Undergraduate Conductors’ and Conducting Teachers’ Perceptions of Basic Conducting Efficacy

basic conducting, nonverbal conducting behaviors, conducting effectivenessThe purpose of this study was to examine undergraduate conductors’ and conducting teachers’ perceptions about basic conducting efficacy. At the beginning and end of the semester, undergraduate students (N = 19) enrolled in a basic conducting course (a) were surveyed about the importance of certain skills necessary for being an effective conductor and (b) viewed and rated their first videotaped conducting episode. Results indicated very few significant differences in participants’ ratings of important conducting skills or their own self-evaluation of nonverbal conducting skills. In addition, university conducting teachers (N = 9) evaluated videos of 10 conductors (five who had participated in the basic conducting course and five nonconductors who had not) who led a university concert band in an identical 1-minute excerpt of band music. No significant differences were found between the basic conductors and the nonconductors’ nonverbal conducting behaviors. Implications for conducting teachers, undergraduate conducting students, and preservice teachers are discussed.YesReviewed and accepted for publication in "Update: Applications of Research in Music Education" http://upd.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/23/8755123314554809.abstrac

Protein glutathionylation: coupling and uncoupling of glutathione to protein thiol groups in lymphocytes under oxidative stress and HIV infection

We show here that exposure to oxidative stress induces glutathione (GSH) modification of protein cysteinyl residues (glutathionylation) in T cell blasts. Treating the cells with the oxidant diamide induces thiolation of a series of proteins that can be detected by 2D electrophoresis when 35S-cysteine is used to label the intracellular GSH pool. This thiolation is reversible, proteins are rapidly dethiolated and GSH is released from proteins once the oxidants are washed and the cells are allowed to recover. Dethiolation is dependent on the availability of GSH and thiols, since it is inhibited by GSH-depleting agents and improved by N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC). The capacity of these agents to reverse glutathionylation is diminished in T cell blasts infected in vitro with HIV, which is known to cause oxidative stress. Consistent with these findings, the activity of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), an enzyme known to be inhibited by glutathionylation, is inhibited in diamide-treated cells and recovers rapidly when cells are allowed to dethiolate. Further, GAPDH activity is diminished by GSH-depleting agents and augmented by NAC. Thus, reversible glutathionylation of proteins can rapidly shift the activity of a key metabolic enzyme and thereby result in dramatic, reversible changes in cellular metabolis

Punishing childhoods: contradictions in children’s rights and global governance

The article considers efforts to eradicate corporal punishment as an aspect of the global governance of childhood and raises problems relevant to global governance more broadly. The article analyses contradictions in children’s rights advocacy between its universal human rights norms and implicit relativist development model. Children’s rights research is influenced by social constructivist theories, which highlight the history of childhood and childhood norms. Earlier social constructivist studies identified the concept of childhood underpinning the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as a Western construction based on Western historical experiences, which excluded the experiences of childhood in developing countries. More recent social constructivist approaches emphasise how childhood norms are constructed and therefore can be reconstructed. The article outlines problems with attempts to globalise childhood norms without globalising material development. The article discusses the softening of discipline norms in Western societies historically. It indicates problems with children’s rights advocacy seeking to eradicate the corporal punishment of children globally without globalising the material conditions, which underpin the post-industrial ideal of childhood embodied in the CRC

Structural basis for the improved drug resistance profile of new generation benzophenone non-nucleoside HIV-1 reverse transcriptase inhibitors.

Owing to the emergence of resistant virus, next generation non-nucleoside HIV reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) with improved drug resistance profiles have been developed to treat HIV infection. Crystal structures of HIV-1 RT complexed with benzophenones optimized for inhibition of HIV mutants that were resistant to the prototype benzophenone GF128590 indicate factors contributing to the resilience of later compounds in the series (GW4511, GW678248). Meta-substituents on the benzophenone A-ring had the designed effect of inducing better contacts with the conserved W229 while reducing aromatic stacking interactions with the highly mutable Y181 side chain, which unexpectedly adopted a "down" position. Up to four main-chain hydrogen bonds to the inhibitor also appear significant in contributing to resilience. Structures of mutant RTs (K103N, V106A/Y181C) with benzophenones showed only small rearrangements of the NNRTIs relative to wild-type. Hence, adaptation to a mutated NNRTI pocket by inhibitor rearrangement appears less significant for benzophenones than other next-generation NNRTIs