La musique d’al-Andalus a fait couler beaucoup d’encre. Différents mythes et constructions historiographiques circulent à son sujet. Pourtant, elle n’a jamais réellement été étudiée dans une perspective historique, alors même qu’elle se situe à la croisée d’enjeux cruciaux pour la société andalousienne. Traces matérielles d’une pratique musicale profane se déroulant dans des contextes festifs et de loisirs, les instruments se trouvent au cœur de nombreuses problématiques comme le contrôle des mœurs par les juristes, la mise en scène du pouvoir politique, les échanges culturels avec l’Orient et leur rôle dans la construction d’une identité andalousienne. Ils ne peuvent être appréhendés qu’en mobilisant des sources variées, aussi bien textuelles qu’iconographiques ou archéologiques. Une analyse de la façon dont ils étaient définis et envisagés dans la société andalousienne a ainsi été menée grâce au croisement de ces sources. Cette approche a également permis de dresser un panorama des instruments effectivement en usage en al-Andalus entre le IIIᵉ/IXᵉ siècle, période d’apparition des premières sources, et le tournant des VIᵉ/XIIᵉ-VIIᵉ/XIIIᵉ siècles, quand la réduction territoriale d’al-Andalus et l’intensité des échanges culturels avec le reste de la péninsule et le Maghreb limitent la pertinence d’une étude de la musique dans le stricte cadre andalousien. Enfin, la mise en parallèle des différents types de sources a aussi éclairé les pratiques sociales et les discours politiques convoquant les instruments. / A lot has been written about al-Andalus’ music. Various myths and misconceptions pervade its historiography. Furthermore, it has never really been studied from an historical point of view, even though it stands at the crossroads of several issues central to al-Andalus’s society. Musical instruments can be studied as material traces of a profane musical practice taking place in celebrative and leisure contexts. They raise numerous questions, such as the setting of moral regulations by religious authorities, the representation of political power, the staging of cultural exchanges between East and West Islamic worlds and the development of an Andalusian identity. A comprehensive study of Andalusian musical instruments requires an analysis of iconographical evidence and archaeological material as well as written sources. It is indeed impossible to grasp the definition and the conception of lusical instruments in Andalusian society without comparing different types of sources. This multidisciplinary perspective also helped in understanding the panorama of the instruments in use in al-Andalus between the 3rd/9th Century – when the first sources can be dated – and the end of the 6th/12th Century – when a study of Andalusian music has to leave al-Andalus’ shrinking borders to focus as well on the cultural exchanges with the rest of the Peninsula and the Maghreb. Finally, a detailed investigation of social practices and political discourses using musical instruments can only be conducted through the study of various sources.

This dissertation addresses the convergence of ethics, labor, aesthetics, cultural citizenship, and the circulation of knowledge among experimental electronic instrument builders in New York City and Berlin. This loosely connected group of musician-inventors engages in what I call “DIY music technology” due to their shared do-it-yourself ethos and their use of emerging and repurposed technologies, which allow for new understandings of musical invention. My ethnography follows a constellation of self-described hackers, “makers,” sound and noise artists, circuit benders, avant-garde/experimental musicians, and underground rock bands through these two cities, exploring how they push the limits of what “music” and “instruments” can encompass, while forming local, transnational, and virtual networks based on shared interests in electronics tinkering and independent sound production. This fieldwork is supplemented with inquiries into the construction of “DIY” as a category of invention, labor, and citizenship, through which I trace the term’s creative and commercial tensions from the emergence of hobbyism as a form of productive leisure to the prevailing discourse of punk rock to its adoption by the recent Maker Movement. I argue that the cultivation of the self as a “productive” cultural citizen—which I liken to a state of “permanent prototyping”—is central to my interlocutors’ activities, through which sound, self, and instrument are continually remade. I build upon the idea of “technoaesthetics” (Masco 2006) to connect the inner workings of musical machines with the personal transformations of DIY music technologists as inventors fuse their aural imaginaries with industrial, biological, environmental, and sometimes even magical imagery. Integral to these personal transformations is a challenge to corporate approaches to musical instrument making and selling, though this stance is often strained when commercial success is achieved. Synthesizing interdisciplinary perspectives from ethno/musicology, anthropology, and science and technology studies, I demonstrate that DIY music technologists forge a distinctive sense of self and citizenship that critiques, yet remains a cornerstone of, artistic production and experience in a post-digital “Maker Age.”

Cette étude se doit d’analyser ce que les textes de la Collection hippocratique, ainsi que l’apport des commentateurs d’Hippocrate, tels Celse, Galien, et jusqu’aux chirurgiens actuels permettent de connaître de l’art chirurgical des Vème et IVème siècles avant J.-C., en Grèce. Les textes dits « chirurgicaux » sont ceux qui mentionnent un acte technique sur le corps humain, le plus souvent à l’aide d’un instrument « chirurgical ». Ils nous donnent des indications sur les pathologies traitées. Quelques documents iconographiques et quelques rares vestiges sont un apport intéressant. En confrontant les textes hippocratiques et la technique chirurgicale actuelle, nous verrons dans quelle mesure il est possible de reconstituer les conditions de réalisation de l’acte chirurgical par les praticiens hippocratiques. / The present study focuses on surgery procedures in fifth and fourth century B.-C. Greece. The analysis of these procedures is based on information stemming from the text constituting the Hippocratic Corpus as well as from Hippocrates’ commentators such as Celsus and Galen- and modern surgeons. The texts analyzed particularly those named “surgical “are those describing a manual intervention on the human body, most frequently supported by an instrument considered as “surgical.” They offer indications on the pathologies treated. Certain iconographic documents are of particular interest. The confrontation between Hippocratic texts and modern surgical techniques will enable to estimate the possibility of restitution of the surgical procedures’ conditions by the Hippocratic surgeons

