White Mensural Manual Encoding: from Humdrum to MEI

The recovery of musical heritage currently necessarily involves its digitalization, not only by scanning images, but also by the encoding in computer-readable formats of the musical content described in the original manuscripts. In general, this encoding can be done using automated tools based with what is named Optical Music Recognition (OMR), or manually writing directly the corresponding computer code. The OMR technology is not mature enough yet to extract the musical content of sheet music images with enough quality, and even less from handwritten sources, so in many cases it is more efficient to encode the works manually. However, being currently MEI (Music Encoding Initiative) the most appropriate format to store the encoding, it is a totally tedious code to be manually written. Therefore, we propose a new format named **mens allowing a quick manual encoding, from which both the MEI format itself and other common representations such as Lilypond or the transcription in MusicXML can be generated. By using this approach, the antiphony Salve Regina for eight-voice choir written by Jerónimo de la Torre (1607–1673) has been successfully encoded and transcribed

Codificación manual mensural: de Humdrum a MEI

The recovery of musical heritage currently necessarily involves its digitalization, not only by scanning images, but also by the encoding in computer-readable formats of the musical content described in the original manuscripts. In general, this encoding can be done using automated tools based with what is named Optical Music Recognition (OMR), or manually writing directly the corresponding computer code. The OMR technology is not mature enough yet to extract the musical content of sheet music images with enough quality, and even less from handwritten sources, so in many cases it is more efficient to encode the works manually. However, being currently MEI (Music Encoding Initiative) the most appropriate format to store the encoding, it is a totally tedious code to be manually written. Therefore, we propose a new format named **mens allowing a quick manual encoding, from which both the MEI format itself and other common representations such as Lilypond or the transcription in MusicXML can be generated. By using this approach, the antiphony Salve Regina for eight-voice choir written by Jerónimo de la Torre (1607–1673) has been successfully encoded and transcribed.La recuperación del patrimonio musical en el momento actual pasa necesariamente por su digitalización, no sólo mediante la obtención de imágenes digitales, sino también por la codificación en formatos legibles por un ordenador del contenido musical descrito en los manuscritos originales. En general, esa codificación se puede realizar mediante herramientas automatizadas basadas en lo que se denomina Reconocimiento Óptico de Música (OMR por sus iniciales en inglés), o manualmente escribiendo directamente el código informático pertinente. La tecnología OMR todavía no está lo suficientemente madura como para extraer con buena calidad el contenido musical de imágenes de partituras, y aún menos de fuentes manuscritas, por lo que en muchos casos es más eficiente codificar las obras manualmente. Sin embargo, es totalmente tediosa la escritura en el formato más adecuado para realizar esa codificación actualmente, MEI (Music Encoding Initiative). Por ello proponemos un nuevo formato denominado **mens que permite escribir manualmente el código de manera rápida y sencilla, a partir del cual, además, somos capaces de generar tanto el propio formato MEI como otras representaciones habituales como son Lilypond o la transcripción en MusicXML. Usando este enfoque, se ha codificado y transcrito la antífona a ocho voces Salve Regina escrita por Jerónimo de la Torre (1607–1673).This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad through Project HISPAMUS Ref. No. TIN2017-86576-R (supported by UE FEDER funds), and partially by the ISEA.CV 2017/2018 research grants

An introduction to Musical Interactions

The article presents a contextual survey of eight contributions in the special issue Musical Interactions (Volume I) in Multimodal Technologies and Interaction. The presentation includes (1) a critical examination of what it means to be musical, to devise the concept of music proper to MTI as well as multicultural proximity, and (2) a conceptual framework for instrumentation, design, and assessment of musical interaction research through five enabling dimensions: Affordance; Design Alignment; Adaptive Learning; Second-Order Feedback; Temporal Integration. Each dimension is discussed and applied in the survey. The results demonstrate how the framework provides an interdisciplinary scope required for musical interaction, and how this approach may offer a coherent way to describe and assess approaches to research and design as well as implementations of interactive musical systems. Musical interaction stipulates musical liveness for experiencing both music and technologies. While music may be considered ontologically incomplete without a listener, musical interaction is defined as ontological completion of a state of music and listening through a listener’s active engagement with musical resources in multimodal information flow

