The Birth of Kala - a Balinese tale

"The Birth of Kala -- a Balinese Tale" by Segara Madu gendér wayang group with Tim Jones, narrator. Part of the SOAS Brunei Gallery Concert Series Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, SOAS, University of London, 19 March 2012 Gendér wayang is the name given to a small quartet of bronze metallophones used in Bali to accompany the shadow play and rituals. The concert was conceived as an exploration of the instruments on different levels: through traditional music, Balinese mythology, new compositions and movement. The first half of the concert consisted of traditional pieces together with Balinese stories and the second half featured the author's composition, also entitled "The Birth of Kala". Performers: Tim Jones (narrator), Paula Friar, Emily Garland, Nick Gray, Rachel Hewit

The Clean Power Plan Puzzle: The Future of Efforts to Control Climate Pollution in the Northeast

In October 2015 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the first national plan to cut climate pollution from power plants. Called the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the effort requires a 32% nation-wide reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the power sector. The CPP also gives states multiple pathways to comply. Now states are on the clock: they must submit their individual compliance plans or signal their intent to submit multi-state plans by September 2016. The nine states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first market-based trading platform established to cut climate pollution from power plants in the Northeast, must now decide the future of the effort. This paper explores a few of the key issues for state regulators in the RGGI region with a special focus on New York State. We discuss the need to reset the RGGI cap to ensure progress toward New York’s and other state climate pollution reduction goals. We recommend a change to RGGI’s structure that will ensure compliance with the CPP. We discuss the EPA’s proposed Clean Energy Incentive Program (CEIP), an effort to encourage early state actions to reduce emissions. And we discuss other implementation issues with respect to linking RGGI to other mass-based state compliance plans. In brief, we recommend that the RGGI states adopt a new cap that requires at least a 2.5 percent per year reduction in region-wide GHG emissions

Developing financial markets

Central banks have an interest in well-functioning money markets, foreign exchange markets, and secondary markets for government securities. Efficient financial markets support both the monetary stability and financial stability goals of the central bank; and more broadly should benefit economic development. Well-functioning money markets support the transmission of an interest-rate based monetary policy and can provide information to the central bank. Liquid foreign exchange markets can help to stabilise the exchange rate and reduce transaction costs in cross-border trade and transfers. The development of these markets will support the later introduction of related financial markets such as repo and derivatives, which should in turn lead to improved risk management and financial stability, thereby enhancing economic welfare. Liquidity and price stability in short-term interest rate markets can support market-making, and thus liquidity in the securities markets. This in turn should reduce the cost of issuance for the government and other fixed-interest issuers. Indeed the secondary market for government securities may act as a catalyst for wider fixed income securities markets development: its yield curve is the benchmark for the pricing of the private sector credit. The advancement of these markets should be accompanied by the development of the appropriate market infrastructure such as robust payment and settlement systems and supportive legal framework. Many developing economies are characterised by illiquidity in these core markets, and in most cases a surplus of central bank money, in the form of excess commercial bank balances with the central bank. This handbook will look at what the central bank, and the Ministry of Finance as issuer of government securities, could do (and in some cases should not do) in support of the development of these markets.Developing financial markets

391 for gamelan

391 for gamelan by Nick Gray First performance on Saturday 10th September 2016 as part of the SOAS Alumni Weekend. The piece, “391”, composed by Nick Gray, is especially designed for instruments from two of the SOAS gamelan sets (one Javanese and one Balinese), tailored to the individuality of their particular tuning, celebrating the uniqueness of SOAS. Players: Rob Campion, Charlie Cawood, Andy Channing, Aris Daryono, Cathy Eastburn, Paula Friar, Nick Gray, Manuel Jimenez, Lucie Treacher

An Economist’s Guide to Heaven

This paper is the first to offer an economic model of God and humanity as optimizing agents in the context of concrete belief archetypes (religious ‘contracts’) in Judeo-Christian theology. Data support the model’s unique predictions, despite their otherwise counterintuitive, unlikely nature. For example, the model requires that in one belief archetype, ‘good works’ not increase with strength of faith, as one might otherwise expect, and that what appears may be God’s dominant contract precisely balances divine penalties for reneging on promises with incentives to seek divine ‘gifts’—an equivalence supported in the data.economics;religion

"The Watchers by the Well"

Music for Balinese gender wayang group plus violin and electronics, accompanying a retelling of an English folktale. The concert also includes some traditional gender wayang pieces (see attached concert programme for full details)

The Birth of Kala

This piece was composed for the author's Balinese gender wayang ensemble, 'Segara Madu', and premiered as part of a the SOAS Brunei Gallery concert series on 19th March 2012. The whole concert was based on Balinese legends of the demonic Kala and the origins of the gender wayang instruments and of the shadow puppet play. The composition itself and the quasi-ritualistic action that accompanies it were intended as a 'reading' of the myth on another level. The score, based on cipher notation, is intended as an aid to the reconstruction of the piece in further performances, rather than an exact representation, the process of playing and teaching the gender wayang being traditionally unnotated

Emotional modulation of visual cortex activity: A functional nearinfrared spectroscopy study

Functional neuroimaging and electroencephalography reveal emotional effects in early visual cortex. Here, we used fNIRS to examine haemodynamic responses evoked by neutral, positive and negative emotional pictures, matched for brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, spatial frequency and entropy. Emotion content modulated amplitude and latency of oxy-, deoxy- and total haemoglobin response peaks, and induced peripheral autonomic reactions. The processing of positive and negative pictures enhanced haemodynamic response amplitude, and this effect was paralleled by blood pressure changes. The processing of positive pictures was reflected in reduced haemodynamic response peak latency. Together these data suggest early visual cortex holds amplitude-dependent representation of stimulus salience and latency-dependent information regarding stimulus valence, providing new insight into affective interaction with sensory processing