The NASA master directory: Quick reference guide

This is a quick reference guide to the NASA Master Directory (MD), which is a free, online, multidisciplinary directory of space and Earth science data sets (NASA and non-NASA data) that are of potential interest to the NASA-sponsored research community. The MD contains high-level descriptions of data sets, other data systems and archives, and campaigns and projects. It provides mechanisms for searching for data sets by important criteria such as geophysical parameters, time, and spatial coverage, and provides information on ordering the data. It also provides automatic connections to a number of data systems such as the NASA Climate Data System, the Planetary Data System, the NASA Ocean Data System, the Pilot Land Data System, and others. The MD includes general information about many data systems, data centers, and coordinated data analysis projects, It represents the first major step in the Catalog Interoperability project, whose objective is to enable researchers to quickly and efficiently identify, obtain information about, and get access to space and Earth science data. The guide describes how to access, use, and exit the MD and lists its features

DEVIANCE by Emily Howard, Zubin Kanga, Bofan Ma and Erik Natanael Gustafsson

This work for piano, video and electronics began with an experiment about how the brain perceives unexpected changes in music. Using EEG brain-scanning equipment from Cyborg Soloists industry partner ANT Neuro, Dr Christiane Neuhaus (University of Hamburg) conducted an experiment on how listeners respond to Howard’s music, including her orchestral work, Torus, and piano material derived from it. Neuhaus’ experiment found that the volunteers heard the music in two parallel ways: one part of the brain perceived the work as a whole, while another perceived the moments of ‘deviance’: any change to a pattern that had been established by the preceding music. Particularly striking were brain responses to gradual shifts in tempi: accelerandos shifting into rallentandos. Howard’s decided to explore these experimental results across different media, drawing together a number of collaborators. She writes: The 90-section structure of DEVIANCE involves a large-scale accelerando followed by ritardando superimposed upon its inverse: a large-scale ritardando followed by an accelerando. The work can also be viewed as 90 standard durations of 10 seconds. The piano material is entirely created from the original Torus expanding and contracting, between faster and slower deviations: always searching, ever circling. The live piano is fused with two intermittent deviant trajectories: sound design by Bofan Ma and video design by Erik Nataneal Gustafsson, each offering an alternative response to the original experimental brain data. Ma’s electronics use AI-generated audio (created using PRiSM SampleRNN software in consultation with researcher, Christopher Melen) trained on the same piano and orchestral recordings used in the experiment, as well as the sonification of the brainwaves that were recorded by Neuhaus, creating a rich and complex texture through which the piano weaves

What Were They Thinking? College Men's Thoughts That Facilitate Sexual Coercion

Researchers have recognized the need to increase understanding of sexually coercive college men. The current exploratory study examines sexually coercive men's written descriptions of their experience in situations when they wanted to have sex with a woman and she did not agree to it. We compared each man's descriptions of a situation involving coercion to their description of a situation in which they used less coercion, by comparison. 57 male undergraduates at a large Midwestern University participated in a self-report open-ended questionnaire. Results indicated that differences between situations existed on a variety of situational and cognitive factors. Differences suggest that men believe that their desire to obtain sexual pleasure motivated them to engage in sexual coercion

Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees, co-created by Benjamin Tassie and Zubin Kanga

Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees uses the latest studio and keyboard technologies (including the 4D expressive ROLI Seaboard Rise 2 keyboard) to augment the sound and capabilities of some of the world’s most significant historical organs. To make 'Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees', Tassie visited and recorded historical organs from across the UK and Europe, including the Van Straten Organ, a reconstruction of a late-Medieval Dutch organ (dating from 1479) in Amsterdam, period instruments at St Cecelia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh, and the Wingfield Organ, a reconstructed English Tudor organ. 'Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees' is a monolithic, 70-minute tour de force, in which the audience is invited to immerse themselves in this sonically enveloping drone-composition. Performed by Kanga in the round using three different keyboards to trigger these organ sounds virtually, this piece of shifting and transforming tones creates a rich and enveloping sensory experience.<br/

Effectiveness of Guidance and Counselling Services in Enhancing Students’ Adjustment to School Academic Environment in Public Boarding Secondary Schools in Kenya