Towards a hypermedia model for digital scholarly edition of musical texts based on MEI (Music Encoding Initiative) standard: Integration of hidden traditions within social editing paradigm

[ES]Las ediciones académicas digitales están modificando sustancialmente la forma en que la que se ha conceptualizado la edición crítica de textos musicales durante largos períodos de tiempo. Sus capacidades hipermedia y su estructura multidimensional permiten poner en contexto diferentes fuentes y testimonios en un espacio virtual donde todos los objetos están relacionados semánticamente. En este contexto, la presente tesis doctoral tiene como objetivo desarrollar un modelo para la integración de las anotaciones interpretativas (técnicas y/o expresivas) que de manera sistemática el intérprete inscribe en los textos musicales con los que trabaja. Estas se trasmiten a través canales informales que se mantienen al margen del ámbito editorial. De este modo se propone un modelo de edición digital para integrar este tipo de anotaciones dentro del paradigma de la edición social. Para ello se han analizado las posibilidades que ofrece el estándar MEI para capturar y codificar la información que representan estas anotaciones sobre el texto musical. De igual manera se han considerado recursos alternativos, como el estándar Web Annotation para anotar recursos digitales, con el fin de articular mecanismos paralelos para la codificación de anotaciones complejas. Además, se analizan las características más definitorias de las anotaciones interpretativas y se propone un marco de clasificación que permita contextualizar la información aportada por los usuarios de la edición. Esta clasificación se contrasta con el análisis de un corpus de anotaciones musicales que incorpora algunas de las anotaciones más comunes dentro la práctica musical. En función de los resultados obtenidos se propone un modelo de edición académica digital para textos musicales que permite integrar de manera colaborativa la información presente en este tipo de anotaciones, como parte esencial de la información que caracteriza la obra musical y las distintas instanciaciones y concepciones artísticas que la definen

e-Skills: The International dimension and the Impact of Globalisation - Final Report 2014

In today’s increasingly knowledge-based economies, new information and communication technologies are a key engine for growth fuelled by the innovative ideas of highly - skilled workers. However, obtaining adequate quantities of employees with the necessary e-skills is a challenge. This is a growing international problem with many countries having an insufficient numbers of workers with the right e-Skills. For example: Australia: “Even though there’s 10,000 jobs a year created in IT, there are only 4500 students studying IT at university, and not all of them graduate” (Talevski and Osman, 2013). Brazil: “Brazil’s ICT sector requires about 78,000 [new] people by 2014. But, according to Brasscom, there are only 33,000 youths studying ICT related courses in the country” (Ammachchi, 2012). Canada: “It is widely acknowledged that it is becoming inc reasingly difficult to recruit for a variety of critical ICT occupations –from entry level to seasoned” (Ticoll and Nordicity, 2012). Europe: It is estimated that there will be an e-skills gap within Europe of up to 900,000 (main forecast scenario) ICT pr actitioners by 2020” (Empirica, 2014). Japan: It is reported that 80% of IT and user companies report an e-skills shortage (IPA, IT HR White Paper, 2013) United States: “Unlike the fiscal cliff where we are still peering over the edge, we careened over the “IT Skills Cliff” some years ago as our economy digitalized, mobilized and further “technologized”, and our IT skilled labour supply failed to keep up” (Miano, 2013)

Sketching music: representation and composition

PhDThe process of musical composition is sometimes conceived of as an individual, internal, cognitive process in which notation plays a passive role of transmitting or recording musical ideas. This thesis questions the role played by representations in musical composition practices. We begin by tracing how, historically, compositional practices have co-evolved with musical representations and technologies for music production. We present case studies to show that the use of graphical sketches is a characteristic feature of the early stages of musical composition and that this practice recurs across musical genres ranging from classical music to contemporary electroacoustic composition. We describe the processes involved in sketching activities within the framework of distributed cognition and distinguish an intermediate representational role for sketches that is different from what is ‘in the head’ of the composer and from the functions of more formal musical notations. Using evidences from the case studies, we argue in particular that as in other creative design processes, sketches provide strategically ambiguous, heterogeneous forms of representation that exploit vagueness, indeterminacy and inconsistency in the development of musical ideas. Building on this analysis of the functions of sketching we describe the design and implementation of a new tool, the Music Sketcher, which attempts to provide more under-specified and flexible forms of ‘sketch’ representation than are possible with contemporary composition tools. This tool is evaluated through a series of case studies which explore how the representations constructed with the tool are interpreted and what role they play in the compositional process. We show that the program provides a similar level of vagueness to pen and paper, while also facilitating re-representation and re-interpretation, thus helping bridge the gap between early representations and later stages of commitment

INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology 5 (II/2020)

The fifth issue of INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology is the second one we are preparing and publishing in the Covid-19 pandemic. And while the theme for the previous issue was conceived in a world unburdened with what has preoccupied our minds and lives in 2020, the theme for this one is directly shaped by it. During the Spring, when we were taken aback by the governmental measures and the fear of the “invisible enemy” (the use of militant vocabulary is rather prominent in the discourse surrounding the virus), the uncertainty for the future grew strong. However, at that time, we could not predict the longevity, brevity and consequences of the pandemic – in December we are still not certain, but we are getting tired. This is why I would like to thank all the authors for working with us in these trying times, unpacking what can only be a beginning of ‘a global crisis’ during the Summer and Autumn of 2020. The main theme of the issue, Music, Art, and Technology in the Time of Global Crisis, strives to capture this period through the lens of workers in art, music, and academia around the world, focusing on the role and place of arts and technology in our/their relocated institutional realities

Generating genomic resources for two crustacean species and their application to the study of White Spot Disease

Over the last decades the crustacean aquaculture sector has been steadily growing, in order to meet global demands for its products. A major hurdle for further growth of the industry is the prevalence of viral disease epidemics that are facilitated by the intense culture conditions. A devastating virus impacting on the sector is the White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV), responsible for over US $ 10 billion in losses in shrimp production and trade. The Pathogenicity of WSSV is high, reaching 100 % mortality within 3-10 days in penaeid shrimps. In contrast, the European shore crab Carcinus maenas has been shown to be relatively resistant to WSSV. Uncovering the basis of this resistance could help inform on the development of strategies to mitigate the WSSV threat. C. maenas has been used widely in studies on ecotoxicology and host-pathogen interactions. However, like most aquatic crustaceans, the genomic resources available for this species are limited, impairing experimentation. Therefore, to facilitate interpretations of the exposure studies, we first produced a C. maenas transcriptome and genome scaffold assembly. We also produced a transcriptome for the European lobster (Homarus gammarus), an ecologically and commercially important crustacean species in United Kingdom waters, for use in comparing WSSV responses in this, a susceptible species, and C. maenas. For the C. maenas transcriptome assembly we isolated and pooled RNA from twelve different tissues and sequenced RNA on an Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform. After de novo assembly a transcriptome encompassing 212,427 transcripts was produced. Similar, the H. gammarus transcriptome was based on RNA from nine tissues and contained 106,498 transcripts. The transcripts were filtered and annotated using a variety of tools (including BLAST, MEGAN and RSEM) and databases (including GenBank, Gene Ontology and KEGG). The annotation rate for transcripts in both transcriptomes was around 20-25 % which appears to be common for aquatic crustacean species, as a result of the lack of well annotated gene sequences for this clade. Since it is likely that the host immune system would play an important role in WSSV infection we characterized the IMD, JAK/STAT, Toll-like receptor and other innate immune system pathways. We found a strong overlap between the immune system pathways in C. maenas and H. gammarus. In addition we investigated the sequence diversity of known WSSV interacting proteins amongst susceptible penaeid shrimp/lobster and the more resistant C. maenas. There were differences in viral receptor sequences, like Rab7, that correlate with a less efficient infection by WSSV. To produce the genome scaffold assembly for C. maenas we isolated DNA from muscle tissue and produced both paired-end and mate pair libraries for processing on the Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform. A de novo draft genome assembly consisting of 338,980 scaffolds and covering 362 Mb (36 % of estimated genome size) was produced, using SOAP-denovo2 coupled with the BESST scaffolding system. The generated assembly was highly fragmented due to the presence of repetitive areas in the C. maenas genome. Using a combination of ab initio predictors, RNA-sequencing data from the transcriptome datasets and curated C. maenas sequences we produced a model encompassing 10,355 genes. The gene model for C. maenas Dscam, a gene potentially involved in (pan)crustacean immune memory, was investigated in greater detail as manual curation can improve on the results of ab initio predictors. The scaffold containing C. maenas Dscam was fragmented, thus only contained the latter exons of the gene. The assembled draft genome and transcriptomes for C. maenas and H. gammarus are valuable molecular resources for studies involving these and other aquatic crustacean species. To uncover the basis of their resistance to WSSV, we infected C. maenas with WSSV and measured mRNA and miRNA expression for 7 time points spread over a period of 28 days, using RNA-Seq and miRNA-Seq. The resistance of C. maenas to WSSV infection was confirmed by the fact that no mortalities occurred. In these animals replicating WSSV was latent and detected only after 7 days, and this occurred in five of out 28 infected crabs only. Differential expression of transcripts and miRNAs were identified for each time point. In the first 12 hours post exposure we observed decreased expression of important regulators in endocytosis. Since it is established that WSSV enters the host cells through endocytosis and that interactions between the viral protein VP28 and Rab7 are important in successful infection, it is likely that changes in this process could impact WSSV infection success. Additionally we observed an increased expression of transcripts involved in RNA interference pathways across many time points, indicating a longer term response to initial viral exposure. miRNA sequencing showed several miRNAs that were differentially expressed. The most striking finding was a novel C. maenas miRNA that we found to be significantly downregulated in every WSSV infected individual, suggesting that it may play an important role in mediating the response of the host to the virus. In silico target prediction pointed to the involvement of this miRNA in endocytosis regulation. Taken together we hypothesize that C. maenas resistance to WSSV involves obstruction of viral entry by endocytosis, a process probably regulated through miRNAs, resulting in inefficient uptake of virions.Cefa

