Mockingbird morphing music: Structured transitions in a complex bird song

The song of the northern mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos, is notable for its extensive length and inclusion of numerous imitations of several common North American bird species. Because of its complexity, it is not widely studied by birdsong scientists. When they do study it, the specific imitations are often noted, and the total number of varying phrases. What is rarely noted is the systematic way the bird changes from one syllable to the next, often with a subtle transition where one sound is gradually transformed into a related sound, revealing an audible and specific compositional mode. It resembles a common strategy in human composing, which can be described as variation of a theme. In this paper, we present our initial attempts to describe the specific compositional rules behind the mockingbird song, focusing on the way the bird transitions from one syllable type to the next. We find that more often than chance, syllables before and after the transition are spectrally related, i.e., transitions are gradual, which we describe as morphing. In our paper, we categorize four common modes of morphing: timbre change, pitch change, squeeze (shortening in time), and stretch (lengthening in time). This is the first time such transition rules in any complex birdsong have been specifically articulated

What makes babies musical? Conceptions of musicality in infants and toddlers

Despite major advances in research on musical ability in infants, relatively little attention has been paid to individual differences in general musicality in infants. A fundamental problem has been the lack of a clear definition of what constitutes “general musicality” or “musical ability” in infants and toddlers, resulting in a wide range of test procedures that rely on different models of musicality. However, musicality can be seen as a social construct that can take on different meanings across cultures, sub-groups, and individuals, and may be subject to change over time. Therefore, one way to get a clearer picture of infant musicality is to assess conceptions of musicality in the general population. Using this approach, we surveyed 174 German adults, asking about their view and conceptions regarding behaviors that characterize a musical child under 3 years. Based on previous studies on adult and child musicality, we designed a survey containing 41 statements describing musical behaviors in children. Participants were asked to rate how indicative these behaviors were of musicality in infants and toddlers. PCA analysis revealed 4 components of musical abilities and behaviors in under-3-year-olds: Musical Communication, Enthusiasm and Motivation, Adaptive Expressiveness, and Musical Abilities as traditionally defined. Professional background and musical expertise of the respondents did not significantly influence participants’ conceptions. Our results suggest that, in order to capture musicality in young children, a wider range of skills and observable behaviors should be taken into account than those assessed by traditional musical ability tests for young children

What makes a child musical? Conceptions of musical ability in childhood

Tests of musical ability in children have relied on diverse conceptions of what musical abilities are. Recent investigations suggest that such conceptions can be seen as socially constructed and differ between cultures, sub-groups, and individuals. Based on a previous study on conceptions of adult musical ability, we designed a questionnaire targeting musical behaviours of 3–6-year-old children. 922 German adults who regularly spend time with children assessed how often a musical child would show these behaviours. Principal component analysis revealed four components of childhood musical ability: musical communication, enthusiasm and motivation, analytical understanding of music, and musical abilities in a narrow sense. The importance assigned to the components differed depending on musical expertise: Participants with higher expertise rated analytical music skills as significantly less important. Results suggest that ecologically valid tests of musical ability in childhood should cover a wide range of skills and observable behaviours

The Dùndún Drum helps us understand how we process speech and music

Every day, you hear many sounds in your environment, like speech, music, animal calls, or passing cars. How do you tease apart these unique categories of sounds? We aimed to understand more about how people distinguish speech and music by using an instrument that can both “speak” and play music: the dùndún talking drum. We were interested in whether people could tell if the sound produced by the drum was speech or music. People who were familiar with the dùndún were good at the task, but so were those who had never heard the dùndún, suggesting that there are general characteristics of sound that define speech and music categories. We observed that music is faster, more regular, and more variable in volume than “speech.” This research helps us understand the interesting instrument that is dùndún and provides insights about how humans distinguish two important types of sound: speech and music

Perception of Nigerian Dùndún talking drum performances as speech-like vs. music-like: The role of familiarity and acoustic cues

It seems trivial to identify sound sequences as music or speech, particularly when the sequences come from different sound sources, such as an orchestra and a human voice. Can we also easily distinguish these categories when the sequence comes from the same sound source? On the basis of which acoustic features? We investigated these questions by examining listeners’ classification of sound sequences performed by an instrument intertwining both speech and music: the dùndún talking drum. The dùndún is commonly used in south-west Nigeria as a musical instrument but is also perfectly fit for linguistic usage in what has been described as speech surrogates in Africa. One hundred seven participants from diverse geographical locations (15 different mother tongues represented) took part in an online experiment. Fifty-one participants reported being familiar with the dùndún talking drum, 55% of those being speakers of Yorùbá. During the experiment, participants listened to 30 dùndún samples of about 7s long, performed either as music or Yorùbá speech surrogate (n = 15 each) by a professional musician, and were asked to classify each sample as music or speech-like. The classification task revealed the ability of the listeners to identify the samples as intended by the performer, particularly when they were familiar with the dùndún, though even unfamiliar participants performed above chance. A logistic regression predicting participants’ classification of the samples from several acoustic features confirmed the perceptual relevance of intensity, pitch, timbre, and timing measures and their interaction with listener familiarity. In all, this study provides empirical evidence supporting the discriminating role of acoustic features and the modulatory role of familiarity in teasing apart speech and music

