avatar
Dear UKAN+ Members

Welcome to July's newsletter, a range of news from across our network reflecting and informing our community which continues to grow with 1321 individuals as at 27th July 2021.
EDI
Support your network
UKAN+ are developing plans and actions to support Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and we ask all members to complete a brief anonymous survey to help us in that work, aiming to get as close to a 100% response rate as we can so that the feedback is properly representative.
The survey will take 5-10 mins to complete and is open until 9 September. It has been developed in conjunction with other EPSRC networks through our membership of a network of EPSRC-funded networks (the Network of Networks). It is being delivered on behalf of all the networks by the EPSRC-funded networks based at Nottingham and Southampton.
The “Understanding our network communities” survey aims to get a sense of
  1. The diversity of our existing membership, so as to help us benchmark and plan our work.
  2. How inclusive our network is seen to be by our membership.
  3. How we should organise our online events and other activities as Covid restrictions are eased, to make these as inclusive as possible.
We would appreciate it if you could take the time to complete the survey which will be a huge support for this important strand of our work.
Metamaterials
You may know from previous communications that the UK Metamaterials Network started in March 2021 with funding from EPSRC and KTN, respectively.
To present a united front in the area of metamaterials and to provide more exposure and connection opportunities, register with their free-of-charge expert database in addition to your UKAN profile.

Acoustic Metamaterials events
UKAN and UKMMN work together to create opportunities for this SIG to connect, exchange knowledge, and raise the profile of acoustic metamaterials.
Are you interested in sharing and discussing your work in a showcase and/or specific discussion groups series in the autumn 2021? Register your interest by 08 August 2021.
ASA
Acoustical Society of America's 2021 Science Communication Award
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) sought nominations for its 2021 Science Communication Awards in Acoustics, which are intended to recognise excellence in the presentation of acoustics related topics to a popular audience.

The video by Acoustics Research Unit (ARU) at the University of Liverpool, funded by UKAN SIG Vibro-Acoustics, has won the Acoustical Society of America's 2021 Science Communication Award in the Member category.

The Musical Vibrations project is being used to demonstrate the potential of vibrotactile feedback to support d/Deaf people in music performance, education, appreciation and production. The vibrotactile technology converts musical sounds that can be heard, into vibrations which are felt through the skin as vibrotactile feedback.

This video documents the responses of staff and pupils at the Royal School for the Deaf Derby who used the vibrotactile equipment in their music lessons.


Although the award is not presented until December the notification said “Your entry was the clear favourite of the judges because of its potential reach and appeal to the general public.”.

Congratulations and well done to all of those involved!
The Rest Is Just Noise_V2
This month's episode of The Rest Is Just Noise is "Stereophonica" with Prof Gascia Ouzounian! Today we understand sound is inherently spatial. It interacts with and informs us about the space it - and we - exist in. But as recently as 1900, scientists held that sound itself could not relay "spatial attributes" and that the human ear had physiological limitations that prevented it from receiving spatial information. How did we go from there to our current understanding of spatial sound?

In her new book, "Stereophonica", Oxford Associate Professor of Music, Gascia Ouzounian, traces the development of this spatial understanding from its modern birth, through science, war, music, and finally to our cities. In this month's episode, we sit down with Gascia to talk about some of the episodes she tells which we found particularly interesting. Enjoy!
Google Earth Sound Map for UK's 15 National Parks

As part of UKAN+'s/UK IYS2020+ activity, UK National Parks are keen to partner with UKAN+ to create a Google Earth Sound Map similar to Prof Pete Stollery’s COVID19 Sound Map , - a global project collating sound recordings made during LockDown; featured by Google as an example of good practice, using Google Earth Web during lockdown.

The National Parks sound map, a new 'free to access' representation of the Park's diverse offer, has potential to draw the attention of the Park's 100 million annual visitors to the importance of sound; engaging new audiences through an easy to access / attractive interface.

Each Park is agreeing a single sound or mini soundscape representative of their respective NP. By way of example only; think clinking ropes and climbing gear for the Peaks, a braying pony for the New Forest, crashing waves for Pembrokeshire Coast, booming bittern for Broads etc etc.
These would then be featured on the map, with further creative possibilities such as videos like the 100 seconds of NPs , still images and text to support/accompany the sounds.

Ruth James of South Down National Park says “I am really interested in the sound map project as we always like to think of the National Park as a layered landscape and sound is a key aspect of this. Through the map we can bring the beauty of the landscape to those who have visual impairments.”