Students understanding of plagiarism : a case study of the Criminology and Forensic Studies Discipline (CFSD), University of KwaZulu-Natal (Howard College), Durban, South Africa.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Plagiarism has been generally distinct by different scholars; student plagiarism is defined as an academic dishonesty where students produce an academic work for others as their own (Jensen, Arnett, Feldman & Cauffman, 2002). The phenomenon is categorized as an “academic dishonesty” in the higher education institutions because is seen as a fraudulent act or efforts by a student to use unsanctioned or deplorable means in an academic work. It indicates unethical behavior or cheating. This behavior is seen as a serious matter and university are mandatory to increase more effort, resources and time in prevention of it, because without taking care of it can lead to impact even in the workplace after university. Academic fraud is a serious issue on academic writing as Weber (2012) states that student plagiarism sits as a special problem within higher education. This study aims to explore students understanding of plagiarism within Criminology and Forensic Studies Discipline on how their understanding of the phenomenon shapes their actions or behaviour. This study adopted qualitative research approach and underpinned by descriptive-interpretive paradigms (hermeneutics) to provide insight into the social phenomenon under study. The study used in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews for depth insight and reach information. Data was collected from 20 students in the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Howard College) within Criminology and Forensic Studies Discipline (CFSD) in the School of Applied Human Sciences under College of Humanities. A key selection criterion was level/ year of study, where 5 students from first year, 5 students from second year, 5 students from third year and 5 postgraduate students participated. This permitted for contrasts in terms of academic practices and understanding of plagiarism. Purposive sampling techniques were used to discover the sample. The findings revealed that students within the Discipline of Criminology and Forensic Studies are fully aware of the existence of plagiarism and they framed their understanding in the criminological perspective, where they placed plagiarism phenomenon as a crime and deviant behaviour. The students’ reports and suggestions provided insight that they take plagiarism incidences seriously and they tried to avoid it in many ways because it against the university policy. The findings also revealed that students hardly read the university plagiarism policy and procedure document or paying more attention just because of their laziness. Strategies in prevention of plagiarism were suggested by students, such as workshops about plagiarism, and compulsory module about plagiarism

XXIII Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación - CACIC 2017 : Libro de actas

Trabajos presentados en el XXIII Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación (CACIC), celebrado en la ciudad de La Plata los días 9 al 13 de octubre de 2017, organizado por la Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI) y la Facultad de Informática de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP).Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI