Music and Mass Education: Cultivation or Control?

The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of public institutions, affecting the education and welfare of people across the social classes but with most impact on the lower orders. Music was to be found throughout, whether in schools, workhouses of asylums. Its role plays an important part in investigating the balance and tensions inherent in liberal attitudes between controlling the individual and allowing for self-expression and cultural development. In this chapter I investigate examples from public institutions using music for discipline, development and rational recreation. Large pauper institutions such as the workhouse, prison and asylum form the basis for exploring the possible uses of music within the new reforming liberalism. This is followed by a more extended investigation into the role of music within the elementary educational reforms of the 1850s and 1860s, using parliamentary reports, journals and new sources to explore the varying arguments and ideals debated during this period

Evaluation of DNA Force Fields in Implicit Solvation.

International audienceDNA structural deformations and dynamics are crucial to its interactions in the cell. Theoretical simulations are essential tools to explore the structure, dynamics, and thermodynamics of biomolecules in a systematic way. Molecular mechanics force fields for DNA have benefited from constant improvements during the last decades. Several studies have evaluated and compared available force fields when the solvent is modeled by explicit molecules. On the other hand, few systematic studies have assessed the quality of duplex DNA models when implicit solvation is employed. The interest of an implicit modeling of the solvent consists in the important gain in the simulation performance and conformational sampling speed. In this study, respective influences of the force field and the implicit solvation model choice on DNA simulation quality are evaluated. To this end, extensive implicit solvent duplex DNA simulations are performed, attempting to reach both conformational and sequence diversity convergence. Structural parameters are extracted from simulations and statistically compared to available experimental and explicit solvation simulation data. Our results quantitatively expose the respective strengths and weaknesses of the different DNA force fields and implicit solvation models studied. This work can lead to the suggestion of improvements to current DNA theoretical models

Simulations of Nucleic Acids and Their Complexes

International audienceRecent years have seen considerable progress in simulations of nucleic acids. Improvements in force fields, simulation techniques and protocols, and increasing computer power have all contributed to making nanosecond-scale simulations of both DNA and RNA commonplace. The results are already helping to explain how nucleic acids respond to their environment and to their base sequence and to reveal the factors underlying recognition processes by probing biologically important nucleic acid-protein interactions and medically important nucleic acid-drug complexation. This Account summarizes methodological progress and applications of molecular dynamics to nucleic acids over the past few years and tries to identify remaining challenges.Recent years have seen considerable progress in simulations of nucleic acids. Improvements in force fields, simulation techniques and protocols, and increasing computer power have all contributed to making nanosecond-scale simulations of both DNA and RNA commonplace. The results are already helping to explain how nucleic acids respond to their environment and to their base sequence and to reveal the factors underlying recognition processes by probing biologically important nucleic acid-protein interactions and medically important nucleic acid-drug complexation. This Account summarizes methodological progress and applications of molecular dynamics to nucleic acids over the past few years and tries to identify remaining challenges