Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Rich Information In The Acoustic Signals From Feeding And Grazing In Ruminants, Montague W. Demment, J. R. Galli, Carlos A. Cangiano, Emilio A. Laca

IGC Proceedings (1997-2023)

Because of their impact on productivity and the environment, feeding behaviour, ingestion and rumination are critical to understand intake in grazing ruminants. Many systems, mainly mechanical, have been developed to measure ingestive behaviour. However, these systems have problems, including mechanical failure and the inability to distinguish between the complex jaw movements of prehension and ingestion (Laca et al., 1994). The sounds generated by these behaviours are rich in information that holds potential not only to distinguish and count behaviours, but also identify aspects of the nature of the foods ingested.

Acoustic Directivity: Advances In Acoustic Center Localization, Measurement Optimization, Directional Modeling, And Sound Power Spectral Estimation, Samuel David Bellows

Theses and Dissertations

Sound radiation from an acoustic source typically exhibits directional behavior, as is the case for the human voice, musical instruments, and loudspeakers, to name just a few. The necessity of directional data for many applications, such as sound source modeling, microphone placement, room acoustical design, and auralization, motivates directivity measurements. However, these measurements require careful understanding and implementation to produce the most meaningful results. Accordingly, this dissertation addresses several topics relevant to directivity theory, measurement, processing, and application. It first expands and amends previously published concepts of an acoustic source center and demonstrates the close relationship between the center and …

Bat Use Of Afforested And Encroached Patches And Their Role In Extending Bat Habitat Into The Nebraska Sandhills, Jacob L. Wagner

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Nebraska Sandhills are currently undergoing a state shift to a redcedar dominated woodland due to anthropologic planting of eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) and woody encroachment from the periphery of the Sandhills. To better understand this novel ecosystem and how bats are utilizing it I collected data at Barta Brothers Ranch with acoustic sensor grids consisting of 24 100m spaced acoustic sensors placed adjacent to planted windbreaks. Supplemental data from the Nebraska North American Bat Monitoring Program was used for data analysis at larger spatial scales. I used linear regressions and kriging interpolation maps to see how bats used windbreaks …

Underwater Communication Acoustic Transducers: A Technology Review, Laila Shams, Tian-Bing Xu, Zhongqing Su (Ed.), Branko Glisic (Ed.), Maria Pina Limongelli (Ed.)

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper provides a comprehensive review on transducer technologies for underwater communications. The popularly used communication transducers, such as piezoelectric acoustic transducers, electromagnetic acoustic transducers, and acousto-optic devices are reviewed in detail. The reasons that common air communication technologies are invalid die to the differences between the media of air and water are addresses. Because of the abilities to overcome challenges the complexity of marine environments, piezoelectric acoustic transducers are playing the major underwater communication roles for science, surveillance, and Naval missions. The configuration and material properties of piezoelectric transducers effects on signal output power, beamwidth, amplitude, and other properties …

Long-Range Aceo Phenomena In Microfluidic Channel, Diganta Dutta, Keifer Smith, Xavier Palmer

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Microfluidic devices are increasingly utilized in numerous industries, including that of medicine, for their abilities to pump and mix fluid at a microscale. Within these devices, microchannels paired with microelectrodes enable the mixing and transportation of ionized fluid. The ionization process charges the microchannel and manipulates the fluid with an electric field. Although complex in operation at the microscale, microchannels within microfluidic devices are easy to produce and economical. This paper uses simulations to convey helpful insights into the analysis of electrokinetic microfluidic device phenomena. The simulations in this paper use the Navier–Stokes and Poisson Nernst–Planck equations solved using COMSOL …

Focusing Of High-Amplitude Sound Waves Using The Time Reversal Process, Brian D. Patchett

Theses and Dissertations

Time reversal is a method often used to focus sound to a desired location, and works best in a reverberant environment. The effect of focus location within a reverberant environment is presented first, revealing that proximity to reflecting surfaces has a significant effect on the amplitude of the focus both experimentally and when using a modal summation model. These effects are a primary component to creating focus signals at high amplitudes. High-amplitude focusing experiments show that when multiple sources are used simultaneously to generate a focus, a peak amplitude pressure spike of 200 dB can be achieved in air. A …

