Exploring and reapplying Wayne Krantz’s method of constructing the album Greenwich Mean

Praised for his non-traditional approach to improvised music, his idiosyncratic chordal voicings and strong sense of time, Wayne Krantz has become a touchstone in modern jazz and a unique voice on the guitar. In 1999, Krantz self-released Greenwich Mean, an album comprising of small vignettes spliced together from a year’s worth of recorded live improvisation from his weekly residency gig at the esteemed 55 Bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. This album marks a fundamental shift in Krantz’s approach to composition from through-composed works to smaller, novel arrangements with a strong emphasis on group improvisation. Using a practice-led research strategy, this study investigates the circumstances, philosophy, and production methods used to create Greenwich Mean, and explores ways they might be reapplied to generate new works for my own guitar/electric bass/drums trio. The methodology involved borrowing methods familiar to my musical practice (such as musical transcription and analysis, composition, improvisation, practise, rehearsal, performance, audio recording/editing, and scoring and charting) and supporting these with literature review and an insightful semi-structured interview with Wayne Krantz. The research has uncovered that a key musical principle of the album and Krantz’s music more broadly is ‘balancing improvisation and composition’. Analysis and interview have shown that this is achieved in several ways: in live performance, through four-, eight-, and sixteen-bar forms, cueing, and ‘germs’, meaning short motivic ideas that have been repurposed from older Krantz compositions; on the album, it is achieved through composite takes, looping, and constructing melodies from brief audio fragments. The consequences of this principle include a variety of effects, such as new cues, novel and malleable arrangements, and new improvisational and compositional language. The production methods used by Krantz were then explored in my own practice, leading to the creation of four new scored works. Despite some limitations, this method succeeded in helping me exceed my compositional boundaries. In spite of his acclaim, Krantz has largely slipped under the academic radar and remains relatively less well-known in comparison to his contemporaries. This research contributes new knowledge on an artist who is, undoubtedly a seminal and unique figure. Additionally, by exploring the novel approach used in the creation of Greenwich Mean, it provides valuable insight into a potentially fruitful process quite removed from traditional compositional methods, helping contemporary artists explore new musical horizon

The Salience of Social Contextual Factors in Appraisals of Police Interactions with Citizens: A Randomized Factorial Experiment

Objectives: Prior research indicates that public assessments of the manner in which the police exercise their authority are a key antecedent of judgments about the legitimacy of the police. In this study, the importance of context in influencing people’s assessment of police wrongdoing is examined. Methods: A randomized factorial experiment was used to test how respondents perceive and evaluate police–citizens interactions along a range of types of situations and encounters. 1,361 subjects were surveyed on factors hypothesized to be salient influences on how citizens perceive and evaluate citizen interactions with police. Subjects viewed videos of actual police – citizen encounters and were asked for their evaluations of these observed encounters. Contextual primes were used to focus subjects on particular aspects of the context within which the encounter occurs. Results: Structural equation models revealed that social contextual framing factors, such as the climate of police – community relations and the legality of the stop that led to the encounter, influence citizen appraisals of police behavior with effects comparable in size to and even larger than demographic variables such as education, race, and income. Conclusions: These results suggest that the understandings and perceptions that people bring to a situation are important determinants of their assessment of police fairness. The police can positively influence citizen interpretations of police actions by striving to create a climate of positive police–community relationships in cities

Cooking Hand Multi-Tool

The purpose of this project was to devise a solution for Jorge Segura, a US Marine who was wounded in Afghanistan and had to have his non-dominant arm amputated above the elbow. His current prosthetic attachments are not suited to cooking tasks, so he needed a way to cook more effectively with either prosthetic attachments or accessibility devices. The main tasks that he needed help with was holding down food on cutting boards and stabilizing pots, pans, and bowls especially when stirring. After background research, exploring commercially available devices, and talking with our challenger, our solution was to design three prosthetic attachments with a quick-change wrist to enable Jorge to stabilize pots, pans, and bowls, as well as hold food down on a cutting board and switch between the attachments efficiently. The quick-change wrist operates in a twist-and-lock fashion, with the wrist inserts mating into the wrist receiver and locking into place with magnets on each component. The wrist receiver easily mates with Jorge’s current wrist so that he can efficiently and easily install our quick-change wrist into his existing wrist. The wrist is predominantly made from delrin to reduce weight and improve component machinability. The prototyping process for the wrist cost $144.58 to develop our functional prototypes, while the estimated mass production cost is only$13.99 per wrist assembly. The clamp attachment interfaces with Jorge’s current body powered prosthetic arm through a connector plate mounted on the attachment body. Jorge is able to engage the cable to open the clamp so that it can fit over various sizes of pots and bowls, and release the tension in the cable to allow it to close over the pot or bowl. The clamp is also fully adjustable, with a trifold face designed with springs to conform to different diameters, and an angled guide that is adjustable with thumb screws to allow Jorge to angle the trifold to fit on curved bowls. It also includes a set of angled and straight inner prongs that can be removed for easier cleaning. The clamp is predominantly made from aluminum to reduce weight, and has an estimated cost of $209.55 to develop our functional prototypes, while the estimated mass production cost is only$43.25 per clamp assembly. The sleeve attachment allows Jorge to stabilize shallow pans with long handles. The design includes a simple diamond-shaped opening to fit over a variety of pan sizes, and has no moving parts for simplicity. Made from a 3D printed core and sheet metal inserts and connections, the sleeve is relatively lightweight and easy to manufacture. Design development to make our sleeve prototypes cost $124.91, while the estimated mass production cost of one sleeve is only$8.05. The cutting tool attachment enables Jorge to secure various sizes of food onto a cutting board. It is made of clear acrylic to allow Jorge to receive visual feedback from what he is cutting. The design of the cutting tool attachment includes several ridges to allow for better grip, and a narrow slit on the base to allow for perpendicular knife cuts. The cutting tool has an estimated development cost of $70.86 for the prototypes, with an estimated mass production cost of$4.72 per assembly. For future manufacturing of the wrist, we recommend that the wrist inserts be made from aluminum instead of delrin to improve the strength of the epoxied and press-fit joints. This would increase the weight of the device and decrease the cost slightly. We recommend that future iterations of the clamp include a more robust prong design, and a more secure connection for the angle guides. To manufacture more copies of the sleeve, we recommend adding a key to both sides of the connecting rod to fully restrain the rotation of the connecting rod. This would increase the weight and cost of the sleeve marginally. Finally, for future iterations of the cutting tool we recommend looking into a solid construction cast from food-safe resin in order to improve cutting tool durability with respect to impact loads

