This article explores how historical musicology can use computational methods within a minimal computing framework, recovering the performance histories of three migrant musicians, producing valuable new information about their careers. Líza Fuchsová, Maria Lidka, and Paul Hamburger all left Nazi-occupied Europe during the late 1930s and settled permanently in the UK. Fuchsová (1913-1977) was a Czech pianist who became an advocate for Czech musical culture as well as an important piano soloist; Hamburger (1920-2004) was an accompanist and teacher who left Vienna for London and became a senior figure in BBC radio and Guildhall professor; and Lidka (1914-2013) [Marianne Liedtke], was a violinist, orchestra leader and later Royal College of Music professor. Their careers have been underexplored, but machine-read digitised archives have opened new possibilities for finding and sorting what can seem like an overwhelming amount of performance data. This article uses a minimal computing led approach to demonstrate building a robust and accessible structure to interrogate performance data and establish performance histories. This article will demonstrate the value of this framework and will show how it can be applied to historical musicology work.

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, music significantly occupied the cultural and social life of the Bengali people. As the epicenter of British political and economic influence in the subcontinent, Calcutta witnessed the emergence of schools offering instruction in Indian and Western art music. The flourishing city housed private and public printing presses, which ensured the circulation and distribution of large numbers of songbooks, manuals, and theoretical treatises on music. The city was also home to a diverse assortment of hereditary music practitioners and occupational specialists illustrative of a variety of musical traditions spread across Bengal and North India. Around the 1870s, Bengali musicians, patrons, and connoisseurs began to take up music as an intellectual activity, examine its history as a source for social and political substance, and view musical instruments as material objects for disciplinary study. This emerging interest in musicology, broadly conceived, coincided with the proclamation of Victoria as queen and empress of India, considerably transforming Bengal's political fabric and cultural worldview. The pioneering musicologist Sourindro Mohun Tagore (1840–1914) was among the many authors who published works celebrating Queen Victoria's ascension as empress of India. In this article, I examine Tagore's songbooks dedicated to the queen, reading them as cultural artifacts representing a richly nuanced historical and musical legacy: a textual and aural archive demonstrating how Bengali musicians used sound to mediate the effects of colonization.

Oocytes with excessively large first polar bodies (PB1) often occur in assisted reproductive procedures. Many times these oocytes are discarded without insemination and, as a result, the application of this portion of oocytes has scarcely been reported to date. Few studies have examined large PB1 oocytes in infertile women and have virtually entirely studied genetic variations for large PB1 oocyte abnormalities. Here, we describe an unusual case of a live birth from a remarkably large PB1 oocyte in a frozen embryo transfer (FET) cycle. This is the first instance of a successful live birth resulting from a PB1 oocyte with an extremely large polar body measuring 80 μM × 40 μM in size. The large PB1 oocyte was performed by an early rescue intracytoplasmic sperm injection (r-ICSI) and was formed into a blastocyst on day 5. Following FET, a healthy boy baby weighing 3100 g was finally delivered by caesarean section at 37 weeks and 5 days after conception. Additionally, there were no complications throughout the antenatal period or the perinatal phase of this following full-term delivery. In this study, it is revealed for the first time that a huge PB1 oocyte can be fertilized, resulting in the growth of a blastocyst, a subsequent pregnancy, and a live birth. This new information prompts us to reconsider the use of large PB1 oocytes. More insightful talks should be given attention to prevent the waste of embryos because not all oocytes with aberrant morphology are unavailable.

Immobilisation of mechanical valve leaflets can be a life-threatening complication. In the acute setting, medical therapy can be attempted but is not always successful. We present the first described case of a patient with a mechanical tricuspid valve with recurrent leaflet immobilisation that was able to be mobilised using a transcatheter knocking technique.

