Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface

This volume originated in HASTAC’s first international conference, “Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface,” held at Duke University during April 19-21, 2007. “Electronic Techtonics” was the site of truly unforgettable conversations and encounters that traversed domains, disciplines, and media – conversations that explored the fluidity of technology both as interface as well as at the interface. This hardcopy version of the conference proceedings is published in conjunction with its electronic counterpart (found at www.hastac.org). Both versions exist as records of the range and depth of conversations that took place at the conference. Some of the papers in this volume are almost exact records of talks given at the conference, while others are versions that were revised and reworked some time after the conference. These papers are drawn from a variety of fields and we have not made an effort to homogenize them in any way, but have instead retained the individual format and style of each author.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLO TUBA REPERTOIRE

A very good case can be made that no other instrument has experienced as dramatic an increase in artistic solo repertoire as the tuba in the past sixty years. Prior to 1954, the mainstays of the tuba repertoire were trite caricature pieces such as Solo Pomposo, Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep, Beelzebub, and Bombastoso. A few tubists, seeing the tremendous repertoire by great composers written for their brass brethren, took it upon themselves to raise the standard of original compositions for tuba. These pioneers and champions of the tuba accomplished a great deal in the mid to late twentieth century. They structured a professional organization to solidify their ranks, planned and performed in the first tuba recitals at Carnegie Hall, organized the First International Tuba Symposium-Workshop, indirectly created more prestigious positions for tuba specialists at major universities, and improved the quantity and quality of the solo tuba repertoire. This dissertation focuses on the development of the solo repertoire for tuba that happened in the United States because of the tremendous efforts of William Bell, Harvey Phillips, Roger Bobo, and R. Winston Morris. Because of their tireless work, tuba instrumentalists today enjoy a multitude of great solo works including traditional sonatas, concertos, and chamber music as well as cutting edge repertoire written in many genres and accompanied by a variety of mediums. This dissertation attempts to trace the development of the repertoire presenting the works of American composers in varying genres and musical styles from 1962 to present through three performed recitals.

Dispersal and Integration in Female Chimpanzees

In chimpanzees, most females disperse from the community in which they were born to reproduce in a new community, thereby eliminating the risk of inbreeding with close kin. However, across sites, some females breed in their natal community, raising questions about the flexibility of dispersal, the costs and benefits of different strategies and the mitigation of costs associated with dispersal and integration. In this dissertation I address these questions by combining long-term behavioral data and recent field observations on maturing and young adult females in Gombe National Park with an experimental manipulation of relationship formation in captive apes in the Congo.

To assess the risk of inbreeding for females who do and do not disperse, 129 chimpanzees were genotyped and relatedness between each dyad was calculated. Natal females were more closely related to adult community males than were immigrant females. By examining the parentage of 58 surviving offspring, I found that natal females were not more related to the sires of their offspring than were immigrant females, despite three instances of close inbreeding. The sires of all offspring were less related to the mothers than non-sires regardless of the mother’s residence status. These results suggest that chimpanzees are capable of detecting relatedness and that, even when remaining natal, females can largely avoid, though not eliminate, inbreeding.

Next, I examined whether dispersal was associated with energetic, social, physiological and/or reproductive costs by comparing immigrant (n=10) and natal (n=9) females of similar age using 2358 hours of observational data. Natal and immigrant females did not differ in any energetic metric. Immigrant females received aggression from resident females more frequently than natal females. Immigrants spent less time in social grooming and more time self-grooming than natal females. Immigrant females primarily associated with resident males, had more social partners and lacked close social allies. There was no difference in levels of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites in immigrant and natal females. Immigrant females gave birth 2.5 years later than natal females, though the survival of their first offspring did not differ. These results indicate that immigrant females in Gombe National Park do not face energetic deficits upon transfer, but they do enter a hostile social environment and have a delayed first birth.

