Page 8 - 2017Spring

From the Editor | Arthur N. Popper
Finding interesting topics for Acoustics Today (AT) is an in- teresting challenge because I want each issue to have topi- cally diverse articles that will have broad interest to mem-
bers of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) as well as to people who read each issue on our open-access Web page. Indeed, when I invite people to write for AT, I emphasize that the articles should be scholarly but at the same time fully un- derstandable by the broad ASA audience. My “benchmark” is the level and breadth of the articles that many of the older members of ASA will remember from Scientific American in the 1950s and 1960s.
I am constantly on the lookout for potential new articles. I certainly look for ideas by browsing each issue of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) and other ASA publications. A major source of ideas comes from our ASA meetings where I try to attend a wide range of talks, talk with attendees to get their ideas for papers, and explore the meeting program. I also seek input from the AT Editorial Board.
One approach I have adopted in looking for ideas is to con- sider articles by individuals who have been recognized by the ASA with awards or other recognition (e.g., special ses- sions). I find that this is often a great source of inspiration.
Furthermore, in selecting articles, I work hard to have a broad diversity of topics, covering, over time, all the techni- cal areas of the ASA. Although there may be articles in the same technical area in a particular issue, my goal for diver- sity of topics is over time. I am also working to ensure that the articles in AT are by both older and younger members of ASA, and I strive for gender diversity for authors as well. (And note, although I tend to favor members of the ASA when looking for articles, membership is not required to be an author.)
I also want to emphasize that I am always open to ideas for new articles from members of the ASA. I invite you to write me (apopper@umd.edu) if you think of something we might include or if you have an idea for an article you would like to write yourself. The only “caveat” is that AT does not publish
new research and that the focus is on broad topics and not the work of one lab or lab group.
This leads me to the selection of the articles in this issue of AT. One day I was browsing the ASA list of recent Fellows and came up with the idea of inviting relatively new Fellows to write articles. So, every senior author in this issue is an ASA Fellow.
For the past several issues, we have had articles on musical instruments, and this issue follows that trend. Judit Ang- ster and her colleagues Péter Rucz and András Miklós write about the fascinating acoustics of pipe organs. It turns out that Judit is a member of a family that has a long history of constructing organs, and so her research fits nicely with family tradition.
The second article fits closely with my interest in having articles that reflect the history of a topic. In this case, Bill Brownell talks about the electromotility of sensory hair cells in the ear. Bill knows this topic rather intimately because he was the person who discovered this amazing phenomenon. He includes a wonderful video that shows the original dis- covery.
This issue has two papers related to speech (the topic of the second largest Technical Committee in the ASA; see http:// acousticalsociety.org/membership#02 for ASA membership statistics). In one article, Ian Bruce discusses the predictors of speech intelligibility, whereas in the second speech-relat- ed article, Valerie Hazan provides a fascinating insight into speech communication from young children just learning language to older people.
In the last article, Jeffrey Ketterling and Ronald Silverman describe how ultrasound can be used for imaging of parts of the human body.
In my last editorial, I talked about having a new AT intern for 2017. I now announce that we have a second intern for this year, Dr. Ernesto Accolti, from the National University of San Juan and the National Research Council in Argentina. The AT Editorial Board, which selects the interns, was quite excited about having Ernesto work with us because this will be an opportunity to broaden the international scope of AT and of the ASA, something that fits closely with the ASA
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6 | Acoustics Today | Spring 2017