The Lark on the Strand: A Study of a Traditional Irish Flute Player and His Music

This thesis provides an in-depth study of a traditional Irish flute player, Jack Coen. Jack, raised in the village of Woodford in County Galway, immigrated to America in 1949 at the age of twenty-four. With his large repertoire of Irish traditional dance tunes, Jack has played music at parties, dances, with the New York Ceilidhe Band, and at festivals such as the 1976 Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C. Jack teaches the flute and the tin whistle and is recognized both as a teacher and as a player. By examining Jack Coen’s music we learn about the style, technique, and repertoire of a traditional Irish flute player. And by focusing on the performer, we observe the relationship between the stylistic features of Jacks’ music and his sense of musical aesthetics; that is, his perception of how the traditional Irish flute should sound and the way in which he aims to achieve a musical quality on the flute. From the performer we also understand more about the traditional process of transmission by discovering how the music has been learned, the different situations of performance, and the manner in which the music is taught. This understanding provides us with the knowledge of how the music has been carried on from generation to generation and by whom. In the case of Jack Coen, and the many Irish immigrant musicians who came to America before him, we see how an Irish musical tradition has functioned when transplanted to another culture

Application of Photovoice with Focus Groups to Explore Dietary Behaviors of Older Filipino Adults with Cardiovascular Disease

Filipino Americans have high rates of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). This study explored the dietary behaviors, a modifiable risk factor, of Filipinos with CVD. Filipinos with CVD were recruited and trained to do Photovoice. Participants took photos to depict their “food experience,” defined as their daily dietary activities. Participants then shared their photos during focus groups. Focus group transcripts were analyzed using an iterative, grounded theory approach. Among 38 Filipino participants, the mean age was 70 years old and all were foreign-born. Major themes included efforts to retain connection to Filipino culture through food, and dietary habits shaped by cultural health beliefs. Many believed that traditional dietary practices increased CVD risk. Receiving a CVD diagnosis and clinician advice changed their dietary behaviors. Household members, the physical environment, and economic constraints also influenced dietary behaviors. Photovoice is feasible among older Filipinos and may enhance understanding of drivers of dietary behaviors

Simulations suggest a constrictive force is required for Gram-negative bacterial cell division

To divide, Gram-negative bacterial cells must remodel cell wall at the division site. It remains debated, however, whether this cell wall remodeling alone can drive membrane constriction, or if a constrictive force from the tubulin homolog FtsZ is required. Previously, we constructed software (REMODELER 1) to simulate cell wall remodeling during growth. Here, we expanded this software to explore cell wall division (REMODELER 2). We found that simply organizing cell wall synthesis complexes at the midcell is not sufficient to cause invagination, even with the implementation of a make-before-break mechanism, in which new hoops of cell wall are made inside the existing hoops before bonds are cleaved. Division can occur, however, when a constrictive force brings the midcell into a compressed state before new hoops of relaxed cell wall are incorporated between existing hoops. Adding a make-before-break mechanism drives division with a smaller constrictive force sufficient to bring the midcell into a relaxed, but not necessarily compressed, state

Adolescent Medicine at the Crossroads: A Review of Fellowship Training and Recommendations for Reform

This report examines the current state of adolescent medicine fellowship programs -- including the supply and recruitment of fellows; the nature and content of clinical, research, and leadership training; and the institutional and financial challenges facing training programs today -- and offers recommendations for building the field. The report is based on findings from the first comprehensive national survey of adolescent medicine fellowship program directors, conducted in the spring of 2007 by Incenter Strategies. The document also presents selected findings from two other Incenter Strategies’ surveys conducted in 2007: one of pediatric residency program directors and the other of adolescent medicine faculty responsible for the one-month pediatric residency rotation. In addition, the report presents findings from key informant interviews and an extensive literature review

Serendipitous Discovery of PSR J1431-6328 as a Highly-Polarized Point Source with the Australian SKA Pathfinder

We identified a highly-polarized, steep-spectrum radio source in a deep image with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope at 888 MHz. After considering and rejecting a stellar origin for this source, we discovered a new millisecond pulsar (MSP) using observations from the Parkes radio telescope. This pulsar has period 2.77 ms and dispersion measure 228.27 pc/cm**3. Although this pulsar does not yet appear to be particularly remarkable, the short spin period, wide profile and high dispersion measure do make it relatively hard to discover through traditional blind periodicity searches. Over the course of several weeks we see changes in the barycentric period of this pulsar that are consistent with orbital motion in a binary system, but the properties of any binary need to be confirmed by further observations. While even a deep ASKAP survey may not identify large numbers of new MSPs compared to the existing population, it would be competitive with existing all-sky surveys and could discover interesting new MSPs at high Galactic latitude without the need for computationally-expensive all-sky periodicity searches.Comment: ApJ, in pres

Incidence of WHO stage 3 and 4 conditions following initiation of Anti-Retroviral Therapy in resource limited settings

To determine the incidence of WHO clinical stage 3 and 4 conditions during early anti-retroviral therapy (ART) in resource limited settings (RLS)