Volume 4, Number 1, March, 1996 - Noise News International

tional development and collaboration in all fields ofacoustics including research, development and education.Means for fulfilling its mission include: developingclose contacts with acoustical societies andinstitutions worldwide; taking a proactive role incoordinating the principal international meetingsdealing with acoustics; maintaining databases onacoustical meetings and important events, acousticalsocieties of the world, research institutes andlaboratories active in acoustics, and undergraduateand graduate educational opportunities in acousticsworldwide.The primary activity of the commission is thesponsoring of International Congresses on Acousticswhich have been held every third year since thefirst one in 1953 in Delft, The Netherlands. The lastcongress was held in 1995 in Trondheim, Norway.The next congress scheduled for 1998 in Seattle,Washington, USA, will be organized by the AcousticalSociety of America. A summary of the InternationalCongresses on Acoustics held to date is givenin Table 1.At the present time, members of the commissionare nominated by, among others, members of theearlier commission, and subsequently elected byIUPAP. The commission is currently in the processof changing its status within IUPAP so that thecommissioners in the future will receive their mandatesfrom the regional acoustical organizations.The International Institute of Noise ControlEngineering (I-INCE) was established in 1974 forthe coordination of worldwide activities of thoseorganizations interested in the engineering aspectsof noise control. International INCE serves in aleadership role in the applications of noise controltechnology on a world-wide basis. Its principal functionssince its founding have been to sponsor theINTER-NOISE series of congresses, to assist in theorganization of International INeE Symposia onspecialized topics, to publish a newsletter, and, since1993, to publish NoiselNews International in cooperationwith the Institute of Noise Control Engineeringof the USA. In 1992, the General Assembly ofInternational INCE was tasked to produce a seriesof reports on critical issues in noise control engineering.Todate, two reports have been published in draftform; one on noise at the workplace and one on theeffects of regulations on traffic noise. InternationalINCE has 38 Member Societies (see the listing at thefront of this issue of this magazine), each of whichis represented on the General Assembly. The I-INCEBoard has six directors who are elected for six-yearterms on the basis of past contributions to the managementof one or more INTER-NOISE Congresses.The secretariat of International INCE is located inLeuven, Belgium.The International Commission on BiologicalEffects of Noise (ICBEN) was chartered in 1968.The Commission has seven working groups, eachcomposed of leading specialists in the field of thebiological effects of noise. Each working groupdeals with a particular aspect of the subject with theobjective of providing a comprehensive coverage ofthe complex biological effects of noise on mammals.The working groups are:• WG 1 Noise-induced hearing loss• WG2 Noise and communication• WG3 Non-auditory physiological effects inducedby noise• WG4 Influence of noise on performance and behavior• WG5 Noise-disturbed sleep• WG6 Community response to noise• WG7 Noise and animalsAn international congress on Noise as a PublicHealth Problem has been held at five year intervalssince the first congress in Washington, DC, USA in1968, as follows: Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia in 1973;Freiburg, Germany in 1978; Turin, Italy in 1983;Stockholm, Sweden in 1988; and Nice, France in1993. The next congress will be held in Sydney,Australia in 1998. The secretariat of ICBEN is locatedin Dortmund, Germany.The International Association Against Noise(AICB) was established in Switzerland in 1959. Itorganizes congresses every other year in Europewhich cover noise abatement in its broadest sense,i.e. including social and legal requirements, regulationsand ordinances, noise control, and the effectsof noise. The secretariat of AICB is located in Lucerne,Switzerland.The International Union for Theoretical andAppliedMechanics (IUTAM) is a parallel organizationto IUPAP within the International Council ofScientific Unions (ICSU) founded in 1931. ICSU'spurpose is to coordinate international efforts inmany different branches of science and to providean organization within which autonomous nongovernmentalinternational scientific associations or unionscan be federated. There is no organizationcomparable to ICSU serving the engineering community.There are, nonetheless, several ICSU unionswith close ties to the engineering community, includingboth IUPAP and IUTAM. Since acousticshas historically been considered a field of physics,it was logical that support for international cooperationin acoustics research should come from IUPAPwhich established its Commission 7 (InternationalCommission on Acoustics - ICA) in 1951. IUTAMhas maintained a liaison relationship with the ICA1996 MarchNoiselNews International 17