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News! Recognition of research and teaching.
The French Acoustical Society presented Joe Wolfe with the Society's International Medal (la Médaille Étrangère) on 8 December. (The medal recognises the research of the acoustics group.) On 30 November 2004, the Minister for Education, Science and Training presented Joe with the award for the Physical Sciences and Engineering section of the Australian Awards for University Teaching. Scientific American gave Science and Technology Web Awards to Einstein Light, a teaching site for relativity and to Music Acoustics, the resarch site of the acoustics group.
Research Interests
My fields are music and speech acoustics and cellular biophysics.
Our group studies the acoustics of musical instruments and of the vocal tract, and the production and analysis of sound by physiological, mechanical and electronic systems. We have collaborative research projects with the leading manufacturer of cochlear implants (on the coding of music), and with local instrument makers. John Smith and I have developed a technique for rapid, precise measurement of acoustic impedance spectra and transfer functions. We use this technique to study musical instruments and the human vocal tract.
Important examples of cellular thermodynamics occur in cryobiology. Many living tissues are damaged by freezing and in most cases tissue damage can be traced to damage of cell membranes. We study the thermal physics of these processes at scales from the ultrastructural to the environmental.
Selected Publications in Biophysics
- Wolfe, J. (2002) "Cellular Thermodynamics" Encyclopedia of Life Sciences (http://www.els.net). London: Nature Publishing Group.
- Wolfe, J. and Bryant, G. (1999) Freezing, drying and/or vitrification of membrane-solute-water systems" Cryobiology, 39, 103-129.
- Yoon, Y. H., Pope, J. and Wolfe, J. (1998) "The Effects of Solutes on the Freezing Properties of and Hydration Forces in Lipid Lamellar Phases." Biophys. J., 74, 1949-1965.
Selected Publications in Acoustics
- Tarnopolsky, A, Fletcher, N. Hollenberg, L., Lange, B., Smith, J. and Wolfe, J. (2005) The vocal tract and the sound of a didgeridoo. Nature, 436, 39.
- Joliveau, E., Smith, J. and Wolfe, J. (2004) "Tuning of vocal tract resonances by sopranos", Nature , 427, 116.
- Wolfe, J., Carter, P., Parker, S., Fearn, R., and Frampton, N. (Patent, 2001) "Multirate cochlear stimulation strategy and apparatus". (International publication date: 18/1/2001; priority date: 13/7/1999). Australia (App'n No 56652/00), Canada (TBA), Japan (TBA), US (TBA) and Europe (Appn No 00941808.8)
- Fearn, R, and Wolfe, J (2000) "The relative importance of rate and place: experiments using pitch scaling techniques with cochlear implantees" Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology, 109, 51-53.
- Dowd, A., Smith, J.R. and Wolfe, J. (1998) "Learning to pronounce vowel sounds in a foreign language using acoustic measurements of the vocal tract as feedback in real time" Language and Speech , 41, 1-20.
- Epps, J., Smith, J.R. and Wolfe, J. (1997) "A novel instrument to measure acoustic resonances of the vocal tract during speech" Measurement Science and Technology 8, 1112-1121.
- Music acoustics A web-based resource based on results of our research in music acoustics.
- Speech Acoustics. A web resource based on results of our research in the acoustics of the speech
Educational Publications
Contact Details
Mail Address
School of Physics
The University of New South Wales
SYDNEY 2052
Australia
Email Address
Phone Number
61 2 9385 4954 (UT +10, +11 Oct-Mar)
Facsimile Number
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