Many people listen to, or at least hear, some form of music almost every day of their lives. However, only some of the processes involved in creating the sensations and emotions evoked by the music are understood in any detail. The problem of unravelling these processes has been much less thoroughly investigated than the comparable topics of speech and image recognition; this has almost certainly been caused by the existence of a greater number of applications awaiting this knowledge. Nevertheless, the area of music perception has attracted some attention over the last few decades and there is an increasing interest in the subject largely arising from the availability of suitably powerful technology. It is becoming feasible to use such technology to construct artificial hearing devices which attempt to reproduce the functionality of the human auditory system. The construction of such devices is both a powerful method of verifying operational theories of the human auditory system and may ultimately provide a means of analysing music in more detail than man. In addition to the analytical benefits, techniques developed in this manner are readily applicable to the creative aspects of music, such as the composition of new music and musical sounds.

Zugl.: Rostock, Univ., Diss., 2006

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2004. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-155). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

University, Diss., 2002--Freiburg (Breisgau).

This thesis consists of three studies that cover topics in inflation and output growth, and their uncertainties in G7 and developing countries. We utilise the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Industrial Price Index (IPI) as proxies for the inflation rate (price level) and the growth rate (output), respectively. Chapter 2 considers the case of three developing countries Turkey, Egypt and Syria. We analyse the inflation and growth using asymmetric PGARCH model. In accordance with this, we estimate all the models using two alternative distributions the normal and Student’s t. Moreover, dummy variables are chosen in the inflation data according to some economic events in Turkey, Egypt and Syria. Even more, the mean equation is adjusted to include these dummy variables on the intercept. To summarize, the results show an evidence of the Cukierman–Meltzer (1986) hypothesis, which is labelled as the ‘opportunistic Fed’ by Grier and Perry (1998), in Egypt and Syria. On the other hand, an evidence of the Holland (1995) hypothesis is obtained in Turkey, this result suggests that the ‘stabilizing Fed’ notion is plausible. Moreover, an evidence for the first leg of Friedman (1977) hypothesis is obtained in Egypt and Turkey. Chapter 3 examines the causal relationship between inflation and output growth, and their variabilities for G7 countries by applying the bivariate constant conditional correlation CCC – GARCH (1,1)-ML models. Moreover, we employ the models including dummy variables in the mean equations to investigate the impact of economic events on inflation and output. Briefly, there are evidences of the second leg of Friedman (1977) hypothesis in the US, UK, Germany, Italy, France and Canada while there is an evidence of Dotsey and Sarte (2000) in Japan. In addition, there are evidences for positive effect of inflation uncertainty on inflation in the US, Germany, Japan and France in line of Cukierman and Meltzer (1986) hypothesis. Moreover, the results of estimation CCC-GARCH (1,1) in mean models including dummy variables highlight a strong support for the two legs of Friedman (1977) hypothesis and Cukierman and Meltzer (1986). Lastly, Chapter 4 is based on examining the inflation rates for three developing countries Turkey, Syria and Egypt by applying the Bai and Perron (2003) breakpoint specification technique in the monthly inflation data of our sample. As a result, three possible break points for each of the inflation rates in the conditional variance have been determined. In addition, we employ GARCH model to control the breaks in the conditional mean and variance equations. To conclude, the autoregressive coefficients seem to cause a statistically significant impact on the breaks only in the case of Turkey, also, the parameters of the mean equation show time varying characteristics across three breaks. As far as the conditional variance is concerned the ARCH parameter (?) shows no time varying behaviour while for the GARCH parameter only one significant break seems to impact the inflation rate in Syria.

Due to the inadequate schooling system and the underpreparedness of learners in South African High Schools, Higher Education Institutions are faced with learners who do not meet the minimum criteria for acceptance into mainstream science programmes. In an attempt to increase access into the institution and meet the demands of more science and technology graduates, the Department of Chemistry at the historically disadvantaged ML Sultan Technikon introduced the Augmented programme for the National Diploma: Analytical Chemistry in 1994. This study provides a report on the profile of the students registered from 1994 to 1996, their graduation rate and a correlation of their points calculated for matric symbols with their graduation rate as well as their performance in Analytical Chemistry, the major subject of their diploma. Interviews are used to determine the perceptions of the lecturers regarding the structure of and teaching in the Augmented programme. / Chemistry / M.Sc. (Chemical Education)

This thesis investigates how recommendation systems has been used and can be used with the help of different machine learning algorithms. Algorithms used and presented are decision tree, random forest and singular-value decomposition(SVD). Together with Tingstad, we have tried to implement the SVD function on their recommendation engine in order to enhance the recommendation given. A trivial presentation on how the algorithms work. General information about machine learning and how we tried to implement it with Tingstad’s data. Implementations with Netflix’s and Movielens open-source dataset was done, estimated with RMSE and MAE.

The introduction of learning technologies into education is making the design of courses and instructional materials an increasingly complex task. Instructional design languages are identified as conceptual tools for achieving more standardized and, at the same time, more creative design solutions, as well as enhancing communication and transparency in the design process. In this article we discuss differences in cognitive aspects of three visual instructional design languages (E²ML, PoEML, coUML), based on user evaluation. Cognitive aspects are of relevance for learning a design language, creating models with it, and understanding models created using it. The findings should enable language constructors to improve the usability of visual instructional design languages in the future. The paper concludes with directions with regard to how future research on visual instructional design languages could strengthen their value and enhance their actual use by educators and designers by synthesizing existing efforts into a unified modeling approach for VIDLs.

This research explores the functions of music by analyzing the relationship between musical and social classification. More particularly it focuses on the manifestation of this relationship during the active participation of audiences in music events where the individual and the collective, the musical and the social are argued to be experientially interwoven. The main argument proposed is that music categories as well as the ritualistic structures and expressions that shape their corresponding live performances are linked with perceptions and fantasies of the social self. Considering elements such as representations, performativity and the constitution of identity within social interaction, this study questions the class-­‐focused approaches conventionally employed to explore the subject. Contrarily it proposes that the ‘reality’ or fantasy of the social self is not ‘a given’ but it is personally configured, and relates the construction of social identities to notions of the spectacle. The interplay between the mediatized representations that shape music categories and individuals’ agency to choose and construct their identity is argued to produce different discursive and performative expressions of ‘the ideal’. In this context, music rituals are sketched as opportunities for the celebration and legitimization of their embodied values, and idealized social identities and relationships. The empirical part of this investigation focuses on Greek music audiences. Employing semi-­‐structured interviews it examines the way individuals with different music identifications construct their understandings of music categories and their rituals, as well as their perceived interconnections with social identities. Its findings suggest that music categories are perceived as naturally linked with different aspects of individuals’ social selves and realities that are expressed and actualized in music performances, verifying the performative and discursive intertwinement of the two modes of classification. However, the analysis of the data collected also indicates that the values expressed or experienced during such immersive processes, which combine social relationships, cultural categories, and multisensory experiences, necessitate widening the theorization of the ‘ideal’.

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