ITL Monitor: Compositional Runtime Analysis with Interval Temporal Logic

Runtime verification has gained significant interest in recent years. It is a process in which the execution trace of a program is analysed while it is running. A popular language for specifying temporal requirements for runtime verification is Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), which is excellent for expressing properties such as safety and liveness. Another formalism that is used is Interval Temporal Logic (ITL). This logic has constructs for specifying the behaviour of programs that can be decomposed into subintervals of activity. Traditionally, only a restricted subset of ITL has been used for runtime verification due to the limitations imposed by making the subset executable. In this thesis an alternative restriction of ITL was considered as the basis for constructing a library of runtime verification monitors (ITL-Monitor). The thesis introduces a new first-occurrence operator (|>) into ITL and explores its properties. This operator is the basis of the translation from runtime monitors to their corresponding ITL formulae. ITL-Monitor is then introduced formally, and the algebraic properties of its operators are analysed. An implementation of ITL-Monitor is given, based upon the construction of a Domain Specific Language using Scala. The architecture of the underlying system comprises a network of concurrent actors built on top of Akka - an industrial strength distributed actor framework. A number of example systems are constructed to evaluate ITL-Monitor's performance against alternative verification tools. ITL-Monitor is also subjected to a simulation that generates a very large quantity of state data. The monitors were observed to deliver consistent performance across execution traces of up to a million states, and to verify subintervals of up to 300 states against ITL formulae with evaluation complexity of O(n^3)

Unravelling revelation : the apocalypse in England, 1700-1834

This thesis argues that, while the Revelation of John claims to unveil reality, the interpretative structures built on the book are undermined by its own rhetoric. A historical examination of its use shows the fragility of hermeneutics, but also the power of the 'apocalyptic tone' to engender new unveilings. The first chapter presents the Apocalypse as a book constantly inviting but constantly confounding interpretation, refusing to fit conventional generic definitions or reading strategies. The next two chapters show the book's continuing prominence in eighteenth-century England after its pivotal role in the Reformation. First - writers such as Isaac Newton and William Whiston - it serves as rationalistic evidence for God's providence, as well as giving encouragement to moral 'usefulness' and to the reformation of Christianity. Secondly, its imagery reinforces the more individualistic appeal of the Wesley's preaching and hymns. But it is only with the French Revolution (treated in Chapter 4) that the Apocalypse recovers political immediacy, as seen in both radical millenarian writers like Priestley and Bicheno and in conservative ones like Burke and G.S. Faber. The Romantic period also saw a revival of prophetic and visionary writing, and for many poets John of Patmos was a guiding spirit. Coleridge, the subject of Chapter 5, moved from the millenarian declamation of 'Religious Musings' and the fragmented vision of 'Kubla Khan' to an attempt to interpret the Apocalypse as symbolic representation of polar logic and moral order

The Poetics of Authorship in the Later Middle Ages: The Emergence of the Modern Literary Persona

Literary individualism manifested itself in the twelfth century both trivially and profoundly. Word puzzles and overt self-naming within a literary work, and discussions of the nature of poetry and the role of the poet in the world, increasingly considered the purpose and efficacy of writing and ultimately of language per se. Poets asserted themselves in their works not so much for the sake of self-promotion, in a modern sense, but to address and modulate contemporary intellectual and spiritual issues. Speculative grammar, nominalism and realism, often provided the material for poets such as Guillem IX, Marcabru, Dante, Chaucer and Langland. As literacy and Aristotelian logic became widespread, these poets contributed to a distinction being made between history and fiction; they employed contemporary ideas about language and its relationship to experience as both metaphor and theme. They elaborated a Western sensibility that had been articulated at least as early as Plato, Paul, and especially Augustine who essentially viewed the world as a text. This basic metaphor ultimately formed the later medieval outlook; text, and language and/or discourse maintained fluid interrelationships. Moreover, Anselm had set aside Augustine\u27s criterion of intentionality as the most important factor when determining falsehoods. Anselm recognized the separateness of language; statements could have a natural integrity despite their lack of objective reference. This autonomy of language formed the ground for individual poetic identity. In the face of a hierarchical authority inherited from the past, poets insisted upon their presence as individuals by aligning themselves with their texts. Marcabru writes about his difficulties in forging an eloquent text that will always be at a remove from him. Dante undertakes this theme through a fictional persona, who resembles himself and discourses with Virgil about the possibility of enunciating truth. Langland, finally, aligns author and persona with poetic theme in the name Will. In measuring dream and allegory against actual experience, Langland discusses the individual writer\u27s will and his hope for salvation

Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo

How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book’s diverse objects of inquiry—from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles—enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard’s topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to Play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new

Austin Osman Spare: the artist's books (1905-1927)

This thesis constitutes a complete analysis of the following five books: Earth: Inferno (1950), A Book of Satyrs (1907 and 1909), The Book of Pleasure (1913), The Focus of Life (1921), and The Anathema of Zos (1927). Emphasis is placed throughout upon the interpretation of the drawings within the context of the accompanying text. All allegorical nomenclature has been interpreted and putative identification given to all significant characters and their functions. The basic thesis is that the books constitute an interconnected developmental sequence; that the artist pursues and refines certain major themes and exhaustively explores allegorical method. In addition thta this leads to the evolution of a method of symbolic automatism. This is presented as the praxis of the evolving cosmology, mysticism and world-view developing directly from Earth: Inferno. The argument is that Earth: Inferno and A Book of Satyrs establish Spare's method of synthesizing influences such as Dante and Blake to evolve effective pictorial and textual tropes. The Book of Pleasure is interpreted as part allegory within the major drawings, and part automatism with symbolic adjuncts in others. All symbolism is interpreted and given putative identification and its function as praxis fully discussed in relation to magical and creative method. The fourth and fifth books are affirmed as mature articulations of Spare's mysticism and magical theory, textually expressed in more emotive persuasive narrative forms through protagonists originating in name and function in Earth: Inferno. The illustrations of The Focus of Life are identified as thematic developments of major concerns of The Book of Pleasure with evidence of considerable influence of Goethe's Faust. Earth: Inferno is considered as the initiation of Spare's method of incorporating both revealed and concealed thematic aspects both textually and pictorially, as well as his prevailing syncretistic approach. Diverse components from Dante, Blake, the Kabbalah, Blavatsky and Egypt are identified. It is argued that Dante and Blake are cast in Kabbalist roles through contemporary scholarship; with Blavatsky as a precedent for synthesis and fusion of seemingly diverse concepts. A Book of Satyrs is construed as complex textual pictorial work functioning on four Dantean levels: Satirical, Biblical / Christian, Kabbalist and Greek Tragic. The Book of Pleasure is present as part allegorical but mainly a didactic work concerned with Spare's symbolic automatism. The Focus of Life is defined as maintaining the Faust theme, whilst the two images of The Anathema of Zos are briefly examined; one in relation to occult influences discussed as influential upon A Book of Satyrs

Evolution on coral reefs, with systematic treatments of the pencil and fairy wrasses (Teleostei: Labridae: Pseudojuloides & Cirrhilabrus)

Fishes represent half of all of the living species of vertebrates that have been described to date. Most species of fish are marine, with at least a third found exclusively in coral reefs. Yet the phylogenetic relationships of coral reef fishes and the drivers of their diversification remain poorly understood, particularly for taxonomic groups at the incipient stages of speciation. Despite the increasing application of high-throughput sequencing techniques to other taxonomic groups, much of the research conducted on coral reef fishes still relies on more traditional sources of information, such as morphology and mitochondrial sequence data. These methods are unreliable in resolving taxonomically problematic groups such as the Labridae, where many groups are still rapidly radiating, and the processes driving this are not well understood. It is therefore prudent to use a combined, integrative approach using both morphological and high-throughput sequencing techniques. This thesis uses the aforementioned techniques, integrated with morphological studies, to tease apart the relationships for members of the Labridae, in particular the fairy and pencil wrasses (Cirrhilabrus and Pseudojuloides respectively). Additionally, it includes taxonomic descriptions of eight new species, as well as investigations into general themes on coral reefs, including, but not limited to hybridisation, deep reef communities, and historical biogeography

