Do choirs have accents? A sociophonetic investigation of choral sound

Many UK cities, including Glasgow, have a long history of choral singing, with recordings dating back to the 1920s (for example, the Glasgow Orpheus Choir). Choirs have a ‘sound’ which is both musical and linguistic. Speakers from different localities can be said to have an accent. Is there such as thing as a regional choral ‘accent’? Neither phoneticians, singers, nor choir directors have a clear understanding of how such choral sound–accents are achieved, how they arise, and are maintained. The main research questions for this thesis are: 1. Is there evidence of regional differences between Glasgow and Cambridge, in the phonology of vowels, rhoticity, and word-final /d/? 2. Is there evidence of a common choral accent uniting Glasgow and Cambridge in the phonology of vowels, rhoticity, and word-final /d/? 3. What changes have taken place in the phonology of choral singing over time? (a) Are the changes linked with changes in spoken phonology over the relevant time period? (b) Are the changes linked with changes in aesthetic conventions of choral singing? (c) Are the changes linked with individual properties of the choir directors? To answer these research questions, two time-aligned electronic corpora were constructed in LaBB-CAT containing 26 hours of commercially-released recordings of British classical choral singing of choirs from two different regions, Glasgow and Cambridge. 1. Recordings of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge (1949–2019). 2. Recordings of the Glasgow Orpheus and Phoenix choirs (1925–2016). This thesis presents the analysis of three different variables. Analysing the front vowels I found a shared front vowel phonology and realisation. The consonant variable rhoticity (e.g. car) was selected to investigate impact of spoken dialect. Word-final /d/ (e.g. lord) was selected to investigate aesthetic–stylistic differences between the two corpora. In a Bayesian analysis of acoustic measures F1 and F2, I found that the vowels KIT, DRESS and TRAP (over 14,000 tokens) demonstrate a pattern of lowering over time consistent with a change in a spoken prestige accent e.g. from Received Pronunciation to Southern Standard British English. The analyses also support separate TRAP and BATH phonemes in both Glasgow and Cambridge, which we would not expect based on spoken vowel phonology. These findings suggest an emerging standard ‘accent’ of choral singing that has changed over time, following the pattern presented by Received Pronunciation. However, the realisation of the GOOSE vowel differs between Glasgow and King’s, perhaps relating to the sociolinguistic salience of GOOSE in Scottish English. Rhoticity (auditory coding of 8,407 tokens) differs between the Glasgow choirs and King’s, as we might expect, based on regional accent phonology. The Glasgow choirs produce postvocalic /r/ in all contexts, though there is a reduction over time; they also produce alveolar trill realisations in initial position 50% of the time in the Orpheus Choir early recordings directed by Hugh S. Roberton (1925–1945), perhaps indicating that the variable was enregistered as part of a distinctly Scottish choral sound. The realisation of word-final /d/ (auditory coding of 3,213 tokens) also differs between the two corpora, with King’s producing more affricated variants and more shadow vowel (epenthetic schwa) variants in pre-pausal contexts. The /d/ findings confirm a change in style suggested by musicological literature (Day, 2000). Phonetic affrication at King’s increases over time as the choir sings more frequently with orchestral accompaniment, likely to improve audibility, and this was carried over into the choir’s unaccompanied singing (Day, 2018). This thesis is the first to provide a quantitative acoustic analysis of choral sound and explore the sociolinguistics of classical choral singing in a UK context. I have found evidence that supports a non-regional standard British classical choral singing vowel phonology and regional differences based on the phonology of the spoken accent of the singers and their choir directors. Future research is needed to explore the perceptual salience of the findings reported in this thesis and whether recordings of other regional choirs support the pattern of non-regional standard vowel phonology

Early predictors of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder in assault survivors

BACKGROUND: Some studies suggest that early psychological treatment is effective in preventing chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but it is as yet unclear how best to identify trauma survivors who need such intervention. This prospective longitudinal study investigated the prognostic validity of acute stress disorder (ASD), of variables derived from a meta-analysis of risk factors for PTSD, and of candidate cognitive and biological variables in predicting chronic PTSD following assault. METHOD: Assault survivors who had been treated for their injuries at a metropolitan Accident and Emergency (AandE) Department were assessed with structured clinical interviews to establish diagnoses of ASD at 2 weeks (n=222) and PTSD at 6 months (n=205) after the assault. Candidate predictors were assessed at 2 weeks. RESULTS: Most predictors significantly predicted PTSD status at follow-up. Multivariate logistic regressions showed that a set of four theory-derived cognitive variables predicted PTSD best (Nagelkerke R2=0.50), followed by the variables from the meta-analysis (Nagelkerke R2=0.37) and ASD (Nagelkerke R2=0.25). When all predictors were considered simultaneously, mental defeat, rumination and prior problems with anxiety or depression were chosen as the best combination of predictors (Nagelkerke R2=0.47). CONCLUSION: Questionnaires measuring mental defeat, rumination and pre-trauma psychological problems may help to identify assault survivors at risk of chronic PTSD

An analysis of sentence structure, capitalization and punctuation errors made by pupils in grades four, five, and six in free writing of sentences using given stimuli words.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Emerging insights and lessons for the future