Coupled Oscillators: Protein And Acoustics, Angelique N. Mcfarlane

Theses

This work encompassed three different vibrational energy transfer studies of coupled resonators (metal, topological, and microtubule comparison) inspired by the lattices of microtubules from regular and cancerous cells. COMSOL Multiphysics 5.4 was utilized to design the experiment. The simulation starts with an acoustic pressure study to examine the vibrational modes present in coupled cylinders, representing α-, β-tubulin heterodimers. The Metal Study consisted of 3 models (monomer, dimer, and trimer) to choose the correct height (40 mm) and mode (Mode 1) for study. The Topological Study was run to predict and understand how the lattice structure changes over a parametric sweep …

Considerations For And Development Of Sound Level Maps For The M16a4 Rifle, Reese D. Rasband

Theses and Dissertations

Small firearms can create sound levels exceeding the safe threshold of human hearing with even one shot. Understanding how the sound propagates will lead to better range and military drill design. This thesis describes errors associated with different predictive interpolation models for the M16A4. Before directly discussing potential sources of error, the thesis first seeks to validate the data acquired. This is done through waveform inspection with a focus on shot-to-shot consistency. Finding the standard deviation in level between a 10-shot volley provides a good baseline with which other sources of error can be compared to. For both peak and …

Volcano Infrasound: Progress And Future Directions, Jacob F. Anderson, Jeffrey B. Johnson

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Over the past two decades (2000–2020), volcano infrasound (acoustic waves with frequencies less than 20 Hz propagating in the atmosphere) has evolved from an area of academic research to a useful monitoring tool. As a result, infrasound is routinely used by volcano observatories around the world to detect, locate, and characterize volcanic activity. It is particularly useful in confirming subaerial activity and monitoring remote eruptions, and it has shown promise in forecasting paroxysmal activity at open-vent systems. Fundamental research on volcano infrasound is providing substantial new insights on eruption dynamics and volcanic processes and will continue to do so over …

The Influence Of Bottom Type And Water Column Stratification On Reef Fish Community Structure At Gray’S Reef National Marine Sanctuary, Bridget Campbell

Honors Theses

Understanding the physical and oceanographic differences across reef habitats can help researchers assess how those differences influence fish distribution and community structure, which leads to a better understanding of what a healthy reef system looks like. The traditional methods used to assess fish communities on temperate reefs are limited and often focus solely on either the reef structure or water column conditions alone. An assessment of both data sets yields a more complete understanding of the ecosystem as a whole. In this study, Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary (GRNMS) was surveyed both inside and outside a Marine Protected Area (MPA) …

Acoustic Parameters As Discriminators Of Wall Events In Pico Dark Matter Search Data, Lucia Volkova

University Honors Program Senior Projects

Bubble chambers are one of several detector types that particle physicists use to search for the as-yet-undetected dark matter. The PICO collaboration – formed from the merger of the similar PICASSO and COUPP experiments – runs such a bubble detector using superheated fluorocarbons (with and without iodine). Bubbles that form along chamber walls exhibit different behavior than those which nucleate in the bulk of the target liquid due to shape distortions from the wall boundary; in previous analyses when searching for dark matter, these wall events have been cut from the data to control for the differing behavior using information …

Modelling Acoustics In Ancient Maya Cities: Moving Towards A Synesthetic Experience Using Gis & 3d Simulation, Graham Goodwin, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Archaeological analyses have successfully employed 2D and 3D tools to measure vision and movement within cityscapes; however, built environments are often designed to invoke synesthetic experiences. GIS and Virtual Reality (VR) now enable archaeologists to also measure the acoustics of ancient spaces. To move toward an understanding of synesthetic experience in ancient Maya cities, we employ GIS and 3D modelling to measure sound propagation and reverberation using the main civic-ceremonial complex in ancient Copán as a case study. For the ancient Maya, sight and sound worked in concert to create ritually-charged atmospheres and architecture served to shape these experiences. Together …

