Connections in Music

PhDThis work is copyright (c) 2010 Kurt Jacobson, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.Connections between music artists or songs provide a context and lineage for music and form the basis for recommendation, playlist generation, and general navigation of the musical universe. We examine the structure of the connections between music artists found on the web. It is shown that different methods of finding associations between artists yeild different net- work structures - the details of associations and how these associations are discovered impact the global structure of the artist network. This realization informs our associations framework - based on seman- tic web technologies and centered around a small RDF/OWL ontology that emphasizes the provenance and transparency of association statements. We develop the MuSim Similarity Ontology and show how, combined with the concepts of linked data, it can be used to create a distributed web-scale ecosystem for music similarity. The Similarity Ontology is evaluated against psychological models for similarity and shown to be flexible enough to accommodate each model examined. Several applications are developed based on the visualization of music artist network structures and the utilization of our associations framework along with other music-related linked data

The Semantic Web MIDI Tape: An Interface for Interlinking MIDI and Context Metadata

The Linked Data paradigm has been used to publish a large number of musical datasets and ontologies on the Semantic Web, such as MusicBrainz, AcousticBrainz, and the Music Ontology. Recently, the MIDI Linked Data Cloud has been added to these datasets, representing more than 300,000 pieces in MIDI format as Linked Data, opening up the possibility for linking fine-grained symbolic music representations to existing music metadata databases. Despite the dataset making MIDI resources available in Web data standard formats such as RDF and SPARQL, the important issue of finding meaningful links between these MIDI resources and relevant contextual metadata in other datasets remains. A fundamental barrier for the provision and generation of such links is the difficulty that users have at adding new MIDI performance data and metadata to the platform. In this paper, we propose the Semantic Web MIDI Tape, a set of tools and associated interface for interacting with the MIDI Linked Data Cloud by enabling users to record, enrich, and retrieve MIDI performance data and related metadata in native Web data standards. The goal of such interactions is to find meaningful links between published MIDI resources and their relevant contextual metadata. We evaluate the Semantic Web MIDI Tape in various use cases involving user-contributed content, MIDI similarity querying, and entity recognition methods, and discuss their potential for finding links between MIDI resources and metadata

Analysis and Exploitation of Musician Social Networks for Recommendation and Discovery

This paper presents an extensive analysis of a sample of a social network of musicians. The network sample is first analyzed using standard complex network techniques to verify that it has similar properties to other web-derived complex networks. Content-based pairwise dissimilarity values between the musical data associated with the network sample are computed, and the relationship between those content-based distances and distances from network theory explored. Following this exploration, hybrid graphs and distance measures are constructed, and used to examine the community structure of the artist network. Finally, results of these investigations are presented and considered in the light of recommendation and discovery applications with these hybrid measures as their basis

The Grizzly, October 7, 1983

Career Workshops Held • What\u27s in a Name • Fago Opens Lecture Series • Lantern Makes National Anthology • Campus Memo • Letters to the Editor • Red and Gold Days Inaugurated • Sorority Pledging Underway • Half-Price Student Rushes for Genty! • Keep it Clean • Renaissance Play at Ursinus Commemoration • ATO Incident at Penn • Politics Sells Papers • Yearbook Sale Begins Monday • Ursinus Soccer Romps Over Hopkins • Volleyball Scores Second Victory • Grizzlies Fall to Swarthmorehttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1103/thumbnail.jp

The Grizzly, October 28, 1983

CampusBooks Speaks Out • C and C Course Offered • Zack Is Back In Bronze • Peace Rally Held • Give Us A Little Bit Of Credit • Respect Is Goal Of Liberal Education • Homecoming: A Big Success • Nobel Prize Awarded • Spirit Week Begins • The Talented Two-Some • The Stone Age is Back • Crown Royal Features Ultimate Competition • Lady Bears Prepare For Penn State Rivalry • U.C. Soccer Continues Winning Ways • Grizziles Roll Over Lebanon Valleyhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1105/thumbnail.jp

The Grizzly, November 4, 1983

Got a Career? • Convocation Set • Visser Conducts Forum • Ursinus Awaits Celebration • Letters to the Editor: Grenada • Forums Finally Finish • Sixteenth-Century Play to Finish • Sports Medicine - It\u27s Where It\u27s At! • College With a Difference? • Reformation Discussed • Creedence Revived • What is Treaty of Paris? • Japanese Exchange Program Offered • Grizzlies Pull Off Stunning Victory • UC Soccer Awaits ECAC Play • X-Country Caps \u2783 Seasonhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1106/thumbnail.jp

Evaluating the Shinumo-Sespe drainage connection: Arguments against the “old” (70–17 Ma) Grand Canyon models for Colorado Plateau drainage evolution