This concluding chapter summarises the key findings of the ‘Pathways’ transformative knowledge network (TKN), its contributions to the ‘sustainability transformations’ literature and the lessons and implications for internationally networked, transdisciplinary research projects in the future. It revisits the theoretical anchors and methodological anchors introduced in Chapters 2–4, and draws on insights from the TKN from individual hubs in each of these areas, pointing to experiences both during the project and after its formal conclusion. It discusses the approaches used to foster cross-learning and evaluation in the project, and describes the single-, double- and triple-loop learning that this enabled. The chapter provides a deeper understanding of ‘transformative pathways to sustainability’ and the role that science and research can play in fostering them, not only through formal research outputs but also the tacit and experiential knowledge and the relationships that they can foster. The chapter closes by offering lessons and recommendations for researchers, funders, policy-makers, managers and practitioners with an interest in enhancing the contribution of social science and transdisciplinary research to the transformative agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals.Fil: Ely, Adrian. University of Sussex; Reino UnidoFil: Marin, Anabel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martin. Escuela de Economia y Negocios. Centro de Investigaciones Para la Transformacion.; ArgentinaFil: Marshall, Fiona. University of Sussex; Reino UnidoFil: Apgar, Marina. No especifíca;Fil: Eakin, Hallie. Arizona State University; Estados UnidosFil: Pereira, Laura. No especifíca;Fil: Charli Joseph, Lakshmi. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Siquieros Garcia, Mario. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Yang, Lichao. No especifíca;Fil: Chengo, Victoria. No especifíca;Fil: Abrol, Dinesh. No especifíca;Fil: Kushwaha, Pravin. No especifíca;Fil: Hackett, Edward. No especifíca;Fil: Navarrete, David Manuel. No especifíca;Fil: Mehrotra, Ritu Priya. No especifíca;Fil: Atela, Joanes. No especifíca;Fil: Mbeva, Kennedy. No especifíca;Fil: Onyango, Joel. No especifíca;Fil: Olsson, Per. No especifíca

Elections and Ethnic Civil War

Existing research on how democratization may influence the risk of civil war tends to consider only changes in the overall level of democracy and rarely examines explicitly the postulated mechanisms relating democratization to incentives for violence. The authors argue that typically highlighted key mechanisms imply that elections should be especially likely to affect ethnic groups’ inclination to resort to violence. Distinguishing between types of conflict and the order of competitive elections, the authors find that ethnic civil wars are more likely to erupt after competitive elections, especially after first and second elections following periods of no polling. When disaggregating to the level of individual ethnic groups and conflicts over territory or government, the authors find some support for the notion that ethno-nationalist mobilization and sore-loser effects provoke postelectoral violence. More specifically, although large groups in general are more likely to engage in governmental conflicts, they are especially likely to do so after noncompetitive elections. Competitive elections, however, strongly reduce the risk of conflict. </jats:p

New research directions on disparities in obesity and type 2 diabetes

Obesity and type 2 diabetes disproportionately impact U.S. racial and ethnic minority communities and lowâ income populations. Improvements in implementing efficacious interventions to reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes are underway (i.e., the National Diabetes Prevention Program), but challenges in effectively scalingâ up successful interventions and reaching atâ risk populations remain. In October 2017, the National Institutes of Health convened a workshop to understand how to (1) address socioeconomic and other environmental conditions that perpetuate disparities in the burden of obesity and type 2 diabetes; (2) design effective prevention and treatment strategies that are accessible, feasible, culturally relevant, and acceptable to diverse population groups; and (3) achieve sustainable health improvement approaches in communities with the greatest burden of these diseases. Common features of guiding frameworks to understand and address disparities and promote health equity were described. Promising research directions were identified in numerous areas, including study design, methodology, and core metrics; program implementation and scalability; the integration of medical care and social services; strategies to enhance patient empowerment; and understanding and addressing the impact of psychosocial stress on disease onset and progression in addition to factors that support resiliency and health.This report discusses a workshop convened by the National Institutes of Health to understand how to (1) address socioeconomic and other environmental conditions that perpetuate disparities in the burden of obesity and type 2 diabetes; (2) design effective prevention and treatment strategies that are accessible, feasible, culturally relevant, and acceptable to diverse population groups; and (3) achieve sustainable health improvement approaches in communities with the greatest burden of these diseases.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154507/1/nyas14270_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154507/2/nyas14270.pd

Informing the Design of Privacy-Empowering Tools for the Connected Home

Connected devices in the home represent a potentially grave new privacy threat due to their unfettered access to the most personal spaces in people's lives. Prior work has shown that despite concerns about such devices, people often lack sufficient awareness, understanding, or means of taking effective action. To explore the potential for new tools that support such needs directly we developed Aretha, a privacy assistant technology probe that combines a network disaggregator, personal tutor, and firewall, to empower end-users with both the knowledge and mechanisms to control disclosures from their homes. We deployed Aretha in three households over six weeks, with the aim of understanding how this combination of capabilities might enable users to gain awareness of data disclosures by their devices, form educated privacy preferences, and to block unwanted data flows. The probe, with its novel affordances-and its limitations-prompted users to co-adapt, finding new control mechanisms and suggesting new approaches to address the challenge of regaining privacy in the connected home.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20

LSST Science Book, Version 2.0

A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will have an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and an imaging camera with field of view of 9.6 deg^2, and will be devoted to a ten-year imaging survey over 20,000 deg^2 south of +15 deg. Each pointing will be imaged 2000 times with fifteen second exposures in six broad bands from 0.35 to 1.1 microns, to a total point-source depth of r~27.5. The LSST Science Book describes the basic parameters of the LSST hardware, software, and observing plans. The book discusses educational and outreach opportunities, then goes on to describe a broad range of science that LSST will revolutionize: mapping the inner and outer Solar System, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, the structure of the Milky Way disk and halo and other objects in the Local Volume, transient and variable objects both at low and high redshift, and the properties of normal and active galaxies at low and high redshift. It then turns to far-field cosmological topics, exploring properties of supernovae to z~1, strong and weak lensing, the large-scale distribution of galaxies and baryon oscillations, and how these different probes may be combined to constrain cosmological models and the physics of dark energy.Comment: 596 pages. Also available at full resolution at http://www.lsst.org/lsst/sciboo

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie