A Performance Guide to Glenn Kotche\u27s Monkey Chant

Solo percussionist and composer Glenn Kotche has achieved international fame with his experimental percussion-based music, collaborating with and composing for renowned contemporary music ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, Band on a Can All-Stars, So Percussion, and Eighth Blackbird. One of his most celebrated compositions in recent years is Monkey Chant, which combines acoustic and electronic elements in a solo multiple percussion setting. Written and premiered in 2006, Kotche was inspired to compose Monkey Chant after listening to original field recordings in Bali from the Nonesuch Explorer Series. Found in these recordings is the popular Balinese music and dance drama known as Kecak. Monkey Chant showcases, through percussion, the intricate vocal patterns and recounting of the Ramayana Epic featured in Balinese Kecak. This monograph serves as an informational performance guide for Monkey Chant that simplifies and resolves performance questions and issues. It provides a contextual setting for the work with a brief biography of Glenn Kotche, including his musical influences and inspiration for the composition. Balinese Kecak is examined as well as the Hindu Ramayana tale as it relates to Kotche’s composition, revealing the function for its compositional form. This document also clarifies and details preparatory procedures for collecting and building the unique instruments required, also detailing schematics for electronic audio equipment and setup. Lastly, there is an analysis of compositional style and form, offering optional solutions to performance obstacles

High-Resolution Analysis Products to Support Severe Weather and Cloud-to-Ground Lightning Threat Assessments over Florida

The Applied Meteorology Unit (AMU) located at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC)/Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) implemented an operational configuration of the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) Data Analysis System (ADAS), as well as the ARPS numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. Operational, high-resolution ADAS analyses have been produced from this configuration at the National Weather Service in Melbourne, FL (NWS MLB) and the Spaceflight Meteorology Group (SMG) over the past several years. Since that time, ADAS fields have become an integral part of forecast operations at both NWS MLB and SMG. To continue providing additional utility, the AMU has been tasked to implement visualization products to assess the potential for supercell thunderstorms and significant tornadoes, and to improve assessments of short-term cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning potential. This paper and presentation focuses on the visualization products developed by the AMU for the operational high-resolution ADAS and AR.PS at the NWS MLB and SMG. The two severe weather threat graphics implemented within ADAS/ARPS are the Supercell Composite Parameter (SCP) and Significant Tornado Parameter (SIP). The SCP was designed to identify areas with supercell thunderstorm potential through a combination of several instability and shear parameters. The SIP was designed to identify areas that favor supercells producing significant tornadoes (F2 or greater intensity) versus non-tornadic supercells. Both indices were developed by the NOAAINWS Storm Prediction Center (SPC) and were normalized by key threshold values based on previous studies. The indices apply only to discrete storms, not other convective modes. In a post-analysis mode, the AMU calculated SCP and SIP for graphical output using an ADAS configuration similar to the operational set-ups at NWS MLB and SMG. Graphical images from ADAS were generated every 15 minutes for 13 August 2004, the day that Hurricane Charley approached and made landfall on the Florida peninsula. Several tornadoes struck the interior of the Florida peninsula in advance of Hurricane Charley's landfall during the daylight hours of 13 August. Since SPC had previously examined this case using SCP and SIP graphics generated from output of the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) model, this day served as a good benchmark to compare and validate the high-resolution ADAS graphics against the smoother RUC analyses, which serves as background fields to the ADAS analyses. The ADAS-generated SCP and STP graphics have been integrated into the suite of products examined operationally by NWS MLB forecasters and are used to provide additional guidance for assessment of the near-storm environment during convective situations

Concurrent Sessions 1A: Ramping It Up: From Marketing to Partnerships

Cleantech startups are all the rage, but what does it take for these companies to get to that next level? Marketing the new company\u27s brand or partnering with large companies with more resources? Either of these can help get innovations to market more quickly

Schematic Structural Design for Center for Centering (C4C)

