Page 57 - Summer 2007

The Library
Dick Stern
Applied Research Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University State College, Pennsylvania 16804
Acoustics Today welcomes contributions for “The Library.” There is no charge for this service. Submissions of about 250 words that may be edited in MSWord or plain text files should be e-mailed to AcousticsToday@aip.org. Graphics must be at least 300 dpi. Please send the text and graphics in separate files.
Book Title: The Elephant’s Secret Sense—The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa Author: Caitlin O’Connell Publisher: Free Press ISBN-10: 0-7432-8441-0 Pages: 256
Binding: Hardcover
Working as a field scientist in 1992, Caitlin O’Connell began a three-year study of elephant movements and interactions with humans in Namibia that led her on an
fourteen-year journey to prove a controversial theory of ele- phants’ seismic communication. While observing a family group of elephants in the wild, she noticed a peculiar listen- ing behavior. A matriarch that she had been watching for months turned her head and lifted her foot off the ground. The other elephants followed suit, all facing the same direc- tion. O’Connell soon made a groundbreaking discovery: the elephants were “listening through limbs.” Through their feet, toenails, trunks, and other, subtler modes of communica- tion, these enormous animals were communicating to one another.
Book Title: Analysis, Synthesis, and Perception of Musical Sounds—The Sound of Music Editor: James W. Beauchamp Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 978-0-387-32496-8 Pages: 328
Chapters: 8
Binding: Hardcover
The problems of analyzing and synthesizing musical timbres have been prevalent for over half a century, and a book length explo- ration of this large and complex
subject has been long overdue. Analysis, Synthesis, and Perception of Musical Sounds: The Sound of Music consists of eight chapters that span the range from tutorial introduction to advanced research and application to speculative assessment of its various techniques. All of the contributors use a generalized additive sine wave model for describing musical timbre which gives a conceptual unity but is of sufficient utility to be adapt- ed to many different tasks. The authors represent an interna- tional community of researchers and teachers in the field of analysis/synthesis/perception, and this book reflects the important trends and interests current in the subject.
Editor’s Note—The items printed in “The Library” are reported for informational purposes only and are not necessarily endorsements by the author, the Editor, Acoustics Today, or the Acoustical Society of America.
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