The Musical Conventions of Star Trek: A Search for Musical Syntax in Science Fiction

When setting out to write this thesis it was with the purpose to understand modern film scoring. The question I was asking myself was in the lines of: ''What is going on with modern film music? This does not sound like it used to! There is a subtle difference - what is it?'' What I was trying to formulate back then was that I had noticed a change of focus in film music of today, i.e. how composers now choose to ''talk'' to the audience. My theory was that film music was moving away from the strong concept of melody given to us with John Williams and Star Wars, to make room for texture: Enormous walls of sound featuring huge orchestras with lots and lots of synths and sound effects. This made me think that perhaps the new leitmotif was texture. My wanderings aside however, the scope of a single thesis is not enough to cover such an extensive topic. But, one must start some place and I landed on figuring out how film music has evolved. To further narrow it down I chose to study science fiction, specifically the music of Star Trek. Star Trek is a special case in movie history. It has been running since 1969 in one form or another. The first movie came out in 1979 and the last one in 2013. It is ideal to use as a case tracking its evolution over time. The most available material to conduct research on is the Star Trek motion pictures. All of the scores has been released as special edition CD's containing most cues from the motion pictures, making it easy to focus on the music. I will discuss Star Trek in depth in chapter 2. But even so, there are no official scores to procure. I was able to get in touch with people able to help me get a look at the actual scores used during the different recording sessions, but that meant traveling to Hollywood and Paramount studios. By the time I had gotten this information any window to apply for funding was past. Therefore I chose to transcribe the music myself. One challenge of transcribing music this detailed is the amount of time required transcribing the examples. With twelve movies to chose from the question regarding what I was going to focus on arose. Star Trek is divided into four epochs. I thought it best to choose two movies from each epoch. One composer in the Star Trek universe stands out: Jerry Goldsmith. He has scored five of the twelve movies during a timespan of 23 year making him part of the quintessential sound of Star Trek. The choice fell on the two first films, ''The Motion Picture'', by Goldsmith and ''The Wrath of Kahn'', by James Horner. Both critically acclaimed for their music. The next obvious candidates was the newest films from the reboot series: ''Star Trek'' and ''Into Darkness'' featuring composer Michael Giacchino. What to chose from ''The Next Generation'' era was harder. I wanted to study how the music has evolved over time therefore looking for some sort of continuity. The choice fell on Goldsmiths scores for ''First Contact'' and ''Nemesis''. I present my analysis in chapter 5 through 10. That being said, the other scores are well worth the attention and should be included in a later research. A table containing the complete list of Star Trek movies can be found on page 27 and the complete list of all composers associated with the Star Trek universe can be found on page 29. Now my quest was crystalizing, I wanted to study the musical conventions of Star Trek. How to go about it? My formal training is for the most part traditional so the analytical tools I already knew was not ideal to handle the diverse tonality of movie scores. I knew ''Hollywoodian'' movie scores since Erich Wolfgang Korngold and John Williams had their roots in nineteen century classical music, also know as the romantic period of classical music. Romantic music is mostly tonal, meaning it uses major and minor chords and scales to build the tonality, but it is not necessarily functional. By that I mean progressions build upon the circle of fifths and the famous I - IV - V7 - I. This brings us to the idea of a tonic, a tonal ''home'' where we feel at peace after pursuing the chord furthest away from the tonic, the dominant. It would be wrong to say that romantic music does not utilize the idea of a tonic, but it was not a concept expanded upon as they did in the classical era. Instead they had what I call tonal centers. These are focal point for any given progression and stands as the root of origin. This differentiation is necessary because harmonic progressions can be made with a different logic than that of the circle of fifths. There are plenty of analytic tools to chose from when working with functional music and atonal music but I was having a hard time finding the right tool for non-unified tonal music. After some research I came upon Frank Lehman's dissertation on ''Reading Tonality Through Film: Transformational Hermeneutics and the Music of Hollywood'' (2012). His research was focusing on neo-Riemannian Theory, a theory made to address the analytical challenges nineteen century music presented, applied to film music. I will discuss the application and execution of this theory in chapter 4. To further explain how my analysis is constructed, I will discuss music analysis in general in chapter 3. To aid the reader in analytic process I have chosen to include the transcriptions immediately following the corresponding analysis. The analytic legend will be discussed on page 31 and finally I will present my conclusions in chapter 11. As a final note I want to talk about what I am not covering in this thesis. First of all, I have chosen to use musical terms and notation to explain my findings. This means the reader will have to have a fairly advanced understanding of musical theory to fully appreciate the content of this thesis. I will not talk about film music history in general: How the film music traditions has evolved from live music to Korngold to Steiner to Williams and even Zimmer is extremely interesting, but it is covered to such an extent elsewhere there simply is no point including it and secondly, I do not believe being reminded of this knowledge will have an impact on the understanding of the main topic of this thesis. My goal is that the content of this thesis provides ample understanding of the main analysis and that the reader will come to appreciate the inner workings of the music in question and how it has evolved

