A history of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College of the City University of New York

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Boston UniversityThe purpose of this study was to document the history of the Aaron Copland School of Music (ACSM) at Queens College. The ACSM evolved out of the Department of Music at Queens College, established by the Board of Trustees and its first president, Paul Klapper, in 1938, one year after the founding of the college. In 1980, the Department of Music officially became a School of Music and subsequently named the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College of the City University of New York in 1981. In an effort to present an organized chronological history of the institution, I employed historical methodology for the collection, analysis, evaluation, verification, and description of data. Archival research and interviews with former students, and past and present faculty and department heads contributed significantly to the study. Additional data built a holistic picture, helping in the analysis of the reports and views of participants. Since there is no prevwus comprehensive historical documentation of the ACSM, it was necessary to examine source items such as Queens College and Copland School of Music records, manuscripts, college bulletins, newspapers, memoirs, and concert programs. Additionally, I examined other items from several archival collections to explain how and why the School of Music originated, as well as prevailing factors that contributed to its growth. Further, the study examines the role of curricula, personnel, facilities, and activities relevant to its development. The history of the ACSM reflects the development of other music schools in higher education in that it has and continues to develop musicians and provides diverse collaborative efforts with the community. A history of the Aaron Copland School of Music is both desirable and necessary to document fully its unique qualities and successes. In addition to documenting the historical record, this study may prove useful to present and future operations of the School of Music as well as bring new insights into the historical foundations of the college and providing a basis for future research

Functional and Structural MRI Studies on Impulsiveness: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorders

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The VIVA Mutual Model: Futuring community based health care provision

VIVA Mutual is an Australian social enterprise that provides health services to clients of the National Disabilities Insurance Scheme (NDIS) through in-home health care provision. Essentially, this is delivery of publicly funded health services outside the public system, an area of research previously explored by Hall et al., (2016) in the UK context. VIVA Mutual has adapted a Buurtzorg model ensuring integrated and holistic client outcomes are organised through empowered work models. Buurtzorg was founded in 2006 by a not-for-profit nursing home organisation in the Netherlands. They used local teams of no more than 12 nurses to deliver community based aged care and adopted a flat organisational structure with minimal back-office support. “Buurtzorg attributed much of its success to empowering its nurse team to build relationships with patients and make independent decisions, not only about patient care, but also about team management” (Bernstein et al., 2022, p.1). VIVA aims to deliver a more innovative, cost-efficient and responsive health care services (Hall et al., 2016) through a social enterprise model

Initial lessons learned in making sanitation data useful for decision making

Useful data is important for effective decision making. In 2017, the World Bank reported that poor data has led to an ineffective allocation of resources across the sanitation sector. The current data gap is also preventing the sanitation sector from tracking its progress in providing sanitation for people living in cities. This challenge is not insurmountable. A sector-wide response needs to include behaviour change in the collection, sharing and use of data. This paper explains Gather’s approach to improving the usefulness of data through geospatial analysis, and presents our recommendation for a sector-wide data strategy that starts with the creation of a data standard for urban sanitation data

Exploring Agricultural Production Systems and Their Fundamental Components with System Dynamics Modelling

Agricultural production in the United States is undergoing marked changes due to rapid shifts in consumer demands, input costs, and concerns for food safety and environmental impact. Agricultural production systems are comprised of multidimensional components and drivers that interact in complex ways to influence production sustainability. In a mixed-methods approach, we combine qualitative and quantitative data to develop and simulate a system dynamics model that explores the systemic interaction of these drivers on the economic, environmental and social sustainability of agricultural production. We then use this model to evaluate the role of each driver in determining the differences in sustainability between three distinct production systems: crops only, livestock only, and an integrated crops and livestock system. The result from these modelling efforts found that the greatest potential for sustainability existed with the crops only production system. While this study presents a stand-alone contribution to sector knowledge and practice, it encourages future research in this sector that employs similar systems-based methods to enable more sustainable practices and policies within agricultural production

Characteristics of effective collaborative care for treatment of depression: a systematic review and meta-regression of 74 randomised controlled trials

