La transformación del mito de Wari en las fiestas mestizas de Oruro y Puno en el altiplano peruano-boliviano : la Diablada y la construcción de nuevas identidades regionales

Feasts are one of the forms of aesthetic expression and communication, not written, most striking of all the inhabitants of the Andean highlands. This essay will focus on two feasts of the urban environment: the Carnival of Oruro in Bolivia and the Feast of the Virgin of Candelaria in Puno, Peru. The analysis of historical and current developments in the feasts is one of the main bases for understanding both indigenous Andean cultures as mestizo and hence its positioning in the world. This article will focus on a particular aspect of the holidays: the myths supposedly prehispanic. These myths are often used to interpret one of the iconic representations of dance and theater  of the Plateau, la Diablada.Una de las formas de expresión y comunicación estética, no escritas, más llamativa de los habitantes de toda la sierra andina son las fiestas. Este ensayo se centrará en dos fiestas del ambiente urbano: el Carnaval de Oruro en Bolivia y la Fiesta de la Virgen de la Candelaria en Puno, Perú. Ambas fiestas están vinculadas a leyendas o mitos. Muchos de ellos han sido transformados o incluso inventados según los intereses de algún sector social, por lo general poderoso y dominante en el terreno político y económico local. Oruro tiene alrededor de 220.000 habitantes y Puno unos 125.000. Ambas urbes son capitales de departamentos del mismo nombre, encontrándose las dos en la zona altiplánica a más de 3.700 msnm. Las fiestas son el evento cultural dominante en ambas regiones, y quien no participa activamente en ellas –y en un lugar prominente– tendrá grandes dificultades de mantener o de ascender a una posición de liderazgo social o político local. El análisis de la evolución histórica y actual de las fiestas es una de las principales bases para comprender las culturas andinas tanto las indígenas como las mestizas y, por ende, su posicionamiento frente al mundo. Son culturas que no se expresan en primer lugar a través de la escritura, y que no transmiten sus valores, su saber y su historia necesariamente en libros o academias y que –ya desde antes de la conquista española– han ido procesando influencias y aportes de otras culturas. Este artículo versará sobre un aspecto determinado de estas fiestas: los mitos supuestamente prehispánicos. Estos mitos muchas veces se utilizan para interpretar una de las representaciones de danza y teatro emblemáticas del Altiplano, la Diablada

Novel Nitroxyl Radical Synthesis

The purpose of this research is to synthesize a novel compound, 2,2,6,6-dispirocyclobutylpiperidine- 4-one (P), for use as an oxidation reactant to form the corresponding nitroxyl radical. This is to be conducted using a reliable method for a variety of 2,2,6,6-tetrasubstituted piperidine-4-one compounds as detailed by Sakai et al. [3]. Sakai uses a variety of 6-member cyclic ketones, which are quite stable. It was attempted to use 4-member cyclic ketones to research the effectiveness of 2,6-substitution using a less stable carbonyl compound. Cyclobutanone and 3-oxycetanone were used as candidates for this reaction. Both are delicate, expensive ketones

Study of the relation of phosphorus and fungi to "Blackheart" of sugar beets, A

May 1, 1931.Includes bibliographical references (pages 91-106)

The LED Paradox: How Light Pollution Challenges Experts to Reconsider Sustainable Lighting

In the 21st century, the notion of “sustainable lighting” is closely associated with LED technology. In the past ten years, municipalities and private light users worldwide have installed light-emitting diodes in urban spaces and public streets to save energy. Yet an increasing body of interdisciplinary research suggests that supposedly sustainable LED installations are in fact unsustainable, because they increase light pollution. Paradoxically, blue-rich cool-white LED lighting, which is the most energy-efficient, also appears to be the most ecologically unfriendly. Biologists, physicians and ecologists warn that blue-rich LED light disturbs the circadian day-and-night rhythm of living organisms, including humans, with potential negative health effects on individual species and whole ecosystems. Can the paradox be solved? This paper explores this question based on our transdisciplinary research project Light Pollution—A Global Discussion. It reveals how light pollution experts and lighting professionals see the challenges and potential of LED lighting from their different viewpoints. This expert feedback shows that “sustainable LED lighting” goes far beyond energy efficiency as it raises complex design issues that imply stakeholder negotiation. It also suggests that the LED paradox may be solved in context, but hardly in principle

