Works of art often refer to one another. Perhaps a closer examination of this relationship occurs if they are theoretically displaced from the sequence of events that contextualise them. Placed side-by-side, they may take on a fresh meaning that might identify artistic intention as universal — as a 'redemptive' statement of Being. Both Piero della Francesca and Stanley Spencer painted 'Resurrection' pictures. The five hundred years that separate them notwithstanding, the reasons for their so doing must bear some comparison. Each made a statement of belief in their depiction of a metaphysical world created primarily in the imagination but housed in cultural milieus that would identify them as 'visionary' amongst their peers. Yet, in many ways, one picture is the antithesis to the other, the first deeply religious, the second highly personal. Regardless of their differences, each work might perpetually and simultaneously strive toward 'the spiritual' in an individual and universal sense. As an artist whose work ostensibly denies any lofty 'spiritual' aspiration whatsoever, Frank Zappa's dismissal of authority, whether couched in religious, musical or sociological terms, marks a valid juxtaposition to current acceptance of artistic form. Not only was it legitimate to invite a musician into the affray, for me it was a vital continuation of my earlier exploration. Zappa seriously challenges the notion of 'feeling' as little more than a pre-set conditioned response to music. I hoped to establish that Zappa's own quest for musical perfection flew in the face of his notorious cynicism, proclaiming his output as 'redemptive' — alongside that of Piero della Francesca and Stanley Spencer. It is the main contention here that as the human predicament requires that the artist should attempt to re-present his vision in order to redefine reality for himself and his peers, the role of artist as 'visionary' is worthy of perennial consideration.

By using existing radio network infrastructure, a user can be positioned even where GPS and other positioning technologies lack coverage. The LTE Positioning Protocol (LPP) supports user Reference Signal Time Difference (RSTD) reports based on the Time of Arrival (TOA) for a Positioning Reference Signal (PRS). In the current reporting format, only one RSTD for each base station is considered, but for indoor environments this is easily biased due to fading and multipath issues, resulting in a Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) bias. With a rich User Equipment (UE) feedback that can represent the multipath channel for each Base Station (BS), the positioning accuracy can be increased. This thesis develops and evaluates a UE reporting format representing multiple TDOA candidates, and a probabilistic positioning algorithm, in terms of positioning accuracy and amount of data reported. By modeling time measurements as Gaussian Mixture (GM), the time information can be compressed with arbitrary resolution and used in a Maximum-Likelihood (ML) estimation to find the position. Results were obtained through simulation in a radio network simulator and post-processing of simulation data in Matlab. The results suggest that several TOA candidates improve the positioning accuracy, but that the largest improvement comes from a noise based threshold by increasing LOS detectability reducing the NLOS bias, while suppressing noise. The results also suggest that the accuracy for the method can be further improved by combining multiple time measurement occasions.

The purpose of my thesis is to study the lament in ancient Greek culture, and to show how its ritual meaning is interpreted by literature. The terms goos, oimoge, threnos and linos not only indicate the presence of different ritual attitudes to death but also the existence of different interpretations for each of them. The goos and the oimoge mirror an archaic religiosity and consist of sinister utterances aimed at summoning ghosts, requesting for divine revenge, etc. Aeschylus introduces them as aischrologic acts as he implies the presence of a god or a daimon. Sophocles and Euripides use them as dysphemic elements and censure an approach to death which implies that gods are vindictive, deceitful and unjust. However, they also introduce an euphemic goos consisting in an expression of feelings. The threnos only appears in funerary contexts in Homer while is often introduced as dysphemic in drama. The linos-song is mentioned as a vintage-song in Homer, it appears as a lament and then as a song for some hero’s apotheosis or return to life in drama. The poetic use of these terms serves to understand how the social and political meaning of the ritual was understood and codified by literature.

This thesis proposes an alternative approach to sound synthesis. It seeks to offer traditional string players a synthesiser which will allow them to make use of their existing skills in performance. A theoretical apparatus reflecting on the constraints of formalisation is developed and used to shed light on construction-related shortcomings in the instrumental developments of related research. Historical aspects and methods of sound synthesis, and the act of musical performance, are addressed with the aim of drawing conclusions for the construction of algorithms and interfaces. The alternative approach creates an openness and responsiveness in the synthesis instrument by using implicit playing parameters without the necessity to define, specify or measure all of them. In order to investigate this approach, several synthesis algorithms are developed, sounds are designed and a selection of them empirically compared to conventionally synthesised sounds. The algorithms are used in collaborative projects with other musicians in order to examine their practical musical value. The results provide evidence that implementations using the approach presented can offer musically significant differences as compared to similarly complex conventional implementations, and that - depending on the disposition of the musician - they can form a valuable contribution to the sound repertoire of performers and composers.

