Poetry in music is the main discussion in this essay. There are three ways to connect music and poem. First, represent the emotion of poems through music; second, parallel the syllables and linguistic intonation to rhythm and pitches; third, transform the methods of writing poems into the methods of composing music. ¡§Remember¡¨ and ¡§The Magic Carousal¡¨ are used as examples in this essay. In ¡§Remember,¡¨ the composer semantically transfers the poetry into his/her music by directly borrowing and engaging the linguistic syntax and formal construction into musical composition. Such method is based on the eight different techniques mentioned in ¡§Looming Imagery,¡¨ a chapter from Yong Wu Huang¡¦s Design of Chinese Poetry, as a means to create musical structures. ¡§The Magic Carousal¡¨ adopts the application of musical tone-painting. A composer creates a tone-poem that expresses the poetic imagery and atmosphere. Based on the concept of musical rhetoric, the words are assigned with particular musical contour or gesture that illustrates the poem even more comprehensively.

In this thesis, I present an approach to a pipeline for time lapse photography using conventional digital images converted to HDR (High Dynamic Range) images (rather than conventional digital or film exposures). Using this method, it is possible to capture a greater level of detail and a different look than one would get from a conventional time lapse image sequence. With HDR images properly tone-mapped for display on standard devices, information in shadows and hot spots is not lost, and certain details are enhanced.

Mental stress ischemia (MSI) is associated with poor prognosis for coronary artery disease (CAD) and is amenable to treatment, yet no easily administered test exists to diagnose it. Given the known increase in systemic vascular tone in response to stress, we studied the ability of peripheral arterial tonometry (PAT), a noninvasive functional measure of arterial tone, to predict those vulnerable to MSI. Seventy-seven patients with chronic stable CAD were subjected to mental stress with concomitant assessment of myocardial perfusion and pulse wave amplitude. Nuclear perfusion imaging was used to document MSI, and PAT was used to measure pulse wave and microarterial tone. A ratio of PAT measurements during stress to those before stress was used to characterize vascular responses. Serum catecholamines and endothelin-1 (ET-1) were simultaneously measured. Subjects who experienced MSI had a lower average PAT ratio than those who did not (0.76 ¡À 0.04 vs. 0.91 ¡À 0.05, P = 0.03). A receiver operating characteristics curve for PAT ratio predicting MSI had an area under the curve of 0.613 (standard error, 0.065, one-sided P = 0.04). Maxima of sensitivity and specificity were observed at a threshold of 0.78 to define an abnormal PAT ratio. Cross-tabulation of groups above and below this threshold with groups of subjects with and without MSI showed a significant predictive relationship between PAT ratio and MSI (P = 0.03). Subjects at or below this threshold (¡Ü0.78) displayed a significant increase in norepinephrine levels during mental stress (235 pg/ml at baseline, 259 pg/ml during mental stress, P = 0.007). Subjects above this threshold (>0.78) displayed a significant decline in their ET-1 levels 24 hours after mental stress (1.15 pg/ml after mental stress, 0.93 pg/ml 24 hours later, P = 0.01), while those at or below threshold had a continued increase. PAT ratio is a complex functional measure of peripheral arterial tone that significantly predicts the occurrence of MSI. It may have clinical value as an easily administered screening test for MSI.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-148). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-137). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

