The Implications of the American Symphonic Heritage in Contemporary Orchestral Modeling

Disparate priorities between composers, performers, audiences, and institutions have created systemic issues in the sustainability and relevance of symphonic music in modern society. The purpose of this study is to explore the history of the symphonic heritage in the United States with the goal of forming solutions to contemporary issues in the sphere of classical symphonic music. With consideration for the breadth of repertoire, the genre of the symphony is the primary focus, with special attention given to under-represented and under-performed composers. The American symphony orchestra, nonexistent during the founding of the country, has become one of the greatest conduits for symphonic music in the world. An examination of the American symphonic heritage illuminates macro trends over the past two hundred years and lends clarity to the current state of the symphony in the United States. No orchestra operating today is reliably self-sufficient. Contemporary orchestral institutions either do not recognize the greatest issues facing their organization, try to find answers to the wrong questions, identify important problems but fail to provide long-term solutions, or some combination of the three. The current world of classical music has become the conservation of largely European art music, operating on antiquated models that have outgrown their earlier success. An evaluation of the American symphonic heritage and traditional practices yields new avenues for contemporary modeling, with implications that point to a greater, more financially stable and optimistic future for the symphony in the United States

Exploring Contributing Factors to Oral Health Disparities Seen Among Adult Immigrants

The objective of the research study was to help identify sociodemographics, socioeconomic status, and cultural barriers that may have been a contributing or limiting factor to immigrants’ oral health. Each of these factors were looked at closer by narrowing down possible subproblems among three immigrant social groups of Brazilian, Indian, and Korean ethnicities at the researchers’ respective local churches (4 in total). A total of one-hundred and forty-nine subjects (n=149) were involved in the research study

Development of an Automated Mapping Tool to Transform Nursing Narrative Information into Quantifiable Nursing Data

poster abstractBackground: Inspecting the effectiveness of health care has been a central focus of health care professionals challenged by a system with aggressive cost constraints and increasing demands for quality of care. This focus has highlighted the importance of having health care data and facilitated the use of large data sets. It is crucial that nurses clearly verify the economic and clinical values of nursing interventions for the improvement of patient outcomes. However, rarely has effectiveness of nursing care in hospitals been demonstrated due to nurse scientists’ inability to electronically obtain valid and comparable nursing data. The importance of “computable” nursing data and databases have been long recognized and led to the development of standardized nursing terminologies (SNTs) to represent nursing interventions and outcomes. Yet, a majority of nursing information systems in hospitals is still using nurses’ free-text records to document care processes and patient outcomes. Free-text records, which may produce rich information on nursing phenomena yet incomputable, have been of limited use for generating nursing information and knowledge. Therefore, the study aimed at the development of an automated mapping tool to extract and transform the narrative nursing notes to quantifiable data in SNTs. Method: The nursing narrative notes were collected from a retrospective nursing record review of patients who were admitted to a community hospital with the diagnosis of Septicemia. The Nursing Interventions Classification and the Nursing Outcome Classification were the SNTs used for mapping. The automated mapping tool was developed using natural language processing; the Graphic User Interface was designed using NetBeans IDE and Perl programming language. Tokenizing each sentence to identify single word term candidates, stemming them, lexical collocations to coordinate the words into meaningful information (phrases/sentences), and mapping them into labels and indicators of SNTs were accomplished by using Regular Expressions. The validation of the tool was completed by comparing the result from the use of the tool with the result from the manual mapping by 2 nursing experts, which was considered as the gold standard. Results: The interface features of the automated mapping tool included data entry options (i.e., browse/upload files or type-in each nursing narrative sentence), mapping sources to select NIC and NOC dictionaries, their domains and classes by their hierarchical classification structure, and output options (i.e., nursing representation with the mapped terms, Frequency of the mapped terms). A total of 25588 words from nursing narrative records of 14 patients were used. On average 52 parsed phrases or sentences per nursing record were mapped. In total, 768 labels of NIC and 4733 indicators of NOC, including the duplicates. Compared with the manually mapped terms (the gold standard), the automated mapping tool showed the accuracy rates ((True positive + True negative)/The Overall mapped), 80.6% with NIC and 74.8% with NOC. The most frequently mapped descriptors of NIC were ‘Report changes in patient status’ under the label of ‘Physician Support (7710).’ The most commonly mapped indicators of NOC were ‘Coughing (041019)’ under the label of ‘Respiratory Status: Airway Patency.’ Nurses were likely to document their observations of patient status than what nursing interventions were provided. Conclusion/Implications: The new automated mapping tool showed high performance at the initial stage. The validation of the tool will be continuously tested with more nursing narratives data. It is expected that the tool will be useful for transforming nursing information with SNTs into quantifiable and comparable data, which consequently can be used for nursing effectiveness research. It can be used for outcomes analyses, regulatory quality report generation, and text analysis for finding appropriate nursing literature and capturing nursing concepts in qualitative research. The study findings can also contribute to the development and refinement of SNTs to more accurately represent nursing practice

