Against the tyranny of musical form: glitch music,affect, and the sound of digital malfunction

This essay provides a model of how to critically read non-representational sound by attending carefully to its material elements. It presents a novel conceptualization of glitch music, an experimental medium of digital art comprised of the unpleasant sounds of technology malfunctioning. The analysis examines the representative songs of glitch artists Oval and their sonic articulation of the regenerative possibilities of failure. Although Oval largely considers conventional musical form to be tyrannical, its sound art simulates traditional musical elements such as rhythm, phrasing, and instrumentation, and transforms them into their respective glitch equivalents of metrical dissonance, repeated sound textures, and timbral experimentation, thereby altering digital malfunctions of sound into a sensual affective experience. Although music is theorized elsewhere to be persuasive because of its mobilization of emotions within the listener, the glitch art of Oval is suasory because it generates affective intensities that operate at an intercorporeal level of matter-energy. The songs of Oval update the modern directive of the Futurist sound movement to train the listener to accept a life surrounded by the sound of digital technology.     

Magnitude of fear as a function of expected time to all aversive event

Three rats were trained to press a lever on a random-interval 1min schedule of food reinforcement. In successive phases of the experiment, electric shocks were superimposed at 1-min fixed intervals, 2-min fixed intervals, or at 1-min random intervals. In the fixed-interval conditions, there was a steep gradient of reduction in response rate as the time for the next shock approached; in the random-interval condition, the response rate following a shock was relatively constant. The present method appears to be adequate to monitor the instantaneous level of fear. The results suggest that animals were timing in units proportional to the fixed interval and that aversive events which occur randomly in time are perceived as phenomenologically random by the rat.     

Movement Characteristics of Preschool Children

Abstract

School districts are required under Public Law 94–142 to find and serve handicapped children from age three. In part this is accomplished through screening programs in which parents are encouraged to have children evaluated. This study reports partial results of one such screening program which used the DIAL test, Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning (Mardell & Goldenberg, 1975a), which provided information on movement components and adds to the literature on the performance of preschoolers. The subjects, 610 boys and girls ages 2 years, 6 months to 5 years, 6 months, individually completed the seven tasks comprising each of the gross movement and fine movement components of DIAL. The sample is considered nonhandicapped because special education was later provided for less than 3% of the children screened. Data were divided by age, sex, and race (white, black). Separate MANOVAs and ANOVAs indicated female superiority in performance for fine movement, but a less clear picture for gross movement. Fine movement performance differences favored white subjects but results were also less clear for gross movement. Performance differences across age were primarily linear but with two or more higher order trends being significant for 13 of 14 fine and gross items.     

Field testing of physiological responses associated with Nordic Walking

This study compared the physiological responses (oxygen consumption and energy expenditure) of Nordic Walking to regular walking under field-testing conditions. Eleven women (M age = 27.1 years, SD = 6.4) and 11 men (M age = 33.8 years, SD = 9.0) walked 1,600 m with and without walking poles on a level, 200-m track. For women, Nordic Walking resulted in increased oxygen consumption (M = 14.9 ml x kg(-1) x min(-1), SD = 3.2 vs. M = 1 7.9 ml x kg(-1) min(-1), SD = 3.5; p < .001), caloric expenditure (M = 4.6 kcal x min(-1), SD = 1.2 vs. M = 5.4 kcal x min(-1), SD = 1.2; p < .001), and heart rate (M = 113.7 bpm, SD = 12.0 vs. M = 118.7 bpm, SD = 14.8; p < .05) compared to regular walking. For men, Nordic Walking resulted in increased oxygen consumption (M = 12.8 ml x kg(-1) min(-1), SD = 1.8 vs. M = 15.5, SD =3.4 ml x kg(-1) min(-1); p < .01), caloric expenditure (M = 5.7 kcal x min(-1), SD = 1.3 vs. M = 6.9 kcal x min(-1), SD = 1.8; p < .001), and heart rate (M = 101.6 bpm, SD = 12.0 bpm vs. M = 109.8 bpm, SD = 14.7; p < .01) compared to regular walking. Nordic Walking, examined in the field, results in a significant increase in oxygen use and caloric expenditure compared to regular walking, without significantly increasing perceived exertion.     

Electrokinetic focusing and filtration of cells in a serpentine microchannel

Focusing cells into a single stream is usually a necessary step prior to counting and separating them in microfluidic devices such as flow cytometers and cell sorters. This work presents a sheathless electrokinetic focusing of yeast cells in a planar serpentine microchannel using dc-biased ac electric fields. The concurrent pumping and focusing of yeast cells arise from the dc electrokinetic transport and the turn-induced ac∕dc dielectrophoretic motion, respectively. The effects of electric field (including ac to dc field ratio and ac field frequency) and concentration (including buffer concentration and cell concentration) on the cell focusing performance were studied experimentally and numerically. A continuous electrokinetic filtration of E. coli cells from yeast cells was also demonstrated via their differential electrokinetic focusing in a serpentine microchannel.     

Independent effects of stimulus and cycle duration in conditioning: The role of timing processes

Rats received delay conditioning procedures with a white-noise conditioned stimulus (CS), a food unconditioned stimulus (US), and head entries into the food cup as the conditioned response. The stimulus duration (S) and the interval between food deliveries (C) were varied between groups:S=15, 30, 60, and 120 sec;C=90, 180, and 360 sec. The stimulus/cycle duration ratio was negatively related to the asymptotic level of conditioning but had no effect on the rate of acquisition. Conditioning and timing of responses emerged together in training. Timing occurred during the CS-US interval (ISI) and the US-US interval (ITI), as evidenced by increasing response rate gradients that were steeper for shorter intervals. The effects of the stimulus/cycle ratio on conditioning were attributed to independent timing of theS andC durations. Serial-, parallel-, and single-process accounts of conditioning and timing are compared.