“I would rather quit composing, period, than be viewed as a neo-Romantic, or a reactionary, or a naïve composer.” So avowed composer Andrew Norman in a 2015 interview with the New York Times. Why is Norman so loath to be labeled neoromantic? Why group this label with reactionism and naivety, words with undeniably negative connotations? This seemingly innocuous statement reflects a reality of contemporary music criticism, which dates back a half century to the stylistic tyranny of serialism. A backlash against serialism’s perceived oppressiveness opened the floodgates for eclectic mixtures of styles; critics today extol such novel stylistic mixtures. But one aesthetic continues to be left behind, implicitly dismissed as “backward-looking”: “reactionary” and “naïve” neoromanticism.

The fetishization of stylistic fusion and fluidity ends with the hint of a post-Romantic idiom, scorned as unadventurous and derivative. Contemporary music’s insatiable striving for “newness,” a drive famously highlighted by serialist-turned-neoromantic George Rochberg, does not sour us on idioms dependent on Stravinsky, Messiaen, or even Couperin (as in the music of Thomas Adès); rather, critics laud the incorporation of their styles today.

Does the condescension reserved for neoromantic music by critics and composers alike indicate a new, subtler brand of stylistic tyranny? This investigation forces us to consider how we understand the concept of influence today: why are certain models legitimate and celebrated, while other models are disdained? It is vital to examine this reality, because it affects how we teach young composers, program concerts, and excite audiences about the artistry of contemporary music.

Recent work on phrase rhythm in jazz explores how various parameters interact with hypermeter - meter deeper than the measure. Despite the importance of hypermetrical regularity, however, deviations in phrase length do occur, and the exceptions warrant exploration. This paper addresses hypermetrical deviation in the works of active jazz composer Maria Schneider.

I posit that Schneider enters into a dialogue with tendencies of phrase rhythm established through the century-long jazz tradition. As James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy (2006) have argued regarding music in the decades surrounding 1800, works are placed into “a dialogue with a community-shared pool of preexisting works, probably including some well-known ones, that formed the new work’s context of understanding.” Rather than comprising some body of previous works, I take the “context of understanding” for Schneider’s music to be the normative eight-bar phrase.

My argument centers around two claims: (1) the normative phrase design from the jazz tradition at large is Schneider’s most common compositional choice, and (2) most of Schneider’s deviational phrases dialogue with the norm directly. A corpus study of 24 works composed between 1984 and 2007 confirms that 61% of phrases conform to the norm, and another 31% of phrases dialogue with the norm directly. This paper establishes the characteristics of the normative phrase, describes the analytical procedure, and summarizes the evident deviational phrase types.

Gabriel Kahane’s (b. 1981) diverse musical output includes two pieces with a special relationship: a song called “Bradbury (304 Broadway)” (2014) and a string quartet, Bradbury Studies (2015). Kahane calls Studies a deconstruction of the song. I take a two-fold path in this paper, arguing that the paired Bradbury Pieces embody deconstruction in both a loose, popular sense, and in a strict Derridean sense. Studies is what I call a popular deconstruction of “Bradbury” in that it reconfigures and re-presents formal sections and smaller aspects of the song with varying degrees of abstraction from their original appearances. Popular deconstruction occurs on the small scale and is also writ large across the form of the piece. Studies is in a cumulative form that gradually reveals the original song. The pairing of the song and Studies, what I call the Bradbury pieces, also comprises a deconstruction in the Derridean sense. Jacques Derrida’s method of deconstruction involved short-circuiting hierarchies. By examining a hierarchical binary (like melody/harmony or nature/culture), he could undo the premises of the hierarchy and instead show that the terms are contained within each other. Anything falling within one of these binaries wasn’t one or the other, but rather existing in a liminal area between the two. The Bradbury pieces together deconstruct the hierarchical binary of concert music and popular music, and thus the binary of composer and singer-songwriter. Deconstructing these binaries is important to Kahane because he sees them as too often dominating journalists’ and others’ discourse regarding new music.

