The Rise Of The Chinese Concerto: A Look Into The Developments Of Chinese Traditional Instrument Concerti With Western Orchestra

The mixing of musical traditions between cultures, philosophies, and religions has been a crucial element of music for centuries. However, a marked rise over the last century has seen rapid development of specific East/West fusions that have become known as “fusion concertos.” These fusions combine Eastern and Western compositional techniques as well as Eastern and Western instruments to create new and interesting works for a multitude of ensembles. This research takes two early examples written by Chinese composers, the worldfamous works Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto and Yellow River Piano Concerto, and analyzes them regarding form, melodic content, harmonic content, and instrumental considerations. This analysis is then compared to three newer works written by wellknown composers Ma Shui-long, Tan Dun, and Bright Sheng. Through this process, key factors will be identified that highlight the fusions between Eastern and Western ideas. Analysis of these traits identifies what makes these compositional hybrids successful regarding the compositional traits listed above and explores important cultural factors that shape the work\u27s narrative. It is my hope that, through this research, more scholars, researchers, and performers become aware of the fundamental techniques that make these works successful and endeavor to continue advancing this exciting and influential genre to a continually wider audience

PROMIS Physical Function Scale Bookmarking and Validation

• Quick, valid and responsive outcome measure are critical for physical therapists • The NIH’s Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) is a universal, 124 item, computer adapted system (CAT) that evaluates various health domains including physical function without a ceiling or floor effect. • PROMIS demonstrates good convergent validity with the Health Assessment Questionnaire Disability Index (HAQ-DI) and Short-form 36 (SF-36) physical function subscale1 and also with ‘gold standard\u27 International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) scale. PROMIS score can also predict poor outcomes at various follow-up lengths ranging from 3-52 weeks2. • The modified physical performance test (mPPT) is a performance-based test containing several functional tasks and is used to assess physical frailty in older individuals3. • Patient reported outcomes (PRO) require less time and equipment compared to performance based measures. • Purpose: To evaluate the relationship between scores on mPPT and PROMIS. Additionally, to map-out the scoring system of the PROMIS, to allow therapists to utilize it’s T-score in clinical practice

Filaments in the southern giant lobe of Centaurus A : Constraints on nature and origin from modelling and GMRT observations

Date of acceptance: 22/05/2014We present results from imaging of the radio filaments in the southern giant lobe of CentaurusA using data from Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope observations at 325 and 235 MHz, and outcomes from filament modelling. The observations reveal a rich filamentary structure, largely matching the morphology at 1.4 GHz. We find no clear connection of the filaments to the jet. We seek to constrain the nature and origin of the vertex and vortex filaments associated with the lobe and their role in high-energy particle acceleration. We deduce that these filaments are at most mildly overpressuredwith respect to the global lobe plasma showing no evidence of largescale efficient Fermi I-type particle acceleration, and persist for ~2-3 Myr. We demonstrate that the dwarf galaxy KK 196 (AM 1318-444) cannot account for the features, and that surface plasma instabilities, the internal sausage mode and radiative instabilities are highly unlikely. An internal tearing instability and the kink mode are allowed within the observational and growth time constraints and could develop in parallel on different physical scales. We interpret the origin of the vertex and vortex filaments in terms of weak shocks from transonic magnetohydrodynamical turbulence or from a moderately recent jet activity of the parent AGN, or an interplay of both.Peer reviewe

Increasing Short-Stay Unplanned Hospital Admissions among Children in England; Time Trends Analysis '97-'06

BACKGROUND: Timely care by general practitioners in the community keeps children out of hospital and provides better continuity of care. Yet in the UK, access to primary care has diminished since 2004 when changes in general practitioners' contracts enabled them to 'opt out' of providing out-of-hours care and since then unplanned pediatric hospital admission rates have escalated, particularly through emergency departments. We hypothesised that any increase in isolated short stay admissions for childhood illness might reflect failure to manage these cases in the community over a 10 year period spanning these changes. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We conducted a population based time trends study of major causes of hospital admission in children 2 days. By 2006, 67.3% of all unplanned admissions were isolated short stays <2 days. The increases in admission rates were greater for common non-infectious than infectious causes of admissions. CONCLUSIONS: Short stay unplanned hospital admission rates in young children in England have increased substantially in recent years and are not accounted for by reductions in length of in-hospital stay. The majority are isolated short stay admissions for minor illness episodes that could be better managed by primary care in the community and may be evidence of a failure of primary care services

The Grizzly, November 10, 2005

Congress to Campus • Spyware Protection • Honor Code Debate Continues • Human Rights Activist Speaks at UC • Scientific Sexual Healing • Epic Skate Shop • DiBlasio to Perform at Ursinus • Repeat! Dynasty Built in Second CC Crown • Fad Diets: Sometimes it is OK Not to be Trendy • Opinions: My Mouth Runneth Over; Who is Samuel Alito? • No Crown but Earn Bid to ECAC • Women\u27s Rugby Division III Championshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1699/thumbnail.jp

