The “Holy Spirit” is a familiar concept in Christianity, but in its original Hebrew construction as Ruah ha-Kodesh, it also plays an active role in classical Rabbinic literature. This dissertation surveys uses of the term Ruah ha-Kodesh in major texts from the Tannaitic period through the Aggadic Midrash and the two Talmuds. Drawing on Scriptural roots, the Rabbis identify Ruah ha-Kodesh as the divinely given power that enables individuals to prophesy. While the term never loses this biblical meaning, the Rabbis take Ruah ha-Kodesh further by personifying it as a metonym for God, and more specifically, as “the divine voice in Scripture.” This dissertation first surveys the historical background of the term in pre-Rabbinic ancient Judaism, and then turns to a detailed textual analysis of its uses as both prophecy and personification in Rabbinic literature. The study notes and examines conventional and formulaic terms associated with Ruah ha-Kodesh. Four major Ruah ha-Kodesh traditions are analyzed in depth over the course of their diachronic development. There are numerous Rabbinic sources that claim that Ruah ha-Kodesh has ended, yet others offer advice on how to achieve it or indicate its existence in the Rabbinic present. The solution to this paradox is that Ruah ha-Kodesh has not gone, but changed. Even as Ruah ha-Kodesh is said to have departed from Israel in her role of inspiring the prophets, she continues to speak actively as part of the ongoing Midrashic dialogue with the Sages. The final chapter examines Ruah ha-Kodesh as a metonym for God, particularly as it contrasts and interacts with other divine metonyms of feminine grammatical gender: the Shekhinah and the Bat Kol. The Shekhinah and Ruah ha-Kodesh are frequently identified, but not identical. The changing role of Ruah ha-Kodesh exemplifies a shift in the locus of divine communication, from prophecy to the Midrashic study of Torah. / text

This report examines maximalist voice in the nonfiction work of James Agee, Lester Bangs, and David Foster Wallace. The term maximalist voice is meant to capture a set of authorial strategies for depicting a vast, complex American reality with an equally complex literary style, one that is simultaneously didactic, chaotic, and intimate. In particular, this report examines Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Bangs’s Psychotic Reactions and Carburator Dung, and Wallace’s Consider the Lobster. In using “voice” as an analytic lens, this report highlight those qualities of the three author’s nonfiction writing that draw upon the particular conventions of oral communication. It concludes by arguing for increased use of voice as a way to analyze literary writing. / text

"Little Black slave child" : operatic expressions of Black cultural trauma from William Grant Still's A troubled island and A bayou legend: Introduction -- From Troubled island (1939). Little black slave child ; 'Tis sunset in the garden -- From A bayou legend. In ages past ; Now they will be coming to the tree -- Lecture. / text

Voice problems are common among teachers due to their job characteristics. Thus, the quality of teaching, daily communication, emotion would be adversely affected. However, the past studies mainly focused on primary school and preschool teachers. There is lack of investigation on voice problems of secondary school teachers. Moreover, the need for voice use training for secondary school teachers was not addressed in the past. This study investigated the prevalence of voice problems in secondary school teachers in Hong Kong and the need for preventive education. A questionnaire was decided with domains in demographics, job natures, impact on voice disorders, risk factors, history of seeking help because of voice problems, view on different treatment options and opinion towards the need of voice protection training. Subjects were recruited from four local secondary schools in Hong Kong. 85 questionnaires were collected and analyzed. The results showed a high prevalence of voice disorders (75%) among secondary school teachers. Also it revealed different levels of impact on work performance, emotion and daily communication. Laryngitis was the only risk factor found to be significantly correlated with the voice disorder. On the other hand, the rate of seeking professional help and their knowledge about voice rehabilitation were low. Most of the respondents realized the need for voice protection training. It suggested that the voice problems of secondary school teachers should be highlighted and more voice protection information and voice training should be provided. / published_or_final_version / Surgery / Master / Master of Medical Sciences

ITC/USA 2012 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Eighth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2012 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / The expected efficiency of network-based telemetry systems vs. the tried and true PCM-based approaches is a debated topic. This paper chooses to use a lighthearted voice to pull the two sides of the "war" to a table of negotiation based on metrics. Ultimately, focusing on metrics that truly define efficiency is the key to understanding the varying points of view. A table of these metrics along with the "why and when" criteria for their use is presented based on historic mathematical information theory, true flight test data requirements, and lab analysis. With these metrics, the negotiation and reasonable compromises in the war may become clear. In other words, this paper attempts to provide a methodology that can be used by the community to aid in choosing the appropriate (or good enough) technologies for current and future telemetry testing demands.

