Gesto Musical e Agenciamento Virtual

Traduzido do original : Musical Gestures and Virtual Agency em fase de publicaçã

Postscripts

Bojan Bujić When is a musette not a musette? A response to Robert S. Hatten Robert S. Hatten A response to Bojan Buji

Intention, Effort, and Restraint: The EMG in Musical Performance

The author presents the challenges and opportunities in the use of the electromyogram (EMG), a signal representing muscle activity, for digital musical instrument applications. The author presents basic mapping paradigms and the place of the EMG in multimodal interac- tion and describes initial trials in machine learning. It is proposed that nonlinearities in musical instrument response cannot be modelled only by parameter interpolation and require strategies of extrapolation. The author introduces the concepts of intention, effort, and restraint as such strategies, to exploit, as well as confront limitations of, the use of muscle signals in musical performance

Particulate organic matter export by two contrasting small mountainous rivers from the Pacific Northwest, U.S.A.

We investigated the export of particulate organic matter (POM) to the ocean by two contrasting small, mountainous rivers, the Umpqua and Eel Rivers, by collecting suspended sediment samples over a range of discharges and analyzing them for a variety of constituents, including organic carbon, nitrogen, biomarkers with distinct biochemical sources, and isotopic compositions (δ¹³C and Δ¹⁴C). Concentrations of all measured constituents in both rivers increased as a function of discharge, resulting in their export being dominated by short-lived, wintertime high-discharge events. In the Umpqua River, marked compositional contrasts between low- and high-discharge conditions were consistent with a shift in the provenance of POM from biogenic sources dominated by non-vascular plant sources at low flows to contributions from vascular plant sources of moderate ¹⁴C ages (~300 years before present) dominating at high flows. In contrast, POM from the Eel River, which was highly diluted by mineral sediment at all discharges, had significant contributions from petrogenic sources and displayed lower concentrations of recognizable biomarkers. Both rivers had comparable yields of biogenic POM, which appeared to be moderately degraded and originated primarily from surface soils in erosion prone areas of the watersheds. While tectonic/geologic differences help explain the contrasts in sediment and petrogenic POM yields between the two watersheds, ecological factors such as vegetation coverage, productivity, and soil carbon are more important in influencing the composition of biogenic POM mobilized from these systems.Keywords: Oregon Coast Range, Northern California, Mendocino triple junction, Eel River, Efffective discharge, Carbon, Continental shelf, Debris flow, United States, Sediment transpor

Striking a Chord: Dementia and Song

We have co-written this piece to relay what can be achieved with song and music in familial and non-familial settings when caring for a person with dementia. This article started as a conversation we had in the Wellcome Collection cafe in London to catch up with each other while Prabhjot was en route from Canada to India, to meet her father. We shared how dementia was becoming a part of our parents’ lives. This article is dedicated to the chords Prabhjot Parmar has struck with her father, Major Harbhajan Singh (25 Dec 1925 – 16 April 2018) and Nirmal Puwar has had the pleasure of sharing with her mother, Kartar Kaur. Both of us have been drawn to understanding how our own performance of song with our respective parent enabled them and us to maintain a register of connection. Song became a means of trying to keep striking a parental and musical chord. We aimed to connect by engendering ‘therapeutic atmospheres’ (Sonntag 2016) through song. We use song and music interchangeably, operating with performance as an umbrella term that includes gesture, utterance, dance, singing and playing musical instruments, for example. Two autoethnographic relational contributions provide a substantive basis to our article, each written by a researcher-carer-daughter, seeking to sustain contact with what remains in her parent living with dementia

Low-intensity frequent fires in coniferous forests transform soil organic matter in ways that may offset ecosystem carbon losses.

Funder: Sequoia Parks ConservancyFunder: Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000936The impact of shifting disturbance regimes on soil carbon (C) storage is a key uncertainty in global change research. Wildfires in coniferous forests are becoming more frequent in many regions, potentially causing large C emissions. Repeated low-intensity prescribed fires can mitigate wildfire severity, but repeated combustion may decrease soil C unless compensatory responses stabilize soil organic matter. Here, we tested how 30 years of decadal prescribed burning affected C and nitrogen (N) in plants, detritus, and soils in coniferous forests in the Sierra Nevada mountains, USA. Tree basal area and litter stocks were resilient to fire, but fire reduced forest floor C by 77% (-36.4 Mg C/ha). In mineral soils, fire reduced C that was free from minerals by 41% (-4.4 Mg C/ha) but not C associated with minerals, and only in depths ≤ 5 cm. Fire also transformed the properties of remaining mineral soil organic matter by increasing the proportion of C in a pyrogenic form (from 3.2% to 7.5%) and associated with minerals (from 46% to 58%), suggesting the remaining soil C is more resistant to decomposition. Laboratory assays illustrated that fire reduced microbial CO2 respiration rates by 55% and the activity of eight extracellular enzymes that degrade cellulosic and aromatic compounds by 40-66%. Lower decomposition was correlated with lower inorganic N (-49%), especially ammonium, suggesting N availability is coupled with decomposition. The relative increase in forms of soil organic matter that are resistant to decay or stabilized onto mineral surfaces, and the associated decline in decomposition suggest that low-intensity fires may promote mineral soil C storage in pools with long mean residence times in coniferous forests

A Conversation with Robert Hatten about A Theory of Virtual Agency for Western Art Music

From August to October 2020, the Brazilian Society for Music Theory and Analysis (TeMA) held a series of five online meetings, each featuring a well-stablished theorist who presented one of his/her recent publications. Following the guest speaker’s presentation, a discussion session ensued, featuring guests from TeMA. On August 20th, TeMA received Robert Hatten to open the series, who was invited to talk about his most recent book: A Theory of Virtual Agency for Western Art Music (2018). Six guests from TeMA joined Hatten for the discussion session: Maria Lúcia Machado Pascoal, Cristina Capparelli Gerling, Flavio Santos Pereira, Diósnio Machado Neto, Guilherme Sauerbronn de Barros, and Paulo de Tarso Salles. Aiming at bringing Hatten’s presentation and the lively ensuing discussion to a wider audience, this essay presents an edited transcription of this meeting

Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers

© 2020 The Authors.Fire is a powerful ecological and evolutionary force that regulates organismal traits, population sizes, species interactions, community composition, carbon and nutrient cycling and ecosystem function. It also presents a rapidly growing societal challenge, due to both increasingly destructive wildfires and fire exclusion in fire‐dependent ecosystems. As an ecological process, fire integrates complex feedbacks among biological, social and geophysical processes, requiring coordination across several fields and scales of study. Here, we describe the diversity of ways in which fire operates as a fundamental ecological and evolutionary process on Earth. We explore research priorities in six categories of fire ecology: (a) characteristics of fire regimes, (b) changing fire regimes, (c) fire effects on above‐ground ecology, (d) fire effects on below‐ground ecology, (e) fire behaviour and (f) fire ecology modelling. We identify three emergent themes: the need to study fire across temporal scales, to assess the mechanisms underlying a variety of ecological feedbacks involving fire and to improve representation of fire in a range of modelling contexts. Synthesis: As fire regimes and our relationships with fire continue to change, prioritizing these research areas will facilitate understanding of the ecological causes and consequences of future fires and rethinking fire management alternatives.Support was provided by NSF‐DEB‐1743681 to K.K.M. and A.J.T. We thank Shalin Hai‐Jew for helpful discussion of the survey and qualitative methods.Peer reviewe