Mediamusic (E-Journal)
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Psalm
No full textA short ancient Near Eastern sacred poem, characterised by speech acts addressed to God, and structural and semantic parallelism. The most important collection is the Sefer tehillim (‘Book of Praises’) containing 150 psalms, in the Tanakh, the canonical Hebrew Scriptures. This collection was translated in the Greek Septuagint, as Psalmoi, literally, ‘songs to be accompanied by a plucked instrument (psalterion).’ The Latin term, psalmus, derived from the Greek, appears in writings by Christian authors as early as the late 2nd century CE. The psalms constitute fundamental elements of Jewish and Christian liturgical practice, education, and theological reflection throughout the Middle Ages
Tailoring the Engineering Design Process Through Data and Process Mining
No full textEngineering changes (ECs) are new product development activities addressing external or internal challenges, such as market demand, governmental regulations, and competitive reasons. The corresponding EC processes, although perceived as standard, can be very complex and inefficient. There seem to be significant differences between what is the “officially” documented and the executed process. To better understand this complexity, we propose a data-driven approach, based on advanced text analytics and process and data mining techniques. Our approach sets the first steps toward an automatic analysis, extracting detailed events from an unstructured event log, which is necessary for an in-depth understanding of the EC process. The results show that the predictive accuracy associated with certain EC types is high, which assures the method applicability. The contribution of this article is threefold: 1) a detailed model representation of the actual EC process is developed, revealing problematic process steps (such as bottleneck departments); 2) homogeneous, complexity-based EC types are determined (ranging from “standard” to “complex” processes); and 3) process characteristics serving as predictors for EC types are identified (e.g., the sequence of initial process steps determines a “complex” process). The proposed approach facilitates process and product innovation, and efficient design process management in future projects
Quality of network support for the deliberate practice of popular musicians
No full textTo become an expert in music, an individual goes through different phases of deliberately practising domain-specific activities with the support of actors within his or her network. These network actors are often referred to in the research literature as "persons in the shadow," because they are for the most part unnoticeable to an audience. Systematic research on popular music does not touch upon who these persons in the shadow are and how they support deliberate practice. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine which network actors have supported popular musicians to deliberately practice their craft during childhood, the period of apprenticeship, and throughout their careers, along with the type of support that was provided. A mixed-method egocentric network analysis, combined with quantitative and qualitative analyses of data from interviews with five experts and five intermediate-level popular musicians, has shown that band members and instrumental teachers were perceived as being most supportive of musicians' deliberate practice during childhood and period of apprenticeship. However, during the musicians' careers, band members were perceived as being most supportive. Experts differed from intermediate-level musicians as follows: (a) experts had contact with a larger pool of band members and instrumental teachers during their careers; (b) their networks, especially of band members in different formations and instrumental teachers, changed constantly and frequently throughout their careers; (c) they were regularly confronted with unfamiliar musical content, which expanded their musical knowledge. In this article we suggest that future research should investigate how change in networks influences deliberate practice and the acquisition of expertise.</p
What we learn about bipolar disorder from large-scale neuroimaging:Findings and future directions from the ENIGMA Bipolar Disorder Working Group
No full textMRI-derived brain measures offer a link between genes, the environment and behavior and have been widely studied in bipolar disorder (BD). However, many neuroimaging studies of BD have been underpowered, leading to varied results and uncertainty regarding effects. The Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Bipolar Disorder Working Group was formed in 2012 to empower discoveries, generate consensus findings and inform future hypothesis-driven studies of BD. Through this effort, over 150 researchers from 20 countries and 55 institutions pool data and resources to produce the largest neuroimaging studies of BD ever conducted. The ENIGMA Bipolar Disorder Working Group applies standardized processing and analysis techniques to empower large-scale meta- and mega-analyses of multimodal brain MRI and improve the replicability of studies relating brain variation to clinical and genetic data. Initial BD Working Group studies reveal widespread patterns of lower cortical thickness, subcortical volume and disrupted white matter integrity associated with BD. Findings also include mapping brain alterations of common medications like lithium, symptom patterns and clinical risk profiles and have provided further insights into the pathophysiological mechanisms of BD. Here we discuss key findings from the BD working group, its ongoing projects and future directions for large-scale, collaborative studies of mental illness.</p
