360 research outputs found
THE GENESIS OF THE SCOTTISH RITE PIPE ORGAN IN THE UNITED STATES THROUGH 1930
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the pipe organ played a coveted role in the civic life of the United States. In the absence of public address systems, pipe organs, with their immense power and tonal capabilities, were logical and cost-effective ways to provide music for the masses. Thus, pipe organs were installed not only in churches, but also in stadiums, municipal auditoriums, convention halls, movie theaters, and Masonic buildings.
Hundreds if not thousands of pipe organs were built for Masonic edifices from approximately 1860 through World War II, including nearly fifty instruments for Scottish Rite Temples. The Scottish Rite is one of the appendant bodies of Freemasonry that a Master Mason may join for further exposure to the principles of Freemasonry. Initially, the Scottish Rite conferred degrees similar to the practices of other nineteenth century secret societies. However, around the turn of the twentieth century, the Rite radically revised its ritual, transitioning it from a traditional lodge experience to a theatrical one. This resulted in a membership boom and warranted the construction of lavish, regional buildings throughout the country. Furthermore, in lieu of regular weekly meetings, the practice of Scottish Rite Masonry shifted to large, biannual âreunionsâ which are grand spectacles of theatre and ceremony.
During the first three decades of the twentieth century, thousands of pipe organs were produced in the United States, with large companies such as M.P. Möller shipping out one pipe organ per day at the peak of production. These instruments fell into two categories: âclassicalâ organs appropriate for church and academic settings and âtheatreâ organs built primarily for entertainment and characterized by the addition of tuned and untuned percussions and special effects. Yet, the ritual work of the Scottish Rite required an entirely different kind of organ. While much of the degree work is solemn, these instruments were also required to play lively marches and to accompany the hearty singing of hundreds if not thousands of men. Although some Scottish Rite pipe organs were built strictly along classical lines, others are a curious blend of classical and theatrical elements reflecting the duality of their purpose. After providing a brief history of Freemasonry, this document will survey the origins of Scottish Rite pipe organs and examine the ritualistic demands the instruments were required to meet. Finally, this document will include an examination of the pipe organ market that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in order to satisfy the needs of Scottish Rite valleys
Investigation of Designs for Tuning of Mutual Coupling and Operating Frequency in High-Power Slot Antenna Arrays
Today's congested frequency spectrum calls for frequency agile arrays and antennas that can avoid the interference of the myriad of RF sources, from satellites to amateur radio, that take up the same bandwidths. Previous work has been done developing tunable slot antennas for this purpose using varactor tuning methods, but a high power tunable slot array has not yet been developed. This thesis presents work aimed at enabling the creation of this high-power tunable slot array. The development of a miniaturized coplanar waveguide to slotline transition and the simulation of several tunable antenna designs are intended to enable frequency tuning in the array at the element level. The transition is based off of previously developed coplanar waveguide to slotline transitions, but will also be miniaturized to achieve easier implementation into the tunable slot array. This transition will also be used to investigate the effects of different loading mechanisms on the slots, based on a previous tunable slot design. The mutual coupling behavior of a two-element tunable slot array is investigated and a method of tuning the mutual coupling between these tunable slots is developed. From there, a transmission line model of this coupling mechanism is created to aid in further understanding of the design and achieve better understanding of the process of mutual coupling in tunable slot arrays
Delineation of the ancestral tus-dependent replication fork trap
In Escherichia coli, DNA replication termination is orchestrated by two clusters of Ter sites forming a DNA replication fork trap when bound by Tus proteins. The formation of a âlockedâ Tusâ Ter complex is essential for halting incoming DNA replication forks. However, the absence of replication fork arrest at some Ter sites raised questions about their significance. In this study, we examined the genome-wide distribution of Tus and found that only the six innermost Ter sites (TerAâE and G) were significantly bound by Tus. We also found that a single ectopic insertion of TerB in its non-permissive orientation could not be achieved, advocating against a need for âback-upâ Ter sites. Finally, examination of the genomes of a variety of Enterobacterales revealed a new replication fork trap architecture mostly found outside the Enterobacteriaceae family. Taken together, our data enabled the delineation of a narrow ancestral Tus-dependent DNA replication fork trap consisting of only two Ter sites
The tilted Iceland Plume and its effect on the North Atlantic evolution and magmatism
Iceland and the encompassing Northeast Atlantic are characterized by abun- dant volcanism, anomalously high topography and, in many places, anoma- lously thick basaltic crust. This has been attributed to the Iceland Plume, rising from the deep mantle, though its structure and very existence are de- bated. Using seismic waveform tomography with massive datasets, we compute a new, detailed model of the crust and upper mantle beneath Iceland and the surrounding North Atlantic region. The model reveals a large, low-velocity anomaly, indicative of high temperatures, at 400-660 kilometers depth beneath eastern Greenland, where seismic receiver functions also indicate an extensive high-temperature region. The anomaly rises upwards and eastwards toward Ice- land, deflecting around the thick lithosphere of Greenlandâs cratons, which we also image in detail. We interpret the major low-velocity anomaly as the Ice- land Plume, ascending from under Greenland and captured by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The ascent of the plume beneath the western Northeast Atlantic is con- sistent with its thin lithosphere, documented by our tomography, and abundant seamounts. Our results reconcile previously contrasting views on the structure of the Iceland Plume: while the plume is clearly visible in the transition zone beneath Greenland, it is confined to the upper mantle beneath Iceland
The dearth of halo dwarf galaxies: is there power on short scales?
