156th Acoustical Society of America Meeting, Nov. 10-14, 200...( October 23 2008 -- Are green schools...)

October 23, 2008 -- Are green schools acoustically sound? How do dolphins and whales hear underwater? How can we protect manatees from getting hit by ships? What secrets will comparing English, German, Hindi, and Arabic languages reveal? Can we detect hidden cars in forests and buried mines underwater? What is the effect of noise in the home? How does the brain deal with sound?

These are a few of the many questions that will be addressed at the 156th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) next month in Miami, FL. Convening at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami, acoustical scientists and engineers will present some 660 talks and posters related to acoustics, a cross-section of diverse disciplines devoted to architecture, underwater research, psychology, physics, animal bioacoustics, medicine, music, noise control, and speech.

Journalists are invited to cover the upcoming meeting either onsite in Miami or online through the meeting's World Wide Press Room. Registration information can be found at the end of this release. In the coming weeks, additional news releases highlighting interesting meeting presentations in more detail will be distributed.

1) PRELIMINARY MEETING HIGHLIGHTS
Some preliminary meeting highlights include:

THE SPEECH-TO-SONG ILLUSION
"This paper reports the first formal investigation of a surprising illusion: A particular spoken phrase is made to be heard convincingly as sung rather than spoken, simply by repeating it several times over..."
http://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov08/asa176.html.

HOW HARBOR PORPOISES CATCH PREY
A Danish study of how these animals locate food with short acoustic bursts whose frequency goes up as the predator approaches prey.
http://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstract
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