The purpose of this study was to compare single- and multi-frequency bioimpedance (BIA) devices against dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) for appendicular lean mass (ALM) and muscle quality index (MQI) metrics in Hispanic adults. One hundred thirty-one Hispanic adults (18–55 years) participated in this study. ALM was measured with single-frequency bioimpedance analysis (SFBIA), multi-frequency bioimpedance analysis (MFBIA) and DXA. ALMTOTAL (left arm + right arm + left leg + right leg) and ALMARMS (left arm + right arm) were computed for all three devices. Handgrip strength (HGS) was measured using a dynamometer. The average HGS was used for all MQI models (highest left hand + highest right hand)/2. MQIARMS was defined as the ratio between HGS and ALMARMS. MQITOTAL was established as the ratio between HGS and ALMTOTAL. SFBIA and MFBIA had strong correlations with DXA for all ALM and MQI metrics (Lin’s concordance correlation coefficient values ranged from 0·86 (MQIMFBIA-ARMS) to 0·97 (Arms LMSFBIA); all P < 0·001). Equivalence testing varied between methods (e.g. SFBIA v. DXA) when examining the different metrics (i.e. ALMTOTAL, ALMARMS, MQITOTAL and MQIARMS). MQIARMS was the only metric that did not differ from the line of identity and had no proportional bias when comparing all the devices against each other. The current study findings demonstrate good overall agreement between SFBIA, MFBIA and DXA for ALMTOTAL and ALMARMS in a Hispanic population. However, SFBIA and MFBIA have better agreement with DXA when used to compute MQIARMS than MQITOTAL.

Parasitism poses a serious threat to hosts under certain circumstances, while the well-being of organisms is also negatively affected by environmental pollution. Little information is available on the simultaneous effects of parasites and pollutants on the physiological homeostasis of organisms. The present paper demonstrates that parasites: (i) may influence the metabolism of pollutants in infected hosts, (ii) interact with pollution in synergistic or antagonistic ways, and (iii) may induce physiological reactions in hosts which were thought to be pollutant-induced. Experimental studies on the uptake and accumulation of metals by fish reveal that fish infected with acanthocephalans have lower metal levels than uninfected hosts; e.g. Pomphorhynchus laevis reduces lead levels in fish bile, thereby diminishing or impeding the hepatic intestinal cycling of lead, which may reduce the quantity of metals available for fish. Alterations in pollutant uptake and accumulation in different intermediate and final hosts due to parasites are thus very important in the field of ecotoxicology. In addition to such alterations, there is a close interaction between the effects of pollutants and parasites which seems to be mediated at least partly by the endocrine system, which itself is closely related to the immune system in fish. Laboratory studies on eels experimentally infected with the swimbladder nematode Anguillicola crassus reveal that toxic chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls produce immunosuppressive effects which facilitate parasite infection. Similarly, an increase in serum cortisol concentration in eels due to chemical exposure and infection is correlated with decreasing levels of anti-A. crassus antibodies. Furthermore, parasites are able to elicit physiological changes which are attributed to chemicals with endocrine disrupting activity, e.g. the cestode Ligula intestinalis is known to suppress gonad development in roach. The most thoroughly documented examples of endocrine disruption in wild fish are in roach, and it is conceivable that this disruption is not only due to chemical activity but also to parasites such as L. intestinalis or species of the phylum Microspora.

Adult male worms of Trichobilharzia sp. recovered from a pied wagtail (Motacilla alba) in the Czech Republic were found to belong to a new species of the genus. The finding of Trichobilharzia sp. in a passeriform bird in Europe represents an important discovery, as only anseriform birds have thus far been reported as final hosts of the European Trichobilharzia species.

Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar, is normally rather refractive to infection with the ectoparasitic monogenean Gyrodactylus derjavini but dexamethasone treatment of the host increases the susceptibility. The causative mechanisms were elucidated in this work. Groups of Atlantic salmon were treated by intra-peritoneal dexamethasone injections and subsequently infected with G. derjavini. It was shown that both the infection level and the mucous cell density of caudal and pelvic fins were affected by the treatment. Significantly higher mucous cell densities were found on infected and treated fish whereas non-infected and treated fish showed no significant elevation of cell density. This suggests that mucous cell discharge elicited by infection is inhibited by the drug. The association with elevated parasite counts in these fish can be explained either by decreased anti-parasitic mucus action or by parasite predilection for intact mucous cells.