N-body simulations of structure formation with scale-invariant primordial
perturbations show significantly more virialized objects of dwarf-galaxy mass
in a typical galactic halo than are observed around the Milky Way. We show that
the dearth of observed dwarf galaxies could be explained by a dramatic downturn
in the power spectrum at small distance scales. This suppression of small-scale
power might also help mitigate the disagreement between cuspy simulated halos
and smooth observed halos, while remaining consistent with Lyman-alpha-forest
constraints on small-scale power. Such a spectrum could arise in inflationary
models with broken scale invariance.Comment: 5 pages LaTeX, 3 figure
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Regulation of nerve growth and patterning by cell surface protein disulphide isomerase.
Contact repulsion of growing axons is an essential mechanism for spinal nerve patterning. In birds and mammals the embryonic somites generate a linear series of impenetrable barriers, forcing axon growth cones to traverse one half of each somite as they extend towards their body targets. This study shows that protein disulphide isomerase provides a key component of these barriers, mediating contact repulsion at the cell surface in chick half-somites. Repulsion is reduced both in vivo and in vitro by a range of methods that inhibit enzyme activity. The activity is critical in initiating a nitric oxide/S-nitrosylation-dependent signal transduction pathway that regulates the growth cone cytoskeleton. Rat forebrain grey matter extracts contain a similar activity, and the enzyme is expressed at the surface of cultured human astrocytic cells and rat cortical astrocytes. We suggest this system is co-opted in the brain to counteract and regulate aberrant nerve terminal growth
Discovery of Protein-Protein Interaction Inhibitors by Integrating Protein Engineering and Chemical Screening Platforms
Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) govern intracellular life, and identification of PPI inhibitors is challenging. Roadblocks in assay development stemming from weak binding affinities of natural PPIs impede progress in this field. We postulated that enhancing binding affinity of natural PPIs via protein engineering will aid assay development and hit discovery. This proof-of-principle study targets PPI between linear ubiquitin chains and NEMO UBAN domain, which activates NF-ÎșB signaling. Using phage display, we generated ubiquitin variants that bind to the functional UBAN epitope with high affinity, act as competitive inhibitors, and structurally maintain the existing PPI interface. When utilized in assay development, variants enable generation of robust cell-based assays for chemical screening. Top compounds identified using this approach directly bind to UBAN and dampen NF-ÎșB signaling. This study illustrates advantages of integrating protein engineering and chemical screening in hit identification, a development that we anticipate will have wide application in drug discovery
Diverse New Microvertebrate Assemblage from the Upper Triassic Cumnock Formation, Sanford Subbasin, North Carolina, USA
The Moncure microvertebrate locality in the Cumnock Formation, Sanford sub-basin, North Carolina, dramatically increases the known Late Triassic age vertebrate assemblage from the Deep River Basin. The 50,000 recovered microvertebrate fossils include osteichthyans, amphibians, and numerous lepidosauromorph, archosauriform, and synapsid amniotes. Actinopterygian fossils consist of thousands of scales, teeth, skull, and lower jaw fragments, principally of redfieldiids and semionotids. Non-tetrapod sarcopterygians include the dipnoan Arganodus sp., the first record of lungfish in the Newark Supergroup. Temnospondyls are comparatively rare but the preserved centra, teeth, and skull fragments probably represent small (juvenile) metoposaurids. Two fragmentary teeth are assigned to the unusual reptile Colognathus obscurus (Case). Poorly preserved but intriguing records include acrodont and pleurodont jaw fragments tentatively assigned to lepidosaurs. Among the archosauriform teeth is a taxon distinct from R. callenderi that we assign to Revueltosaurus olseni new combination, a morphotype best assigned to cf. Galtonia, the first Newark Supergroup record of Crosbysaurus sp., and several other archosauriform tooth morphotypes, as well as grooved teeth assigned to the recently named species Uatchitodon schneideri. Synapsids represented by molariform teeth include both "traversodontids" assigned to aff. Boreogomphodon and the "dromatheriid" Microconodon. These records are biogeographically important, with many new records for the Cumnock Formation and/or the Newark Supergroup. In particular, Colognathus, Crosbysaurus, and Uatchitodon are known from basins of Adamanian age in the southwestern U.S.A. These new records include microvertebrate taxa more typical of non-Newark basins (abundant archosauriforms, temnospondyls, lungfish) as well as more typical Newark osteichthyans and synapsid-rich faunal elements
Comparison of analyses of the QTLMAS XII common dataset. I: Genomic selection
<p>Abstract</p> <p>A dataset was simulated and distributed to participants of the QTLMAS XII workshop who were invited to develop genomic selection models. Each contributing group was asked to describe the model development and validation as well as to submit genomic predictions for three generations of individuals, for which they only knew the genotypes. The organisers used these genomic predictions to perform the final validation by comparison to the true breeding values, which were known only to the organisers. Methods used by the 5 groups fell in 3 classes 1) fixed effects models 2) BLUP models, and 3) Bayesian MCMC based models. The Bayesian analyses gave the highest accuracies, followed by the BLUP models, while the fixed effects models generally had low accuracies and large error variance. The best BLUP models as well as the best Bayesian models gave unbiased predictions. The BLUP models are clearly sensitive to the assumed SNP variance, because they do not estimate SNP variance, but take the specified variance as the true variance. The current comparison suggests that Bayesian analyses on haplotypes or SNPs are the most promising approach for Genomic selection although the BLUP models may provide a computationally attractive alternative with little loss of efficiency. On the other hand fixed effect type models are unlikely to provide any gain over traditional pedigree indexes for selection.</p
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