Digital adaptations to arts programme delivery for people living with dementia in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Learning from the challenges and successes of online arts delivery during the pandemic is crucially important for considering long-term sustainable solutions that enable people living with dementia to remotely participate in meaningful activities.

Methods: Twenty-eight arts workers responded to an online survey exploring i) the meaning of face-to-face arts activities that were replicated online, ii) perceived motivations to attend, iii) successes and challenges in adapting arts for online/socially distanced setting.

Results: Responses described arts giving structure and purpose to people living with dementia and their carers, a sense of community, and a way to reduce physical isolation.

Testing the combination of Feeling Safe and peer counselling against formulation-based cognitive behaviour therapy to promote psychological wellbeing in people with persecutory delusions: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial (the Feeling Safe-NL Trial).

Background: Persecutory delusions are strong threat beliefs about others' negative intentions. They can have a major impact on patients' day-to-day life. The Feeling Safe Programme is a new translational cognitive-behaviour therapy that helps patients modify threat beliefs and relearn safety by targeting key psychological causal factors.

The relationship between musicianship and pain. Is chronic pain and its management a problem for student musicians only?

Introduction: The neuro-biological side of chronic pain research has presented reliable evidence of distinct cortical and spinal alteration compared to healthy individuals. Furthermore, research suggests that musicians are especially vulnerable to pain, and recent neurological investigations into musicians' brain plasticity support this hypothesis. However, chronic pain is not acute pain plus time, but a separate condition, and little is known about musicians' chronic pain-related emotions and behaviors.

Perceived barriers and solutions by generalist physicians to work towards timely young-onset dementia diagnosis.

Timely diagnosis of young-onset dementia (YOD) is an important prerequisite to initiate appropriate support. However, YOD diagnosis is often late. We aimed to explore the perspectives of referring general practitioners and occupational physicians, to better understand their barriers to YOD diagnosis and reveal potential solutions to facilitate timely diagnosis.

Action, emotion, and music-colour synaesthesia: an examination of sensorimotor and emotional responses in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes.

Synaesthesia has been conceptualised as a joining of sensory experiences. Taking a holistic, embodied perspective, we investigate in this paper the role of action and emotion, testing hypotheses related to (1) changes to action-related qualities of a musical stimulus affect the resulting synaesthetic experience; (2) a comparable relationship exists between music, sensorimotor and emotional responses in synaesthetes and the general population; and (3) sensorimotor responses are more strongly associated with synaesthesia than emotion. 29 synaesthetes and 33 non-synaesthetes listened to 12 musical excerpts performed on a musical instrument they had first-hand experience playing, an instrument never played before, and a deadpan performance generated by notation software, i.

The same but different. Multidimensional assessment of depression in students of natural science and music.

Depression is one of the most common and debilitating health problems, however, its heterogeneity makes a diagnosis challenging. Thus far the restriction of depression variables explored within groups, the lack of comparability between groups, and the heterogeneity of depression as a concept limit a meaningful interpretation, especially in terms of predictability. Research established students in late adolescence to be particularly vulnerable, especially those with a natural science or musical study main subject.

Patterns of verbal interaction in newly formed music ensembles.

Ensemble rehearsal in the European classical music tradition has a relatively homogenised format in which play-through, discussion, and practice of excerpts are employed to establish and agree on performance parameters of notated music. This research analyses patterns in such verbal communication during rehearsals and their development over time. Analysing two newly established ensembles that work over several months to a performance, it investigates the interaction dynamics of two closely collaborating groups and adaptation depending on task demands, familiarity with each other and an upcoming deadline.

The use of technology for arts-based activities in older adults living with mild cognitive impairment or dementia: A scoping review.

For older adults living with mild cognitive impairment or dementia, creative arts-based activities can offer many benefits from enjoyment as leisure/recreation to an avenue to maintain cognitive, social and emotional wellbeing. With growing interest and recognition that technology could have potential to assist in delivering these activities in more accessible and personalised ways, a scoping review was undertaken to systematically examine the scientific literature for technology-assisted creative arts activities for older adults living with dementia. We searched PubMed, PsychINFO, Web of Science, Scopus and ACM Digital Library databases using keywords centering on population with dementia, an intervention using technology, and a context of creative arts, with no restrictions on the type of outcome measured.

The Communication of Timbral Intentions Between Pianists and Listeners and Its Dependence on Auditory-Visual Conditions.

The perceptual experiment reported in this article explored whether the communication of five pairs of timbral intentions (bright/dark, heavy/light, round/sharp, tense/relaxed, and dry/velvety) between pianists and listeners is reliable and the extent to which performers' gestures provide visual cues that influence the perceived timbre. Three pianists played three musical excerpts with 10 different timbral intentions (3 × 10 = 30 music stimuli) and 21 piano students were asked to rate perceived timbral qualities on both unipolar Likert scales and non-verbal sensory scales (shape, size, and brightness) under three modes (vision-alone, audio-alone, and audio-visual). The results revealed that nine of the timbral intentions were reliably communicated between the pianists and the listeners, except for the dark timbre.

The Multi-hub Academic Conference: Global, Inclusive, Culturally Diverse, Creative, Sustainable.

New conference formats are emerging in response to COVID-19 and climate change. are sustainable and inclusive regardless of participant mobility (financial means, caring commitments, disability), but lack face-to-face contact. (physical meetings with additional virtual presentations) tend to discriminate against non-fliers and encourage unsustainable flying.

Teaching and Learning of Piano Timbre Through Teacher-Student Interactions in Lessons.