A Sonic Net Reduces Damage To Sunflower By Blackbirds (Icteridae): Implications For Broad-Scale Agriculture And Crop Establishment, Amanda K. Werrell, Page E. Klug, Romuald N. Lipcius, John P. Swaddle

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Blackbirds, such as red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus), are notorious agricultural pests and damage crops at multiple stages of growth. Our aim was to test a novel deterrent, the use of sound designed to mask communication among birds (termed a “Sonic Net”), to deter blackbirds (Icteridae) from target areas of maturing sunflower crops. The Sonic Net masks communication of a target species by delivering “pink noise” that overlaps with the frequencies that the species uses for acoustic communication. If birds cannot hear predators or conspecific warning calls their perceived predation risk increases, and they relocate to an area with …

A Multidisciplinary Approach To Investigate Deep-Pelagic Ecosystem Dynamics In The Gulf Of Mexico Following Deepwater Horizon, April Cook, Andrea Bernard, Kevin M. Boswell, Heather Bracken-Grissom Dr., Marta D'Elia, Sergio Derada, Cole Easson, David English, Ron Eytan, Tamara Frank, Chuanmin Hu, Matt Johnston, Heather Judkins, Chad Lembke, Jose Lopez, Rosanna Milligan, Jon A. Moore, Brad Penta, Nina Pruzinsky, John A. Quinlan, Travis M. Richards, Isabel C. Romero, Mahmood S. Shivji, Michael Vecchione, Max D. Weber, R.J. David Wells, Tracey Sutton

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

The pelagic Gulf of Mexico (GoM) is a complex system of dynamic physical oceanography (western boundary current, mesoscale eddies), high biological diversity, and community integration via diel vertical migration and lateral advection. Humans also heavily utilize this system, including its deep-sea components, for resource extraction, shipping, tourism, and other commercial activity. This utilization has had impacts, some with disastrous consequences. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWHOS) occurred at a depth of ∼1500 m (Macondo wellhead), creating a persistent and toxic mixture of hydrocarbons and dispersant in the deep-pelagic (water column below 200 m depth) habitat. In order to assess the …

Spatial And Temporal Patterns Of Bat Activity In A Southeast Nebraska Agricultural Landscape, Christopher Fill

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Intensive agriculture is associated with biodiversity loss and species decline. Yet wild species, such as bats, may provide critical ecosystem services to agriculture, even in transformed landscapes. In the United States, bats have been estimated to save the agricultural industry billions of dollars per year. However, white-nose syndrome and habitat loss have led to the decline of many bat species in North America, including the federally threatened northern long-eared bat, Myotis septentrionalis.

To better evaluate the effectiveness of these pest-controlling services, and to increase understanding of bat foraging behavior in these extreme landscapes, I deployed 11 grids of 24 detectors, …

Generating Acoustic Projections Using 3d Models, Jake A. Brazelton

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Raytracing is used in commercial graphics engines most commonly for lighting effects, but it also has many uses when it comes to acoustic simulation. Adopted directly from these computer graphics programs, the formulas presented herein enable the visualization of acoustic intensity levels throughout a 3D space using Python 3 and the OpenGL library. In addition to visualization, they also provide the ability to calculate the reverberation time and critical distance of an enclosed space in relation to its size and material makeup. The described application bundles all of these components together in a Qt5 application that allows users to view …

A Machine Learning Approach To The Perception Of Phrase Boundaries In Music, Evan Matthew Petratos

Senior Projects Fall 2020

Segmentation is a well-studied area of research for speech, but the segmentation of music has typically been treated as a separate domain, even though the same acoustic cues that constitute information in speech (e.g., intensity, timbre, and rhythm) are present in music. This study aims to sew the gap in research of speech and music segmentation. Musicians can discern where musical phrases are segmented. In this study, these boundaries are predicted using an algorithmic, machine learning approach to audio processing of acoustic features. The acoustic features of musical sounds have localized patterns within sections of the music that create aurally …

