Part One of this project examines a group of piano pieces that bear the title sonata-fantasy or fantasy-sonata. While much has been written about quasi-sonata fantasies and quasi-fantasies of the Romantic period, the sonata/fantasy hybrid works of the following era have largely been a neglected area in music research. The purpose of this document is to fill this void and provide an introductory study of these works. The introductory chapter includes a list of sonata-fantasies and fantasy-sonatas I have found in U.S. libraries. The next two chapters outline the history of the fantasy as a genre and its relationship to the sonata up to the mid-nineteenth century: while the two were generally viewed as two contrasting genres in the eighteenth century, their boundaries gradually began to disappear in the early nineteenth century. Six works selected for detailed analysis in this project are Joachim Raffs Fantasie-Sonate, op.168; Alexander Scriabins Sonate Fantaisie, op.posth. and Sonata No.2 (Sonate-Fantaisie), op.19; Joaquin Turinas Sonata Fantasia, op.59; Anatoly Nikolayevich Aleksandrovs Piano Sonata No.11 Sonata Fantasia, op.81; and George Rochbergs Sonata-Fantasia. The final chapter summarizes the analyses of the selected works and explores explanations for the emergence of pieces bearing the sonata/fantasy compound titles. Part Two of this project consists of program notes for the repertoire used in fulfilling the performance requirements of the D.M.A. degree. The following works are individually discussed in this section: Piano Trio No. 28 in D Major, Hob. XV: 16 by Franz Joseph Haydn; Piano Trio in D Major, No. 70 no. 1, Ghost by Ludwig van Beethoven; Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor, op.66 by Felix Mendelssohn; Prelude in D Major, BWV925 by Wilhelm Friedmann Bach(?); Sonata in G Major, op.78 (D.894) by Franz Schubert; Klavierstcke, op.118 by Johannes Brahms; Rain Tree Sketch for piano (1982) by Toru Takemitsu; Los Requiebros by Enrique Granados; and Concerto in G Major for Piano and Orchestra by Maurice Ravel.

Processes having the same bridges as a given reference Markov process constitute its reciprocal class. In this paper we study the reciprocal class of compound Poisson processes whose jumps belong to a finite set A in R^d. We propose a characterization of the reciprocal class as the unique set of probability measures on which a family of time and space transformations induces the same density, expressed in terms of the reciprocal invariants. The geometry of A plays a crucial role in the design of the transformations, and we use tools from discrete geometry to obtain an optimal characterization. We deduce explicit conditions for two Markov jump processes to belong to the same class. Finally, we provide a natural interpretation of the invariants as short-time asymptotics for the probability that the reference process makes a cycle around its current state.

Small quantities of reduced sulphur compounds (RSCs) emitted from Kraft pulp mills can affect air quality due to low odour thresholds. Chromatographic methods were developed for individual RSCs at ppt to ppb concentrations. Analyses of ambient air samples showed that while H2S, CH3SH, DMS and DMDS were linked to the pulp mill, the majority of COS and CS2 was due to other sources unrelated to the mill. The fluxes of individual RSCs from kraft wastewater clarifiers were quantified for the first time. DMDS and DMS were the major RSCs emitted from the primary and secondary clarifiers, respectively. RSC fluxes were one to three orders of magnitude higher at the primary clarifier than at the secondary one. Clarifier emissions were, however, insignificant compared to point sources in the mill. Statistically significant correlations were found between the DMS emission and BOD, COD, as well as TSS in the secondary treatment system.

Small quantities of reduced sulphur compounds (RSCs) emitted from Kraft pulp mills can affect air quality due to low odour thresholds. Chromatographic methods were developed for individual RSCs at ppt to ppb concentrations. Analyses of ambient air samples showed that while H2S, CH3SH, DMS and DMDS were linked to the pulp mill, the majority of COS and CS2 was due to other sources unrelated to the mill. The fluxes of individual RSCs from kraft wastewater clarifiers were quantified for the first time. DMDS and DMS were the major RSCs emitted from the primary and secondary clarifiers, respectively. RSC fluxes were one to three orders of magnitude higher at the primary clarifier than at the secondary one. Clarifier emissions were, however, insignificant compared to point sources in the mill. Statistically significant correlations were found between the DMS emission and BOD, COD, as well as TSS in the secondary treatment system.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic version.

