Joseph Willcox Jenkins: male chorus arrangements of Stephen Collins Foster melodies

During his tenure as the first arranger for the United States Army Chorus (1956- 1959), Joseph Willcox Jenkins composed and arranged a prolific amount of male choral music, much of which remains unpublished. Outside the circles of the U.S. Army Chorus and Duquesne University, where he was a professor for forty years, much of Jenkins's music is relatively unknown. His works, however, reflect a commanding knowledge of the male chorus, unique since of style, and creative use of many compositional techniques. Throughout his brief time with the Army Chorus, Jenkins arranged at least 270 pieces and composed a handful of original works. Among these works are fourteen arrangements of Stephen Collins Foster melodies that remain prominent in the ensemble's performing repertoire to this day. This document presents six performance editions of Jenkins's fourteen arrangements of the Stephen Collins Foster melodies: "Beautiful Dreamer," "Camptown Races," "Nelly Bly," "Oh Susanna," "Ring Ring de Banjo," and "Some Folks." These arrangements will be compared to the original songs, placed in historical context, and ultimately expand the choices of male choral repertoire. The research undertaken here stimulates the historical research of American male choruses, namely the United States Army Chorus, and provides the possibility for further study of Jenkins's musical works. Additionally, along with this document, the results of this study were presented in printed performance editions of the selected works and performed in a lecture recital featuring the arrangements. The performing ensemble was the United States Army Chorus of Fort Myer, Arlington, Virginia

Describing the Subtle Factors That Influence Moments of Interactive Responses During Music Therapy Sessions For People With Late-Stage Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Related Major Neurocognitive Disorders: A Multiple Case Study

The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to describe moments of response and their triggers in individual music therapy sessions for three older adults with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease and related major neurocognitive disorders in a long-term care setting. The participants in this study were three women from 87-92 years of age who lived in a local skilled nursing facility, had a diagnosis of late-stage dementia, and were considered to be minimally responsive to environmental cues by staff. Individual music therapy sessions were implemented in each participant’s room for approximately 30 minutes twice a week for six weeks. Participant responses were captured through video recording, narrative notes, and coding of dominant awareness state for each session according to the classification of behavior states developed by Wolff (1959). The investigator found that although all the participants showed varying levels of responsiveness, they all responded to session factors in each session including the environment, music, and interaction with the music therapist. The implications of the results are discussed in regards to varying functional, environmental, musical, and emotional awareness of individuals with advanced neurocognitive disorders

The effects of beach renourishment on benthic microalgae

Coastal erosion threatens hundreds of miles of beach every year making beach renourishment in the southeastern United States essential to the economic health of coastal communities. Governments often fail to consider the possibility of ecological damage associated with renourishment projects and the potential for negative impacts on local fisheries through damage to benthic microalgae, the base of the food web. This study set out to determine what impact beach renourishment had on the benthic microalgal communities by measuring and comparing chlorophyll a concentrations before and after renourishment at Kure Beach and Carolina Beach in southeastern North Carolina. The final data set contained 4260 chlorophyll a measurements that covered two beaches, 8 sites, 16 transects, and 3 elevations per treatment with 6 samples collected at each elevation. Sediment samples were also analyzed for mean grain size. Sampling design considered effects of site elevation, renourishment, and seasonality and was completed 15 times for each beach for a total of 30 sampling trips. Up-current and down current controls were included in the experimental design Chlorophyll a measurements ranged from 0.00 mg/m2 to 14.88mg/m2 with an overall mean of 3.53 mg/m2 (s = 2.22). Results show no significant impact from renourishment on benthic microalgal communities at either beach. Paired comparisons between beaches, and between treatment and control sites at each elevation were made using a mixed model ANOVA (SAS) with no significant results observed. Data indicated a negative relationship between chlorophyll a concentrations and grain size but the source sediment for these projects was well suited for the renourished beaches. No significant change in grain size after renourishment was observed and no drop in chlorophyll a could be detected

