Keeping it in three dimensions: measuring the development of mental rotation in children with the rotated colour cube test (RCCT)

This study introduces the new Rotated Colour Cube Test (RCCT) as a measure of object identification and mental rotation using single 3D colour cube images in a matching-to-sample procedure. One hundred 7- to 11-year-old children were tested with aligned or rotated cube models, distracters and targets. While different orientations of distracters made the RCCT more difficult, different colours of distracters had the opposite effect and made the RCCT easier because colour facilitated clearer discrimination between target and distracters. Ten-year-olds performed significantly better than 7- to 8-year-olds. The RCCT significantly correlated with children’s performance on the Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices Test (RCPM) presumably due to the shared multiple-choice format, but the RCCT was easier, as it did not require sequencing. Children from families with a high socio-economic status performed best on both tests, with boys outperforming girls on the more difficult RCCT test sections

'More-than-human’ resilience(s)? Enhancing community in Finnish forest farms

Community resilience is widely understood as a critical element in the relatively under-explored concept of social resilience. Through engaging with ‘more-than-human’ literatures, a more expansive view of the ‘social’ emerges, which repositions individuals as networked and agency as relational. This moves resilience away from its hegemonic positioning as a neoliberal strategy of individualisation and responsibilisation, with it instead emerging as an everyday ‘doing’ embedded in the human and non-human networks of relationality that we form and are formed by. The paper develops this socio-cultural conceptualisation through an original and empirically grounded discussion of Finnish farm communities and the role of the forest in developing, maintaining and enhancing these essential, connective assemblages. Resilience becomes conceptualised as dynamic, uneven, multiple and contextual performances or resiliences. While this further problematizes the comparative measurement and operationalisation of resilience, its networked and relational nature arguably offers a more inclusive and ethically grounded concept that, furthermore, negates the socio-ecological divide that persists in resilience thinking

Algorithmic Modelling of Folded Surfaces. Analysis and Design of Folded Surfaces in Architecture and Manufacturing.

Both in the field of design and architecture origami is often taken as a reference for its kinetic proprieties and its elegant appearance. Dynamic facades, fast deployment structures, temporary shelters, portable furniture, retractile roofs, are some examples which can take advantage of the kinetic properties of the origami. While designing with origami, the designer needs to control shape and motion at the same time, which increases the complexity of the design process. This complexity of the design process may lead the designers to choose a solution where the patterns are mere copies of well-known patterns or to reference to the origami only for ornamental purposes. The origami-inspired projects that we gathered and studied in the fields of architecture, manufacturing and fashion, confirmed this trend. We observed that the cause of this lack of variety could also be attributed to insufficient knowledge, or to inefficiency of the design tools. Many researchers studied the mathematical implications of origami, to be able to design specific patterns for precise applications. However, this theoretical knowledge is hard to apply directly to different practical projects without a deep understanding of these theorems. Thus, in this thesis, we aim to narrow the gap between potentialities of this discipline and limits of the available designing tools, by proposing a simplified synthetic constructive approach, applied with a parametric modeller, which allows the designers to bypass scripting and algebraic formulations and, at the same time, it increases the design freedom. Among the cases studies, we propose some fabrication-aimed examples, which introduce the subjects of thick-origami, distribution of stresses and analysis of deformations of the folded models.Nei campi dell’architettura e dell’industrial design, l’origami è spesso preso come riferimento per le sue proprietà cinetiche e le sue forme eleganti. Facciate dinamiche, strutture pieghevoli, rifugi temporanei, arredi portatili, tetti retrattili, sono alcuni esempi di progetti che potrebbero beneficiare delle proprietà cinetiche dell’origami. Progettare con l’origami richiede di controllare forma e movimento contemporaneamente; ciò aumenta la complessità del processo progettuale. Questa difficoltà progettuale può portare i progettisti a scegliere soluzioni che non sono altro che mere copie di pattern noti o a considerare l’origami come riferimento solo per ragioni ornamentali. I progetti ispirati all’origami che abbiamo raccolto ed analizzato nei campi di architettura, industria manifatturiera, e moda, confermano questo trend. Abbiamo osservato che la causa di questo mero utilizzo potrebbe essere attribuibile a preparazione insufficiente del progettista o a inefficienza degli strumenti progettuali. Diversi ricercatori hanno studiato le implicazioni matematiche dell’origami, per poter progettare specifici pattern per precise applicazioni. Nonostante ciò, questa conoscenza teorica è difficile da applicare direttamente ad altri progetti pratici senza una profonda comprensione di questi teoremi. Questa tesi punta quindi a ridurre il divario tra potenzialità di questa disciplina e limiti imposti dagli strumenti progettuali disponibili, proponendo un approccio sintetico e costruttivo semplificato, che permetta ai progettisti di evitare scripting e formulazioni algebriche, aumentando allo stesso tempo la libertà progettuale. Tra i casi studio, proponiamo anche alcuni esempi mirati alla fabbricazione che introducono il tema dell’origami a spessore non nullo, della distribuzione delle forze e dell’analisi delle deformazioni sui modelli piegati

Upholding a Modernist Mentality: Experimentalism and Neo-tonality in the Symphonies of Einojuhani Rautavaara

Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) is one of the most significant Finnish composers to emerge after Sibelius, and his music has been highly acclaimed for its originality and accessibility. After experimenting with modernism in the 1960s, his more approachable recent style has often been misunderstood. This thesis will consider this music, and re-consider terms describing it, such as “mystical”, “neo-Romantic” and “postmodern”, which are used in a variety of music criticism and in some biographical accounts. As such, it offers a new understanding of Rautavaara’s idiom, its larger significance, and its relationship with broader, historical trends within the Long Twentieth Century. This thesis addresses the larger, integrated role of modernism in Rautavaara’s music within the multi-stylistic context of contemporary composition. Modernism is examined both in technical, stylistic terms as well as a more general mentality of progress, arguing that both definitions have informed Rautavaara’s recent music more than has been acknowledged. After considering modernism in its broadest terms and in the more specific Finnish context, the thesis draws on the concepts of “reactive modernism” (J.P.E. Harper-Scott) and the “moderate mainstream” (Arnold Whittall) to argue that, in the late-twentieth century, Rautavaara continues an individualistic, critical approach that did not reject either “modern” or “anachronistic” techniques. Musical analyses focussing on the eight symphonies, several of which have received no previous detailed discussion, support a new contextualisation of Rautavaara’s entire symphonic cycle as a major pillar of his output. These analytical chapters work inwards from differing experiences of global form, to surface-level thematic processes, to melodic and harmonic processes, in particular how Rautavaara reconciles dodecaphonic and tonal thinking. Issues of symmetry and duality occur throughout. From these close readings, contextual discussion assesses Rautavaara’s legacy, focusing on his mentorship of younger Finnish composers, as well as determining common and recurring compositional features

August 22, 2018

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/thedmonline/1067/thumbnail.jp

Influence, Innovation, and Structure: Modernist Evaluative Criteria in the Reception Histories of Charles Ives and Jean Sibelius

Title from PDF of title page, viewed on June 6, 2016Thesis advisor: Andrew GranadeVitaIncludes bibliographical references (pages 121-138)Thesis (M.M.)--Conservatory of Music and Dance. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2016In 1987, Maynard Solomon published an article titled “Charles Ives: Some Questions of Veracity,” which challenged the priority and probity of Charles Ives’s technical innovations and ignited a scholarly firestorm. Nearly twenty years later, John McGinness ruminated on the uproar, asking, “While unquestionably of historical importance, why, in our postmodern times, should dating and/or the addition of dissonance play a crucial role in the critical evaluation of Ives’s music?” McGinness continued by questioning the effects of what he called “Modernist Criticism” on Ives studies and concluded by problematizing its usefulness to evaluations of Ives’s music. This thesis continues the conversation that McGinness began. First, I broaden his discussion to include the reception history of Jean Sibelius and recent contributions to Sibelius studies, for throughout their respective reception histories, the musics of Ives and Sibelius have been particularly vulnerable to negative valuations based on modernist criticism. Next, I borrow Richard Taruskin’s definition of modernist criticism, which he describes as comprising three tenets: influence, innovation, and structure. Taruskin’s three tenets serve as the subjects of the central chapters of this thesis, each of which seeks to outline the origin of its subject as a criterion of musical evaluation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy and to sketch a brief narrative of its application to the reception histories of Ives and Sibelius in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Finally, I explore the ramifications of modernist aesthetic assumptions that the parallels and similarities in the reception histories of Ives and Sibelius reveal. My research continues a budding tradition that examines and uncovers the biases musicologists bring into their discipline. My purpose is to demonstrate the pervasiveness of modernist criticism in musicology and the related fields of theory and criticism and to challenge influence, innovation, and structure as evaluative criteria in the reception histories of Ives and Sibelius.Introduction -- Influence -- Innovation -- Structure -- Epilogu

Algèbres hypercomplexes pour le Calcul

Dans les domaines mathématique ou applicatif, la multiplication de nombres possède un rôle clef pour le Calcul. En Science et en Ingénierie, la nonlinéarité offre de grands défis de modélisation mais aussi de résolution. Notre approche vise, via la multiplication, l'étude de certains phénomènes non linéaires que l'on retrouve fréquemment dans le domaine de la Science et de l'Industrie. Pour cela, nous étudions dans cette thèse la multiplication de nombres multidimensionnels, associée à des structures algébriques en dimension finie appelées algèbres hypercomplexes. Nous utilisons la multiplication comme lien entre les divisions apparentes des différents domaines théorique et pratique que nous abordons par une approche transdisciplinaire. Nous effectuons une analyse comparative entre les algèbres hypercomplexes et les principaux outils de Calcul, approche qui n’est pas développée dans la littérature existante. Nous présentons une synthèse des applications existantes (par ex. robotique, modélisation 3D, électromagnétisme) et des principaux avantages des algèbres hypercomplexes, pour la Science et l’Ingénierie. A partir des conséquences de l’utilisation des structures alternatives (autres que réelles ou complexes), nous proposons une extension nouvelle de la théorie spectrale présentée sous le nom de couplage spectral. Grâce aux algèbres hypercomplexes et à la théorie du couplage spectral, nous présentons des applications inédites à la mécanique et à la chimie ainsi que des perspectives pour le domaine du calcul quantique. Pour les domaines d’applications présentés, existants ou inédits, nous étudions les aspects de modélisation théorique et aussi d’analyse numérique. Nous montrons que suivant les cas d'étude, les aspects numériques avantageux découlent d'un choix judicieux des modèles et des algèbres hypercomplexes associées. Ces avantages sont principalement dus à la manière de définir la multiplication dans les algèbres concernées. Dans les domaines applicatifs abordés, une grande partie des modèles théoriques et numériques repose actuellement sur l’utilisation des nombres réels ou complexes ainsi que sur l’algèbre linéaire. Nous montrons dans cette thèse que les algèbres hypercomplexes sont complémentaires des outils algébriques actuellement utilisés et possèdent un vaste potentiel théorique et pratique, grandement sous-exploité pour le Calcul