Mentoring at the University of Pennsylvania: Results of a Faculty Survey

BACKGROUND: Research suggests mentoring is related to career satisfaction and success. Most studies have focused on junior faculty. OBJECTIVE: To explore multiple aspects of mentoring at an academic medical center in relation to faculty rank, track, and gender. DESIGN: Cross-sectional mail survey in mid-2003. PARTICIPANTS: Faculty members, 1,432, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine MEASUREMENTS: Self-administered survey developed from existing instruments and stakeholders. RESULTS: Response rate was 73% (n = 1,046). Most (92%) assistant and half (48%) of associate professors had a mentor. Assistant professors in the tenure track were most likely to have a mentor (98%). At both ranks, the faculty was given more types of advice than types of opportunities. Satisfaction with mentoring was correlated with the number of types of mentoring received (r = .48 and .53, P < .0001), job satisfaction (r = .44 and .31, P < .0001), meeting frequency (r = .53 and .61, P < .0001), and expectation of leaving the University within 5 years (Spearman r = −.19 and −.18, P < .0001), at the assistant and associate rank, respectively. Significant predictors of higher overall job satisfaction were associate rank [Odds ratio (OR) = 2.04, CI = 1.29–3.21], the 10-point mentoring satisfaction rating (OR = 1.27, CI = 1.17–1.35), and number of mentors (OR = 1.60, CI = 1.20–2.07). CONCLUSIONS: Having a mentor, or preferably, multiple mentors is strongly related to satisfaction with mentoring and overall job satisfaction. Surprisingly, few differences were related to gender. Mentoring of clinician–educators, research track faculty, and senior faculty, and the use of multiple mentors require specific attention of academic leadership and further study

Combined optogenetic and electrical stimulation of the sciatic nerve for selective control of sensory fibers

IntroductionElectrical stimulation offers a drug-free alternative for the treatment of many neurological conditions, such as chronic pain. However, it is not easy to selectively activate afferent or efferent fibers of mixed nerves, nor their functional subtypes. Optogenetics overcomes these issues by controlling activity selectively in genetically modified fibers, however the reliability of responses to light are poor compared to electrical stimulation and the high intensities of light required present considerable translational challenges. In this study we employed a combined protocol of optical and electrical stimulation to the sciatic nerve in an optogenetic mouse model to allow for better selectivity, efficiency, and safety to overcome fundamental limitations of electrical-only and optical-only stimulation.MethodsThe sciatic nerve was surgically exposed in anesthetized mice (n = 12) expressing the ChR2-H134R opsin via the parvalbumin promoter. A custom-made peripheral nerve cuff electrode and a 452 nm laser-coupled optical fiber were used to elicit neural activity utilizing optical-only, electrical-only, or combined stimulation. Activation thresholds for the individual and combined responses were measured.ResultsOptically evoked responses had a conduction velocity of 34.3 m/s, consistent with ChR2-H134R expression in proprioceptive and low-threshold mechanoreceptor (Aα/Aβ) fibers which was also confirmed via immunohistochemical methods. Combined stimulation, utilizing a 1 ms near-threshold light pulse followed by an electrical pulse 0.5 ms later, approximately halved the electrical threshold for activation (p = 0.006, n = 5) and resulted in a 5.5 dB increase in the Aα/Aβ hybrid response amplitude compared to the electrical-only response at equivalent electrical levels (p = 0.003, n = 6). As a result, there was a 3.25 dB increase in the therapeutic stimulation window between the Aα/Aβ fiber and myogenic thresholds (p = 0.008, n = 4).DiscussionThe results demonstrate that light can be used to prime the optogenetically modified neural population to reside near threshold, thereby selectively reducing the electrical threshold for neural activation in these fibers. This reduces the amount of light needed for activation for increased safety and reduces potential off-target effects by only stimulating the fibers of interest. Since Aα/Aβ fibers are potential targets for neuromodulation in chronic pain conditions, these findings could be used to develop effective strategies to selectively manipulate pain transmission pathways in the periphery

HERVs establish a distinct molecular subtype in stage II/III colorectal cancer with poor outcome

© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most lethal malignancies. The extreme heterogeneity in survival rate is driving the need for new prognostic biomarkers. Human endogenous retroviruses (hERVs) have been suggested to influence tumor progression, oncogenesis and elicit an immune response. We examined multiple next-generation sequencing (NGS)-derived biomarkers in 114 CRC patients with paired whole-exome and whole-transcriptome sequencing (WES and WTS, respectively). First, we demonstrate that the median expression of hERVs can serve as a potential biomarker for prognosis, relapse, and resistance to chemotherapy in stage II and III CRC. We show that hERV expression and CD8+ tumor-infiltrating T-lymphocytes (TILs) synergistically stratify overall and relapse-free survival (OS and RFS): the median OS of the CD8-/hERV+ subgroup was 29.8 months compared with 37.5 months for other subgroups (HR = 4.4, log-rank P < 0.001). Combing NGS-based biomarkers (hERV/CD8 status) with clinicopathological factors provided a better prediction of patient survival compared to clinicopathological factors alone. Moreover, we explored the association between genomic and transcriptomic features of tumors with high hERV expression and establish this subtype as distinct from previously described consensus molecular subtypes of CRC. Overall, our results underscore a previously unknown role for hERVs in leading to a more aggressive subtype of CRC.The biobanking of CRC from Hospital Santa Maria, Lisbon, Portugal, was supported by a grant from the Official Portuguese Funding Agency for Science and Technology (FCT: PIC/IC/82821/2007).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin