The Influence of Different Structural Features on Felt Musical Tension in Two Piano Pieces by Mozart and Mendelssohn

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Lehne ◽  
Martin Rohrmeier ◽  
Donald Gollmann ◽  
Stefan Koelsch

In tonal music, patterns of tension and resolution form one of the core principles evoking emotions. The experience of musical tension and resolution depends on various features of the music (e.g., dynamics, agogics, melody, and harmony); however, the relative contribution of different features to the experience of tension is less clear. To investigate the influence of different features on subjectively experienced musical tension, we compared continuous ratings of felt musical tension for original and modified versions of two piano pieces by Mendelssohn and Mozart. Modifications included versions without dynamics and without agogics as well as versions in which the music was reduced to its melodic, harmonic, or outer voice components. Additionally, we compared tension ratings with a loudness model. Tension ratings for versions without dynamics, versions without agogics and without dynamics, and outer voice reductions correlated highly with ratings for the original versions for both pieces. Tension rating correlations between melodic or harmonic reductions and original versions, as well as loudness and original ratings, differed between pieces and appeared to depend on the relative importance of the feature in the respective piece. In addition, qualitative analyses suggested that felt tension and resolution depend on phrase structure, local harmonic implications, and global syntactic structures of the pieces. Altogether, results indicate that discarding expressive features such as dynamics and agogics largely preserves tension-resolution patterns of the music, whereas the contributions of harmonic and melodic structure depend on the way in which they are employed in the composition.

Author(s):  
Mario Luis Small

This chapter examines the “core discussion networks” of graduate students in three departments and shows that, contrary to traditional expectations, many of the ties appear to be weak rather than strong. It considers how the students relate to those they have considered their confidants after six months, and more specifically whether they would as a whole report the same confidants. Three perspectives on the relative importance of network structure versus social interaction are discussed based on the students’ different experiences: the students will keep most confidants, they will drop many of their confidants, or they will drop many confidants but quickly replace them. In general, the students replaced their confidants often.


2005 ◽  
Vol 62 (7) ◽  
pp. 2118-2135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlado Spiridonov ◽  
Mladjen Curic

Abstract The relative importance of various processes to sulfate production and wet deposition is examined by using a cloud-resolving model coupled with a sulfate chemistry submodel. Results using different versions of the model are then compared and principal differences with respect to their dynamics, microphysics, and chemistry are carefully discussed. The results imply that the dominant microphysical and chemical conversions of sulfate in the 3D run are nucleation, scavenging, and oxidation. Due to the lower cloud water and rainwater pH, oxidation does not contribute as significantly to the sulfate mass in the 2D run as the 3D. Sensitivity tests have revealed that in-cloud scavenging in the 2D run for continental nonpolluted and continental polluted clouds accounted for 29.4% and 31.5% of the total sulfur deposited, respectively. The 3D run shows a lower percentage contribution to sulfur deposition for about 28.2% and 29.6%. In addition, subcloud scavenging for the 2D run contributed about 32.7% and 38.2%. In-cloud oxidation in the 2D run accounted for about 24.5% to 30.4% of the total sulfur mass deposited. Subcloud oxidation contributed from 21.0% to 20.6% of the total sulfur mass removed by wet deposition. In-cloud oxidation for the 3D run shows slightly lower percentage values when compared to those from the 2D run. The relative contribution of subcloud oxidation for continental nonpolluted and polluted clouds exceeds those values in the 2D run by approximately 7% and 10%, respectively. Ignoring the ice phase and considering those types of convective clouds in the 2D run may lead to a higher value of the total sulfur mass removed by the wet deposition of about 33.9% to 39.2% for the continental nonpolluted and 36.2% to 45.6% for the continental polluted distributions relative to the base runs.


2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carissa Jones ◽  
Isaac Rojas-González ◽  
Julio Lemos-Espinal ◽  
Jaime Zúñiga-Vega

Abstract There appears to be variation in life-history strategies even between populations of the same species. For ectothermic organisms such as lizards, it has been predicted that demographic and life-history traits should differ consistently between temperate and tropical populations. This study compares the demographic strategies of a temperate and a tropical population of the lizard Xenosaurus platyceps. Population growth rates in both types of environments indicated populations in numerical equilibrium. Of the two populations, we found that the temperate population experiences lower adult mortality. The relative importance (estimated as the relative contribution to population growth rate) of permanence and of the adult/reproductive size classes is higher in the temperate population. In contrast, the relative importance for average fitness of fecundity and growth is higher in the tropical population. These results are consistent with the theoretical frameworks about life-historical differences among tropical and temperate lizard populations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank J. Garcia

