Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of North Texas, 2006. / System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Accompanied by 4 recitals, recorded Apr. 10, 1997, July 17, 1997, Mar, 3, 1998, and Nov. 14, 2005. Includes bibliographical references (p. 40-41).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Abilene Christian University, 2002. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-105).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Abowd, Gregory, Committee Chair ; Grinter, Rebecca, Committee Member ; Starner, Thad, Committee Member ; Guzdial, Mark, Committee Member ; Bell, Genevieve, Committee Member.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, November, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: Owen Middleton (b. 1941) enjoys an established and growing reputation as a composer of classical guitar music, but his works for piano are comparatively little known. The close investigation offered here of Middleton's works for piano reveals the same impressive craftsmanship, compelling character, and innovative spirit found in his works for guitar. Indeed, the only significant thing Middleton's piano music currently lacks is the well-deserved attention of professional players and a wider audience. Middleton's piano music needs to be heard, not just discussed, so one of this document's purposes is to provide a recorded sample of his piano works. While the overall repertoire for solo piano is vast, and new works become established in that repertoire with increasing difficulty, Middleton's piano works have a significant potential to find their way into the concert hall as well as the private teaching studio. His solo piano music is highly effective, well suited to the instrument, and, perhaps most importantly, fresh sounding and truly original. His pedagogical works are of equal value. Middleton's piano music offers something for everyone: there one finds daring virtuosity, effusions of passion, intellectual force, colorful imagery, poetry, humor, and even a degree of idiomatic innovation. This study aims to reveal key aspects of the composer's musical style, especially his style of piano writing, and to provide pianists with helpful analytical, technical, and interpretive insights. These descriptions of the music are supported with recorded examples, selected from the works for solo piano written between 1962 and 1993: Sonata for Piano, Childhood Scenes, Katie's Collection, and Toccata for Piano. The complete scores of the recorded works are included in the appendix. A chapter briefly describing the piano pieces since 1993 concludes the study and invites the reader to further investigations of this unique and important body of work. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2011

The recording industry is little more than one hundred years old. In its short history there have been many changes that have redefined roles, enabled fortunes to be built and caused some to be dissipated. Recording and delivery formats have gone through fundamental conceptual developments and each technological transformation has generated both positive and negative effects. Over the past fifteen years technology has triggered yet another large-scale and protracted revision of the business model, and this adjustment has been exacerbated by two serious economic downturns. This dissertation references the author’s career to provide context and corroboration for the arguments herein. It synthesizes salient constants from more than forty years’ empirical evidence, addresses industry rhetoric and offers methodologies for musicians with examples, analyses, and codifications of relevant elements of the business. The economic asymmetry of the system that exploits musicians’ work can now be rebalanced. Ironically, the technologies that triggered the industry downturn now provide creative entities with mechanisms for redress. This is a propitious time for ontologically reexamining music business realities to determine what is axiological as opposed to simply historical axiom. The primary objective herein is to contribute to the understanding of applied fundamentals, the rules of engagement that enable aspirants and professionals alike to survive and thrive in this dynamic and capricious vocation. The secondary goal is to empower creative practitioners to circumvent systemic injustices that have been perpetrated and perpetuated by the oligopolistic market conditions that have prevailed for most of the century of recorded sound.

abstract: Four new duets by different composers were commissioned for this project that utilize the clarinet and bass clarinet with tenor saxophone and bassoon. The pieces are Three Southwest Landscapes by Dan Caputo, Gestures by Michael Lanci, Connotations and Denotations by Jeffery Brooks, and Lyddimy by Thomas Breadon, Jr. The present document includes background information and a performance guide for each of the pieces. The guide gives recommendations to aid musicians wishing to perform these works. Also included are transcripts of interviews conducted with each composer and performer, as well as full scores of each piece. In addition to the document there are recordings of all four pieces. / Dissertation/Thesis / Dan Caputo, Three Southwest Landscapes, I - Marvel of Ages / Dan Caputo, Three Southwest Landscapes, II - Weathered Moon / Dan Caputo, Three Southwest Landscapes, III - Abstrata / Thomas Breadon, Jr., Lyddimy / Michael Lanci, Gestures / Jeffery Brooks, Connotations and Denotations / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2014

