Auditory Streaming Complexity and Renaissance Mass Cycles

How did Renaissance listeners experience the polyphonic mass ordinary cycle in the soundscape of the church? We hypothesize that the textural differences in complexity between mass movements allowed listeners to track the progress of the service, regardless of intelligibility of the text or sophisticated musical knowledge.  Building on the principles of auditory scene analysis, this article introduces the Auditory Streaming Complexity Estimate, a measure to evaluate the blending or separation of each part in polyphony, resulting in a moment-by-moment tally of how many independent streams or sound objects might be heard. When applied to symbolic scores for a corpus of 216 polyphonic mass ordinary cycles composed between c. 1450 and 1600, we show that the Streaming Complexity Estimate captures information distinct from the number of parts in the score or the distribution of voices active through the piece. While composers did not all follow the same relative complexity strategy for mass ordinary movements, there is a robust hierarchy emergent from the corpus as a whole: a shallow V shape with the Credo as the least complex and the Agnus Dei as the most. The streaming complexity of masses also significantly increased over the years represented in this corpus

Electronic Locator of Vertical Interval Successions (ELVIS): The first large data-driven research project on musical style

The ELVIS project had three locally based teams (in Canada, at McGill, in Scotland, at Aberdeen, and in New England, USA, divided between MIT, the lead, and Yale), each of which focused on a different aspect of the overall research program: using computers to understand musical style. The central unifying concept of the ELVIS project was to study counterpoint: the way combinations of voices in polyphonic music (e.g. the soprano and bass voices in a hymn, or the viola and cello in a string quartet, as well as combinations of more than two voices) interact: i.e. what are the permissible vertical intervals (notes from two voices sounding at the same time) for a particular period, genre, or style. These vertical intervals, connected by melodic motions in individual voices, constitute Vertical Interval Successions. In more modern terms, this could be described as harmonic progressions of chords, but what made ELVIS particularly flexible was its ability to bridge the gap to earlier, contrapuntally-conceived music by using the diad (a two-note combination) rather than the triad (a combination of three notes in particular arrangements) as a basis (since triads and beyond may be expressed as sums of diads)

Streaming complexity in the Renaissance Mass Ordinary cycle

Complexity of a piece should also be related to its intended use and context. The Mass Ordinary cycles of 15th- and 16th-c. Europe were works of exceptional formal consistency, and if complexity is relevant to the role of a Kyrie, Gloria, or Agnus Dei, this should be measurable from the scores of surviving examples. We evaluate an aspect of complexity generalizable to past church goers from the consequences of low-level auditory streaming principles. The streaming complexity estimate presumes that this music tends to be heard as an integrated stream within the rich scene of the church service unless the voices diverge through separation cues such as independent onsets and contrary motion. In a corpus of more than 200 mass cycles composed over 150 years, we find significant differences in average streaming complexity over time and between movements. The Agnus Dei tends to be more complex, the Credo, with a long text, is usually low, depending on the composer. Results suggest streaming complexity may indeed be tuned for the intended use of a work. By bringing musicological evidence into corpus analysis, we can consider this feature in relation to the role of music beyond present day patterns of consumption

Using corpus studies to find the origins of the madrigal

A recurring topic in musicology is the origin of the madrigal. Did it come from the frottola, the motet and chanson, or other Italian traditions? MS Florence, BNC, 164-167 (c. 1520) has four sections, each devoted to a different genre: madrigals, other Italian-texted genres, chansons, and motets. These sections provide evidence of genre classification from the period. We encoded the 82 pieces in the manuscript and used jSymbolic to extract 801 features from each file. We then used Weka to train classifiers to identify the pieces in the different sections. This allowed us to test the claims of earlier scholars as to similarity or difference between the madrigals and the other genres. The classifiers could distinguish the other Italian-texted genres from the madrigals only 72% of the time, compared to 100% of the time for the motets and chansons, suggesting that the madrigals are more similar to other Italian-texted pieces than to the other genres. Features based on rhythm were particularly effective in separating the genres, especially in discriminating madrigals from motets

Systematic review of comprehensive primary health care models

Many countries are investing in primary health care (PHC) reform, with particular attention being paid to establishing local or regional organisational structures; implementing new funding arrangements and changing the PHC workforce skills mix. This review examines what is known about the implementation and effectiveness of the different system-wide models being developed in Australia, United Kingdom and New Zealand to achieveThe research reported in this paper is a project of the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute, which is supported by a grant from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing under the Primary Health Care Research, Evaluation and Development Strategy

Child handwashing in an internally displaced persons camp in Northern Iraq: A qualitative multi-method exploration of motivational drivers and other handwashing determinants.

BACKGROUND: Children in humanitarian situations are particularly vulnerable to diseases such as diarrhoea. Handwashing with soap can greatly reduce transmission but handwashing rates are often low and traditional interventions ineffective. To aid future intervention design, this study aims to understand the determinants of child handwashing and the key motivational drivers of children's behaviour within a specific humanitarian setting. METHODS: In an internally displaced persons camp in Northern Iraq we conducted a series of 36 friendship-paired interviews with children aged 7-12 years, six semi-structured caregiver interviews, and three semi-structured hygiene promoter interviews. Perceived determinants of child handwashing were explored qualitatively, and motivational drivers were explored quantitatively with children in a rating exercise. Qualitative data were analysed thematically, using an inductive approach, and logistic regression analyses of motive rating data were performed to determine the predicted probabilities of motives being rated as important. RESULTS: Access to soap and water was perceived to be high across all participant groups. Children, caregivers and hygiene promoters all perceive the determinants of child handwashing to be associated with familial role, environmental factors pertaining to location and quality of handwashing materials and facilities, and level of exposure to hygiene promotion, and children also attribute their handwashing to social norms. We find that children in this context are motived most by play and nurture. CONCLUSIONS: Provision of soap and water alone is not sufficient to encourage children to practice handwashing with soap in a humanitarian context. Our findings suggest that equal consideration should be given to the quality and location of handwashing materials and facilities and social norms could be leveraged to promote and enhance child handwashing. Motive-based interventions targeting play or nurture may be a promising approach and are likely most effective when used in conjunction, along with other motivational drivers such as affiliation and love

Child's play: Harnessing play and curiosity motives to improve child handwashing in a humanitarian setting.

