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As the primary mechanism through which journalistic labour is organized within a newsroom, news beats are an important feature of journalistic research. However, within the extensive research that examines beat reporting and its specialties, there is little that examines how the media covers itself���or the media beat. This study explores the media beat in Australia, examining how media covered two major media change events: the loss of jobs at newspaper publisher Fairfax in 2012 and the potential closure of wire service Australian Associated Press (AAP) in 2020. In analysing reporting of change events in journalism through a framework of metajournalistic discourse, and through an analysis of 200 items, this study found that ���media beat��� journalists included more information about the adverse effects of job loss and disruption on news supply in 2020 than in 2012. Intermedia competition often shaped coverage, with journalists reporting change in rival media companies. Yet, how ���media beat��� reporters covered these changes varied in both years. The study also found that stakeholders from within and outside of media contribute to the development of change narratives in journalism by offering robust discussion of the implications of industry transformation for news quality and informed publics.

As automobiles have become an essential part to facilitate our daily life, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have been gaining more and more interest in assisting drivers to enhance both safety and convenience. To respond timely in case of an emergency, ADAS needs to keep track of the driver’s health/consciousness, which is generally achieved by monitoring the driver’s vital signs including Respiration Rate (RR), Heart Rate (HR) and Heart Rate Variability (HRV). However, most of the state-of-art solutions need to assume that the human is stationary, which does not hold in practical driving scenarios. To tackle the problem, we propose a novel system, which can estimate driver’s RR, HR and Inter-Beat Intervals (IBI) in the presence of driver’s motion artifacts using commercial millimeter-wave (mmWave) radio. The system consists of two key components. First, to extract the reflection signals containing vital signals, the motion artifacts are first removed by a novel motion compensation module, followed by the periodicity check to identify the components with vital signals. Second, the respiration and heartbeat signals are reconstructed by jointly optimizing the decomposition of all the extracted compound vital signals over different range-azimuth bins. We evaluate the system performance in real driving environment and investigate the impact of different parameters including the device locations, pavement conditions and motion types. Experimental results show that the proposed system can achieve a median error of 0.16 Respiration Per Minute (RPM), 0.82 Beat Per Minute (BPM) and 46 ms for RR, HR and IBI estimations, corresponding to the relative accuracy of 99.17%, 98.94% and 94.11%, respectively.

Background Pseudo-spiral Cartesian sampling with compressed sensing reconstruction has facilitated highly accelerated 4D flow magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in various cardiovascular structures. However, unlike echo planar imaging (EPI)-accelerated 4D flow MRI, it has not been validated in whole-heart applications. Hypothesis Pseudo-spiral 4D flow MRI (PROUD [PROspective Undersampling in multiple Dimensions]) is comparable to EPI in robustness of valvular flow measurements and remains comparable as the undersampling factor is increased and scan time reduced. Study Type Prospective. Population Twelve healthy subjects and eight patients with valvular regurgitation. Field Strength/Sequence 3.0 T; PROUD and EPI 4D flow sequences, 2D flow and balanced steady-state free precession sequences. Assessment Valvular blood flow was quantified using valve tracking. PROUD- and EPI-based measurements of aortic (AV) and pulmonary (PV) flow volumes and left and right ventricular stroke volumes were tested for agreement with 2D MRI-based measurements. PROUD reconstructions with undersampling factors (R) of 9, 14, 28, and 56 were tested for intervalve consistency (per valve, compared to the other valves) and preservation of peak velocities and E/A ratios. Statistical Tests We used repeated measures ANOVA, Bland-Altman, Wilcoxon signed rank, and intraclass correlation coefficients. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results PROUD and EPI intervalve consistencies were not significantly different both in healthy subjects (valve-averaged mean difference [limits of agreement width]: 3.2 +/- 0.8 [8.7 +/- 1.1] mL/beat for PROUD, 5.5 +/- 2.9 [13.7 +/- 2.3] mL/beat for EPI, P = 0.07) and in patients with valvular regurgitation (2.3 +/- 1.2 [15.3 +/- 5.9] mL/beat for PROUD, 0.6 +/- 0.6 [19.3 +/- 2.9] mL/beat for EPI, P = 0.47). Agreement between EPI and PROUD was higher than between 4D flow (EPI or PROUD) and 2D MRI for forward flow, stroke volumes, and regurgitant volumes. Up to R = 28 in healthy subjects and R = 14 in patients with valvular regurgitation, PROUD intervalve consistency remained comparable to that of EPI. Peak velocities and E/A ratios were preserved up to R = 9. Conclusion PROUD is comparable to EPI in terms of intervalve consistency and may be used with higher undersampling factors to shorten scan times further. Level of Evidence 1 Technical Efficacy Stage 2