Governance in Sport: A Scoping Review

This article examines the current state of sport governance research within the field of sport management. In adopting Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) framework, a scoping review was conducted involving a comprehensive search of all published literature between 1980 and 2016. The process involved searching four electronic databases and a manual search of sport management journals. The search identified (n=243) journal articles that examined sport governance related issues. Findings are presented as a frequency and thematic analysis. The frequency analysis reveals a notable increase in sport governance research in recent years with a large number of non-empirical studies focused on the not-for-profit sector. The thematic analysis draws upon and extends Henry and Lee’s (2004) three notions of governance and identifies sport governance-related topics, research contexts and social issues. Findings indicate that all three forms of governance (organizational, systemic, and political) have contributed to our understanding of sport governance but more empirical and theoretically driven research is needed

Constructive or Disruptive? How Active Learning Environments Shape Instructional Decision-Making

This study examined instructional shifts associated with teaching in environments optimized for active learning, including how faculty made decisions about teaching and their perceptions of how students responded to those changes. The interviews and subsequent analysis reveal a broad range of course changes, from small modifications of existing activities to large shifts towards collaborative learning, many of which emerged during the term rather than being planned in advance. The faculty discuss several factors that influenced their decisions, including prior experience, professional identity, student engagement, and perceived and realized affordances of the environments

The Life and Death of the Supermarket: How Food Trade Infrastructure Affects the Design of Architectural and Urban Settings

Historically food has played an important role in how cities are shaped. The modern city is no exception to this, yet it holds an abstracted relationship to the hinterlands that feed it (Steel: 2008), thus giving the perception (particularly in Western cities) that constant food supply to the city is a given right. The problem of feeding cities still remains a challenge (Diamond: 2005), one that, in combination with an ever increasing scarcity of fossil fuels, has led to a emerging tide of urbanism looking to bring localised food back to prominence in the city. More so, investigating building infrastructure to mass produce food in cities themselves: the return to a city state model. A consequence of this is also a move towards a more resource sustainable city framework. However, there is little discussion around how this new food urbanism will be structured within the city, and conversely, how it will structure the city. The most prominent architectural/urban typology which represents food in the city currently is that of the supermarket building, a type which has evolved from the urban market but has shed its civic role (Steel: 2008). This is further characterised by the common use of the private motor vehicle to access the supermarkets site. What if we were to amputate the car from the supermarket? Would we return to the urban market as the defining food space typology in the city? Or would food space be embodied in a new formal language? Primary Research Question(s): How can we track the implications of food (supply, demand, requirements) for the contemporary Western city through a supermarket typology? Secondary Research Questions: How does food culture and its resulting space enhance the urban public sphere (i.e. the vitality of the city)? Methodology Using the analysis model of design (institutionalised/autonomous design process) versus nondesign (overlapping of cultural systems in which design is one of these) laid out by Diana Agrest in 1974 as an analysis departure point; the research will investigate the historical and contemporary role of food markets in cities. The supermarket typology will form the basis for how food exchange related design affects urban fabric build-up in Western cities. Through links in the literature review, as well as empirically based evidence, I draw through extrapolations of how a food market driven city might conduct urban change. This may nurture a more direct relationship to its surrounding geography (e.g. the hinterland) and the food sources needed to feed it. Empirical analysis has been conducted on what might typify a vibrant and civically significant urban market to counteract the research into supermarket typologies. The Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne, Australia, has been selected as this case study. There is an assumption that there are qualities instilled in urban markets which have more positive effects for urban environments than that of supermarkets. Thus, through looking at these environments it may be possible to tease out new directions for solidifying the prominence of food in the city once more

