Oklahoma City University

About: Oklahoma City University is a education organization based out in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supreme court & Comparative law. The organization has 240 authors who have published 421 publications receiving 6923 citations.

Riff Schemes, Form, and the Genre of Early American Hardcore Punk (1978–83)

Abstract: [1.1] American hardcore punk rock--or simply "hardcore"--is a subgenre of punk that first emerged in the late 1970s as a response to the "punk rock revolution" created by bands such as the Sex Pistols and the Ramones (Blush 2010, 14). Although hardcore began as a regional phenomenon, relegated to the West coast of the U.S., other scenes soon sprang up, most notably in Washington D.C. Bands like Bad Brains, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and Minor Threat drew upon the fast tempos and concise song forms of the Ramones and Wire and the dense textures and riff-driven songs of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple in the creation of a new genre. In addition to these musical features, many participants describe hardcore as reflecting intensity, energy, and aggression, particularly in the performance and reception of the music.(1) While hardcore has been the focus of studies in fields such as ethnomusicology, history, and philosophy, its musical features have yet to be examined with any amount of analytical depth.(2) This article is an attempt to fill this gap in knowledge, at least in part, by investigating the structures of guitar riffs.(3)[1.2] My investigation proceeds with the view that a guitar riff is a series of performative actions; I place the focus on the execution of gestures along a fretboard. Such an investigation is not wholly new in analytical studies of popular music. For example, Joti Rockwell (2009), Timothy Koozin (2011), and David Heetderks (2013) have investigated the importance of fretboard topography in their studies of rhythm, form, and pitch. Indeed, Koozin goes so far as to state that "guitar fretboard topography and the rhythmic actions of guitar playing are significant performative elements that have not been fully considered in studies of form, harmony, and rhythm in pop-rock music" ([1]). To address this need, Koozin discusses the role of guitar voicings--the particular harmonic "shapes" a guitarist uses in playing chord progressions and/or riffs--in creating form. Rockwell undertakes a similar task, as he describes picking patterns on the banjo in order to highlight aspects of rhythm and meter. Heetderks's study is most similar to the present article, as he uses my own earlier work on riff schemes (Easley 2011, 62-104) as a point of departure, as well as Harold Bloom's concept of revision, to discuss the role of such gestural patterns in Sonic Youth's readings and misreadings of hardcore. Thus, Koozin, Rockwell, and Heetderks seek to construct a performance-based type of analysis that addresses both sound and human action.(4) This closely parallels the type of analytical engagement described by Andrew Mead (1999) in his study of kinesthetic empathy. As he states, "the sound of the music was an embodiment of the making, and. . .hearing that making in the sound had much to do with my understanding of the music" (2).(5) My reactions to hardcore are similar: while I hear the pitches and rhythms of guitar riffs, I also feel the physical gestures with which they are performed. This reaction guides the present study, as I investigate how these gestures unfold over time as a series of repetitive, lateral motions along a fretboard. That is, this study is informed by an embodied understanding of these musical actions. I focus on how individual motions are introduced, repeated, and altered over the course of a riff.(6) As I shall demonstrate, these performative actions often reflect a structural basis in what I call "riff schemes": organizing patterns of physical repetition and physical change made by a guitarist's fretting hand.(7) In addition to their purely structural features, riff schemes play an important role in shaping hardcore as a genre.(8) When considered alongside other aspects of the music, these schemes serve to foster participants' understanding and descriptions of the music as exhibiting energy, intensity, and aggression, all of which are common tropes in oral histories of the genre. …

Taking Shelter: Estimating the Safety Benefits of Tornado Safe Rooms

Abstract: Over the past several decades, engineers have made significant progress in the design and construction of structures able to withstand tornadic winds and debris. The aftermath of the 3 May 1999 F5 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, highlighted the modest market penetration of tornado shelters in metropolitan areas. The authors use historical data from Oklahoma to estimate the potential casualties that tornado shelters could prevent and calculate that the cost per fatality avoided in single-family homes is $29 million while the cost per fatality avoided for mobile homes is $2.6 million. The estimates are sensitive to the proportion of strong (F3 or stronger) tornadoes and the choice of an interest rate for present-value calculations. If the F-scale distribution of Oklahoma tornadoes resembled a reported national frequency distribution and fatalities per category storm are held constant, the permanent home cost per fatality avoided triples to $88 million.

The Citation of Wikipedia in Judicial Opinions

Abstract: Wikipedia has been cited in over four hundred American judicial opinions. Courts have taken judicial notice of Wikipedia content, based their reasoning on Wikipedia entries, and decided dispositive motions on the basis of Wikipedia content. The impermanent nature of Wikipedia entries and their questionable quality raises a number of unique concerns. To date, no law review article has comprehensively examined the citation of Wikipedia in judicial opinions or considered its long-range implications for American law.This article reports the results of an exhaustive study examining every American judicial opinion that cites a Wikipedia entry. The article begins with a discussion of cases that cite Wikipedia for a significant aspect of the case before the court. The impact of these citations on litigants’ constitutional and procedural rights, the law of evidence, judicial ethics, and the judicial role in the common law adversarial system are explored. Part II discusses collateral references to Wikipedia entries. Part III proposes a set of best practices for when and how Wikipedia should be cited. Detailed statistics on the quality of Wikipedia entries cited in judicial opinions and the completeness and accuracy of citations to Wikipedia entries are provided. The article concludes with a discussion of the impact of Wikipedia citations in judicial opinions on the future of the law.

Arginine Transport in the Culture Form of Trypanosoma cruzi

Abstract: SYNOPSIS. Arginine in Trypanosoma cruzi is taken up by a mediated transport system; a large non-saturable component is also involved. Arginine transport specificity in T. cruzi is unusual since lysine and histidine do not inhibit its uptake. Glycine and valine are partially competitive inhibitors and homoarginine, alanine and methionine are completely competitive. At least one arginine transport site is so specific that homoarginine will not react with it. Apparently the diamino acid transport systems of T. cruzi have undergone major evolutionary modifications.

Women in substance abuse recovery: measures of resilience and self-differentiation.

Abstract: The National Institute of Drug Abuse has promoted drug abuse research in the past two decades focusing on women and gender differences. One hundred twenty-eight Hispanic and White women have participated in this comparative descriptive study that has examined the differences between chemically dependent (CD) women in recovery and non—chemically dependent (non-CD) women in regard to resilience and self-differentiation—demographic variables associated with resilience and self-differentiation and recovery variables associated with resilience and self-differentiation in the CD women. Findings indicate that the CD women and Hispanic women have scored significantly lower on measures of resilience and self-differentiation. Among the recovery variables, resilience and self-differentiation are significant for children support but community support is not significant. The finding that Hispanic and White women in recovery score lower on resilience and self-differentiation is important for designing treatment strateg...