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From the Editor | Arthur N. Popper
I endeavor to have a diverse set of topics in each issue of Acoustics Today (AT) so that, over the course of a few issues, every member of the Acousti- cal Society of America (ASA)
will find articles that relate to technical areas of interest to them as well as additional articles that will introduce them to new and interesting topics. In some ways, I have “failed” with this issue but in an interesting way. That is, there is less diversity but more interrelatedness in the articles than usual.
Three of the featured articles cover sound communication by animals. Gerald Pollack discusses sound production and detection in the largest and most diverse group of land animals—insects. Peter Tyack considers acoustic commu- nication in the largest (in body mass, not number) marine animals—the cetaceans. And Joy Reidenberg provides fasci- nating insight into how vertebrates, and particularly marine mammals, produce sounds. All three articles are accompa- nied by multimedia.
Last year, I was in Dublin and had dinner with Enda Mur- phy. Before dinner ended, I had persuaded Enda to do an article on the effects of environmental noise on humans. The article, although it focuses on humans, has striking implica- tions for the effects of man-made sound on animals and so has bearing on the insect and marine mammal articles.
In his article, Enda mentions the use of smartphones to mea- sure environmental noise, and, by chance, this issue has an article on the topic by Benjamin Faber. Ben’s article arises out of a special session at an ASA meeting that he organized a few years ago and shows how we can easily use our smart- phones to replace, or at least supplement, more single-pur- pose instrumentation.
In addition to longer featured articles, every issue of AT has shorter pieces on topics that hopefully interest ASA mem- bers (and others). This issue is particularly rich in interesting shorter pieces that I mention below. But, before that, I want to tell you about a change in AT starting with this issue. The fact that we have so many interesting shorter pieces prompt- ed the AT Editorial Board to think about how we should or- ganize such material in the magazine. Up until now, these
pieces were distributed over several “departments” in AT, and some were in the front and some in the back, with no particular organization. Because the topics were so diverse, it became hard to decide their place in the magazine.
To “solve” this problem and to give the shorter pieces more prominence, we decided to have a new section in AT called “Sound Perspectives.” Sound Perspectives will be a section in AT for columns that range from 500 to 2,500 words (sci- entific articles are about 6,000 words) and that cover various topics.
Our first set of Sound Perspectives is particularly diverse. One perspective, by ASA Editor in Chief James Lynch and Adrian KC Lee, addresses an issue of great concern to all ASA members—speed of publication of ASA journals. Jim and KC describe the very productive approach that the ASA has taken to markedly speed up the time from submission to publication of an article in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA). Jim and KC make it clear that what they are describing are really the first steps and that the speed of publication is a very high priority for the ASA Publications Office.
The ASA is greatly interested in increasing the number of women engaged in STEM fields and particularly in acoustics. The ASA has a very active Women in Acoustics (WIA) Com- mittee, and it has been doing some very interesting things to move the ASA in this direction. Because this is so important to the ASA, I invited the leaders of the WIA Committee to contribute columns to AT on a regular basis (for now they decided to do a column twice a year) to inform members of their activities and the issues that are of concern. The first such column, by Lauren Ronsse and Tracianne Neilsen, is in this issue, and they share fascinating information about seven women who have been scholars, mentors, and leaders in acoustics.
Another column in this issue is by Kenneth J. de Jong and Terrin Tamati. They served as local chairs at the Indianapolis ASA meeting and were challenged, as are all organizers, with locating different concurrent sessions so that members had to take the least amount of time going between sessions that interested them. Ken and Terrin did an analysis of member interests, as they describe in their column, and were success-
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6 | Acoustics Today | Summer 2017