No description available.

abstract: Nanowires (NWs) have attracted many interests due to their advance in synthesis and their unique structural, electrical and optical properties. NWs have been realized as promising candidates for future photonic platforms. In this work, erbium chloride silicate (ECS), CdS and CdSSe NWs growth by vapor-liquid-solid mechanism and their characterization were demonstrated. In the ECS NWs part, systematic experiments were performed to investigate the relation between growth temperature and NWs structure. Scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and photoluminescence characterization were used to study the NWs morphology, crystal quality and optical properties. At low growth temperature, there was strong Si Raman signal observed indicating ECS NWs have Si core. At high growth temperature, the excess Si signal was disappeared and the NWs showed better crystal quality and optical properties. The growth temperature is the key parameter that will induce the transition from Si/ECS core-shell NWs structure to solid ECS NWs. With the merits of high Er concentration and long PL lifetime, ECS NWs can serve as optical gain material with emission at 1.5 μm for communications and amplifiers. In the CdS, CdSSe NWs part, the band gap engineering of CdSSe NWs with spatial composition tuning along single NWs were demonstrated. The first step of realizing CdSSe NWs was the controlled growth of CdS NWs. It showed that overall pressure would largely affect the lengths of the CdS NWs. NWs with longer length can be obtained at higher pressure. Then, based on CdS NWs growth and by adding CdSe step by step, composition graded CdSSe alloy NWs were successfully synthesized. The temperature control over the source vapor concentration plays the key role for the growth. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Electrical Engineering 2012

Cyanobacterial secondary metabolites are a rich source of bioactive compounds with potential utilization in pharmacology. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the novel compound nostatin A isolated from the cyanobacterium Desmonostoc muscorum. Project was focused on the extraction, purification and characterization of the cytostatic effect caused by this novel compound and its naturally occurred structural analogues. The cytostatic activity of nostatin A and its analogs was evaluated in HeLa cell line. Experiments based on microscopy, flow cytometry and HPLC-HRMS techniques were performed in order to clarify the cytostatic effect of nostatin A in HeLa cells and its mechanism of the action.

