The Recurrence of Rhythm is an inquiry into the notion that the voice flows ??? a theme that continually recurs in the Homeric poems, Plato's Cratylus and James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. Through a re-interpretation of the meaning of rhythmos in pre-Socratic philosophy, I define rhythm as the particular manner in which the voice is flowing, and argue that it is the specific quality of phonetic writing to represent the flowing aspect of the voice. The Greek concept of rhythmos is held to be inseparable from the invention of phonetic writing and the transcription of the Homeric poems, and it is this new definition of rhythm that allows the thesis to engage in contemporary debates concerning the relationship between speech and writing (as developed by Derrida, Ong, Havelock, Parry, Lord and Prier). I also argue that the Platonic concept of rhythm qua metre provides an essential point of mediation between the Greek oral tradition and the history of Western literature, a move that sets the scene for a comparative study of Homer and Joyce. By developing an original concept of recurrence that pertains to both the repetition of themes in the Homeric poems and the heroic experience of living for the sake of the story, this thesis proposes that rhythm and recurrence are interrelated concepts that distinguish the lyrical and dramatic modes that structure the epic form of narrative found in both Homer's poems and Joyce's novels. Drawing upon the esthetic philosophy of Stephen Dedalus, I develop the dialectical theory of genre first outlined by Joyce in the Paris notebook, and argue that the latent lyricism contained in the narrative style of A Portrait is a proto-typical form of the interior monologue found in Ulysses. In opposition to the early modernist paradigm of Joyce criticism, this thesis rejects the notion that mythic archetypes function as Platonic ideals (i.e. the transcendent form of the modernist artwork), but rather holds that heroic themes recur in the mental stream of the modern subject, and manifest themselves immediately through Joyce???s use of the interior monologue technique.

Papaya Whip is an original composition for orchestra in one movement. The accompanying paper discusses the evolution of the piece followed by an analysis of the work in relation to temporal structure, pitch structure, and orchestration. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications and future projects.

The present research quantified the shoulder rhythm for arm postures that represent the right-handed reachable workspace and compared 3 methods of scapular tracking: acromion marker cluster (AMC), stylus and scapular locator. The shoulder rhythm models can be incorporated into existing and future shoulder biomechanical models to determine shoulder geometry when simulating postures experienced in workplaces and thus have ergonomic implications for correctly identifying risk factors. The results of this research also provide guidance for future studies involving scapular tracking. Fourteen male and 14 female participants performed static arm postures spread over 5 elevation angles: 0, 45, 90, 135, 180 degrees, three elevation planes: 0, 45, 90 degrees to the frontal plane and, three axial rotations: maximum internal, neutral, and maximum external rotation. Kinematic data was recorded using a Vicon MX20+ motion-tracking system. Bone rotations were calculated using Euler angles and continuous prediction models were generated to estimate scapular and clavicular orientations based primarily on thoracohumeral relative orientations. Methods of scapular tracking were compared using repeated measures analysis of variance. Participant characteristics did not influence any of the scapular or the clavicular angles (p>.05). Axial rotation did not influence scapular retraction/protraction and elevation plane did not influence clavicular elevation (p>.05). Elevation angle was the largest contributor to lateral rotation and posterior tilt of the scapula and all clavicular angles. Plane of elevation was the largest contributor to scapular protraction. Using the stylus as the gold standard, the locator and the AMC underestimated lateral rotation, with a maximum difference of 11 degrees and 9 degrees between the locator and the stylus and AMC and the stylus measurements, respectively. The AMC and the locator overestimated posterior tilt at overhead postures and underestimated it at low elevation angles. The maximum difference between the AMC- and the locator- and the stylus-measured tilt was 10 degrees. The scapular locator consistently overestimated protraction by approximately 5 degrees. The AMC underestimated protraction in the frontal plane at low elevation angle but overestimated it at all other postures and the overestimation increased with plane of elevation, internal rotation and elevation angle. Overall, it is recommended to use AMC rather than the scapular locator to measure scapular position.

In this thesis, a chorus detection and an emotion detection algorithm for popular music are proposed. First, a popular music is decomposed into chorus and verse segments based on its color representation and MFCCs (Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients). Four features including intensity, tempo and rhythm regularity are extracted from these structured segments for emotion detection. The emotion of a song is classified into four classes of emotions: happy, angry, depressed and relaxed via two classification methods. One is back-propagation neural network classifier and the other is Adaboost classifier. A test database consisting of 350 popular music songs is utilized in our experiment. Experimental results show that the average recall and precision of the proposed chorus detection are approximated to 95% and 84%, respectively; the average precision rate of emotion detection is 86% for neural network classifier and 92% for Adaboost classifier. The emotions of a song with different cover versions are also detected in our experiment. The precision rate is 92%.

The motivation of this paper is to propose a simple and reliable method to identify on-road vehicle events, particularly in the driving situations. A content rhythm is extracted by applying a virtual line lies on the same position of each frame. Thereupon a simplified representation of a continuous video is to record the temporal information of vehicle status. Thus, vehicle situations such as changing lane, safe distance and speed display can be detected instantly by analyzing the statistical characteristics of content rhythm. The proposed method can not only prevent accidents but also improve the traffic safety by monitoring the on-road vehicle status. Experimental results show the proposed method is reliable for vehicle event detection.

