Into the sounding environment A compositional approach

The focus of the compositional approach presented in this folio is the sounding environment. The term sounding environment is used in this context to refer to the whole of our living experience in the world which we might register as relating to sound. It might include everything that is sounding, seemingly sounding, imagined sounding, remembered sounding, sensed as sounding, composed to sound. It includes thus the actual sound environment, all that is sensed or interpreted as sound and imaginary sounds. This dissertation accompanies the seven acousmatic and the two sound installation works included in the folio. It is divided into two parts. In the first part relevant ideas and theories both from the literature of electroacoustic music composition and soundscape composition are discussed while in the second the compositional approach to the sounding environment is presented as applied to the works

STUDY OF HEAT SHOCK PROTEINS IN THALASSAEMIC PATIENTS

When cells are exposed to a variety of stimuli, there is increased expression of stress or heat shock proteins, a major representative of which is hsp70. The objective of the present work was to investigate the endogenous expression of hsp70 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells and erythrocytes of patients suffering from b-thalassaemia and to correlate hsp70 levels with patients' antioxidant status. Blood samples were obtained from thalassaemia major patients aged 16-24 years. Hsp70 was identified with a mouse monoclonal anti-human hsp70 antibodies using the Western blot procedure. The total antioxidant status was determined by means of a commercial kit of RANDOX. It was established that: i) Hsp70 levels were low in mononuclear cells, ii) Hsp70 was not appreciably induced by incubation at 43°C, Hi) in erythrocytes, however, there was a marked endogenous expression ofhsp70 - thalassaemics express more hsp70 than control subjects, iv) the antioxidant status of thalassaemics was by about 20 % less than the control one. The increased endogenous hsp70 in thalassaemic erythrocytes was consistent with the hypothesis that the elevated levels of denaturated globins induced the expression of stress proteins during erythopoiesis. We are currently investigating whether there is a correlation between the severity of the clinical symptoms and hsp70 levels