For the Research on Contemporary Composition conference, I propose giving a lecture recital focusing on the lives, music, and musical philosophies of avant-garde Black composers, highlighting CMOP (Chicago Modern Orchestra Project) founder and director Renee C. Baker. The lecture will be divided into three sections:

I. A brief overview of the Black avant-garde, briefly discussing the music and select musical and personal philosophies of Black avant-garde composers, with music samples. The types of music discussed will span free jazz, minimalism, complexity/simplicity, experimentalism, serialism, music theater, and more. (Approximately 9 minutes)

II. A more in-depth discussion of the creative output of Renee C. Baker: composer, conductor, performer, visual artist. The discussion will include insight into how her life and her myriad of experiences (in the realms of music, visual art, travel, cultural studies, and more) influence her creative output, and how her visual art and music personalities interact with and/or inform each other. Audio clips as well as slides with professional images, music score examples, and visual art samples, will accompany this part of the lecture. (Approximately 6 minutes)

III. A performance/interpretation of a recent work entitle Rage (Approximately 15 minutes). This performance will come directly after a bit of contextualization, and will conclude my 30-minute presentation.

If it is at all possible to allow for questions after the lecture/recital, a Q&A period will be greatly welcome.

At the time of the Florentine Camerata and the rise of Opera, in my opinion, music had the same value as silence today. In the quieter society back then, listening to music was as special as listening to the silence today. For many human beings around the world, achieving this is almost impossible.

How does this value exchange affect in the minds of composers today?

I would like to present and explain two works of mine focusing on silence. One of them, the serie “Still-Leben mit Stille” (Still life with silence), is intended to contemplation focusing on the graphic value of the silence in music. In this series, different topics are analyzed (I.e. “Is it possible to do “Poli-Phony” with silence? Do we need different terminology for today´s new silence values in music, like “Polisiopy”?).

The second work is the opera “The Rest is Silence”. Written after Shakespeare´s quotation, the musical rest is obviously silence. This opera is very similar to those created by the time of the Florentine Camerata (mythological theme, instrumentation, etc.), only adapted to the new values of our society. At the same time silence is used as a protest for the damage our civilization is doing to our planet.

Payday lending is a form of short term credit that charges a per dollar fee for borrowing and is most commonly used by credit constrained individuals (Huckstep 2007). The first payday loan location opened in 1993 (Gallmeyer and Roberts, 2009). It has grown in popularity since its introduction in the 1990s and is currently one of the fastest growing consumer finance products (Caskey, 2001). There are more payday lending locations in the United States than McDonalds and Starbucks combined which is over lending 50,000 locations (Zinman, 2010). To take out a payday loan a borrower demonstrates proof of employment such as a paystub and proof that they have a checking account (Caskey, 2001). Payday lenders rarely run a formal credit check (Morse, 2011). The borrower writes a post-dated check for the loan amount plus fees (Huckstep, 2007). This post-dated check serves as collateral. The loan is typically due on the borrower’s next payday (Huckstep, 2007). The goal of this study is to determine if there is a relationship between the legality of payday lending and the poverty outcomes in a state.

Due to the changing worldview of gender as a fluid concept versus its previous role as a rigid aspect of human identity, marketing researchers and consumer behaviorists need to conduct current studies on color psychology as a means of communication to the changing gender spectrum. Because of the lack of updated research on this topic, marketing strategies and advertisements can often seem out of touch with its younger, socially conscious audience. This study aims to fill this gap in research by exploring college students’ color preferences in a digital marketing scenario. Through the methods of survey and analysis, the study’s objective will be to apprehend the correlation between a person’s identifying gender and their color choice.