The ability to play the piano with a variety of timbres requires a performer to have advanced pianistic skills. Little is known about how these skills are acquired and developed in piano lessons and what the role is of elements such as concepts, technique, sonic outcomes, and bodily movements. To investigate the teaching and learning of piano timbre, the lessons of three pairs of university-level teachers and students (two teachers and three students) were observed, during which they behaved as usual in the first two lessons and were asked to use a dialogic teaching approach in the third lesson.

Musical novices perform with equal accuracy when learning to drum alone or with a peer.

The capacity of expert musicians to coordinate with each other when playing in ensembles or rehearsing has been widely investigated. However, little is known about the ability of novices to achieve satisfactory coordinated behaviour when making music together. We tested whether performance accuracy differs when novices play a newly learned drumming pattern with another musically untrained individual (duo group) or alone (solo group).

"Help! I Need Somebody": Music as a Global Resource for Obtaining Wellbeing Goals in Times of Crisis.

Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. However, little is known about the role of music and related personal or cultural (individualistic vs. collectivistic) variables in maintaining wellbeing during times of stress and social isolation as imposed by the COVID-19 crisis.

Stream segregation revisited: Dynamic listening and influences of emotional context on stream perception and attention.

A classical experiment of auditory stream segregation is revisited, reconceptualising perceptual ambiguity in terms of affordances and musical engagement. Specifically, three experiments are reported that investigate how listeners' perception of auditory sequences change dynamically depending on emotional context. The experiments show that listeners adapt their attention to higher or lower pitched streams (Experiments 1 and 2) and the degree of auditory stream integration or segregation (Experiment 3) in accordance with the presented emotional context.

Neural multimodal integration underlying synchronization with a co-performer in music: Influences of motor expertise and visual information.

Sensorimotor synchronization is a general skill that musicians have developed to the highest levels of performance, including synchronization in timing and articulation. This study investigated neurocognitive processes that enable such high levels of performance, specifically testing the relevance of 1) motor resonance and sharing high levels of motor expertise with the co-performer, and 2) the role of visual information in addition to auditory information. Musicians with varying levels of piano expertise (including non-pianists) performed on a single piano key with their right hand along with recordings of a pianist who performed simple melodies with the left hand, synchronizing timing and articulation.

Music for Relaxation: A Comparison Across Two Age Groups.

There are currently many types of music sold commercially that are branded as "relaxation aids." However, the claims that the music can induce psychological and physical relaxation are rarely validated on an empirical basis. This study investigated the effectiveness of a particular type of "relaxation" music that we call Meditative Binaural Music (MBM), which incorporates binaurally recorded sounds, binaural beats, a slow tempo, and gradual changes.

A calibrated UV-LED based light source for water purification and characterisation of photocatalysis.

Photocatalysis has a potential to become a cost effective industrial process for water cleaning. One of the most studied photocatalysts is titanium dioxide which, as a wide band gap semiconductor, requires ultraviolet (UV) light for its photoactivation. This is at the wavelengths where the efficiency of present-day light emitting diodes (LEDs) decreases rapidly, which presents a challenge in the use of UV-LEDs for commercially viable photocatalysis.

When the Sound Becomes the Goal. 4E Cognition and Teleomusicality in Early Infancy.

In this paper we explore early musical behaviors through the lenses of the recently emerged "4E" approach to mind, which sees cognitive processes as Embodied, Embedded, Enacted, and Extended. In doing so, we draw from a range of interdisciplinary research, engaging in critical and constructive discussions with both new findings and existing positions. In particular, we refer to observational research by French pedagogue and psychologist François Delalande, who examined infants' first "sound discoveries" and individuated three different musical "conducts" inspired by the "phases of the game" originally postulated by Piaget.

Spatial patterns of water-dispersed seed deposition along stream riparian gradients.

Riparian ecosystems along streams naturally harbour a high plant diversity with many increasingly endangered species. In our current heavily modified and fragmented catchments, many of these species are sensitive to dispersal limitation. Better understanding of riparian plant dispersal pathways is required to predict species (re-)colonization potential and improve success rates of stream and riparian zone conservation and restoration.

Variations in the Prevalence of Risk Factors for Coronary Artery Disease in Rio Grande do Sul-Brazil: A Comparative Analysis between 2002 and 2014.

Background: Due to the importance of coronary artery disease (CAD), continuous investigation of the risk factors (RFs) is needed.

Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of RFs for CAD in cities in Rio Grande do Sul State, and compare it with that reported in a similar study conducted in the same cities in 2002.

Methods: Cross-sectional study on 1,056 healthy adults, investigating the prevalence and absolute and relative frequencies of the following RFs for CAD: obesity, systemic arterial hypertension (SAH), dyslipidemias, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, diabetes mellitus, and family history, as well as age and sex.

Active Drumming Experience Increases Infants' Sensitivity to Audiovisual Synchrony during Observed Drumming Actions.

In the current study, we examined the role of active experience on sensitivity to multisensory synchrony in six-month-old infants in a musical context. In the first of two experiments, we trained infants to produce a novel multimodal effect (i.e.

Synchronization and leadership in string quartet performance: a case study of auditory and visual cues.

Temporal coordination between members of a string quartet was investigated across repeated performances of an excerpt of Haydn's string quartet in G Major, Op. 77 No. 1.

Enhancing methane production of Chlorella vulgaris via thermochemical pretreatments.

To enhance the anaerobic digestion of Chlorella vulgaris, thermochemical pretreatments were conducted. All pretreatments markedly improved solubilisation of carbohydrates. Thermal treatments and thermal treatments combined with alkali resulted in 5-fold increase of soluble carbohydrates while thermal treatment with acid addition enhanced by 7-fold.