The Symphony of State: São Paulo\u27s Department of Culture, 1922-1938

In 1920s-30s São Paulo, Brazil, leaders of the vanguard artistic movement known as “modernism” began to argue that national identity came not from shared values or even cultural practices but rather by a shared way of thinking, which they variously designated as Brazil’s “racial psychology,” “folkloric unconscious,” and “national psychology.” Building on turn-of-the-century psychological and anthropological theories, the group diagnosed Brazil’s national mind as characterized by “primitivity” and in need of a program of psychological development. The group rose to political power in the 1930s, placing the artists in a position to undertake such a project. The Symphony of State charts this previously unexamined intellectual project and explains why elite leaders believed music to be the most-promising strategy for developing the national mind beyond primitivity. In 1935, they founded the São Paulo Department of Culture and Recreation in order to fund music education, train ethnomusicologists, commission symphonies, and host performances across the city. Until now, historians of twentieth-century Brazil have praised music as a critical site for marginalized groups to sound out political protest. But The Symphony of State shows the reverse has also been true: elite groups used music as a top-down civilizing project designed to naturalize racial hierarchies and justify class difference. The intellectual history portion of the dissertation turns on archival sources, newspaper accounts, personal correspondence, modernist literature, and the period’s scholarly journals. The examination of literary form, discourse analysis, and marginalia lends depth to a carefully-documented study of ideas. Then, The Symphony of State brings to bear an innovative reading of ethnographic field books, vinyl records, and music scores to show that the department’s scholarship and symphonic compositions alike furthered the narrative of a nation jeopardized by primitivity. What is more, the department’s composers employed musical properties such as harmony and dissonance as metaphors to convince listeners that a harmonious society required the maintenance of racial and class hierarchies. In bringing further clarity to the department’s intellectual project, the sections featuring music analysis speak to the value of reading music as an historical text. The dissertation accomplishes multiple goals. It uncovers the theory of national psychology driving the musical institution; examines ethnographic material to further understand racial and regional prejudice in the period; and analyzes concert music commissioned and performed by the municipal department. The examination of the musical institution reveals a moment in Brazilian history in which national identity was constructed atop the notion of a shared psychology and in which modernity was believed to come with the musical tuning of the body politic and the training of its mind

Control by light and oxygen of B875 and B850 pigment-protein complexes in Rhodopseudomonas sphaeroides

AbstractControl by light and oxygen of the formation of B875 and B850 pigment-protein complexes in Rhodopseudomonas sphaeroides was evaluated by use of Hill plots. Kinetics of oxygen-dependent control exhibited Hill coefficients of n = 1.06 and n = 0.65 for B875 and B850 complexes, respectively. Half-maximum inhibition of B875 complexes was at 20.4% air saturation of the medium and of B850 complexes at 0.9%. Light controlled both complexes with an identical sigmoidal kinetics of n = 2.1

Stratigraphy of stable isotope ratios and leaf structure within an African rainforest canopy with implications for primate isotope ecology

The canopy effect describes vertical variation in the isotope ratios of carbon (δ(13)C), oxygen (δ(18)O) and partially nitrogen (δ(15)N) within plants throughout a closed canopy forest, and may facilitate the study of canopy feeding niches in arboreal primates. However, the nuanced relationship between leaf height, sunlight exposure and the resulting variation in isotope ratios and leaf mass per area (LMA) has not been documented for an African rainforest. Here, we present δ(13)C, δ(18)O and δ(15)N values of leaves (n = 321) systematically collected from 58 primate food plants throughout the canopy (0.3 to 42 m) in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa. Besides leaf sample height and light availability, we measured leaf nitrogen and carbon content (%N, %C), as well as LMA (n = 214) to address the plants’ vertical resource allocations. We found significant variation in δ(13)C, δ(18)O and δ(15)N, as well as LMA in response to height in combination with light availability and tree species, with low canopy leaves depleted in (13)C, (18)O and (15)N and slightly higher in %N compared to higher canopy strata. While this vertical isotopic variation was not well reflected in the δ(13)C and δ(15)N of arboreal primates from this forest, it did correspond well to primate δ(18)O values

Scattering by single physically large and weak scatterers in the beam of a single-element transducer