Algorithmic composition of music in real-time with soft constraints

Music has been the subject of formal approaches for a long time, ranging from Pythagoras’ elementary research on tonal systems to J. S. Bach’s elaborate formal composition techniques. Especially in the 20th century, much music was composed based on formal techniques: Algorithmic approaches for composing music were developed by composers like A. Schoenberg as well as in the scientific area. So far, a variety of mathematical techniques have been employed for composing music, e.g. probability models, artificial neural networks or constraint-based reasoning. In the recent time, interactive music systems have become popular: existing songs can be replayed with musical video games and original music can be interactively composed with easy-to-use applications running e.g. on mobile devices. However, applications which algorithmically generate music in real-time based on user interaction are mostly experimental and limited in either interactivity or musicality. There are many enjoyable applications but there are also many opportunities for improvements and novel approaches. The goal of this work is to provide a general and systematic approach for specifying and implementing interactive music systems. We introduce an algebraic framework for interactively composing music in real-time with a reasoning-technique called ‘soft constraints’: this technique allows modeling and solving a large range of problems and is suited particularly well for problems with soft and concurrent optimization goals. Our framework is based on well-known theories for music and soft constraints and allows specifying interactive music systems by declaratively defining ‘how the music should sound’ with respect to both user interaction and musical rules. Based on this core framework, we introduce an approach for interactively generating music similar to existing melodic material. With this approach, musical rules can be defined by playing notes (instead of writing code) in order to make interactively generated melodies comply with a certain musical style. We introduce an implementation of the algebraic framework in .NET and present several concrete applications: ‘The Planets’ is an application controlled by a table-based tangible interface where music can be interactively composed by arranging planet constellations. ‘Fluxus’ is an application geared towards musicians which allows training melodic material that can be used to define musical styles for applications geared towards non-musicians. Based on musical styles trained by the Fluxus sequencer, we introduce a general approach for transforming spatial movements to music and present two concrete applications: the first one is controlled by a touch display, the second one by a motion tracking system. At last, we investigate how interactive music systems can be used in the area of pervasive advertising in general and how our approach can be used to realize ‘interactive advertising jingles’.Musik ist seit langem Gegenstand formaler Untersuchungen, von Phytagoras‘ grundlegender Forschung zu tonalen Systemen bis hin zu J. S. Bachs aufwändigen formalen Kompositionstechniken. Vor allem im 20. Jahrhundert wurde vielfach Musik nach formalen Methoden komponiert: Algorithmische Ansätze zur Komposition von Musik wurden sowohl von Komponisten wie A. Schoenberg als auch im wissenschaftlichem Bereich entwickelt. Bislang wurde eine Vielzahl von mathematischen Methoden zur Komposition von Musik verwendet, z.B. statistische Modelle, künstliche neuronale Netze oder Constraint-Probleme. In der letzten Zeit sind interaktive Musiksysteme populär geworden: Bekannte Songs können mit Musikspielen nachgespielt werden, und mit einfach zu bedienenden Anwendungen kann man neue Musik interaktiv komponieren (z.B. auf mobilen Geräten). Allerdings sind die meisten Anwendungen, die basierend auf Benutzerinteraktion in Echtzeit algorithmisch Musik generieren, eher experimentell und in Interaktivität oder Musikalität limitiert. Es gibt viele unterhaltsame Anwendungen, aber ebenso viele Möglichkeiten für Verbesserungen und neue Ansätze. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, einen allgemeinen und systematischen Ansatz zur Spezifikation und Implementierung von interaktiven Musiksystemen zu entwickeln. Wir stellen ein algebraisches Framework zur interaktiven Komposition von Musik in Echtzeit vor welches auf sog. ‚Soft Constraints‘ basiert, einer Methode aus dem Bereich der künstlichen Intelligenz. Mit dieser Methode ist es möglich, eine große Anzahl von Problemen zu modellieren und zu lösen. Sie ist besonders gut geeignet für Probleme mit unklaren und widersprüchlichen Optimierungszielen. Unser Framework basiert auf gut erforschten Theorien zu Musik und Soft Constraints und ermöglicht es, interaktive Musiksysteme zu spezifizieren, indem man deklarativ angibt, ‚wie sich die Musik anhören soll‘ in Bezug auf sowohl Benutzerinteraktion als auch musikalische Regeln. Basierend auf diesem Framework stellen wir einen neuen Ansatz vor, um interaktiv Musik zu generieren, die ähnlich zu existierendem melodischen Material ist. Dieser Ansatz ermöglicht es, durch das Spielen von Noten (nicht durch das Schreiben von Programmcode) musikalische Regeln zu definieren, nach denen interaktiv generierte Melodien an einen bestimmten Musikstil angepasst werden. Wir präsentieren eine Implementierung des algebraischen Frameworks in .NET sowie mehrere konkrete Anwendungen: ‚The Planets‘ ist eine Anwendung für einen interaktiven Tisch mit der man Musik komponieren kann, indem man Planetenkonstellationen arrangiert. ‚Fluxus‘ ist eine Anwendung, die sich an Musiker richtet. Sie erlaubt es, melodisches Material zu trainieren, das wiederum als Musikstil in Anwendungen benutzt werden kann, die sich an Nicht-Musiker richten. Basierend auf diesen trainierten Musikstilen stellen wir einen generellen Ansatz vor, um räumliche Bewegungen in Musik umzusetzen und zwei konkrete Anwendungen basierend auf einem Touch-Display bzw. einem Motion-Tracking-System. Abschließend untersuchen wir, wie interaktive Musiksysteme im Bereich ‚Pervasive Advertising‘ eingesetzt werden können und wie unser Ansatz genutzt werden kann, um ‚interaktive Werbejingles‘ zu realisieren