The complexity of late medication errors

The medication administration process is complex and frequently leads to errors. Medication errors have a global impact of over $42 billion annually, and in the US an impact of over$21 billion annually. Medication errors have been researched for over 20 years following the Institute of Medicine’s landmark study, To Err is Human, but they continue to increase. The purpose of this study was to evaluate contributing factors to late medication administrations (LMAs). Complexity theory guided the study design and data analysis, supporting the wide array of factors that have been shown, individually, to contribute to medication errors and the inter-reliant system structure of the medication administration process. A six-hospital system was the setting for the study. Descriptive statistics and multilevel Negative Binomial regression modeling was performed to model relationships among variables. Three levels of nested predictor variables were tested in the modeling: shift characteristics were nested within nurse characteristics, which were nested within unit characteristics. Shift characteristics were time of shift (day or night) and presence of a permanent charge nurse. Nurse characteristics were years of experience, highest degree obtained, full-time equivalent status, and specialty certification. Unit characteristics were patient population, unit size, nurse manager years of experience, and nurse manager specialty certification. Results showed that registered nurses working on units with intensive care unit (ICU) patient populations had higher average count of LMAs when compared to nurses working with patient populations on medical-surgical, stepdown or mixed units, after controlling for all other predictors in the model and nurse and unit clustering. Nurses who had earned an associate’s degree were found to have higher average count of LMAs when compared to bachelor’s prepared nurses, controlling for all other predictors in the model and nurse and unit clustering. Shifts that had a permanent charge nurse had a higher average count of LMAs when compared to shifts that were staffed with a relief charge nurse and controlling for all other predictors in the model and nurse and unit clustering. Both individual nurse and unit characteristics appear to influence the occurrence of LMAs on nursing units and the use of multilevel regression modeling mirrors the inter-reliant concept supported through complexity theory and nested structure frequently found in healthcare

Soil carbon loss by experimental warming in a tropical forest

Tropical soils contain one-third of the carbon stored in soils globally1, so destabilization of soil organic matter caused by the warming predicted for tropical regions this century2 could accelerate climate change by releasing additional carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere3,4,5,6. Theory predicts that warming should cause only modest carbon loss from tropical soils relative to those at higher latitudes5,7, but there have been no warming experiments in tropical forests to test this8. Here we show that in situ experimental warming of a lowland tropical forest soil on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, caused an unexpectedly large increase in soil CO2 emissions. Two years of warming of the whole soil profile by four degrees Celsius increased CO2 emissions by 55 per cent compared to soils at ambient temperature. The additional CO2 originated from heterotrophic rather than autotrophic sources, and equated to a loss of 8.2 ± 4.2 (one standard error) tonnes of carbon per hectare per year from the breakdown of soil organic matter. During this time, we detected no acclimation of respiration rates, no thermal compensation or change in the temperature sensitivity of enzyme activities, and no change in microbial carbon-use efficiency. These results demonstrate that soil carbon in tropical forests is highly sensitive to warming, creating a potentially substantial positive feedback to climate chang

Concern for information privacy:a cross-nation study of the United Kingdom and South Africa

Individuals have differing levels of information privacy concern, formed by their expectations and the confidence they have that organisations meet this in practice. Variance in privacy laws and national factors may also play a role. This study analyses individuals’ information privacy expectation and confidence across two nations, the United Kingdom and South Africa, through a survey of 1463 respondents. The findings indicate that the expectation for privacy in both countries are very high. However, numerous significant differences exist between expectations and confidence when examining privacy principles. The overall results for both countries show that there is a gap in terms of the privacy expectations of respondents compared to the confidence they have in whether organisations are meeting their expectations. Governments, regulators, and organisations with an online presence need to consider individuals’ expectations and ensure that controls that meet regulatory requirements, as well as expectations, are in place

CAG Repeat Variants in the POLG1 Gene Encoding mtDNA Polymerase-Gamma and Risk of Breast Cancer in African-American Women