This thesis attempts an intervention in popular music classification. It argues that popular musicians do not only choose the titles to their works, but go further to define the genres of these works. The dynamic at play is such that most popular musicians claim to produce works of different and new genres with each new work they create. By engaging with the works of a selection of Nigerian popular musicians, the thesis demonstrates that the disorderliness in popular music branding can be restricted. Through a critical discourse analysis of the textual elements of the material and of ‘alternative’ audience contributions, the thesis advocates a new genre of popular music, namely the genre of ‘political music’. This distinctive genre is extractable from the otherwise conventional genres of popular music, and is composed of three comprehensible subgenres namely protest political music, unity political music and terrestrial praise political music. The study’s selection is made of popular music material from hip hop, reggae, afro-beat, and juju genres. They are delivered in popular Nigerian languages ranging between Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, English and Pidgin English.

PRATIQUE DES LANGAGES FONCTIONNELS TYPES Dans l'approche conception on s'intéresse à l'évolution de la compilation de ML en l'illustrant par la description de deux compilateurs : CeML un compilateur de ML vers C et OCamil un compilateur d'O'CAML vers .net. On montre ensuite les capacités d'extensions (parallèle et objet) au niveau des constructions du langage ML. Cela autorise de le choisir comme langage cible de compilation pour d'autres langages. Les capacités d'interopérer entre ML d'autres langages sont alors explorées pour plusieurs plates-formes d'exécution en conservant la sûreté du typage statique. Dans l'approche développement d'applications on s'intéresse aux outils de développement de l'édition structurée à la mise au point et à l'intégration de ces outils dans une même interface. On discute ensuite sur la formation du programmeur en montrant le cadre confortable du typage statique et l'intérêt de comprendre le modèle fonctionnel avant d'aborder le modèle objet. Le déploiement d'application est illustré par plusieurs applications embarquant un compilateur ML en tant que composant de l'application.

<p>Volume rendering (VRT) has been used with great success in studies of patients using computed tomography (CT), much because of the possibility of standardizing the rendering protocols. When using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), this procedure is considerably more difficult, since the signal from a given tissue can vary dramatically, even for the same patient. This thesis work focuses on how to improve the presentation of MRI data by using VRT protocols including standardized transfer functions. The study is limited to exclusively examining data from patients with suspected renal artery stenosis. A total number of 11 patients are examined.</p><p>A statistical approach is used to standardize the volume rendering protocols. The histogram of the image volume is modeled as the sum of two gamma distributions, corresponding to vessel and background voxels. Parameters describing the gamma distributions are estimated with a Maximum-likelihood technique, so that expectation (E1 and E2) and standard deviation of the two voxel distributions can be calculated from the histogram. These values are used to generate the transfer function.</p><p>Different combinations of the values from the expectation and standard deviation were studied in a material of 11 MR angiography datasets, and the visual result was graded by a radiologist. By comparing the grades, it turned out that using only the expectation of the background distribution (E1) and vessel distribution (E2) gave the best result. The opacity is then defined with a value of 0 up to a signal threshold of E1, then increasing linearly up to 50 % at a second threshold E2, and after that a constant opacity of 50 %. The brightness curve follows the opacity curve to E2, after which it continues to increase linearly up to 100%.</p><p>A graphical user interface was created to facilitate the user-control of the volumes and transfer functions. The result from the statistical calculations is displayed in the interface and is used to view and manipulate the transfer function directly in the volume histogram.</p><p>A transfer function generated with the Maximum-likelihood VRT method (ML-VRT) gave a better visual result in 10 of the 11 cases than when using a transfer function not adapting to signal intensity variations.</p>

