Interval patterns are dependent on metrical position in jazz solos

2021 ◽  
pp. 102986492110339
Author(s):  
Peter Cross ◽  
Andrew Goldman

During jazz improvisation, performers employ short recurrent musical motifs called licks. Past research has focused on the pitch, intervallic, and rhythmic characteristics of licks, but less attention has been paid to whether they tend to start in the same place within the measure ( metrical dependence). Licks might be metrically dependent, and where a given lick starts in a measure ( metrical position) may thus be part of the performer’s mental representation of that lick. Here we report the use of a corpus study to investigate whether licks are metrically dependent. We analyzed a subset of solos, all those in 4/4 time ( n = 435), from the Weimar Jazz Database (WJD; Pfleiderer et al., 2017). Using a sliding window technique, we identified melodic sequences ( interval n-grams) between 3 and 10 intervals in length. We counted the number of times each interval n-gram occurred, and noted the metrical position of the initial note of each occurrence, using different levels of quantization (8th and 16th note). We compared the entropy of the distribution of metrical positions for each n-gram—with lower values indicating a stronger metrical dependence—against simulated counterparts that assumed no relationship between an n-gram and its metrical position (no metrical dependence). Overall, we found that shorter n-grams were metrically dependent, with varying results for longer n-grams. We suggest two possible explanations: either mental representations of licks may encode their metrical features or the metrical position may make certain licks more accessible to the performer. On the basis of our findings we discuss future studies that could employ our methods.

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Savadori ◽  
Eraldo Nicotra ◽  
Rino Rumiati ◽  
Roberto Tamborini

The content and structure of mental representation of economic crises were studied and the flexibility of the structure in different social contexts was tested. Italian and Swiss samples (Total N = 98) were compared with respect to their judgments as to how a series of concrete examples of events representing abstract indicators were relevant symptoms of economic crisis. Mental representations were derived using a cluster procedure. Results showed that the relevance of the indicators varied as a function of national context. The growth of unemployment was judged to be by far the most important symptom of an economic crisis but the Swiss sample judged bankruptcies as more symptomatic than Italians who considered inflation, raw material prices and external accounts to be more relevant. A different clustering structure was found for the two samples: the locations of unemployment and gross domestic production indicators were the main differences in representations.


Author(s):  
Dana Ganor-Stern

Past research has shown that numbers are associated with order in time such that performance in a numerical comparison task is enhanced when number pairs appear in ascending order, when the larger number follows the smaller one. This was found in the past for the integers 1–9 ( Ben-Meir, Ganor-Stern, & Tzelgov, 2013 ; Müller & Schwarz, 2008 ). In the present study we explored whether the advantage for processing numbers in ascending order exists also for fractions and negative numbers. The results demonstrate this advantage for fraction pairs and for integer-fraction pairs. However, the opposite advantage for descending order was found for negative numbers and for positive-negative number pairs. These findings are interpreted in the context of embodied cognition approaches and current theories on the mental representation of fractions and negative numbers.


2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helga Noice ◽  
Roger Chaffin ◽  
Tony Noice ◽  
John M. Jeffrey ◽  
James Pelletier

Author(s):  
Hamish Farquhar ◽  
Ana B Vargas-Santos ◽  
Huai Leng Pisaniello ◽  
Mark Fisher ◽  
Catherine Hill ◽  
...  

Abstract Objectives To evaluate the efficacy, defined as achieving target serum urate <6.0 mg/dl, and safety of urate-lowering therapies (ULT) for people with gout and CKD stages 3–5. Methods PubMed, The Cochrane Library, and EMBASE, were searched from 1 January 1959 to 31 January 2018 for studies that enrolled people with gout, who had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) or creatinine clearance (CrCl) of < 60 mL/min, and exposure to allopurinol, febuxostat, probenecid, benzbromarone, lesinurad or pegloticase. All study designs other than case reports were included, except for people on dialysis, for which we did include case reports. Results There were 36 reports with an analysis of efficacy and/or safety based upon renal function – allopurinol (n = 12), febuxostat (n = 10), probenecid (n = 3), benzbromarone (n = 5), lesinurad (n = 5), and pegloticase (n = 1). There were 108 reports that involved people with gout and renal impairment but did not contain any analysis on efficacy and/or safety based upon renal function – allopurinol (n = 84), febuxostat (n = 14), benzbromarone (n = 1), lesinurad (n = 3), and pegloticase (n = 6). Most studies excluded people with more severe degrees of renal impairment (eGFR or CrCl of < 30mL/min). For allopurinol in particular, there was significant variability in the dose of drug used, and efficacy in terms of urate lowering, across all levels of renal impairment. Conclusion There is a lack of evidence regarding efficacy and/or safety of currently used ULT according to different levels of renal function. Future studies should include patients with CKD and should report study outcomes stratified by renal function.