Multifractal analysis reveals music-like dynamic structure in songbird rhythms

Music is thought to engage its listeners by driving feelings of surprise, tension, and relief through a dynamic mixture of predictable and unpredictable patterns, a property summarized here as “expressiveness”. Birdsong shares with music the goal to attract its listeners’ attention and might use similar strategies to achieve this. We here tested a thrush nightingale’s (Luscinia luscinia) rhythm, as represented by song amplitude envelope (containing information on note timing, duration, and intensity), for evidence of expressiveness. We used multifractal analysis, which is designed to detect in a signal dynamic fluctuations between predictable and unpredictable states on multiple timescales (e.g. notes, subphrases, songs). Results show that rhythm is strongly multifractal, indicating fluctuations between predictable and unpredictable patterns. Moreover, comparing original songs with re-synthesized songs that lack all subtle deviations from the “standard” note envelopes, we find that deviations in note intensity and duration significantly contributed to multifractality. This suggests that birdsong is more dynamic due to subtle note timing patterns, often similar to musical operations like accelerando or crescendo. While different sources of these dynamics are conceivable, this study shows that multi-timescale rhythm fluctuations can be detected in birdsong, paving the path to studying mechanisms and function behind such patterns

One Year Term Review as a Participating Guest in the Detonator and Detonation Physics Group

The one year stay was possible after a long administrative process, because of the fact that this was the first participating guest of B division as a foreign national in HEAF (High Explosives Application Facility) with the Detonator/Detonation Physics Group

Shelf‐basin exchange times of Arctic surface waters estimated from \u3csup\u3e228\u3c/sup\u3eTH/\u3csup\u3e228\u3c/sup\u3eRa disequilibrium

The transpolar drift is strongly enriched in 228Ra accumulated on the wide Arctic shelves with subsequent rapid offshore transport. We present new data of Polarstern expeditions to the central Arctic and to the Kara and Laptev seas. Because 226Ra activities in Pacific waters are 30% higher than in Atlantic waters, we correct 226Ra for the Pacific admixture when normalizing 228Ra with 226Ra. The use of 228Ra decay as age marker critically depends on the constancy in space and time of the source activity, a condition that has not yet adequately been tested. While 228Ra decays during transit over the central basin, ingrowth of 228Th could provide an alternative age marker. The high 228Th/228Ra activity ratio (AR = 0.8–1.0) in the central basins is incompatible with a mixing model based on horizontal eddy diffusion. An advective model predicts that 228Th grows to an equilibrium AR, the value of which depends on the scavenging regime. The low AR over the Lomonosov Ridge (AR = 0.5) can be due to either rapid transport (minimum age without scavenging 1.1 year) or enhanced scavenging. Suspended particulate matter load (derived from beam transmission and particulate 234Th) and total 234Th depletion data show that scavenging, although extremely low in the central Arctic, is enhanced over the Lomonosov Ridge, making an age of 3 years more likely. The combined data of 228Ra decay and 228Th ingrowth confirm the existence of a recirculating gyre in the surface water of the eastern Eurasian Basin with a river water residence time of at least 3 year

What are the Limits of PDV?

Author Institution: Lawrence Livermore National LaboratorySlides presented at the Heterodyne Velocimeter Workshop held at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, July 20-21, 2006

Evidence for STAT4 as a Common Autoimmune Gene: rs7574865 Is Associated with Colonic Crohn's Disease and Early Disease Onset

Recent studies demonstrated an association of STAT4 variants with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), indicating that multiple autoimmune diseases share common susceptibility genes. We therefore investigated the influence of STAT4 variants on the susceptibility and phenotype of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) in a large patient and control cohort. Genomic DNA from 2704 individuals of Caucasian origin including 857 patients with Crohn's disease (CD), 464 patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), and 1383 healthy, unrelated controls was analyzed for seven SNPs in the STAT4 gene (rs11889341, rs7574865, rs7568275, rs8179673, rs10181656, rs7582694, rs10174238). In addition, a detailed genotype-phenotype analysis was performed. Our analysis revealed an association of the STAT4 SNP rs7574865 with overall decreased susceptibility to CD (p = 0.047, OR 0.86 [95% CI 0.74-0.99]). However, compared to CD patients carrying the wild type genotype, the STAT4 SNP rs7574865 was significantly associated with early CD onset (p = 0.021) and colonic CD (p = 0.008; OR = 4.60, 95% CI 1.63-12.96). For two other STAT4 variants, there was a trend towards protection against CD susceptibility (rs7568275, p = 0.058, OR 0.86 [95% CI 0.74-1.00]; rs10174238, p = 0.057, OR 0.86 [95% CI 0.75-1.00]). In contrast, we did not observe any association with UC susceptibility. Evidence for weak gene-gene interaction of STAT4 with the IL23R SNP rs11209026 was lost after Bonferroni correction. Our results identified the STAT4 SNP rs7574865 as a disease-modifying gene variant in colonic CD. However, in contrast to SLE and RA, the effect of rs7574865 on CD susceptibility is only weak