Traditional medicines (TM) have been used for centuries to treat illnesses, but in many cases their modes-of-action (MOAs) remain unclear. Given the increasing data of chemical ingredients of traditional medicines and the availability of large-scale bioactivity data linking chemical structures to activities against protein targets, we are now in a position to propose computational hypotheses for the MOAs using in silico target prediction. The MOAs were established from supporting literature. The in silico target prediction, which is based on the “Molecular Similarity Principle”, was modelled via two models: a Naïve Bayes Classifier and a Random Forest Classifier. Chapter 2 discovered the relationship of 46 traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) therapeutic action subclasses by mapping them into a dendrogram using the predicted targets. Overall, the most frequent top three enriched targets/pathways were immune-related targets such as tyrosine-protein phosphatase non-receptor type 2 (PTPN2) and digestive system such as mineral absorption. Two major protein families, G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR), and protein kinase family contributed to the diversity of the bioactivity space, while digestive system was consistently annotated pathway motif. Chapter 3 compared the chemical and bioactivity space of 97 anti-cancer plants’ compounds of TCM, Ayurveda and Malay traditional medicine. The comparison of the chemical space revealed that benzene, anthraquinone, flavone, sterol, pentacyclic triterpene and cyclohexene were the most frequent scaffolds in those TM. The annotation of the bioactivity space with target classes showed that kinase class was the most significant target class for all groups. From a phylogenetic tree of the anti-cancer plants, only eight pairs of plants were phylogenetically related at either genus, family or order level. Chapter 4 evaluated synergy score of pairwise compound combination of Shexiang Baoxin Pill (SBP), a TCM formulation for myocardial infarction. The score was measured from the topological properties, pathway dissimilarity and mean distance of all the predicted targets of a combination on a representative network of the disease. The method found four synergistic combinations, ginsenoside Rb3 and cholic acid, ginsenoside Rb2 and ginsenoside Rb3, ginsenoside Rb3 and 11-hydroxyprogesterone and ginsenoside Rb2 and ginsenoside Rd agreed with the experimental results. The modulation of androgen receptor, epidermal growth factor and caspases were proposed for the synergistic actions. Altogether, in silico target prediction was able to discover the bioactivity space of different TMs and elucidate the MOA of multiple formulations and two major health concerns: cancer and myocardial infarction. Hence, understanding the MOA of the traditional medicine could be beneficial in providing testable hypotheses to guide towards finding new molecular entities.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:23:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-10-06Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:50:00Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 caetano_mct_me_jabo.pdf: 257399 bytes, checksum: 9345f2ab37f9803a090aa70b6aad44ad (MD5) / O desenvolvimento dos centros urbanos tem conduzido a um aumento desordenado na geração de resíduos e conseqüente poluição ambiental. Tendo em vista o potencial agronômico dos resíduos gerados pelas cidades, o presente trabalho teve por objetivo verificar a influência do composto de lixo (CL), composto de poda de árvore (CP) e substrato comercial (SC), associados a diferentes lâminas de irrigação no desenvolvimento de porta-enxerto (limão-cravo) de citros. O delineamento experimental adotado foi em blocos casualizados em um esquema fatorial 6x3, sendo seis diferentes combinações de substratos: S1 – 100% SC; S2 – 80% SC + 20% CP; S3 – 60% SC + 30% CP + 10% CL; S4 – 40% SC + 40% CP + 20% CL; S5 – 20% SC + 50% CP + 30% CL e S6 – 60% CP + 40% CL associados a três lâminas de irrigação: 50% (I1), 100% (I2) e 150% (I3) da evapotranspiração diária medida pelo atmômetro. Os parâmetros avaliados das plantas foram: altura, número de folhas, diâmetro do caule, matéria fresca aérea e matéria seca aérea. Os resultados permitiram concluir que a irrigação abaixo da evaporação medida pelo atmômetro causaram efeito negativo no desenvolvimento das plantas e que a reposição de água com 150% (I3) foi a que favoreceu o desenvolvimento. Os substratos S2, o qual se utilizou 80% de SC associado à 20% CP foi os que proporcionou melhor desenvolvimento dos porta-enxertos. Os substratos com porcentagem de composto de lixo superior a 30% mostraram-se inadequados para o desenvolvimento dos porta-enxertos / The development of urban centers has led to an inordinate increase in the generation of waste and consequent environmental pollution. Considering the agronomic potential of the waste generated by cities, the present work objective was to check the influence of garbage compound (GC), pruning of tree (PT) and commercial substrate (CS), associated to different irrigation blades in the rootstocks (Rangpur Lime) citros development. The experimental delineation adopted was in random blocks in a fatorial scheme 6x3, being six different substrates combinations: S1 – 100% CS; S2 – 80% CS + 20% PT; S3 – 60% CS + 30% PT + 10% GC; S4 – 40% CS + 40% PT + 20% GC; S5 – 20% CS + 50% PT + 30% GC e S6 – 60% PT + 40% GC associated to different irrigation blades: 50% (I1), 100% (I2) e 150% (I3) of the daily evapotranspiration measured by the atmometer. The evaluated plants parameters were: height, leaves number, stem diameter, fresh matter and dry matter of the air part. The results allowed to conclude that the irrigation below the evaporation measured by the atmometer caused negative effect in the plants development and the water replacement with 150 % (I3) was the one that favored the development. The substrates S2, which is used 80% of SC associated with 20% CP was that the enhanced growth of the rootstocks. The substrates with garbage compound percentage superior to 30 % appeared unsuitable for the rootstocks development