A study of performance practices in recordings of Bach\u27s Violin Sonata BWV 1003 from 1930-2000

Throughout the 20th century, the performance practice of baroque music has undergone many stylistic changes. Moreover, the rich resources of primary source material available to us in musical recordings of the period have only recently been realised. Bruce Haynes, in his book The End of Early Music, suggests that the twentieth century saw three principal schools of performance: romantic, modernist, and historically-informed. This study investigates Haynes\u27 hypothesis through a comparison of fourteen recordings of Bach\u27s Solo Violin Sonata in A minor BWV 1003, ranging from 1933 to 1999. Focus is made on eight predetermined observation criteria: tempo, tempo fluctuation, rhythmic alteration, accentuation, articulation, portamento, vibrato, and ornamentation. Each criterion is discussed with reference to the secondary literature and observations of each recording are compiled in a systematic fashion. Each of the three schools (romantic, modernist, and historically-informed) is profiled, and an attempt is made to compare and categorise each recording, where possible. The results are used to test the validity of Haynes tripartite model and also to shed further light on the ways that performance practices have changed across the century

Inhibition of oncogenic transcription factor REL by the natural product derivative calafianin monomer 101 induces proliferation arrest and apoptosis in human B-lymphoma cell lines

Increased activity of transcription factor NF-κB has been implicated in many B-cell lymphomas. We investigated effects of synthetic compound calafianin monomer (CM101) on biochemical and biological properties of NF-κB. In human 293 cells, CM101 selectively inhibited DNA binding by overexpressed NF-κB subunits REL (human c-Rel) and p65 as compared to NF-κB p50, and inhibition of REL and p65 DNA binding by CM101 required a conserved cysteine residue. CM101 also inhibited DNA binding by REL in human B-lymphoma cell lines, and the sensitivity of several B-lymphoma cell lines to CM101-induced proliferation arrest and apoptosis correlated with levels of cellular and nuclear REL. CM101 treatment induced both phosphorylation and decreased expression of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-XL, a REL target gene product, in sensitive B-lymphoma cell lines. Ectopic expression of Bcl-XL protected SUDHL-2 B-lymphoma cells against CM101-induced apoptosis, and overexpression of a transforming mutant of REL decreased the sensitivity of BJAB B-lymphoma cells to CM101-induced apoptosis. Lipopolysaccharide-induced activation of NF-κB signaling upstream components occurred in RAW264.7 macrophages at CM101 concentrations that blocked NF-κB DNA binding. Direct inhibitors of REL may be useful for treating B-cell lymphomas in which REL is active, and may inhibit B-lymphoma cell growth at doses that do not affect some immune-related responses in normal cells.R01 GM094551 - NIGMS NIH HHS; P50 GM067041 - NIGMS NIH HHS; GM094551 - NIGMS NIH HHS; R24 GM111625 - NIGMS NIH HHS; GM067041 - NIGMS NIH HH

Cytomegalovirus infections in Solid Organ transplant recipients

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Foreword Special Issue on Transistors With Steep Subthreshold Swing for Low-Power Electronics

The increasing power consumption of integrated circuits is today the main impediment to the density scaling of integrated circuit technology. The reduction of supply voltage is the most effective way to reduce power; however, using modern transistors voltage reduction is traded against reduced speed or limited by a rising off-state leakage, neither of which is desirable. A better tradeoff can be achieved if the fundamental current control mechanism provides a steep turn-on characteristic. Steep means better than 60 mV/decade at room temperature, the limit obtained by barrier lowering in a bipolar transistor or metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) when the current is dominated by the thermionic emission of carriers above the energy barrier in the base or channel region

Vancomycin Dosing Practices among Critical Care Pharmacists: A Survey of Society of Critical Care Medicine Pharmacists

