Music and Law: Copyrighting a Musical Idea

The law of music copyright, although now quite old, is still relatively young in its development and refinement when compared to other segments of the copyright law. The impediment in its progress is partially due to the technicalities inherent in the discipline itself, and also to the lack of musical sophistication on the part of most law making bodies. Modern day electronic developments in recording and storing sound will do much to facilitate and broaden the scope of the law. Its implementation through a Music-Legal Board of Experts could be the effective step needed in order to overcome the present shortcomings of music copyright law

17O NMR spectroscopy as a tool to study hydrogen bonding of cholesterol in lipid bilayers

Cholesterol is a crucial component of biological membranes and can interact with other membrane components through hydrogen bonding. NMR spectroscopy has been used previously to investigate this bonding, however this study represents the first 17O NMR spectroscopy study of isotopically enriched cholesterol. We demonstrate the 17O chemical shift is dependent on hydrogen bonding, providing a novel method for the study of cholesterol in bilayers

Controllability, Observability, Realizability, and Stability of Dynamic Linear Systems

We develop a linear systems theory that coincides with the existing theories for continuous and discrete dynamical systems, but that also extends to linear systems defined on nonuniform time domains. The approach here is based on generalized Laplace transform methods (e.g. shifts and convolution) from our recent work \cite{DaGrJaMaRa}. We study controllability in terms of the controllability Gramian and various rank conditions (including Kalman's) in both the time invariant and time varying settings and compare the results. We also explore observability in terms of both Gramian and rank conditions as well as realizability results. We conclude by applying this systems theory to connect exponential and BIBO stability problems in this general setting. Numerous examples are included to show the utility of these results.Comment: typos corrected; current form is as accepted in EJD

Fiber-optic immunosensor for detection of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic fever IgG antibodies in patients

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a severe viral disease with high fatality rate. CCHF virus is endemic in parts of Africa, Asia, Middle East and southeastern Europe. Rapid diagnostics of CCHF is vital for appropriate clinical management and prevention of secondary spread from human-to-human. Currently, diagnostics relies on Real-Time RT-PCR and antibody or antigen detection using ELISA. These methods require trained personnel and expensive equipment and are not appropriate for point-of-care (POC) diagnostics. Furthermore there are no POC assays available for CCHF. We developed a fiber-optic biosensor for the detection of CCHF IgG antibodies. In order to improve sensitivity, we optimized both the bioreceptor immobilization protocol and the chemiluminescence substrate formulation. The resulting protocol showed a 100-fold greater sensitivity for detection of CCHF antibodies. Finally, we evaluated the fiber-optic biosensor with two CCHF patient sera. We showed that the fiber-optic biosensor is 10-times more sensitive that colorimetric ELISA and is able to detect both patients with high and low levels of IgG antibodies. We believe that the fiber-optic biosensor is a suitable alternative to ELISA as it is much more sensitive and makes it possible to detect small amount of antibodies at an early stage of infection, and can be integrated as a point-of-care diagnostic system of CCHF

Reproducibility of Ba/Ca variations recorded by northeast Pacific bamboo corals

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Paleoceanography 32 (2017): 966–979, doi:10.1002/2017PA003178.Trace elemental ratios preserved in the calcitic skeleton of bamboo corals have been shown to serve as archives of past ocean conditions. The concentration of dissolved barium (BaSW), a bioactive nutrientlike element, is linked to biogeochemical processes such as the cycling and export of nutrients. Recent work has calibrated bamboo coral Ba/Ca, a new BaSW proxy, using corals spanning the oxygen minimum zone beneath the California Current System. However, it was previously unclear whether Ba/Cacoral records were internally reproducible. Here we investigate the accuracy of using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for Ba/Cacoral analyses and test the internal reproducibility of Ba/Ca among replicate radial transects in the calcite of nine bamboo corals collected from the Gulf of Alaska (643–720 m) and the California margin (870–2054 m). Data from replicate Ba/Ca transects were aligned using visible growth bands to account for nonconcentric growth; smoothed data were reproducible within ~4% for eight corals (n = 3 radii/coral). This intracoral reproducibility further validates using bamboo coral Ba/Ca for BaSW reconstructions. Sections of the Ba/Ca records that were potentially influenced by noncarbonate bound Ba phases occurred in regions where elevated Mg/Ca or Pb/Ca and coincided with anomalous regions on photomicrographs. After removing these regions of the records, increased Ba/Cacoral variability was evident in corals between ~800 and 1500 m. These findings support additional proxy validation to understand BaSW variability on interannual timescales, which could lead to new insights into deep sea biogeochemistry over the past several centuries.NSF Grant Number: OCE-1420984; NOAA/OE Grant Number: NA16RP2637; MIT-WHOI Joint Program; American Geophysical Union Travel Grant; UC Davis President's Undergraduate Fellowship; Bowdoin College Gibbons Summer Research Fellowship2018-03-1