The face is an integral part of one’s self-concept and unquestionably the most important attribute used to distinguish one's identity. A growing body of literature demonstrates that any condition that results in facial disfigurement can have a profound adverse impact on one's psychological and social functioning. In this respect, patients with facial disfigurements are at higher risk to experience psychosocial difficulties than others. Owing to injuries or illnesses such as cancer, patients undergo reconstructive surgeries both to recover their facial function and to reduce the adverse impact of facial disfigurements on their psychosocial functioning. However, since surgical planning and evaluation of reconstructive outcomes still relies heavily on surgeons' qualitative assessments, it is challenging to measure surgery outcomes and, therefore, difficult to improve surgical practice. Thus, this dissertation research aims to help patients suffering from facial disfigurement by developing quantitative measures that are 1) related to human perception of faces, and 2) that account for patient's internal status (i.e., psychosocial functioning). Such measures can be used to improve surgical practice and assist patients with disfigurement to be psychosocially adjusted. Specifically, this dissertation proposes quantitative measures of facial morphology and expression that are closely related to overall facial attractiveness and a patient's psychosocial functioning. Such measures will allow surgeons to quantitatively plan and evaluate reconstructive surgeries. In addition, this dissertation introduces a modeling technique to simulate disfigurement on novel faces with control on the type, location, and severity of disfigurement. This modeling technique is important since it can help patients with facial disfigurement gain a more accurate understanding of how they are viewed in society, which has a strong potential to facilitate their psychosocial adjustment. This dissertation provides a new perspective on how to help patients with facial disfigurement address challenging problems in facial reconstruction, aesthetic understanding, and psychosocial actualization. It is hoped that this work has shown that multiple benefits could be realized from future studies utilizing the modeling technique to understand human perception of facial disfigurement and thereby to develop quantitative measures that are closely associated with human perception. / text

Στόχος της παρούσας μελέτης ήταν η σύγκριση των ορθογραφικών επιδόσεων μαθητών της Δ΄ τάξης, της Ε΄ τάξης και της Στ΄ τάξης του δημοτικού σχολείου με μαθησιακές δυσκολίες με μαθητές χωρίς μαθησιακές δυσκολίες, των ίδιων τάξεων, στην ορθογραφική απόδοση λεξικών μορφημάτων λέξεων της ελληνικής γλώσσας. Στην έρευνα έλαβαν μέρος 927 παιδιά. Από αυτά 776 ήταν παιδιά χωρίς μαθησιακές δυσκολίες ενώ 151 ήταν παιδιά με μαθησιακές δυσκολίες. Τα αποτελέσματα της έρευνας, απόλυτα συμβατά με ευρήματα άλλων ερευνών, έδειξαν ότι οι επιδόσεις των παιδιών με μαθησιακές δυσκολίες ήταν, με στατιστικά σημαντική διαφορά, χαμηλότερες από τις επιδόσεις των παιδιών χωρίς δυσκολίες της ίδιας ηλικίας ενώ έδειξαν επίσης ότι η διαφορά παραμένει ακόμα και όταν συγκριθούν οι επιδόσεις των παιδιών με μαθησιακές δυσκολίες της Στ’ δημοτικού με αυτές των παιδιών χωρίς μαθησιακές δυσκολίες της Δ΄ τάξης. Παρόλα αυτά. τα αποτελέσματα έδειξαν επίσης ότι, παρά τις διαφορές τους, παιδιά με και χωρίς μαθησιακές δυσκολίες χρησιμοποιούν κοινές ορθογραφικές στρατηγικές ενώ αυτό που φαίνεται να προσδιορίζει το προφίλ των παιδιών με μαθησιακές δυσκολίες είναι η διατήρηση, παρά την ανάπτυξη της ορθογραφικής τους ικανότητας με την ηλικία, λαθών που αλλοιώνουν τη φωνολογική ταυτότητα των λέξεων που αποδίδουν ορθογραφικά. / The aim of this study was to compare the spelling performance of students of class 4th, class 5th and 6th class of primary school with learning difficulties with students of the same classes without learning difficulties, to yield orthographic lexical morphemes of Greek words. The survey took place 927 children. Of these 776 were children without learning disabilities and 151 were children with learning difficulties. The survey results, fully consistent with findings of other surveys, showed that the performance of children with learning difficulties was a statistically significant difference, lower than the children without difficulties of the same age and also showed that the difference remains even when comparing performance of children with learning difficulties of 6th class with those of children without learning difficulties of 4th class. Nevertheless, results also showed that despite their differences, children with and without learning disabilities using common spelling strategies and what seems to determine the profile of children with learning difficulties is to maintain, despite the development of spelling ability with age, errors that alter the identity of phonological give spelling words.