Abstract International courts play a key role in the attainment of global social justice objectives. The core contributions of international adjudication to global social justice are, not surprisingly, in line with the core functions of adjudication: the enforcement of substantive rights in a setting of fair procedures. Fully realizing the potential for justice inherent in this role is limited, however, by certain institutional and structural features unique to international adjudication. This article analyzes these opportunities, challenges, and background conditions in the context of international economic law (IEL) adjudication, where the results are mixed. For example, one can see in the case of the World Trade Organization (WTO) evidence of institutional and doctrinal evolution, albeit uneven, toward more substantively progressive outcomes. In the case of the foreign investment regime, however, one can see evidence of this regime retarding global social justice rather than advancing it. This makes it all the more important that all judges and arbitrators in IEL adjudications consider carefully the interpretive, remedial, and progressive roles that principles of justice can play in adjudication, particularly in the face of any deficiencies in procedural or substantive justice in the law or forum within which they operate. The work of IEL adjudication offers a number of possible sites for interpretive practices according to principles of justice, such as the resolution of disputes involves difficult interpretive questions centered around fairness and unfairness; equality and inequality of treatment; the scope of exceptions; and the meaning of evolutionary terms. Capitalizing on these opportunities and moving IEL adjudication toward global social justice requires what effective judging always requires: a vision of the goals of the institutions and regimes in question; an understanding of the social issues the regime either was created to address or touches incidentally through its actions and externalities; careful attention to the relationships among the relevant actors and their expectations; and a sophisticated understanding of the legal context and legislative history of the law in question.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Navid Bavi ◽  
Michael D Clark ◽  
Gustavo F Contreras ◽  
Rong Shen ◽  
Bharat Reddy ◽  
...  

The voltage-dependent motor protein, Prestin (SLC26A5) is responsible for the electromotive behavior of outer hair cells (OHCs). Here, we determined the structure of dolphin Prestin in complex with Cl- and the inhibitor Salicylate using single particle cryo-electron microscopy. These structures establish the specific structural features of mammalian Prestin and reveal small but significant differences with the transporter members of the SLC26 family of membrane proteins. Comparison with SLC26A9 point to conformational differences in the special relationship between the core and gate domains. Importantly, we highlight substantial alterations to the hydrophobic footprint of Prestin as it relates to the membrane, which point to a potential influence of Prestin on its surrounding lipid. The structure of Prestin bound to the inhibitor Salicylate confirms the nature of the anion binding pocket, formed by TM3 and TM10 in the Core domain and a set of anion coordinating residues which include Q97, F101, F137, S398 and R399. The presence of a well-defined density for Salycilate points to an inhibition mechanism based on competition for the anion-binding pocket of Prestin. These observations illuminate the structural basis of Prestin electromotility, a key component in the mammalian cochlear amplifier.


2021 ◽  
pp. 52-73
Author(s):  
Benjamin Hoy

Chapter 3 focuses on the Great Lakes in the 1860s and 1870s to argue that the border’s importance shifted in response to Reconstruction and Confederation. National consolidation encouraged each nation to rethink how African Americans, Indigenous people, immigrants, and settlers fit into each country. By dividing those who constituted the nation from those who threatened it, battles over belonging helped to usher in new immigration laws and extradition provisions. Debates over suffrage required each country to outline the core tenants of the socieities they intended to create. This forced them to weigh the relative importance of cultural beliefs, gendered norms, contract freedom, racial background, and private property against one another. In this uncertain environment, sexual morality, suffrage rights, citizenship, and ideas about the family created the terrace that border control grew from.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (11) ◽  
pp. 6294-6309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaushik Saha ◽  
Whitney England ◽  
Mike Minh Fernandez ◽  
Tapan Biswas ◽  
Robert C Spitale ◽  
...  

