Louis Vierne indicated his 24 Pices en style libre as being for organ or harmonium and he provided separate registrations for each instrument. Nevertheless, several organists and authors have noted a disparity in the work's success on the two different instruments. This study begins with a look into the development of the harmonium and a consideration of sorne important traits of standard harmonium literature as exemplified by Franck and Guilmant. An examination of Vierne's pieces from this harmonium perspective reveals several problems, mostly in the areas of compositional texture, the harmonium's air supply; and Vierne's harmonium registrations, which often point in opposite directions from his verbal indications in the score and his organ registrations. This study concludes that Vierne's 24 Pices are genuine organ music and that Vierne made little attempt to conform to the musical capabilities and constraints of the harmonium, even as he hoped that indicating the harmonium would increase the market appeal of this volume. / Louis Vierne indiqua que ses 24 Pices en style libre taient crites pour orgue ou pour harmonium, et il fournit des indications de registration pour les deux instruments. Toutefois, plusieurs organistes et auteurs ont not une disparit entre le succs de l'oeuvre sur l'un ou l'autre des instruments. Cette tude s'intresse tout d'abord l'histoire de l'harmonium ainsi qu' la littrature pour harmonium, telle qu'illustre dans certaines oeuvres de Franck et Guilmant. Une analyse des pices de Vierne, du point de vue de l'harmonium, rvle plusieurs problmes, notamment en ce qui concerne la texture musicale et le systme de vent de l'harmonium, ainsi que les registrations pour harmonium, qui souvent indiquent le contraire de ce qu'indiquent les instructions verbales et les registrations pour orgue. Cette tude conclut que les 24 Pices de Vierne constituent une musique d'orgue vritable, et que Vierne ne fit que peu d'efforts pour les adapter aux capacits et limitations de l'harmonium, en esprant que l'harmonium permettrait ce recueil de trouver un public plus large.

Three experiments were conducted with five species of tropical fish to investigate the phenomena of taste aversion and food neophobia. In addition, an experiment determined specifically if position in the tank could acquire conditioned aversive properties. In Experiment 1 , four habituated fish were fed novel meat-flavored pellets on the treatment day. Six were made ill within 30, 60, or 90 minutes (2 subjects each) by intragastric administration of syrup or Epicac. The following day all were fed familiar commercial pellets. On the second day after treatment, all were offered the meat-flavored pellets. Results showed longer latencies, more tasting, and decreased consumption of novel pellets. All measures differed significantly for the treatment subjects compared to their own baseline and controls. Experiment II demonstrated food neophobia in four in experienced fish. After habituation they were fed novel meat-flavored pellets but not made ill (day 0). On day 1 and 2 they received familiar diet and were made ill after the feeding on day 2. On day 3 they received familiar food again and no change in approach latency, testing response, or quantity consumed occurred. On day 4, they were offered the novel meat-flavored pellets which they refused. These results indicate that the fish associated the illness with the more "novel" food even though their familiar diet was temporally closer to the illness. In Experiment III five species of naive fish were habituated to 20-gallon tanks and made ill after eating in one end and not in the other. The same food was us ed in both ends. The "illness end" could have taken on discriminitive properties and food consumption there should have decreased, as opposed to the other "safe end". The results indicated that "place" did not acquire aversive discriminitive properties. Food consumption decreased in quantity, food approach latencies increased and length of tasting bouts increased in both ends. These experiments were the first to use these species of fish in this type of research. The results extend the phenomena of taste aversion and food neophobia. In addition, Experiment III systematically replicated the hypothesis of relevant relations between stimuli and showed that it is easier to learn certain consequences with certain cues than with others. In this case illness was quickly associated with taste but "place" was treated as irrelevant.

Plankton imaging systems such as SIPPER produce a large quantity of data in the form of plankton images from a variety of classes. A system known as PICES was developed to quickly extract, classify and manage the millions of images produced from a single one-week research cruise. A new fast technique for parameter tuning and feature selection for Support Vector Machines using Wrappers was created. This technique allows for faster feature selection, while at the same time maintaining and sometimes improving classification accuracy. It also gives the user greater flexibility in the management of class contents in existing training libraries. Support vector machines are binary classifiers that can implement multi-class classifiers by creating a classifier for each possible combination of classes or for each class using a one class versus all strategy. Feature selection searches for a single set of features to be used by each of the binary classifiers. This ignores the fact that features that may be good discriminators for two particular classes might not do well for other class combinations. As a result, the feature selection process may not include these features in the common set to be used by all support vector machines. It is shown through experimentation that by selecting features for each binary class combination, overall classification accuracy can be improved and the time required for training a multi-class support vector machine can be reduced. Another benefit of this approach is that significantly less time is required for feature selection when additional classes are added to the training data. This is because the features selected for the existing class combinations are still valid, so that feature selection only needs to be run for the new combination added. This work resulted in a system called PICES, a GUI based user friendly system, which aids in the classification management of over 55 million images of plankton split amongst 180 classes. PICES embodies an improved means of performing Wrapper based feature selection that creates classifiers that train faster and are just as accurate and sometimes more accurate, while reducing the feature selection time.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill that started on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico was the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. There was an unexpected and prolonged sedimentation event of oil-associated marine snow to the seafloor due to the oil spill. The sedimentation event occurred because of the coagulation process among oil associated marine particles. Marine scientists are developing models for the coagulation process of marine particles and oil, in order to estimate the amount of oil that may reach the seafloor along with marine particles. These models, used certain assumptions regarding the shape and the texture parameters of marine particles. Such assumptions may not be based on accurate information or may vary during and after the oil spill. The work performed here provided a quantitative analysis of the assumptions used in modeling the coagulation process of marine particles. It also investigated the changes in model parameters (shape and texture) during and after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in different seasons (spring and summer). An Interactive Visualization Application was developed for data exploration and visual analysis of the trends in these parameters. An Interactive Statistical Analysis Application was developed to create a statistical summary of these parameter values.