In humanitarian emergency settings there is need for low cost and rapidly deployable interventions to protect vulnerable children, in- and out-of-school, from diarrhoeal diseases. Handwashing with soap can greatly reduce diarrhoea but interventions specifically targeting children's handwashing behaviour in humanitarian settings have not been tested. Traditional children's handwashing promotion interventions have been school-focused, resource-intensive and reliant on health-based messaging. However, recent research from non-humanitarian settings and targeting adults suggests that theory-based behaviour change interventions targeting specific motives may be more effective than traditional handwashing interventions. In this proof-of-concept study we test, for the first time, the distribution of a modified soap bar, designed to appeal to the motives of play and curiosity, in a household-level, rapidly deployable, handwashing promotion intervention for older children in a humanitarian setting - an internally displaced persons camp in Iraqi Kurdistan. Out of five total blocks within the camp, one was assigned to intervention and one to control. 40 households from each assigned block were then randomly chosen for inclusion in the study and the practice of handwashing with soap at key times was measured at baseline and four weeks after intervention delivery. Children in intervention households received transparent soaps with embedded toys, delivered within a short, fun, and interactive household session with minimal, non-health-based, messaging. The control group received plain soap delivered in a short standard, health-based, hygiene promotion session. At the 4-week follow-up, children in the intervention group were 4 times more likely to wash their hands with soap after key handwashing occasions than expected in the counterfactual (if there had been no intervention) based on the comparison to children in the control group (adjusted RR = 3.94, 95% CI 1.59-9.79). We show that distributing soaps with toys embedded inside, in a rapidly deployable intervention, can improve child handwashing behaviour in a humanitarian emergency context. Further studies are needed to determine the longer-term behavioural and health impact of such an intervention when delivered at a greater scale in a humanitarian context

Effectiveness of behaviour change techniques used in hand hygiene interventions targeting older children - A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Promoting good hand hygiene in older children is an important measure to reduce the burden of common diseases such as diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections. The evidence around what works to change this behaviour, however, is unclear. OBJECTIVES: To aid future intervention design and effective use of resources, this review aims to identify the individual components used in hand hygiene interventions and assesses their contribution to intended behavioural change. METHODS: We systematically searched seven databases for experimental studies evaluating hand hygiene interventions targeting children (age 5-12) and quantitively reporting hand hygiene behaviour. Interventions in each study were categorised as 'promising', or 'non-promising' according to whether they led to a positive change in the targeted behaviour. Behaviour change techniques (BCTs) were identified across interventions using a standard taxonomy and a novel promise ratio calculated for each (the ratio of promising to non-promising interventions featuring the BCT). 'Promising' BCTs were those with a promise ratio of ≥2. BCTs were ranked from most to least promising. RESULTS: Our final analysis included 19 studies reporting 22 interventions across which 32 unique BCTs were identified. The most frequently used were 'demonstration of the behaviour', 'instruction on how to perform the behaviour' and 'adding objects to the environment'. Eight BCTs had a promise ratio of ≥2 and the five most promising were 'demonstration of the behaviour', 'information about social and environmental consequences', 'salience of consequences', 'adding objects to the environment', and 'instruction on how to perform the behaviour'. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that hand hygiene interventions targeting older children should employ a combination of promising BCTs that ensure children understand the behaviour and the consequences of their hand hygiene habits, appropriate hardware is available, and social support is provided. Researchers are encouraged to consistently and transparently describe evaluated interventions to allow promising components to be identified and replicated

Persistent postoperative pain and healthcare costs associated with instrumented and non-instrumented spinal surgery: a case-control study

Purpose: To compare rates of persistent postoperative pain (PPP) after lumbar spine surgery—commonly known as Failed Back Surgery Syndrome—and healthcare costs for instrumented lumbar spinal fusion versus decompression/discectomy. Methods: The UK population-based healthcare data from the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database from NHS Digital and the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) were queried to identify patients with PPP following lumbar spinal surgery. Rates of PPP were calculated by type of surgery (instrumented and non-instrumented). Total healthcare costs associated with the surgery and covering the 24-month period after index hospital discharge were estimated using standard methods for classifying health care encounters into major categories of health care resource utilization (i.e., inpatient hospital stays, outpatient clinic visits, accident and emergency attendances, primary care encounters, and medications prescribed in primary care) and applying the appropriate unit costs (expressed in 2013 GBP). Results: Increasing the complexity of surgery with instrumentation was not associated with an increased rate of PPP. However, 2-year healthcare costs following discharge after surgery are significantly higher among patients who underwent instrumented surgery compared with decompression/discectomy. Conclusions: Although there is a not insubstantial risk of ongoing pain following spine surgery, with 1-in-5 patients experiencing PPP within 2 years of surgery, the underlying indications for surgical modality and related choice of surgical procedure do not, by itself, appear to be a driving factor