Shared Insights: A Survey of Postsecondary and Adult Men's Chorus Directors

The following dissertation focuses on the all-male chorus context. Through a survey of university, GALA and adult affiliated community chorus directors on the specific challenges – vocal pedagogy, rehearsal techniques, auditioning, and repertoire – of the TTBB chorus, valuable insights were gathered from participating directors that serve to supplement existing literature available to directors

The Uncoupling Protein 1 Gene (UCP1) Is Disrupted in the Pig Lineage: A Genetic Explanation for Poor Thermoregulation in Piglets

Piglets appear to lack brown adipose tissue, a specific type of fat that is essential for nonshivering thermogenesis in mammals, and they rely on shivering as the main mechanism for thermoregulation. Here we provide a genetic explanation for the poor thermoregulation in pigs as we demonstrate that the gene for uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) was disrupted in the pig lineage. UCP1 is exclusively expressed in brown adipose tissue and plays a crucial role for thermogenesis by uncoupling oxidative phosphorylation. We used long-range PCR and genome walking to determine the complete genome sequence of pig UCP1. An alignment with human UCP1 revealed that exons 3 to 5 were eliminated by a deletion in the pig sequence. The presence of this deletion was confirmed in all tested domestic pigs, as well as in European wild boars, Bornean bearded pigs, wart hogs, and red river hogs. Three additional disrupting mutations were detected in the remaining exons. Furthermore, the rate of nonsynonymous substitutions was clearly elevated in the pig sequence compared with the corresponding sequences in humans, cattle, and mice, and we used this increased rate to estimate that UCP1 was disrupted about 20 million years ago

Growing Action Spaces

In complex tasks, such as those with large combinatorial action spaces, random exploration may be too inefficient to achieve meaningful learning progress. In this work, we use a curriculum of progressively growing action spaces to accelerate learning. We assume the environment is out of our control, but that the agent may set an internal curriculum by initially restricting its action space. Our approach uses off-policy reinforcement learning to estimate optimal value functions for multiple action spaces simultaneously and efficiently transfers data, value estimates, and state representations from restricted action spaces to the full task. We show the efficacy of our approach in proof-of-concept control tasks and on challenging large-scale StarCraft micromanagement tasks with large, multi-agent action spaces

Transforming Protein: Land-Use Implications of a Transition to Plant-Based Meat

The burgeoning plant-based meat industry has demonstrated the potential for plant-based meat to provide a comparable consumer experience to animal meat with a significantly reduced environmental impact. This study explores the land-use implications of plant-based meat production under various adoption scenarios and ingredient mixtures. A system-level model quantifies land that is both offset from beef and pork production and land that is potentially additive from ingredients grown in regions outside traditional animal agriculture supply chains. Coconut oil is explored as a potential high-risk ingredient due to it contributing additive land-use and being grown in sensitive biomes. GIS software was used to contextualize land-use requirements for the oil by comparing projections to existing suitable agricultural land in top producing countries and current production land area. Finally, a qualitative case study of potential risks and opportunities associated with relying on the oil was conducted to inform sourcing and ingredient panel strategies. There are several key takeaways from the analyses conducted: 1. Due to its much larger land-use footprint, plant-based displacement of beef products drive proportionally higher land-use benefits than that of pork. 2. Over 20 years, roughly 25% rate of animal-based meat displacement in the US will stabilize land-use associated with overall meat production in the country. 3. Under high market adoption, plant-based meat will require almost two million square hectares of land for coconut oil production in 20 years, or 55% of land currently used for coconut cultivation in the Philippines. These findings signal that plant-based meat has significant land-use implications which can be realized under reasonably high adoption and over the long run. The industry would benefit from diversifying ingredients which represent additive land-use and potential supply chain risks. The research presented serves as a “living” model and foundation for future investigation into other ingredients used in plant-based meat products.Master of ScienceSchool for Environment and SustainabilityUniversity of Michiganhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154861/1/358_TransformingProtein_FinalDoc.pd

A search for antiproton decay at the Fermilab Antiproton Accumulator

We report on the search for anti-proton decay at the Fermilab Antiproton Accumulator Ring. Experiment 868 (APEX) was designed to search for two-body p̄ decay modes containing an electron in the final state (→e+X)(p̄→e+X) and to conduct an exploratory search for decays with a muon in the final state (→μ+X).(p̄→μ+X). Data were taken for three months in the Spring of 1995. Preliminary results yield lower limits on /BRτp̄/BR in the range of 105–106105–106 years for selected channels having an electron in the final state, improving on previous results by approximately 3 orders of magnitude. Additionally, we report the first preliminary results for the →μγp̄→μγ and →μπ0p̄→μπ0 decay channels. © 1997 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87906/2/419_1.pd

Upper limits on the strength of periodic gravitational waves from PSR J1939+2134

The first science run of the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors presented the opportunity to test methods of searching for gravitational waves from known pulsars. Here we present new direct upper limits on the strength of waves from the pulsar PSR J1939+2134 using two independent analysis methods, one in the frequency domain using frequentist statistics and one in the time domain using Bayesian inference. Both methods show that the strain amplitude at Earth from this pulsar is less than a few times $10^{-22}$.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the Proceedings of the 5th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves, Tirrenia, Pisa, Italy, 6-11 July 200

Improving the sensitivity to gravitational-wave sources by modifying the input-output optics of advanced interferometers

We study frequency dependent (FD) input-output schemes for signal-recycling interferometers, the baseline design of Advanced LIGO and the current configuration of GEO 600. Complementary to a recent proposal by Harms et al. to use FD input squeezing and ordinary homodyne detection, we explore a scheme which uses ordinary squeezed vacuum, but FD readout. Both schemes, which are sub-optimal among all possible input-output schemes, provide a global noise suppression by the power squeeze factor, while being realizable by using detuned Fabry-Perot cavities as input/output filters. At high frequencies, the two schemes are shown to be equivalent, while at low frequencies our scheme gives better performance than that of Harms et al., and is nearly fully optimal. We then study the sensitivity improvement achievable by these schemes in Advanced LIGO era (with 30-m filter cavities and current estimates of filter-mirror losses and thermal noise), for neutron star binary inspirals, and for narrowband GW sources such as low-mass X-ray binaries and known radio pulsars. Optical losses are shown to be a major obstacle for the actual implementation of these techniques in Advanced LIGO. On time scales of third-generation interferometers, like EURO/LIGO-III (~2012), with kilometer-scale filter cavities, a signal-recycling interferometer with the FD readout scheme explored in this paper can have performances comparable to existing proposals. [abridged]Comment: Figs. 9 and 12 corrected; Appendix added for narrowband data analysi

Quantum state preparation and macroscopic entanglement in gravitational-wave detectors

Long-baseline laser-interferometer gravitational-wave detectors are operating at a factor of 10 (in amplitude) above the standard quantum limit (SQL) within a broad frequency band. Such a low classical noise budget has already allowed the creation of a controlled 2.7 kg macroscopic oscillator with an effective eigenfrequency of 150 Hz and an occupation number of 200. This result, along with the prospect for further improvements, heralds the new possibility of experimentally probing macroscopic quantum mechanics (MQM) - quantum mechanical behavior of objects in the realm of everyday experience - using gravitational-wave detectors. In this paper, we provide the mathematical foundation for the first step of a MQM experiment: the preparation of a macroscopic test mass into a nearly minimum-Heisenberg-limited Gaussian quantum state, which is possible if the interferometer's classical noise beats the SQL in a broad frequency band. Our formalism, based on Wiener filtering, allows a straightforward conversion from the classical noise budget of a laser interferometer, in terms of noise spectra, into the strategy for quantum state preparation, and the quality of the prepared state. Using this formalism, we consider how Gaussian entanglement can be built among two macroscopic test masses, and the performance of the planned Advanced LIGO interferometers in quantum-state preparation

Search for gravitational wave bursts in LIGO's third science run

We report on a search for gravitational wave bursts in data from the three LIGO interferometric detectors during their third science run. The search targets subsecond bursts in the frequency range 100-1100 Hz for which no waveform model is assumed, and has a sensitivity in terms of the root-sum-square (rss) strain amplitude of hrss ~ 10^{-20} / sqrt(Hz). No gravitational wave signals were detected in the 8 days of analyzed data.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures. Amaldi-6 conference proceedings to be published in Classical and Quantum Gravit