BACKGROUND Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) episode related blood pressure (BP) surge may mediate the association of OSA with cardiovascular disease. However, BP is not measured during a clinical sleep study. METHOD We tested the feasibility of incorporating the Caretaker physiological monitor, which utilizes a novel continuous beat-to-beat (b-b) BP monitoring technology, into polysomnography (PSG) and aimed to characterize BP surges related to obstructive respiratory events. B-b BP was concurrently collected and merged with PSG data on a posthoc basis. We compared BP surge between mean respiratory (apnoea, hypopnea and desaturation-alone events) and nonrespiratory events (spontaneous or leg movement-related arousals). We examined the association of the degree of oxygen desaturation with BP surge in a given respiratory event combining all events. A total of 17 consecutive patients (12 men, mean 52 years old, nine diagnostic and eight split-night PSGs) undergoing clinically indicated PSG were included after excluding one patient with poor signal quality due to excessive movement. RESULTS Caretaker was well tolerated. Mean respiratory BP surge ranged from 5 to 19 mmHg [Median (IQR) = 13.9 (9.5--16.2)]. Mean BP surge between the respiratory and nonrespiratory events was similar [13.8 (4.5) vs. 14.9 (5.3) mmHg, P = 0.13]. Accounting for the count distribution of desaturation/BP surge data pair events, there was a linear correlation between the degree of oxygen desaturation and BP surge (R = 0.57, P

This study investigates the beat-to-beat relationships among Pulse Transit Times (PTTs) and Pulse Arrival Times (PATs) concomitantly measured from the heart to finger, ear and forehead vascular districts, and their correlations with continuous finger blood pressure. These aspects were explored in 22 young volunteers at rest and during cold pressure test (CPT, thermal stress), handgrip (HG, isometric exercise) and cyclo-ergometer pedalling (CYC, dynamic exercise). The starting point of the PTT measures was the opening of the aortic valve detected by the seismocardiogram. Results indicate that PTTs measured at the ear, forehead and finger districts are uncorrelated each other at rest, and during CPT and HG. The stressors produced district-dependent changes in the PTT variability. Only the dynamic exercise was able to induce significant changes with respect to rest in the PTTs mean values (-40%, -36% and -17%, respectively for PTTear, PTTfore, PTTfinger,), and synchronize their modulations. Similar trends were observed in the PATs. The isovolumic contraction time decreased during the stressors application with a minimum at CYC (-25%) reflecting an augmented heart contractility. The increase in blood pressure (BP) at CPT was greater than that at CYC (137 vs. 128 mmHg), but the correlations between beat-to-beat transit times and BP were maximal at CYC (PAT showed a higher correlation than PTT; correlations were greater for systolic than for diastolic BP). This suggests that pulse transit times do not always depend directly on the beat-to-beat BP values but, under specific conditions, on other factors and mechanisms that concomitantly also influence BP.

While the phenomenon of beat-deafness has been explored in clinical contexts, few studies have investigated how rhythmically challenged people experience the act of keeping time with music. Task-based semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants who self-identified as being unable to clap in time to a beat. Participants were asked to keep time with a gradated battery of musical stimuli using both claps and alternative gestures (e.g. head nodding, swaying) and to articulate their timekeeping experience and strategies. Analysis reveals three core themes: (a) an apparent disconnect between the act of identifying the beat and the physical act of clapping, (b) variation in strategies for keeping time depending on the type of musical example (i.e., whether the beat was explicitly played by a percussive instrument or not), and (c) variation in the ease of coordination and listening experience when a movement other than clapping was used to keep time. Despite being small in scale, this qualitative study sheds light on some of the underlying strategies and processes involved in beat abstraction and keeping time to music, informing options for the musical training of rhythmically challenged people.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) consists of complex segments, such as P-QRS-T waves. Manual ECG annotation is challenging and time-consuming, even for specialist physicians. The shortage of labelled ECG data is one of the essential factors that affect ECG intelligent analysis's long-term development. This study proposes an intelligent ECG-assisted annotation system, that not only supplements labelled data, but also significantly reduces the workload compared with manual annotation. Since beat annotation is the most basic and important part, a GAN-based generation model that can generate 14 types of simulation beats and a CNN-based beat pre-annotation model are proposed. The experimental results show that the simulation beat has high similarity to real beat and the accuracy of the pre-annotation model on the test set of 14 classes of beats is 99.28%. The proposed ECG intelligent annotation system's self-learning mechanism could improve pre-annotation performance and annotation efficiency by generating more labelled data. The proposed annotation system can also be extended to other data annotation applications.

