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52 Acoustics Today, October 2011 Title: Acoustical Design of Theatres for Drama Performance: 1985–2010 Editors: David T. Bradley, Erica E. Ryherd, and Michelle C. Vigeant ISBN 978-0-9846084-5-4 Publisher: Acoustical Society of America Binding: Hardcover Pages: 334 The acoustic environment is paramount in any space that houses dramatic perform- ance. Thornton Wilder said, “The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard.” This new book takes an inside look at the acoustical design of 130 drama theatres from around the world. It is a compilation of drama theatres that have been designed during the 25-year period from 1985 to 2010. Top acoustical consulting firms from around the world contributed examples of their work, including images, acoustical data, and descriptions of the theatres. The book is a valuable educational resource that provides introductions from leading theatre con- sultants and a prominent artistic director, an overview of key aspects involved in the acoustic design of drama theatres, and a comprehensive glossary of common theatre acoustics terminology. Further, the book is a useful reference, as the contributed the- atres are categorized according to theatre type, and are indexed by consulting firm and by geographic location. Title: Principles of SONAR Performance Modeling Author: Michael A. Ainslie Publisher: Springer Binding: Hardcover Pages: 828 ISBN-13: 978-3540876618 Human beings are used to using built-in optical sensors—our eyes—to build an accu- rate picture of our immediate surroundings, and when we wish to look beyond the vis- ible horizon we turn to radio waves to do the same job. In water, neither visible light nor radio carries more than a few meters, whereas low frequency sound can travel tens or even hundreds of kilometers, making sonar the sensor of choice for underwater nav- igation, oceanography, or the detection of underwater objects. Principles of SONAR Performance Modeling opens with a description of the pioneering efforts of Pierre and Jacques Curie, who discovered piezoelectricity, Paul Langevin, who demonstrated underwater echolocation during World War I, and other giants of the twentieth centu- ry such as Ernest Rutherford, Léon Brillouin and Maurice Ewing, in making sonar and its applications a reality. Traditionally considered a branch of engineering, sonar per- formance modeling is treated here with a physicist’s perspective, bringing together oceanography, acoustics, signal processing and detection theory in one volume. Separate chapters describe the characteristic physical, chemical and biological signa- ture of the oceans, acoustic reflection from the oceans’ boundaries and their contents, propagation, noise and reverberation modeling, beamforming and matched filter pro- cessing, the hearing capabilities of marine mammals, and the fundamentals of statisti- cal detection theory for fluctuating and non-fluctuating signals. The cornerstone is a derivation from physical principles of the sonar equations, which are applied to exam- ples of SONAR—both man-made and biological.