2021 ◽  
pp. 263208432110100
Author(s):  
Satyendra Nath Chakrabartty

Background Scales for evaluating insomnia differ in number of items, response format, and result in different scores distributions and score ranges and may not facilitate meaningful comparisons. Objectives Transform ordinal item-scores of three scales of insomnia to continuous, equidistant, monotonic, normally distributed scores, avoiding limitations of summative scoring of Likert scales. Methods Equidistant item-scores by weighted sum using data-driven weights to different levels of different items, considering cell frequencies of Item-Levels matrix, followed by normalization and conversion to [1, 10]. Equivalent test-scores (as sum of transformed item- scores) for a pair of scales were found by Normal Probability curves. Empirical illustration given. Results Transformed test-scores are continuous, monotonic and followed Normal distribution with no outliers and tied scores. Such test-scores facilitate ranking, better classification and meaningful comparison of scales of different lengths and formats and finding equivalent score combinations of two scales. For a given value of transformed test-score of a scale, easy alternate method avoiding integration proposed to find equivalent scores of another scales. Equivalent scores of scales help to relate various cut-off scores of different scales and uniformity in interpretations. Integration of various scales of insomnia is achieved by finding one-to-one correspondence among the equivalent score of various scales with correlation over 0.99 Conclusion Resultant test-scores facilitated undertaking analysis in parametric set up. Considering the theoretical advantages including meaningfulness of operations, better comparison, use of such method of transforming scores of Likert items/test is recommended test and items, Future studies were suggested.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Gina M. Buckley ◽  
Rebecca Storey ◽  
Fred J. Longstaffe ◽  
David M. Carballo ◽  
Kenneth G. Hirth ◽  
...  

The city of Teotihuacan (AD 1–550) was a major multiethnic urban center that attracted migrants from as far away as west Mexico and the Maya region. Past research in the Tlajinga district at Teotihuacan using oxygen isotopes from human remains estimated that nearly 30% of the population of Tlajinga 33, a single apartment compound, were migrants. This study takes a dual-isotope approach (87Sr/86Sr and δ18O p ) to reevaluate the proportion of in-migration at Tlajinga and includes data from two additional apartment compounds, Tlajinga 17 and 18 (n = 23). New results indicate that migrants comprised ~45% of the Tlajinga population. Previously acquired radiocarbon dates combined with mortuary and isotope data suggest that immigration to Tlajinga was highest during the first centuries of compound occupation. Nevertheless, migration was a continual process throughout its history. Additionally, a new finding suggests that residents of Tlajinga 33 ingested foods with higher 87Sr/86Sr ratios than did those of Tlajinga 17 and 18. We hypothesize that the incorporation of imported lime for the nixtamalization process skewed the 87Sr/86Sr ratios of human remains, a potentially important finding for future studies at Teotihuacan.


2009 ◽  
Vol 185 (12) ◽  
pp. 821-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilke Vorwerk ◽  
Daniela Wagner ◽  
Björn Seitz ◽  
Hans Christiansen ◽  
Hendrik A. Wolff ◽  
...  

1997 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 2219-2222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y-L. Shen

Numerical results on the evolution of thermal stresses in multilevel interconnects are presented. Two levels of aluminum lines with an aspect ratio of unity, aligned vertically or arranged in a staggered manner, are considered by recourse to the finite element analysis. The stresses are found to be significantly higher in the lower-level lines than in the upper-level lines, for both the aligned and staggered arrangements. The stress magnitudes are generally smaller in lines of staggered arrangement, compared to the case of aligned lines. Implications of the present findings are discussed, with directions of future studies highlighted.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document