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In the 19th century, leading piano pedagogues stressed the importance of accuracy and speed in piano playing. "Nothing is worse than wrong notes," wrote Czerny, only to be chastised by Beethoven asking for more musical teaching. 20th and 21st-century research has shown that this technic-interpretation divide is a false dichotomy: even early-level students are able to discern emotional expression and musical form while simultaneously building their piano technic. It is time to fully integrate technic and interpretation into one holistic teaching approach. A knowledge-based approach to piano teaching will incorporate insights derived from current research into aural perception and motor learning. These include audiation: the ability to sing inwardly, think in sound and understand every detail of music making without the physical presence of sound. Building a student’s sense of interoception, the awareness of sensations inside the body; and proprioception, the consciousness of limb position and movement outside the body, will facilitate technical development. Helping a student integrate all of this into their executive control, the ability to switch rapidly from task to task and quickly focus attention in different parameters, has been proven to improve brain function. “Technic comes from the mind (Geist), not the fingers,” said Liszt. In light of the growing interest in neurologically informed teaching, current research is summarized and cited, and practical, step-by-step applications are provided for immediate use in the teaching studio, demonstrating a new integrated schema for building a strong technical foundation in all piano students.

The 1870s were generally happy and successful ones for Twain and his family as they became part of a congenial community in Hartford, Connecticut, and writings flowed from his pen. During this decade, Twain wrote Roughing It (1872), The Gilded Age (1873), and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He lampooned greed and corruption in The Gilded Age and numerous essays. Tom Sawyer contains several stories about Sunday school escapades and revival meetings based on Twain’s childhood. Twain’s friendship with Joseph Twichell, the pastor of the Asylum Hill (Congregational) Church in Hartford, was deep, meaningful, and long-lasting. Their relationship as well as an examination of Twain’s view of Christ, human nature, sin, salvation, Christianity, and the church helps illuminate Twain’s religious convictions during the 1870s.

The United Nations Information Office (UNIO), dating from 1942, holds the distinction of being both the first international agency of the embryonic UN network and the first to hold the United Nations label. Run from 1942 to 1945 from two offices in New York and London, these two were merged at the end of World War II to form the UN Information Organisation, and subsequently transformed into the Department of Public Information run from UN headquarters in New York. This article adds to the history of the UN by exploring the origins and development of the UNIO during 1940–41, when it was a British-led propaganda operation to gather US support for the allied war effort. It also examines the UNIO from the viewpoint of the power transition from Britain to the United States that took place during the war, and how this reflected a transition of internationalisms: from the British view of world order through benevolent imperialism to the American view of a progressive campaign for global development and human rights.

Planet Happiness is pioneering a new approach to inclusive tourism planning, putting host communities at the heart of destination planning processes. Tourism is one of the world’s largest and fastest growing industries. With 1.403 billion visitor movements across international borders in 2018 and employing more than one in ten people worldwide, tourism has a major impact on the well-being of destination communities. While tourism can be viewed as a vehicle for development, the term “overtourism” is increasingly applied to disaffected destinations around the world. Using concepts from community and social well-being, Planet Happiness proposes tourism should be planned and managed to strengthen the collective well-being of destination communities. Building on well-being knowledge accumulated with communities and governments since 2010, Planet Happiness provides a methodology and resources to enable host communities and wider stakeholders to guide tourism development away from overtourism and towards destination happiness, well-being and sustainability.

Objectives: The aim was to explore the experiences of fourth-year medical students of diagnostic consultations in a simulated primary care setting, in order to gain an insight into the suitability of such simulated consultations for assessing the diagnostic reasoning skills of medical students.\ud \ud Methods: This single-centre study employed a qualitative, cross-sectional design. Twelve fourth-year medical students volunteered to be filmed across 21 simulated, primary care consultations. The setting closely resembled OSCE stations, with a clinician present at each station monitoring the students’ performance using a station-checklist. Upon completion of each station, participants reflected on their experiences using video-stimulated recall. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.\ud \ud Results: The simulated scenarios were often perceived to have limited fidelity with predictable outcomes. At times, preoccupation with the assessment checklist meant that students were more likely to focus on asking questions than interpreting the information they were gaining. Some students felt scrutinized during the consultations, while others struggled to adapt to the time pressure. Overall, the artificial setting seemed to promote a reductionist diagnostic approach and an attitude of ‘ticking boxes’ rather than engaging in active diagnostic reasoning.\ud \ud Conclusions: The present findings call into question the assumption that observation-based assessment of the performance of medical students during simulated consultations can be reliably used to assess their diagnostic skills. Future studies need to explore how current assessment modalities could be better adapted to facilitate active engagement in diagnostic reasoning.

