With the development of automatic speech recognition has come a new type of technology, designed to give the user advice on how to speak better. In this episode, we talk with Nicole Holliday (University of California, Berkeley) about some of the issues that can arise with the use of these technologies, from their nebulous definitions of "good communication" to the impact they could have at businesses that use these technology to evaluate employees.

Associated paper: Nicole R. Holliday. "Socially prescriptive speech technologies: Linguistic, technical, and ethical issues." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 158, 4361–4369 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0039685.

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
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Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

Do you find the sound of people chewing unbearably annoying? Or perhaps you can't stand to be near folks who are typing on noisy keyboards, fidgeting with their pens, or rustling a plastic bag of chips. The term for this sort of aversion is misophonia. Even if you don't personally deal with this issue, you may know someone who does. In this episode, we talk with Benjamin Kirby (Wichita State University) and Olivia Zant (University of North Texas), whose recent JASA Express Letters article, “Psychoacoustic Assessment of Misophonia,” touches on this topic.

Associated paper: Benjamin J. Kirby, Alaina Cunningham, and Olivia Montou Zant. "Psychoacoustic assessment of misophonia." JASA Express Lett. 5, 094401 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0039238.

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Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

Manipulating the scattering of waves can allow engineers to achieve numerous goals, like reducing unwanted noise or eliminating potentially destructive vibrations in structures. In this episode, we talk to Vladislav Sorokin (University of Auckland) and Luke Bennetts (University of Melbourne), two guest editors of the recent Special Issue on Wave Phenomena in Periodic, Near-Periodic, and Locally Resonant Systems about recent advances in research regarding vibroacoustic systems.

Read all the articles from the special issue here!

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.