“Curious inventions”: Carlo Farina's Capriccio stravagante

Carlo Farina's 1627 Capriccio Stravagante uses four violin-family instruments (violin, two violas, and a violoncello-range instrument) to mimic other instruments such as trumpets, shawms, organs, and guitars. This investigation seeks to equip the modern performer by framing the piece in the context of contemporary understandings and techniques. Carlo Farina and the Capriccio model the influence of emerging tastes for Italian practices and musicians in the courts of northern Europe, and for the violin as an individually idiomatic solo instrument. Marin Mersenne identified the violin's specific strength as its versatile ability to adopt the timbre and musical idioms of other instruments, as demonstrated in the Capriccio. One of the primary tasks facing the modern interpreter is to identify the instruments which Farina imitates throughout the piece. The Lira, for example, is not the lira da braccio but the hurdy-gurdy, and Il tremulant is not a string tremolo technique but an organ setting. Chapter V of this analysis examines each mimicked instrument in turn and considers their period performance practice and repertoire, extrapolating an application to violin-family instruments

Mapping realities & cultivating belief

Reality is flexible and personalized. As you become, it becomes. In her 1922 classic, The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams reminds us that once a thing becomes real "It can't become unreal again, it lasts for always." My thesis work is an extension of the imagined world I have harbored in my thoughts since childhood. A world experienced simultaneously with the one we now occupy. Combinations of photography, sculpture, painting, and play represent a visual chronicle of the travels and adventures of my companions and I, as we move between worlds and encounter the fantastic

Concept perception in preschool children's use of stories through several media

The purpose of the study was to determine the difference in concept perception in preschool children using story reading through several different media presentations. Specifically, it was to ascertain if significant differences did exist in concept perception of children ranging in age from 3 years 6 months to 5 years 6 months under three different methods of presentation: adult story reader present and reading story, filmstrip and cassette, and cassette recorder alone. Three stories were selected for the investigation with consideration being given to comparable content and length of the stories. All stories depicted the seasons and involved plants, animals, and human beings. Three trained professionals with earned degrees in the areas of child development or in child psychology evaluated the stories for appropriateness. A questionnaire and scoring scale was devised by the investigator and were evaluated by the three trained professionals

“Among Mankind’s Deepest Needs”: Repetitive Grief and Intimate Isolation in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude

In this paper, the author considers how two novels, though written by wholly different men from wholly different regions, manage to evoke a similar perspective on the concept of grief–born out of relational instances of shame, sacrifice, and betrayal–as it arises in close relationships. Both authors seek to portray the griefs experienced by their respective characters in an equally realistic and compassionate manner. In exploring the intimacy which exists on multiple levels–both in the isolation of the relationship itself, as well as in the further, personal isolation of individuals recognizing the failures of their relationships–both Kundera and Garcia Marquez have managed to create a vastly complex and full-bodied picture of grief as it exists within the realm of the intimate relationship. Through the use of similar repetitive structures, philosophizing narrators, and excursions into the world of magical realism, both authors create a means of exploring the way in which grief, iterated cyclically and perpetually, shapes a close relationship, and ultimately redefines the very nature of the intimacy itself

Trends in Weekly Reported Net use by Children During and after Rainy Season in Central Tanzania.

The use of long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) is one of the principal interventions to prevent malaria in young children, reducing episodes of malaria by 50% and child deaths by one fifth. Prioritizing young children for net use is important to achieve mortality reductions, particularly during transmission seasons. Households were followed up weekly from January through June 2009 to track net use among children under seven under as well as caretakers. Net use rates for children and caretakers in net-owning households were calculated by dividing the number of person-weeks of net use by the number of person-weeks of follow-up. Use was stratified by age of the child or caretaker status. Determinants of ownership and of use were assessed using multivariate models. Overall, 60.1% of the households reported owning a bed net at least once during the study period. Among net owners, use rates remained high during and after the rainy season. Rates of use per person-week decreased as the age of the child rose from 0 to six years old; at ages 0-23 months and 24-35 months use rates per person-week were 0.93 and 0.92 respectively during the study period, while for children ages 3 and 4 use rates per person-week were 0.86 and 0.80. For children ages 5-6 person-week ratios dropped to 0.55. This represents an incidence rate ratio of 1.67 for children ages 0-23 months compared to children aged 5-6. Caretakers had use rates similar to those of children age 0-35 months. Having fewer children under age seven in the household also appeared to positively impact net use rates for individual children. In this area of Tanzania, net use is very high among net-owning households, with no variability either at the beginning or end of the rainy season high transmission period. The youngest children are prioritized for sleeping under the net and caretakers also have high rates of use. Given the high use rates, increasing the number of nets available in the household is likely to boost use rates by older children