Abstract Recognition of highly degenerate mammalian splice sites by the core spliceosomal machinery is regulated by several protein factors that predominantly bind exonic splicing motifs. These are postulated to be single-stranded in order to be functional, yet knowledge of secondary structural features that regulate the exposure of exonic splicing motifs across the transcriptome is not currently available. Using transcriptome-wide RNA structural information we show that retained introns in mouse are commonly flanked by a short (≲70 nucleotide), highly base-paired segment upstream and a predominantly single-stranded exonic segment downstream. Splicing assays with select pre-mRNA substrates demonstrate that loops immediately upstream of the introns contain pre-mRNA-specific splicing enhancers, the substitution or hybridization of which impedes splicing. Additionally, the exonic segments flanking the retained introns appeared to be more enriched in a previously identified set of hexameric exonic splicing enhancer (ESE) sequences compared to their spliced counterparts, suggesting that base-pairing in the exonic segments upstream of retained introns could be a means for occlusion of ESEs. The upstream exonic loops of the test substrate promoted recruitment of splicing factors and consequent pre-mRNA structural remodeling, leading up to assembly of the early spliceosome. These results suggest that disruption of exonic stem–loop structures immediately upstream (but not downstream) of the introns regulate alternative splicing events, likely through modulating accessibility of splicing factors.


Author(s):  
Glenn R. Lowry ◽  
Rodney L. Turner ◽  
Julie Fisher

This chapter presents a dynamic structural model of the relative contribution and importance of education and skills required of information systems (IS) professionals. Model development took into account the technical skills found in many tertiary IS programs, other business-oriented academic studies, and soft skills sought by employers in new graduates. The model also includes features of the working environment which influence the career progress of IS graduates. Acknowledging the importance of these four areas, the authors present a second-order structural model that links these areas and compares the application of this model to IS students and decision makers who employ graduates. The model fits the data for the two groups and exhibits some unexpected outcomes in the area of soft skills, with students attributing more importance to soft skills than IS managers. The model was employed to identify gender differences in perceptions of the relative contribution and importance of education and skills required of IS professionals. The model also includes features of the working environment which influence the career progress of IS graduates. The model was used to describe how attitudes and perceptions of IS professionals change across career stages as measured by age groupings. Changes in perceptions across four major age groupings show significant differences with respect to these factors according to age groups and by inference, career stage. The model allows, with some confidence, a quantitative interpretation of the relative importance of the respective variables from the perspectives of the student and employer stakeholder groups toward the education and professional development of IS professionals. The model also suggests the presence of contrasting, gender-based quantitative views of the relative importance of the respective variables to the education and professional development of IS professionals.


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 1291
Author(s):  
María Navarro-Cáceres ◽  
Marcelo Caetano ◽  
Gilberto Bernardes ◽  
Mercedes Sánchez-Barba ◽  
Javier Merchán Sánchez-Jara

In tonal music, musical tension is strongly associated with musical expression, particularly with expectations and emotions. Most listeners are able to perceive musical tension subjectively, yet musical tension is difficult to be measured objectively, as it is connected with musical parameters such as rhythm, dynamics, melody, harmony, and timbre. Musical tension specifically associated with melodic and harmonic motion is called tonal tension. In this article, we are interested in perceived changes of tonal tension over time for chord progressions, dubbed tonal tension profiles. We propose an objective measure capable of capturing tension profile according to different tonal music parameters, namely, tonal distance, dissonance, voice leading, and hierarchical tension. We performed two experiments to validate the proposed model of tonal tension profile and compared against Lerdahl’s model and MorpheuS across 12 chord progressions. Our results show that the considered four tonal parameters contribute differently to the perception of tonal tension. In our model, their relative importance adopts the following weights, summing to unity: dissonance (0.402), hierarchical tension (0.246), tonal distance (0.202), and voice leading (0.193). The assumption that listeners perceive global changes in tonal tension as prototypical profiles is strongly suggested in our results, which outperform the state-of-the-art models.


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-314
Author(s):  
SHIN FUKUDA

Japanese has two types of two-place motion verbs whose ‘objects’ can be marked as either accusative or oblique (accusative–oblique alternations). The accusative–goal verbs mark their objects with accusative case -o or the goal marker -ni, and the accusative–source verbs mark their objects with accusative -o or the source marker -kara. Previous studies describe systematic differences in the interpretation of the arguments of these verbs and the events they denote between the two structures. This study argues that these alternating verbs are variable behavior verbs that are linked to two distinct syntactic structures. The core evidence for this claim comes from the results of two acceptability judgment experiments with Japanese native speakers that examined: (i) selectional restrictions on the subjects of the alternating verbs and (ii) the ability of their subjects to license ‘floating’ numeral quantifiers. The results of the experiments demonstrate that the accusative–source verbs alternate between the transitive and unaccusative structures, whereas the accusative–goal verbs consistently behave like transitive verbs but assign two different structural cases to their objects. Thus, the study shows that there are multiple ways in which two-place motion verbs are mapped onto distinctive syntactic structures, whereby the core meaning of the verbs and their syntactic structures together determine their interpretation.


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