K-Pop Genres: A Cross-Cultural Exploration

The Proceedings can be viewed at: http://www.ppgia.pucpr.br/ismir2013/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Proceedings-ISMIR2013-Final.pdfPoster Session 3Current music genre research tends to focus heavily on classical and popular music from Western cultures. Few studies discuss the particular challenges and issues related to non-Western music. The objective of this study is to improve our understanding of how genres are used and perceived in different cultures. In particular, this study attempts to fill gaps in our understanding by examining K-pop music genres used in Korea and comparing them with genres used in North America. We provide background information on K-pop genres by analyzing 602 genre-related labels collected from eight major music distribution websites in Korea. In addition, we report upon a user study in which American and Korean users annotated genre information for 1894 K-pop songs in order to understand how their perceptions might differ or agree. The results show higher consistency among Korean users than American users demonstrated by the difference in Fleiss’ Kappa values and proportion of agreed genre labels. Asymmetric disagreements between Americans and Koreans on specific genres reveal some interesting differences in the perception of genres. Our findings provide some insights into challenges developers may face in creating global music services.published_or_final_versio

Routing and re-routing in a LEO/MEO two-tier mobile satellite communications system with inter-satellite links

A novel LEO/MEO two-tier satellite communication system with inter-satellite links (ISLs) is proposed for providing multimedia services to global mobile users. This two-tier system architecture can reduce the transmission delay for long-distance users via MEO satellites while keeping the benefits of using LEO satellites as the service access nodes. The routing and re-routing during a handoff operation is simplified. Since the physical topology of the underlying network is time-dependent, routing is crucial for guaranteeing the delay and delay variation performance for interactive applications. We decompose the routing problem into two parts, routing in the access network and routing in the core MEO ISL network. For the access network, a new routing algorithm called the maximum holding access protocol (MHAP) is proposed for minimizing the number of LEO handoffs. For core MEO ISL network, both minimum transmission delay routing (MTDR) and minimum transmission time jitter routing (MTTJR) are investigated. Using computer simulations, we show that the proposed routing algorithms can reduce the probability of call re-routing and thus are very suitable for providing interactive multimedia services.published_or_final_versio

Music information behaviors and system preferences of university students in Hong Kong

The Conference proceedings' website is located at http://www.terasoft.com.tw/conf/ismir2014/Proceedings.htmlThis paper presents a user study on music information needs and behaviors of university students in Hong Kong. A mix of quantitative and qualitative methods was used. A survey was completed by 101 participants and supplemental interviews were conducted in order to investigate users’ music information related activities. We found that university students in Hong Kong listened to music frequently and mainly for the purposes of entertainment, singing and playing instruments, and stress reduction. This user group often searches for music with multiple methods, but common access points like genre and time period were rarely used. Sharing music with people in their online social networks such as Facebook and Weibo was a common activity. Furthermore, the popularity of smartphones prompted the need for streaming music and mobile music applications. We also examined users’ preferences on music services available in Hong Kong such as YouTube and KKBox, as well as the characteristics liked and disliked by the users. The results not only offer insights into non-Western users’ music behaviors but also for designing online music services for young music listeners in Hong Kong. © Xiao Hu, Jin Ha Lee, Leanne Ka Yan Wong.published_or_final_versio

A cross-cultural study of mood in K-POP Songs

Prior research suggests that music mood is one of the most important criteria when people look for music – but the perception of mood may be subjective and can be influenced by many factors including the listeners’ cultural background. In recent years, the number of studies of music mood perceptions by various cultural groups and of automated mood classification of music from different cultures has been increasing. However, there has yet to be a well-established testbed for evaluating cross-cultural tasks in Music Information Retrieval (MIR). Moreover, most existing datasets in MIR consist mainly of Western music and the cultural backgrounds of the annotators were mostly not taken into consideration or were limited to one cultural group. In this study, we built a collection of 1,892 K-pop (Korean Pop) songs with mood annotations collected from both Korean and American listeners, based on three different mood models. We analyze the differences and similarities between the mood judgments of the two listener groups, and propose potential MIR tasks that can be evaluated on this dataset. © Xiao Hu, Jin Ha Lee, Kahyun Choi, J. Stephen Downie.published_or_final_versio

