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From the Editor | Arthur N. Popper
This is an eclectic issue with topics ranging from regenera- tion of sensory hair cells of the ear to the acoustics of my fa- vorite instrument, the violin. But before discussing the ar-
ticles in the issue, I do want to mention that we are looking for a new Acoustics Today (AT) intern to join us for a year of being part of the print and Web presence of AT.
You may recall that our first AT intern, Laura Kloepper, worked on helping AT (and ASA) move into social media in a big way. Our current intern, Andrew (Pi) Pyzdek, is doing a series of articles for the AT Web page on various interesting areas of acoustics that are very much aimed at a lay audience (http://goo.gl/Fg0bDJ). You can find out more about being an AT intern at http://goo.gl/tiKPp0. The specific responsi- bility for each AT intern varies and depends on the interests of the individual and the needs of the magazine. I’m very glad to explore ideas that anyone might want to propose.
One of the real contributions of ASA is in the education of future acousticians and the public about our disciplines. The fall 2015 issue of AT had an article about overall education projects of the society (http://goo.gl/IEUthG). This issue has an article on new and very interesting approaches to overall education, with specific examples using acoustics but which are applicable to most any discipline. Thus, this article writ- ten by John Buck, Kathleen Wage, and Jill Nelson might be shared with a far broader audience than just ASA members.
In the next article, Colin Gough shares his abiding interest, and hobby, on the acoustics of violins. Colin points out that even experts sometimes cannot differentiate between the
sounds of some of the oldest and rarest instruments and new instruments. Colin takes advantage of multimedia, available on the AT Web site, to illustrate acoustics and the sounds produced by violins.
Ewa Jacewicz and Robert Fox explore the variation in sounds in a very different way in a discussion of regionally accented speech. This paper came out of a wonderful presentation that Ewa and Robert made at a recent ASA meeting. It pro- vides substantial insight into the variation in speech around the United States and, again, takes advantage of multimedia to illustrate how speech varies.
The final article moves from sound production to sound re- ception. One of the major health issues in the United States and around the world is hearing loss, and much of this loss results from damage to the sensory hair cells of the inner ear. Becky Lewis, Jenny Stone, and Edwin Rubel provide great insight into recent studies that are trying to figure out meth- ods to regenerate hair cells in the mammalian ear.
The issue also has a number of other articles of interest. Re- gretfully, ASA has lost several distinguished members in the past months and this issue thus includes four obituar- ies. However, unlike “standard” obituaries, the goal of AT is to include material that gives insight into the scholarly con- tributions of very interesting people. Thus, although most people tend to skip obituaries, I encourage you to look at those published here for interesting information about vari- ous areas of acoustics.
As always, I am pleased to hear about ideas for future arti- cles for Acoustics Today. Please drop me an email with ideas (apopper@umd.edu) and I’ll get back to you quickly.
6 | Acoustics Today | Summer 2016