To assist medical and hearing-science professionals in supporting parents of deaf children, we have identified common questions that parents may have and provide evidence-based answers. In doing so, a compassionate and positive narrative about deafness and deaf children is offered, one that relies on recent research evidence regarding the critical nature of early exposure to a fully accessible visual language, which in the United States is American Sign Language (ASL). This evidence includes the role of sign language in language acquisition, cognitive development, and literacy. In order for parents to provide a nurturing and anxiety-free environment for early childhood development, signing at home is important even if their child also has the additional nurturing and care of a signing community. It is not just the early years of a child's life that matter for language acquisition; it's the early months, the early weeks, even the early days. Deaf children cannot wait for accessible language input. The whole family must learn simultaneously as the deaf child learns. Even moderate fluency on the part of the family benefits the child enormously. And learning the sign language together can be one of the strongest bonding experiences that the family and deaf child have.

While central to the Christian religion, the act of faith has been notoriously difficult to define. This essay is an attempt to illuminate, with the aid of insights from cognitive science and process philosophy, what it means for a Christian to have faith, specifically in God. In doing so, the apriori and aposteriori aspects of faith are explored, along with its connections to science and empirical evidence, revelation, knowledge, doubt, morality, and additional Christian beliefs.

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is known to ameliorate the toxicity of the trace metal nickel (Ni) to aquatic animals. In theory, this effect is mediated by the capacity of DOC to bind Ni, rendering it less bioavailable, with the resulting reduction in accumulation limiting toxicological effects. However, there is a lack of experimental data examining Ni accumulation in marine settings with natural sources of DOC. In the current study, radiolabelled Ni was used to examine the time- and concentration-dependence of Ni accumulation, using naturally sourced DOC, on developing larvae of the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Contrary to prediction, the two tested natural DOC samples (collected from the eastern United States, DOC 2 (Seaview park, Rhode Island (SVP)) and DOC 7 (Aubudon Coastal Center, Connecticut)) which had previously been shown to protect against Ni toxicity, did not limit accumulation. The control (artificial seawater with no added DOC), and the DOC 2 sample could mostly be described as having saturable Ni uptake, whereas Ni uptake in the presence of DOC 7 was mostly linear. These data provide evidence that DOC modifies the bioavailability of Ni, through either indirect effects (e.g. membrane permeability) or by the absorption of DOC-Ni complexes. There was some evidence for regulation of Ni accumulation in later-stage embryos (96-h) where the bioconcentration factor for Ni declined with increasing Ni exposure concentration. These data have implications for predictive modelling approaches that rely on known relationships between Ni speciation, bioavailability and bioreactivity, by suggesting that these relationships may not hold for natural marine DOC samples in the developing sea urchin model system.

This is a polemical essay concerning the "wall of separation" between church and state in the United States of America. The author observes that there is a political struggle between defenders of religion, primarily Christians, on the one hand, and secularists on the other. Typical reasons given by secularists for a hard and fast division between church and state, and/or religion and politics, are historical, constitutional, and cultural. Underlying all of these reasons perhaps is the idea that faith is cognitively inferior to knowledge and therefore has no place in the public square. The author vigorously contests each aspect of the secularists' position and explores in further detail the epistemological distinctions between faith and knowledge.

This paper describes the Centers of Excellence in Primary Care Education (CoEPCE), a seven-site collaborative project funded by the Office of Academic Affiliations (OAA) within the Veterans Health Administration of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The CoEPCE was established to fulfill OAA's vision of large-scale transformation of the clinical learning environment within VA primary care settings. This was accomplished by funding new Centers within VA facilities to develop models of interprofessional education (IPE) to teach health professions trainees to deliver high quality interprofessional team-based primary care to Veterans. Using reports and data collected and maintained by the National Coordinating Center over the first six years of the project, we describe program inputs, the multicomponent intervention, activities undertaken to develop the intervention, and short-term outcomes. The findings have implications for lessons learned that can be considered by others seeking large-scale transformation of education within the clinical workplace and the development of interprofessional clinical learning environments. Within the VA, the CoEPCE has laid the foundation for IPE and collaborative practice, but much work remains to disseminate this work throughout the national VA system.

