OPERA IN AMERICA: MUSIC OF, BY, AND FOR THE PEOPLE­: A PERFORMANCE DISSERTATION

Opera in America: Music of, by, and for the people is a study of the relationship between American popular culture and opera in the United States. Four performance projects demonstrate the on-going exchange between the operatic community-including its composer, singers, and patrons-and the country's popular entertainment industry with its broad audience base. Numerous examples of artistic cross pollination between lowbrow and highbrow music will illustrate the artistic and social consequences created by this artistic amalgamation. Program #1, By George! By Ira! By Gershwin!, is a retrospective of Gershwin's vocal music representing a blending of popular and serious music in both style and form. The concert includes selections from Porgy and Bess, a work considered by many musicologists as the first American opera. Program #2, Shadowboxer, is a premiere performance of an opera by Frank Proto and John Chenault. For this newly commissioned work, I serve as Assistant Director to Leon Major. Shadowboxer provides a clear example of opera utilizing popular culture both musically and dramatically to tell the true story of American hero and legendary boxer, Joe Louis. Program #3, Just a Song at Twilight, is an original theatrical music piece featuring music, letters, diaries, and journals of the Gilded Age, an era when opera was synonymous with popular entertainment. Special attention is focused on tum-of­ the-century singers who performed in both opera and vaudeville. Program #4 is a presentation of Dominick Argento's Miss Manners on Music and illustrates the strong relationship that can exist between opera and American popular entertainment. Originally conceived as a song cycle, I have staged the work as a one-act opera sung and acted by soprano Carmen Balthrop. This piece is based on the writings of pop icon and newspaper columnist Judith Martin, otherwise known as Miss Manners. All four performances are recorded in audio and video formats.

Developing “middle leaders” in the public services? The realities of management and leadership development for public managers

Purpose – This paper aims to assess the actual contribution to organisational change of management and leadership development (MLD) activity for middle managers (MMs) in public service organisations (PSOs). Design/methodology/approach – Using the case study approach, the paper compares the content and outcomes of management and leadership training interventions for MMs in two large PSOs. The organisations, a fire brigade and a train operating company, are leaders in their sectors with respect to management development and “modernisation” of their services. Findings – The paper demonstrates how, in one case, MM development was largely an exercise in regulatory compliance, with little effect on individual MMs' performance or organisational outcomes. The second case demonstrates how MMs were effectively trained to enforce specific human resource policies which contributed to the successful implementation of top-down strategy yet paid little attention to the potential leadership role of MMs. Research limitations/implications – The paper highlights the need for further contextualised research at organisational level into the outcomes of MLD, especially in terms of different public service contexts. Practical implications – The paper demonstrates the dangers of designing and implementing development programmes without sufficient regard to professional practice and the realities of managerial discretion in PSOs. Originality/value – The paper provides an in-depth and contextualised insight into the conditions for success and failure in management development interventions in PSOs.

Analytical calculation of far infrared spectra of ice in terms of a molecular model

Wideband far infrared (FIR) spectra of complex permittivity e(p) of ice are calculated in terms of a simple analytical theory based on the method of dipolar autocorrelation functions. The molecular model represents a revision of the model recently presented for liquid water in Adv. Chem. Phys. 127 (2003) 65. A composite two-fractional model is proposed. The model is characterised by three phenomenological potential wells corresponding to the three FIR bands observed in ice. The first fraction comprises dipoles reorienting in a rather narrow and deep hat-like well; these dipoles generate the librational band centred at the frequency approximate to 880 cm(-1). The second fraction comprises elastically interacting particles; they generate two nearby bands placed around frequency 200 cm(-1). For description of one of these bands the harmonic oscillator (HO) model is used, in which translational oscillations of two charged molecules along the H-bond are considered. The other band is produced by the H-bond stretch, which governs hindered rotation of a rigid dipole. Such a motion and its dielectric response are described in terms of a new cut parabolic (CP) model applicable for any vibration amplitude. The composite hat-HO-CP model results in a smooth epsilon(nu) ice spectrum, which does not resemble the noise-like spectra of ice met in the known literature. The proposed theory satisfactorily agrees with the experimental ice spectrum measured at - 7 degrees C. The calculated longitudinal optic-transverse optic (LO-TO) splitting occurring at approximate to 250 cm(-1) qualitatively agrees with the measured data. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Constraining the age of Lateglacial and early Holocene pollen zones and tephra horizons in southern Sweden with Bayesian probability methods

The sediment sequence from Hasseldala port in southeastern Sweden provides a unique Lateglacial/early Holocene record that contains five different tephra layers. Three of these have been geochemically identified as the Borrobol Tephra, the Hasseldalen Tephra and the 10-ka Askja Tephra. Twenty-eight high-resolution C-14 measurements have been obtained and three different age models based on Bayesian statistics are employed to provide age estimates for the five different tephra layers. The chrono- and pollen stratigraphic framework supports the stratigraphic position of the Borrobol Tephra as found in Sweden at the very end of the Older Dryas pollen zone and provides the first age estimates for the Askja and Hasseldalen tephras. Our results, however, highlight the limitations that arise in attempting to establish a robust, chronologically independent lacustrine sequence that can be correlated in great detail to ice core or marine records. Radiocarbon samples are prone to error and sedimentation rates in lake basins may vary considerably due to a number of factors. Any type of valid and 'realistic' age model, therefore, has to take these limitations into account and needs to include this information in its prior assumptions. As a result, the age ranges for the specific horizons at Hasseldala port are large and calendar year estimates differ according to the assumptions of the age-model. Not only do these results provide a cautionary note for overdependence on one age-model for the derivation of age estimates for specific horizons, but they also demonstrate that precise correlations to other palaeoarchives to detect leads or lags is problematic. Given the uncertainties associated with establishing age-depth models for sedimentary sequences spanning the Lateglacial period, however, this exercise employing Bayesian probability methods represents the best possible approach and provides the most statistically significant age estimates for the pollen zone boundaries and tephra horizons. Copyright (C) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