Discerning the spatio-temporal disease patterns of surgically induced OA mouse models

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common cause of disability in ageing societies, with no effective therapies available to date. Two preclinical models are widely used to validate novel OA interventions (MCL-MM and DMM). Our aim is to discern disease dynamics in these models to provide a clear timeline in which various pathological changes occur. OA was surgically induced in mice by destabilisation of the medial meniscus. Analysis of OA progression revealed that the intensity and duration of chondrocyte loss and cartilage lesion formation were significantly different in MCL-MM vs DMM. Firstly, apoptosis was seen prior to week two and was narrowly restricted to the weight bearing area. Four weeks post injury the magnitude of apoptosis led to a 40–60% reduction of chondrocytes in the non-calcified zone. Secondly, the progression of cell loss preceded the structural changes of the cartilage spatio-temporally. Lastly, while proteoglycan loss was similar in both models, collagen type II degradation only occurred more prominently in MCL-MM. Dynamics of chondrocyte loss and lesion formation in preclinical models has important implications for validating new therapeutic strategies. Our work could be helpful in assessing the feasibility and expected response of the DMM- and the MCL-MM models to chondrocyte mediated therapies

A quasi-periodic oscillation in the blazar J1359+4011

The OVRO 40-m telescope has been monitoring the 15 GHz radio flux density of over 1200 blazars since 2008. The 15 GHz light curve of the flat spectrum radio quasar J1359+4011 shows a strong and persistent quasi-periodic oscillation. The time-scale of the oscillation varies between 120 and 150 days over a $\sim4$ year time span. We interpret this as the active galactic nucleus mass-scaled analog of low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations from Galactic microquasars, or as evidence of modulation of the accretion flow by thermal instabilites in the "inner" accretion disc.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

Synthesis and Hydrogen-Bond Patterns of Aryl-Group Substituted Silanediols and -triols from Alkoxy- and Chlorosilanes

Organosilanols typically show a high condensation tendency and only exist as stable isolable molecules under very specific steric and electronic conditions at the silicon atom. In the present work, various novel representatives of this class of compounds were synthesized by hydrolysis of alkoxy- or chlorosilanes. Phenyl, 1-naphthyl, and 9-phenanthrenyl substituents at the silicon atom were applied to systematically study the influence of the aromatic substituents on the structure and reactivity of the compounds. Chemical shifts in 29Si NMR spectroscopy in solution, correlated well with the expected electronic situation induced by the substitution pattern on the Si atom. 1H NMR studies allowed the detection of strong intermolecular hydrogen bonds. Single-crystal X-ray structures of the alkoxides and the chlorosilanes are dominated by π-π interactions of the aromatic systems, which are substituted by strong hydrogen bonding interactions representing various structural motifs in the respective silanol structures

Processing of COBRA FMCW SAR Data

We present results from air-borne SAR campaigns using the FMCW SAR system COBRA operating at 35 GHz. Thanks to its large bandwidth the theoretical image resolution is below 10 cm in both the range and azimuth dimensions. Highly precise navigation data as well as very accurate synchronization of navigation and SAR data enables equally accurate absolute positioning. The SAR data were focused using a Frequency Scaling Algorithm (FSA) that accounts for the movement of the platform during the long ramp duration. The focusing chain integrates a two-step motion compensation scheme. The geometric and radiometric characteristics of the resulting single look complex (SLC) images were analyzed based on corner reflectors deployed within the test site. The scene was illuminated several times from two opposite directions in a standard strip-map mode. For each track, highly overlapping data segments were focused and geocoded individually. These products were subsequently mosaicked to generate a single geocoded image. Examples of change detection and moving target indication are also given