Thesis (S.M.)--Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-154).

Thesis (M.S.)--Naval Postgraduate School, 2002. / Thesis advisor(s): Joseph A. Rice, Kevin B. Smith. Includes bibliographical references (p. 43-44). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Applied Physics)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Joseph A. Rice, Thomas J. Hofler. Includes bibliographical references (p. 41). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Engineering Acoustics)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Thomas R. Howarth, Dehua Huang. Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-69). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-187). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.S. in Information Systems and Operations)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Joseph A. Rice, Dan C. Boger. Includes bibliographical references (p. 35). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Electrical Engineering and M.S. in Engineering Acoustics)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Roberto Cristi, Joseph Rice. Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-108). Also available online.

In the group of people with whom I have worked most closely, we recently attempted to dress our visionary goal in words: “to learn enough about human face-to-face interaction that we are able to create an artificial conversational partner that is humanlike”. The “conversational homunculus” figuring in the title of this book represents this “artificial conversational partner”. The vision is motivated by an urge to test computationally our understandings of how human-human interaction functions, and the bulk of my work leads towards the conversational homunculus in one way or another. This book compiles and summarises that work: it sets out with a presenting and providing background and motivation for the long term research goal of creating a humanlike spoken dialogue system, and continues along the lines of an initial iteration of an iterative research process towards that goal, beginning with the planning and collection of human-human interaction corpora, continuing with the analysis and modelling of the human-human corpora, and ending in the implementation of, experimentation with and evaluation of humanlike components for in human-machine interaction. The studies presented have a clear focus on interactive phenomena at the expense of propositional content and syntactic constructs, and typically investigate the regulation of dialogue flow and feedback, or the establishment of mutual understanding and grounding. / QC 20110310

On the classical guitar, a performer can impart very distinct qualities to the sound by changing the way in which s/he manipulates the instrument. In fact, guitarists can often infer how the instrument was played by listening to a recording, based on their knowledge of playing techniques. In other words, information about guitarists' manipulations is present in the sound of the instrument. The goal of this work is thus to develop an automatic method able to extract part of that information from a recording. In particular, this thesis focuses on one playing parameter: the angle with which the string isreleased at the end of a pluck, or the "angle of release". Along with the plucking position, this gestural parameteris known to have a clear influence on the sound of the guitar. Central to this research is the use of the physics of sound production on the classical guitar. Indeed, guitar acoustics are used to predict the effect of the angle of release on the sound, and establish formal links between signal parameters and this gestural parameter. This dissertation first situates itself with respect to previous work on gestural acquisition on the classical guitar. It then discusses the acoustics of the classical guitar in detail, in order to reveal the underlying structure of typical guitar sounds. It also considers general and specialized aspects of classical guitar playing technique, in order to better understand how guitarists can fashion sound, within the limits imposed by the physics of the instrument. In its second and main part, this dissertation adapts a standard physical model of a guitar string to include the influence of the angle of release on the vibration of the instrument. Most importantly, it establishes a clear relationship between the angle of release and parameters of velocity signals. Then it presents a signal analysis framework developed to extract signal parameters that are affected by changes in the angle of release.In its final part, this research discusses results obtained when the method for angle of release extraction is applied to velocity signals measured at the bridge of the guitar. Strengths and shortcomings of the method, as well as future avenues for research are also addressed. / Les guitaristes classiques peuvent apporter de multiples nuances aux sons de leur instrument grâce à un large éventail de techniques de jeu. Il leur est même possible d'identifier comment une guitare a été jouée par l'écoute attentive d'un enregistrement, en confrontant les sons entendus à leurs connaissances sur la pratique instrumentale. Ce dernier point suggère la présence d'informations sur les manipulations des instrumentistes dans les sons produits. L'objectif de ce travail de doctorat est donc de développer des méthodes automatiques permettant d'extraire une partie de ces informations à partir d'enregistrements des vibrations de l'instrument. Cette thèse se concentre sur un paramètre spécifique: l'angle avec lequel une corde quitte le doigt à la fin du pincement, désigné "angle de lâcher" par la suite. En effet, ce paramètre de jeu, au même titre que la position de pincement le long de la corde, a une influence claire sur le son produit. L'utilisation faite de connaissances physiques sur la production des sons de guitare classique est un élément central des travaux présentés dans cette thèse. En effet, des considérations physiques sont utilisées pour expliciter l'effet d'un changement de l'angle de lâcher sur les caractéristiques du signal sonore.Après avoir précisé le contexte de cette thèse par rapport aux travaux existant sur l'acquisition du geste sur la guitare classique, l'acoustique de l'instrument est abordée. Cette revue du fonctionnement de la guitare permet de dégager la structure sous-jacente des sons de guitare. Les techniques de jeux sont aussi présentées afin de montrer comment les guitaristes exploitent les degrés de liberté à leur portée pour modifier le son de leur instrument. La contribution majeure de cette thèse est ensuite détaillée: l'adaptation d'un modèle physique standard de corde de guitare afin d'y inclure l'effet de l'angle de lâcher, et de relier la variation de cet angle aux changements de contenu sonore. La mise au point d'un système d'analyse visant à extraire les paramètres des signaux de vitesse dépendant de l'angle de lâcher est ensuite abordée.La dernière partie de ce travail présente les résultats obtenus par la méthode d'extraction de l'angle de lâcher sur des signaux de vitesse mesurés. À la lumière de ces résultats, les forces et faiblesses de la méthode sont dégagées, ainsi que des pistes de recherche futures.

An investigation was made of the spin-lattice interaction of F centers in quartz through the use of 9.3 Gc acoustic waves. An upper limit to the acoustic-attenuation coefficient of 7.7 x 10-3 nepers per centimeter was found. This corresponds to a cross section of less than 3.9 x 10-20 square centimeters. Comparison with theory indicates that T1 for F centers in quartz is greater than 8.9 milliseconds.