Optical mapping is an imaging technique that is extensively used in cardiovascular research, wherein parameter-sensitive fluorescent indicators are used to study the electrophysiology and excitation-contraction coupling of cardiac tissues. Despite many benefits of optical mapping, eliminating motion artifacts within the optical signals is a major challenge, as myocardial contraction interferes with the faithful acquisition of action potentials and intracellular calcium transients. As such, excitation-contraction uncoupling agents are frequently used to reduce signal distortion by suppressing contraction. When compared with other uncoupling agents, blebbistatin is the most frequently used, as it offers increased potency with minimal direct effects on cardiac electrophysiology. Nevertheless, blebbistatin may exert secondary effects on electrical activity, metabolism, and coronary flow, and the incorrect administration of blebbistatin to cardiac tissue can prove detrimental, resulting in erroneous interpretation of optical mapping results. In this “Getting It Right” perspective, we briefly review the literature regarding the use of blebbistatin in cardiac optical mapping experiments, highlight potential secondary effects of blebbistatin on cardiac electrical activity and metabolic demand, and conclude with the consensus of the authors on best practices for effectively using blebbistatin in optical mapping studies of cardiac tissue.

This exploratory, qualitative study documents how journalists working for U.S. news organizations defined and refined the concept of a “gender beat” in the aftermath of the 2017 resurgence of the #...

Purpose: This study aimed to document the present status of medicinal plants used to boost the immunity to combat Coronavirus. Materials and Methods: For the assessment and use of herbs during the Covid 19 pandemic, surveys were conducted in different villages of Seraj block. The surveys were conducted during the spread of the pandemic from 2020 to 2021. Local people were interviewed and information on the utilization of local herbs during this pandemic was recorded. Information on parts used, the procedure of use, habit, habitat, etc. was also collected. Results: A total of 58 species of medicinal plants from 27 families and 42 genera were documented. Among them, the most dominant family was Rosaceae. Most of the plants such as Morchella sp, Naustratium officinale,Taraxacum officinale ,Urtica dioica ,Allium sp,Withania foraminifera, Curcuma longa, Cannabis, Mentha, Ocimum sanctum are rich in antioxidants and have a wide range of medicinal values used to treat cough, cold, fever, and bronchitis. All these plants were used traditionally to boost immunity. Due to the covid -19 pandemic, the utilization of these herbal plants has increased many folds in the area. These medicinal plants should be made available to scientists to design clinical trials. Integration of this concept would certainly develop drug therapy in the near future. Conclusion: The study found that the use of medicinal plants has increased during COVID-19 and most of the respondents recommended medicinal plants to prevent COVID-19 and to boost immunity. More studies should be conducted to develop certain formulations.

Auditory perception of time is superior to visual perception, both for simple intervals and beat-based musical rhythms. To what extent does this auditory advantage characterize perception of different hierarchical levels of musical meter, and how is it related to lifelong experience with music? We paired musical excerpts with auditory and visual metronomes that matched or mismatched the musical meter at the beat level (faster) and measure level (slower) and obtained fit ratings from adults and children (5-10 years). Adults exhibited an auditory advantage in this task for the beat level, but not for the measure level. Children also displayed an auditory advantage that increased with age for the beat level. In both modalities, their overall sensitivity to beat increased with age, but they were not sensitive to measure-level matching at any age. More musical training was related to enhanced sensitivity in both auditory and visual modalities for measure-level matching in adults and beat-level matching in children. These findings provide evidence for auditory superiority of beat perception across development, and they suggest that beat and meter perception develop quite gradually and rely on lifelong acquisition of musical knowledge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

In medical practices, the detection of diseases highly depends on different medical tests. Electrocardiogram (ECG) technique is commonly used for heart disease diagnosis. Doctors can measure pulse and other heart boundaries with the aid of it. Fast and precise detection of forms of arrhythmia is critical while identifying heart disease. In this work, we proposed an intelligent ECG device (called iKardo) with the built-in automatic capability to classify into critical and non-critical data from an imbalanced ECG dataset for the smart IoT or Internet of Things based smart healthcare device. Particular emphasis is given to the reduction of data misclassification by converting imbalanced data into a balanced dataset using necessary techniques. This proposed iKardo helps in the accurate detection of critical ECG beats with an accuracy of 99.58% and result in a smart healthcare monitoring device that would make the disease detection fast and precise.

In this paper we have utilized a hybrid lightweight 1D deep learning model that combines convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) methods for accurate, fast, and automated beat-wise ECG classification. The CNN and LSTM models were designed separately to compare with the hybrid CNN-LSTM model in terms of accuracy, number of parameters, and the time required for classification. The hybrid CNN-LSTM system provides an automated deep feature extraction and classification for six ECG beats classes including Normal Sinus Rhythm (NSR), atrial fibrillation (AFIB), atrial flutter (AFL), atrial premature beat (APB), left bundle branch block (LBBB), and right bundle branch block (RBBB). The hybrid model uses the CNN blocks for deep feature extraction and selection from the ECG beat. While the LSTM layer will learn how to extract contextual time information. The results show that the proposed hybrid CNN-LSTM model achieves high accuracy and sensitivity of 98.22% and 98.23% respectively. This model is light and fast in classifying ECG beats and superior to other previously used models which makes it very suitable for embedded systems designs that can be used in clinical applications for monitoring heart diseases in faster and more efficient manner.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss some of James G. March’s key ideas and extend and integrate them with the works and ideas of John Boyd, whose work is highly relevant to, yet neglected by, behavioral and evolutionary perspectives on decision-making, organizations and strategy.Design/methodology/approachThis paper integrates and synthesizes ideas in behavioral organization studies with those of John Boyd.FindingsThe authors suggest that when integrated, Boydian and Marchian ideas can enrich the understanding of particular ideas and mechanisms identified in behavioral organization studies and help broaden the intellectual and interdisciplinary range of the field in consonance with March’s vision for it.Originality/valueThe authors combine and integrate ideas central to the field of organization studies with those of an “outsider.”

Non-invasive electrocardiographic imaging (ECGI) is a novel clinical tool for mapping ventricular arrhythmia. Using multiple body surface electrodes to collect unipolar electrograms and conventional medical imaging of the heart, an epicardial shell can be created to display calculated electrograms. This calculation is achieved by solving the inverse problem and allows activation times to be calculated from a single beat. The technology was initially pioneered in the US using an experimental torso-shaped tank. Accuracy from studies in humans has varied. Early data was promising, with more recent work suggesting only moderate accuracy when reproducing cardiac activation. Despite these limitations, the system has been successfully used in pioneering work with non-invasive cardiac radioablation to treat ventricular arrhythmia. This suggests that the resolution may be sufficient for treatment of large target areas. Although untested in a well conducted clinical study it is likely that it would not be accurate enough to guide more discreet radiofrequency ablation.

Dans cette contribution, Lindsay Lachance s’entretient avec Tara Beagan, lauréate du prix Siminovitch en 2020, au sujet des personnages féminins de sa pièce Honour Beat. Au fil de la conversation, nous apprenons comment la famille de Beagan et leurs expériences intergénérationnelles figurent dans l’univers de sa pièce. La dramaturge interroge les notions de jeunesse, de joie et de souvenirs incarnés en demandant que la plus jeune des comédiennes interprète le rôle du personnage le plus âgé. Honour Beat est un univers dans lequel la mère sert de communauté et de chez soi, et elle nous invite tous à prendre le thé chez elle.

We aimed at investigating the relation between left ventricle (LV) systolic parameters and beat-to-beat distances and also whether this relation is different in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). The relation between peak velocity in left ventricular outflow (VLVOT), left atrioventricular plane displacement (LAVPD) or peak systolic tissue Doppler velocity of lateral mitral annulus (Lateral S') and preceding beat-to-beat distance (RR1) or prepreceding beat-to-beat distance (RR2) were analyzed by linear regression analysis. From this analysis, three parameters were obtained: slope of regression line, constant of regression line, and square of regression coefficient (r2) of linear relation. In the group with HFrEF, the slope and r2 values of the regression line showing the relationship between the RR1 interval and VLVOT, LAVPD, and Lateral S' values were higher and the constants were lower. In the Kendall rank correlation analysis, the slope, constant, and r2 values of the regression analysis between RR1 interval and VLVOT or Lateral S' were in significant correlation with LVEF. The r2 of VLVOT-RR1 analysis, slope of this analysis, and slope of Lateral S'-RR1 regression line values were mostly predictive for detecting HFrEF. It was concluded that the novel parameters obtained by linear regression analysis between LV systolic function parameters and RR1 interval, but not RR2, might be beneficial for evaluating systolic heart failure in patients with AF. They might have potential for future research about the physiopathology of heart and prognosis in patient with AF.

Enhancing synchronization among people when synchronization is lacking is believed to improve their social skills, learning processes, and proficiency in musical rhythmic development. Greater synchronization among people can be induced to improve the rhythmic interaction of a system with multiple dancing robots that dance to a drum beat. A series of experiments were conducted to examine the human–human synchrony between persons that participated in musical sessions with robots. In this study, we evaluated: (a) the effect of the number of robots on a subject’s ability to synchronize with an experimenter; (b) the effect of the type of robot synchrony, namely, whether the robots did or did not represent the subject’s rhythm; (c) the effect of an in-sync and out-of-sync robot on a subject’s behavior. We found that: (a) three robots increased the level of synchronization between the subject and experimenter and their enjoyment level; (b) robots may induce greater synchronization between the subject and experimenter by reproducing the rhythms of not only the experimenter but also of the subject compared to when only the experimenter’s rhythms had been reproduced; (c) the robots in-sync had greater influence on the natural rhythm of the subject.

Based on a content analysis of 33,640 news stories from the Journalistic Role Performance project, this paper analyzes how civic, service and infotainment roles connect with thematic beats and vary...

This study investigates placebos and video games’ usefulness as psychological research tools. One proposed underlying mechanism of the placebo effect is participants’ expectations. Such expectation effects exist in sports psychology and healthcare domains, but inconsistent findings have emerged on whether similar effects impact a participants’ cognitive performance. Concurrently, using video games as task environments is an emerging methodology relating to expertise and large-scale behavioral data collection. Therefore, this study examines the expectancy effect induced by researcher instructions on in-game performance. The instructional expectancy condition for this study is in-game successes framed using emoting (e.g., emoting under the pretense of subsequent performance increases) versus a control group. Preliminary results showed no evidence of different in-game performance between expectancy conditions. Potential mechanisms that could have led to a lack of effect were discussed.

Cues to prominence such as beat gesture and contrastive pitch accent play an important role in constraining what is remembered. However, it is currently unclear how beat gesture affects online discourse processing alone and in combination with contrastive accenting. Using an adaptation of the visual world eye-tracking paradigm, we orthogonally manipulated the presence of these cues and their felicity (match) with contrast within local (sentence-level) and global (experiment-level) referential contexts. In Experiment 1, in which beat gesture and contrastive accenting were always globally felicitous with the context of filler referring expressions, beat gesture increased anticipation of both target and competitor referents of locally infelicitous critical referring expressions differing in color and shape, whereas contrastive accenting hindered resolution of these expressions. In Experiment 2, in which beat gesture and contrastive accenting were always globally infelicitous with the context of filler referring expressions, beat gesture increased anticipation of both target and competitor referents of locally felicitous critical referring expressions contrasting in color, whereas contrastive accenting did not affect their interpretation. Taken together, these findings indicate that local and global felicity of cues to prominence with contrast affects their interpretation during online spoken discourse processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

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A case report of unusual QT interval prolongation after ventricular premature beat is presented.

Online and remote ways of working have created a warm and welcoming environment for fraudsters. And yet many businesses say they should be doing more to beat fraud. Now it's time for them to take action.

Background Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) involves synchronizing footsteps to music or a metronome to improve gait speed and stability in patients with neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease. However, responses to RAS vary across individuals, perhaps because of differences in enjoyment of the music or in musical abilities. Research question Intuitively, musical enjoyment may influence gait responses to RAS, but enjoyment has not been systematically manipulated nor the effects empirically assessed. In addition, differences in beat perception ability are likely to influence gait responses to music, particularly when synchronizing to the beat. Therefore, we asked: how does music enjoyment alter gait, and do gait parameters differ between individuals with good versus poor beat perception ability, specifically when instructed to ‘walk freely’ versus ‘synchronize to the beat’? Method Young adults and older adults walked on a pressure sensor walkway in silence and to music that they had rated as either high or low in enjoyment, as well as a metronome. All stimuli were presented at 15 % faster than baseline cadence. Participants either walked freely to the music or synchronized to the beat. Results Music enjoyment had no significant effects on gait in either younger or older adults. Compared to baseline, younger adults walked faster (by taking longer strides) to music than the metronome, whereas older adults walked faster (by taking more steps per minute) to the metronome than music. When instructed to synchronize vs. walk freely, young adults walked faster, but older adults walked slower. Finally, regardless of instruction type, young adults with poor beat perception took shorter and slower strides to the music, whereas older adults with poor beat perception took slower strides to the music. Significance Beat perception ability, instruction type, and age affect gait more than music enjoyment does, and thus should be considered when optimizing RAS outcomes.

This article analyses the tensions of the cultural news beat, or what we call cultural journalism. We trace the ways in which transformations such as globalization, digitalization and conglomeratio...

Background Spontaneous ventricular premature contractions (PVCs) and ventricular tachycardia (VT) in the acute post infarct milieu is assumed to be due to automaticity. However, the mechanism has not been studied with intramural mapping. Objective To study the mechanism of spontaneous PVCs with high density intramural mapping in a canine model, and to test the hypothesis that post-infarct PVCs and VT are due to re-entry rather than automaticity. Methods In 15 anesthetized dogs, using 768 intramural unipolar electrograms, simultaneous recordings were made. After 20 mins of stabilization, recordings were made during the first 10 minutes of ischemia, and activation maps of individual beats were constructed. Acute ischemia was produced by clamping the left anterior descending coronary artery proximal to the first diagonal branch. Results In all experiments ST-T alternans was present. Spontaneous ventricular beats occurred in 5 of 15 dogs where the earliest ectopic activity was manifested in the endocardium, well within the ischemic zone. From there, activity spread rapidly along the subendocardium, with endo-to epicardial spread along the non-ischemic myocardium. Epicardial breakthrough always occurred at the border of the ischemic myocardium. In 3 dogs, delayed potentials were observed, which were earliest at the ischemic epicardium and extended transmurally with increasing delay towards the endocardium, where they culminated in a premature beat. A similar sequence was observed in VT that followed. Conclusion Graded responses that occur with each sinus beat intramurally, when able to propagate from epicardium to endocardium is the mechanism of PVCs and VT in post-infarct myocardium. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among beat perception, error detection, and musical experience. We presented monophonic rhythms using a piano timbre along with two measures of beat perception (Harvard Beat Finding and Interval Test [BFIT] and Goldsmiths Beat Alignment Test) and a measure of melodic error detection. College musicians’ ( N = 43) ability to detect rhythm errors was not significantly correlated to their ability to perceive beat alignment (Goldsmiths test) or tempo change (BFIT). Age was related to performance on only one of the measures, the BFIT test. A regression model yielded pitch error detection as the only significant predictor of rhythmic error detection. We suggest that college musicians already possess a requisite ability for beat processing that allows them to perform error detection. The lack of relationship between beat perception and rhythmic error detection is explained by this requisite ability in the population, and we promote future research for pitch and rhythm processing as it relates to rhythm perception or performance.

