A Concise History of Western Music for Film-makers

The use of music in films has become almost ubiquitous in both drama and documentary. Music is used regularly in cinema, broadcasting and more recently, in interactive media. Yet audiences often criticise makers for its overuse, especially in actuality television. The problem is not merely concerned with the volume and placement of music, but of the internal nature and structure of the musical material itself. This article contextualises the history of western music in a way which may be able to help inform film makers and broadcasters about how music might be used more advantageously to accompany moving pictures

Harnessing the Power of Music & Sound Design in Interactive Media

The history of the development of sound on film offers us lessons for the development of sound and music for interactive artforms. Now that technological developments have enabled almost unrestricted importation of audio into interactive platforms, the time has come for us to ask: is the content of the audio good enough

Psycho and The Orchestration of Anxiety

Since its release in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho has entered the consciousness of our culture as have few other films. Its striking imagery, combined with its universally recognised score, has prompted a wealth of scholarly output. New understanding in the areas of emotion and cognition now affords us the opportunity to re-examine this film from a less familiar vantage point. This article places Psycho within the context of American TV drama of the 1950s and explores the effect of Bernard Herrmann’s music on the emotional responses of the viewer, as well as the possible consequences of this effect upon the literal reading of the film

The Soundtrack (Putting Music in Its Place)

There are currently many books and journals on film music in print, most of which describe music as a separate activity from film, applied to images most often at the very end of the production process by composers normally resident outside the filmic world. This article endeavours to modify this practice by placing music within the larger notion of “the soundtrack”. This new model assumes that irrespective of industrial determinants, the soundtrack is perceived by an audience as such a unity; that music, dialogue, effects and atmospheres are heard as interdependent layers in the sonification of the film. We often can identify the individual sonic elements when they appear, but we are more aware of the blending they produce when sounding together, much as we are when we hear an orchestra

Sounding the past: three silent films

The project was an experiment in linking music and poetry to archive films, not only to provide an enhancing accompaniment but, in some cases, with the aim of making something new which would quite profoundly change the way that these films were perceived by audiences

The Relationship Between Adjunct Faculty Staffing and College Student Retention and Graduation

The rise of non-tenure track, part-time faculty, referred to as adjuncts, has brought a significant shift to the academic workforce. The count of part-time faculty on campuses has followed an upward trend for the last few decades and now part-time faculty form half of the total faculty workforce. This begs the question, in the face of institutional policies that favor increasing the proportion of adjuncts on faculty rosters: Has the use of adjuncts negatively impacted the student experience and quality of education, leading to lower persistence and graduation rates? This dissertation examines the relationship between adjunct faculty and student outcomes measured by both retention and graduation rates. This study employs Berger and Milem’s (2000) framework as the conceptual model linking an institution’s structural-demographic characteristics to student outcomes. Using a national sample of baccalaureate degree granting institutions from IPEDS data, I used panel data models to estimate retention and graduation rates. My panel models include a host of input variables, with an institution’s proportion of part-time faculty as the key variable. My fixed effects panel data models indicate that an institution’s proportion of part-time faculty does not have a statistically significant impact on retention and graduation, controlling for other input variables

Asymptotically Optimal Quantum Circuits for d-level Systems

As a qubit is a two-level quantum system whose state space is spanned by |0>, |1>, so a qudit is a d-level quantum system whose state space is spanned by |0>,...,|d-1>. Quantum computation has stimulated much recent interest in algorithms factoring unitary evolutions of an n-qubit state space into component two-particle unitary evolutions. In the absence of symmetry, Shende, Markov and Bullock use Sard's theorem to prove that at least C 4^n two-qubit unitary evolutions are required, while Vartiainen, Moettoenen, and Salomaa (VMS) use the QR matrix factorization and Gray codes in an optimal order construction involving two-particle evolutions. In this work, we note that Sard's theorem demands C d^{2n} two-qudit unitary evolutions to construct a generic (symmetry-less) n-qudit evolution. However, the VMS result applied to virtual-qubits only recovers optimal order in the case that d is a power of two. We further construct a QR decomposition for d-multi-level quantum logics, proving a sharp asymptotic of Theta(d^{2n}) two-qudit gates and thus closing the complexity question for all d-level systems (d finite.) Gray codes are not required, and the optimal Theta(d^{2n}) asymptotic also applies to gate libraries where two-qudit interactions are restricted by a choice of certain architectures.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures (very detailed.) MatLab files for factoring qudit unitary into gates in MATLAB directory of source arxiv format. v2: minor change

Epigenetic Modifications Mediate Experience-Induced Neuroplasticity; Relevance to the Etiology and Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Covalent chemical modifications, including the acetylation of core histone proteins and methylation of cytosine in or near promoter regions of DNA, influence the efficiency with which genes are transcribed. Chemical modifications that regulate gene expression within postmitotic differentiated neurons can reflect environmental influences, including exposure to stress. These chemical modifications or “marks” may reflect downstream consequences of the transduction of extracellular chemical messengers, such as neurotransmitters, growth factors and hormones, by receptors located at the surface of the neuron or within the cell itself. The ability to decipher the epigenetic code may serve as a record of early childhood adversity that sensitizes to additional epigenetic changes caused by traumatic exposures in adulthood. Further, epigenetic therapeutic interventions may be possible that would attenuate the severity of adverse consequences associated with traumatic exposures in the child and adult. Ideally, targeted epigenetic therapeutic interventions would address stress-induced dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and promote expression of therapeutically beneficial neuroplasticity factors