Where you can help.
If you are interested in supporting a Park to make a quality recording of their emblematic sound, please contact charlotte.swain@acoustics.ac.uk

"This project was triggered by conversations with Peak District National Park, encouraging them to develop activities during International Year of Sound and it has snowballed from there. It is serendipitously great timing because 2021 is the 70th Anniversary of UK's National Parks. " Charlotte Swain
Vicky Stewart
Female acousticians celebrate International Women in Engineering Day

Female acousticians from across the Association of Noise Consultants (ANC) network came together to mark International Women in Engineering Day (INWED).
Colleagues in the industry collaborated to celebrate the event, with activities including a social media ‘take over’ held over three days in the run-up to the event.
Sarah Barnes, assistant acoustic consultant at Adnitt Acoustics, Angela Lamacraft, principal acoustic consultant at ACCON UK and Vicky Stewart, associate acoustic consultant at Atkins, each hosted the ANC channels for a day.
As well as documenting their work in acoustics, they introduced content from fellow female ANC members, including Sue Bird MBE, Anne Budd, Helen Sheldon, Eleanor Girdziusz and Jo Miller.
The collaboration concluded with a presentation to members, which was held as part of the ANC’s interim meeting, which took place on the day of INWED, on the 23 June.
Sarah Barnes, Vicky Stewart, Eleanor Girdziusz, Louise Beamish, Reena Mahtani and Anne Budd gave the presentation to members, showing prominent issues including the gender pay gap, and potential reasons why young women are not joining the industry and exploring STEM careers.
Vicky Stewart, (photo) chairs the ANC’s Future Acousticians committee, which is tasked with promoting equality, inclusion and diversity in the sector, said: “INWED is an important day for every woman working in STEM and the social media take over and the presentation to members gave us a great platform to talk about it to a wide audience.
“Through videos, case studies and slides on social media and our talk at the interim meeting we were able to show the huge impact women make in acoustics.”
Transformative
New grants related to acoustics
Its great to be able to inform you that in the recent EPSRC Transformative Healthcare Technologies Call, three grants involving ultrasound were awarded. UKAN+ would like to congratulate Nir Grossman from Imperial College London and colleagues securing £302,810 for Non-invasive Electrical Deep Brain Stimulation Technology. Patrick Degenaar from Newcastle University for securing £302,148 for Symbiotic Intrabody Networks for Bioelectronic Therapeutics and Marcus Kaiser from University of Nottingham for securing £293,510 for Beyond drugs: Non-invasive focused ultrasound brain stimulation as a novel intervention for mental health Marcus is recruiting an RA for this project, full details on the UKAN+ Jobs page.
Tribo
Tribo-Acoustic Sensors Workshop 1 September 10:00-17:00
A workshop on the use of ultrasonic 'tribo-acoustic' sensors to measure oil films, viscosity, contact, and stress in machine elements.

Hear about how PhD students and RA's in the Leonardo Centre at the University of Sheffield use ultrasound to measure of contacts in machine elements.
The group has built sensors for the measurement of oil film thickness, asperity contact, contact stress, surface films, and film viscosity. These sensors have been applied to lab based machine elements, such as seals, journal bearings, thrust pads, piston rings, and rolling element bearings; as well as applications in the field from auto and marine engines, metal rolling, and wind turbine transmissions.
This workshop will cover:
  • basic physics of how ultrasound responds to dry and lubricated interfaces
  • practical aspects on sensor manufacture sensors and the necessary instrumentation; including live demos.
  • results from sensors applied to a variety of lab based machine elements.
  • experience of field applications
The event will be online and free to join. Feel free to drop in and out and attend the sessions of interest to you.
Zoom
UKAN+ Webinars
Our acoustic weekly webinar is taking a short break for the summer. We are looking to plan our scheduled for six months in advance. Please do reach out to us if you are interested in hosting a UKAN+ Zoom webinar.
The UKAN+ Events page provides you with all the latest links to our wide range of talks already scheduled for September and October.
You can replay our various webinars via our YouTube channel here including our recent webinar from Phillippe Blondel presenting Surround Sound and Marine Habitats.

youtube 
Get in touch!
If you have any news for our August newsletter do drop us an email before the 17th. We are interested to hear a range of news, perhaps you have a recent publication, or you would like to offer a blog for our community or maybe you know of some industry news we could share.