Vpr

Vpr is a Human immunodeficieny viral gene and protein product.

Vpr stands for "Viral Protein R". Vpr, a 96 amino acid 14-kDa protein, plays an important role in regulating nuclear import of the HIV-1 pre-integration complex, and is required for virus replication in non-dividing cells such as macrophages. Vpr also induces G2 cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in proliferating cells, which can result in immune dysfunction.

Vpr is also immunosuppressive due to its ability to sequester a proinflammatory transcriptional activator in the cytoplasm. HIV-2 contains both a Vpr protein and a related (by sequence homology) Vpx protein (Viral Protein X). Two functions of Vpr in HIV-1 are split between Vpr and Vpx in HIV-2, with the HIV-2 Vpr protein inducing cell cycle arrest and the Vpx protein required for nuclear import.

Vpr-Binding Protein

Vpr-binding protein (VprBP) is a 1,507-amino-acid human protein that contains conserved domains, including YXXY repeats, the Lis homology motif, and WD40 repeats. VprBP acts as a substrate-recognition unit when associated with DNA damage-binding protein 1 (DDB1) as part of a CUL4–DDB1 E3 ubiquitin ligase complex. When bound to Vpr, VprBP allows Vpr to modulate the catalytic activity of the CUL4–DDB1 complex, inducing G2 cell cycle arrest in infected cells.

Vermont Public Radio

Vermont Public Radio (VPR) is a network of public radio stations covering the state of Vermont. In addition to locally produced programming, the network broadcasts programming from NPR, Public Radio International, and American Public Media. It is headquartered in Colchester, a suburb of Burlington. Other studio facilities are located in Montpelier, Manchester and Norwich.

History

Vermont Public Radio first signed on in 1977 from studios at the historic Windsor House in Windsor. Despite criticism that Vermont was too small and too rural for a listener-supported public radio station, the network has expanded to 13 full-power stations and 12 low-power translators covering almost all of Vermont as well as parts of New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Quebec.

In terms of market size, VPR is the smallest NPR member station/network in New England and one of the smallest in the nation. However, since the mid-1990s, it has been one of the most listened-to public radio stations per capita in the country, with approximately 194,000 listeners each week and 27,000 members who support VPR with a voluntary financial contribution.

Background music

Background music refers to various styles of music or soundscapes primarily intended to be passively listened to. It is not meant to be the main focus of an audience, but rather to supplement that which is meant to be focused upon. Music that is played at a low volume and is not the main focus of an audience is also referred to as background music. Traditional examples of background music include music played at various social gatherings and music played in certain retail venues. It is also common to employ background music in various electronic media including film, television, and Internet videos such as video blogs.

Psychological study

The study of background music focuses on the impact of music with non-musical tasks, including changes in behavior in the presence of different types, settings, or styles of music. In laboratory settings, music can affect performance on cognitive tasks (memory, attention, and comprehension), both positively and negatively. Used extensively as an advertising aid, music may also affect marketing strategies, ad comprehension, and consumer choices.

The Music

The Music were an English alternative rock band, formed in Kippax, Leeds in 1999. Comprising Robert Harvey (vocals, guitar), Adam Nutter (lead guitar), Stuart Coleman (bass) and Phil Jordan (drums), the band came to prominence with the release of their debut album, The Music, in 2002. The band released two further studio albums, Welcome to the North (2004) and Strength in Numbers (2008), before parting ways in 2011.

Career

The Music all met at Brigshaw High School, except Phil Jordan who went to Garforth, and began playing in 1999 as Insense. In 2001 the song "Take the Long Road and Walk It" circulated as a demo before being released by Fierce Panda as a 1000-copies-only single, a rarity from its day of release. Around this time the NME and Steve Lamacq were describing them as the best unsigned band in Britain. The band were quickly signed by Hut, who released their first EP You Might as Well Try to Fuck Me.

In 2002, following another EP (The People) they released their eponymous début album which reached No. 4 in the UK album charts. Their début single was re-issued as part of a two-disc set to promote the album, and reached No. 14 in the singles chart. Two further singles from the album, "Getaway" and "The Truth is No Words" reached No. 26 and No. 18 respectively. June 2003 saw them filling in for an absent Zwan on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival.

MUSIC-N

MUSIC-N refers to a family of computer music programs and programming languages descended from or influenced by MUSIC, a program written by Max Mathews in 1957 at Bell Labs. MUSIC was the first computer program for generating digital audio waveforms through direct synthesis. It was one of the first programs for making music (in actuality, sound) on a digital computer, and was certainly the first program to gain wide acceptance in the music research community as viable for that task. The world's first computer-controlled music was generated in Australia by programmer Geoff Hill on the CSIRAC computer which was designed and built by Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard. However, CSIRAC produced sound by sending raw pulses to the speaker, it did not produce standard digital audio with PCM samples, like the MUSIC-series of programs.

Design

All MUSIC-N derivative programs have a (more-or-less) common design, made up of a library of functions built around simple signal-processing and synthesis routines (written as opcodes or unit generators). These simple opcodes are then constructed by the user into an instrument (usually through a text-based instruction file, but increasingly through a graphical interface) that defines a sound which is then "played" by a second file (called the score) which specifies notes, durations, pitches, amplitudes, and other parameters relevant to the musical informatics of the piece. Some variants of the language merge the instrument and score, though most still distinguish between control-level functions (which operate on the music) and functions that run at the sampling rate of the audio being generated (which operate on the sound). A notable exception is ChucK, which unifies audio-rate and control-rate timing into a single framework, allowing arbitrarily fine time granularity and also one mechanism to manage both. This has the advantage of more flexible and readable code as well as drawbacks of reduced system performance.