This project is an addition to Cowgill Hall, the building that houses the College of Architecture on the Virginia Tech campus. Cowgill Hall is located on the north edge of campus, on a direct northern axis with the centerline of the campus drill field, which is the heart and center of the Va Tech Blacksburg campus. Cowgill Hall is a 4 story concrete and glass structure, built in 1969, with a dry moat-like hardscape on three sides around it and a wide bridge connecting the building at the second level to the campus via a large plaza. My solution was to use the bridge as the way to connect an addition to the existing Cowgill Hall building. By extending the bridge the axis is also extended, and the addition can become a terminus to the axis. I wanted the addition itself to promote and enhance the Va Tech School of Architecture methodology of design education, which is that of constructive exploration and student collaboration. Being able to observe the design process of other students seems to be fundamental to design education. Therefore, I sought to provide a design that would enhance the student's experience of a daily architectural education. The student experiences the building through a variety of pathways vertically through it, that path being a progression also of daylight to darkness, openness to closed, public to private. The path begins at the plaza, where the bridge takes the student from the campus into Cowgill Hall. My design extends the path out the other side of the building, creating another bridge. The addition is a semicircular four story form with a radial pattern of stair towers, with a slight skew and offset which serves to enhances a tension between the original Cowgill Hall building and the addition and thus become a dynamic large-occupancy gathering space and open lecture hall. The building structure is concrete and waffle slab. The exterior is two layers; the outer one comprised of stone and concrete, the inner one comprised of glass and steel. The building in plan is surrounded by ramps rising up and to the east, and the outer layer of the exterior supports a series of stacked and parallel ramps, which serves as one method of navigating the building vertically; one path. Always above the ramp is the inner layer, which consists of a slim-profile steel curtainwall glazing system. As the ramp moves towards ground level, the stone and concrete cladding peel away and the curtainwall expands, allowing more daylight and views in the desirable direction towards the mountains. The stone cladding is topped by precast concrete panels, the stone rising to the underside of the highest perimeter ramp on the building. which peels away as the building rises from the ground. The cladding consists of precast concrete and Virginia Bluestone, which is the stone most buildings on campus are built with. The bluestone is rough cut and heavy, and anchors the building to the site. Precast concrete tops the bluestone, aligning with the ramp, and easily allowing punched-openings to align squarely with the slope of the interior ramp system. The outer layer being heavy masonry grounds the building while giving it the mass and distinction that the surrounding Virginia Tech campus requires. The project's vertical structure is comprised of radial concrete walls which are in pairs. They support the waffle slab floor and roof structure, while housing the stairs. Movement inside the building vertically may be accomplished through any one of these radially located stair towers, which differ in their degree of solidity. Depending on the mood of the student or the educator, the path vertically can be chosen by the personal desire to be seen or to see others. One can sneak quietly or strut through the building openly. One can look through the stair walls to the student desks below and observe while being observed, or observe discreetly and without being intrusive. The path through the building is experiential, while the progression of spaces in the building provide unique and appropriate arenas for private introspection, collaboration and group learning. The spaces in tension create gathering spaces for education and reflection. The whole promote movement, observation and interaction. / Master of Architecture

The research presented in this thesis addresses the problem of updating an analytical model using a parametric Reference Basis approach. In this method, some parameters are assumed to be accurate (e.g. natural frequencies, mode shapes and mass matrix), while others are adjusted so that the eigenvalue equation is satisfied. Updating is done with the use of principal submatrices, and the method seeks the best parameters multiplying these matrices. This is a departure from classical model reference, and is closer to the formulation of sensitivity methods. The submatrices allow updating of the stiffness matrix with certain freedom while preserving connectivity. Closed form solution can be achieved through multiple ways; two different approaches, denoted as the Quadratic Compression Method (QCM) and the Full Vector Method (FVM), are described in this paper. It is shown that the QCM possesses superior robustness properties with respect to noise in the data. This fact, as well as the simplicity offered by QCM, is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally. The experiments are presented to show the advantage of the QCM in the updating process. / Master of Science

This thesis is the search for clarity in the relationship between essence and appearance, construction and form, necessity and possibility, object and subject. It is a reflection on the question of the nature of building. I cannot tell you that something is beautiful. I can only explain why I do what I do, and how I do it. I have tried to limit the text to a minimum, because architecture is not about words. Text is added to clarify an idea. The project is a bank made with brick in Old Town Alexandria. / Master of Architecture

Long ago the stories common to men were clearly present in their architecture. Sculpture, mosaics, paintings, stained-glass windows, all blatantly told the beginning, the morals, the epics, and future of humanity. Today these elements have all but disappeared along with the stories that they told. One story still common to humanity is the act of death, transcending culture, nationality, or creed. The pages to follow disclose an architecture for the emotional state of mourning. The seven spaces of this architecture exist in three dimensions: the narrative, the emotive, and sacred. / Master of Architecture

