Junior Recital: Michael Alcorn, tenor

The Kennesaw State University School of Music presents Junior Recital: Michael Alcorn, tenor, accompanied by Sherri Barrett.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1837/thumbnail.jp

Folio of original compositions

Not availabl

AQuaMaM: An Autoregressive, Quaternion Manifold Model for Rapidly Estimating Complex SO(3) Distributions

Accurately modeling complex, multimodal distributions is necessary for optimal decision-making, but doing so for rotations in three-dimensions, i.e., the SO(3) group, is challenging due to the curvature of the rotation manifold. The recently described implicit-PDF (IPDF) is a simple, elegant, and effective approach for learning arbitrary distributions on SO(3) up to a given precision. However, inference with IPDF requires $N$ forward passes through the network's final multilayer perceptron (where $N$ places an upper bound on the likelihood that can be calculated by the model), which is prohibitively slow for those without the computational resources necessary to parallelize the queries. In this paper, I introduce AQuaMaM, a neural network capable of both learning complex distributions on the rotation manifold and calculating exact likelihoods for query rotations in a single forward pass. Specifically, AQuaMaM autoregressively models the projected components of unit quaternions as mixtures of uniform distributions that partition their geometrically-restricted domain of values. When trained on an "infinite" toy dataset with ambiguous viewpoints, AQuaMaM rapidly converges to a sampling distribution closely matching the true data distribution. In contrast, the sampling distribution for IPDF dramatically diverges from the true data distribution, despite IPDF approaching its theoretical minimum evaluation loss during training. When trained on a constructed dataset of 500,000 renders of a die in different rotations, AQuaMaM reaches a test log-likelihood 14% higher than IPDF. Further, compared to IPDF, AQuaMaM uses 24% fewer parameters, has a prediction throughput 52$\times$ faster on a single GPU, and converges in a similar amount of time during training

Senior Recital: Michael Alcorn, tenor

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Mr. Alcorn is a voice student of Valerie Walters.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1647/thumbnail.jp

Kennesaw State University Concerto Competition: Final Round

Kennesaw State University School of Music presents Concerto Competition: Final Round.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1620/thumbnail.jp

Symphony Orchestra : Concert Competition Winners

Kennesaw State University School of Music presents Symphony Orchestra: Concert Competition Winners.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1557/thumbnail.jp

Induction of erythroid differentiation in rat erythroleukaemic (REL) cells

The work presented here was an attempt to characterise some properties of a rat erythroleukaemic cell line (REL), in particular, the ability of these cells to undergo erytliroid differentiation following exposure to dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO). Erythroid differentiation was readily demonstrated by the appearance of haemoglobin in REL cells, using the benzidine reaction. Although it required some 72 hours exposure to DMSO before significant numbers of haemoglobinized cells could be detected, it appeared that some cells became committed to differentiate after as little as 8 hours exposure. It was possible to propose a sequence of events when REL cells were exposed to DMSO. After 4 hours of DMSO, DNA synthesis was down- regulated and REL cells started to shift out of S-phase of the cell cycle (i.e. proliferative) and started to accumulate in G0/G1(i.e. quiescent). This loss of proliferative ability was reflected in a reduction in cloning efficiency, i.e. some cells could no longer divide. Cells became committed to differentiation by 8 hours and by 24 hours, gross morphological changes could be observed, e.g. a significant reduction in cell size, cells adopting a smooth surface appearance as demonstrated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Cells producing haemoglobin could be detected by 72 hours of DMSO and the number of cells rose to a maximum after about 96 hours. It would appear that haemoglobin production is a relatively late event in DMSO-induced erytliroid differentiation of REL cells. To try to identify the biological activities that regulate differentiation, REL cells were adapted to a chemically defined, serum-free (SF) medium. Although the growth and division of these cells was not significantly different from cells grown in serum-containing medium, without serum, REL cells could not be induced to differentiate. Even when SF medium was supplemented with combinations of known growth factors / cytokines, no significant erythroid differentiation was obtained. It is because of this ability to differentiate along an erythroid pathway that the REL cells are regarded as erythroleukaemic. However, under certain culture conditions, REL cells developed characteristics associated with monocyte / macrophage maturation as demonstrated by morphology, appearance under SEM, cytochemical analyses, and expression of a macrophage-associated surface antigen. It would appear that REL cells are not restricted to the erythroid lineage, but, in fact, they retain the potential to mature along additional lineages. Brief cytogenetic analysis revealed the presence of a chromosomal abberation, namely, the translocation of the major portion of chromosome 3 to the terminal region of chromosome 1. The area of the breakpoint on chromosome 3 contains the protooncogene, c-abl. It may be that this translocation subverts the normal expression of c-abl and this aberrant expression contributes to the unregulated growth of REL cells

Effect of Absent Tactile Sensation on Multi-digit Coordination Underlying Hand Control

We investigated the effect of anesthesia, causing absent tactile sensation feedback, on multi-digit coordination underlying hand control. The purpose of the study is to expand our understanding on the essential role of tactile sensation feedback in the sensorimotor integration process by examining the motor coordination patterns during multi-digit forces production tasks. We hypothesized that absent tactile sensation feedback would interrupt the force sharing pattern at local and non-local digits. Twelve participants were utilized for data collection and statistical analysis (25.6 ± 4.1 years old, 6 males and 6 females), right-handed (according to their preferred hand use for writing and eating) and had no significant hand injury within the last five years. All participants performed a maximal voluntary contraction (MVC), ramp, and step task, pre- and post-anesthesia. In general, participants presented lower maximal force production in all MVC conditions after anesthesia, total MVC force was not distributed evenly among individual digits, and when sensory function of the MVC involved digits are uniformly absent or intact, force sharing pattern across the individual digits would be maintained. When the instructed finger (master finger) was index, other fingers (enslaved fingers) barely produced force. However, other enslaved fingers showed relatively higher forces when the master finger was ring or little finger. When required force level increased, performance error was increased accordingly. The findings from the current study confirmed our hypothesis that absent tactile sensation feedback (somatosensory feedback) will not only affect force production at local digits, but also at non-local digits as well