ABSRACT. Human gait is inherently rhythmical, thus walking to rhythmic auditory stimulation is a promising intervention to improve temporal gait asymmetry (TGA) following neurologic injury such as stroke. However, the degree of benefit may relate to an individual's underlying rhythmic ability. We conducted an initial investigation into the relationship between rhythm abilities and responsiveness of TGA when walking to a metronome. TGA was induced in neurotypical young adults with ankle and thigh cuff weights. Participants were grouped by strong or weak rhythm ability based on beat perception and production tests. TGA was induced using a unilateral load affixed to the non-dominant leg. Participants walked under three conditions: uncued baseline, metronome set to 100% of baseline cadence, and metronome set to 90% of baseline cadence. Repeated measures analysis using generalized estimating equations was conducted to determine how rhythm ability affected TGA response in each walking condition. Most participants improved TGA when walking to a metronome at either tempo compared to baseline; however, this improvement did not differ between strong and weak rhythm ability groups. Those who scored worse on the rhythm perception test also were poorer at synchronizing their steps to the beat. The induced TGA is smaller than what is commonly experienced after stroke. A larger induced TGA may be necessary to reveal subtle differences in responsiveness to rhythmical auditory stimulation between those with strong and weak rhythm abilities.

This article examines press ethics across different news beats. Traditionally, studies of news beats have focused on the development, output or routines of a particular news beat, but few studies h...

Introduction: The pattern of brain waves in primary insomniacs is different from healthy subjects. Studies have shown that binaural beats can alter the pattern of brain waves in healthy individuals, but the efficacy of binaural beats in altering the pattern of brain waves in primary insomniacs has not yet been investigated. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of theta binaural beat on the absolute power of theta activity in primary insomniacs. Methods: This study was a randomized clinical trial with experimental and control groups. Primary insomniacs received theta binaural beats in the experimental group and white noise in the control group. Their brain waves were recorded by EEG for 25 minutes, the first 5 minutes without stimulus (1st block), 15 minutes after receiving stimulus (binaural beat or white noise), and the last 5 minutes without stimulus (5th block). Matlab software (R2019a), EEGLAB toolbox and SPSS-24 were used for data analysis. Results: The absolute power of theta activity in the experimental group was significantly higher in the last block comparing to the first block in all brain lobes (P< 0.05). The largest changes in theta activity were in temporal and parietal lobes, and the last one was in prefrontal lobe. In the control group, none of the brain lobes showed significant difference in the last block compared to the first block. Conclusion: Theta binaural beat can alter the absolute power of theta activity in primary insomniacs. The implications of the study are discussed.

As digital platforms have come to play a central role in the news and information ecosystem, a new realm of watchdog journalism has emerged – the platform beat. Journalists on the platform beat report on the operation, use and misuse of social media platforms and search engines. The platform beat can serve as an important mechanism for increasing the accountability of digital platforms, in ways that can affect public trust in the platforms, but that can also, hopefully, lead to the development of stronger, more reliable, and ultimately more trustworthy, platforms. However, there are a number of tensions, vulnerabilities and potential conflicts of interest that characterize the platform beat. This article explores these complex dynamics of the platform beat in an effort assess the capacity of those on the platform beat to enhance the accountability and trustworthiness of digital platforms.

Orchestras all over the world have concert programs in various formats for children, including some designed for preschoolers. Presenting concerts to children in kindergartens and schools is a long-standing tradition in Israel. The uniqueness of these programs and their main innovation is the preparatory work and process through which the children are prepared for the concert—which is the culmination of the whole process. This case study focuses on the first 10 years (2005–15) of one of these programs—“Beat”—implemented in Israeli kindergartens. We aim to characterize the development of the various stages of this program, and to describe its integration into kindergarten life. The data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 26 program participants over the years (kindergarten teachers, music teachers in kindergartens, musicians, etc.), as well as documents (concert programs, preparation booklets, etc.) from its collaborating bodies. The main findings show the importance and impact of the cooperation between kindergarten teachers and music teachers during the preparatory stages, making music a part of daily life in kindergarten.

