Shostakovich, old believers and new minimalists

The chapter discusses ‘minimalist’ elements of Dmitri Shostakovich's style as embodiments/ expressions of traditional Russian expressive modes rooted in the idioms of old folk music and the music of the ‘old believers’ The collection volume comprises a selection of articles that, as a group, marks an important new stage in our understanding of Shostakovich and his working environment. The papers have in common a perspective that we believe offers the most fruitful route forward for Shostakovich studies today. All address aspects of the composer’s output in the context of his life and cultural milieu. They are thus illuminating from two directions: the uncovering of ‘outside’ stimuli allows us to perceive the motivations behind Shostakovich’s artistic choices, while at the same time the nature of those choices offers insights into the workings of the larger world—cultural, social, political—that he inhabited. Thus his often ostensibly quirky choices are revealed as responses—by turns sentimental, moving, sardonic and angry—to the particular conditions, with all their absurdities and contradictions, that he had to negotiate. The composer emerging from the role of tortured loner of older narratives into that of the gregarious and engaged member of his society that, for better and worse, characterized the everyday reality of his life

Symbols, Metaphors and Irrationalities in Twentieth-Century Music

A Chapter in the volume 'Mimesi, Verita e Fiction. Ripensare l'arte. Sulla scia della "Poetica" di Aristotele' ed. Rafael Jimenez Catano and Ignacio Yarza. Published as a part of the series 'Poetica e Christianesimo', volume 3. Rome: EDUSC, 2009, pp 69 - 88

Progenitors of the protochordate ocellus as an evolutionary origin of the neural crest

The neural crest represents a highly multipotent population of embryonic stem cells found only in vertebrate embryos. Acquisition of the neural crest during the evolution of vertebrates was a great advantage, providing Chordata animals with the first cellular cartilage, bone, dentition, advanced nervous system and other innovations. Today not much is known about the evolutionary origin of neural crest cells. Here we propose a novel scenario in which the neural crest originates from neuroectodermal progenitors of the pigmented ocelli in Amphioxus-like animals. We suggest that because of changes in photoreception needs, these multipotent progenitors of photoreceptors gained the ability to migrate outside of the central nervous system and subsequently started to give rise to neural, glial and pigmented progeny at the periphery

Efficacy of cimetidin in the prevention of ulcer formation in the stomach during immobilization stress

The effect of stress on the formation of ulcers in the mucous membrane of the stomach, the increase in cyclic adenosine monophosphate level in the gastric tissues, and parietal cell structure alteration. Use of cimetidin prevents these effect

Performance of a CsI(Tl) calorimeter in an experiment with stopped K+'s

The performance of the photon detector constructed for the search of T-violation in the decay K^+ -> pi^0 mu^+ nu is presented. The specific features of this detector consisting of 768 CsI(Tl) crystals with PIN photodiode readout for high precision measurement of T-odd correlations in the decays of positive kaons are considered.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, talk at the INSTR02 Conference, Novosibirsk, Russia, February 28 - March 6, 200