THE IMPACT OF BURNING AND GRAZING OF HEATHLAND PLANTS AND INVERTEBRATES IN COUNTRY ANTRIM

The impact of burning and grazing on plant, ground beetle and spider species was investigated experimentally in stands of varying ages (burnt in 1982 and 1988 and unburnt plots) on an area of heather moorland in County Antrim, north-east Ireland. Burning initiated complex succession pathways which appear to have characteristic plant and invertebrate species associations. Removal of Calluna dominance initiated a period of high plant species diversity. Investigation of initial post-fire regeneration suggested that the frequency of occurrence of plant species changed over time and was affected by grazing. Grouping of species by the position of their renewal bud, i.e. their life-form, did not account for all observed interspecific variation. The dominant species after burning were Eriophorum vaginatum, E. angustifolium and Vaccinium myrtillus. Studies of vegetation canopy structure showed that, even with the exclusion of the main grazing herbivores, Calluna will not re-establish itself as the dominant species until several years after burning. The ground beetle Nebria salina was trapped more often on plots burnt in 1988 than on unburnt plots or those burnt in 1982. In comparison, Pterostichus niger and Carabus granulatus were trapped in greater numbers on plots burnt in 1982 than on unburnt plots and plots burnt in 1988. The large species Carabus problematicus and Carabus glabratus were trapped in greater numbers on unburnt plots. Similarly, more of the spiders Ceratinella brevipes and Centromerita concinna were trapped on the plots burnt in 1982. In comparison, Lepthyphantes zimmermanni and Robertus lividus were trapped more often on unburnt plots than on plots burnt in 1982 and 1988. Results are discussed with respect to the importance of the continuation of traditional heathland management practices.

AHRC-DFG Project "Songs of the Revolution of 1848 and their Reception History in Germany"

This on-line project consists of commentaries and critical editions of the songs of the 'Vormaerz' and the 1848 Revolution which have shaped the cultural memory of this period in Germany. Looking at both textual and musical developments the research deals with the history of reception of key 1848 songs by established as well as anonymous poets. These together have formed an enduring corpus in the repertoires of singers of German political song. One of the main findings is how songs are not static: they evolve musically and textually and can undergo changes of function during a process of historical reception which is often ideologically motivated.

Isomorphism between ice and silica

Both ice and silica crystallize into solid-state structures composed of tetrahedral building units that are joined together to form an infinite four-connected net. Mathematical considerations suggest that there is a vast number of such nets and thus potential crystal structures. It is therefore perhaps surprising to discover that, despite the differences in the nature of interatomic interactions in these materials, a fair number of commonly observed ice and silica phases are based on common nets. Here we use computer simulation to investigate the origin of this symmetry between the structures formed for ice and silica and to attempt to understand why it is not complete. We start from a comparison of the dense phases and then move to the relationship between the different open (zeolitic and clathratic) structures formed for both materials. We show that there is a remarkably strong correlation between the energetics of isomorphic silica and water ice structures and that this correlation arises because of the strong link between the total energy of a material and its local geometric features. Finally, we discuss a number of as yet unsynthesized low-energy structures which include a phase of ice based on quartz, a silica based on the structure of ice VI, and an ice clathrate that is isomorphic to the silicate structure nonasil.

Primary assembly of soil communities: disentangling the effect of dispersal and local environment

It has long been recognised that dispersal abilities and environmental factors are important in shaping invertebrate communities, but their relative importance for primary soil community assembly has not yet been disentangled. By studying soil communities along chronosequences on four recently emerged nunataks (ice-free land in glacial areas) in Iceland, we replicated environmental conditions spatially at various geographical distances. This allowed us to determine the underlying factors of primary community assembly with the help of metacommunity theories that predict different levels of dispersal constraints and effects of the local environment. Comparing community assembly of the nunataks with that of non-isolated deglaciated areas indicated that isolation of a few kilometres did not affect the colonisation of the soil invertebrates. When accounting for effects of geographical distances, soil age and plant richness explained a significant part of the variance observed in the distribution of the oribatid mites and collembola communities, respectively. Furthermore, null model analyses revealed less co-occurrence than expected by chance and also convergence in the body size ratio of co-occurring oribatids, which is consistent with species sorting. Geographical distances influenced species composition, indicating that the community is also assembled by dispersal, e.g. mass effect. When all the results are linked together, they demonstrate that local environmental factors are important in structuring the soil community assembly, but are accompanied with effects of dispersal that may "override" the visible effect of the local environment.

Effects of oxidized and glycated LDL on gene expression in human retinal capillary pericytes

Modified (oxidized and/or glycated) low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) have been implicated in retinal pericyte loss, one of the major pathologic features of early-stage diabetic retinopathy. To delineate underlying molecular mechanisms, the present study was designed to explore the global effects of modified LDL on pericyte gene expression.