Issues around Quality of Service (QoS) and security for Voice over IP (VoIP) have been extensively investigated separately, due to the great attention this technology currently attracts. The specific problem this work addresses centres upon the selection of optimal parameters for QoS and security for VoIP streams integrating both network impairments and user perception metrics into a novel empirically-driven approach. Specifically, the simulation model seeks the optimal parameters in terms of variable VoIP payloads, iterative block ciphers, codecs and authentication mechanisms to be used, so that optimum tradeoff between a set of conflicting factors is achieved. The model employs the widely used Transmission Rating Factor, R, as the methodology to predict and measure the perceived QoS based on current transmission and network impairments. The R factor is then used to map perceived QoS to the corresponding Mean Opinion Score value, which gives the average estimation of perceived voice quality (Quality of Experience). Furthermore, a genetic algorithm (GA) has been developed that uses the output from the simulation model as an input into an offline optimisation routine that simultaneously maximises the VoIP call volumes and the Level of Encryption (LoE) per call basis, without degrading the perceived quality of service under a specific threshold as dictated by the R factor. The solutions reflect the optimum combination of parameters for each codec used and due to the small size of the search space the actual speed of GA has been validated against an exhaustive search algorithm. The results extracted from this study demonstrate that under strict and pre-defined parameters the default payload size supported by the codecs is not the optimal selection in terms of call volume maximisation and perceived QoS when encryption is applied.

"Impossible Voices: Phenomenologies of Sound in Beckett" is the first sustained exploration of sound in the prose and drama of Samuel Beckett. Bringing the field of sound studies to bear on Beckett's works, this dissertation argues that Beckett's treatment of inner speech--the sounds and voices in the "mind's ear"--is implicated in an aesthetics not only of failure, but of impossibility. The "impossible voices" of the dissertation's title are the "dead voices" or "human murmurs" of Beckett's purgatorial soundscapes. These sounds, qua manifestations of inner speech, cannot be fully exteriorized. This unbridgeable gap between inner speech and sounded speech within the self finds it analogue in a breakdown of communication between self and other, as shown in the three major plays: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Happy Days. Where conversation in these purgatorial worlds often asserts or provides mere presence, meaning is found by apophatic means such as noise, catachresis, and the ineffable. The organization of the chapters of this dissertation indicates a move from embodied voices--speaker and listener in two separate, functioning bodies--to a dynamic in which a disembodied voice speaks to a body in a "listening posture." The listener's vocal expression, moreover--if it exists--is secondary to that of the voice. This study thus makes a case for the importance of sound in the Beckett canon, using phenomenological readings to show that the impossible in Beckett is bound up with sound. / Romance Languages and Literatures

Just lucky is a chamber work for three singers, three percussionists and saxophone quartet. It is a setting of a poem of the same name by David Bush. / text

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Master / Master of Science in Information Technology in Education

This study carried out in one children’s home in Finland. This study aims to understand how the caregivers collectively perceive their work to secure and construct the childhood of the children living in the children’s home. Furthermore, the study mainly includes caregiver’s perceptions and practices of upbringing of children in the children’s home, which have been thoroughly analysed in the study. The study follows carefully designed two qualitative research methods: focus group interview and text for data collection. The data comprise one focus group interview of seven child care workers that includes five discussion questions about children’s home, listening to the children, importance of rules, regulations and daily routines, children’s future and difficulties in the work. References have been given to the ‘text’, i.e. institution’s policy documents- rules and regulations and the Finnish Child Welfare Act for the analysis of the data. However, the study does not include the analysis of the ‘text’ itself. Moreover, thematic analysis is used for data analysis. The study highlights that understanding childhood comprise the process of trust building between children and care workers- allowing children’s voice, agency, independence and protection respecting the child rights, personal integrity with the provision of safe home, trustable adults and permanent routines and individual child care plan. In addition, the same body ‘caregiver’ who, at the same time, allows child autonomy, agency and independence, also regulates the children’s everyday life, controls children and creates limitation, bridge trust and protect them from developing deviancy and asocial behaviours. Such process gives special consideration to the children’s psychological as well as physical incompetency such as age, immaturity and the vulnerable past in the children’s home that partly creates dilemmas/conflicts in delivering full agency to the children as mentioned in the legal frame work. The study reveals that building trust takes place through interaction between children and care workers and is a long-term process that backs up bringing corrective experiences in children. Listening to the children means helping and teaching them to recognise own feelings, emotions and stand independent and strong for oneself in the future. Likewise, respect to the child rights and organising everyday life delivers protection and safety net to the children. The study reveals, despites various difficulties at work, such as changing welfare act, complicated bureaucracy, unlimited parental rights and surprising legal interference, the child workers have the professional as well as moral obligations to protect children and provide them a safe and intact growing environment. Finally, the study reveals that future of the children is based on the personal choices they make in future and only a few of them will have relatively better life than others. However, all of the children are always under potential risk of post-traumatic collapses.   Keywords: childhood, child perspective, agency, children’s voice, building trust.