Everyday Nationalism in Unsettled Times:In Search of Normality during Pandemic
No full textPandemics and other crisis situations create 'unsettled times', or ontologically insecure moments when social and political institutions are in flux. During such crises, the ordinary and unnoticed routines that structure everyday life are thrust into the spotlight as people struggle to maintain or recreate a sense of normalcy. Drawing on a range of cases including China, Russia, the UK, and US, we examine three categories of everyday practice during the COVID-19 pandemic that respond to disruptions in daily routines and seek a return to national normality: performing national solidarities and exclusions by the wearing of facemasks; consuming the nation in the form of panic buying and conspiracy theories; and the enforcing of foreign policies through social media and embodiment. This analysis thus breaks with existing works on everyday nationalism and banal nationalism that typically focus on pervasively unnoticed forms of nationalism during settled times, and challenges approaches to contentious politics that predict protest mobilization for change rather than restoration of the status quo ante. In highlighting the ways that unsettled times disrupt domestic and international structures, this work also presents a first attempt to link everyday nationalism with growing work on international practices
Predictors of new onsets of irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia:the lifelines study
No full textBACKGROUND: It has been claimed that functional somatic syndromes share a common etiology. This prospective population-based study assessed whether the same variables predict new onsets of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM).METHODS: The study included 152 180 adults in the Dutch Lifelines study who reported the presence/absence of relevant syndromes at baseline and follow-up. They were screened at baseline for physical and psychological disorders, socio-demographic, psycho-social and behavioral variables. At follow-up (mean 2.4 years) new onsets of each syndrome were identified by self-report. We performed separate analyses for the three syndromes including participants free of the relevant syndrome or its key symptom at baseline. LASSO logistic regressions were applied to identify which of the 102 baseline variables predicted new onsets of each syndrome.RESULTS: There were 1595 (1.2%), 296 (0.2%) and 692 (0.5%) new onsets of IBS, CFS, and FM, respectively. LASSO logistic regression selected 26, 7 and 19 predictors for IBS, CFS and FM, respectively. Four predictors were shared by all three syndromes, four predicted IBS and FM and two predicted IBS and CFS but 28 predictors were specific to a single syndrome. CFS was more distinct from IBS and FM, which predicted each other.CONCLUSIONS: Syndrome-specific predictors were more common than shared ones and these predictors might form a better starting point to unravel the heterogeneous etiologies of these syndromes than the current approach based on symptom patterns. The close relationship between IBS and FM is striking and requires further research.</p
Winning the war by losing the battle? The marketization of the expanding preschool sector in Sweden
No full textThis article analyzes how childcare vouchers were introduced in the context of the Swedish welfare state by examining vital political decisions from the prohibition of publicly funded private preschools in 1984 and onwards. Basing our argument on theories of political institutions and historical institutionalism, we argue that this remarkable shift in preschool policy was due to a set of specific historical premises that included an expanding preschool sector and incremental reforms that did not abolish public preschools, but merely complemented them with private preschools. Instead of perceiving childcare vouchers as the mere results of marketization ideology, we interpret this reform as the result of a sequence of decisions, institutional layering, vested interests, and positive feedback mechanisms, where the expansion of the early care and education sector played a significant role. In this context, we argue that the marketization may be seen as a successful support of the rapidly growing sector of publicly funded preschools in Sweden. Although the Social Democrats lost the battle of marketization, they certainly won the war on publicly funded preschools for all
The effects of fiscal policy at the effective lower bound
No full textWe estimate the effects of government spending shocks during prolonged episodes of low interest rates, which we consider as proxy for the effective lower bound (ELB). Using a panel VAR model for 17 advanced countries, we find that both the government consumption and investment multipliers are significantly higher, and exceed unity, when interest rates are persistently low. Distinguishing between construction- and equipment-related government investments, we find that only the former raises output by significantly more when the ELB binds. This result can be explained by existing New Keynesian models featuring time-to-build constraints on government investment