Numerical Modeling Of Submicron Particles For Acoustic Concentration In Gaseous Flow, Jizhou Liu, Xiaodong Li, Fang Q. Hu

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

This paper intends to explore the rationality and feasibility of modeling dispersed submicron particles in air by a kinetic-based method called the unified gas-kinetic scheme (UGKS) and apply it to the simulation of particle concentration under a transverse standing wave. A gas-particle coupling scheme is proposed where the gas phase is modeled by the two-dimensional linearized Euler equations (LEE) and, through the analogous behavior between the rarefied gas molecules and the air-suspended particles, a modified UGKS is adopted to estimate the particle dynamics. The Stokes' drag force and the acoustic radiation force applied on particles are accounted for by introducing …

A Method For Automatic Detection Of Tongued And Slurred Note Transitions In Clarinet Playing, Whitney L. Coyle, Jack D. Gabriel

Faculty Publications

This study offers a simple method to characterize two transition types in passages of music in order to automatically distinguish slurred transitions from tongued transitions in musical settings. Data were recorded from musicians playing a clarinet with a sensor-equipped mouthpiece measuring blowing pressure in the mouth and pressure in the mouthpiece. This method allows for comparing transitions in different musical contexts, playing regimes, and between players. The method is highly reliable in automatically detecting transition types in recorded clarinet playing in both simple and more complex passages.

The Fourier Spectrum Of A Singing Wine Glass, Reuben Leatherman, Justin Charles Dunlap, Ralf Widenhorn

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The phenomenon of the singing wineglass is familiar to many. Most people have run a finger along the rim of a wine glass with the right speed and pressure to get it to whistle a tone or perhaps heard a glass harmonica being played. However, have you ever noticed and wondered why the vibrations caused by a finger on a glass produce a pulsating sound, rather than a steady, constant-amplitude vibration? Further exploration reveals that the sound and pulsations of a wine glass vary depending on the way the wine glass is stimulated. In this paper, we investigate and model …

Implementing The North American Bat Monitoring Program In Nebraska: An Assessment Of Nebraska Bats With An Emphasis On Citizen Science, Baxter Seguin

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Over the past decade bat species in North America have been under immense stress due to anthropogenic activities throughout the continent along with severe declines from foreign invaders. Though many specific anthropogenic related activities such as deforestation, land-use alteration, and hibernacula disturbance/modification were the primary culprits of negative impacts on bat species in the past, they pale in comparison to the threats bats face today. White nose syndrome a disease caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans and wind energy development have caused declines and disruptions to the bat populations of North America at an unprecedented rate.

Due to the significant …

An Investigation Of Clarinet Playing Using A Sensor-Equipped Mouthpiece, Camille Adkison

Honors Program Theses

The purpose of this study is to characterize clarinet playing techniques through measurements of the pressure in the clarinet mouthpiece while a musician plays and to investigate the methods by which clarinet players transition from note to note, termed articulations. The results provide information about the clarinet-player system that can be incorporated in future models of the clarinet. The work reported here involves the use of a recent technological development, the sensor-equipped mouthpiece. Using the sensor-equipped mouthpiece, researchers are able to record pressure in the musician's mouth and the clarinet mouthpiece. Six clarinet players of varying experience levels were asked …

Practice Room Acoustics: What Matters To Musicians About The Practice Space, Yu-Tien Chou

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Why do people always prefer the practice room in the corner on the second floor than the others? What’s the reason why string players often go for the “dryer” room than the wind players? Wondering why brass players often occupy the resonant room? This paper is here to decipher all the mysteries behind all of the questions above by the acoustic analysis suggested by Bonnelo and the other supplying papers on sound absorbing materials. The question to be answered is how the rooms are different from each other in terms of their dimensions and damping surfaces. Eventually, construct a criteria …

Browsing Via Sonification, Taylor C. Cutlip

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Based on unexpected results in her previous research, Dr. Frances Van Scoy became inspired to develop a tool that allows the user to navigate spaces using auditory instead of visual cues to detect objects or anomalies in a given space in an effort to overcome the encountered obstacles. This problem report details the work of one of her grad students in exploring different open source software for developing the tool as well as research into gestures and other considerations when furthering this research into the third dimension at a future date.

