“Strength Shed by a New and Terrible Vision:” The Organic Evolution of the Blues and the Blues Aesthetic in Richard Wright’s \u27Uncle Tom’s Children\u27

An exploration into the development of the blues aesthetic in the African-American literary tradition

The Stakes of Spinoza’s Language: A Moderate Necessitarian Understanding of \u27Ethics\u27 and Spinoza’s Conception of Freedom as Both Positive and Negative Liberty

This paper explores different readings of Spinoza\u27s Ethics with a specific focus on Spinoza\u27s understanding of the relationship between infinite and finite modes in his constructed universe. These different readings suggest that Spinoza\u27s conception of human freedom can be read both as examples of positive liberty and negative liberty

Speaking Rate Effects on Normal Aspects of Articulation: Outcomes and Issues

The articulatory effects of speaking rate have been a point of focus for a substantial literature in speech science. The normal aspects of speaking rate variation have influenced theories and models of speech production and perception in the literature pertaining to both normal and disordered speech. While the body of literature pertaining to the articulatory effects of speaking rate change is reasonably large, few speaker-general outcomes have emerged. The purpose of this paper is to review outcomes of the existing literature and address problems related to the study of speaking rate that may be germane to the recurring theme that speaking rate effects are largely idiosyncratic

Bounds on expected coupling times in Markov chains

In the author’s paper “Coupling and Mixing Times in Markov Chains” (RLIMS, 11, 1- 22, 2007) it was shown that it is very difficult to find explicit expressions for the expected time to coupling in a general Markov chain. In this paper simple upper and lower bounds are given for the expected time to coupling in a discrete time finite Markov chain. Extensions to the bounds under additional restrictive conditions are also given with detailed comparisons provided for two and three state chains

Stationary distributions and mean first passage times of perturbed Markov chains

Stationary distributions of perturbed finite irreducible discrete time Markov chains are intimately connected with the behaviour of associated mean first passage times. This interconnection is explored through the use of generalized matrix inverses. Some interesting qualitative results regarding the nature of the relative and absolute changes to the stationary probabilities are obtained together with some improved bounds

A survey of generalized inverses and their use in stochastic modelling

In many stochastic models, in particular Markov chains in discrete or continuous time and Markov renewal processes, a Markov chain is present either directly or indirectly through some form of embedding. The analysis of many problems of interest associated with these models, eg. stationary distributions, moments of first passage time distributions and moments of occupation time random variables, often concerns the solution of a system of linear equations involving I – P, where P is the transition matrix of a finite, irreducible, discrete time Markov chain. Generalized inverses play an important role in the solution of such singular sets of equations. In this paper we survey the application of generalized inverses to the aforementioned problems. The presentation will include results concerning the analysis of perturbed systems and the characterization of types of generalized inverses associated with Markovian kernels