The study of misinformation blossomed with the work of Elizabeth Loftus in the 1970s, looking, for example, at how the presence of information in leading questions overshadowed the existing memory of a car crash. Loftus and Palmer (1974) first used the term misinformation effect and found a connection between language and episodic memory. At first, this term only referred to when participants were asked to recall an event when prompted by a biased question, and their memory of the misinformation was measured. Quickly there grew two types of misinformation effect, one in which the misleading information is presented before the event occurs as ‘priming’ the individual ((Lewandowsky, Ecker, Seifert, Schwarz & Cook, 2012), and one in which the biasing information is presented afterwards, as in the original study. More recently, Dalal, Diab and Tinsdale (2015) applied misinformation to hiring decisions in the use of rumors by employers, a specific type of misinformation. This study was groundbreaking for misinformation research as it showed the effect could impact not just declarative memory but person judgements as well. While many variables have been studied with respect to misinformation effects on memory, there has been very little work focused on the influence of misinformation on personal judgements and feelings.

The health benefits of breastfeeding infants for at least the first six months of life are widely known, but the majority of women begin supplementing breast milk with formula within three months after birth. In 1991, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) to increase breastfeeding rates worldwide. This initiative focuses on providing evidence-based, maternity care with an emphasis on improving breastfeeding rates. There are ten steps that hospitals must implement to some degree in order to become a Baby-Friendly hospital; these steps focus on educating the staff and the mothers on breastfeeding techniques, encouraging exclusive breastfeeding to include the first night after labor, and providing continuing support for breastfeeding mothers after they leave the hospital. Nurses play a large role in the success of the BFHI because they work so closely with the mothers. Nurses should be able to provide care without their personal attitudes toward breastfeeding affecting the quality of care, but a positive attitude toward breastfeeding would be beneficial to implementing the BFHI effectively. The BFHI is mentioned in several newer editions of maternal nursing care textbooks, exposing nursing students to the idea and goal of the BFHI earlier than in the past.

The Corps of Cadets is a diverse group of individuals with different motivations for pursuing a college degree while participating in a Senior Military College ROTC program. The purpose of this study was to determine if gender, contracted status, or a combination of both influenced cadet self-efficacy levels. Self- efficacy levels were determined by surveying a company of cadets using an ROTC specific experience measure and behavior models measure, as well as Eisengerger’s abbreviated perceived organizational support scale, the Positive and Negative Affectivity Schedule, and the Big Five Inventory. The hypothesis was that overall there would be a significant difference between males and females with males having higher levels of the self-efficacy antecedents measured. Additionally, it was hypothesized that in general contracted cadets would have overall higher efficacy levels.

Many beehive products such as propolis, Manuka honey, bee pollen, and royal jelly have been used by people due to their popular known health benefits. A novel bee product, bee venom, has demonstrated effective in treating various debilitating conditions, and thus bee venom therapy has been the subject of scientific studies to quantify its medical efficacy. Although bee venom has been used for millennia in Eastern medicine, modern bee venom therapy (BVT) originated in Europe in the 19th century, but was brought to the U.S. by Dr. Bodog Beck after World War I. The treatment became more widespread in the West as the 20th century progressed (Cooney et al, 2011). There are currently various application methods with the most popular being apipuncture (acupuncture with bee venom where needles are initially dipped into the venom before applied to the patient) and bee venom injections (Mohammadi et al, 2015). The multiple beneficial effects of bee venom include increased blood circulation, stimulation of the pituitary-cortical system, and reduced pain and inflammation (Mohammadi et al, 2015). These responses help treat the symptoms of many diseases and chronic inflammatory conditions. With additional research, the use of bee venom can be included as a means to safely alleviate the symptoms of several autoimmune diseases, especially rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Densely connected convolutional neural networks are currently one of the best object recognition algorithms. Given the plasticity of neural networks, the DenseNet algorithm should perform similarly in NLP tasks. In its attempt to verify whether the DenseNet algorithm can yield equally impressive results on NLP tasks, this paper has modified the DenseNet algorithm and tested it on text classification. For this purpose, three differently sized datasets have each been encoded as Tf-IDf vectors and word vectors and then the DenseNet’s performance on these different feature sets was compared to more conventional methods including Naïve Bayes classifiers and other neural networks. The paper finds that DenseNets can perform on par with these algorithms but scale especially well with large datasets and semantically rich features.

Disparities in levels of knowledge and vaccination rates, regarding Human Papillomavirus (HPV), among college students age 18 to 26 were analyzed and compared by gender and race. Differences in the knowledge ofHPV, its transmission, sequelae related to the virus, and prevention of the virus exists. The important elements identified as the cause of this disparity include the following: preconceived barriers related to preventative vaccination, lack of proper education of both parents and patients by healthcare providers, and deficiency in offering preventative vaccines to all races and genders by healthcare providers. Marked changes in the offering of preventative vaccines for HPV, as well as appropriate education of HPV, are critical for a decrease in transmission and infection rates across the nation.

Keywords: Human Papillomavirus (HPV), vaccinations, college age students, barriers to vaccination

Nicaragua has a high rate of incidence and mortality related to cervical cancer when compared to other Latin American countries. Cervical cancer is related to persistent infections of oncogenic Human Papillomavirus (HPV), which can be detected by recommended Papanicolaou screenings. Current public health initiatives are focused on decreasing rates of cervical cancer by increasing rates of screening. Exposing and analyzing perceived barriers to obtaining the recommended screening within target populations could lead to a positive overall effect on the associated mortality rate in Nicaragua. Nicaraguan women were surveyed using a Likert-type 4- point scale evaluating perceived barriers commonly reported in the published literature. The most frequently reported barrier in the study was the concern that the examiner may not be female. Other commonly reported barriers were fear of a cancer diagnosis, fear that results would not be private, and embarrassment regarding exposing genitals for the exam. Weaker positive responses were seen regarding long wait times at the clinic. In contrast, a lack of spousal/partner support, previous negative experience with having the Papanicolaou exam, and knowledge deficit regarding need or risk showed the strongest disagreement in the survey. Mild disagreement was noted regarding fear of pain during the exam. Unexpected findings included females reporting issues with continuity of care, and not receiving results of screenings. Knowledge of barriers may improve exam adherence and early detection for future healthcare professionals working within this population of females. Applying knowledge of perceived barriers, public health officials and providers will be equipped to maximize effectiveness of cervical cancer screening initiatives.

Keywords: Papanicolaou screenings, Pap, cervical cancer, Nicaragua

Enhancing the cultural competency of healthcare providers (HCPs) is one strategy to bridge the gap of healthcare disparities in the multicultural United States (US). This quantitative study was designed to assess if a seven-day international medical mission trip to Belize, Central America enhanced the cultural competence ofHCPs. The independent t-test was used to compare a single sample of unmatched HCPs using a survey designed to measure cultural competence pre- and post- an international medical mission trip. The HCPs (N=l2) had a higher score indicating an improvement in cultural competence post-trip (M=74.5, SD􀂖.5) as compared to pre-trip (M=72.4, SD=7.l).

Keywords: Cultural competency, minorities, healthcare providers, healthcare disparities, international medical mission trip

This research study was conducted to compare the treatment patterns of Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Physicians when treating children, aged 6 months to 12 years, diagnosed with Acute Otitis Media (AOM) based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines. An anonymous, non-experimental, cross­sectional, 9-item, web-based survey that differentiated information by provider was collected. A total of 39 surveys from NPs and Physicians was received. Findings conclude that providers are not consistently following the CDC and AAP recommendations. Survey analysis show that 35% percent of NPs incorrectly prescribe antibiotics compared to 18.2% of Physicians. Research shows no significance between provider type when prescribing "Watchful Waiting" as a treatment for AOM.

Keywords: acute otitis media, nurse practitioner, physician, antibiotics, watchful waiting, evidence-based guidelines