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Providence Section of the IEEE
Registration & Cocktails (cash bar): 5:30 PM; Dinner 6:30 PM (Dinner followed by Guest Speakers and Installation of Officers); Thursday, 15 May
RI ASCE IEEE WTS PES MEETING
What the Future Holds for Rhode Island Renewable Energy
Mr. Andrew Dzykewicz, Commissioner, Rhode Island Energy Commission
Location: The Squantum Association
947 Veterans Memorial Parkway
East Providence, RI 02915
Phone: 401-434-8377Reservations: Reservations and dinner selections may be made by contacting Jim Brunnhoeffer, by Thursday, May 8th, at Roger Williams University (401-254-3870) or via email at gbrunnhoeffer@rwu.edu. Please reference RIASCE Dinner Meeting in the heading.
Dinner selections: Baked Scrod or Balsamic & Raspberry Chicken
Price: $45.00 Members and Guests / $15.00 StudentsPlease mail check, payable to ASCE RI Section, as follows:
ATTN: Mr. Kevin Schott
Camp Dresser & McKee, Inc.
56 Exchange Terrace
Providence, RI 02903or payable at the door
Unfortunately, RIASCE will be billed for the number of reservations. It will therefore be necessary to bill all “no shows”.
Directions: From the west: I-95 to Providence, I-195 east to exit 4, Riverside-Taunton. Bear right off exit ramp onto Veterans Memorial Parkway. Approximately 2.5 miles on the right, look for the stone pillars marking the entrance to Squantum Road. Proceed 1/4 mile down the road to the bottom of the hill.
From the east: I-195 west to exit 6, Broadway-East Providence. Turn left onto Broadway and follow it until it ends. Turn left onto Veterans Memorial Parkway. Halfway up the hill on the right look for the stone pillars marking the entrance to Squantum Road. Proceed 1/4 mile down the road to the bottom of the hill. Use this URL to map your route:
http://www.squantumassociation.com/directions.html
Providence Section
Presentation: 7:00PM (tentative); Monday, 19 May
Underwater Ears and POTential Impacts: how to see what whales hear
Darlene R. Ketten, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Biology Department, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA dketten@whoi.edu www.whoi.edu/csi
The problem of potential impacts from anthropogenic sound in the oceans is a hydra: manifold, complex, and mutable. All human activities in the oceans produce noise. These activities span the globe and likely occur within the audible range of most marine species. Underwater noise is therefore a universal problem that cannot be solved simply nor from data limited to one species or incident. A recent Ocean Studies Board panel found there is a doubling per decade in anthropogenic noise in the ocean’s sound budget. Strandings associated with mid-frequency active sonars have heightened our awareness and concerns about acoustic pollution and potential harm to marine mammals. These concerns have spawned serious and occasionally vituperous debates as well as costly legal battles. Recent research efforts have substantially increased our knowledge about some species, but we are still far from a clear understanding of the mechanisms and scope of impacts.
Conventional audiometric methods are not applicable to most marine mammal species because of size and accessibility. Audiograms are available for fewer than 22 of the 124 marine mammal species, all of which were obtained from smaller species and often from only one captive animal. Thus, we are far from understanding underwater noise impacts primarily because we first need to understand what and how the majority of species can hear. By combining conventional audiometry from captive animal studies with functional modeling and biomechanical measures of ear and head architecture, we can obtain a broader picture of multiple species hearing as well as a better understanding of critical features of underwater hearing mechanisms. An important concept in neuroethology is the Umwelt; i.e., an animal's perceived world is a species-specific representation constructed from blocks of data that its sensory systems can capture. These blocks are tuned by evolution. Functional modeling builds on this concept, analyzing sensory system elements in the context of the operational medium. Thus, an important aspect of modeling is that it not only provides sensory ability estimates but also examines the evolutionary habitat-anatomy push-pull.
This talk will therefore describes what is known about underwater hearing of marine mammals, focusing particularly on whales which have the most fully adapted underwater ears, by tying together what is known from experimental measures, the anatomy of their auditory systems, and related models as well as implications for their probable liability for hearing loss from underwater sound exposures.
Supported by ONR, NOAA Fisheries and NIH]
Darlene R. Ketten, Ph.D., is a marine biologist and neuroanatomist specializing in the underwater hearing and mechanisms of hearing loss. She received a B.A. from Washington University (Biology and French), a M.S. from M.I.T. (Biological Oceanography), and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, The Johns Hopkins University (jointly awarded in neuroanatomy, behavioral ecology, and experimental radiology). She currently holds appointments as a Senior Scientist in Biology at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, as an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and as a Senior Research Fellow at NIH/NIDCD and is director of the WHOI Computerized Scanning and Imaging Facility (www.whoi.edu/csi).
Her research focuses on modeling underwater hearing ranges of marine mammals and on biomedical diagnositic imaging techniques for assessing ear trauma and disease. She has completed medical specialty courses in Otopathology, Neuroradiology, and Forensic Pathology and is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and an active member of advisory boards and panels on hearing, bioacoustics, acoustic trauma, and marine mammal regulatory guidelines for the National Institutes of Deafness and Communication Disorders, National Academy of Sciences, the Marine Mammal Commission, NATO, and the U.S.
Reservations: For information regarding this event and to register contact Richard Katz at richard.katz@navy.mil or cell 401 862 2910.
Directions: Use this URL to map your route: http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/visitbrown/directions.html
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Updated: April 25, 2008.