Grafting culture:On the development and diffusion of the strathspey in Scottish music

The strathspey is typically understood to be an eighteenth-century variety of fiddle music instigated by two well-known musical families native to the Spey valley region

On homoclinic orbits to center manifolds of elliptic-hyperbolic equilibria in Hamiltonian systems

We consider a Hamiltonian system which has an elliptic-hyperbolic equilibrium with a homoclinic loop. We identify the set of orbits which are homoclinic to the center manifold of the equilibrium via a Lyapunov- Schmidt reduction procedure. This leads to the study of a singularity which inherits certain structure from the Hamiltonian nature of the system. Under non-degeneracy assumptions, we classify the possible Morse indices of this singularity, permitting a local description of the set of homoclinic orbits. We also consider the case of time-reversible Hamiltonian systems

Reeling in the Strathspey: The Origins of Scotland’s National Music

According to the conventionally held view, the strathspey or 'strathspey reel' was an eighteenth century innovation instigated by fiddlers of the Speyside region, such as the Browns of Kincardine and the Cummings of Grantown. However, the basic rhythmic characteristics inherent to the strathspey – a series of long and short notes, organised within two or four strong beats per bar – are found in Gaelic songs thought to be much older. Using a range of data from early fiddle collections and transcriptions of twentieth century audio recordings, this paper explores the musical and semantic connections between the strathspey and Gaelic song, suggesting an alternative developmental path for Scotland’s national music

The storyteller, the scribe, and a missing man : Hidden influences from printed sources in the Gaelic tales of Duncan and Neil MacDonald

The Scottish Gaelic tradition bearer Duncan MacDonald1 (1883-1954) was one of the most remarkable storytellers of twentieth-century Europe.2 He piqued the interest of a host of ethnologists in the later years of his life because of his considerable repertoire of traditional knowledge. They were especially interested in his ability to tell certain tales of his--particularly those with ties to older literary versions in manuscripts3--in a virtually identical fashion from recitation to recitation. During a period when scholars were admitting that the conservatism of Gaelic oral tradition had been perhaps exaggerated at times (see O Duilearga 1945), Duncan MacDonald's abilities were seen as an acquittal of the seanchaidh.4 It became clear that it was possible in certain cases for the surface forms of language, not just plot, to survive down through the ages in an almost unaltered form. MacDonald's genealogy (see Matheson 1977), with its ties to the hereditary poets and historians of Clann Domhnaill of Sleat, suggested that he was an approximation of the kind of professional Gaelic storyteller that would have been an institution in earlier times.Issue title: In Memoriam John Miles Foley January 22, 1947-May 3, 2012

The Storyteller, the Scribe, and a Missing Man: Hidden Influences from Printed Sources in the Gaelic Tales of Duncan and Neil MacDonald

This article concerns the well-known case of storytelling brothers Neil and Duncan MacDonald from South Uist, Scotland. The impressive verbal consistency of their hero tales has been taken to indicate that some Gaelic storytellers could acquire, recite, and transmit their repertoire in a near verbatim fashion. However, by deploying plagiarism detection techniques across an electronic corpus of texts, the author reveals that previous observations about the brothers’ verbal conservativeness have been skewed by corrupt evidence

On Ethmoidal Abscess

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Is the critical Shields stress for incipient sediment motion dependent on channel-bed slope?

Data from laboratory flumes and natural streams show that the critical Shields stress for initial sediment motion increases with channel slope, which indicates that particles of the same size are more stable on steeper slopes. This observation is contrary to standard models that predict reduced stability with increasing slope due to the added downstream gravitational force. Processes that might explain this discrepancy are explored using a simple force-balance model, including increased drag from channel walls and bed morphology, variable friction angles, grain emergence, flow aeration, and changes to the local flow velocity and turbulent fluctuations. Surprisingly, increased drag due to changes in bed morphology does not appear to be the cause of the slope dependency because both the magnitude and trend of the critical Shields stress are similar for flume experiments and natural streams, and significant variations in bed morphology in flumes is unlikely. Instead, grain emergence and changes in local flow velocity and turbulent fluctuations seem to be responsible for the slope dependency due to the coincident increase in the ratio of bed-roughness scale to flow depth (i.e., relative roughness). A model for the local velocity within the grain-roughness layer is proposed based on a 1-D eddy viscosity with wake mixing. In addition, the magnitude of near-bed turbulent fluctuations is shown to depend on the depth-averaged flow velocity and the relative roughness. Extension of the model to mixed grain sizes indicates that the coarser fraction becomes increasingly difficult to transport on steeper slopes

A model for fluvial bedrock incision by impacting suspended and bed load sediment

A mechanistic model is derived for the rate of fluvial erosion into bedrock by abrasion from uniform size particles that impact the bed during transport in both bed and suspended load. The erosion rate is equated to the product of the impact rate, the mass loss per particle impact, and a bed coverage term. Unlike previous models that consider only bed load, the impact rate is not assumed to tend to zero as the shear velocity approaches the threshold for suspension. Instead, a given sediment supply is distributed between the bed and suspended load by using formulas for the bed load layer height, bed load velocity, logarithmic fluid velocity profile, and Rouse sediment concentration profile. It is proposed that the impact rate scales linearly with the product of the near-bed sediment concentration and the impact velocity and that particles impact the bed because of gravitational settling and advection by turbulent eddies. Results suggest, unlike models that consider only bed load, that the erosion rate increases with increasing transport stage (for a given relative sediment supply), even for transport stages that exceed the onset of suspension. In addition, erosion can occur if the supply of sediment exceeds the bed load transport capacity because a portion of the sediment load is transported in suspension. These results have implications for predicting erosion rates and channel morphology, especially in rivers with fine sediment, steep channel-bed slopes, and large flood events