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Boston – The 151st international meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (2 Huntington Quadrangle, Melville, NY 11747-4502), to be held 5—9  June at the Rhode Island Convention  Center in Providence,  Rhode Island, will host a day-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of speech privacy.  The celebration will be held on Wednesday, 7 June, starting with presentations on various topics related to speech privacy and ending with a dinner and keynote speech by Congressman Patrick Kennedy. The event begins at 8:00 a.m. and concludes at 10:00 p.m.

According to Greg Tocci and David Sykes, the co-chairs of American National Standards Institute (ANSI) working group S12/WG44—Speech Privacy and organizers of this celebration, the day’s events include:

• Fourteen invited and contributed papers by pioneers, leaders, researchers and practitioners of speech privacy including Leo Beranek, 2003 President’s National Medal of Science recipient, Bill Cavanaugh, Parker Hirtle, Rein Pirn, John Bradley, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, James West, Charles Salter and others;
• The fourth international meeting of the ASA & Institute of Noise Control Engineering Joint Subcommittee on Speech Privacy in Healthcare Facilities, which recently gained recognition as ANSI S12 WG44. At this meeting, the subcommittee's ongoing collaboration with the American Institute of Architects and American Hospital Association on the drafting of an "Interim Guideline on Speech Privacy and Acoustics" will be discussed. The AIA's 60-year-old manual "Guidelines for the Design and  Construction of Healthcare Facilities" is the reference standard or code accepted by several U.S. federal agencies, 42 states and numerous municipalities.
• Dinner in the Rotunda Room of the Rhode Island  Convention Center at  which guests are welcome honoring speech privacy's pioneers with a keynote speech by U.S. Congressman Patrick Kennedy (RI). A healthcare advocate, Congressman Kennedy is also the son of U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (MA) who wrote HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), the bipartisan healthcare privacy law that stipulates protection of speech privacy.

                   
HIPAA (1995) is one of two recent bipartisan national privacy protection laws that seek to harmonize U.S. privacy protections with similar statutes in Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia and elsewhere around the globe. HIPAA's companion  U.S. law is GLBA (Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act) (1999), which covers financial services institutions and is named for its sponsors Senators Gramm, Leach and Bliley.

Complete details about the ASA event can be found at www.speechprivacy.org. Full meeting registration is required for those who wish to attend the technical sessions.  Preregistration for the dinner is encouraged (cost for dinner is $50 USD) and guests are welcome. Preregister at: http://redirect.aecdaily.com/s18122/scitation.aip.org/ASA/RI.jsp or download a registration form at http://redirect.aecdaily.com/s18122/asa.aip.org/providence/regform.pdf and return it to ASA by fax or mail.

(Washington, DC, March 14, 2006) – Building on its succesful continuing education course on stone materials for architects -- the eighth edition of which will be held in Verona, Italy in early October during Marmomacc, the world’s largest exhibition of marble, stone and related technology – Veronafiere is launching an online version of its course.  This first segment, “An Introduction to Sourcing Dimensional Stone: The Example of Verona, Italy As A Materials and Processing Center,” provides architects with basic information required to play an active role in stone selection for a project.

The free course is hosted by AEC Daily, Veronafiere’s partner in this online venture.  The course provides one Learning Unit for AIA Continuing Education and state credit, which also qualifies as an HSW credit.  To learn how to take the course, go to http://redirect.aecdaily.com/s18122/www.aecdaily.com/sponsor/veronafiere 

“Given the increasing importance of distance learning for continuing education, we have decided to put an introduction to our course online,” said Janina Mathiasz, head of Veronafiere’s Foreign Department.  “We hope that this course will expose a greater number of architects to the basics of stone selection and spur them to come to Verona to take the full course and visit Marmomacc, the world’s best source for stone materials,” added Ms. Mathiasz.

As Tom Leib of Arrowstreet Architects (Somerville, MA) commented after participating in last year’s intensive four-day course in Verona, “Total immersion works.  Even though I’ve worked with stone importers in the U.S., I learned much new information about how the industry relates to architecture.”

Veronafiere, one of Italy’s leading trade fair companies, is an AIA CES provider and member of the Marble Institute of America.  Only fifteen U.S. architects are accepted each year for its course, which was recently recognized as a “Best Practices and Trends” program by the AIA.  Architects compete for scholarships that cover tuition, meals, hotel accommodations and local transportation.  Each participant is responsible for their own transportation between the U.S. and Verona as well as a small administrative fee.

The course, co-sponsored by Stone World and recognized by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the Royal Institute of British Architecture, will be offered again during the next Marmomacc, October 5-8, 2006.  More information can be obtained by contacting the US coordinator, Ms. Julie Buss at jbuss@cig-dc.com.