Modelling Emotional Effects of Music: Key Areas of Improvement

Modelling emotions perceived in music and induced by music has garnered increased attention during the last five years. The present paper attempts to put together observations of the areas that need attention in order to make progress in the modelling emotional effects of music. These broad areas are divided into theory, data and context, which are reviewed separately. Each area is given an overview in terms of the present state of the art and promising further avenues, and the main limitations are presented. In theory, there are discrepancies in the terminology and justifications for particular emotion models and focus. In data, reliable estimation of high-level musical concepts and data collection and evaluation routines require systematic attention. In context, which is the least developed area of modelling, the primary area of improvement is incorporating musical context (music genres) into the modelling emotions. In a broad sense, better acknowledgement of music consumption and everyday life context, such as the data provided by social media, may offer novel insights into the modelling emotional effects of music

Attitudes toward sad music are related to both preferential and contextual strategies

Music-related sadness and its paradoxical pleasurable aspects have puzzled researchers for decades. Previous studies have highlighted the positive effects of listening to sad music and the listening strategies that focus on mood-regulation. The present study explored people’s attitudes toward sad music by focusing on a representative sample of the Finnish population. Three hundred and fifty-eight participants rated their agreement with 30 statements concerning attitudes toward sad music. The ratings were subjected to factor analysis, resulting in 6 factors explaining 51% of the variance (RMSEA = 0.049). The factors were labeled Avoidance, Autobiographical, Revival, Appreciation, Intersubjective, and Amplification, and they were divided into 2 broad headings, preferential and contextual attitudes toward sad music. Contextual attitudes seemed to be ambiguous in terms of valence, whereas the preferential attitudes were more clearly identified in terms of positive/negative polarity. The results of the survey suggest that listening to sad music elicits a wide variety of responses that are not fully revealed in previous studies

The NorduGrid architecture and tools

The NorduGrid project designed a Grid architecture with the primary goal to meet the requirements of production tasks of the LHC experiments. While it is meant to be a rather generic Grid system, it puts emphasis on batch processing suitable for problems encountered in High Energy Physics. The NorduGrid architecture implementation uses the \globus{} as the foundation for various components, developed by the project. While introducing new services, the NorduGrid does not modify the Globus tools, such that the two can eventually co-exist. The NorduGrid topology is decentralized, avoiding a single point of failure. The NorduGrid architecture is thus a light-weight, non-invasive and dynamic one, while robust and scalable, capable of meeting most challenging tasks of High Energy Physics.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 9 pages,LaTeX, 4 figures. PSN MOAT00

Atlas Data-Challenge 1 on NorduGrid

The first LHC application ever to be executed in a computational Grid environment is the so-called ATLAS Data-Challenge 1, more specifically, the part assigned to the Scandinavian members of the ATLAS Collaboration. Taking advantage of the NorduGrid testbed and tools, physicists from Denmark, Norway and Sweden were able to participate in the overall exercise starting in July 2002 and continuing through the rest of 2002 and the first part of 2003 using solely the NorduGrid environment. This allowed to distribute input data over a wide area, and rely on the NorduGrid resource discovery mechanism to find an optimal cluster for job submission. During the whole Data-Challenge 1, more than 2 TB of input data was processed and more than 2.5 TB of output data was produced by more than 4750 Grid jobs.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 7 pages, 3 ps figure

REVIEW OF PARTICLE PHYSICS

The Review summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 2,143 new measurements from 709 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. Particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We give numerous tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Among the 120 reviews are many that are new or heavily revised, including a new review on Machine Learning, and one on Spectroscopy of Light Meson Resonances. The Review is divided into two volumes. Volume 1 includes the Summary Tables and 97 review articles. Volume 2 consists of the Particle Listings and contains also 23 reviews that address specific aspects of the data presented in the Listings. The complete Review (both volumes) is published online on the website of the Particle Data Group (pdg.lbl.gov) and in a journal. Volume 1 is available in print as the PDG Book. A Particle Physics Booklet with the Summary Tables and essential tables, figures, and equations from selected review articles is available in print, as a web version optimized for use on phones, and as an Android app.Peer reviewe

Towards a more explicit account of the transformation: Reply to comments on “An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music”

Our integrative framework for explaining the enjoyment of sadness associated with music sparked a delightful number (13) of commentaries which challenge, stimulate, strengthen and shape the ideas we initially put forward. Here we organize our response around five central themes brought up by several commentators. These relate to questions about (a) the nature of sad music, (b) whether music can induce genuine sadness, (c) details of the transformation, (d) music as a technology for emotion regulation, and (e) broader implications and extensions.nonPeerReviewe

Irreversibility and dissipation in neutral B-meson decays

The propagation and decay of neutral B-mesons can be described in terms of quantum dynamical semigroups; they provide generalized time-evolutions that take into account possible non-standard effects leading to loss of phase coherence and dissipation. These effects can be fully parametrized in terms of six phenomenological constants. A detailed analysis of selected B-meson decays shows that present and future dedicated experiments, both at colliders and B-factories, will be able to put stringent bounds on these non-standard parameters.Comment: 33 pages, plain-TeX, no figure

Information dynamics: patterns of expectation and surprise in the perception of music

This is a postprint of an article submitted for consideration in Connection Science © 2009 [copyright Taylor & Francis]; Connection Science is available online at:http://www.tandfonline.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0954-0091&volume=21&issue=2-3&spage=8

Identification of Clostridium species and DNA fingerprinting of Clostridium perfringens by amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis

An amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) method was applied to 129 strains representing 24 different Clostridium species, with special emphasis on pathogenic clostridia of medical or veterinary interest, to assess the potential of AFLP for identification of clostridia. In addition, the ability of the same AFLP protocol to type clostridia at the strain level was assessed by focusing on Clostridium perfringens strains. All strains were typeable by AFLP, so the method seemed to overcome the problem of extracellular DNase production. AFLP differentiated all Clostridium species tested, except for Clostridium ramosum and Clostridium limosum, which clustered together with a 45% similarity level. Other Clostridium species were divided into species-specific clusters or occupied separate positions. Wide genetic diversity was observed among Clostridium botulinum strains, which were divided into seven species-specific clusters. The same AFLP protocol was also suitable for typing C. perfringens at the strain level. A total of 29 different AFLP types were identified for 37 strains of C. perfringens; strains initially originating from the same isolate showed identical fingerprinting patterns and were distinguished from unrelated strains. AFLP proved to be a highly reproducible, easy-to-perform, and relatively fast method which enables high throughput of samples and can serve in the generation of identification libraries. These results indicate that the AFLP method provides a promising tool for the identification and characterization of Clostridium species