Turkish folk music in Ghent: musical knowledge in a diaspora context

Turkish folk music (Türk halk müziği) is in its motherland an academically approached, conservatory-institutionalised and state-supported kind of music. The reason for this uncommon attention and care is the great importance that has been attached to this music since the founding of the Republic (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti). Traditional Turkish folk music has been considered with high esteem as the only genuine musical expression of Turkish national culture. This preferential treatment unarguably forwarded the knowledge construction about the music to a large extent, although it also implied some inevitable musical adaptations, standardisation and curtailment. In the diaspora on the other hand, Turkish folk music receives hardly any official attention and support. Thus, it will be virtually impossible to maintain the level and pace of the knowledge construction existing in Turkey. Moreover, when living abroad (gurbette), Turkish musicians and their public are likely to adopt a new attitude towards their native music. Particular emotional motives will affect the meanings they put on the music, and cause priorities to shift and intentions to change. In this paper, musical knowledge about the Turkish folk music repertoire performed among the Turkish immigrant communities in the city of Ghent (Belgium) is examined. Turkish folk musicians are interviewed and observed in search of their explicit or implicit knowledge related to different fields, such as music theory (scale/melody and metrical/rhythmical organization, tuning systems,…), performance practice (style and interpretation: ornamentations, variations, phrasings, dynamics, tempo changes,…), musical forms and genres, functions and meanings, geographical and temporal situation, etc. Dependable written sources about Turkish folk music, as well as recordings of authentic performances by traditional Turkish folk musicians constitute the reference sources. The obtained information is processed into a structured ‘map’ of concrete existing diasporic musical knowledge about Turkish folk music

Why not use the thermal radiation for nanothermometry?

The measurement of temperature with nanoscale spatial resolution is an emerging new technology and it has important impact in various fields. An ideal nanothermometer should not only be accurate, but also applicable over a wide temperature range and under diverse conditions. Furthermore, the measurement time should be short enough to follow the evolution of the system. However, many of the existing techniques are limited by drawbacks such as low sensitivity and fluctuations of fluorescence. Therefore, Plank's law offers an appealing relation between the absolute temperature of the system under interrogation and the thermal spectrum. Despite this, thermal radiation spectroscopy is unsuitable for far-field nanothermometry, primarily because of the power loss in the near surroundings and a poor spatial resolution.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Turkish folk music in Ghent: musical knowledge in a diaspora context

Turkish folk music (Türk halk müziği) is in its motherland an academically approached, conservatory-institutionalised and state-supported kind of music. The reason for this uncommon attention and care is the great importance that has been attached to this music since the founding of the Republic (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti). Traditional Turkish folk music has been considered with high esteem as the only genuine musical expression of Turkish national culture. This preferential treatment unarguably forwarded the knowledge construction about the music to a large extent, although it also implied some inevitable musical adaptations, standardisation and curtailment. In the diaspora on the other hand, Turkish folk music receives hardly any official attention and support. Thus, it will be virtually impossible to maintain the level and pace of the knowledge construction existing in Turkey. Moreover, when living abroad (gurbette), Turkish musicians and their public are likely to adopt a new attitude towards their native music. Particular emotional motives will affect the meanings they put on the music, and cause priorities to shift and intentions to change. In this paper, musical knowledge about the Turkish folk music repertoire performed among the Turkish immigrant communities in the city of Ghent (Belgium) is examined. Turkish folk musicians are interviewed and observed in search of their explicit or implicit knowledge related to different fields, such as music theory (scale/melody and metrical/rhythmical organization, tuning systems,…), performance practice (style and interpretation: ornamentations, variations, phrasings, dynamics, tempo changes,…), musical forms and genres, functions and meanings, geographical and temporal situation, etc. Dependable written sources about Turkish folk music, as well as recordings of authentic performances by traditional Turkish folk musicians constitute the reference sources. The obtained information is processed into a structured ‘map’ of concrete existing diasporic musical knowledge about Turkish folk music