Zugl.: Dortmund, Univ., Diss., 2003

This study presents a detailed analytical examination of formal organization in Anton Bruckner’s early instrumental slow movements: from the String Quartet, WAB 111, to the Third Symphony, WAB 103. It proposes an analytical methodology and conception of the formative process of musical works that seeks to 1) reappraise the development and idiosyncrasies of his slow movements’ form, and 2) turn the textual multiplicity often associated with Bruckner’s large-scale works (a scholarly issue often referred to as the “Bruckner Problem”) into a Bruckner Potential. In addressing traditional and innovative formal aspects of Bruckner’s music, critics have tended to overemphasize one side or the other, consequentially portraying his handling of form as either whimsical or excessively schematic. By way of a reconstruction of Bruckner’s early experiments with slow-movement form (1862–1873), this study argues that influential lines of criticism in the reception history of Bruckner’s large-scale forms find little substantiation in the acoustical surface of Bruckner’s music and its dialogic engagement with mid- and late-19th-century generic expectations. Because the textual multiplicity often associated with Bruckner’s works does not sit comfortably with traditional notions of authenticity and authorship, Bruckner scholarship has operated under aesthetic premises that fail to acknowledge textual multiplicity as a basic trait of his oeuvre. The present study circumvents this shortcoming by conceiving formal-expressive meaning in Bruckner’s symphonies as growing out of a dual-dimensional dialogue comprising 1) an outward dialogue, characterized by the interplay between a given version of a Bruckner symphony and its implied genre (in this case, sonata form); and 2) an inward dialogue, characterized by the interplay among the various individualized realizations of a single Bruckner symphony. The analytical method is exemplified through a detailed consideration of each of the surviving realizations of the slow movement of Bruckner’s Third Symphony, WAB 103.

An n-dimensional integral quadratic form over Z is a polynomial of the form f = f(x1, … ,xn) =∑_(1≤i,j ≤n)▒a_ij x_i x_j, where a_ij=a_ji in Z. An integral quadratic form is called positive definite if f(α_1, …,α_n) > 0 whenever (0, … , 0) ≠(α_1, …,α_n) in Z^n. A positive definite integral quadratic form is said to be almost (primitively) universal if it (primitively) represents all but at most finitely many positive integers. In general, almost primitive universality is a stronger property than almost universality. Main results of this study are: every primitively universal form non-trivially represents zero over every ring Z_p of p-adic integers, and every almost universal form in five or more variables is almost primitively universal. With use of these results and improving a result of G. Pall from 1946, we then provide criteria to determine whether a given integral quadratic lattice over a ring Z_p of p-adic integers is Z_p-universal or primitively Z_p-universal. The criteria are stated explicitly in terms of a Jordan splitting of the lattice. As an application of the local criteria, we complete the determination of the universal positive definite classically integral quaternary quadratic forms that are almost primitively universal, which was initiated in work of N. Budarina in 2010. Finally, with the use of these local results, we identify 28 positive definite classically integral primitively universal quaternary quadratic forms which were not known previously, introducing a conjecture obtained by a numerical approach, which could possibly be the primitive counterpart to the Fifteen Theorem proved by J.H. Conway and W.A. Schneeberger in 1993.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第19548号 / 理博第4208号 / 新制||理||1604(附属図書館) / 32584 / 京都大学大学院理学研究科数学・数理解析専攻 / (主査)教授 池田 保, 教授 雪江 明彦, 准教授 市野 篤史 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Forskningen kring effektiva marknader är uppdelad; ena sidan påstår att marknaden är fullständigt effektiv och det inte går att skapa någon form av överavkastning. Andra sidan hävdar tvärtemot att endast historisk information reflekteras i dagens priser. På kort sikt kan det finns en viss ineffektivitet och de flesta erkänner att marknaden innehåller anomalier Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om det existerar systematiska fel beträffande informationsflöden som pekar mot att den svenska aktiemarknaden inte är av semi-stark form eller stark form av effektivitet Vi utgår från tre metodologiska ställningstaganden; utgångspunkt, forskningsansats samt kunskapssyn. En deduktivt kvantitativ metod tillämpas och vi applicerar metoden för event study. Vi finner stöd för att det finns systematiska fel i marknaden beträffande informationsflöden i form av aktierekommendationer. Resultaten antyder att den svenska aktiemarknaden inte är av starkt effektiv form och i ett fall av fyra finner vi att den inte heller besitter semi-stark form. / Research concerning efficient markets are divided into two camps; the one hand, claims that the market is fully efficient and it is not possible to create any kind of excess returns. The other side argues the contrary that only historical information are reflected in today’s prices. Short term, there is some inefficiency and most recognize that the market contain anomalies The purpose is to investigate whether there exist indications regarding flows of information to the Swedish stock market suggesting a semi-strong form or strong form of efficiency. We start from three methodological statements; starting point, the research approach and epistemological beliefs. A deductive quantitative methodology is used, and we apply the method of event study. We find evidence for the existence of systematic errors in the market in terms of flows of information in the form of stock recommendations. The results suggest that the Swedish stock market is not of the strong efficient form and in one case out of four, we find that it does not possess the semi-strong form.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Mathematics / Ivan Blank / Under the guidance of Dr. Ivan Blank, I study the obstacle problem with an elliptic operator in divergence form. First, I give all of the nontrivial details needed to prove a mean value theorem, which was stated by Caffarelli in the Fermi lectures in 1998. In fact, in 1963, Littman, Stampacchia, and Weinberger proved a mean value theorem for elliptic operators in divergence form with bounded measurable coefficients. The formula stated by Caffarelli is much simpler, but he did not include the proof. Second, I study the obstacle problem with an elliptic operator in divergence form. I develop all of the basic theory of existence, uniqueness, optimal regularity, and nondegeneracy of the solutions. These results allow us to begin the study of the regularity of the free boundary in the case where the coefficients are in the space of vanishing mean oscillation (VMO).