Rediscovering the forgotten music of the Holocaust: the life and music of the Dutch-Jewish composer Sim Gokkes

The Dutch-Jewish composer Sim Gokkes was born in Amsterdam in 1897, later to be murdered, along with many other Dutch-Jewish composers, in Auschwitz in 1943. A victim of Nazi persecution, relatively little is known about his music as most of his compositions were lost or destroyed by the Nazis during World War II. This thesis includes an exploration of the contemporary political background in Germany and the Netherlands, an account of Gokkes’s life, musical background and how this, in turn, influenced his compositional work, with a particular reference to Gokkes’s juxtaposition of traditional, Jewish liturgical music and new compositional techniques in European art music of that time. Thus, the thesis serves to re-discover Gokkes’s largely forgotten works and contribute towards the development of a greater understanding of Dutch modern music in the first decades of the twentieth century. This is currently an understudied area. The first section of this thesis provides a historical background with details of the effects on Dutch music of the Nazi policy of condemning any music that was ‘degenerate’ and considered to manifest symptoms of national decline (Levi, 2001: 35-36). This included all works by Jewish composers in Germany, and later in the Netherlands. The second section is biographical, providing a detailed and chronological account of the composer’s life, his work as a composer and conductor and how this influenced his mature composing style and output, and finally his persecution at the hands of the Nazis. This section also touches upon how several Dutch composers, including Gokkes, were influenced by a rise in Jewish nationalism in music which started in Russia and spread across Europe in the early part of the twentieth century. It illustrates how Gokkes was arguably regarded as the most Jewish sounding of the Dutch-Jewish composers of the early twentieth century, due to his efforts to bring aspects of specifically Jewish musical thought into Dutch art-music practice. The third section is an overview and cultural analysis of Gokkes’s music, exploring Gokkes in the context of his Jewish faith and how his writing of both secular music and music for the synagogue was innovative while investigating the argument that he juxtaposed ancient Jewish techniques with modern Western art-music methods

Reducing image artefacts in concurrent TMS/fMRI by passive shimming

A significant problem in the concurrent application of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is the image artefact caused by the effect of the TMS-coil on the homogeneity of the static magnetic field (B0). The resulting field inhomogeneity can lead to spatial distortions and local signal loss in echo-planar (EP) images. Here we demonstrate that passive shimming using thin patches of austenitic stainless steel can reduce the effect of the TMS-coil on B0 by ~ 80%, thus essentially eliminating the associated artefact. Initially the effect of the TMS-coil on B0 was measured using the phase of gradient echo images. Consequently the ideal distribution for the steel was simulated using the magnetic properties of the steel and the effects of the TMS-coil. Finally we demonstrate the effect of two different implementations of the passive shim on a spherical phantom and in vivo

Hubble Space Telescope Imaging of the Circumstellar Nebulosity of T Tauri

Short-exposure Planetary Camera images of T Tauri have been obtained using broadband filters spanning the wavelength range 0.55-0.80 μm. The optically visible star lies very close to an arc of reflection nebulosity. The arc's northern arm extends approximately 5" from the star, while its southwestern arm appears brighter and extends only 2". The arc shows an approximate symmetry along an axis toward the west-northwest, the direction of Hind's Nebula and the blueshifted molecular outflow. The morphology of the reflected light is similar to models of scattered light within an illuminated, axisymmetric outflow cavity in a circumbinary envelope, viewed ≈ 45° from the outflow axis. However, our model images do not successfully account for the amount of limb brightening that is seen. No optical counterpart to the infrared companion is seen to a limiting magnitude of V = 19.6, which suggests A_V > 7 mag toward this source. There is no evidence for an optical tertiary, to a limiting ΔV = 5.1 mag fainter than the primary, at the position where such an object has been previously reported

Sampling Bias Overestimates Climate Change Impacts on Forest Growth in the Southwestern United States

Climate−tree growth relationships recorded in annual growth rings have recently been the basis for projecting climate change impacts on forests. However, most trees and sample sites represented in the International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) were chosen to maximize climate signal and are characterized by marginal growing conditions not representative of the larger forest ecosystem. We evaluate the magnitude of this potential bias using a spatially unbiased tree-ring network collected by the USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program. We show that U.S. Southwest ITRDB samples overestimate regional forest climate sensitivity by 41–59%, because ITRDB trees were sampled at warmer and drier locations, both at the macro- and micro-site scale, and are systematically older compared to the FIA collection. Although there are uncertainties associated with our statistical approach, projection based on representative FIA samples suggests 29% less of a climate change-induced growth decrease compared to projection based on climate-sensitive ITRDB samples

Mortality and other important diabetes-related outcomes with insulin vs other antihyperglycemic therapies in type 2 diabetes

Context: The safety of insulin in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) has recently undergone scrutiny. Objective: The objective of the study was to characterize the risk of adverse events associated with glucose-lowering therapies in people with T2DM. Design and Setting: This was a retrospective cohort study using data from the UK General Practice Research Database, 2000–2010. Patients: Patients comprised 84 622 primary care patients with T2DM treated with one of five glucose-lowering regimens: metformin monotherapy, sulfonylurea monotherapy, insulin monotherapy, metformin plus sulfonylurea combination therapy, and insulin plus metformin combination therapy. There were 105 123 exposure periods. Main Outcome Measures: The risk of the first major adverse cardiac event, first cancer, or mortality was measured. Secondary outcomes included these individual constituents and microvascular complications. Results: In the same model, and using metformin monotherapy as the referent, the adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) for the primary end point was significantly increased for sulfonylurea monotherapy (1.436, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.354–1.523), insulin monotherapy (1.808, 95% CI 1.630–2.005), and insulin plus metformin (1.309, 95% CI 1.150–1.491). In glycosylated hemoglobin/morbidity subgroups, patients treated with insulin monotherapy had aHRs for the primary outcome ranging from 1.469 (95% CI 0.978–2.206) to 2.644 (95% CI 1.896–3.687). For all secondary outcomes, insulin monotherapy had increased aHRs: myocardial infarction (1.954, 95% CI 1.479–2.583), major adverse cardiac events (1.736, 95% CI 1.441–2.092), stroke (1.432, 95% CI 1.159–1.771), renal complications (3.504, 95% CI 2.718–4.518), neuropathy (2.146, 95% CI 1.832–2.514), eye complications (1.171, 95% CI 1.057–1.298), cancer (1.437, 95% CI 1.234–1.674), or all-cause mortality (2.197, 95% CI 1.983–2.434). When compared directly, aHRs were higher for insulin monotherapy vs all other regimens for the primary end point and all-cause mortality. Conclusions: In people with T2DM, exogenous insulin therapy was associated with an increased risk of diabetes-related complications, cancer, and all-cause mortality. Differences in baseline characteristics between treatment groups should be considered when interpreting these results