This article analyzes David Hume’s influential critique of worship from a process point of view informed by the thought of Whitehead and Hartshorne.

Speciation of copper in marine systems strongly influences the ability of copper to cause toxicity. Natural organic matter (NOM) contains many binding sites which provides a protective effect on copper toxicity. The purpose of this study was to characterize copper binding with NOM using fluorescence quenching techniques. Fluorescence quenching of NOM with copper was performed on nine sea water samples. The resulting stability constants and binding capacities were consistent with literature values of marine NOM, showing strong binding with $$\log K$$ values from 7.64 to 10.2 and binding capacities ranging from 15 to 3110 nmol mg $${\text {C}}^{-1}.$$ Free copper concentrations estimated at total dissolved copper concentrations corresponding to previously published rotifer effect concentrations, in the same nine samples, were statistically the same as the range of free copper calculated for the effect concentration in NOM-free artificial seawater. These data confirms the applicability of fluorescence spectroscopy techniques for NOM and copper speciation characterization in sea water and demonstrates that such measured speciation is consistent with the chemical principles underlying the biotic ligand model approach for bioavailability-based metals risk assessment.

Deaf children who are not provided with a sign language early in their development are at risk of linguistic deprivation; they may never be fluent in any language, and they may have deficits in cognitive activities that rely on a firm foundation in a first language. These children are socially and emotionally isolated. Deafness makes a child vulnerable to abuse, and linguistic deprivation compounds the abuse because the child is less able to report it. Parents rely on professionals as guides in making responsible choices in raising and educating their deaf children. But lack of expertise on language acquisition and overreliance on access to speech often result in professionals not recommending that the child be taught a sign language or, worse, that the child be denied sign language. We recommend action that those in the social welfare services can implement immediately to help protect the health of deaf children.

This is a polemical essay providing an historical and cultural analysis of John Rawls’s political liberalism, and arguing that the “original position” in his philosophy is not only hypothetical, but also unrealistic by virtue of ignoring comprehensive religious and philosophical points of view. Rawls attempts to derive the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity from a mere thought experiment withoutconsidering the foundational role of the Christian religion, which was instrumental in the birth and refinement of these ideas.

There is need for effective venues to allow teams to coordinate care for high-risk or high-need patients. In addition, health systems need to assess the impact of such approaches on outcomes related to chronic health conditions and patient utilization. We evaluate the clinical impact of a novel case conference involving colocated trainees and supervisors in an interprofessional academic primary care clinic. The study utilized a prospective cohort with control group. Intervention patients (N = 104) were matched with controls (N = 104) from the same provider's panel using propensity scores based on age, gender, risk predictors, and prior utilization patterns. Clinical outcomes and subsequent utilization patterns were compared prior to and up to 6 months following the conference. In terms of utilization, intervention patients demonstrated increased visits with primary care team members (p = .0002) compared with controls, without a corresponding increase in the number of primary care providers' visits. There was a trend towards decreased urgent care and emergency visits (p = .07) and a significant decrease in the rate of hospitalizations (p = .04). Patients with poorly-controlled hypertension saw significant decreases in mean systolic blood pressure from 167 to 146 mm Hg. However, there were no differences between the intervention and control groups. Intervention patients with diabetes demonstrated a nonsignificant trend towards decreased hemoglobin A1c from 9.8 to 9.4, when compared with controls. Interprofessional case conferences have potential to improve care coordination and may be associated with improved disease management, decreased unplanned care, and overall reduced hospitalizations.