A novel, portable, filter fluorometer was developed for the determination of chloroform and TCE at environmentally-relevant levels when coupled with improved sampling techniques and reagents. Reagents selective for the TCE or chloroform convert these toxic species into fluorescent species that can be monitored. The fluorometer is based on LED excitation light sources, a battery-operated photomultiplier tube as a radiation detector, and appropriate excitation and emission filters. A unique low-power, miniature heater inside the cell holder of the fluorometer provides control of the temperature of the reagent solution above ambient temperature. The fluorometer and the sampling systems, including a miniature air pump, are portable and can be operated from a small lead battery over an entire day. Sparging, passive transfer, and membrane sampling techniques were used to transfer TCE or chloroform from the sample solution as a vapor into the appropriate reagent and to provide preconcentration. The apparatus for membrane sampling was improved to be applicable for continuous sampling of water in the field situations with minimal sample manipulation. Each of the three sampling techniques provides a transfer rate of the analyte of ~1 ng/min per ng/mL of analyte in the sample. The optimized reagent based on 1-(3-pyridylmethyl)urea provides high selectivity to chloroform and the reagent based on isonicotinamide has excellent selectivity to TCE. These two reagents serve as an alternative to the more common pyridine reagent for the determination of chloroform or TCE in water and eliminate the exposure of the user to toxic pyridine vapor. The developed filter fluorometer, the optimized reagents, and the membrane sampling technique provide a detection limit for chloroform of 0.2 and 10 ng/mL, respectively, with the pyridine and 1-(3-pyridylmethyl)urea reagent. The detection limit for TCE is 0.3 ng/mL with the isonicotinamide reagent. For TCE, the detection limit is almost two orders of magnitude better than obtained previously with a fluorometric technique. Analysis times vary from 15 to 30 min. / Graduation date: 2003

published_or_final_version / Dentistry / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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Recent events in the business world have focused attention on the importance of high quality financial reporting. Of particular interest is where the collapse of prominent companies such as Baring Plc. was due to the company's involvement with derivative instruments. In Australia, some derivative instruments are not recognised in the balance sheet. However, the Australian accounting standard AASB 1033 Presentation and Disclosure of Financial Instruments requires extensive disclosures to overcome the lack of guidance with regard to the recognition and measurement. Therefore, AASB 1033 may be regarded as a high quality disclosure standard. This thesis investigates the transparency or information quality of derivative disclosures of Australian firms in the extractive industries using 1998 to 2001 financial reports. The extractive industries play a major role in the Australian economy, where they generated exports worth more than A$30billion in 2000 to 2002 (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2003a and 2003b). Further, firms in the extractive industries extensively use derivative instruments for hedging purposes (Berkman, Bradbury, Hancock and Innes, 1997). The objective of this study is, first, to examine the relationship between the transparency or disclosure quality of derivative information and firm characteristics. Second, this study investigates the value relevance of derivative disclosures in particularly hedge information, net fair value information and risk information. Quality is measured based on a disclosure index developed from AASB 1033 Presentation and Disclosure of Financial Instruments. A finding of concern is that the majority of firms in this study provide less than complete information and therefore enforcement power is required to ensure compliance (Kothari, 2000) Prior studies have related disclosure quality of accounting information with firm characteristics but no attempt has been made to relate those characteristics with the disclosure quality of derivative instruments. The current study contributes to the literature by examining the relationship between firm characteristics and the quality of derivative disclosures. Firm characteristics investigated are size, profitability, price-earnings ratio, market-to-book ratio, research and development activity, auditor, debt-to-equity ratio and type of extractive firm. This study finds that the variables, firm size, price-earnings and debt-to-equity ratios are associated with the disclosure quality of derivative information. To a lesser extent, the variables, market-to-book ratio and profitability, are also associated with disclosure quality. High disclosure quality has been argued to lead to a reduction in the cost of debt (Sengupta, 1998) and equity (Botosan, 1997), resulting in higher security prices (Miller and Bahnson, 2002). The results of this study indicate that high quality derivative information, as represented by the disclosure index, is value relevant. Market participants do consider hedge information and risk information components as important for decision-making. However, examining the specific information disclosed in the financial statements indicate that some of the disclosed information such as the unrealised gain or loss on financial assets and liabilities and off-balance sheet derivative financial instruments are not significant. These results contribute to the value relevance literature as this study focuses on the extractive industries which have been neglected in the literature. This study provides important information for standard setters and regulators for future directions in developing accounting standards and is particularly relevant for the impending adoption of International Accounting Standards.

This research dissertation presents work undertaken to develop new performance techniques and mappings for the expressive control of spatial motion using Ambisonic projection. The dissertation reviews relevant research from the fields of Spatial Sound and Extended Instruments, and establishes playability as a useful set of criteria for a reflexive project methodology and evaluation. This reflexive research systematically investigates Trevor Wishart’s taxonomy of spatial motions through the development of new hardware, software, performance techniques and spatial motion analysis.

This research dissertation presents work undertaken to develop new performance techniques and mappings for the expressive control of spatial motion using Ambisonic projection. The dissertation reviews relevant research from the fields of Spatial Sound and Extended Instruments, and establishes playability as a useful set of criteria for a reflexive project methodology and evaluation. This reflexive research systematically investigates Trevor Wishart’s taxonomy of spatial motions through the development of new hardware, software, performance techniques and spatial motion analysis.