Listening to the Lomax archive: the sonic rhetorics of American vernacular music in the 1930s

This dissertation brings to rhetoric a study of vernacular music that amplifies what is known about rhythmic practice in the rhetorical tradition. Responding to emergent conversations at the intersection of rhetorical and sound studies, this work engages with questions about sound and music’s rhetorical roles in myth making, racial formation, cultural eloquence, progressive thought, and historiography. While recent scholarship has identified the sonic elements of rhetoric’s classical roots, I argue that vernacular, folk, or “roots” music can be a key element—a sonic rhetoric—for interpreting the ebb and flow of cultural ideals within more contemporary historical moments, particularly during times of crisis. In 1933, folklorists John A. Lomax and his son Alan set out as emissaries for the Library of Congress to record the “folksong of the American Negro” in several Southern African-American prisons. As this dissertation demonstrates, the music they gathered for the Library’s Folklife Archive contributed to a new mythology of “authentic” Americana for a people in financial, social, and identity crisis. During the 1930s, this music had paradoxical effects: even as the songs reified long-held conservative orthodoxies, they also performed as agents for social change and reconstitution. The recordings the Lomaxes made in the prisons, for example, were produced under the coercive auspices of white privilege, yet also provided incarcerated African-American men rhetorical agency they would not otherwise have enjoyed. Similarly, pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton enjoined Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress in his desire to insert and authenticate himself within the early history of jazz. He did so through deftly articulated sonic rhetorics—virtuosic performances and oral histories—but the recorded sessions brought more fortune and fame to Lomax than Morton, who died soon after. By 1939, Lomax was hosting a national radio program titled Folk Songs of America (one of many programs on CBS’s American School of the Air) where, with a particularly authentic American irony, songs recorded in the prison yard were silently repurposed by professional musicians and broadcast to the country’s white suburban classrooms

Effect of Iodine on Mercury Concentrations in Dental-unit Wastewater

Dental amalgam is a mixture of mercury, silver, tin, and copper. Mercury typically makes up about 50% of it. The amalgam is used to provide the dental patient with a strong durable filling. Some of the dental amalgam may end up in the dental wastewater along with the water used for rinsing. Iodine is often used to control bacteria in dental-unit fresh waterlines. Could Iodine effect mercury concentrations in the wastewater?ISTC partnered with researchers at the Naval Institute for Dental and Biomedical Research to answer that question. Full results appear in Stone, Mark E., et al (2006). "Effect of Iodine on Mercury Concentrations in Dental-unit Wastewater." Dental Materials 22(2), 119-124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dental.2005.04.009.Ope

Crumple: A Method for Complete Enumeration of All Possible Pseudoknot-Free RNA Secondary Structures

The computing for this project was performed at the OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER) at the University of Oklahoma (OU). OSCER director Henry Neeman and OSCER staff provided valuable technical expertise. The authors acknowledge and appreciate the discussions about this work with Dr. Changwook Kim, Adam Heck, Sean Lavelle, and Jui-wen Liu.Conceived and designed the experiments: SB SJS. Performed the experiments: SB JWS. Analyzed the data: SB JWS SJS. Wrote the paper: SB JWS SJS.The diverse landscape of RNA conformational space includes many canyons and crevices that are distant from the lowest minimum free energy valley and remain unexplored by traditional RNA structure prediction methods. A complete description of the entire RNA folding landscape can facilitate identification of biologically important conformations. The Crumple algorithm rapidly enumerates all possible non-pseudoknotted structures for an RNA sequence without consideration of thermodynamics while filtering the output with experimental data. The Crumple algorithm provides an alternative approach to traditional free energy minimization programs for RNA secondary structure prediction. A complete computation of all non-pseudoknotted secondary structures can reveal structures that would not be predicted by methods that sample the RNA folding landscape based on thermodynamic predictions. The free energy minimization approach is often successful but is limited by not considering RNA tertiary and protein interactions and the possibility that kinetics rather than thermodynamics determines the functional RNA fold. Efficient parallel computing and filters based on experimental data make practical the complete enumeration of all non-pseudoknotted structures. Efficient parallel computing for Crumple is implemented in a ring graph approach. Filters for experimental data include constraints from chemical probing of solvent accessibility, enzymatic cleavage of paired or unpaired nucleotides, phylogenetic covariation, and the minimum number and lengths of helices determined from crystallography or cryo-electron microscopy. The minimum number and length of helices has a significant effect on reducing conformational space. Pairing constraints reduce conformational space more than single nucleotide constraints. Examples with Alfalfa Mosaic Virus RNA and Trypanosome brucei guide RNA demonstrate the importance of evaluating all possible structures when pseduoknots, RNA-protein interactions, and metastable structures are important for biological function. Crumple software is freely available at http://adenosine.chem.ou.edu/software.html.Yeshttp://www.plosone.org/static/editorial#pee

