Neurologically-Informed Musicking (NIM) for Relaxation : Process and Effects

This study aimed to look at the effects of client directed therapeutic musical improvisation on relaxation. The protocol used immediate brain wave data to inform a music therapist’s improvisation for the purpose of affecting the client’s state of rest. Based on prior and existing music therapy techniques, this music therapy method was further developed by the researcher and thesis sponsor, and for the sake of consolidation and brevity, was given the name, Neurologically-Informed Musicking (NIM). The researcher asked the following questions: (1) What form does the NIM process takes when relaxation is a clinical goal? How (if at all) does the process promote relaxation? (2) Are there statistically significant relationships between electroencephalograph (EEG) measurements and NIM improvisation strategies associated with state of silence, rest, unrest, and sleep in a therapeutic setting? Comparisons among visual representations of measurements show (a) baseline EEG fluctuations between Silence and NIM, (b) bandwidth differences before and after changes in specific musical elements of improvisation. AMest demonstrated that statistically significant differences in Theta/Beta ratio between silence (baseline) and NIM (improvisational music phase). However, /-test results showed no statistically significant differences in Theta/Beta bandwidth ratio upon specific changes across musical elements (key change, tempo change, trills, and rest). Based upon findings, it is evident that NIM may represent a useful music therapy protocol in facilitating relaxation or other clinical goals across a diversity of settings and clients. However, additional research is needed before more confident conclusions can be drawn

Collaborating with local administrative offices to improve neighborhoods: A case study of the Design Consultant program

In 2016, the Seoul Design Foundation, a city-funded design organization in Seoul, carried out a program that aims to solve local problems in the city by catalyzing collaboration between designers and civil servants. The one-year program, called “Design Consultant” program, supported 15 design projects addressing problems at a sub-district level through the collaboration with sub-district offices in Seoul. This paper examines the underlying strategies of the program to address a city’s problems, and at the same time to promote the adoption of the design in the public sector. Four projects carried out under the framework of the Design Consultant program were studied by interviewing the civil servants and junior designers who collaborated for five months at local sub-district offices.Keywords: transformation design, local administrative offices, scaling out, scaling up, Seoul metropolitan city

Multi-lingual Common Semantic Space Construction via Cluster-consistent Word Embedding

We construct a multilingual common semantic space based on distributional semantics, where words from multiple languages are projected into a shared space to enable knowledge and resource transfer across languages. Beyond word alignment, we introduce multiple cluster-level alignments and enforce the word clusters to be consistently distributed across multiple languages. We exploit three signals for clustering: (1) neighbor words in the monolingual word embedding space; (2) character-level information; and (3) linguistic properties (e.g., apposition, locative suffix) derived from linguistic structure knowledge bases available for thousands of languages. We introduce a new cluster-consistent correlational neural network to construct the common semantic space by aligning words as well as clusters. Intrinsic evaluation on monolingual and multilingual QVEC tasks shows our approach achieves significantly higher correlation with linguistic features than state-of-the-art multi-lingual embedding learning methods do. Using low-resource language name tagging as a case study for extrinsic evaluation, our approach achieves up to 24.5\% absolute F-score gain over the state of the art.Comment: 10 page

Analysis of the effect of initial conditions on the initial development of a turbulent jet

The effect of the initial condition at the jet exit on the downstream evolution, particularly within the potential core length, were numerically investigated as well as with available experimental data. In order to select the most dependable computational model for the present numerical experiment, a comparative study has been performed with different turbulence models at k-epsilon level, and it was found that the k-epsilon-gammma model yields superior prediction accuracy over other conventional models. The calculated results show that the potential core length and the spreading rate the initial mixing layer are dependent on the initial length scale as well as the turbulent kinetic energy at the jet exit. Such effect of the initial length scale increases with higher initial turbulence level. An empirical parameter has been devised to collapse the calculated data of the potential core length and the spreading rate with various initial conditions onto a single curve

The Seoul Olympic Games and Korean society : causes, context and consequences

The overall aim of the research project is to investigate the alms and the consequences of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. The Seoul Olympics took place over twenty years ago, and the event has had a significant impact on South Korean society which is best explained by reference to theories of globalization and mega events. The project uses qualitative methods and a variety of data sources to evaluate the domestic impact of the Games in relation to culture, politics, sport, and economics. The analysis is contextualised within an understanding of Korean history with specific reference to Japanese colonialism and relations between North and South Korea. Particular attention is paid to the decision by most of the Communist bloc to participate in the Seoul Olympics, despite a North Korean boycott. The thesis also examines the reasons that lay behind Seoul wiuning the right to host the Games, as well as the postGames consequences, both of which are addressed using empirical data drawn from interviews and documentary evidence. Having addressed the evidence within the context of wider sociological debate concerning globalisation, the thesis concludes that South Korea's political, economic, cultural and sporting interests were well served by the Seoul Olympic Games, and that hosting a mega-event of this scale helped to accelerate South Korea's modernisation process and its emergence on the global stage

Competing Magnetic Orderings and Tunable Topological States in Two-Dimensional Hexagonal Organometallic Lattices

The exploration of topological states is of significant fundamental and practical importance in contemporary condensed matter physics, for which the extension to two-dimensional (2D) organometallic systems is particularly attractive. Using first-principles calculations, we show that a 2D hexagonal triphenyl-lead lattice composed of only main group elements is susceptible to a magnetic instability, characterized by a considerably more stable antiferromagnetic (AFM) insulating state rather than the topologically nontrivial quantum spin Hall state proposed recently. Even though this AFM phase is topologically trivial, it possesses an intricate emergent degree of freedom, defined by the product of spin and valley indices, leading to Berry curvature-induced spin and valley currents under electron or hole doping. Furthermore, such a trivial band insulator can be tuned into a topologically nontrivial matter by the application of an out-of-plane electric field, which destroys the AFM order, favoring instead ferrimagnetic spin ordering and a quantum anomalous Hall state with a non-zero topological invariant. These findings further enrich our understanding of 2D hexagonal organometallic lattices for potential applications in spintronics and valleytronics.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Pedagogy of aesthetics : a study of three architectural design studios

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on October 25, 2012).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Benyamin SchwarzVita.Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2011."May, 2011"Venustas (beauty) in the architectural field is one of the qualities of architecture along with firmitas (firmness) and utilitas (utility). Given that pursuing beauty is one of the roles of an architect/designer, aesthetics, the discussion of beauty, cannot be excluded from architectural education. However, it is rare to find scholarly discussions that include aesthetic education and theory to explain the process of how students obtain knowledge of the aesthetics of architecture. This dissertation explores the pedagogy of aesthetic education in architectural design studios using a grounded theory approach. Based on a multicase study of three outstanding instructors' studios in three different schools, their 40 students and 3 administrators using observations, interviews and document reviews, a theoretical framework of “a process of aesthetic education in the architectural studio” is proposed. Finally, recommendations and implications for design educators are presented.Includes bibliographical reference