The provocative hypothesis that the Shinumo Sandstone in the depths of Grand Canyon was the source for clasts of orthoquartzite in conglomerate of the Sespe Formation of coastal California, if verified, would indicate that a major river system flowed southwest from the Colorado Plateau to the Pacific Ocean prior to opening of the Gulf of California, and would imply that Grand Canyon had been carved to within a few hundred meters of its modern depth at the time of this drainage connection. The proposed Eocene Shinumo-Sespe connection, however, is not supported by detrital zircon nor paleomagnetic-inclination data and is refuted by thermochronology that shows that the Shinumo Sandstone of eastern Grand Canyon was \u3e60 °C (∼1.8 km deep) and hence not incised at this time. A proposed 20 Ma (Miocene) Shinumo-Sespe drainage connection based on clasts in the Sespe Formation is also refuted. We point out numerous caveats and non-unique interpretations of paleomagnetic data from clasts. Further, our detrital zircon analysis requires diverse sources for Sespe clasts, with better statistical matches for the four “most-Shinumo-like” Sespe clasts with quartzites of the Big Bear Group and Ontario Ridge metasedimentary succession of the Transverse Ranges, Horse Thief Springs Formation from Death Valley, and Troy Quartzite of central Arizona. Diverse thermochronologic and geologic data also refute a Miocene river pathway through western Grand Canyon and Grand Wash trough. Thus, Sespe clasts do not require a drainage connection from Grand Canyon or the Colorado Plateau and provide no constraints for the history of carving of Grand Canyon. Instead, abundant evidence refutes the “old” (70–17 Ma) Grand Canyon models and supports a \u3c6 Ma Grand Canyon

Destabilization of the Dystrophin-Glycoprotein Complex without Functional Deficits in α-Dystrobrevin Null Muscle

α-Dystrobrevin is a component of the dystrophin-glycoprotein complex (DGC) and is thought to have both structural and signaling roles in skeletal muscle. Mice deficient for α-dystrobrevin (adbn−/−) exhibit extensive myofiber degeneration and neuromuscular junction abnormalities. However, the biochemical stability of the DGC and the functional performance of adbn−/− muscle have not been characterized. Here we show that the biochemical association between dystrophin and β-dystroglycan is compromised in adbn−/− skeletal muscle, suggesting that α-dystrobrevin plays a structural role in stabilizing the DGC. However, despite muscle cell death and DGC destabilization, costamere organization and physiological performance is normal in adbn−/− skeletal muscle. Our results demonstrate that myofiber degeneration alone does not cause functional deficits and suggests that more complex pathological factors contribute to the development of muscle weakness in muscular dystrophy

Extracellular ATP is a pro-angiogenic factor for pulmonary artery vasa vasorum endothelial cells

Expansion of the vasa vasorum network has been observed in a variety of systemic and pulmonary vascular diseases. We recently reported that a marked expansion of the vasa vasorum network occurs in the pulmonary artery adventitia of chronically hypoxic calves. Since hypoxia has been shown to stimulate ATP release from both vascular resident as well as circulatory blood cells, these studies were undertaken to determine if extracellular ATP exerts angiogenic effects on isolated vasa vasorum endothelial cells (VVEC) and/or if it augments the effects of other angiogenic factors (VEGF and basic FGF) known to be present in the hypoxic microenvironment. We found that extracellular ATP dramatically increases DNA synthesis, migration, and rearrangement into tube-like networks on Matrigel in VVEC, but not in pulmonary artery (MPAEC) or aortic (AOEC) endothelial cells obtained from the same animals. Extracellular ATP potentiated the effects of both VEGF and bFGF to stimulate DNA synthesis in VVEC but not in MPAEC and AOEC. Analysis of purine and pyrimidine nucleotides revealed that ATP, ADP and MeSADP were the most potent in stimulating mitogenic responses in VVEC, indicating the involvement of the family of P2Y1-like purinergic receptors. Using pharmacological inhibitors, Western blot analysis, and Phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) in vitro kinase assays, we found that PI3K/Akt/mTOR and ERK1/2 play a critical role in mediating the extracellular ATP-induced mitogenic and migratory responses in VVEC. However, PI3K/Akt and mTOR/p70S6K do not significantly contribute to extracellular ATP-induced tube formation on Matrigel. Our studies indicate that VVEC, isolated from the sites of active angiogenesis, exhibit distinct functional responses to ATP, compared to endothelial cells derived from large pulmonary or systemic vessels. Collectively, our data support the idea that extracellular ATP participates in the expansion of the vasa vasorum that can be observed in hypoxic conditions

Redefining tumor classification and clinical stratification through a colorectal cancer single-cell atlas

Colorectal cancer (CRC), a disease of high incidence and mortality, exhibits a large degree of inter- and intra-tumoral heterogeneity. The cellular etiology of this heterogeneity is poorly understood. Here, we generated and analyzed a single-cell transcriptome atlas of 49,859 CRC cells from 16 patients, validated with an additional 31,383 cells from an independent CRC patient cohort. We describe subclonal transcriptomic heterogeneity of CRC tumor epithelial cells, as well as discrete stromal populations of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs). Within CRC CAFs, we identify the transcriptional signature of specific subtypes that significantly stratifies overall survival in more than 1,500 CRC patients with bulk transcriptomic data. We demonstrate that scRNA analysis of malignant, stromal, and immune cells exhibit a more complex picture than portrayed by bulk transcriptomic-based Consensus Molecular Subtypes (CMS) classification. By demonstrating an abundant degree of heterogeneity amongst these cell types, our work shows that CRC is best represented in a transcriptomic continuum crossing traditional classification systems boundaries. Overall, this CRC cell map provides a framework to re-evaluate CRC tumor biology with implications for clinical trial design and therapeutic development. Competing Interest Statement: The authors have declared no competing interest