Quantitative ultrasound techniques are generally applied to characterize media whose scattering sites are considered to be small compared to a wavelength. In this study, the backscattered response of single weakly scattering spheres and cylinders with diameters comparable to the beam width of a 2.25 MHz single-element transducer were simulated and measured in the transducer focal plane to investigate the impact of physically large scatterers. The responses from large single spherical scatterers at the focus were found to closely match the plane-wave response. The responses from large cylindrical scatterers at the focus were found to differ from the plane-wave response by a factor of f(−1). Normalized spectra from simulations and measurements were in close agreement: the fall-off of the responses as a function of lateral position agreed to within 2 dB for spherical scatterers and to within 3.5 dB for cylindrical scatterers. In both measurement and simulation, single scatterer diameter estimates were biased by less than 3% for a more highly focused transducer compared to estimates for a more weakly focused transducer. The results suggest that quantitative ultrasound techniques may produce physically meaningful size estimates for media whose response is dominated by scatterers comparable in size to the transducer beam

Breast-Lesion Characterization using Textural Features of Quantitative Ultrasound Parametric Maps

© 2017 The Author(s). This study evaluated, for the first time, the efficacy of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) spectral parametric maps in conjunction with texture-analysis techniques to differentiate non-invasively benign versus malignant breast lesions. Ultrasound B-mode images and radiofrequency data were acquired from 78 patients with suspicious breast lesions. QUS spectral-analysis techniques were performed on radiofrequency data to generate parametric maps of mid-band fit, spectral slope, spectral intercept, spacing among scatterers, average scatterer diameter, and average acoustic concentration. Texture-analysis techniques were applied to determine imaging biomarkers consisting of mean, contrast, correlation, energy and homogeneity features of parametric maps. These biomarkers were utilized to classify benign versus malignant lesions with leave-one-patient-out cross-validation. Results were compared to histopathology findings from biopsy specimens and radiology reports on MR images to evaluate the accuracy of technique. Among the biomarkers investigated, one mean-value parameter and 14 textural features demonstrated statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) between the two lesion types. A hybrid biomarker developed using a stepwise feature selection method could classify the legions with a sensitivity of 96%, a specificity of 84%, and an AUC of 0.97. Findings from this study pave the way towards adapting novel QUS-based frameworks for breast cancer screening and rapid diagnosis in clinic

Recombination dynamics of clusters in intense extreme-ultraviolet and near- infrared fields

We investigate electron-ion recombination processes in clusters exposed to intense extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) or near-infrared (NIR) pulses. Using the technique of reionization of excited atoms from recombination (REAR), recently introduced in Schütte et al (2014 Phys. Rev. Lett. 112 253401), a large population of excited atoms, which are formed in the nanoplasma during cluster expansion, is identified under both ionization conditions. For intense XUV ionization of clusters, we find that the significance of recombination increases for increasing cluster sizes. In addition, larger fragments are strongly affected by recombination as well, as shown for the case of dimers. We demonstrate that for mixed Ar–Xe clusters exposed to intense NIR pulses, excited atoms and ions are preferentially formed in the Xe core. As a result of electron-ion recombination, higher charge states of Xe are efficiently suppressed, leading to an overall reduced expansion speed of the cluster core in comparison to the shell

Recombination dynamics of clusters in intense extreme-ultraviolet and near-infrared fields

We investigate electron-ion recombination processes in clusters exposed to intense extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) or near-infrared (NIR) pulses. Using the technique of reionization of excited atoms from recombination (REAR), recently introduced in Schütte et al (2014 Phys. Rev. Lett. 112 253401), a large population of excited atoms, which are formed in the nanoplasma during cluster expansion, is identified under both ionization conditions. For intense XUV ionization of clusters, we find that the significance of recombination increases for increasing cluster sizes. In addition, larger fragments are strongly affected by recombination as well, as shown for the case of dimers. We demonstrate that for mixed Ar–Xe clusters exposed to intense NIR pulses, excited atoms and ions are preferentially formed in the Xe core. As a result of electron-ion recombination, higher charge states of Xe are efficiently suppressed, leading to an overall reduced expansion speed of the cluster core in comparison to the shell