This article investigates the contexts, or "listening niches", in which people hear popular music. The study spanned a century of popular music, divided into 10 decades, with participants born between 1940 and 1999. It asks about whether they know and like the music in each decade, and their emotional reactions. It also asks whether the music is associated with personal memories and, if so, wit...

The automatic extraction of musical structure from audio is an important aspect for many music information retrieval (MIR) systems. The criteria on which structural elements in music are defined in MIR systems is often not clearly stated but typically stem from (music) theoretical or signal-based properties. In many cases, however, perceptual-based criteria are the most relevant and systems nee...

The article by Homedes and Ugalde in this week’s issue of PLoS Medicine is an important addition to the global discussion about Mexico’s 2003 health reform, the Seguro Popular (SP) [1]. While this reform has been controversial in Mexico [2], it has been highly praised in international circles. The Lancet ran a special series on the reform in 2006, and former U.S. President Bill Clinton lauded S...

Weblogs are a popular form of easy-to-use personal publishing that has attracted millions of bloggers to share their personal thoughts, opinions, and knowledge on the web. The versatility of weblogs as a communication medium has attracted interests from educators. Educational applications of weblogs have so far included journals, e-portfolio, learning diaries, and logbooks. As in the case of ot...

Despite the widespread usage of the term "never events," the National Quality Forum (NQF) refers to these events as "serious reportable events" in all of their definitions and references. In this editorial, we use the popular but likely improper term "never events" as it further illustrates the public's perception of adverse occurrences. Although the preferred terminology reverts to "serious re...