The thesis focuses on fast acquisition techniques for spread spectrum packet radio communications systems. Matched filters are often used to achieve fast acquisitions. A new synchronizer using multiple acquisition detection is designed to achieve a highly reliable synchronization with a very simple receiver structure. Since PN codes, in practice, cannot be made too long due to the difficulty of manufacturing long matched filters and the limitation on the bandwidth of the frequency spectrum for the system, the reliable synchronization can be only obtained by repeating the transmission of the acquisition code at the beginning of each packet. The verification or coincidence detection is done by means of a marker detection following an acquisition. A hard-limiting synchronizer is also examined combined with the multiple acquisition detection. The hard-limiting synchronizer is simpler to implement and suitable for receiving signals with a large SNR dynamic range, but it cannot work well when multi-user interference and multi-path interference are present. For this reason, a new linear Automatic Threshold Control (ATC) synchronizer is developed for detecting signals with a large amplitude dynamic range while preserving good performance in multi-path and multi-user interference. The idea of the ATC scheme is to adjust the receiver acquisition threshold level according to the SNR of the received signal such that the largest (or the most likely) correlation peak in a short time period is selected for the synchronization alignment. Therefore false acquisitions caused by strong correlation side-lobes during the acquisition can be eliminated. For the more realistic situation where the multi-user interference or near-far effect causes severe performance degradation, we proposed a novel non-linear multi-user detector or multistage detector which is suitable for both the synchronous and asynchronous CDMA systems. This sub-optimal detector is able to achieve the performance of the optimal detector with very small computation complexity. The near-far effect will no longer exist because the interference from the unexpected users is considered to be not always harmful for the detection of a specific users' message. To apply this detection technique to asynchronous CDMA systems, acquisition for each users' PN codes becomes more critical, because during the acquisition, the information from the other users' PN code is usually not available, which means that acquisition still suffers the near-far effect. The proposed acquisition scheme based on interference cancellation technique and the ATC scheme can alleviate the near-far effect significantly, and provide the necessary condition for the appropriate operations of multi-user detectors. / Graduate

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths behind lung cancer in the United States. Colonoscopy is the preferred screening method for detection of diseases like Colorectal Cancer. In the year 2006, American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) and American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) issued guidelines for quality colonoscopy. The guidelines suggest that on average the withdrawal phase during a screening colonoscopy should last a minimum of 6 minutes. My aim is to classify the colonoscopy video into insertion and withdrawal phase. The problem is that currently existing shot detection techniques cannot be applied because colonoscopy is a single camera shot from start to end. An algorithm to detect phase boundary has already been developed by the MIGLAB team. Existing method has acceptable levels of accuracy but the main issue is dependency on MPEG (Moving Pictures Expert Group) 1/2. I implemented exhaustive search for motion estimation to reduce the execution time and improve the accuracy. I took advantages of the C/C++ programming languages with multithreading which helped us get even better performances in terms of execution time. I propose a method for improving the current method of colonoscopy video analysis and also an extension for the same to make it usable for real time videos. The real time version we implemented is capable of handling streams coming directly from the camera in the form of uncompressed bitmap frames. Existing implementation could not be applied to real time scenario because of its dependency on MPEG 1/2. Future direction of this research includes improved motion search and GPU parallel computing techniques.

It's a Wonderful Business: The Art of Production Sound is a documentary film that offers an inside look at what it takes to record the dialog of actors and diegetic sounds on a movie set. This is the job of the production sound crew, in charge of recording the voices of some of the most talented and prominent performers in the motion picture industry. The documentary features interviews with former and current production sound mixers and boom operators from some of the most acclaimed films in the history of cinema. The film also explores the personal demands, the working conditions, and the sacrifices sound crews have endured to succeed in the always challenging, but very exciting, world of film making.