With a sound sensing system using stochastic resonance (4SR), it became possible to obtain an acoustic pulse wave (APW)—a waveform created via a mixture of apex beat and heart sound. We examined 50 subjects who were healthy, with no underlying cardiovascular diseases. We could determine boundary frequency (BF) using APW and phonocardiogram signals. APW data was divided into two bands, one from 0.5 Hz to BF, and a second one from BF to 50 Hz. This permitted the extraction of cardiac apex beat (CAB) and cardiac acoustic sound (CAS), respectively. BF could be expressed by a quadratic function of heart rate, and made it possible to collect CAB and CAS in real time. According to heart rate variability analysis, the fluctuation was 1/f, which indicated an efficient cardiac movement when heart rate was 70 to 80/min. In the frequency band between 0.5 Hz and BF, CAB readings collected from the precordial region resembled apex cardiogram data. The waveforms were classified into five types. Therefore, the new 4SR sensing system can be used as a physical diagnostic tool to obtain biological pulse wave data non-invasively and repeatedly over a long period, and it shows promise for broader applications, including AI analysis.

Binaural beats have been used as a way of modifying cognition via auditory stimulation. A recent meta-analysis suggests that binaural beat stimulation can have a positive effect on attention (Garcia-Argibay et al., Psychologische Forschung 83:1124-1136, 2019a, Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung 83:357-372, 2019b), with the sample-weighted average effect size being about .58. This is an intriguing and potentially useful finding, both theoretically and practically. In this study, we focus on sustained attention. We delivered beta-frequency (16 Hz) binaural beat stimulation during a sustained attention task. In "Experiment 1", reaction times were faster under beat stimulation than control stimulation in a between-subjects design. However, the effect was modest in magnitude, and model comparisons using Bayes Factors were indiscriminate between including and excluding the effect from the model. We followed this initial experiment with two concurrently administered follow-up experiments. In "Experiment 2", we added thought probes to measure any changes in task engagement associated with binaural beat stimulation. "Experiment 2" revealed a different effect from "Experiment 1": participants in the binaural beat condition exhibited a shallower vigilance decrement. However, the beat stimulation did not affect the thought probes responses. Combining data across the two experiments indicated rather strong evidence against the hypothesis that beta-frequency binaural beats can augment sustained attention, either via a general speeding of responding or a mitigation of the vigilance decrement. Finally, in "Experiment 3", we investigated whether pupillary measures of arousal and/or task engagement would be affected by binaural beat stimulation. There was no evidence for such effects. Overall, we did not observe any consistent evidence that binaural beat stimulation can augment sustained attention or its subjective and physiological correlates.

Aim. Blood pressure (BP) determination in atrial fibrillation (AF) patients remains challenging due to its high inter-measurement variability. The novel methodology of precise beat-to-beat BP determination may be used to guide the hypotensive therapy selection and adjustment, but along with that provides additional opportunity for the investigation of hemodynamics in patients with chronic AF. Material and method. The study sample consisted of 60 patients with the main diagnosis of grade II-III arterial hypertension; 30 of those were on sinus rhythm and 30 had chronic non-valvular AF. In all patients HR was within the limits recommended for left ventricular ejection fraction of >40%. Beat-to-beat systolic, diastolic, and pulse BP (SBP, DBP, and PBP, respectively) assessment at each heart beat within 15 minute interval was performed with “Kardiotekhnika-SAKR” system (NAO “Incart”, St.Petersburg, Russia). Results. Mild RR-interval variations, observed on sinus rhythm, resulted in insignificant SBP, DBP, and PBP fluctuations. More prominent RR-interval irregularity, typical for AF, is accompanied by more significant SBP, DBP, and PBP deviations. As mean SBP of each patient was taken for 1,0, “normal” SBP (≥0,9) was seen in RR-intervals of 754±58 msec; “markedly decreased” ( 1,15) in 587±38 msec; “prominently increased” (>1,2) in 566±38 msec; “severely increased” (>1,2) in 539±41 msec. For PBP (mean PBP of each patient was taken for 1,0) “normal” PBP (≥0,75) was seen in RR-intervals of 770±58 msec; “markedly decreased” (

Local news organizations are adapting their newsroom routines to better respond to a digital readership. These models feature different levels of online integration, but all aim to restructure news...

In this paper, we focus on the consequences of cost-cutting strategies for the division of labor in newsrooms both in terms of differences between generalist profiles and beat reporters, and in terms of differences between permanent staff and freelancers. A large-scale representative survey of Belgian journalists in 2013 and 2018 shows that the number of beat reporters has remained stable although these journalists are expected to cover a higher number of beats. We also noticed a sharp increase of selfemployed journalists. The prestigious political beat seems to benefit from a protected position in the newsroom and is mostly staffed by payroll journalists. Other beats are under pressure, most importantly the regional beat (that has decreased over the course of 5 years) and the lifestyle beat. The latter group of journalists are predominantly freelancers and report low levels of perceived autonomy from commercial and non-commercial pressure. The findings raise concerns about negative side-effects of cost-cutting strategies including a tendency towards more homogeneous news production and increasing influence of PR on journalism.

This research presents a comparison study between different representations of spectrograms and then feeding them to different convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures. The study uses two short-time Fourier transform (STFT) representations, namely, Log-scale and Mel-Scale in addition to Bi-Spectrum and the third-order cumulant. Meanwhile, four different CNN architectures have been utilized in the present study, namely, AOCT-NET, Mobile-Net, Squeeze-Net, and Shuffle-Net. The study has exploited 10,502 beats extracted from the standard MIT-BIH arrhythmia database and represent six different classes: normal beat (N), left bundle branch block beat (LBBB), right bundle branch block beat (RBBB), premature ventricular contraction (PVC), atrial premature beat (APB), and aberrated atrial premature (aAP). The study compares the accuracy, sensitivity, precision, and specificity rates of the spectrogram-based and CNN architecture models under study. This paper hypothesizes that ECG features can be extracted from different spectral representations and can lead to improving the understanding and detection of the human heart's different arrhythmias by feeding these features to different CNN models. The suggested models’ performance was evaluated by dividing the dataset into three subsets (Training 70%, Validation 15%, and Testing 15%) and the best overall performance among all used CNN architectures was MobileNet with an overall accuracy of 93.8%, while the best spectrum representation among all used was the bispectrum with an overall accuracy of 93.7%. It has been shown that the spectrum representations of ECG beat have provided significant information about heart performance and can be used significantly in arrhythmia classification using deep learning techniques.

Local journalism in the UK has been described as being in “crisis”. Local newspapers have experienced years of declining circulations and staff cuts, leading to questions about how effectively thos...

Acoustic signals that reliably indicate body size, which usually determines competitive ability, are of particular interest for understanding how animals assess rivals and choose mates. Whereas body size tends to be negatively associated with formant dispersion in animal vocalizations, non-vocal signals have received little attention. Among the most emblematic sounds in the animal kingdom is the chest beat of gorillas, a non-vocal signal that is thought to be important in intra and inter-sexual competition, yet it is unclear whether it reliably indicates body size. We examined the relationship among body size (back breadth), peak frequency, and three temporal characteristics of the chest beat: duration, number of beats and beat rate from sound recordings of wild adult male mountain gorillas. Using linear mixed models, we found that larger males had significantly lower peak frequencies than smaller ones, but we found no consistent relationship between body size and the temporal characteristics measured. Taken together with earlier findings of positive correlations among male body size, dominance rank and reproductive success, we conclude that the gorilla chest beat is an honest signal of competitive ability. These results emphasize the potential of non-vocal signals to convey important information in mammal communication.

Background and Purpose: Blood pressure variability (BPV) from beat to beat is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events and enables rapid assessment of BPV, but the underlying causes of elevated BPV are unclear. Methods: In consecutive patients within 4 to 6 weeks of transient ischemic attack or nondisabling stroke (OXVASC [Oxford Vascular Study]), continuous noninvasive blood pressure was measured beat to beat over 5 minutes (Finometer). Arterial stiffness was measured by carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (Sphygmocor). After automated and manual data cleaning, associations between BPV (residual coefficient of variation), demographic factors, and arterial stiffness were determined for both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, by ANOVA and linear models. Relationships between demographic factors and arterial stiffness were determined by interaction terms and mediation. Results: Among 1013 patients, 54 (5.3%) were in AF, and 51 (5%) had low-quality recordings. In a general linear model including the remaining 908 participants, systolic BPV (SBPV) was most strongly associated with age ( P =0.00003), body mass index (BMI; P =0.003), and arterial stiffness ( P =0.008), with weaker independent associations with current smoking ( P =0.01) and a low diastolic blood pressure ( P =0.046). However, while there was a linear increase in SBPV with BMI in men, in women, SBPV was lowest for a BMI in the normal range but was greater below 20 or above 30 (ANOVA, P =0.012; BMI-sex interaction, P =0.03). Although BMI and pulse wave velocity were partially independent, increased pulse wave velocity mediated ≈32% of the relationship between increased BMI and SBPV ( P Conclusions: Vascular aging, manifest as arterial stiffness, was a strong determinant of increased SBPV and partially mediated the effect of increased BMI. However, although high BMI was independently associated with SBPV in both sexes, a low BMI was associated with increased SBPV only in women. SBPV may partially mediate the relationship between BMI and cardiovascular events, while obesity may provide a modifiable target to reduce SBPV and cardiovascular events.

This study draws upon psychological models of momentum to test for the existence of characteristics such as the hot hand and whether such characteristics predict better or worse overall performance. Using data from professional golf tournaments, we show that the negative emotions associated with poor performance (such as a loss of confidence) have a greater influence in the short run on scoring than positive emotions associated with prior success. We find that male and female golfers respond similarly to prior hole performance, while better players may be more prone to dips in performance after recent failures than other players. Overall, our results provide empirical support for the notion that performance training should incorporate psychological skills, including strategies for controlling emotional responses to success and failure in the short run.