Permanent dielectric materials are integral to the fabrication of microelectronic devices and packaging. Dielectrics are used throughout devices to electrically and mechanically isolate conductive components. As such, they are required to have low electrical permittivity and robust mechanical properties. For packaging applications, dielectrics can be directly photo-definable. Dielectrics need to have excellent lithographic properties. These properties are pivotal for enabling high yield and low cost fabrication of reliable, energy efficient devices. The aim of this work was to develop new positive tone dielectrics which have improved or application-specific lithographic, mechanical, and electrical properties. To this end, several new dielectric polymers and chemistries were evaluated and characterized. Initially, it was desired to develop a positive tone, polynorbornene (PNB) dielectric that utilizes diazonaphthoquinone (DNQ) photochemistry. Cross-linking was achieved with epoxy cross-linkers during a thermal cure. Several DNQ-containing compounds were evaluated, but only one had good miscibility with PNB. The dissolution characteristics of PNB were measured with respect to polymer composition, DNQ loading, and cross-linker loading. PNB films exhibited unique dissolution properties, and these measurements allowed for an optimum formulation to be developed. A formulation with 20 pphr DNQ and 10 pphr epoxy cross-linker had sufficient inhibition in unexposed regions and fast dissolution in exposed regions. The resulting dielectric was the first positive tone, DNQ-based PNB dielectric. After achieving photo-definability, the cross-linking of the cured dielectric was evaluated by characterizing the mechanical properties. It was discovered that DNQ acted as a cross-linker in these films, and this insight was key to achieving good curing of the dielectric. Several experiments were performed to support this conclusions, and the reaction kinetics of this cross-linking reaction were evaluated. This effort produced a functional, positive tone dielectric with a sensitivity of 408 mJ cm-2 and contrast of 2.3. The modulus was 2.0 to 2.6 GPa and the dielectric constant of 3.7 to 3.9, depending on the curing conditions. The DNQ cross-linking results led to the investigation of other cross-linking chemistries for positive tone dielectrics. A chemically amplified (CA) photochemistry was utilized along with a Fischer esterification cross-linking reaction. Patterning and cross-linking were demonstrated with a methacrylate polymer. Successful positive tone lithography was demonstrated at a high sensitivity of 32.4 mJ cm-2 and contrast of 5.2. Cross-linking was achieved at 120°C as shown by residual stress and solubility measurements. The CA photochemistry and Fischer esterification cross-linking were also demonstrated using a PNB dielectric, which was shown to have improved lithographic properties: a sensitivity of 8.09 mJ cm-2 and contrast of ≥ 14.2. Work was performed to evaluate the effect of the polymer composition on the mechanical and electrical properties. A polymer with 60 mol% hexafluoroisopropanol norbornene and 40 mol% tert-butyl ester norbornene exhibited a dielectric constant of 2.78, which is lower than existing positive tone dielectrics. It also outperformed existing dielectrics in several other categories, including dark erosion, volume change, cure temperature, and in-plane coefficient of thermal expansion. However, a limitation of this dielectric was cracking in thick films. The final study was to improve the mechanical properties of this CA PNB dielectric specifically to enable 5 µm thick films. First, a terpolymer was tested that included a non-functional third monomer. The dielectric constant increased to 3.48 with 24 mol% of the third monomer. Second, low molecular weight additives were used to lower the modulus. Only one of the five tested additives enabled high quality, thick films. This additive did not significantly affect the dielectric constant at low loadings. An optimized formulation was made, and processing parameters were studied. The additive decreased the lithographic properties, lowering the sensitivity to 175 mJ cm-2 and lowering the contrast to 4.36. In all, this work produced three functional dielectrics with positive tone photo-definability and good lithographic properties. Each dielectric can serve a variety of purposes in microelectronics packaging.

The achievement of thermally stable second-order nonlinear optical (NLO) coefficients in polymers is an important but elusive goal in obtaining useful materials for commercial devices. In order to demonstrate the effect of photocrosslinkable groups on enhancement of stability of NLO properties, a series of NLO polymers were investigated, which contain side-chain NLO chromophores with a variable number of crosslinkable methacrylate groups attached to the chromophore opposite the main chain attachment point. Following electric field poling, polymers were crosslinked by irradiating polymer samples containing a photoinitiator. Decay of second-order NLO properties was measured by second harmonic generation (SHG), and stability of SHG coefficients was significantly enhanced after photocrosslinking for polymers containing multiple crosslinkable groups on the chromophore. Addition of reactive diluents further enhanced stability. The enhancement of thermal stability demonstrates the efficacy of photocrosslinking and suggests that the stability improvements may carry over to systems with more efficient chromophores and more stable polymer backbones. The addition of photocrosslinkable materials is also exploited in photoresists to mitigate alignment limitations on flexible substrates during photolithographic patterning by enabling imaging of two device layers in a single lithographic exposure. To facilitate the simultaneous patterning of two device layers, a new photoresist system was developed which is able to store and transfer two images concurrently. The dual-tone photoresist system has the ability to store two independent latent images, distinguished by the incident exposure light wavelength, while remaining compatible with reactive ion etch image transfer processes. A modified chemically amplified photoresist for 193 nm lithography containing an added photobase generator (PBG) leads to a dual-threshold behavior of the dissolution vs. dose contrast curve that enables pitch division of patterned images. To improve these resists, a study of resist components’ effects on line edge roughness and pitch division process windows was performed. The kinetics of two-stage PBGs are compared to single-stage PBGs with a view toward achieving higher acid latent image gradients at the line edge. Application of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to determine the rate constants for resist components in thin films is demonstrated and discussed as a tool for formulating dual-threshold resists. / text

 In tone languages, tones, in addition to phonemes, are used to differentiate meanings. The tone of a word changes its meaning. This gives rise to a question regarding vocal music in such languages: does the melodic contour have to depend upon the lexical tones of the text so as to enhance the understanding of the text? This question has motivated a number of studies to examine the relationship between lexical tones and melody in different vocal genres of different tone languages. Yet a satisfactory answer is still missing. While existing studies reveal that the degree of conformity between speech tone and melody varies according to the genre as well as the language, some genres of Cantonese vocal music, such as Cantonese opera and Canto-pop, show a strikingly higher degree of tone-melody correspondence. Taking Canto-pop as the focus, the present study seeks to investigate the principles of tone-melody mapping—the underlying rules which govern the realization and perception of Cantonese speech tones in sung melody. It also seeks to gain a deeper understanding about how the constraints of speech tones affect the text-music interaction and why the preservation of speech tones is particularly prominent in this genre. Drawing insights from musicology, linguistics and psychology, the thesis presents an interdisciplinary research that casts new light on the subject of tone-melody relationship—the relationship between speech tones and sung melody in vocal music. It is found that the correspondence between musical intervals and tonal transitions in Cantonese speech can be crucial to tone perception in sung melody. But there are also occasions where the speech tones are still perceived correctly despite the occurrences of physical tone-melody mismatch, largely on account of the tonal, melodic, syntactic and semantic context. While a misperception of the speech tones may not always necessarily lead to a miscomprehension of the lyrics, it is still an aesthetic requirement for Cantopop to maintain perfect tone-melody mapping. This requirement even has an influence on the creative process of Cantopop. / published_or_final_version / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy

Peer-to-peer (P2P) video streaming has become a very popular and cost-effective solution to provide video-on-demand (VoD) streaming service to a large group of Internet users. Recent advances of layered video coding are shown to be promising in addressing the problem of receiver heterogeneity in P2P streaming networks. The key idea is to encode a raw video into multiple non-overlapped layers. Peers in the network can enjoy different streaming qualities by subscribing to different number of layers according to their specific network bandwidth. In this thesis, a systematic and comprehensive study of layered P2P VoD streaming networks is conducted. We first investigate the overlay construction problem that concerns the strategy of forming a logical overlay network for peers to exchange data pieces. We propose a neighbor relationship management algorithm to maintain a stable yet diversified neighbor set to facilitate adding or dropping a video layer, i.e. layer adaptation. Subsequently, an incentive scheme is designed to differentiate neighbors’ contributions at different layers, and a peer is allowed to adjust its number of neighbors according to its average service response time. We then develop an efficient layer adaptation algorithm for adjusting the number of video layers a peer subscribes to. We use a sliding buffer window for video piece scheduling, and make use of the time difference between the playback point and the starting point of the sliding window to initiate the process of adding or dropping a layer. A probing period is also introduced to ensure the adding decision is indeed correct. We next focus on designing piece scheduling algorithm for video data exchange among peers. At each peer, a utility function for calculating the relative importance of each missing video data piece is designed. In piece scheduling, a peer prefers a piece with higher utility value. We show that our utility based piece scheduling algorithm yields better video quality than conventional approaches. Last but not least, we study the request peer selection problem for identifying the most suitable neighbor for a peer to make a piece request. Two algorithms are designed, smallest service response time first (SSF) and closest playback point first (CPF). SSF ensures peers with larger uplink bandwidths to serve more requests, and CPF encourages a newly joined peer to contribute its uplink bandwidth as quickly as possible. We show that there exists a sweet spot by properly combining the two together. Although our algorithms are presented sequentially in addressing each of the problems above, they do interact with each other. Throughout our study, a comprehensive packet-level simulator is used to closely examine and analyze such interactions. With that, our algorithms are judicially designed and fine-tuned for best performance. To the best of our knowledge, our in-house developed simulator is the most comprehensive packet-level simulator for layered P2P VoD streaming. / published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This PhD research aims at revealing the underlying complexity of the grammar of tone-melody mapping in Cantonese pop music. While linguists have shown a growing interest and invested painstaking effort in finding out whether lexical tones and musical melody interact in vocal music, the attention of these scholars mainly focuses on whether a lexical item remains intelligible to speakers of the given language when the tonal integrity is not preserved in the song. Others are interested in quantifying the degree of tone-melody correspondence and in carrying out cross-linguistic comparisons. The majority of such research studies fail to unravel the details of how tone and melody interact. This research challenges the methodologies and assumptions made in some previous studies that fail to account for the discrepancy between structural and perceptual ‘correspondence’ or ‘mismatch’. The notions of ‘correspondence’ and ‘mismatch’ are revisited and redefined from a perceptual perspective – a ‘perfect match’ refers to the mapping between a melodic transition and a tonal target transition that is satisfactorily accepted by native speakers of the language, whereas a ‘mismatch’ refers to a tone-melody pairing that sounds awkward to the native ear, whether or not the string of syllables are comprehensible, ambiguous or unintelligible when set to the song. Through conducting perception tests, songs are grouped into two main categories for two different purposes – the songs without perceptual mismatch are used for a profound analysis of the well-formed mapping patterns at the abstract level. The most frequently attested correspondence pattern concerns the pairing between tonal target transition and melodic transition progressing in the same direction. The directionality constraint is satisfied in about 80% of the cases. It is also revealed that level tonal target sequences can be mapped to non-level melodies and still remain well-formed. This mapping, however, is strictly conditional and only occurs when licensed. The other group of songs are those in which native speakers have identified cases of perceptual mismatch. By examining the ill-formed examples, other mapping constraints are uncovered – the interval constraint requires that the pitch distance of a melodic transition be comparable to that of the corresponding tonal target transition. The mapping criterion is therefore more like a ‘vector’, obliging the two transitions to agree not only in direction but also in slope. The Hidden Structure Alignment constraint is the third important mapping constraint discovered that succeeds in providing solutions to account for unusual pairings or mismatches that directionality and interval fail to explain. In order that a tonal target transition match a melodic transition, the hidden or phonetically unexpressed semitones on both tonal and melodic scales should be aligned to or absent from the same edge. This constraint is helpful to account for the extremely restricted mapping patterns at the song-final cadence. By investigating a large corpus of Cantonese pop songs written by various lyricists, this research proposes a detailed description of the grammar of Cantonese tone-melody mapping in terms of the interaction of the directionality, interval and hidden structure alignment constraints. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy