Single chords convey distinct emotional qualities to both naïve and expert listeners.

Previous research on music and emotions has been able to pinpoint many structural features conveying emotions. Empirical research on vertical harmony’s emotional qualities, however, has been rare. The main studies in harmony and emotions usually concern the horizontal aspects of harmony, ignoring emotional qualities of chords as such. An empirical experiment was conducted where participants (N = 269) evaluated pre-chosen chords on a 9-item scale of given emotional dimensions. 14 different chords (major, minor, diminished, augmented triads and dominant, major and minor seventh chords with inversions) were played with two distinct timbres (piano and strings). The results suggest significant differences in emotion perception across chords. These were consistent with notions about musical conventions, while providing novel data on how seventh chords affect emotion perception. The inversions and timbre also contributed to the evaluations. Moreover, certain chords played on the strings scored moderately high on the dimension of ‘nostalgia/longing,’ which is usually held as a musical emotion rising only from extra-musical connotations and conditioning, not intrinsically from the structural features of the music. The role of background variables to the results was largely negligible, suggesting the capacity of vertical harmony to convey distinct emotional qualities to both naïve and expert listeners

Single chords convey distinct emotional qualities to both naïve and expert listeners

Previous research on music and emotions has been able to pinpoint many structural features conveying emotions. Empirical research on vertical harmony’s emotional qualities, however, has been rare. The main studies in harmony and emotions usually concern the horizontal aspects of harmony, ignoring emotional qualities of chords as such. An empirical experiment was conducted where participants (N = 269) evaluated pre-chosen chords on a 9-item scale of given emotional dimensions. 14 different chords (major, minor, diminished, augmented triads and dominant, major and minor seventh chords with inversions) were played with two distinct timbres (piano and strings). The results suggest significant differences in emotion perception across chords. These were consistent with notions about musical conventions, while providing novel data on how seventh chords affect emotion perception. The inversions and timbre also contributed to the evaluations. Moreover, certain chords played on the strings scored moderately high on the dimension of ‘nostalgia/longing,’ which is usually held as a musical emotion rising only from extra-musical connotations and conditioning, not intrinsically from the structural features of the music. The role of background variables to the results was largely negligible, suggesting the capacity of vertical harmony to convey distinct emotional qualities to both naïve and expert listeners

PROCESS SUPPORT FOR THE OPTION GENERATION PHASE IN WIN-WIN NEGOTIATIONS: COMPARISON OF THREE COMMUNICATION MODES

Analytically oriented Negotiation Support Systems have been studied and developed for decades, but they have not become widely adopted by negotiation practitioners. Along with the phenomenal growth of e-commerce, a need has arisen for information systems that support the parties’ “soft” negotiation processes and communications in addition to the “hard” quest for a mathematically optimal solution. In this study, we report an experiment about applying three different communication modes in integrative win-win negotiations following the principled negotiation tactics. We focus on integrative negotiation’s dialoguing phase where the parties share information, brainstorm options together, and establish an appropriate atmosphere. We compare computer-supported same-time same-place negotiations aided by group support systems (GSS) - either anonymously or non-anonymously - with the control treatment group that uses verbal communication backed up with flipcharts and Post-it notes. Due to the recent social media revolution, the role of anonymity might have changed from the GSS research results obtained decades ago. Our goal is to find out possible differences in the negotiation outcomes: meeting satisfaction and productivity. We discovered that all three modes worked well when used together with a carefully structured and facilitated process, although the number of unique ideas generated was significantly higher in the computer-supported groups

New election prediction: Macron will win, but the race will be closer than opinion polls suggest

Opinion polls suggest Emmanuel Macron will win the second round of the French presidential election, but given the surprise results in the UK’s Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election, how certain can we be of the result? Outlining findings from a new prediction model, Vuk Vukovic and Ilona Lahdelma discuss the precision of French pollsters in calling the first round, and why their survey predicts a narrower race than most opinion polls, with Macron still emerging on top

Towards Net Zero Energy Buildings: building performance optimization, simulation and analysis

The European Union 2020 energy targets seems to be a progressive, however, it still needs to be worked upon. The implementation of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEBs) as the building target represents one of the biggest challenges to increase energy savings and minimize greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper detached house has been modelled using dynamic simulation tool and the energy efficiency measures, concerning different technologies for envelope systems and technical systems, were set up as parameters in dynamic simulation tool and simulated and analysed. The objective of this paper is to define the heating, cooling, and electricity demand of a residential building in a cold climate region. The façade parameters were optimized for the best possible energy performance, to be used as design guidelines for facades in low and nearly zero energy buildings for architects and engineers. The purpose of the study is to give guidelines of office buildings facade design from the perspective of energy-efficiency and daylighting to architects, engineers, real-estate developers, etc.Peer reviewe

Business and it executives ’ perceptions on business and it alignment and the business value of IT

This paper presents first results of a study in which the perceptions of business and IT executives are compared regarding the maturity level of business and IT alignment and the business value of IT. The alignment of business and IT is investigated as alignment processes and structures. The business value of IT is examined with a multidimensional framework, which includes both the realized business value and the expected future business value of IT. The results indicate that business and IT executives perceive specifically the role of IT differently. Differences were also found in how business and IT executives perceive the alignment in operative IT-related activities. In addition, the views on IT’s impact on the quality of business processes and services differed. Our results indicate that professional responsibility may play a major role in some areas

Valenced Priming with Acquired Affective Concepts in Music: Automatic Reactions to Common Tonal Chords

This study tested whether chords that do not differ in acoustic roughness but that have distinct affective connotations are strong enough to prime negative and positive associations measurable with an affective priming method. We tested whether musically dissonant chords low in valence (diminished, augmented) but that contain little acoustic roughness are strong enough in terms of negative affective connotations to elicit an automatic congruence effect in an affective priming setting, comparable to the major-positive/minor-negative distinction found in past studies. Three out of 4 hypotheses were supported by the empirical data obtained from four distinct sub-experiments (approximately N = 100 each) where the diminished and augmented chords created strong priming effects. Conversely, the minor chord and the suspended fourth failed to generate priming effects. The results demonstrate how automatic responses to consonant/dissonant chords can be driven by acquired, cultural concepts rather than exclusively by acoustic features. The obtained results of automatic responses are notably in line with previous data gathered from self-report studies in terms of the stimuli’s positive vs. negative valence. The results are discussed from the point of view of previous affective priming studies, cross-cultural research, as well as music historical observations

Role of polygeneration in sustainable energy system development : Challenges and opportunities from optimization viewpoints

A sustainable energy system can be treated as a development of the distributed generation concept. It meets energy demands locally from renewable energy or/and high-efficiency polygeneration production technologies, and is characterized by energy and cost efficiency, reliability, and environmental-friendliness.Distributed energy systems typically use renewable energy resources to supply all energy demands, such as heat, cooling, and electric power in an integrated way. However, it seems that too much emphasis is placed on power and associated renewable energy-based power technologies for dealing with sustainability issues in public discussion and the research community. Often, equally important thermal energy (heat and cooling) and polygeneration are ignored. Polygeneration is an energy- efficient technology for generating simultaneously heat and power as well as other energy products in a single integrated process. Energy efficiency contributes significantly to CO2 emission reduction. This paper discusses the role of polygeneration in a distributed energy system and the contributions of polygeneration to the development of sustainable energy systems. The paper also stresses that efficient decision support tools for sustainable polygeneration systems are important to achieve sustainability. First, the joint characteristic of a polygeneration plant that defines the dependency between different energy products is reviewed. Then, typical methods for dealing with polygeneration systems are reviewed. The review attempts to highlight the complexity of polygeneration systems and potential of polygeneration systems to adjust output of different energy products. Next, the challenges of sustainable polygeneration energy systems are discussed. Then some practices for operating polygeneration plants are discussed.Peer reviewe