IV. Melodic Structure in Nigra Sum

Monograph in Musi

III. Parody and Variation in Monteverdi's Vespers

Monograph in Musi

I. The Mass and Vespers of 1610: The Sources and their Interpretations

Monograph in Musi

Civic Identity and Civic Glue: Venetian Processions and Ceremonies of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Processions were an integral part of Venetian religious and civic life. State and church were inextricably intertwined, since the doge served not only as the head of the civil government, but also as the governor of the ducal church of St. Mark’s, by far the most important ecclesiastical institution in the city. Processions on feast days as well as processions celebrating civic events all culminated in some kind of religious service. Ducal processions included the two instrumental ensembles of the doge: his pifferi and his six long silver trumpets. Other instruments and singers from St. Mark’s also participated in official processions. Aside from ducal processions, the city’s confraternities and many churches mounted their own processions, often including instruments and singers on their patron saints’ feast days, the first Sunday of every month, during Holy Week and for funerals of members. These processions were very frequent, often wound through various parts of the city, and were a major factor in displaying governmental authority, the city’s institutions and in creating a sense of civic identity and unity. The article concludes with an account of the four-day celebration of the coronation of the Dogaressa Morosina Morosini Grimani 4-7 May, 1597 to illustrate the intertwining and integration of processions, religion, governmental authority and public entertainment, all accompanied by music, in a spectacular example of the unifying effects of such festivities

V. Some Historical Perspective on the Mondeverdi Vespers

Monograph in Musi

Introduction

Monograph in Musi

Clinical validation of a targeted methylation-based multi-cancer early detection test using an independent validation set

BACKGROUND: A multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test used to complement existing screening could increase the number of cancers detected through population screening, potentially improving clinical outcomes. The Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas study (CCGA; NCT02889978) was a prospective, case-controlled, observational study and demonstrated that a blood-based MCED test utilizing cell-free DNA (cfDNA) sequencing in combination with machine learning could detect cancer signals across multiple cancer types and predict cancer signal origin (CSO) with high accuracy. The objective of this third and final CCGA substudy was to validate an MCED test version further refined for use as a screening tool. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This pre-specified substudy included 4077 participants in an independent validation set (cancer: n = 2823; non-cancer: n = 1254, non-cancer status confirmed at year-one follow-up). Specificity, sensitivity, and CSO prediction accuracy were measured. RESULTS: Specificity for cancer signal detection was 99.5% [95% confidence interval (CI): 99.0% to 99.8%]. Overall sensitivity for cancer signal detection was 51.5% (49.6% to 53.3%); sensitivity increased with stage [stage I: 16.8% (14.5% to 19.5%), stage II: 40.4% (36.8% to 44.1%), stage III: 77.0% (73.4% to 80.3%), stage IV: 90.1% (87.5% to 92.2%)]. Stage I-III sensitivity was 67.6% (64.4% to 70.6%) in 12 pre-specified cancers that account for approximately two-thirds of annual USA cancer deaths and was 40.7% (38.7% to 42.9%) in all cancers. Cancer signals were detected across >50 cancer types. Overall accuracy of CSO prediction in true positives was 88.7% (87.0% to 90.2%). CONCLUSION: In this pre-specified, large-scale, clinical validation substudy, the MCED test demonstrated high specificity and accuracy of CSO prediction and detected cancer signals across a wide diversity of cancers. These results support the feasibility of this blood-based MCED test as a complement to existing single-cancer screening tests. CLINICAL TRIAL NUMBER: NCT02889978

Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Global Warming in the Tibetan Plateau during the Last 50 Years Based on a Generalised Temperature Zone - Elevation Model

Temperature is one of the primary factors influencing the climate and ecosystem, and examining its change and fluctuation could elucidate the formation of novel climate patterns and trends. In this study, we constructed a generalised temperature zone elevation model (GTEM) to assess the trends of climate change and temporal-spatial differences in the Tibetan Plateau (TP) using the annual and monthly mean temperatures from 1961-2010 at 144 meteorological stations in and near the TP. The results showed the following: (1) The TP has undergone robust warming over the study period, and the warming rate was 0.318°C/decade. The warming has accelerated during recent decades, especially in the last 20 years, and the warming has been most significant in the winter months, followed by the spring, autumn and summer seasons. (2) Spatially, the zones that became significantly smaller were the temperature zones of -6°C and -4°C, and these have decreased 499.44 and 454.26 thousand sq km from 1961 to 2010 at average rates of 25.1% and 11.7%, respectively, over every 5-year interval. These quickly shrinking zones were located in the northwestern and central TP. (3) The elevation dependency of climate warming existed in the TP during 1961-2010, but this tendency has gradually been weakening due to more rapid warming at lower elevations than in the middle and upper elevations of the TP during 1991-2010. The higher regions and some low altitude valleys of the TP were the most significantly warming regions under the same categorizing criteria. Experimental evidence shows that the GTEM is an effective method to analyse climate changes in high altitude mountainous regions