Leo Beranek, a 2003 National Medal of Science recipient and longtime member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), died in Westwood, MA, on October 10, 2016, almost a month following his 102nd birthday.  His remarkable life and career were highlighted in a special Fall 2014 issue of Acoustics Today http://acousticstoday.org/issues/2014AT/Fall2014/ index.html)  Leo graduated in 1936 from Cornell College (Iowa) with a BA degree in physics and mathematics.  He received his DSc degree from Harvard in 1940 in acoustics.  His first papers in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America were published in 1940 when he was 26 years old; his last was published in 2016 when he was 101.  Leo remained at Harvard during World War II as director of two laboratories:  first, the Electro-Acoustic Laboratory, which dealt with voice communication in combat vehicles, and second, the Systems Research Laboratory, one of whose missions was to improve the US Navy’s ability to combat Japanese kamikaze aircraft attacks.  In 1948, Leo and colleagues formed the acoustical consulting firm Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (BBN).  In 1965, under Leo’s leadership, BBN became a vanguard of the digital age by putting together one of the most advanced computer software groups in the country, and this group was instrumental in the development of the Internet.  He consulted on many concert halls, among which was the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, which was hailed as an “acoustical ‘miracle’” on the front page of The New York Times (4/18/2000).  The Hall is considered one of the five best concert halls acoustically in the world.  Leo published 185 technical papers and 13 books, many of which are discussed in the special issue of Acoustics Today.  http://acousticstoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/OBIT-Beranek.pdf

Leo Beranek’s decision to leave Iowa in 1936 for Cambridge, where he revolutionized the field of acoustics, came down to a simple factor:  Harvard University was the only graduate school that offered him a scholarship.  Once there, he planned to go into radio—“that’s what electronics meant in those days,” he once recalled—but he also played timpani in the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and that “got me going in acoustics.  We were trying to understand how sound behaves in rooms.”  When I try to explain his importance to people who haven’t heard of him, I always say he is like the Sir Paul McCartney of acoustics,” said Tim Mellow, a British acoustical consultant who worked with Dr. Beranek on a book published in 2012, when Dr. Beranek was 98.  “Beranek is the father of modern acoustics, the era of microphones, loudspeakers, and computers.”  Hiawatha Bray and Bryan Marquard  https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/10/13/leo-beranek-accoustics-pioneer-and-founder-bbn-technologies-dies/F732cEPdAE3K00y6cO1U9N/story.html

In 1969, the company Leo Beranek helped found, Bolt, Beranek & Newman, won a contract from the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency to build the first computer-based network, which came to be called Arpanet.  By demonstrating the ability to share data and messages through vast computer networks, Arpanet, a product of government-sponsored research, paved the way for the creation of the internet.  Among its many breakthrough achievements, his company sent the first email message http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/technology/raymond-tomlinson-email-obituary.html?_r=0 that used the @ symbol, in 1972.  Dr. Beranek was a sought-after acoustics genius, and Bolt, Beranek & Newman’s first contract was to design the acoustics of the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York.  He also improved the acoustic environment in such landmark concert venues as the Koussevitzky Music Shed at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Mass., and Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall) at Lincoln Center in New York.  Dr. Beranek’s most successful book, “Acoustics,” published in 1954, remains a textbook for acoustic engineering students around the world.  From 1948 to 1958 he did work on noise control, creating standards that are used internationally today.  “I looked into how quiet do spaces have to be to be pleasant for people,” he told an interviewer in 2009.  “In other words, can you write a specification saying that if you’re going to have an office, the noise should not be any greater than so much?  What are acceptable noise standards in a home, in a factory, in a concert hall?   wrote those.”  At the advent of the jet age, Dr. Beranek’s work on noise control became a factor in the controversy over noise levels near the world’s airports when the Boeing 707 jet began flights to Europe from Idlewild (now Kennedy International) Airport in 1958.  Despite claims by the airlines and Boeing that jets were no louder than propeller aircraft, Dr. Beranek’s tests showed otherwise, and the airlines were compelled to install mufflers on their jets and make steep climbs during takeoffs to control the noise levels.  These standards were adopted around the world.  Dr. Beranek was also a founder of a Boston television station, WCVB, and a major donor to arts institutions, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/business/leo-beranek-dead.html?_r=0

For 50 years, the National Sea Grant College program has worked to create and maintain a healthy coastal environment and economy.  The Sea Grant network includes 33 programs based at top universities in every coastal and Great Lakes state, Puerto Rico, and Guam.  A partnership between universities and the federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Sea Grant directs federal resources to pressing problems in local communities.  http://seagrant.noaa.gov/whoweare/seagranthistory.aspx

The National Sea Grant College Program is a program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) within the U.S. Department of Commerce.  No sea rights have actually been granted (though this was considered), only money.  The program was instituted in 1966 when Congress passed the National Sea Grant College Program Act.  Sea Grant colleges are not to be confused with land-grant colleges (a program instituted in 1862), space-grant colleges (instituted in 1988), or sun-grant colleges (instituted in 2003), although an institution may be in one or more of the other programs concurrently.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Sea_Grant_College_Program  

Raymond James Stadium, also known as the "Ray Jay", is a multi-purpose football stadium located in Tampa, Florida.  It is home to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League (NFL) as well as the NCAA's South Florida Bulls football team.  The stadium seats 65,890, and is expandable to 75,000 for special events.  The stadium also hosts the annual Outback Bowl on New Year's Day; the annual pinnacle of USA equestrian showjumping, the AGA/Budweiser American Invitational; and the Monster Jam monster truck event after the end of football season in January or February.  Raymond James Stadium hosted Super Bowls XXXV and XLIII, and will host the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship game.  Raymond James Stadium was built to replace Tampa Stadium at the demand of new Bucs owner Malcolm Glazer.  It is located adjacent to the site of the old stadium on the former location of Al Lopez Field, a minor-league baseball stadium that had been demolished in 1989.  It was known as Tampa Community Stadium during construction, but the naming rights were bought for US$32.5 million for a 13–year deal by St. Petersburg-based Raymond James Financial in June 1998.  On April 27, 2006, an extension was signed to maintain naming rights through 2015.  In May 2016 the Buccaneers announced that the naming rights were extended an additional 12 years ensuring that Raymond James Financial's name will continue to appear though 2028.  The stadium officially opened on September 20, 1998, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Chicago Bears, 27–15.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_James_Stadium

The 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship is a bowl game that will be used to determine a national champion of NCAA Division I FBS college football for the 2016 season, to be played at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida  between the Clemson Tigers, winners of the Fiesta Bowl and Alabama Crimson Tide, winners of the Peach Bowl.  It will be the culminating game of the 2016–17 bowl season as the third College Football Playoff National Championship.  NO. 2 CLEMSON VS. NO. 1 ALABAMA January 9, 2017 at 8 p.m. on ESPN

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1675  January 9, 2017  On this date in 1839, the French Academy of Sciences announced the Daguerreotype photography process.  On this date in 1859, Carrie Chapman Catt, American activist, founded the League of Women Voters and International Alliance of Women.