Introduction: Critically ill patients and their pharmacokinetics present complexities often not considered by consensus guidelines from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists. Prior surveys have suggested discordance between certain guideline recommendations and reported infectious disease pharmacist practice. Vancomycin dosing practices, including institutional considerations, have not previously been well described in the critically ill patient population. Objectives: To evaluate critical care pharmacists\u27 self-reported vancomycin practices in comparison to the 2009 guideline recommendations and other best practices identified by the study investigators. Methods: An online survey developed by the Research and Scholarship Committee of the Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacology (CPP) Section of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) was sent to pharmacist members of the SCCM CPP Section practicing in adult intensive care units in the spring of 2017. This survey queried pharmacists\u27 self-reported practices regarding vancomycin dosing and monitoring in critically ill adults. Results: Three-hundred and sixty-four responses were received for an estimated response rate of 26%. Critical care pharmacists self-reported largely following the 2009 vancomycin dosing and monitoring guidelines. The largest deviations in guideline recommendation compliance involve consistent use of a loading dose, dosing weight in obese patients, and quality improvement efforts related to systematically monitoring vancomycin-associated nephrotoxicity. Variation exists regarding pharmacist protocols and other practices of vancomycin use in critically ill patients. Conclusion: Among critical care pharmacists, reported vancomycin practices are largely consistent with the 2009 guideline recommendations. Variations in vancomycin dosing and monitoring protocols are identified, and rationale for guideline non-adherence with loading doses elucidated

Proceedings of the 2015 WA Chapter of MSA Symposium on Music Performance and Analysis

This publication, entitled Proceedings of the 2015 WA Chapter MSA Symposium on Music Performance and Analysis, is a double-blind peer-reviewed conference proceedings published by the Western Australian Chapter of the Musicological Society of Australia, in conjunction with the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, edited by Jonathan Paget, Victoria Rogers, and Nicholas Bannan. The original symposium was held at the University of Western Australia, School of Music, on 12 December 2015. With the advent of performer-scholars within Australian Universities, the intersections between analytical knowledge and performance are constantly being re-evaluated and reinvented. This collection of papers presents several strands of analytical discourse, including: (1) the analysis of music recordings, particularly in terms of historical performance practices; (2) reinventions of the \u27page-to-stage\u27 paradigm, employing new analytical methods; (3) analytical knowledge applied to pedagogy, particularly concerning improvisation; and (4) so-called \u27practice-led\u27 research.https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecubooks/1005/thumbnail.jp

Using Clouds to Scale Grid Resources: An Economic Model

Infrastructure as a Service clouds are a flexible and fast way to obtain (virtual) resources as demand varies. Grids, on the other hand, are middleware platforms able to combine resources from different administrative domains for task execution. Clouds can be used by grids as providers of devices such as virtual machines, so they only use the resources they need. But this requires grids to be able to decide when to allocate and release those resources. Here we introduce and analyze by simulations an economic mechanism (a) to set resource prices and (b) resolve when to scale resources depending on the users’ demand. This system has a strong emphasis on fairness, so no user hinders the execution of other users’ tasks by getting too many resources. Our simulator is based on the well-known GridSim software for grid simulation, which we expand to simulate infrastructure clouds. The results show how the proposed system can successfully adapt the amount of allocated resources to the demand, while at the same time ensuring that resources are fairly shared among users

Hepatocyte-intrinsic SMN deficiency drives metabolic dysfunction and liver steatosis in spinal muscular atrophy

This work was supported by an Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) CDF grant number C210112024 (to CJJY). Acknowledgments to Dave Wee, Edward Manser, Frederick Bard, and Uttam Surana from A*STAR for scientific discussions and to Shaye Moore from Boston Children’s Hospital for assistance with editing and submission.Peer reviewe

Assessing generalisability of deep learning-based polyp detection and segmentation methods through a computer vision challenge

Polyps are well-known cancer precursors identified by colonoscopy. However, variability in their size, appearance, and location makes the detection of polyps challenging. Moreover, colonoscopy surveillance and removal of polyps are highly operator-dependent procedures and occur in a highly complex organ topology. There exists a high missed detection rate and incomplete removal of colonic polyps. To assist in clinical procedures and reduce missed rates, automated methods for detecting and segmenting polyps using machine learning have been achieved in past years. However, the major drawback in most of these methods is their ability to generalise to out-of-sample unseen datasets from different centres, populations, modalities, and acquisition systems. To test this hypothesis rigorously, we, together with expert gastroenterologists, curated a multi-centre and multi-population dataset acquired from six different colonoscopy systems and challenged the computational expert teams to develop robust automated detection and segmentation methods in a crowd-sourcing Endoscopic computer vision challenge. This work put forward rigorous generalisability tests and assesses the usability of devised deep learning methods in dynamic and actual clinical colonoscopy procedures. We analyse the results of four top performing teams for the detection task and five top performing teams for the segmentation task. Our analyses demonstrate that the top-ranking teams concentrated mainly on accuracy over the real-time performance required for clinical applicability. We further dissect the devised methods and provide an experiment-based hypothesis that reveals the need for improved generalisability to tackle diversity present in multi-centre datasets and routine clinical procedures