Turkish folk music in Ghent: developing musical knowledge in a diaspora context

The question of musical knowledge applied to folk music is always challenging. While folk music normally does not have great artistic or academic aspirations and its theory and praxis are often little documented, its musicians and public still possess the necessary (implicit) knowledge to be able to produce and consume their music. When we consider Turkish folk music, it appears to be an example of academically approached, conservatory-institutionalised and state-supported folk music. The reason for all this attention is the fact that, according to the official republican ideology, traditional Turkish folk music has been considered as the only genuine musical expression of Turkish national culture. Notwithstanding the political applications and biased views of the music, and the inevitable musical adaptations, standardisation and narrowing-down, this preferential treatment has unarguably also benefitted the advancement of knowledge construction about the music. In the diaspora on the other hand, Turkish folk music lacks all this official attention and support. Thus, it will be probably impossible to maintain the level and pace of the knowledge construction existing in Turkey. Besides, when living abroad, Turkish musicians and their public are likely to adopt a new attitude towards their native music. Particular emotional motives will presumable affect the meanings they put on the music, and cause their priorities to shift and intentions to change. In this paper, ‘musical knowledge’ about the Turkish folk music repertoire performed among the Turkish immigrant communities in the Belgian city of Ghent will be examined. Turkish folk musicians will be interviewed and observed in search of their explicit or implicit knowledge related to different fields, such as music theory (scale/melody and metrical/rhythmical organization, tuning systems,…), performance practice (style and interpretation: ornamentations, variations, phrasings, dynamics, tempo changes,…), musical forms and genres, functions and meanings, geographical and temporal situation, etc. Dependable written sources about Turkish folk music, as well as recordings of authentic performances by traditional Turkish folk musicians will constitute the reference sources. The obtained information will be processed in order to compose a structured ‘map’ of concrete diasporic musical knowledge about Turkish folk music. The following step could be the placement of this ‘map’ over the existing educational situations (either formal or informal) within the Turkish immigrant communities in Ghent. Thus could be investigated which aspects of musical knowledge are being transferred and which are not. Interesting questions could be: which aspects are deliberately omitted, which ones are forgotten, and to which ones is paid either more or less attention. Looking for explanations of these findings could possibly reveal either difficulties manifesting in the construction and transfer of musical knowledge, or underlying hierarchies in appreciation of the knowledge aspects. As a pendant to the diasporic research, an analysis of the existing or desired knowledge about Turkish folk music at the conservatories in Turkey could be performed. It could be expected that a large amount of structured musical knowledge is in course of being built up and transferred within this institutions. The outcome of the analysis would be the composition of a matrix of ‘knowable’ and ‘teachable’ aspects of Turkish folk music. When the mapped out knowledge aspects of the immigrant musicians would be compared to this more comprehensive matrix, guidelines for future development and professionalizing of the education in Turkish music in the diaspora could emerge. While it is likely to find important hiatuses in the existing knowledge of the immigrant musicians, these musicians’ ways of dealing with their homeland folk music could in turn possibly serve as a guide for functional adaptations of the proposed knowledge matrix

Chickens prefer beautiful humans

We trained chickens to react to an average human female face but not to an average male face (or vice-versa). In a subsequent test, the animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences (obtained from university students). This suggests that human preferences arise from general properties of nervous systems, rather than from face-specific adaptations. We discuss this result in the light of current debate on the meaning of sexual signals, and suggest further tests of existing hypotheses about the origin of sexual preferences

Direct susceptibility testing by disk diffusion on clinical samples : a rapid and accurate tool for antibiotic stewardship

We compared the accuracy of direct susceptibility testing (DST) with conventional antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST), both using disk diffusion, on clinical samples. A total of 123 clinical samples (respiratory tract samples, urine, vaginal and abdominal abscess discharges, bile fluid and a haematoma punctate) were selected on various indications; direct inoculation on Mueller-Hinton agar and antibiotic paper disks were applied. In parallel, standard culture, identification and AST on the colonies grown overnight was executed. Both AST and DST were interpreted after identification of the isolates. The results from both AST and DST for 11 antibiotics tested on 97 samples with Gram-negative rods showed 93.4 % total agreement, 1.6 % minor discordances, 4.6 % major discordances and 0.4 % very major discordances. Analysing the discordant results, DST predominantly resulted in more resistant isolates than AST. This was mostly due to the presence of resistant mutants or an additional isolate. The remaining discordances were seen for isolates with inhibition zones close to the clinical breakpoint. For the 26 samples yielding staphylococci, a total agreement of 100 % was observed for the nine antibiotics tested. Overall, the highest percentage of discordant results occurred for the beta-lactam antibiotics amoxicillin-clavulanate (13.4 %) and cefuroxime (12.4 %). When used selectively and interpreted carefully, DST on clinical samples is potentially very useful in the management of critically ill patients, as the time to results is shortened by approximately 24 h. However, we recommend to communicate results with reservations and confirm by conventional AST

Newman Tamburino solutions with an aligned Maxwell field

We prove that there exists no aligned Einstein Maxwell generalization of the spherical class of Newman Tamburino solutions. The presence of an aligned Maxwell field automatically leads to the cylindrical class.Comment: 5 page

Effects of Land Management Strategies on the Dispersal Pattern of a Beneficial Arthropod

Several arthropods are known to be highly beneficial to agricultural production. Consequently it is of great relevance to study the importance of land management and land composition for the conservation of beneficial aphid-predator arthropod species in agricultural areas. Therefore our study focusing on the beneficial arthropod Bembidion lampros had two main purposes: I) identifying the physical barriers to the species’ dispersal in the agricultural landscape, and II) assessing the effect of different land management strategies (i.e. use of pesticides and intensiveness) on the dispersal patterns. The study was conducted using genetic analysis (microsatellite markers) applied to samples from two agricultural areas (in Denmark) with different agricultural intensity. Land management effects on dispersal patterns were investigated with particular focus on: physical barriers, use of pesticide and intensity of cultivation. The results showed that Bembidion lampros disperse preferably through hedges rather than fields, which act as physical barriers to gene flow. Moreover the results support the hypothesis that organic fields act as reservoirs for the re-colonization of conventional fields, but only when cultivation intensity is low. These results show the importance of non-cultivated areas and of low intensity organic managed areas within the agricultural landscape as corridors for dispersal (also for a species typically found within fields). Hence, the hypothesis that pesticide use cannot be used as the sole predictor of agriculture’s effect on wild species is supported as land structure and agricultural intensity can be just as important