Chemoreception is a primitive sense universally employed by organisms for finding and selecting food, rejecting toxic chemicals, detecting mates and offspring, choosing sites for egg-laying, recognizing territories and avoiding predators. Chemosensory responses are frequently modulated based on the internal environment of the organism. An organism’s internal environment undergoes regular changes in anticipation and in response to daily changes in its external environment, e.g., light-dark cycle. A resettable timekeeping mechanism called the circadian clock internally drives these cyclical changes with a ~24 hour period. Using electrophysiological, behavioral and molecular analyses, I tested where and how these two conserved processes, viz., the circadian timekeeping mechanism and the chemosensory pathway, intersect each other at organismal and cellular levels. The presence of autonomous peripheral oscillators in the chemosensory organs of Drosophila, prompted us to test whether chemosensory responses are under control of the circadian clock. I found that local oscillators in afferent (primary) chemosensory neurons drive rhythms in physiological and behavioral responses to attractive and aversive chemical signals. During the middle of the night, high level of G proteincoupled receptor kinase 2 (GPRK2), a clock controlled signaling molecule present in chemosensory neurons, suppresses tastant-evoked responses and promotes olfactory responses. G-protein mediated signaling was shown to be involved in generating optimal response to odorants. Multifunctional chemosensory clocks exert control on feeding and metabolism. I propose that temporal plasticity in innate behaviors should offer adaptive advantages to flies.

The hierarchical B picture coding is introduced into the extension of H.264/AVC in order to improve coding performance and provide temporal scalability as well. In general, coding performance is affected by the content variation in each GOP (Group of Picture). Therefore, the ways to determine the size of sun-GOP is a critical problem for video coding. In this thesis, the adaptive GOP structure determination scheme is proposed to select the appropriate sub-GOP size with content complexity consideration. We compute the frame difference by hierarchical B picture structure and use the information to be a basis of sub-GOP decision. Hence, we can get proper combination of sub-GOP. Experimental results show the RD curves that our proposed method compares with the fixed GOP setting in the existing hierarchical B picture coding of SVC.

Reprint. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, 1913. / "Reprinted from the American Journal of Psychology, July, l9l3, vol. xxiv, pp. 305-359 ; October, 1913, vol. xxiv, pp. 508-519. Includes bibliographical references (p. 508-519).

　　Temporal preparation and impulsivity are sharing two common cognitive processes: time perception and response inhibition. Rhythmic synchronization can be regarded as a specific paradigm of temporal preparation. The major purpose of the present study is to examine the relationship between rhythmic synchronization and response inhibition. Results indicated a significant correlation between rhythmic synchronization and response inhibition. Number of years of formal music training was not significantly correlated with rhythmic synchronization. No relationship was found between response inhibition and general intelligence. Regression analysis revealed that number of commission errors was the best predictor for rhythmic synchronization, followed by reaction time of interference. Time perception is anticipatory in nature and should be better examined with a proactive stopping paradigm. Response style was not found to have a statistical significant role in the present study. Further research may further examine the clinical effectiveness of rhythmic synchronization on alleviating impulsivity via its effect on response inhibition. proactive stopping paradigm. Response style was not found to have a statistical significant role in the present study. Further research may further examine the clinical effectiveness of rhythmic synchronization on alleviating impulsivity via its effect on response inhibition. / published_or_final_version / Clinical Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Psychology

Study Objectives. Sleep is regulated by internal mechanisms that respond to environmental cues. Physical activity is one external cue that can affect sleep. It has been suggested that exercise affects sleep in a variety of ways, including influencing neurotransmitter levels and altering circadian rhythms. The purpose of this study was to examine self-reported sleep quality both before and after a well- defined exercise protocol. Design, Setting, and Participants. The TIGER study involves a 15-week aerobic exercise intervention conducted in young adults (n=2,027, mean age 21.8 ± 5 y). Participants were required to engage in 30 minutes of aerobic exercise at 65-85% maximal heart rate reserve three times/week. Multivariate regression was used to identify factors associated with sleep quality and duration. Measurements and Results. Multiple measures of body size/composition, heart rate (HR), and blood pressure (BP) were obtained on all participants. Sleep quality and duration were accessed via a condensed sleep quality profile (SQP). Prior to exercise, age (p<0.001), gender (p<0.008) and overweight/obesity status (p<0.001), but not race/ethnicity, were all significantly associated with SQP score. Age (p<0.002), and race/ethnicity (p<0.05) were significantly associated with sleep duration, with African Americans and Hispanics having significantly shorter sleep times compared to non-Hispanic whites. SQP score was not significantly different following chronic exercise training. Conclusions. Although overweight/obesity groups had significantly different sleep quality scores before and after exercise, sleep quality did not change for subjects after 15 weeks of aerobic exercise intervention. / text