due to submarine melting in glacial bays
Authors: Vishnu Hari , Deane Grant B. , Chitre Mandar , Glowacki Oskar , Stokes M. Dale , Moskalik Mateusz , Johnson Hayden A.
Published: November 2021

Climate-change induced melting is leading to accelerating ice loss at tidewater glaciers worldwide. A significant component of the freshwater flux from these glaciers arises from submarine melting at the glacier-ocean interface. This melting causes a distinct acoustic signature due to the release of pressurized bubbles underwater, opening up the possibility of monitoring this phenomenon on a large scale using passive acoustic systems. To evaluate the use of sound in monitoring submarine glacier melting, we made acoustic measurements using vertical hydrophone arrays in four glacial bays in Svalbard in 2019. As the recording array was moved away from the glacier, the variation in the recorded acoustic level due to melting ice did not follow a uniformly decreasing trend as one might expect. Moreover, the acoustic intensities at different glaciers were clustered at different levels. These observations indicate that the geometry of the glacier-ocean interface, thermohaline structure of the underwater channel and presence of floating ice in the bay played a role in determining the acoustic field. Most of this variation can be explained through propagation modeling. Moving forward, this model-based interpretation of the field will play an integral part in inverting the sound to estimate the submarine melt rate.
Modelling laser-fluid coupling and cavitation in laser lithotripsy
Authors: Zhao Xuning , Ma Wentao , Wang Kevin
Published: November 2021

The absorption of laser by fluid and the resulting vapor bubbles plays a significant role in laser lithotripsy and many other industrial applications. In this talk, we present a coupled photo-thermal-mechanical model of laser interaction in compressible multiphase fluid flows. The model couples the three-dimensional compressible Navier–Stokes equation with a nonlocal laser absorption equation. The computational framework is an extension of the recently developed FIVER (“a Finite Volume method with Exact multi-material Riemann solver”) framework, which features the use of level set and embedded boundary methods for tracking material (fluid–fluid and fluid–solid) interfaces, and the solution of local, one-dimensional multi-material Riemann problems for enforcing interface conditions. We will start with a brief review of the key model equations and numerical algorithms adopted by FIVER, as well as recent efforts on verification and validation. Next, physical models of laser absorption and laser-induced heating will be presented. Numerical models and methods for simulating phase change and tracking the vapor–liquid interface will be introduced and assessed. The performance of this computational framework will be demonstrated using several simplified model problems and a numerical experiment of cavitation in Holmium:YAG laser lithotripsy.
Know when something happens: Some thoughts on Apfel's three laws of cavitation research
Authors: Roy Ronald A.
Published: November 2021

When it comes to experimental research on acoustic cavitation, connecting the dots can be challenging. It requires that the researcher possesses good command of the essential facts associated with the medium, the sound field, and the relevant observable phenomena. This maxim is embodied in Robert Apfel's “Three Laws” of cavitation research: (1) Know Thy Fluid, (2) Know Thy Sound Field, and (3) Know When Something Happens. To honor the late Professor Apfel, I will discuss when and how these laws are applicable in a variety of scenarios across application areas (biomedical, physical, industrial) and share some reminiscences on what it was like for an aspiring young scholar to rub shoulders with the greats during a golden age of acoustic cavitation, physical acoustics, and biomedical ultrasound.
A review of modeling and simulation of cavitation with application to ultrasound and shock-wave therapies
Authors: Colonius Tim
Published: November 2021

High-intensity ultrasound and shock waves are used for intra- and extra-corporeal manipulation of cells, tissue, and urinary calculi. In many applications, these waves induce the expansion and collapse of preexisting or newly cavitating bubbles whose presence can either mediate the generation of localized stresses or lead to collateral damage, depending on how effectively they can be controlled. We review efforts aimed at simulating wave propagation, nucleation, and bubble dynamics. We discuss both interface capturing approaches that can be used to look at micro-scale bubble collapses as well as stochastic models that treat the bubbles as an unresolved disperse phase that can be used to simulate how bubble clouds alter macroscopic wave focusing, scattering, and stress fields. The translation of the fundamental fluid dynamics into improvements in the design and clinical application of shockwave lithotripters will also be discussed.
Influence of hearing aid compression speed and channels on measures of psychophysical tuning curves
Authors: Brennan Marc , Garvey Sarah
Published: November 2021