Redefining Leadership in the 21st Century: the view from cybernetics

A white paper developed by the ANU School of Cybernetics powered by The Menzies Foundation

The experiences of family members witnessing the diminishing drinking of a dying relative:An adapted meta-narrative literature review

Background: Addressing the concerns of family members is an important aspect of palliative and end-of-life care. One aspect that commonly causes family caregivers concern is the decline of patients’ oral fluid intake in the last few days of life.  Aim: To map the narratives in which family members’ experiences of witnessing the diminishing drinking of a dying relative have been researched, review the findings within each narrative and consider directions for future research.  Design: An adapted meta-narrative review approach.  Data Sources: The Cumulative Index of Nursing and Applied Health Literature, Medline, PsycINFO, Psycharticles and Scopus databases were searched for relevant research published between January 1982 and December 2017. Quality was assessed using the Quality Assessment and Review Instrument.  Results: A total of 22 papers met the inclusion criteria. No study focused specifically on the experiences of family members when witnessing the diminishing drinking of dying relatives. However, research about diminishing drinking was identified within studies broadly focusing on cancer cachexia, clinical decision-making about hydration and/or nutrition and support in a hospice context. The research indicates that family members’ experiences of diminishing drinking vary with their views about the significance of drinking, dying well and their expectations of themselves and healthcare professionals.  Conclusion: While some understanding of the topic can be inferred from research in related areas, there is a paucity of information specifically about family members’ experiences when witnessing the diminishing drinking of a dying relative

A Neuro-Symbolic Approach to Monitoring Salt Content in Food

We propose a dialogue system that enables heart failure patients to inquire about salt content in foods and help them monitor and reduce salt intake. Addressing the lack of specific datasets for food-based salt content inquiries, we develop a template-based conversational dataset. The dataset is structured to ask clarification questions to identify food items and their salt content. Our findings indicate that while fine-tuning transformer-based models on the dataset yields limited performance, the integration of Neuro-Symbolic Rules significantly enhances the system's performance. Our experiments show that by integrating neuro-symbolic rules, our system achieves an improvement in joint goal accuracy of over 20% across different data sizes compared to naively fine-tuning transformer-based models.Comment: Accepted in CL4Health workshop in LREC-COLING'2

Screening for Meares-Irlen sensitivity in adults: can assessment methods predict changes in reading speed?

Two methods of assessing candidates for coloured overlays were compared with the aim of determining which method had the most practical utility. A total of 58 adults were assessed as potential candidates for coloured overlays, using two methods; a questionnaire, which identified self-reported previous symptoms, and a measure of perceptual distortions immediately prior to testing. Participants were classified as normal, Meares-Irlen sensitive, and borderline sensitive. Reading speed was measured with and without coloured overlays, using the Wilkins Rate of Reading Test and the change in speed was calculated. Participants classified as normal did not show any significant benefit from reading with an overlay. In contrast, a significant reading advantage was found for the borderline and Meares-Irlen participants. Current symptom rating was found to be a significant predictor of the change in reading speed, however the previous symptom rating was not found to be a reliable predictor. These data indicate that the assessment of perceptual distortions immediately prior to measuring colour preference and reading speed is the most meaningful method of assessing pattern glare and determining the utility of coloured overlays

Routine activities and proactive police activity: a macro-scale analysis of police searches in London and New York City

This paper explored how city-level changes in routine activities were associated with changes in frequencies of police searches using six years of police records from the London Metropolitan Police Service and the New York City Police Department. Routine activities were operationalised through selecting events that potentially impacted on (a) the street population, (b) the frequency of crime or (c) the level of police activity. OLS regression results indicated that routine activity variables (e.g. day of the week, periods of high demand for police service) can explain a large proportion of the variance in search frequency throughout the year. A complex set of results emerged, revealing cross-national dissimilarities and the differential impact of certain activities (e.g. public holidays). Importantly, temporal frequencies in searches are not reducible to associations between searches and recorded street crime, nor changes in on-street population. Based on the routine activity approach, a theoretical police-action model is proposed