Missed cues: music in the American spoken theater c. 1935-1960

The period from the end of World War I through the 1950s has been called “the Golden Age of Drama on Broadway.” Subsumed within this period is another sort of golden age, of music in the American spoken theater, Broadway and beyond, c. 1935-60. Unlike more familiar, and better-studied, genres of dramatic music such as opera, ballet, and the Broadway-style musical, music composed for spoken dramas is neither a definitive part of the dramatic form nor integral to the work’s original conception. Rather, it is added in production, like sets, costumes, and lighting. This study traces the roots of this rich period of spoken-dramatic music to the collaboration of producer John Houseman, director Orson Welles, and composer Virgil Thomson on the Federal Theatre Project, beginning in 1936. The musical ramifications of that collaboration eventually extended to include composers Paul Bowles and Marc Blitzstein, influential theater companies such as the Theatre Guild and Group Theatre, innovative directors such as Elia Kazan and Margo Jones, and major playwrights such as Lillian Hellman and Tennessee Williams. Following a consideration of the forces that gave rise to this musically rich nexus and the people, materials, and practices involved, three high-profile theatrical collaborations are examined, along with three scores that resulted from them: Thomson’s score for Houseman’s 1957 “Wild West” Much Ado About Nothing; Blitzstein’s score for Welles and the Mercury Theatre’s 1937-38 “anti-Fascist” Julius Caesar; and Bowles’s score for the original production of Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (1944-45). Each score is located within the musico-dramatic history that produced it, and analyzed within the context of the production for which it was written. This work aims to begin to recover a vast body of forgotten American dramatic music, to limn the role of the spoken theater in the careers of these three noteworthy American musical artists, to probe a busy intersection of high and commercial art forms, and to suggest music’s important role in the development of the American spoken theater

Action control in uncertain environments

A long-standing dichotomy in neuroscience pits automatic or reflexive drivers of behaviour against deliberate or reflective processes. In this thesis I explore how this concept applies to two stages of action control: decision-making and response inhibition. The first part of this thesis examines the decision-making process itself during which actions need to be selected that maximise rewards. Decisions arise through influences from model-free stimulus-response associations as well as model-based, goal-directed thought. Using a task that quantifies their respective contributions, I describe three studies that manipulate the balance of control between these two systems. I find that a pharmacological manipulation with levodopa increases model-based control without affecting model-free function; disruption of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex via magnetic stimulation disrupts model-based control; and direct current stimulation to the same prefrontal region has no effect on decision-making. I then examine how the intricate anatomy of frontostriatal circuits subserves reinforcement learning using functional, structural and diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A second stage of action control discussed in this thesis is post-decision monitoring and adjustment of action. Specifically, I develop a response inhibition task that dissociates reactive, bottom-up inhibitory control from proactive, top-down forms of inhibition. Using functional MRI I show that, unlike the strong neural segregation in decision-making systems, neural mechanisms of reactive and proactive response inhibition overlap to a great extent in their frontostriatal circuitry. This leads to the hypothesis that neural decline, for 4 example in the context of ageing, might affect reactive and proactive control similarly. I test this in a large population study administered through a smartphone app. This shows that, against my prediction, reactive control reliably declines with age but proactive control shows no such decline. Furthermore, in line with data on gender differences in age-related neural degradation, reactive control in men declines faster with age than that of women

Concrete poetry in England and Scotland 1962-75: Ian Hamilton Finlay, Edwin Morgan, Dom Sylvester Houédard and Bob Cobbing

This thesis examines concrete poetry in England and Scotland from 1962 to 1975. Through the 1950s-70s, international concrete poetry evolved away from constructivist influenced, “classical” ideals of minimalism and iconic visual effect towards principles owing more to Dadaism and Futurism: spontaneity, maximalism, sonority and an emphasis on intermedial expression. Against this backdrop, using close textual analysis supported by primary research, I engage with four poets whose work collectively exemplifies the wide range of values which concrete poetry represented in England and Scotland during the period in question. A movement away from classical ideals can be tracked across the oeuvres of Finlay, Morgan, Houédard and Cobbing; but many aspects of their work cannot be accounted for by this general rubric. Finlay saw concrete poetry as a means of casting off Scottish literary tradition, but also of embodying an immutable vision of aesthetic and ethical order, using a marriage of the visual and linguistic to emphasise links between disparate ideas and things. However, his restless reconfiguration of poetry’s visual-physical aspects ultimately resulted in a re-separation of word and image which, together with an increasing historical-mindedness, ended his attachment to the style. Morgan, by contrast, used concrete poetry to redefine rather than repel Scottish literary culture, and was a more context-focused poet, using concrete grammar – whose sonic possibilities he exploited more than Finlay – to depict specific communicative scenarios, and thus to register ethical and political imperatives, often reflecting Scottish nationalist ideals. The emphasis on semantics common to Morgan and Finlay’s work, reflecting relative fidelity to classical principles, is overridden in Houédard’s concrete poetry, which came to employ a grammar of abstract visual motifs in which linguistic meaning was subsumed, related as much to apophatic theology as to classical concrete. For Cobbing too, concrete became a means of evading language, in his case to access a transcendent realm of “intermedial” poetry equally related to language’s sonic and visual dimensions, and influenced by various contemporary artforms, and by counter-cultural ideals. However, Cobbing’s emphasis on performing poems, and the reintegration of semantics into his work throughout this period, led by the early 1970s to an alternative poetic ideal of relativity