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From the Editor | Arthur N. Popper
This issue of Acoustics Today (AT) has five articles as well as essays about the Acousti- cal Society of America (ASA) in our new Sound Perspec- tives section. The intent of the
Sound Perspectives essays is to enable AT to inform members and others (we have almost 1,000 nonmembers who have requested notification when new issues of AT go up on the Web) about the ASA and other ideas and issues of interest.
Indeed, I have been gently “pushing” our current and past presidents and our executive director to talk more about what is happening within the Society, and they all have done so in this issue. Outgoing President Michael Stinson has an essay on being president of the ASA. It is clear that Mike had a busy, but very fulfilling, year, and he makes a great case for the involvement of members in the activities of our Society.
ASA Executive Director Susan Fox, complementing the presi- dent’s article, shares the growing activities, many of which have come from our strategic planning process, to engage younger members in acoustics and in the operation of the ASA.
Following up on sharing information about the ASA, David Feit, ASA Treasurer, writes about the quite healthy financial status of the Society, although he also points out challenges for the future that need consideration. One aspect of our fi- nancial picture is the ASA Foundation Fund. Although each issue of AT has a small update about Fund events, it is impor- tant to appreciate the overall purpose of the Fund and so its chair, Carl Rosenberg, writes an informative piece about the many important activities that the Fund supports and that it is planning to expand in the future through fundraising efforts. Indeed, the Fund has touched the lives of numerous ASA members (including several who wrote for this issue), and it is important that all of us know about and support this program going forward.
Another important part of ASA are Standards. Because I have never fully understood how Standards work and their involvement with ASA, I invited our Standards Director Christopher Struck to write about that program. Chris ex- plains the Standards Program and, importantly, discusses why members should get involved and how they can do this.
As someone who has been involved in Standards Commit- tees, I can attest that this is a great way to contribute to one’s discipline in a way that has national and international im- plications and that encourages working with a wide range of people with interesting and provocative ideas.
Over the past years, I have invited the chairs of our techni- cal committees (TCs) to profile their disciplines, and we are coming close to covering all of them. This issue has a piece about the Signal Processing TC by its chair Paul Gendron. When I invite authors to write, I tell them that I am the au- dience and that their goal is to make me interested in and help me learn about the work of the TC. Paul did really well to fulfill that goal. I had no idea of the impact of the Signal Processing TC on so many aspects of acoustics and the ASA. Indeed, in reading what Paul wrote, I immediately thought of reaching out to TC members for some of the work I do that is more classified as animal bioacoustics.
The final Sound Perspectives essay is from one of our AT in- terns, Ernesto Accolti. As readers may recall, Ernesto is from Argentina and is spending the year writing about acousti- cians from South America for the AT website (two articles are now posted at http://acousticstoday.org/accolti in both English and Spanish) and a few articles, like the one in this issue of AT, about international acoustics events. Ernesto’s contributions fit quite closely with the ASA international outreach, and I suspect readers will find his approach useful and informative.
Of course, this issue of AT also has five articles on various interesting topics. The issue starts with an article on marine sediments by Megan Ballard and Kevin Lee. Megan and Kev- in talk not only about how sound propagates through sedi- ments but also address the fascinating issue of how biological material in the sediment can alter propagation.
In the next article, Micheal Dent, associate editor of AT, dis- cusses auditory mechanisms in mammals. Micheal empha- sizes the importance of comparative issues and how under- standing hearing in nonhuman animals can help understand human hearing and its evolution.
This is followed by an article by Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA) Editor Kent Gee and myself on mentor- ing. I invited Kent to write this after he organized a session
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6 | Acoustics Today | Fall 2017