title: Towards a digital library of popular music

authors: Bainbridge, David

subjects: computer science

abstract: Digital libraries of music have the potential to capture popular imagination in ways that more scholarly libraries cannot. We are working towards a comprehensive digital library of musical material, including popular music. We have developed new ways of collecting musical material, accessing it through searching and browsing, and presenting the results to the user. We work with different representations of music: facsimile images of scores, the internal representation of a music editing program, page images typeset by a music editor, MIDI files, audio files representing sung user input, and textual metadata such as title, composer and arranger, and lyrics.
This paper describes a comprehensive suite of tools that we have built for this project. These tools gather musical material, convert between many of these representations, allow searching based on combined musical and textual criteria, and help present the results of searching and browsing. Although we do not yet have a single fully-blown digital music library, we have built several exploratory prototype collections of music, some of them very large (100,000 tunes), and critical components of the system have been evaluated.

text: Towards a digital library of popular music Digital libraries of music have the potential to capture popular imagination in ways that more scholarly libraries cannot. We are working towards a comprehensive digital library of musical material, including popular music. We have developed new ways of collecting musical material, accessing it through searching and browsing, and presenting the results to the user. We work with different representations of music: facsimile images of scores, the internal representation of a music editing program, page images typeset by a music editor, MIDI files, audio files representing sung user input, and textual metadata such as title, composer and arranger, and lyrics.
This paper describes a comprehensive suite of tools that we have built for this project. These tools gather musical material, convert between many of these representations, allow searching based on combined musical and textual criteria, and help present the results of searching and browsing. Although we do not yet have a single fully-blown digital music library, we have built several exploratory prototype collections of music, some of them very large (100,000 tunes), and critical components of the system have been evaluated.

year: 1999

title: Measures of Dosage for Spinal-Cord Electrical Stimulation: Review and Proposal

authors: Single, Peter S.

abstract: This manuscript proposes an electrical definition of therapeutic dose for spinal cord systems used for the treatment of chronic pain, analogous to the pharmacological definition. Dose-response relationships are fundamental to pharmacology, radiotherapy, and other treatments, but have never been properly established for neuromodulation. This manuscript offers a robust measure of dose, pre-requisite to establishing a reliable and repeatable dose-response relationship. The new definition, enabled by the system transresistance obtained from measurement of evoked action potentials, recognizes the mechanism of action of spinal cord stimulation (SCS), and should improve acceptance of the therapy as compared to pharmacological treatments which are currently used more frequently for the treatment of chronic pain. The new definition suggests methods for personalization and standardization of the dose in SCS, and is potentially generalizable to all neuromodulation therapies in which nervous tissue is excited including sacral nerve stimulation (SNS), vagal nerve stimulation (VNS), and deep-brain stimulation (DBS). Formulas are provided, and applied using patient data. Powerful conclusions are drawn from application of the new measure.

text: Measures of Dosage for Spinal-Cord Electrical Stimulation: Review and Proposal This manuscript proposes an electrical definition of therapeutic dose for spinal cord systems used for the treatment of chronic pain, analogous to the pharmacological definition. Dose-response relationships are fundamental to pharmacology, radiotherapy, and other treatments, but have never been properly established for neuromodulation. This manuscript offers a robust measure of dose, pre-requisite to establishing a reliable and repeatable dose-response relationship. The new definition, enabled by the system transresistance obtained from measurement of evoked action potentials, recognizes the mechanism of action of spinal cord stimulation (SCS), and should improve acceptance of the therapy as compared to pharmacological treatments which are currently used more frequently for the treatment of chronic pain. The new definition suggests methods for personalization and standardization of the dose in SCS, and is potentially generalizable to all neuromodulation therapies in which nervous tissue is excited including sacral nerve stimulation (SNS), vagal nerve stimulation (VNS), and deep-brain stimulation (DBS). Formulas are provided, and applied using patient data. Powerful conclusions are drawn from application of the new measure.

year: 2023

title: The influence of harvest frequency and regime on the performance of  Filamentous Algae Nutrient Scrubbers treating agricultural drainage

authors: Waaka, Okeroa

subjects: Filamentous algae nutrient scrubbers

abstract: Filamentous algae nutrient scrubbers (FANS) are ecologically engineered flow-ways that have recently been proposed as a potential on-farm method to treat agricultural drainage in New Zealand. The effectiveness of FANS systems to remove nutrients from polluted waters and to produce algal biomass as a harvestable by-product is heavily influenced by operational parameters. As filamentous algae grow on a flow-way, the thickness of the algal biomass increases and begins to reduce light penetration and nutrient assimilation. Therefore, periodic harvesting of the accumulated algal biomass plays a key role in determining the biomass production and nutrient removal performance of FANS systems. 