Using Machine Learning To Accurately Predict Ambient Soundscapes From Limited Data Sets, Katrina Lynn Pedersen

Theses and Dissertations

The ability to accurately characterize the soundscape, or combination of sounds, of diverse geographic areas has many practical implications. Interested parties include the United States military and the National Park Service, but applications also exist in areas such as public health, ecology, community and social justice noise analyses, and real estate. I use an ensemble of machine learning models to predict ambient sound levels throughout the contiguous United States. Our data set consists of 607 training sites, where various acoustic metrics, such as overall daytime L50 levels and one-third octave frequency band levels, have been obtained. I have data for …

An Acoustical Analogue Of A Galactic-Scale Gravitational-Wave Detector, Michael T. Lam, Joseph D. Romano, Joey Key, M. E. Normandin, ‪Jeffrey S. Hazboun

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications and Presentations

By precisely monitoring the “ticks” of Nature's most precise clocks (millisecond pulsars), scientists are trying to detect the “ripples in spacetime” (gravitational waves) produced by the inspirals of supermassive black holes in the centers of distant merging galaxies. Here, we describe a relatively simple demonstration that uses two metronomes and a microphone to illustrate several techniques used by pulsar astronomers to search for and detect gravitational waves. An adapted version of this demonstration could be used as an instructional laboratory investigation at the undergraduate level.

A Circular Planetarium As A Spatial Visual Musical Instrument, Dale E. Parson Ph.D.

Computer Science and Information Technology Faculty

Planetariums have been home to spatial visual music for over sixty years. Advanced technology in spatial sound such as sound field and wave field systems are superseding channel-based systems as areas for research. Nevertheless, there is room for invention in immersive spatial visual music in a channel-based planetarium. Circular seating minimizes problems with sonic reflections from circular walls suffered by unidirectional theatre seating arrangements. Circular seating supports dynamic permutation of channel-to-speaker routing as a corrective and compositional measure. Full dome projection of visuals gives inherent support for graphics-to-music spatial correlation and related immersive effects. This paper is a case study …

Three Dimensional Passive Localization For Single Path Arrival With Unknown Starting Conditions, Britt Aguda

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Introduced in this paper is the time difference of arrival (TDoA) conic approximation method (TCAM), a technique for passive localization in three dimensions with unknown starting conditions. The TDoA of a mutually detected signal across pairs of detectors is used to calculate the relative angle between the signal source and the center point of the separation between the detectors in the pair. The relative angle is calculated from the TDoA using a mathematical model called the TDoA approximation of the zenith angle (TAZA). The TAZA angle defines the opening angle of a conic region of probability that contains the signal …

Ask An Acoustician: Whitney Coyle, Whitney Coyle

Faculty Publications

Meet Whitney Coyle Welcome to the second installment of our new Sound Perspectives series “Ask an Acoustician.” This article highlights Whitney Coyle, an assistant professor at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida (rollins.edu). Whitney represents the musical acoustics field. She received her BS from Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky, in the fields of music and mathematics. She then went on to Pennsylvania State University, University Park, for her MS and PhD in acoustics. Whitney has a strong association with the Acoustical Society of American (ASA), including serving on the Student Council Committee from 2011 to 2015. She received awards for the …

Tissue Mimicking Materials For Multi-Modality Breast Phantoms, G. Fiaschetti, Jacinta Browne, M. Cavagnaro, L. Farina, G. Ruvio

Conference Papers

The paper proposes two different Tissue Mimicking Material (TMM) techniques for the development of breast phantoms which are suitable for multi-modality imaging. In particular, the focus is on the behavior of dielectric and acoustic properties when fat, sodium chloride and sugar are added to the mixtures.