Faculty Composers: Laurence Sherr, Jennifer Mitchell and Drew Dolan

Kennesaw State University School of Music presents Faculty Composers: Laurence Sherr, Jennifer Mitchell and Drew Dolanhttps://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1551/thumbnail.jp

Composing the Double Concerto for Toy Pianos and Chamber Orchestra and the Creation of the Toy Piano Chamber Music Database

Double Concerto for Toy Pianos and Chamber Orchestra is a three-movement, 17- minute work written for two soloists playing two amplified toy pianos each, and a chamber orchestra consisting of woodwinds plus alto saxophone; brass; amplified banjo; 3 percussion; strings; and a variety of toy instruments and animal calls.Part I of this essay provides brief historical information about the toy piano and selected performers and chamber music works, toy symphonies, and a description of several important toy piano concertos. I also discuss my research methodologies for the creation of the Toy Piano Chamber Music Database, a repository of chamber and large ensemble music that has toy piano in it. Part II of this essay focuses on Double Concerto for Toy Pianos and Chamber Orchestra. It includes an explanation of performance practicalities, a formal analysis of the piece, and a discussion of my approaches to orchestration.An unconventional aspect of this composition is the use of four specific toy pianos, each with a distinct timbre and range.</p

DISSERTATION Error Resilient Transmission of Video Streaming over Wireless Mobile Networks

iii iv THE third generation of mobile systems brought higher data rates that allow for provisioning of multimedia services containing also video. The real-time services like video call, conferencing, and streaming are particularly challenging for mobile communication systems due to the wireless channel quality variations. The mechanism for video compression utilizes a hybrid of temporal and spatial prediction, transform coding and variable length coding. The combination of these methods provides high compression gain, but at the same time makes the encoded stream more prone to errors. In this thesis, techniques for error resilient transmission of video streaming over wireless mobile networks are investigated. Focus is given to the recent H.264/AVC standard, although the majority of the proposed method apply to other video coding standards, too. The first part is dedicated to exploiting the residual redundancy of the received video stream at the decoder. The redundancy is used for error localization within a damaged packet that would be discarded otherwise. Error detection using syntax analysis and detection of impairments in the picture domain do not requir

Predictive neural biomarkers of clinical response in depression:a meta-analysis of functional and structural neuroimaging studies of pharmacological and psychological therapies

We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of neural predictors of response to the most commonly used, evidence based treatments in clinical practice, namely pharmacological and psychological therapies. Investigations of medication-free subjects suffering from a current major depressive episode who underwent positron emission tomography (PET) or functional or structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans prior to the initiation of treatment were reviewed. Results of 20 studies from 15 independent samples were included in the functional imaging meta-analysis and 9 studies from 6 independent samples in the structural neuroimaging meta-analysis. Regional activations with prognostic value include the well replicated finding that increased baseline activity in the anterior cingulate is predictive of a higher likelihood of improvement. As well, increased baseline activation in the insula and striatum is associated with higher likelihood of a poorer clinical response. Structural neuroimaging studies indicated that a decrease in right hippocampal volume is a statistically significant predictor of poorer treatment response. Overall, the predictive information that is measurable with brain imaging techniques is both multimodal and regionally distributed as it contains functional as well as structural correlates which encompass several brain regions within a frontostriatal–limbic network. To develop clinically relevant, prognostic markers will require high predictive accuracy at the level of the individual. Predicting clinical response will help to stratify patients and to identify at an early stage those patients who may require more intensive or combined therapies. We propose that structural and functional neuroimaging show significant potential for the development of prognostic markers of clinical response in the treatment of depression