The Center for Centering (C4C) is a meditative center for individuals to reflect and discover their own creativity. Based on a spoke and wheel concept, the center integrates social, sensory, environmental, and inductive spaces, allowing for individuals to discover themselves in different settings, while appearing as a striking sculpture conceived in a spiral gesture integrated in the local landscape. The location for this structure is in Santa Cruz, CA, on Swanton Ranch. The building is built on mostly flat terrain surrounded by sparse trees and an overlooking view of the ocean. The initial concept for the Center for Centering is inspired by the naturally layered structure of a succulent. This project is intended to be a place where residents can self-reflect and discover their own creativity in the direct contact of nature. The C4C structural dome houses four different experiential spaces; a social space within the dome, for connecting with others; surrounded by warm timber elements and shaded by the shadows of the woven dome, with a light breeze blowing past you and through the building. An inductive space, representing a place for solitude; for meditation; for quiet reflection.  A shallow indent on the floor will be filled with small clay balls, providing a space for visitors to lay back and relax, gazing up to the open sky above that will be visible through a ceiling opening resembling a human shape, reflecting in spirit the person lying down. A sensory space; a space with a large gong-like bowl affixed to one wall, inviting visitors to touch it, to engage with the bowl to emit sound that will resonate in the space, in the visitors’ ears, as well as through their body. And lastly, an environmental space; incorporating movement by inviting visitors to wander through a floor-level labyrinth. The main goal of the senior project design team was to provide two clients, Marcos Lutyens and Cynthia Campoy Brophy, with a practical schematic design that can be used to present the project to possible donors. By joining ARCH 551 for the quarter, the team was tasked to the “structures group”, whose goal would be to absorb architectural ideas and feedback from architects, professors, clients, and others, then assess the structural viability of them. Through the experience of the design team, the team was able to give the clients a more engineering-focused viewpoint. The structure of the building is composed of discontinuous timber pieces that form the main diagrid form of the main dome. The members are pin-connected, with a compression ring at the tip and where the dome meets the walls of the sensory spaces. The bottom of the dome is supported by concrete columns that curve in-plane to allow the form of the dome structure to be fully realized to the foundation. The pathway is made up of a series of three-hinged arches, also made with discontinuous timber pieces. The three spaces at the Northern face of the dome are designed with concrete, to allow for the free-form shapes which the architecture demands

Prenatal anxiety, maternal stroking in infancy, and symptoms of emotional and behavioral disorders at 3.5 years

Animal findings of long-term effects of maternal behaviors mediated via altered GR gene expression will, if translated into humans, have far reaching implications for our understanding of child and adolescent psychopathology. We have previously shown that mothers’ self-reported stroking of their infants modifies associations between prenatal depression and anxiety and child outcomes at 29 weeks and 2.5 years. Here, we examine whether the effect of early maternal stroking is evident at 3.5 years, and in a much larger sample than in previous publications. A general population sample of 1233 first-time mothers completed anxiety measures at 20 weeks gestation, 865 reported on infant stroking at 9 weeks, and 813 on child symptoms at 3.5 years. Maternal stroking moderated the association between pregnancy-specific anxiety and internalizing (p = 0.010) and externalizing (p = 0.004) scores, such that an effect of PSA to increase symptoms was markedly reduced for mothers who reported high levels of stroking. There was no effect of maternal stroking on general anxiety. The findings confirm the previously reported effect of maternal stroking, and in a much larger sample. They indicate that there are long-term effects of early maternal stroking, modifying associations between prenatal anxiety and child emotional and behavioral symptoms

Drama in Sprachpraxis at a German university English department: Practical solutions to pedagogical challenges

This article describes the initial phase of incorporating drama-in-education classes into the practical language curriculum of a German university English department. It offers a brief overview of drama in (higher) education, before focusing on some recent developments in Germany and the UK: specifically the current increase of interest in Theaterpädagogik in Germany, and the incorporation of performative pedagogy in UK higher education, with the example of an initiative at the University of Warwick. The practical language curriculum of the University of Tübingen English Department, within which the drama classes are being run, is introduced. A report on one of the classes is provided, with a short example of a student-led presentation session. After investigating some student feedback from the class, the article concludes by suggesting that a drama approach offers solutions to some challenges posed by the curriculum, and explains a brief rationale for its further development in this context

Macbeth in the higher education English language classroom

This paper presents the latest phase in an ongoing project to develop and widen the scope of drama-based classes in the practical language section of a German university English department. A brief overview of the use of literature in the (English) language classroom is given, with examples of some recent models, before turning to a consideration of practical drama-based approaches in Shakespeare education. This forms the background against which the main report on practice is presented. The Sprachpraxis section of the University of Tübingen English Department is briefly introduced before the focus shifts to the most recent example: a course on Shakespeare’s Macbeth involving drama-based methods. Course design, assessment and literature choice are discussed, before the pre- and post-course expectations and impressions are explored using data gathered from student questionnaires and teacher diary entries. Based on this analysis, initial outcomes are suggested for the continued progress of drama-based elements in the Sprachpraxis curriculum