Objective\ud To provide an insight into the experiences and perceptions of physician associate students and primary care staff involved in primary care educational placements in the United Kingdom.\ud \ud Methods\ud A qualitative study was conducted. Data were collected from focus groups and semi-structured interviews with eight first year Physician Associate students and six primary care staff in two general practice surgeries in East Sussex, United Kingdom. Recruitment was via purposeful sampling. Thematic Analysis was used to develop common themes. \ud \ud Results\ud Three themes were identified: 'Perceptions of the Physician Associate Role', 'Interprofessional Working', and 'The Physician Associate Course Structure and Placements'. Staff demonstrated a lack of familiarity with the physician associate programme and there was a risk of unrealistic expectations. Overall, staff and students were positive about their experiences. However, students expressed anxiety over a large amount of learning in a short timeframe, the perceptions of others, and the reluctance of staff to train them in phlebotomy skills. In addition, students were unsure about their career aspirations for the future. \ud \ud Conclusions\ud Participants were positive about their experiences however students expressed a number of anxieties, with a scope to improve interprofessional education. Staff demonstrated an overall lack of knowledge of the curriculum and physician associates in general leading to a risk of unrealistic expectations. Further studies on these themes with a larger sample size across relevant training institutions in the United Kingdom is required to explore this further.

This essay analyzes the narrative accounts of Deucalion’s flood within the broader context of human creation in two ancient mythographical works of myth (Ovid, Apollodorus) and three modern handbooks. In each case the mythographer has been forced to reshape the episodic-one might say disparate and conflicting -nature of her or his sources and invent new connective tissue to organize early mythic time. The authorial voice and narrative aims of all writers attempting to create a coherent and comprehensive account of this period remain operative even in subliterary works such as Apollodorus’ Bibliotheke and render source criticism problematic.

This paper offers a history of fortified blended foods, a humanitarian product that first emerged in the middle of the twentieth century. Tracing its emergence and development, the paper argues that this food was the product of four key historical trends: (i) the search for a compact and efficient diet in the wake of the Second World War; (ii) the high modernist movement that saw science and technology as a way to improve on traditional foods; (iii) the state-led industrialisation of the development decades oriented around the notion of a worldwide ‘protein gap’; and (iv) the legacy of ‘productivist’ agriculture in the United States, generating massive surpluses in certain crops that had to be adapted creatively for a multitude of uses. The paper positions fortified blended foods in these broader historical processes, and asserts that humanitarian techniques are very much rooted in cultural, political, and social conditions.

This article presents a statistical analysis of the sky conditions, during years from 2010 to 2012, for three different locations: the Joint Research Centre site in Ispra (Italy, European Solar Test Installation – ESTI laboratories), the site of National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden (Colorado, USA) and the site of Brookhaven National Laboratories in Upton (New York, USA). The key parameter is the clearness index kT, a dimensionless expression of the global irradiance impinging upon a horizontal surface at a given instant of time. In the first part, the sky conditions are characterized using daily averages, giving a general overview of the three sites. In the second part the analysis is performed using data sets with a short-term resolution of 1 sample per minute, demonstrating remarkable properties of the statistical distributions of the clearness index, reinforced by a proof using fuzzy logic methods. Successively some time-dependent correlations between different meteorological variables are presented in terms of Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients, and introducing a new one.

Over the past decade, researchers have begun to use metals of the lanthanide family for numerous applications, including liquid crystal display (LCD) screens, optical fibers, and laser technology. Unfortunately, little is presently known about their bioavailability or the mechanisms by which they might cause toxicity. The present study focuses on cerium (Ce), one of the most widely used lanthanides, and on validating the biotic ligand model as a means to predict Ce bioaccumulation. Short-term exposures to Ce were performed using the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, to better relate Ce bioavailability to its chemical speciation in solution. Maximum uptake fluxes (Jmax) and affinity constants for the binding of Ce to the biological uptake sites (KS) were established at pH 5.0 and pH 7.0. An apparent affinity constant of 1.8 × 107 M–1 was observed at pH 5.0, with a larger value obtained at pH 7.0 (6 × 107 M–1), albeit under conditions where equilibrium could not be confirmed. By evaluating Ce speciation using centrifugal ultrafiltration and single-particle inductively coupled plasma spectrometry, it could be concluded that very little (∼30%) Ce was truly dissolved at pH 7.0, with the majority of the metal being present in colloidal species. Speciation was also monitored by fluorescence to evaluate Ce complexation by natural organic matter (NOM). The presence of NOM decreased Ce bioaccumulation in line with free Ce concentrations. Finally, competition with calcium for the metal uptake sites was shown to result in a decrease in Ce uptake by C. reinhardtii. Environ Toxicol Chem 2015;34:1711–1719. © 2015 SETAC