Elemental and Sr-Nd-Pb isotopic geochemistry of Mesozoic mafic intrusions in southern Fujian Province, SE China: Implications for lithospheric mantle evolution

Abstract Cretaceous mafic dykes in Fujian province, SE China provide an opportunity to examine the nature of their mantle source and the secular evolution of the Mesozoic lithospheric mantle beneath SE China. The mafic rocks have SiO2 ranging from 47.42 to 55.40 wt %, Al2O3 from 14.0 wt % to 20.4 wt %, CaO from 4.09 to 11.7 wt % and total alkaline (K2O+Na2O) from 2.15 wt % to 6.59 wt %. Two types are recognized based on their REE and primitive mantle-normalized trace element patterns. Type-A is the dominant Mesozoic mafic rock type in SE China and is characterized by enrichment of light rare earth elements (LREE) ((La/Yb)n = 2.85-19.0) and arc-like trace element geochemistry. Type-P has relatively flat REE patterns ((La/Yb)n = 1.68-3.43) and primitive mantle-like trace element patterns except for enrichment of Rb, Ba and Pb. Type-A samples show EMII signatures on the Sr-Nd isotopic diagram, whereas type-P rocks have high initial 143Nd/144Nd ratios (0.5126-0.5128) relative to the type-A rocks (143Nd/144Nd = 0.5124-0.5127). The type-A rocks have 207Pb/204Pb ranging from 15.47 to 15.67 and 206Pb/204Pb from 18.26 to 18.52. All the type-A rocks show a negative correlation between 143Nd/144Nd and 206Pb/204Pb ratios and a positive relationship between 87Sr/86 Sr and206Pb/204Pb ratios, indicating mixing of a depleted mantle source and an EMII component. Geochemical modelling shows that the parental magmas were formed by 5-15 % partial melting of a spinel lherzolite, and contaminated by less than 1 % melt derived from subducted sediment. The type-P magmas were derived from a mantle source unmodified by subduction components. The wide distribution of type-A dykes in SE China suggests that subduction-modified lithospheric mantle was extensive beneath the Cathaysia Block. Geochemical differences between Mesozoic and Cenozoic mafic rocks indicate that lithospheric thinning beneath SE China occurred in two episodes: firstly by heterogeneous modification by subducted components in early Mesozoic times, and later by chemical-mechanical erosion related to convective upwelling of the asthenosphere during Cenozoic times. © 2007 Cambridge University Press.published_or_final_versio

A novel push-and-pull hybrid data broadcast scheme for wireless information networks

A new push-and-pull hybrid data broadcast scheme is proposed for providing wireless information services to three types of clients, general, pull and priority clients. Only pull and priority clients have the back channel for sending requests to the broadcast server. There is no scalability problem with the hybrid scheme because the amount of pull and priority clients is very small. Based on the requests collected from pull and priority clients, the server estimates the interest pattern changes of the whole client population. Then the broadcast schedule on the push channel for the next broadcast cycle is adjusted. Besides the push channel, a small amount of broadcast bandwidth is allocated to a pull channel. The data to be broadcast on the pull channel is decided by the server in real-time and priority is given to requests from priority clients. Simulations show that with a time-varying client interest pattern, the average data access time for all three types of clients can be minimized. Because of the priority in using the pull channel, priority clients can achieve the lowest access time and pull clients can achieve a lower access time than general clients. To further improve the performance, the hybrid scheme with local client cache is also investigated.published_or_final_versio