Next, I examined whether chimpanzees use condition- and phenotype-dependent cues in making dispersal decisions. I examined the effect of social and environmental conditions present at the time females of known age matured (n=25) on the females’ dispersal decisions. Females were more likely to disperse if they had more male maternal relatives and thus, a high risk of inbreeding. Females with a high ranking mother and multiple maternal female kin tended to disperse less frequently, suggesting that a strong female kin network provides benefits to the maturing daughter. Females were also somewhat less likely to disperse when fewer unrelated males were present in the group. Habitat quality and intrasexual competition did not affect dispersal decisions. Using a larger sample of 62 females observed as adults in Gombe, I also detected an effect of phenotypic differences in personality on the female’s dispersal decisions; extraverted, agreeable and open females were less likely to disperse.

Natural observations show that apes use grooming and play as social currency, but no experimental manipulations have been carried out to measure the effects of these behaviors on relationship formation, an essential component of integration. Thirty chimpanzees and 25 bonobos were given a choice between an unfamiliar human who had recently groomed or played with them over one who did not. Both species showed a preference for the human that had interacted with them, though the effect was driven by males. These results support the idea that grooming and play act as social currency in great apes that can rapidly shape social relationships between unfamiliar individuals. Further investigation is needed to elucidate the use of social currency in female apes.

I conclude that dispersal in female chimpanzees is flexible and the balance of costs and benefits varies for each individual. Females likely take into account social cues present at maturity and their own phenotype in choosing a settlement path and are especially sensitive to the presence of maternal male kin. The primary cost associated with philopatry is inbreeding risk and the primary cost associated with dispersal is delay in the age at first birth, presumably resulting from intense social competition. Finally, apes may strategically make use of affiliative behavior in pursuing particular relationships, something that should be useful in the integration process.

Regularization of an iterative algorithm for the extrapolation of bandlimited signals

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Ill-posed Inverse Problems and Logarithmic Continuity in Electromagnetics

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Superresolution and number of degrees of freedom in inverse diffraction with subwavelength sources

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The reporting behaviours of student nurses who have experienced verbal abuse

Background: There is evidence that student nurses are vulnerable to experiencing verbal abuse from a variety of sources and under-reporting of verbal abuse is prevalent throughout the nursing profession. The objective of the study is to explore the reporting behaviours of student nurses who have experienced verbal abuse. Method: For this study a definition of verbal abuse was adopted from current Department of Health (England) guidelines. Questionnaires were distributed in 2005 to a convenience sample of 156 third year nursing students from one pre-registration nursing programme in England. A total of 114 questionnaires were returned, giving an overall response rate of 73.0%. Results: Fifty one students (44.7% of responses) reported verbal abuse; all of these completed the section exploring reporting behaviours. The incidents involved patients in thirty three cases (64.7%); eight cases (15.7%) involved visitors or relatives and ten cases (19.6%) involved other healthcare workers. Thirty two students (62.7%) stated that they did report the incident of verbal abuse they experienced and nineteen (37.3%) of respondents reported that they did not. Only four incidents developed from an oral report to being formally documented. There was a statistically significant association (P = 0.003) between the focus of verbal abuse (patient/visitor or colleague) and the respondents reporting practices with respondents experiencing verbal abuse from colleagues less likely to report incidents. Most frequent feelings following experiences of verbal abuse from colleagues were feelings of embarrassment and hurt/shock. Most frequent consequences of experiencing verbal abuse from patients or relatives were feeling embarrassed and feeling sorry for the abuser. When comparing non reporters with reporters, the most frequent feelings of non reporters were embarrassment and hurt and reporters, embarrassment and feeling sorry for the abuser. When considering levels of support after the incident the mean rating score of respondents who reported the incident was 5.40 (standard deviation 2.89) and of those that did not, 4.36 (standard deviation 2.87) which was not statistically significant (p = 0.220). Conclusions: 1. Not documenting experiences of verbal abuse formally in writing is a prevalent phenomenon within the sample studied and reporting practices are inconsistent. 2. Both Higher Education Institutions and health care providers should consider emphasising formal reporting and documenting of incidents of verbal abuse during student nurse training and access to formal supportive services should be promoted. 3. Effective incident reporting processes and analysis of these reports can lead to an increased awareness of how to avoid negative interactions in the workplace and how to deal with incidents effectively.