Contents: Introduction: the problem of the loss of moral knowledge A possible solution: linguistic virtue ethics: From Aristotle to Wittgenstein: tracing the history of the loss of moral knowledge Philosophical, linguistic virtue ethics: MacIntyre's solution Theological, linguistic virtue ethics: Hauerwas's answer The failure of this answer: a critique of linguistic virtue ethics: The presupposition of epistemic access The issues with behavior The presuppositions of the self The implications of this failure and the prospects for moral knowledge: Problems for philosophical theology The charge of relativism Epilogue: The future of virtue ethics and implications for moral knowledge Bibliography Index.

As technological interest and environmental emissions of the rare earth elements increase, it is becoming more important to assess their potential environmental impact. Samarium (Sm) is a lanthanide of intermediate molar mass that is used in numerous high-technology applications including wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles. The present study relates the speciation of Sm determined in the presence of natural organic matter (NOM) to its bioavailability to the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The free ion concentration was determined using a cation exchange resin (ion exchange technique) in dynamic mode and compared with thermodynamic modeling. Short-term biouptake experiments were performed in the presence of 4 types of NOM: Suwannee River fulvic acids, Pahokee Peat fulvic acids, Suwannee River humic acids, and a Luther Marsh dissolved organic matter isolate (90-95% humic acids). It was clearly shown that even a small amount of NOM (0.5 mg C L-1 ) resulted in a significant decrease (10 times) in the Sm internalization fluxes. Furthermore, complexation with humic acids (and the corresponding reduction in Sm bioavailability) was stronger than that with fulvic acids. The results showed that the experimentally measured (free) Sm was a better predictor of Sm internalization than either the total concentrations or the free ion concentrations obtained using thermodynamic modeling. Environ Toxicol Chem 2018;37:1623-1631. © 2018 SETAC.

The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) is one of the most controversial institutions of the Cold War. Founded in 1950 to unite intellectuals against the repressive demands of Communist doctrine, it promoted its cause of Western cultural integrity until it was revealed in the 1960s that it had benefited from large-scale funding from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and its independence and motives were seriously questioned. Up till now, most studies of the CCF have focused on the CIA connection and the principal actors who ran the Congress in America and Europe. Aiming to broaden understanding of the CCF’s cultural legacy, this volume examines the global reach of its most important form of influence: its journals and magazines, published on five continents, several of which are still in print today. By investigating the circumstances of their creation, the editors who ran them, and their cultural significance in their national contexts, this volume breaks new ground in exploring the global impact of the Congress from the 1950s to the present day.

The historiography of the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 is dominated by the personal clash between the principal negotiators, Harry Dexter White of the United States and John Maynard Keynes of Britain. Their contest over different blueprints for the structure of post-war economic and financial management was set in the context of American designs to dismantle the protective measures of the British imperial system and pave the way toward a US-led world order. Yet 42 other nations were also present at the conference. This book examines Bretton Woods as a seminal moment in international diplomacy, with new partners and players expressing their demands on the global stage. Six themes are explored: North–South relations, Rooseveltian ideals, policy coalitions, public and private interests, key personalities, and trade.

Survey—originally Soviet Survey—was established in 1956, and stayed in print—similar to Encounter—until the end of the Cold War, at which point its job was symbolically done. Its formation epitomised the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) as a network of exiled intellectuals speaking out against the ravages of totalitarianism, but it continued long after the CCF folded. Its founder, Walter Laqueur, and long-time editor, Leo Labedz, were both survivors and emigres from Central Europe, and their mid-century experiences and resulting political convictions drove Survey to become one of the principal outlets for Sovietology. Labedz’s relentless accumulation of facts outlining the crimes and failures of the Soviet Union and global Communism were the journal’s trademark. Survey, along with China Quarterly, occupied a special place among the CCF journals as the only publications focused on developments in the ideological adversaires of the Soviet Union and the Peoples’ Republic of China.