Structure and dynamics of the fast lithium ion conductor "li 7La3Zr2O12"

The solid lithium-ion electrolyte "Li7La3Zr 2O12" (LLZO) with a garnet-type structure has been prepared in the cubic and tetragonal modification following conventional ceramic syntheses routes. Without aluminium doping tetragonal LLZO was obtained, which shows a two orders of magnitude lower room temperature conductivity than the cubic modification. Small concentrations of Al in the order of 1 wt% were sufficient to stabilize the cubic phase, which is known as a fast lithium-ion conductor. The structure and ion dynamics of Al-doped cubic LLZO were studied by impedance spectroscopy, dc conductivity measurements, 6Li and 7Li NMR, XRD, neutron powder diffraction, and TEM precession electron diffraction. From the results we conclude that aluminium is incorporated in the garnet lattice on the tetrahedral 24d Li site, thus stabilizing the cubic LLZO modification. Simulations based on diffraction data show that even at the low temperature of 4 K the Li ions are blurred over various crystallographic sites. This strong Li ion disorder in cubic Al-stabilized LLZO contributes to the high conductivity observed. The Li jump rates and the activation energy probed by NMR are in very good agreement with the transport parameters obtained from electrical conductivity measurements. The activation energy Ea characterizing long-range ion transport in the Al-stabilized cubic LLZO amounts to 0.34 eV. Total electric conductivities determined by ac impedance and a four point dc technique also agree very well and range from 1 × 10-4 Scm-1 to 4 × 10-4 Scm-1 depending on the Al content of the samples. The room temperature conductivity of Al-free tetragonal LLZO is about two orders of magnitude lower (2 × 10 -6 Scm-1, Ea = 0.49 eV activation energy). The electronic partial conductivity of cubic LLZO was measured using the Hebb-Wagner polarization technique. The electronic transference number te- is of the order of 10-7. Thus, cubic LLZO is an almost exclusive lithium ion conductor at ambient temperature. © the Owner Societies 2011

Experimental Virus Evolution Reveals a Role of Plant Microtubule Dynamics and TORTIFOLIA1/SPIRAL2 in RNA Trafficking

The cytoskeleton is a dynamic network composed of filamentous polymers and regulatory proteins that provide a flexible structural scaffold to the cell and plays a fundamental role in developmental processes. Mutations that alter the spatial orientation of the cortical microtubule (MT) array of plants are known to cause important changes in the pattern of cell wall synthesis and developmental phenotypes; however, the consequences of such alterations on other MT-network-associated functions in the cytoplasm are not known. In vivo observations suggested a role of cortical MTs in the formation and movement of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) RNA complexes along the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Thus, to probe the significance of dynamic MT behavior in the coordination of MT-network-associated functions related to TMV infection and, thus, in the formation and transport of RNA complexes in the cytoplasm, we performed an evolution experiment with TMV in Arabidopsis thaliana tor1/spr2 and tor2 mutants with specific defects in MT dynamics and asked whether TMV is sensitive to these changes. We show that the altered cytoskeleton induced genetic changes in TMV that were correlated with efficient spread of infection in the mutant hosts. These observations demonstrate a role of dynamic MT rearrangements and of the MT-associated protein TORTIFOLIA1/SPIRAL2 in cellular functions related to virus spread and indicate that MT dynamics and MT-associated proteins represent constraints for virus evolution and adaptation. The results highlight the importance of the dynamic plasticity of the MT network in directing cytoplasmic functions in macromolecular assembly and trafficking and illustrate the value of experimental virus evolution for addressing the cellular functions of dynamic, long-range order systems in multicellular organisms.Instituto de Biotecnologia y Biologia Molecula