This is a freely-available open access publication. Please cite the published version which is available via the DOI link in this record.BACKGROUND: Collaborative care is a complex intervention based on chronic disease management models and is effective in the management of depression. However, there is still uncertainty about which components of collaborative care are effective. We used meta-regression to identify factors in collaborative care associated with improvement in patient outcomes (depressive symptoms) and the process of care (use of anti-depressant medication). METHODS AND FINDINGS: Systematic review with meta-regression. The Cochrane Collaboration Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis Group trials registers were searched from inception to 9th February 2012. An update was run in the CENTRAL trials database on 29th December 2013. Inclusion criteria were: randomised controlled trials of collaborative care for adults ≥18 years with a primary diagnosis of depression or mixed anxiety and depressive disorder. Random effects meta-regression was used to estimate regression coefficients with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) between study level covariates and depressive symptoms and relative risk (95% CI) and anti-depressant use. The association between anti-depressant use and improvement in depression was also explored. Seventy four trials were identified (85 comparisons, across 21,345 participants). Collaborative care that included psychological interventions predicted improvement in depression (β coefficient -0.11, 95% CI -0.20 to -0.01, p = 0.03). Systematic identification of patients (relative risk 1.43, 95% CI 1.12 to 1.81, p = 0.004) and the presence of a chronic physical condition (relative risk 1.32, 95% CI 1.05 to 1.65, p = 0.02) predicted use of anti-depressant medication. CONCLUSION: Trials of collaborative care that included psychological treatment, with or without anti-depressant medication, appeared to improve depression more than those without psychological treatment. Trials that used systematic methods to identify patients with depression and also trials that included patients with a chronic physical condition reported improved use of anti-depressant medication. However, these findings are limited by the observational nature of meta-regression, incomplete data reporting, and the use of study aggregates.NIH

HIV-1 Conserved Mosaics Delivered by Regimens with Integration-deficient, DC-targeting Lentivirus Induce Robust T Cells

Background: To be effective against HIV-1, vaccine-induced T cells must selectively target functionally conserved and, at the same time, protective epitopes present on the majority of currently circulating and reactivated HIV-1 strains, and rapidly reach protective frequencies upon exposure to the virus. Heterologous prime-boost regimens using virally vectored vaccines are currently the most promising strategy towards achieving this goal, nevertheless, induction of robust longterm memory remains challenging. To this end, lentiviral vectors induce high frequencies of memory cells due to their low-inflammatory nature, while typically inducing only low antivector immune responses. Methods: We describe construction of novel candidate vaccines ZVex.tHIVconsv1 and ZVex.tHIVconsv2, which are based on an integration-deficient lentiviral vector platform with preferential transduction of human dendritic cells and express bivalent mosaic of conserved-region T-cell immunogens with a high global HIV-1 match. Results: Each of the two mosaics was individually immunogenic and together in heterologous prime-boost regimens with nonreplicating simian (chimpanzee) adenovirus or non-replicating poxvirus MVA vaccines induced very high frequencies of plurifunctional and broadly cross-reactive T cells in BALB/c and outbred CD1-SWISS mice. Conclusions: These data support further development of this vaccine concept

Educating for Inclusive, Caring Communities : What kind of education do clergy and ordinands require in order to include and care for people living with dementia and their carers and supporters?

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank everybody who passed on and answered our calls for participants. This research has been generously supported by HammondCare, The Sir Halley Stewart Trust, and the Kirby Laing Foundation

Integration of suboptimal health status evaluation as a criterion for prediction of preeclampsia is strongly recommended for healthcare management in pregnancy: A prospective cohort study in a Ghanaian population

Background: Normotensive pregnancy may develop into preeclampsia (PE) and other adverse pregnancy complications (APCs), for which the causes are still unknown. Suboptimal health status (SHS), a physical state between health and disease, might contribute to the development and progression of PE. By integration of a routine health measure in this Ghanaian Suboptimal Health Cohort Study, we explored the usefulness of a 25-question item SHS questionnaire (SHSQ-25) for early screening and prediction of normotensive pregnant women (NTN-PW) likely to develop PE. Methods: We assessed the overall health status among a cohort of 593 NTN-PW at baseline (10–20 weeks gestation) and followed them at 21–31 weeks until 32–42 weeks. After an average of 20 weeks follow-up, 498 participants returned and were included in the final analysis. Hematobiochemical, clinical and sociodemographic data were obtained. Results: Of the 498 participants, 49.8% (248/498) had ‘high SHS’ at baseline (61.7% (153/248) later developed PE) and 38.3% (95/248) were NTN-PW, whereas 50.2% (250/498) had ‘optimal health’ (17.6% (44/250) later developed PE) and 82.4% (206/ 250) were NTN-PW. At baseline, high SHS score yielded a significantly (p \u3c 0.05) increased adjusted odds ratio, a wider area under the curve (AUC) and a higher sensitivity and specificity for the prediction of PE (3.67; 0.898; 91.9% and 87.8%), PE coexisting with intrauterine growth restriction (2.86, 0.838; 91.5% and 75.9%), stillbirth (2.52; 0.783; 96.6% and 60.0%), hemolysis elevated liver enzymes and low platelet count (HELLP) syndrome (2.08; 0.800; 97.2% and 63.8%), acute kidney injury (2.20; 0.825; 95.3% and 70.0%) and dyslipidaemia (2.80; 0.8205; 95.7% and 68.4%) at 32–42 weeks gestation. Conclusions: High SHS score is associated with increased incidence of PE; hence, SHSQ-25 can be used independently as a risk stratification tool for adverse pregnancy outcomes thereby creating an opportunity for predictive, preventive and personalized medicine