Performance modelling and analysis of software defined networking

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging architecture for the next-generation Internet, providing unprecedented network programmability to handle the explosive growth of Big Data driven by the popularisation of smart mobile devices and the pervasiveness of content-rich multimedia applications. In order to quantitatively investigate the performance characteristics of SDN networks, several research efforts from both simulation experiments and analytical modelling have been reported in the current literature. Among those studies, analytical modelling has demonstrated its superiority in terms of cost-effectiveness in the evaluation of large-scale networks. However, for analytical tractability and simplification, existing analytical models are derived based on the unrealistic assumptions that the network traffic follows the Poisson process which is suitable to model non-bursty text data and the data plane of SDN is modelled by one simplified Single Server Single Queue (SSSQ) system. Recent measurement studies have shown that, due to the features of heavy volume and high velocity, the multimedia big data generated by real-world multimedia applications reveals the bursty and correlated nature in the network transmission. With the aim of the capturing such features of realistic traffic patterns and obtaining a comprehensive and deeper understanding of the performance behaviour of SDN networks, this paper presents a new analytical model to investigate the performance of SDN in the presence of the bursty and correlated arrivals modelled by Markov Modulated Poisson Process (MMPP). The Quality-of-Service performance metrics in terms of the average latency and average network throughput of the SDN networks are derived based on the developed analytical model. To consider realistic multi-queue system of forwarding elements, a Priority-Queue (PQ) system is adopted to model SDN data plane. To address the challenging problem of obtaining the key performance metrics, e.g., queue length distribution of PQ system with a given service capacity, a versatile methodology extending the Empty Buffer Approximation (EBA) method is proposed to facilitate the decomposition of such a PQ system to two SSSQ systems. The validity of the proposed model is demonstrated through extensive simulation experiments. To illustrate its application, the developed model is then utilised to study the strategy of the network configuration and resource allocation in SDN networksThis work is supported by the EU FP7 “QUICK” Project (Grant NO. PIRSES-GA-2013-612652) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant NO. 61303241)

Tolerance of banana for fusarium wilt is associated with early H2O2 accumulation in the roots

Banana plants derived from a tissue culture process possess a high rate of random variations that were widely used as popular cultivars due to the new desired traits. In this study, two near-isogenic lines, one susceptible (parental Williams-8818) and the other resistant (somaclonal variation progeny Williams-8818-1 from Williams-8818) to Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. Cubense (Foc4), were inoculated with race 4 of F. oxysporum (Fox). Production of O2•− , H2O2 and MDA, as well as changes in enzyme activities, and transcript levels of SOD and CAT in root extracts were monitored every 24 h over 4 days. The histochemical location of H2O2 was also detected. In the resistant iso-line, the accumulation of O2•− and H2O2, and the activation of SOD occurred in the first 24 h, but activation of CAT reached its maximum only after 48 h. All changes were generally lower in the susceptible iso-line when compared to the resistant iso-line. SOD transcripts were further up-regulated until 72 h in the resistant iso-line, but not in the susceptible iso-line. CAT expression was not affected in any of the two iso-lines. This suggests that expressions of the two key genes in the antioxidant system are less suitable indicators for Foc resistance in banana. In contrast, the first “oxidative burst” is a better indicator for different susceptibility of banana to Foc.Key words: Banana, Fusarium oxysporum, catalase, reactive oxygen species, somaclonal variation, disease resistance

Value of micro-CT for monitoring spinal microvascular changes after chronic spinal cord compression

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Vortex deformation and breaking in superconductors: A microscopic description

Vortex breaking has been traditionally studied for nonuniform critical current densities, although it may also appear due to nonuniform pinning force distributions. In this article we study the case of a high-pinning/low-pinning/high-pinning layered structure. We have developed an elastic model for describing the deformation of a vortex in these systems in the presence of a uniform transport current density $J$ for any arbitrary orientation of the transport current and the magnetic field. If $J$ is above a certain critical value, $J_c$, the vortex breaks and a finite effective resistance appears. Our model can be applied to some experimental configurations where vortex breaking naturally exists. This is the case for YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-x}$ (YBCO) low angle grain boundaries and films on vicinal substrates, where the breaking is experienced by Abrikosov-Josephson vortices (AJV) and Josephson string vortices (SV), respectively. With our model, we have experimentally extracted some intrinsic parameters of the AJV and SV, such as the line tension $\epsilon_l$ and compared it to existing predictions based on the vortex structure.Comment: 11 figures in 13 files; minor changes after printing proof