The overall aim of this study was to investigate the influence of harvest frequency and harvest regime on biomass productivity and nutrient removal of an outdoor FANS system. The FANS system used in this study consisted of six flow-ways that were split into two sets of triplicate flow-ways named “FULL” and “PARTIAL”. Harvesting of the FULL replicate flow-ways occurred once a week, where algal biomass accumulated along the entirety of the flow-way was collected. Harvesting of the PARTIAL replicate flow-ways occurred twice a week, where the algal biomass was collected in alternate meter sections (a total of 3-metre harvest length every 3 – 3.5 days). 

The increased harvest frequency (3 – 3.5 days) and sectioned harvest regime implemented in the PARTIAL replicate flow-ways significantly improved biomass productivity (3.2 g DW m-2. d) in comparison to the less frequent (7 – 7.5 days) and total harvest regime implemented in the FULL replicate flow-ways (0.9 g DW m-2. d). However, there was no significant difference in nutrient removal rates between the PARTIAL and FULL replicate flow-ways. There is still limited understanding of how operational parameters can be optimized to maximise biomass productivity and nutrient removal in FANS systems on a year-round basis. However, the findings of this study demonstrate that an increased harvest frequency and sectioned harvest regime can improve the biomass yield of filamentous algae grown on an outdoor FANS system during spring to summer months. 

Furthermore, this study has suggested the potential for Māori acceptance of FANS technology and algal biomass use. In person interviews with whanau and iwi members recalled use of algal biomass harvested from rivers and streams as fertilizer for vegetable gardens or bait for eel trapping. Moreover, the literature review and in person interviews highlighted the importance of identifying and using ngā kupu (words and terms) used by Māori to describe freshwater algae. The intergenerational observation and utilization of algae as a resource by Māori may reveal an awareness of biological processes that either differs or compliments a Western Science point of view. Incorporating this knowledge into current water and environmental management practices could be extremely beneficial for improving water quality of streams in Aotearoa New Zealand.

text: The influence of harvest frequency and regime on the performance of  Filamentous Algae Nutrient Scrubbers treating agricultural drainage Filamentous algae nutrient scrubbers (FANS) are ecologically engineered flow-ways that have recently been proposed as a potential on-farm method to treat agricultural drainage in New Zealand. The effectiveness of FANS systems to remove nutrients from polluted waters and to produce algal biomass as a harvestable by-product is heavily influenced by operational parameters. As filamentous algae grow on a flow-way, the thickness of the algal biomass increases and begins to reduce light penetration and nutrient assimilation. Therefore, periodic harvesting of the accumulated algal biomass plays a key role in determining the biomass production and nutrient removal performance of FANS systems. 

The overall aim of this study was to investigate the influence of harvest frequency and harvest regime on biomass productivity and nutrient removal of an outdoor FANS system. The FANS system used in this study consisted of six flow-ways that were split into two sets of triplicate flow-ways named “FULL” and “PARTIAL”. Harvesting of the FULL replicate flow-ways occurred once a week, where algal biomass accumulated along the entirety of the flow-way was collected. Harvesting of the PARTIAL replicate flow-ways occurred twice a week, where the algal biomass was collected in alternate meter sections (a total of 3-metre harvest length every 3 – 3.5 days). 

The increased harvest frequency (3 – 3.5 days) and sectioned harvest regime implemented in the PARTIAL replicate flow-ways significantly improved biomass productivity (3.2 g DW m-2. d) in comparison to the less frequent (7 – 7.5 days) and total harvest regime implemented in the FULL replicate flow-ways (0.9 g DW m-2. d). However, there was no significant difference in nutrient removal rates between the PARTIAL and FULL replicate flow-ways. There is still limited understanding of how operational parameters can be optimized to maximise biomass productivity and nutrient removal in FANS systems on a year-round basis. However, the findings of this study demonstrate that an increased harvest frequency and sectioned harvest regime can improve the biomass yield of filamentous algae grown on an outdoor FANS system during spring to summer months. 

Furthermore, this study has suggested the potential for Māori acceptance of FANS technology and algal biomass use. In person interviews with whanau and iwi members recalled use of algal biomass harvested from rivers and streams as fertilizer for vegetable gardens or bait for eel trapping. Moreover, the literature review and in person interviews highlighted the importance of identifying and using ngā kupu (words and terms) used by Māori to describe freshwater algae. The intergenerational observation and utilization of algae as a resource by Māori may reveal an awareness of biological processes that either differs or compliments a Western Science point of view. Incorporating this knowledge into current water and environmental management practices could be extremely beneficial for improving water quality of streams in Aotearoa New Zealand.

year: 2023