Hydatid cysts were recovered from 35.2% (233/661) of camels (Camelus dromedarius) slaughtered in five different regions of Iran. The degree of prevalence between males (34.4%) and females (36.6%) was not statistically significant. The highest rate of infection (59.3%) was found in the Isfahan region (in the central part of Iran) while the lowest (25.7%) was found in Kerman province. The organ distribution of cysts was 49.4% in lungs alone, 30.0% in both liver and lungs, 14.6% in liver only and 6.0% in other organs. Therefore, the lungs were the predominant sites of the hydatid cyst. The range in the number of cysts was 1–48 in infected animals. The majority of the camels had 1–5 cysts, with 21.9%, 11.6% and 5.6% of infected camels having 6–10, 11–20 and 21 or more cysts respectively. There was a direct relationship between the rate and intensity of infection and host age. The fertility rate of lung cysts (69.7%) was higher than that of liver cysts (58.7%) and other organs (50.0%) whilst the viability rate of protoscoleces of liver fertile cysts (80.3%) was significantly higher than that of lung cysts (55.8%) and other organs (57.1%). The role of camels in the epidemiology of Echinococcus granulosus in Iran is discussed.

The ability to provide adequate nutrition is considered a key factor in evaluating the sustainability of foods and diets. Nutrient indices are used as functional units (FU) in life cycle assessment of foods to include nutritional performance in the environmental assessment of a product. Several general and food-group-specific nutrient indices exist but many lack validation, particularly when used as FU. In addition, the nutrient selection strategies and reference units for nutrient intake can vary considerably among studies. To validate intake-based product-group-specific nutrient indices previously developed for protein (NR-FIprot) and carbohydrate (NR-FIcarb) foods and for fruits and vegetables (NR-FIveg), we applied principal component analysis to investigate correlations between nutrients in foods and dishes representing a typical Finnish diet. The reference amounts for meal components were based on a plate model that reflected Finnish dietary recommendations. The portion sizes for the different food groups were anchored at 100 g, 135 g and 350 g for proteins, carbohydrates and fruits/vegetables, respectively. Statistical modelling largely validated the NR-FI indices, highlighting protein foods as sources of niacin, vitamin B12 and Se, carbohydrate foods as sources of Mg, Fe and phosphorous, and fruits/vegetables as sources of potassium, vitamin K, vitamin C, fibre and thiamine. However, in contrast to the intake-based approach applied in NR-FIprot, the dietary recommendation-based validation process suggested that fruits and vegetables should be favoured as sources of riboflavin and vitamin B6.

The influence of temperature and humidity on the survival and development of Toxocara canis eggs in an in vitro model system was investigated. Two soil samples were inoculated with T. canis eggs and maintained at 3% and 50% humidity and temperatures of 19–24°C. Nine soil samples were inoculated with T. canis eggs of which three samples were kept at 4°C with humidities at 3%, 15%, and 30%; three were maintained at 21°C and three more were incubated at 34°C, and at the same three humidity levels. Samples were monitored every 7 days for a total of 2 months, for the presence and development of eggs. With increasing temperature, the number of eggs undergoing development increased (P<0.01); the number of deformed eggs decreased, the number of infective eggs increased (P<0.01), and egg maturation was accelerated. A decrease in the survival of infective eggs occurred at 34°C. An increase in humidity produced a rise in the number of developed eggs at all three temperatures (P<0.01). This study suggests that elevated temperatures accelerated the development as well as the degradation of eggs of T. canis, whereas the range in humidity was directly correlated with egg development.

Species co-occurrences and interspecific associations between intensity of infection were studied in helminth communities of three populations of brown trout, Salmo trutta, from northern Italy. Of the eight helminth species, only four were common enough to be included in the analyses: Pomphorhynchus laevis, Acanthocephalus anguillae, Echinorhynchus truttae and Cyathocephalus truncatus. The observed frequencies of co-occurrences of the different species, based on presence/absence data, did not differ from those predicted by a null model derived from prevalence data. However, the intensity of infection (number of individuals per fish) of different helminth species were generally, but not always significantly, negatively correlated in tests of pairwise associations. Variation in fish sizes and its effect on infection levels, and whether or not two helminth species used the same or different intermediate hosts, had no influence on these findings. Of the few significant negative associations found between pairs of helminth species, none was found in more than one fish population. This suggests that interspecific associations may be condition-dependent: even in apparently similar localities, the same combinations of helminth species show different associations. Without evidence of replicability, it is almost impossible to conclude to the consistent role of competition between any pair of helminth species in the field.