The DNA polymerase-gamma (POLG) gene, which encodes the catalytic subunit of enzyme responsible for directing mitochondrial DNA replication in humans, contains a polyglutamine tract encoded by CAG repeats of varying length. The length of the CAG repeat has been associated with the risk of testicular cancer, and other genomic variants that impact mitochondrial function have been linked to breast cancer risk in African-American (AA) women. We evaluated the potential role of germline POLG-CAG repeat variants in breast cancer risk in a sample of AA women (100 cases and 100 age-matched controls) who participated in the Women's Circle of Health Study, an ongoing multi-institutional, case-control study of breast cancer. Genotyping was done by fragment analysis in a blinded manner. Results from this small study suggest the possibility of an increased risk of breast cancer in women with minor CAG repeat variants of POLG, but no statistically significant differences in CAG repeat length were observed between cases and controls (multivariate-adjusted odds ratio 1.74; 95% CI, 0.49–6.21). Our study suggests that POLG-CAG repeat length is a potential risk factor for breast cancer that needs to be explored in larger population-based studies

The Surveillance for Enteric Fever in Asia Project (SEAP), Severe Typhoid Fever Surveillance in Africa (SETA), Surveillance of Enteric Fever in India (SEFI), and Strategic Typhoid Alliance Across Africa and Asia (STRATAA) population-based enteric fever studies: a review of methodological similarities and differences.

Building on previous multicountry surveillance studies of typhoid and others salmonelloses such as the Diseases of the Most Impoverished program and the Typhoid Surveillance in Africa Project, several ongoing blood culture surveillance studies are generating important data about incidence, severity, transmission, and clinical features of invasive Salmonella infections in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. These studies are also characterizing drug resistance patterns in their respective study sites. Each study answers a different set of research questions and employs slightly different methodologies, and the geographies under surveillance differ in size, population density, physician practices, access to healthcare facilities, and access to microbiologically safe water and improved sanitation. These differences in part reflect the heterogeneity of the epidemiology of invasive salmonellosis globally, and thus enable generation of data that are useful to policymakers in decision-making for the introduction of typhoid conjugate vaccines (TCVs). Moreover, each study is evaluating the large-scale deployment of TCVs, and may ultimately be used to assess post-introduction vaccine impact. The data generated by these studies will also be used to refine global disease burden estimates. It is important to ensure that lessons learned from these studies not only inform vaccination policy, but also are incorporated into sustainable, low-cost, integrated vaccine-preventable disease surveillance systems

Fluoride content and recharge ability of five glassionomer dental materials

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The relationship between fluoride content and fluoride release for glass-ionomer cements is not well understood. The aim of this laboratory study was: to determine the fluoride concentrations at the surfaces of glass-ionomer materials with respect to different storage media and different pH environments; to examine the recharge ability of the materials after NaF immersion; and to assess the morphological changes at the material surfaces using scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive spectroscopic techniques (SEM/EDS).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Five glass-ionomer materials, Fuji Triage (FT), Fuji II LC (FII), Fuji VIII (FVIII), Fuji IX GP (FIX), and Ketac N100 (KN), were analyzed in this study. Resin-based fluoride releasing material Helioseal F (HSF) was used as a comparison material. The sample consisted of 120 cured cement disks (n = 20 disks of each tested material, 10 × 1.5 mm). Five disks of each material were stored in 4 different storage media (I- saline, II- acidic solution ph = 2.5, III- acid solution ph = 5.5, IV- NaF solution (c = 500/106). After 7 days, two disks of each material were transferred from media I, II and III to the NaF solution for 3 min. EDS analysis was conducted in 3 randomly selected spots of each experimental disk. SEM was used to determine morphological characteristics of the material surface. Differences between the experimental groups have been analyzed using Student's t-test with the level of significance set at p < 0.001.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>FT showed the highest fluoride content at the surface of the material. The lowest amounts of fluoride ions were detected at the surfaces of the FT disks stored at low pH environments, and this difference was statistically significant (p < 0.001). Glass-ionomers showed significantly higher fluoride concentrations when compared to the HSF (p < 0.001). After immersion in the NaF solution, fluoride concentrations at the surfaces of the disks increased when compared with previous storage media (FT>FVIII>KN>FII>FIX). SEM analysis of the surface morphology revealed numerous voids, cracks and microporosities in all experimental groups, except for KN and HSF. More homogenous material structure with more discrete cracks was observed in samples stored at neutral pH environment, compared to disks stored in acidic solutions.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The tested materials could be considered as promising dental materials with potential prophylactic characteristics due to their relatively high fluoride content, but also the ability to extensively reabsorb fluoride ions, especially in acidic environments.</p