Cost-effectiveness of secondary screening modalities for hypertension

Background: Clinic-based blood pressure (CBP) has been the default approach for the diagnosis of hypertension, but patients may be misclassified because of masked hypertension (false negative) or ‘white coat’ hypertension (false positive). The incorporation of other diagnostic modalities, such as home blood pressure monitoring (HBPM) and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM), holds promise to improve diagnostic accuracy and subsequent treatment decisions. Materials and methods: We reviewed the literature on the costs and cost-effectiveness of adding HBPM and ABPM to routine blood pressure screening in adults. We excluded letters, editorials, and studies of pregnant and/or pre-eclamptic patients, children, and patients with specific conditions (e.g. diabetes). Results: We identified 14 original, English language studies that included cost outcomes and compared two or more modalities. ABPM was found to be cost saving for diagnostic confirmation following an elevated CBP in six studies. Three of four studies found that adding HBPM to an elevated CBP was also cost-effective. Conclusion: Existing evidence supports the cost-effectiveness of incorporating HBPM or ABPM after an initial CBP-based diagnosis of hypertension. Future research should focus on their implementation in clinical practice, long-term economic values, and potential roles in identifying masked hypertension

Heterogeneity of Plaque Structural Stress Is Increased in Plaques Leading to MACE: Insights From the PROSPECT Study.

OBJECTIVES: This study sought to determine if plaque structural stress (PSS) and other plaque stress parameters are increased in plaques that cause future major adverse cardiovascular event(s) (MACE) and if incorporating these parameters improves predictive capability of intravascular ultrasonography (IVUS). BACKGROUND: Less than 10% of coronary plaques identified as high-risk by intravascular imaging result in subsequent MACE. Thus, more specific measurements of plaque vulnerability are required for effective risk stratification. METHODS: Propensity score matching in the PROSPECT (Providing Regional Observations to Study Predictors of Events in the Coronary Tree) study plaque cohort resulted in 35 nonculprit lesions (NCL) associated with future MACE and 66 matched NCL that remained clinically silent. PSS was calculated by finite element analysis as the mechanical loading within the plaque structure in the periluminal region. RESULTS: PSS was increased in the minimal luminal area (MLA) regions of NCL MACE versus no MACE plaques for all plaques (PSS: 112.1 ± 5.5 kPa vs. 90.4 ± 3.3 kPa, respectively; p = 0.001) and virtual histology thin-cap fibroatheromas (VH-TCFAs) (PSS: 119.2 ± 6.6 kPa vs. 95.8 ± 5.0 kPa, respectively; p = 0.005). However, PSS was heterogeneous over short segments, and PSS heterogeneity index (HI) was markedly greater in NCL MACE than in no-MACE VH-TCFAs (HI: 0.43 ± 0.05 vs. 0.29 ± 0.03, respectively; p = 0.01). Inclusion of PSS in plaque assessment improved the identification of NCLs that led to MACE, including in VH-TCFAs (p = 0.03) and plaques with MLA ≤4 mm2 (p = 0.03). Incorporation of an HI further improved the ability of PSS to identify MACE NCLs in a variety of plaque subtypes including VH-TCFA (p = 0.001) and plaques with MLA ≤4 mm2 (p = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS: PSS and variations in PSS are increased in the peri-MLA regions of plaques that lead to MACE. Moreover, longitudinal heterogeneity in PSS is markedly increased in MACE plaques, especially VH-TCFAs, potentially predisposing to plaque rupture. Incorporation of PSS and heterogeneity in PSS may improve the ability of IVUS to predict MACE.BH

Intravascular Lithotripsy for Treatment of Calcified Coronary Lesions: Patient-Level Pooled Analysis of the Disrupt CAD Studies.

Abstract Objectives The aim of this pooled analysis was to assess the cumulative safety and effectiveness of coronary intravascular lithotripsy (IVL). Background The clinical outcomes of IVL to opt..

On the combination of omics data for prediction of binary outcomes

Enrichment of predictive models with new biomolecular markers is an important task in high-dimensional omic applications. Increasingly, clinical studies include several sets of such omics markers available for each patient, measuring different levels of biological variation. As a result, one of the main challenges in predictive research is the integration of different sources of omic biomarkers for the prediction of health traits. We review several approaches for the combination of omic markers in the context of binary outcome prediction, all based on double cross-validation and regularized regression models. We evaluate their performance in terms of calibration and discrimination and we compare their performance with respect to single-omic source predictions. We illustrate the methods through the analysis of two real datasets. On the one hand, we consider the combination of two fractions of proteomic mass spectrometry for the calibration of a diagnostic rule for the detection of early-stage breast cancer. On the other hand, we consider transcriptomics and metabolomics as predictors of obesity using data from the Dietary, Lifestyle, and Genetic determinants of Obesity and Metabolic syndrome (DILGOM) study, a population-based cohort, from Finland

Heavy Quark Symmetry Violation in Semileptonic Decays of D Mesons

The decays of $D$ mesons to $K l \nu$ and $K^* l \nu$ final states exhibit significant deviations from the predictions of heavy-quark symmetry, as one might expect since the strange quark's mass is of the same order as the QCD scale. Nonetheless, in order to understand where the most significant effects might lie for heavier systems (such as $B \to D l\nu$ and $B \to D^* l\nu$), the pattern of these deviations is analyzed from the standpoint of perturbative QCD and ${\cal O}(1/m_s)$ corrections. Two main effects are noted. First, the perturbative QCD corrections lead to an overall decrease of predicted rates, which can be understood in terms of production of excited kaonic states. Second, ${\cal O}(1/m_s)$ effects tend to cancel the perturbative QCD corrections in the case of $Kl\nu$ decay, while they have minimal effect in $K^*l\nu$ decay.Comment: 25 pages (LaTeX) + 7 pages of Postscript figures (included at end), EFI-92-3