Music and learning

The ideas and research that will be outlined and discussed here have been selected to show that music is more than a curriculum subject and that it can permeate many aspects of our lives and that it is important to our cognitive and physical development. Although the field of music education can sometimes be rather too focused on the development of young musicians, I am particularly interested in the development of young people and in ways that music can enhance and enrich their learning

Music education

Prior to the 1980s the music curriculum consisted of class-singing, sol-fah deciphering and music appreciation. Typical resources were the piano, the Curwen modulator, numerous sets of song and sight-reading books (to suit single gender class groupings) and a record player. More enlightened teachers would have some percussion instruments or recorders in the classroom and, from the 1970s, the odd guitar. The Scottish Examination Board 'O' Grade examination at the end of year 4 was designed to be overtaken by pupils who had expertise on an instrument or voice to the equivalent of Associated Board Grade 5, tuition on which was given outwith the classroom while the teacher concentrated on historical study, rudiments and analysis. Such elitism fuelled growing disillusionment in pupils and many teachers who experienced a different world of music in their private lives (Witkin, 1974). Significant and effective change came in 1978 with the publication by the Scottish Education Department of the highly controversial Curriculum Paper 16, Music in Scottish Schools. This was the dividing line between past practices and future developments which radically changed the way in which music was taught and which clearly focused music teachers' and educators' energies and ideas. It encapsulated many of the ideas and innovations which had been forming in Britain through the work of Paynter and Aston (1970), Witkin (1974) and in the USA since the 1960s (Choksy et al., 1986) and placed them into a Scottish context. This provided the impetus for a root and branch overhaul of the curriculum which would reshape music in the classroom into an action-based experience, open to all children, regardless of their musical or academic ability. In the contexts of both primary and secondary schools, Curriculum Paper 16 recommended syllabus content and teaching and learning strategies, the review of assessment approaches and most significantly, staffing, resource and accommodation requirements to enable 'music for all' to be implemented. These recommendations gave teachers and headteachers the tools and impetus to make demands on local authorities to fund the developments appropriately

Controlled Release of Multiple Therapeutics from Silicone Hydrogel Contact Lenses.

PURPOSE: The majority of contact lens wearers experience a significant level of ocular discomfort associated with lens wear, often within hours of wear, related to dry lenses, inflammation, protein adhesion to the lens surface, etc. Application of controlled drug release techniques has focused on the incorporation and/or release of a single comfort molecule from a lens including high molecular weight comfort agents or pharmaceutical agents. Previous studies have sought to mitigate the occurrence of only single propagators of discomfort. Clinical studies with eye drop solutions have shown that a mixture of diverse comfort agents selected to address multiple propagators of discomfort provide the greatest and longest lasting sensations of comfort for the patient. In this paper, multiple propagators of discomfort are addressed through the simultaneous release of four molecules from a novel contact lens to ensure high level of lens wear comfort. METHODS: Silicone hydrogel contact lenses were engineered via molecular imprinting strategies to simultaneously release up to four template molecules including hydropropyl methylcellulose (HPMC), trehalose, ibuprofen, and prednisolone. RESULTS: By adjusting the ratio of functional monomer to comfort molecule, a high level of control was demonstrated over the release rate. HPMC, trehalose, ibuprofen, and prednisolone were released at therapeutically relevant concentrations with varying rates from a single lens. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate use as daily disposable lenses for single day release or extended-wear lenses with multiple day release. Imprinted lenses are expected to lead to higher efficacy for patients compared to topical eye drops by improving compliance and mitigating concentration peaks and valleys associated with multiple drops

Improving nanopore read accuracy with the R2C2 method enables the sequencing of highly multiplexed full-length single-cell cDNA.

High-throughput short-read sequencing has revolutionized how transcriptomes are quantified and annotated. However, while Illumina short-read sequencers can be used to analyze entire transcriptomes down to the level of individual splicing events with great accuracy, they fall short of analyzing how these individual events are combined into complete RNA transcript isoforms. Because of this shortfall, long-distance information is required to complement short-read sequencing to analyze transcriptomes on the level of full-length RNA transcript isoforms. While long-read sequencing technology can provide this long-distance information, there are issues with both Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) and Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) long-read sequencing technologies that prevent their widespread adoption. Briefly, PacBio sequencers produce low numbers of reads with high accuracy, while ONT sequencers produce higher numbers of reads with lower accuracy. Here, we introduce and validate a long-read ONT-based sequencing method. At the same cost, our Rolling Circle Amplification to Concatemeric Consensus (R2C2) method generates more accurate reads of full-length RNA transcript isoforms than any other available long-read sequencing method. These reads can then be used to generate isoform-level transcriptomes for both genome annotation and differential expression analysis in bulk or single-cell samples

Iterative oblique projection onto convex sets and the split feasibility problem,”

Abstract Let C and Q be nonempty closed convex sets in R N and R M , respectively, and A an M by N real matrix. The split feasibility problem (SFP) is to find x ∈ C with Ax ∈ Q, if such x exist. An iterative method for solving the SFP, called the CQ algorithm, has the following iterative step: with L the largest eigenvalue of the matrix A T A and P C and P Q denote the orthogonal projections onto C and Q, respectively; that is, P C x minimizes c − x , over all c ∈ C. The CQ algorithm converges to a solution of the SFP, or, more generally, to a minimizer of P Q Ac − Ac over c in C, whenever such exist. The CQ algorithm involves only the orthogonal projections onto C and Q, which we shall assume are easily calculated, and involves no matrix inverses. If A is normalized so that each row has length one, then L does not exceed the maximum number of nonzero entries in any column of A, which provides a helpful estimate of L for sparse matrices. Particular cases of the CQ algorithm are the Landweber and projected Landweber methods for obtaining exact or approximate solutions of the linear equations Ax = b; the algebraic reconstruction technique of Gordon, Bender and Herman is a particular case of a block-iterative version of the CQ algorithm. One application of the CQ algorithm that is the subject of ongoing work is dynamic emission tomographic image reconstruction, in which the vector x is the concatenation of several images corresponding to successive discrete times. The matrix A and the set Q can then be selected to impose constraints on the behaviour over time of the intensities at fixed voxels, as well as to require consistency (or near consistency) with measured data