In two separate studies, I examine the relationship between skin tone and important psychological well-being, delinquency, and social integration outcomes for Blacks, testing not only if skin tone is important in determining these outcomes but attempting to disentangle the mechanism by which the inequality is produced. More specifically, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), in study one I draw on important propositions of Agnew’s (1992) General Strain Theory to investigate the extent to which darker skin impacts youths’ feelings of strain, psychological well-being, and delinquency. The study found skin tone to be significantly associated with certain facets of well-being but surprisingly there were no direct effects on various types of strain. Skin tone is a strong predictor of one’s involvement in serious weapon violence, controlling for prior delinquency. Results also show that skin tone matters more for female adolescents’ odds of being suspended compared to their male counterparts, while certain forms of strain significantly impact the effect of skin tone on one’s involvement in delinquent activity. In study two, I continue my investigation of skin tone as an external or interracial source of discrimination using the National Survey of American Life (NSAL). In this study I am concerned with whether Blacks with darker skin tones are more likely than their lighter-skinned counter parts to live in neighborhoods that they perceive as more segregated and with fewer amenities and community resources. Although these data did not allow me to directly test how the respondents came to reside in their present community (i.e. racial steering or neighborhood choice), I examine skin tone discrimination as well as major types of everyday discrimination (e.g. being denied a bank loan or housing opportunity) experiences reported by Blacks. Overall, findings suggest that darker-skinned Blacks fare worse in regard to frequent experiences of skin tone discrimination from Whites. Skin tone is significantly related to respondent’s perceived seriousness of drug activity in their current neighborhood, suggesting that skin tone may have some impact on one’s perceived neighborhood quality. Further results, implications, and conclusions are discussed.

Young infants can discriminate a great variety of speech sounds both native and nonnative in their language environment. The focus of the perceptual reorganisation research to date has been on infants’ discrimination of nonnative segments, in particular, consonants and vowels. In tone languages (eg. Cantonese, Mandarin, and Thai) phonemic distinctions are signalled not only by consonants and vowels, but also by lexical tone – consisting of variations in fundamental frequency (pitch) and related features. Although such languages are spoken by over half the world’s population, the development of lexical tone perception has been relatively neglected. This thesis addresses whether perceptual reorganisation occurs for tone in infancy. Overall, the results of experiments conducted support the hypotheses and the existence of perceptual reorganisation for tone in infancy, similar to that for consonants and vowels. Implications of the results for speech perception development theories, “tone space”, tone acquisition, and early word learning are discussed, and future studies relating to these issues suggested. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis takes its start from the identification of a gap in knowledge between the act of musical utterance and its significance for human being. Based on the proposition that music education could benefit from what it most appears to lack, a deep epistemology, the study first examines the knowledge gap as an epistemological omission in music curriculum and discourse, and then argues the case for retrieval of a logos epistemology to rectify the omission. The recovery of the meaning of the musical act, it is argued, is an ethical, biographical initiative taken up by the individual who senses the need to strive towards freedom of moral decision. Recovery consists in developing an epistemology specific to human utterance, namely, a logos epistemology. Since the logos is an original form-bestowing power whose sanctuary is the human being, it seeks and finds expression in uttered forms, and it is through fully conscious observation of one's own contribution to the emergence of these forms that one can find oneself as knower. It is significant that it is characteristic of the logos in the current era, however, that it is hidden from the (dual) perspective which humanity has taken up in its cognitive evolution. The condition of its recovery, then, is that it must be 'unconcealed' for it is obscured by its own forms, and consequently, by aesthetic and linguistic theory derived, not from efforts made towards enhanced musical experience, but inferred from the sense-perceptible elements of experience. It is argued that it is educationally responsible to cultivate the individual's latent epistemic resources, namely, self-observed, consciously directed intentionally, so that the meaning of the original experience of musical phenomena, tone and interval, can be raised to awareness, and musical culture renewed. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 63-70). Also available in print.

We argue that the standard focus theories reach their limits when confronted with the focus systems of the Chadic languages. The backbone of the standard focus theories consists of two assumptions, both called into question by the languages under consideration. Firstly, it is standardly assumed that focus is generally marked by stress. The Chadic languages, however, exhibit a variety of different devices for focus marking. Secondly, it is assumed that focus is always marked. In Tangale, at least, focus is not marked consistently on all types of constituents. The paper offers two possible solutions to this dilemma.