Sensory Prioritization in Rats: Behavioral Performance and Neuronal Correlates

Operating with some finite quantity of processing resources, an animal would benefit from prioritizing the sensory modality expected to provide key information in a particular context. The present study investigated whether rats dedicate attentional resources to the sensory modality in which a near-threshold event is more likely to occur. We manipulated attention by controlling the likelihood with which a stimulus was presented from one of two modalities. In a whisker session, 80% of trials contained a brief vibration stimulus applied to whiskers and the remaining 20% of trials contained a brief change of luminance. These likelihoods were reversed in a visual session. When a stimulus was presented in the high-likelihood context, detection performance increased and was faster compared with the same stimulus presented in the low-likelihood context. Sensory prioritization was also reflected in neuronal activity in the vibrissal area of primary somatosensory cortex: single units responded differentially to the whisker vibration stimulus when presented with higher probability compared with lower probability. Neuronal activity in the vibrissal cortex displayed signatures of multiplicative gain control and enhanced response to vibration stimuli during the whisker session. In conclusion, rats allocate priority to the more likely stimulus modality and the primary sensory cortex may participate in the redistribution of resources

Double Superhelix Model of High Density Lipoprotein

High density lipoprotein (HDL), the carrier of so-called “good” cholesterol, serves as the major athero-protective lipoprotein and has emerged as a key therapeutic target for cardiovascular disease. We applied small angle neutron scattering (SANS) with contrast variation and selective isotopic deuteration to the study of nascent HDL to obtain the low resolution structure in solution of the overall time-averaged conformation of apolipoprotein AI (apoA-I) versus the lipid (acyl chain) core of the particle. Remarkably, apoA-I is observed to possess an open helical shape that wraps around a central ellipsoidal lipid phase. Using the low resolution SANS shapes of the protein and lipid core as scaffolding, an all-atom computational model for the protein and lipid components of nascent HDL was developed by integrating complementary structural data from hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry and previously published constraints from multiple biophysical techniques. Both SANS data and the new computational model, the double superhelix model, suggest an unexpected structural arrangement of protein and lipids of nascent HDL, an anti-parallel double superhelix wrapped around an ellipsoidal lipid phase. The protein and lipid organization in nascent HDL envisages a potential generalized mechanism for lipoprotein biogenesis and remodeling, biological processes critical to sterol and lipid transport, organismal energy metabolism, and innate immunity

Post-acquisitions structures in cross-border M&As: An innovation-based perspective

Post-acquisitions structures in cross-border M&As: An innovation-based perspectiv

Inducible nitric oxide synthase mediates DNA double strand breaks in Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus Type 1-induced leukemia/lymphoma

BACKGROUND: Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) is an aggressive and fatal malignancy of CD4(+) T-lymphocytes infected by the Human T-Cell Virus Type 1 (HTLV-1). The molecular mechanisms of transformation in ATLL have not been fully elucidated. However, genomic instability and cumulative DNA damage during the long period of latency is believed to be essential for HTLV-1 induced leukemogenesis. In addition, constitutive activation of the NF-κB pathway was found to be a critical determinant for transformation. Whether a connection exists between NF-κB activation and accumulation of DNA damage is not clear. We recently found that the HTLV-1 viral oncoprotein, Tax, the activator of the NF-κB pathway, induces DNA double strand breaks (DSBs). RESULTS: Here, we investigated whether any of the NF-κB target genes are critical in inducing DSBs. Of note, we found that inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) that catalyzes the production of nitric oxide (NO) in macrophages, neutrophils and T-cells is over expressed in HTLV-1 infected and Tax-expressing cells. Interestingly, we show that in HTLV-1 infected cells, iNOS expression is Tax-dependent and specifically requires the activation of the classical NF-κB and JAK/STAT pathways. A dramatic reduction of DSBs was observed when NO production was inhibited, indicating that Tax induces DSBs through the activation of NO synthesis. CONCLUSIONS: Determination of the impact of NO on HTLV-1-induced leukemogenesis opens a new area for treatment or prevention of ATLL and perhaps other cancers in which NO is produced