The mechanism of drought resistance in the seedlings of Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) and Brutia pine (Pinus brutia) was investigated. Both species showed anatomical and morphological adaptations to conserve moisture. Aleppo pine had a thicker cuticle, fewer stomata per unit length, per unit area, and per needle than Brutia pine. A significant number of Aleppo pine stomata were sealed with a waxy layer. Brutia pine had shorter needles, smaller needle surface area, a smaller surface area-to-volume ratio, and longer main root length. The two species were similar in height growth and in the seasonal trend of total non-structural carbohydrates (reducing sugars and starch). Brutia pine had more reducing sugars and less starch in its shoots than Aleppo pine. The latter had a greater amount of total non-structural carbohydrates and starch when the seedlings were subjected to dry down moisture stress. Electron microscopy techniques were used to monitor ultrastructural changes in the chloroplasts of mesophyll cells. Aleppo pine was found to contain chloroplasts exhibiting water stress-related damage at a relative water content of 62 percent, where as Brutia pine chloroplasts were disrupted. It is suggested that future investigations examine the physiological manifestation of drought mechanism at the cellular and molecular levels of both species.

A remarkable property of developing organisms is the consistency and robustness within the formation of the body plan. In many animals, morphological pattern formation is orchestrated by conserved signaling pathways, through a process of strict spatio-temporal regulation of cell fate specification. Although morphological patterns have been the focus of both classical and recent studies, little is known about how this robust process is modified throughout evolution to accomodate different morphological adaptations.

The following dissertation describes a personal course of research into audio morphing technology, with a primary focus on how such research might impact the composition of contemporary, research-based art music. These two primary concerns have been augmented through considerations of both: the broader literature of musical morphology, and selected analyses from the history of western art music that employ an idiosyncratic interpretation of audio morphing principles. I have attempted throughout to tightly focus these discussions through the lens of my own compositional activity, embodied by the accompanying dissertation composition for ten musicians/sound technicians (for chelsea smith) and its chapter-length analysis. Therefore, following a terminological distinction between appearances and usages of the terms morphing and morphology in the existing literature (Chapter 1), the above materials will be organized in order of their importance to my compositional activity. As such, the analysis of my dissertation composition (Chapter 2) will be presented first. This will be followed by a summary of my technical research (Chapter 3), and three highly personalized interpretations of how morphing principles might be said to apply to works from the past repertoire of the western tradition (Chapters 4-6). The morphing principles alluded to above include: the primacy of pure sound, the decomposition of complex sonic phenomena into simpler elements, the importance of continuous transformation, and the connection of disparate sonic entities through continua of new material. Such principles will not only inform my analyses of past music, but will also be revealed as central to my compositional perspective in for chelsea smith. / Graduate / 0413 / emaildfm@gmail.com

The verb in a Chatino language bears a value for Aspect (a grammatical category of Zapotecan verbs which indicates a bundle of aspectual and modal features), marked with a prefix, a tonal change, or both. There is a moderate amount of allomorphy among the Aspect prefixes, and when verbs of Tataltepec Chatino are grouped according to in which particular forms a given verb’s Aspect prefix appears, generalizations about the verbs can be made. For example, verbs with one set of allomorphs are are generally transitive; verbs with another set are generally intransitive, and so on. Attempts to meaningfully classify the verbs of contemporary Tataltepec Chatino are complicated by the effects of a few incomplete processes, such as the syncopation of historically disyllabic roots. To overcome this difficulty, a more conservative form of Tataltepec Chatino was constructed from an analysis of the lexical entries of a bilingual dictionary published in 1970 and from my own field notes. This pre-1970 Tataltepec Chatino shows the Aspect prefixes quite clearly and allows for a ready classification of the verbs. When the verb classes which can be identified for Tataltepec Chatino are compared to those found for other Chatino languages, we can see the development of several subclasses being brought about by various morphophonemic processes, such as the syncopation of Aspect prefix vowels, the deletion of similar consonants, and the merger of coronal and velar stops before laterals. This verb classification also corroborates those undertaken for Zenzontepec Chatino and the Eastern Chatino of San Marcos Zacatepec, as this verb classification scheme is largely in concord with them or if not, convincing explanations of Tataltepec Chatino’s deviance can be found. / text

published_or_final_version / Anatomy / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Ecology and Biodiversity / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

No description available.