How is climate change impacting the Arctic Ocean? It can be hard to track these changes, but researchers have been using acoustic signals transmitted beneath the ice to learn more. In this episode, we talk with Matthew Dzieciuch and Peter Worcester of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Hanne Sagen of the Nansen Center about an international effort to use acoustic thermometry to better understand the changing ocean.

Associated paper: Matthew A. Dzieciuch, Hanne Sagen, Peter F. Worcester, Espen Storheim, F. Hunter Akins, Stein Sandven, John A. Colosi, John N. Kemp, and Geir Martin Leinebø. "Transarctic acoustic transmissions during the Coordinated Arctic Acoustic Thermometry Experiment in 2019–2020." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 159, 1071–1085 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0042233.

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

As anyone in ocean acoustics will tell you, sound is essential for much of the work done under water, whether that be navigation, sensing objects, or passively monitoring wildlife. While much research has been done about sandy ocean floors, scientists still have a lot to learn about muddier regions with mixtures of type of sediment. In this episode, we talk with two editors and a researcher involved with the recent JASA Special Issue on Assessing Sediment Heterogeneity on Continental Shelves and Slopes: Preston Wilson (University of Texas at Austin), David Knowles (University of Texas at Austin), and Kyle Becker (University of Washington).

Read all the articles from the special issue here!

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

With the development of automatic speech recognition has come a new type of technology, designed to give the user advice on how to speak better. In this episode, we talk with Nicole Holliday (University of California, Berkeley) about some of the issues that can arise with the use of these technologies, from their nebulous definitions of "good communication" to the impact they could have at businesses that use these technology to evaluate employees.

Associated paper: Nicole R. Holliday. "Socially prescriptive speech technologies: Linguistic, technical, and ethical issues." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 158, 4361–4369 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0039685.

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

Do you find the sound of people chewing unbearably annoying? Or perhaps you can't stand to be near folks who are typing on noisy keyboards, fidgeting with their pens, or rustling a plastic bag of chips. The term for this sort of aversion is misophonia. Even if you don't personally deal with this issue, you may know someone who does. In this episode, we talk with Benjamin Kirby (Wichita State University) and Olivia Zant (University of North Texas), whose recent JASA Express Letters article, “Psychoacoustic Assessment of Misophonia,” touches on this topic.

Associated paper: Benjamin J. Kirby, Alaina Cunningham, and Olivia Montou Zant. "Psychoacoustic assessment of misophonia." JASA Express Lett. 5, 094401 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0039238.

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Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

Manipulating the scattering of waves can allow engineers to achieve numerous goals, like reducing unwanted noise or eliminating potentially destructive vibrations in structures. In this episode, we talk to Vladislav Sorokin (University of Auckland) and Luke Bennetts (University of Melbourne), two guest editors of the recent Special Issue on Wave Phenomena in Periodic, Near-Periodic, and Locally Resonant Systems about recent advances in research regarding vibroacoustic systems.

Read all the articles from the special issue here!

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

In this episode, find out what the next generation of acousticians is researching! In this episode, we talk to the latest round of POMA Student Paper Competition winners, from the joint 188th meeting of the ASA and the 25th International Congress on Acoustics held in New Orleans in May 2025. Their topics include:

- Using the spatial decomposition method to parameterize acoustic reflections in a room (Lucas Hocquette, L-Acoustics)

- Visualizing nonlinearities in a bolted plate system with digital image correlation (Nicholas Pomianek, Boston University)

- Analyzing the how people pronounce the word "just" in casual speech (Ki Woong Moon, University of Arizona)

- Modeling strings of historical instruments that no longer make sound (Riccardo Russo, University of Bologna)

- Improving automatic music mashup generators (Yu Foon Darin Chau, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

Associated papers:

Lucas Hocquette, Philip Coleman, and Frederic Roskam. "Acoustic reflection parameterization based on the spatial decomposition method." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 56, 055004 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0002037.

Nicholas Pomianek, Trevor Jerome, Enrique Gutierrez-Wing, and J. Gregory McDaniel. "Visualizing contact area dependent nonlinearity in a bolted plate system through digital image correlation." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 56, 065001 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0002099.

Ki Woong Moon and Natasha Warner. "Realization of just: Speech reduction in a high-frequency word." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 56, 060005 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0002080

Riccardo Russo, Craig J. Webb, Michele Ducceschi, and Stefan Bilbao. "Convergence analysis and relaxation techniques for modal scalar auxiliary variable methods applied to nonlinear transverse string vibration." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 56, 035007 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0002073.

Yu Foon Darin Chau, Andrew Brian Horner, Joshua Chang, Chun Yuen Chan, and Harris Lau. "Retrieval-based automatic mashup generation with deep learning-guided features." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 56, 035006 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0002071.

Learn more about entering the POMA Student Paper Competition for the Fall 2025 meeting in Honolulu

Read more from Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA).

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Studying bats' hearing can be tricky due to their small size, making certain styles of measurement used for larger echolocating mammals unavailable to researchers. In this episode, we talk to Victoria Fouhy and Michael Smotherman (Texas A&M University) about their work to develop a noninvasive method to study cortical auditory evoked potentials in bats, thereby allowing scientists to better understand how these animals process echolocation information.

Associated paper:
- Victoria Fouhy, Sam Ellis, and Michael Smotherman. "Subcutaneous cortical auditory evoked potentials in echolocating bats." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 158, 3390-3399 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0039659.

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

You may have heard of the "ghost army" of World War II—a set of rubber tanks used by the US Army to mimic active battlefields in Europe. What you may not know was the tanks were accompanied by an equally fake soundtrack of battle noises. Even more surprising? This "sonic deception" was developed by a team of the ASA's founding members whose contributions were almost lost to history. In this episode, we talk with Walter Montano (ARQUICUST Argentina Peru) about the innovations that helped save thousands of lives during the war.

Read the associated article: Walter A. Montano and Gary W. Elko. (2025) “Sonic Deception During the Second World War,” Acoustics Today 21(2). https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2025.21.2.38

Learn more about the ASA Committee on Archives and History.

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Intro/Outro Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.