Creating a Circus of Words, Music, and Sound: From Roaratorio to Owenvarragh

This article documents the creation of a work by the authors based on a score written by the composer John Cage entitled 'Owenvarragh: A Belfast Circus on The Star Factory.' The article is part of a documentary portfolio in the journal which also includes a volume of the poetry created by Dowling in accordance with the instructions of the Cage score, and a series of documentary videos on the creation of the work and its first performance. Cage's score is based on his work 'Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegan's Wake' (1979) and it provides a set of detailed instructions for the musical realisation of a literary work. The article documents this first fully realised version of the score since Cage first produced 'Roaratorio' in 1979. The work, which was motivated by the Cage centenary year in 2012, musically realises Carson's book 'The Star Factory' (1998), a novelestic autobiography of Carson's Belfast childhood. The score required the creation of a fixed media piece based on over 300 field recordings of the sounds and places mentioned in the book, a volume of poetry created from the book which is recited to form the rhythmic spine of the work, and the arrangement of a performance including these two components along with live musical performance by the authors in collaboration with three other musicians under their direction, and a video installation created for the work. The piece has been performed three times: in association with the Sonorities 2012 Festival at Queen's University of Belfast (March 2012), at The Belfast Festival at Queen's (October 2012), and in the Rymer Auditoium of the University of York (June 2013).

Additional information:

The work which the article documents was conceived by Monaghan and Dowling, and the project was initiated by Monaghan after a she received a student prize to support its development and first performance. Elements of the project will be included in her PhD dissertation for which Dowling is a supervisor. Monaghan created the fixed media piece based on over 300 field recordings, the largest single aspect of realising Cage's score. Dowling was responsible for initiating the collaboration with Ciaran Carson, and for two other components: the creation of a volume of poetry derived from the literary work which is recited in the performance, and the creation of and supervision of the technical work on a video which accompanies the piece. The co-authors consulted closely during the work on these large components from May 2011 until March 2012 when the first performance took place. The co-authors also shared in numerous other artistic and organisational aspects of the production, including the arrangement and performnance of the music, musical direction to other performers, and marketing.

Criminal Conversations: Rogues, Words and the World in the Work of Daniel Defoe

Even as Daniel Defoe's roguish protagonists notably Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack try to separate themselves from illicit itinerants, they are implicated further in deviance. Moll and Jack both embody and exploit ambiguous moral and spatial arrangements, and use hybrid linguistic formulations, all of which collocate the roguish and the reputable. By brilliantly realizing this interpenetration of words and worlds, Defoe problematises eighteenth-century efforts to demarcate the illicit and itinerant along the lines of space, rank, gender and language. Such efforts facilitated deviant mobility as much as they demonised it. Much scholarship has attended to Defoe's representations of criminality and poverty. This article develops such research to re-position him in a tradition of rogue-writing that stylishly problematises normative discriminatory practices.

Association analysis of apolipoprotein E genotype and risk of depressive symptoms in Alzheimer's disease

OBJECTIVES: Behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are potent predictors of carer distress and admission to institutional care. In Alzheimer's disease (AD), depressive symptoms are one of the most common complaints affecting around 50% of all patients. There is speculation these symptoms result from known genetic risk factors for AD, therefore we investigated the role of apolipoprotein E epsilon4 in the aetiology of depression in AD. METHODS: In this well-characterised cohort (n = 404) from the relatively genetically homogeneous Northern Ireland population, we tested the hypothesis that genetic variants of apolipoprotein E influence the risk for depressive symptoms in AD patients using the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI-D) to determine the presence of depressive symptoms during the dementing illness. RESULTS: A total of 55% of patients exhibited a history of depression/dysphoria during the course of the illness as gathered by the NPI-D questionnaire. Forty-six percent were suffering from depression/dysphoria when the analysis was restricted to the month prior to interview. No statistically significant association between genotypes or alleles of apolipoprotein E and depression/dysphoria in AD was observed, nor was any association noted between the presence of severe symptoms and genotypes/alleles of apolipoprotein E. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest apolipoprotein E genotype creates no additional risk for depressive symptoms in AD.

Sequence variation in the CHAT locus shows no association with late-onset Alzheimer's disease

There is substantial evidence for a susceptibility gene for late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) on chromosome 10. One of the characteristic features of AD is the degeneration and dysfunction of the cholinergic system. The genes encoding choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and its vesicular transporter (VAChT), CHAT and SLC18A3 respectively, map to the linked region of chromosome 10 and are therefore both positional and obvious functional candidate genes for late-onset AD. We have screened both genes for sequence variants and investigated each for association with late-onset AD in up to 500 late-onset AD cases and 500 control DNAs collected in the UK. We detected a total of 17 sequence variants. Of these, 14 were in CHAT, comprising three non-synonymous variants (D7N in the S exon, A120T in exon 5 and L243F in exon 8), one synonymous change (H547H), nine single-nucleotide polymorphisms in intronic, untranslated or promoter regions, and a variable number of tandem repeats in intron 7. Three non-coding SNPs were detected in SLC18A3. None demonstrated any reproducible association with late-onset AD in our samples. Levels of linkage disequilibrium were generally low across the CHAT locus but two of the coding variants, D7N and A120T, proved to be in complete linkage disequilibrium.

Is there an association between angiotensin-converting enzyme gene variants and chronic nonproductive cough?

Background: It is unclear why some patients develop a chronic nonproductive cough. Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inactivates tussive peptides in the airways such as bradykinin and tachykinins. An insertion/deletion polymorphism in the ACE gene accounts for variation in ACE levels, and patients with the II genotype have lowest serum ACE levels compared with ID and DD genotypes. We hypothesized that the II genotype would be associated with increased risk of developing a chronic cough.

Materials and methods: We recruited 47 patients (33 women), referred for evaluation of cough (median cough duration, 24 months; range, 2 to 240 months). Cough patients were evaluated using a comprehensive diagnostic protocol, and cough reflex sensitivity was measured using a capsaicin inhalation challenge. ACE genotyping was performed on DNA samples from patients using the polymerase chain reaction followed by agarose gel electrophoresis. ACE genotypes in patients with chronic cough were compared with those in 199 healthy control subjects. Serum ACE levels were determined using a colorimetric assay.

Results: Genotype frequencies for the ACE gene were similar between patients and control subjects. There was no correlation between capsaicin sensitivity and ACE genotypes or serum ACE levels.

Conclusion: Susceptibility to develop chronic cough is not associated with ACE genotype.

Lack of association between the-2518G/A polymorphism of the MCP-1 gene and ischaemic heart disease: a family-based investigation

Using two recently described family-based tests of association, the possible role of the functional -2518G/A polymorphism in the promoter region of the monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) gene in the susceptibility to ischaemic heart disease (IHD) was investigated in a well-defined Irish population. One thousand and twelve individuals from 386 families with at least one member prematurely affected with M were, genotyped for the MCP-1 -2518G/A polymorphism. Using the combined transmission disequilibriurn test and the pedigree disequilibriurn test, no association between the MCP-1 -2518G/A polymorphism and M was found. g Our data demonstrate that, in an Irish population, the MCP-1 -2518G/A polymorphism is not strongly associated with M.