Jishin (earthquake) is a musical composition written for full orchestra, based on a twelve-tone row. The twelve-tone row is structured such that it contains only two musical intervals (perfect 5 th , major 3 rd ). Due to the nature of the row, various transpositions of the row can be used to form what seems to be a never ending cycle of pitches. Throughout the composition the material of the row is fragmented and used motivically to develop larger structures within the whole of the piece. Like an earthquake, Jishin strives to create an enormous amount of tension and aggressive energy. At the end, the moment of strongest tension, the original row is set against itself in retrograde, metaphorically representing the friction caused by plate tectonics.

This work presents a survey and a user evaluation of tone mapping operators (TMOs) for high dynamic range (HDR) video, i.e. TMOs that explicitly include a temporal model for processing of variations in the input HDR images in the time domain. The main motivations behind this work is that: robust tone mapping is one of the key aspects of HDR imaging [Reinhard et al. 2006]; recent developments in sensor and computing technologies have now made it possible to capture HDR-video, e.g. [Unger and Gustavson 2007; Tocci et al. 2011]; and, as shown by our survey, tone mapping for HDR video poses a set of completely new challenges compared to tone mapping for still HDR images. Furthermore, video tone mapping, though less studied, is highly important for a multitude of applications including gaming, cameras in mobile devices, adaptive display devices and movie post-processing. Our survey is meant to summarize the state-of-the-art in video tonemapping and, as exemplified in Figure 1 (right), analyze differences in their response to temporal variations. In contrast to other studies, we evaluate TMOs performance according to their actual intent, such as producing the image that best resembles the real world scene, that subjectively looks best to the viewer, or fulfills a certain artistic requirement. The unique strength of this work is that we use real high quality HDR video sequences, see Figure 1 (left), as opposed to synthetic images or footage generated from still HDR images. / VPS

Diabetes mellitus is characterized by hyperglycemia, oxidative stress and excessive production of intermediary metabolites including methylglyoxal (MGO), a reactive carbonyl. MGO can readily interact with proteins, lipids and DNA, and cause an imbalance of the cellular antioxidant system leading to carbonyl stress. The effects of MGO can be devastating if the targeted molecules are responsible for the maintenance of membrane potentials and ionic homeostasis. Here we show that MGO disrupts the vascular isoform of ATP-sensitive K+ (KATP) channels by acting on the mRNAs of Kir6.1 and SUR2B subunits thereby regulating vascular tone. Our results show that the 3’ untranslated region (UTR) of Kir6.1 mRNA and the coding region of SUR2B mRNA are targeted by MGO causing a disruption of vascular KATP channels. The destabilization of the mRNAs of KATP channel can in turn affect K+ homeostasis of vascular smooth muscles as well as vascular responses to circulating vasodilators and vasoconstrictors.

This thesis is a detailed investigation of the phonology and phonetics of the intonation of Persian carried out in the framework of the AM theory of intonational phonology. Based on 2112 utterances read by a total of 8 native speakers, the work, on the one hand, presents a phonological account of the prosodic structure of this language, a structure that consists of the level Accentual Phrase with the pitch accent (L+)H* immediately dominated by the level Intonational Phrase, each level being marked by a low or high boundary tone. On the other hand, it scrutinizes the phonetic implementation of tones with regard to segments and shows how the phonology of Persian intonation is phonetically realized in the speech string. This research also studies the intonational patterns of simplex sentences, compound sentences coordinated with different types of conjunctions, subordinate structures, and vocative constructions. The sentence types include copular verb declaratives, sentences with unaccusative and unergative verbs, (S)(O)V sentences with and without adjuncts, null subject sentences, scrambled sentences, yes/no questions, leading yes/no questions, alternative questions, tag questions, single and multiple WH-questions, echo questions, imperatives, and single, double, and phrase focus constructions. / February 2008

Henry Cowell (1897-1965), American composer in 20th century, is the first who proposed the concept of tone clusters and placed many new techniques in his piano music. Innovative music theories and unique thoughts were displayed in his compositions and critiques. For developing both new visual and audio effects of piano music, Cowell played tone clusters with arms, palms, and fists, and also played strings inside piano to give new gesture and timbre of piano. This thesis is divided into three parts besides introduction and conclusion. The first part describes the origin and development of new piano techniques in the 20th century. The second part investigates Cowell¡¦s compositional career, compositional methods and thoughts for piano music. The third part analyzes ways of performing tone clusters and strings in Cowell¡¦s solo piano pieces with new techniques. Through analyzing these particular techniques, the compositional methods and uniqueness of Cowell¡¦s piano music could be understood. In the meanwhile, the performers will pay more attention to avoid performing injuries and damaging pianos.