School adjustment is the process of copying in a new school environment in order to attain the individual and school’s set goals and aspirations. The government, education managers, and parents have expressed the need to strengthen school Guidance and Counselling services in order to enhance students’ adjustment to the school environment. Public boarding secondary schools are expected tom implement Guidance and Counselling policy of the Ministry of Education and help students adjust to the secondary school environment. This study investigated the effectiveness of Guidance and Counselling services in enhancing students’ adjustment to school academic environment in public boarding secondary schools in Kenya. The study adopted a descriptive research survey design. The study target population was 36,671 comprising of 35,659 Form 3 students, 506 Form 3 class teachers and 506 teachers in charge of Guidance and Counselling from boarding secondary schools in Kitui, Nyeri and Nairobi counties in Kenya. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select 756 respondents comprising of 720 Form 3 students, 18 Form 3 class teachers and 18 teachers in charge of Guidance and Counselling from 18 secondary schools for the study. Questionnaires were used to collect data from Form 3 students and their class teachers while an interview schedule was used to collect data from teachers in charge of Guidance and Counseling. A pilot study involving 76 respondents was carried out in three public boarding secondary schools from Machakos, Kirinyaga and Thika counties. Using Spearman Brown Prophecy formula by split half technique reliability coefficient of 0.745, 0.746 and 0.736 were realized for students, class teachers and teachers In charge of Guidance and Counseling respectively. This was accepted because an alpha value of 0.7 and above is considered suitable for making group inferences that are accurate. The data were analyzed by use of descriptive statistics with the help of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0 for windows and presented in frequency distribution tables, percentages and bar charts. The study also found out that Guidance and Counseling were effective in helping students adjust to school physical, social and academic environment. The findings of this study provide information to school administrators, policymakers, parents and other stakeholders on various issues that need to be addressed in Guidance and Counseling like strengthening individual counseling, training of peer counselors and gender balance in the appointment of school counseling personnel to enhance students adjust to the school environment. The study further suggests ways of improving Guidance and Counselling services in order to make it more effective in public boarding secondary schools

Vicentino, love you – studies for keyboard, co-created by Oliver Leith and Zubin Kanga

This work composed by Oliver Leith in collaboration with Zubin Kanga uses the TouchKeys technology to play microtonally on a keyboard. This is connected to an analogue synthesizer, combining new touch-sensor technology with retro analogue technologies (thus working across two major Cyborg Soloists themes).<br/

Counterfeits (Siminica) co-created by Laurence Osborn and Zubin Kanga

This work composed by Laurence Osborn in collaboration with Zubin Kanga, combines the TouchKeys technology on a keyboard, with vocal samples created by the composer to imitate the Romanian folk singer, Siminica. The TouchKeys keyboard facilitates the bending of pitch by sliding the finger across the key, which in this case is used to allow the keyboard to imitate the vocal sounds of a folk singer

DARKEST BEFORE DAWN: The Work of Emmaculeta Chiseya of Zimbabwe

Women on the frontline of efforts to end violence and secure a just peace seldom record their experiences, activities and insights – as generally there is no time, or, perhaps, no formal education that would help them record their stories. The Women PeaceMakers Program is a selective program for leaders who want to document, share and build upon their unique peacemaking stories. Selected peacemakers join the IPJ for an eight-week residency. Women PeaceMakers are paired with a Peace Writer to document in written form their story of living in conflict and building peace in their communities and nations. While in residence at the institute, Women PeaceMakers give presentations on their work and the situation in their home countries to the university and San Diego communities. Emmaculeta Chiseya, a mother of two from Harare, Zimbabwe has worked to gender- sensitize community development and promote human rights for over 15 years. From 1996 to 2000, Chiseya was responsible for the promotion, protection and defense of human rights under the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association. During an increasingly dangerous period of Zimbabwean history, she has helped pioneer human rights education and civic education curricula in schools throughout the country. As a project officer for the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), Chiseya advocates for democracy and electoral education and serves as an election monitor. Chiseya has experience educating police and other security forces to desist from torture practices, and has used theater to encourage greater understanding of human rights. In the current dangerous climate in Zimbabwe, with exorbitant inflation and unemployment rates and a nonexistent health care system, the rights which the constitution grants are challenged; politically motivated violence confronts the citizens who are seeking a return to peace. Human rights activists and peacemakers must maneuver carefully simply to assemble. Torture practices by police are on the rise. Chiseya is working to help people negotiate these pitfalls in order to move democratic change and human rights forward. She believes in the right of the people to elect a government of their choice without fear.https://digital.sandiego.edu/ipj-research/1047/thumbnail.jp