A total of 179 urban rats were sampled in the city of Doha in Qatar across the winter seasons (February–April) of 2002 and 2003. Only two parasites were identified, with overall prevalences of 35.8% and 41.3% for the cestode Hymenolepis diminuta and the flea Xenopsylla astia respectively. The prevalence of H. diminuta was markedly influenced by both year of study and host age, being higher in 2003 and amongst older rats. The abundance of infection of H. diminuta was influenced by the year of study, host age and sex. Worm burdens in adult rats were almost twice as heavy in males compared with females and adults of both sexes harboured heavier infections than juveniles. The prevalence of X. astia was influenced by both year and host age, being higher in juvenile rats in 2002 and in adults in 2003. The abundance of X. astia was significantly higher in 2003 and both male and female rats showed similar abundances, but in 2003 females were more heavily infested. Reasons for this are discussed in relation to the differing foraging strategies shown by male and female rats. The prevalence and abundance profiles for both H. diminuta and X. astia were higher overall in 2003 due to a significant increase in the rat population density, although this did not reflect in any increase in parasite species richness. Rats that were infected with H. diminuta were almost twice as likely to be infected with X. astia than those without the cestode, but when controlled for the effects of year, host age and sex, no quantitative interactions were detected between the two parasite species.

Schistosoma japonicum and S. mansoni were tested for reactivity with an anti-inducible nitric oxide (iNOS) antibody and the distribution of iNOS was studied by immunofluorescent tests in different stages of the parasites. Reactivity was associated with the tegument in both larval schistosomes (sporocysts and cercariae) and eggs. With adult worms, the majority of the immunofluorescence was predominantly subtegumental in S. japonicum and parenchymal in S. mansoni. Fluorescence was also observed in host tissues (snails and mouse liver). In Western blots, the enzyme of S. japonicum had an apparent molecular weight of about 210 kDa. The possible role of worm and host iNOS in the parasite–host interrelation remains to be clarified.

There is increasing pressure to develop alternative control strategies against the pathogen Gyrodactylus salaris, which has devastated wild Atlantic salmon Salmo salar in Norway. Hyperparasitism is one option for biological control and electron microscopy has revealed two ectosymbionts associated with G. salaris: unidentified rod-shaped bacteria, and the protist, Ichthyobodo necator. No endosymbionts were detected. The flagellate I. necator occurred only occasionally on fish suffering costiosis, whereas bacterial infections on the tegument of G. salaris were observed throughout the year, but at variable densities. Bacteria were seldom observed attached to fish epidermis, even when individuals of G. salaris on the same host were heavily infected. Wounds on salmon epidermis caused by the feeding activity of bacteria-infected G. salaris did not appear to be infected with bacteria. On heavily infected gyrodactylids, bacteria were most abundant anteriorly on the cephalic lobes, including the sensory structures, but no damaged tissue was detected by transmission electron microscopy in the region of bacterial adherence. Furthermore, transmission and survival of infected G. salaris on wild salmon did not appear to be influenced by the bacterial infection. The lack of structural damage and impact on G. salaris biology indicates that these bacteria are not a potential agent for control of gyrodactylosis. However, this may not be the case for all gyrodactylid–bacterial interactions and a review of bacterial infections of platyhelminths is presented.

The effect of exposing Lymnaea stagnalis (Gastropoda: Pulmonata), infected with Diplostomum spathaceum (Trematoda: Diplostomatidae), to 100 μg l−1 cadmium for 7 days on survival characteristics (survival, tail loss, decaudized cercarial life-span) of emerged cercariae was investigated. Exposure of L. stagnalis to cadmium resulted in significantly increased D. spathaceum cercarial survival and an inhibited tail loss compared to controls. The normal parallel relationship which exists over time between decreasing cercarial survival and increasing tail loss in controls was changed in cercariae from cadmium-exposed hosts with an increased proportion of cercarial deaths occurring without tail loss. The decaudized cercarial life-span over the survival period of the cercarial population did not significantly change. However comparisons between individuals decaudized during the initial 24 h time period with those which were decaudized during the final period of cercarial survival showed a significantly altered life span which did not occur in the control population. As a potential indicator of penetration ‘fitness’ comparisons were also undertaken between control and exposed cercariae decaudized during the initial 24 h time period, which revealed that the decaudized cercarial life-span from the exposed hosts was significantly different from controls. This may have important implications for the ability of cercariae to migrate through the tissues of their target host. The importance and relevance of these results to parasite transmission are discussed.