A previous study in chickens revealed that myosin light chain kinase (MLCK), f actin, and myosin are found on the crystalline lens. Their polygonal arrangement at the posterior surface resembles a muscle tissue, which suggests that these proteins may have a contractile role in accommodation. The ciliary muscle in chickens is skeletal in nature and, therefore, chickens were used to test the hypothesis that contractile microfilaments play a role in accommodation. Ciliary nerve-induced accommodation was measured in the presence of an MLCK inhibitor 1-(5-Iodonaphthalene-1-sulfonyl)-1H-hexahydro-1,4-diazepine hydrochloride (ML-7). Eyes of 6-day old white Leghorn chickens (gallus gallus domesticus) were enucleated in Tyrode’s saline solution while keeping the ciliary nerve intact. One eye was treated with ML-7 and the other eye was treated with vehicle only. Three concentrations of ML-7 were used: 1 µM, 10 µM, and 100 µM. Two experiments were carried out, one including a (3×10 min) wash and one without. Focal lengths of the vehicle- and ML-7-treated eyes were measured before, during and after accommodation. Immunoblots were used to detect the amount of phosphorylated myosin with and without the inhibitor. Focal lengths for accommodation were shorter than those at rest (p<0.001). In the wash experiment, vehicle-treated eyes had higher accommodative amplitudes compared to ML-7-treated eyes for all three dosage groups. In the no-wash experiment, only the 1 µM group demonstrated the same trend as the wash experiment. For the 10 µM and 100 µM groups, ML-7-treated eyes had higher accommodative amplitudes compared to vehicle-treated eyes. Immunoblots revealed varying amounts of inhibition within pairs of eyes as well as between birds for both experiments. Results from this experiment indicate that ML-7 was not effective at determining whether contractile microfilaments found on the lens contribute to accommodation.

A previous study in chickens revealed that myosin light chain kinase (MLCK), f actin, and myosin are found on the crystalline lens. Their polygonal arrangement at the posterior surface resembles a muscle tissue, which suggests that these proteins may have a contractile role in accommodation. The ciliary muscle in chickens is skeletal in nature and, therefore, chickens were used to test the hypothesis that contractile microfilaments play a role in accommodation. Ciliary nerve-induced accommodation was measured in the presence of an MLCK inhibitor 1-(5-Iodonaphthalene-1-sulfonyl)-1H-hexahydro-1,4-diazepine hydrochloride (ML-7). Eyes of 6-day old white Leghorn chickens (gallus gallus domesticus) were enucleated in Tyrode’s saline solution while keeping the ciliary nerve intact. One eye was treated with ML-7 and the other eye was treated with vehicle only. Three concentrations of ML-7 were used: 1 µM, 10 µM, and 100 µM. Two experiments were carried out, one including a (3×10 min) wash and one without. Focal lengths of the vehicle- and ML-7-treated eyes were measured before, during and after accommodation. Immunoblots were used to detect the amount of phosphorylated myosin with and without the inhibitor. Focal lengths for accommodation were shorter than those at rest (p<0.001). In the wash experiment, vehicle-treated eyes had higher accommodative amplitudes compared to ML-7-treated eyes for all three dosage groups. In the no-wash experiment, only the 1 µM group demonstrated the same trend as the wash experiment. For the 10 µM and 100 µM groups, ML-7-treated eyes had higher accommodative amplitudes compared to vehicle-treated eyes. Immunoblots revealed varying amounts of inhibition within pairs of eyes as well as between birds for both experiments. Results from this experiment indicate that ML-7 was not effective at determining whether contractile microfilaments found on the lens contribute to accommodation.

We present a new sub-optimal near-maximum-likelihood (ML) detection method for the family of variable-rate space-time block codes (VRSTBC). The proposed detection method is based on the concept of symbol reliability and provides a wide range of performance-complexity trade-offs. The reliability measures are defined with the help of a recent generic ML metric expression. The error performance and complexity analysis of the method via simulations show an achievable near-ML error performance with significant reduction in complexity. The performance of the proposed method is also compared with the group interference cancellation (GIC) method which was the detection method originally applied to VRSTBCs and the results show a significant improvement. The new method offers various levels of error protection via a simple parameter and hence can provide the users of a wireless network with different performance levels according to their cost allowance. Unequal error protection by VRSTBCs under the new detection method was explored. Several applications integrating data with different levels of sensitivity to error can benefit from the wide range of possibilities that the combination of the proposed detection method and VRSTBCs provides. To further explore these flexibilities, four practically interesting power allocation schemes were applied to the transmission and the behaviors were observed through case studies. / Thesis (Master, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-26 23:45:07.81