Towards a More Inclusive Music Education: Experiences of LGBTQQIAA Students in Music Teacher Education Programs Across Pennsylvania

During the past decade, the field of music education has seen an increase in the amount of scholarship surrounding LGBTQ studies in music teaching and learning. For example, the University of Illinois hosted three symposia for the field of music education dedicated to LGBTQ studies (2010, 2012, 2016), and proceedings from these symposia were published in three separate issues of the of the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education (2011, 2014, 2016). Other notable scholarship has been published in Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education (Gould 2005); the Music Educators Journal (Bergonzi, 2009; Carter, 2011; McBride, 2016); the Journal of Research in Music Education (Carter, 2013; Nicholas, 2013); and UPDATE: Applications of Research in Music Education (Garrett, 2012). (excerpt

Technology capital transfer

It is widely believed that an important factor underlying the rapid growth in China is increased foreign direct investment (FDI) and the transfer of foreign technology capital, which is accumulated know-how from investment in research and development (R&D), brands, and organizations that is not specific to a plant. In this paper, we study two channels through which FDI can contribute to upgrading of the stock of technology capital: knowledge spillovers and appropriation. Knowledge spillovers lead to new ideas that do not directly compete or devalue the foreign affiliate’s stock. Appropriation, on the other hand, implies a redistribution of property rights over patents and trademarks; the gain to domestic companies comes at a loss to the multinational company (MNC). In this paper we build these sources of technology capital transfer into the framework developed by McGrattan and Prescott (2009, 2010) and introduce an endogenously-chosen intensity margin for operating technology capital in order to capture the trade-offs MNCs face when expanding their markets internationally. We show that economic outcomes differ dramatically depending on the source of greater openness and the channel with which technology capital transfer is operative.

Evolutionary History and Attenuation of Myxoma Virus on Two Continents

The attenuation of myxoma virus (MYXV) following its introduction as a biological control into the European rabbit populations of Australia and Europe is the canonical study of the evolution of virulence. However, the evolutionary genetics of this profound change in host-pathogen relationship is unknown. We describe the genome-scale evolution of MYXV covering a range of virulence grades sampled over 49 years from the parallel Australian and European epidemics, including the high-virulence progenitor strains released in the early 1950s. MYXV evolved rapidly over the sampling period, exhibiting one of the highest nucleotide substitution rates ever reported for a double-stranded DNA virus, and indicative of a relatively high mutation rate and/or a continually changing selective environment. Our comparative sequence data reveal that changes in virulence involved multiple genes, likely losses of gene function due to insertion-deletion events, and no mutations common to specific virulence grades. Hence, despite the similarity in selection pressures there are multiple genetic routes to attain either highly virulent or attenuated phenotypes in MYXV, resulting in convergence for phenotype but not genotype. © 2012 Kerr et al

Customer Service Challenges in Omni-Channel Retailing—An Exploratory Study of Vague Language in Retailer Customer Service Policies

Retailers are interacting with customers via an ever-increasing number of touchpoints. The addition of social media and mobile devices to the traditional physical and virtual retail platforms has created an evolving consumer practice of using several such touchpoints in the course of a single purchase (the omni-channel”). The difficulty of providing high levels of customer service has increased with the necessity of managing multiple channels under the retailer’s control and coordinating formally or informally with touchpoints not directly within the retailer’s own operations. Multiple sources of potentially conflicting information (e.g., order fulfillment) can lead to miscommunication, and thus poor service experience for customers. The purpose of this paper is to describe two preliminary studies that explore how well retailers are prepared for this increasing complexity via a content analysis of retailer website language regarding customer service policies. Implications of our findings and recommendations for further research are then discussed

Evolutionary Conservation of the PA-X Open Reading Frame in Segment 3 of Influenza A Virus

PA-X is a fusion protein of influenza A virus encoded in part from a +1 frameshifted X open reading frame (X-ORF) in segment 3. We show that the X-ORFs of diverse influenza A viruses can be divided into two groups that differ in selection pressure and likely function, reflected in the presence of an internal stop codon and a change in synonymous diversity. Notably, truncated forms of PA-X evolved convergently in swine and dogs, suggesting a strong species-specific effect

A Challenge to the Ancient Origin of SIVagm Based on African Green Monkey Mitochondrial Genomes

While the circumstances surrounding the origin and spread of HIV are becoming clearer, the particulars of the origin of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) are still unknown. Specifically, the age of SIV, whether it is an ancient or recent infection, has not been resolved. Although many instances of cross-species transmission of SIV have been documented, the similarity between the African green monkey (AGM) and SIVagm phylogenies has long been held as suggestive of ancient codivergence between SIVs and their primate hosts. Here, we present well-resolved phylogenies based on full-length AGM mitochondrial genomes and seven previously published SIVagm genomes; these allowed us to perform the first rigorous phylogenetic test to our knowledge of the hypothesis that SIVagm codiverged with the AGMs. Using the Shimodaira–Hasegawa test, we show that the AGM mitochondrial genomes and SIVagm did not evolve along the same topology. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the SIVagm topology can be explained by a pattern of west-to-east transmission of the virus across existing AGM geographic ranges. Using a relaxed molecular clock, we also provide a date for the most recent common ancestor of the AGMs at approximately 3 million years ago. This study substantially weakens the theory of ancient SIV infection followed by codivergence with its primate hosts