While much work has been completed on spectral resolution in listeners with SNHL, little attention has been paid to the impact of hearing-aid signal processing on access to spectral information. In this study, we hypothesized that increasing the hearing aid compression speed and number of compression channels would improve access to spectral information by providing better audibility across frequency. However, limited outer hair cell function or inhibition could curtail the benefit of improved audibility on spectral resolution. In this experiment, psychophysical tuning curves were measured for 25 participants with hearing loss. Both an excitation and phenomenological model of the auditory system were used to examine potential mechanisms that contributed to the observed results. The provision of amplification improved the measured sharpness of tuning for the low-frequency side. While decreasing the compression speed did not have a systematic effect on the measured psychophysical tuning curves, the low frequency side improved as the number of compression channels was increased. Threshold estimates from the excitation and phenomenological models were able to account for some of these observed trends in the psychophysical tuning curves, but the threshold estimates from the phenomenological model were more consistent with the measured thresholds.
Auditory selective attention and speech-in-noise in cochlear implants
Authors: Lee Jae Hee , Orr Mallory , Shim Hwan , Choi Inyong
Published: November 2021

Auditory selective attention is a crucial mechanism for comprehending speech in noise. We investigated if cochlear implant (CI) users exhibit auditory selective attention that involves modulation of neural responses to target speech and if such attentional ability predicts their speech-in-noise performance. In our experiment, designed to assess the strength of attentional modulation, participants with normal hearing and with CI were given a pre-stimulus visual cue that directed their attention to either of two sequences in stationary background noise and asked to select a deviant syllable. We hypothesized that the amplitude of event-related-potential (ERP) would be greater when the syllable is attended if either group is capable of employing auditory selective attention and that the difference of ERP amplitude between attended and unattended trials predicts the performance in a speech-in-noise task. Our analysis showed that the amplitude of ERPs for the attended syllable was greater than that for the unattended syllable with the CI subjects, exhibiting that attention modulates CI users’ cortical responses to sounds. Moreover, the strength of attentional modulation showed a significant correlation with the same CI users’ speech-in-noise performance. These results show that attentional modulation provides a valuable neural marker for predicting CI users’ success in real-world communications.
Transmission loss of plates with embedded multi-scale and tuned acoustic black holes
Authors: Xiong Yu , Smith Edward , Conlon Stephen C.
Published: November 2021

The Acoustic Black Hole (ABH) is an emerging method for developing lightweight, high-loss structures and has recently drawn extensive attention. Unlike many conventional methods, ABH implementations are typically able to reduce structure vibration and sound radiation without a net addition of mass. Transmission loss (TL) is a key criterion for panel structure in the noise and vibration industry. Many noise and control applications demand panel structures with high TL and low weight. Plates with embedded ABH cells have the potential to act as good candidates for TL applications. In this work, the transmission loss (TL) of an embedded multi-scale ABH plate was studied. The embedded large and small ABH cells were particularly designed to cut on below and above the critical frequency of the plate, respectively. The results were compared with a uniform plate and an embedded single-scale ABH plate. Discrete tuning masses were attached at the ABH cells' center to manipulate the ABH cut-on modes to increase the TL further. The results show that the damped multi-scale ABH plate achieved a 10 dB TL increase, flattened the TL curve, and nearly eliminated the plate coincidence dip. Manipulating the high loss ABH modes by adding tuning masses (20 g each) demonstrated a 2 dB increase at low frequencies within the mass-law range. Although damping material was applied, adding some mass and an overall weight advantage were still attained compared to the uniform plate. The damped multi-scale ABH plate is 7% lighter than the uniform plate.
Damping of vibration-isolated structures: A review
Authors: Ryaboy Vyacheslav M.
Published: November 2021

Vibration presents a major challenge to advanced experiments in physics and life sciences, as well as to precise manufacturing processes. A vibration-isolated platform had become an indispensable element of precision experimental and manufacturing systems. Ideally, the platform should behave as an absolutely rigid body; unfortunately, absolutely rigid bodies do not exist: any structure deviates from the rigid behavior at its resonance frequencies. Resonance vibrations of the platform carrying precision optomechanical or acoustical equipment can be excited by acoustical inputs, residual vibrations coming from the floor through vibration isolators, and atmospheric turbulence. These vibrations must be mitigated by dissipation of mechanical energy, or damping. This paper summarizes current methods and achievements in active and passive damping of optical tables and breadboards, applicable also to other types of structures. Dynamic response of an isolated platform is analyzed. Physical principles of active damping systems, multiple tuned dynamic absorbers, and elastomeric constrained-layer damping links are presented; various designs of damping devices are considered, and their operation illustrated by experimental results; advantages and shortcomings of each method are discussed.