State-of-the-art management of nasopharyngeal carcinoma: current and future directions

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a distinct type of head and neck cancer. Approximately 70% of patients with newly diagnosed NPC present with locally advanced disease. Phase III clinical trials support the addition of chemotherapy to radiotherapy for the initial treatment of these patients. Once metastatic disease develops, practices become varied. Further experience needs to be gained with both targeted therapies and immunotherapy to gauge whether they will improve treatment outcomes in NPC

Association of cetuximab with adverse pulmonary events in cancer patients: a comprehensive review

Compounds derived from biologic sources, or biologicals, are increasingly utilized as therapeutic agents in malignancy. Development of anti-cancer targeted therapies from biologics is increasingly being utilized. Cetuximab, a chimeric monoclonal antibody, is one such anti-cancer targeted therapeutic that has shown efficacy in quelling the rate of patient decline in colorectal, head/neck, and non-small cell lung cancer. However, due to the relatively recent addition of biologic compounds to the therapeutic arsenal, information related to adverse reactions is less well known than those seen in traditional chemotherapeutics. Dermatologic reactions have been demonstrated as the most frequent side effect cited during cetuximab therapy for malignancy; however, other effects may lead to greater morbidity. In general, pulmonary complications of therapeutics can lead to significant morbidity and mortality. The purpose of this review is to compile the various pulmonary side effects seen in patients treated with cetuximab for various malignancies, and to compare the incidence of these adverse reactions to standard therapies

Expression analysis of asthma candidate genes during human and murine lung development

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Little is known about the role of most asthma susceptibility genes during human lung development. Genetic determinants for normal lung development are not only important early in life, but also for later lung function.</p> <p>Objective</p> <p>To investigate the role of expression patterns of well-defined asthma susceptibility genes during human and murine lung development. We hypothesized that genes influencing normal airways development would be over-represented by genes associated with asthma.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Asthma genes were first identified via comprehensive search of the current literature. Next, we analyzed their expression patterns in the developing human lung during the pseudoglandular (gestational age, 7-16 weeks) and canalicular (17-26 weeks) stages of development, and in the complete developing lung time series of 3 mouse strains: A/J, SW, C57BL6.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In total, 96 genes with association to asthma in at least two human populations were identified in the literature. Overall, there was no significant over-representation of the asthma genes among genes differentially expressed during lung development, although trends were seen in the human (Odds ratio, OR 1.22, confidence interval, CI 0.90-1.62) and C57BL6 mouse (OR 1.41, CI 0.92-2.11) data. However, differential expression of some asthma genes was consistent in both developing human and murine lung, e.g. <it>NOD1, EDN1, CCL5, RORA </it>and <it>HLA-G</it>. Among the asthma genes identified in genome wide association studies, <it>ROBO1</it>, <it>RORA, HLA-DQB1, IL2RB </it>and <it>PDE10A </it>were differentially expressed during human lung development.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our data provide insight about the role of asthma susceptibility genes during lung development and suggest common mechanisms underlying lung morphogenesis and pathogenesis of respiratory diseases.</p

Phylogeny Disambiguates the Evolution of Heat-Shock cis-Regulatory Elements in Drosophila

Heat-shock genes have a well-studied control mechanism for their expression that is mediated through cis-regulatory motifs known as heat-shock elements (HSEs). The evolution of important features of this control mechanism has not been investigated in detail, however. Here we exploit the genome sequencing of multiple Drosophila species, combined with a wealth of available information on the structure and function of HSEs in D. melanogaster, to undertake this investigation. We find that in single-copy heat shock genes, entire HSEs have evolved or disappeared 14 times, and the phylogenetic approach bounds the timing and direction of these evolutionary events in relation to speciation. In contrast, in the multi-copy gene Hsp70, the number of HSEs is nearly constant across species. HSEs evolve in size, position, and sequence within heat-shock promoters. In turn, functional significance of certain features is implicated by preservation despite this evolutionary change; these features include tail-to-tail arrangements of HSEs, gapped HSEs, and the presence or absence of entire HSEs. The variation among Drosophila species indicates that the cis-regulatory encoding of responsiveness to heat and other stresses is diverse. The broad dimensions of variation uncovered are particularly important as they suggest a substantial challenge for functional studies