The following news conference will take place in the Whidbey Room of the Westin Seattle Hotel, 1900 Fifth Avenue, Seattle, Washington.

It will occur at an international meeting devoted exclusively to the science of acoustics: the Joint 16th International Congress on Acoustics (ICA) and the 135th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), to take place between June 20-26 at the Seattle Sheraton Hotel and Towers and the Westin Seattle. A news release on the meeting can be found at http://www.acoustics.org/press_release.html

Studying how female midshipman fish distinguish between the mating calls ("hums") of numerous males singing to them simultaneously, Andrew Bass's lab at Cornell University (607-254-4330) will present evidence that the regularly repeating acoustical "beats" produced by the concurrent hums get converted into rhythmically timed nerve signals in the brain, allowing individuals to distinguish between the different songs (Meeting Paper 4aAB1). Whales generate long rhythmic patterns of sound, and some sounds can travel hundreds of miles underwater. Analyzing "the remarkable cadence" of these patterns, Christopher Clark of Cornell University (607-254-2408) will show that whales can retain a rhythm even after minutes of silence (4aAB4).

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BEFORE JUNE 22

Please feel free to call Ben Stein of the American Institute of Physics at 301-209-3091. To read the abstracts of the papers mentioned in the news conference description, go to the ICA/ASA Meeting Abstracts Database (asa.aip.org/asasearch.html) and type in the paper code.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO DURING THE WEEK OF JUNE 22

Please feel free to call Ben Stein at the meeting newsroom: 206-727-7617 and 206-727-7618. The newsroom will be located at the Blakely Room of the Westin, and the hours will be Monday-Wednesday, June 22-24, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., and Thursday, June 25 from 8 a.m.-12 p.m.