The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is an international scientific society dedicated to increasing and diffusing the knowledge of acoustics and its practical applications. The ASA was instigated by Wallace Waterfall, Floyd Watson, and Vern Oliver Knudsen. On December 27, 1928, approximately 40 scientists and engineers interested in acoustics met at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York, NY, to consider the formation of a scientific society for acoustics. Just a few months later, the Acoustical Society of America held its first meeting on May 10-11, 1929, with approximately 450 charter members. In 1931 the Acoustical Society joined with three other scientific societies to form the American Institute of Physics. The Society has 13 technical committees that represent specialized interests in the field of acoustics. The committees organize technical sessions at conferences and are responsible for the representation of their sub-field in ASA publications.
How beatboxers produce sound: Using real-time MRI to understand
Beatboxing is a musical art form in which performers use their vocal tract to create percussive sounds. Sometimes individual beatboxers perform as a part of an ensemble, using their vocal tracts to provide beats for other ...
Nov 07, 2018
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Orcasound: A citizen science tool for whale research
A crucial part of studying southern resident killer whales is finding them and quickly alerting experts to send boats out to collect fecal samples or prey fragments to better understand what the whales are eating.
Moths survive bat predation through acoustic camouflage fur
Moths are a mainstay food source for bats, which use echolocation (biological sonar) to hunt their prey. Scientists such as Thomas Neil, from the University of Bristol in the U.K., are studying how moths have evolved passive ...
Identifying a piranha by its bark
A piranha's bite is definitely worse than its bark, but the bark has uses too. A new study of the sounds made by piranhas in the Amazon finds that their underwater "barks" are an effective tool for identifying different species ...
Deconstructing crowd noise at college basketball games
With thousands of fans clapping, chanting, shouting and jeering, college basketball games can be almost deafeningly loud. Some arenas have decibel meters, which, accurately or not, provide some indication of the noise volume ...
How to reduce the impact of shipping vessel noise on fish? Slow them down
The western Canadian Arctic's natural underwater soundscape has been shielded from the din of commercial shipping by the sea ice that covers the area, rendering it mostly inaccessible to shipping vessels. But with large amounts ...
Cloaking devices—it's not just 'Star Trek' anymore
Cloaking devices play a pivotal role in many sci-fi television programs. Scientists are now working to take this technology from the dramatic realm of science fiction and make it real. Amanda D. Hanford, at Pennsylvania State ...
Ultrasonic attack is unlikely, but incidental exposure presents plenty of problems
New technologies for mobile devices may use ultrasonic sound waves for a variety of purposes, from charging your phone when you enter your room to collecting data on which advertisements you watch. Pest deterrents, dog controllers, ...
Decoding tornadoes' infrasound waves
Infrasound waves oscillate at frequencies humans can't hear, but they're extremely useful for monitoring nuclear blasts because infrasound decays so slowly within our atmosphere that it can wrap around Earth multiple times. ...
What does a 'normal' voice sound like?
Have you ever turned the dial on the radio or switched the television channel because you found the quality of the presenter's voice grating? What is it about a person's voice that can be soothing, aggravating or even sensual? ...
