Trax on the Trail

Trax on the Trail is a website where scholars, educators, journalists, students, and the general public can learn about American presidential campaign music and gain insight into how sound participates in forming candidate identity. Our interdisciplinary team includes academic experts from the fields of political science, musicology, sociology, history, communications, and ethnomusicology, as well as industry professionals and students. We will follow the 2016 presidential campaign as it unfolds and post original scholarship that addresses the creative use of music and sound on the campaign trail

Spatio-Temporal Variability of Harbor Porpoise Life History Parameters in the North-East Atlantic

Harbor porpoises exhibit early maturation, relatively short gestation/lactation periods and a faster rate of reproduction as compared to other cetacean species. Intrinsic and extrinsic factors can influence both population vital rates and population structure, which ultimately cause changes in dynamics within and between populations. Here, we undertook a retrospective analysis of mortality data collected over a 24-year period for assessing life history traits of the North-east Atlantic harbor porpoise population. We use time-period specific models for key life history relationships that considered cause of death of individuals (as a proxy for health status), sex and management unit (MU). Sexual variation in asymptotic length, asymptotic age, average length at 50% maturity (L50) and average age at 50% maturity (A50) were observed, with females attaining a larger asymptotic length, larger L50, and delaying attainment of both sexual and physical maturity, compared to males. While females are constrained in their minimum body size due to giving birth to proportionally larger offspring, males exhibited more plasticity in size at sexual maturity, enabling re-allocation of available energy resources toward reproduction. Data were then used to compare biological parameters among two porpoise MUs in United Kingdom waters, both of which in the current study exhibited reduced reproductive rates compared to other geographic regions. In both MUs, females significantly increased their A50 and males significantly declined in their L50. An increase in the age at asymptotic length was also observed in both sexes, along with a significant decline in the Gompertz growth rate parameter that was more apparent in the female data. While availability of suitable prey resources may be a limiting factor, a combination of other factors cannot be ruled out. Porpoises in the Celtic and Irish Seas MU were significantly larger in their maximum length, asymptotic length and L50 compared to porpoises in the North Sea MU throughout the study period, suggesting limited gene flow between these two MUs. These results justify the maintenance of these harbor porpoise MUs or assessment units, as two separate units, within the range of the North-east Atlantic population, and for indicator assessments under the EU’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive

Enhancer evolution across 20 mammalian species.

The mammalian radiation has corresponded with rapid changes in noncoding regions of the genome, but we lack a comprehensive understanding of regulatory evolution in mammals. Here, we track the evolution of promoters and enhancers active in liver across 20 mammalian species from six diverse orders by profiling genomic enrichment of H3K27 acetylation and H3K4 trimethylation. We report that rapid evolution of enhancers is a universal feature of mammalian genomes. Most of the recently evolved enhancers arise from ancestral DNA exaptation, rather than lineage-specific expansions of repeat elements. In contrast, almost all liver promoters are partially or fully conserved across these species. Our data further reveal that recently evolved enhancers can be associated with genes under positive selection, demonstrating the power of this approach for annotating regulatory adaptations in genomic sequences. These results provide important insight into the functional genetics underpinning mammalian regulatory evolution.We thank Stephen Watt, Frances Connor, the CRUK-CI Genomics and Bioinformatics cores, Biological Resources Unit (Matthew Clayton), Margaret Brown (West Yorkshire bat hospital), Julie E. Horvath (North Carolina Central University), and Chris Dillingham (University of Cardiff) for technical assistance; Matthieu Muffato for assistance with whole-genome alignments; Claudia Kutter, Gordon Brown, Christine Feig, and Christina Ernst for useful comments and discussions, and the EBI systems team for management of computational resources. This research was supported by Cancer Research UK (D.V., D.T.O.), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (C.B., P.F.), the Wellcome Trust (WT095908) (P.F.) and (WT098051) (P.F., D.T.O.), the European Research Council, EMBO Young Investigator Programme (D.T.O.), the National Science Foundation (0744979) (T.J.P.), NIH (P40 OD010965, R01 OD010980, R37 MH060233) (A.J.J.) and MRC (U117588498) (J.M.A.T.). Cetacean samples were collected by the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, funded by Defra and the Governments of Scotland and Wales.This is the final version. It originally appeared at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415000070

Organizing German Musical Life at Midcentury: Brendel, Schumann, and the Leipzig Tonkünstlerversammlungen and Tonkünstlerverein

Even though the Tonkünstlerversammlung of 1847 in Leipzig has been identified as the first national meeting of German musicians, we know very little about it. This chapter studies the nature and significance of that gathering, with special emphasis on Schumann's direct and indirect role surrounding the momentous event. It also looks at the activities of the core group in the following two years, as Franz Brendel and colleagues continued to meet on a regular basis through 1849, with further Tonkünstlerversammlungen taking place in 1848 and 1849. The political events of those years had a serious impact on the gatherings, leading to their cessation, but published and unpublished sources indicate that the concept of such meetings of musicians better succeeded on the local level. In his scheme for a German Allgemeiner Tonkünstlerverein, Brendel focused on initially establishing local chapters, with the Leipzig Tonkünstlerverein already functioning in 1847 and those in various other cities (Berlin, Magdeburg, Dessau, Freiburg, Stettin, Darmstadt) added by 1849. It was in the collective action of these branches under the aegis of a national organization that Brendel saw the hope of improving German musical conditions. This progressive idea would eventually lead to the establishment of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein in 1861

Music in television: Channels of listening

Music in Television is a collection of essays examining television’s production of meaning through music in terms of historical contexts, institutional frameworks, broadcast practices, technologies, and aesthetics. It presents the reader with overviews of major genres and issues, as well as specific case studies of important television programs and events. With contributions from a wide range of scholars, the essays range from historical-analytical surveys of TV sound and genre designations to studies of the music in individual programs, including South Park and Dr. Who

The musical world of Strauss's youth

Born in Munich on June 11, 1864, Richard Strauss entered the world at a crucial time of change for the political and cultural environment in which he would develop as person and musician: three months earlier, Ludwig II had acceded to power over the Kingdom of Bavaria, while almost six weeks earlier, Richard Wagner had first arrived in Munich under the new king's aegis. That these related events did not have an immediate impact on Strauss in his earliest years does not diminish their ultimate real and symbolic significance for his life and career: he emerged as musician within a city where the revolution in music was a matter of public debate, especially to the extent that its progenitor Wagner directly influenced the monarch and indirectly had an impact on affairs of state. Character of the city However, of all German-speaking major cities, Munich may have been the least suited for artistic upheaval, given the nature of its institutions and the character of its citizens. In his study Pleasure Wars, Peter Gay paints a picture of a Munich that was hopelessly polarized, between the cultural offerings sponsored by the ruling Wittelsbachs and the middle class that preferred popular types of entertainment

Pitched Battles: Music and Sound in Anglo-American and German Newsreels of World War II

The observation by Siegfried Kracauer, one of the leading sociologists of the twentieth century, that the Nazis were more skilled than the Americans and British in the use of cinematic devices in newsreels for war propaganda purposes was thought-provoking in its day. It still prompts critical engagement with the texts under consideration, even as recent scholarship has adopted a more nuanced position with regard to the Nazi use of persuasive media. A comparative study of Anglo-American and German newsreels produced during the Second World War, with an emphasis on their use of music and sound, both questions and extends Kracauer’s hypotheses within the sonic realm. Music continues to serve the function of adding an affective voice to images in news media, which still count war reportage as one of their primary audiovisual vehicles for persuasive purposes