Web 2.0 systems supporting childhood chronic disease management: A pattern language representation of a general architecture

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chronic disease management is a global health concern. By the time they reach adolescence, 10–15% of all children live with a chronic disease. The role of educational interventions in facilitating adaptation to chronic disease is receiving growing recognition, and current care policies advocate greater involvement of patients in self-care. Web 2.0 is an umbrella term for new collaborative Internet services characterized by user participation in developing and managing content. Key elements include Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to rapidly disseminate awareness of new information; weblogs (blogs) to describe new trends, wikis to share knowledge, and podcasts to make information available on personal media players. This study addresses the potential to develop Web 2.0 services for young persons with a chronic disease. It is acknowledged that the management of childhood chronic disease is based on interplay between initiatives and resources on the part of patients, relatives, and health care professionals, and where the balance shifts over time to the patients and their families.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Participatory action research was used to stepwise define a design specification in the form of a pattern language. Support for children diagnosed with diabetes Type 1 was used as the example area. Each individual design pattern was determined graphically using card sorting methods, and textually in the form <it>Title, Context, Problem, Solution, Examples and References</it>. <it>Application references </it>were included at the lowest level in the graphical overview in the pattern language but not specified in detail in the textual descriptions.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The design patterns are divided into functional and non-functional design elements, and formulated at the levels of organizational, system, and application design. The design elements specify access to materials for development of the competences needed for chronic disease management in specific community settings, endorsement of self-learning through online peer-to-peer communication, and systematic accreditation and evaluation of materials and processes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The use of design patterns allows representing the core design elements of a Web 2.0 system upon which an 'ecological' development of content respecting these constraints can be built. Future research should include evaluations of Web 2.0 systems implemented according to the architecture in practice settings.</p

Developmental Plasticity of the Amphibious Liverwort Riccia fluitans

The colonization of land by ancestors of embryophyte plants was one of the most significant evolutionary events in the history of life on earth. The lack of a buffering aquatic environment necessitated adaptations for coping with novel abiotic challenges, particularly high light intensities and desiccation as well as the formation of novel anchoring structures. Bryophytes mark the transition from freshwater to terrestrial habitats and form adaptive features such as rhizoids for soil contact and water uptake, devices for gas exchange along with protective and repellent surface layers. The amphibious liverwort Riccia fluitans can grow as a land form (LF) or water form (WF) and was employed to analyze these critical traits in two different habitats. A combination of light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies was conducted to characterize and compare WF and LF morphologies. A complete phenotypic adaptation of a WF plant to a terrestrial habitat is accomplished within 15 days after the transition. Stable transgenic R. fluitans lines expressing GFP-TUBULIN and mCherry proteins were generated to study cell division and differentiation processes and revealed a higher cell division activity in enlarged meristematic regions at LF apical notches. Morphological studies demonstrated that the R. fluitans WF initiates air pore formation. However, these pores are arrested at an early four cell stage and do not develop further into open pores that could mediate gas exchange. Similarly, also arrested rhizoid initial cells are formed in the WF, which exhibit a distinctive morphology compared to other ventral epidermal cells. Furthermore, we detected that the LF thallus has a reduced surface permeability compared to the WF, likely mediated by formation of thicker LF cell walls and a distinct cuticle compared to the WF. Our R. fluitans developmental plasticity studies can serve as a basis to further investigate in a single genotype the molecular mechanisms of adaptations essential for plants during the conquest of land

Applications Note BiasViz: Visualization of amino acid biased regions in protein alignments

Summary: About a third of all protein sequences have at least one composition biased region (CBR). Such regions might act as linkers between protein domains but often confer specific binding to various molecules; therefore their characterization in terms of their boundaries and over-represented residues is important. Analysis of CBRs in a particular sequence can be time consuming if several types of biases have to be explored and their position visualized. Assessment of the significance of the detected CBRs can be approached by comparison to homologous protein sequences. To assist this procedure, we have developed BiasViz, a tool that allows to graphically studying local amino acid composition in protein sequences of a multiple sequence alignment. Availability: BiasViz java applet and source code can be accessed fro