Claudia Muzio (1889-1936), her life and career : a thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy, Massey University Conservatorium of Music, College of Fine Arts, Design and Music, Wellington, New Zealand

The Italian soprano Claudia Muzio was, in the course of her short career (1910-1935) hailed as one of the world's great singers. There is a great deal of evidence, in the form of reviews and testimonials by her contemporaries, that Claudia became famous amongst critics and audiences alike for her dedication, histrionic ability and the beauty and intelligence of her singing. Claudia was what we would call today a role model. There was a dedicated following of young girls and women, the Muzio Fan Club, which started in Chicago and soon had members throughout the United States. Only one other soprano of the day had such a following, Geraldine Farrar, whose 'gerryflapper' following was more impressive, though not so much devoted to the singing of their idol as to her style Both genetically and environmentally, conditions were ideal for Claudia to become what she did. Her parents, though at the time Claudia was born to them they were still unmarried, were both musicians Carlo Muzio, though, soon turned his attention to stage directing. Giovanna Gavirati, his mistress and Claudia's natural, and later legal, mother, was a singer and had a sister who was a professional singer as well. Added to those already favourable conditions was the constant backstage environment in which Claudia spent her childhood, "at work" with her parents who doted on her and were reluctant to leave her behind when they travelled between several of the major opera houses of the world – Covent Garden in London, The Metropolitan in New York, the San Carlo in Naples and others.[from Introduction

Space telerobotic systems: Applications and concepts

The definition of a variety of assembly, servicing, and maintenance missions has led to the generation of a number of space telerobot concepts. The remote operation of a space telerobot is seen as a means to increase astronaut productivity. Dexterous manipulator arms are controlled from the Space Shuttle Orbiter cabin or a Space Station module. Concepts for the telerobotic work system have been developed by the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center through contracts with the Grumman Aerospace Corporation and Marin Marietta Corporation. These studies defined a concept for a telerobot with extravehicular activity (EVA) astronaut equivalent capability that would be controlled from the Space Shuttle. An evolutionary development of the system is proposed as a means of incorporating technology advances. Early flight testing is seen as needed to address the uncertainties of robotic manipulation in space. Space robotics can be expected to spin off technology to terrestrial robots, particularly in hazardous and unstructured applications

Large-N Baryons, Chiral Loops, and the Emergence of the Constituent Quark

Meson loop corrections to baryon axial currents are computed in the 1/N expansion. It is already known that the one-loop corrections are suppressed by a factor 1/N; here it is shown that the two-loop corrections are suppressed by (1/N)^2. To leading order, these corrections are exactly what would be calculated in the constituent quark model. Some applications are discussed

Ichthyofaunal Diversification and Distribution in the Big Creek Watershed, Craighead and Greene Counties, Arkansas

Big Creek is a relatively small deltaic stream, in northeastern Arkansas, in an area of intense cultivation. Recently it has been dredged in the interest of flood control. Lost Creek and Mud Creek are the major tributaries of Big Creek and collectively drain the Big Creek watershed. The streams were found to have relatively low alkalinity, moderate carbon dioxide, adequate oxygen values, and relatively high turbidity. Channeling of Big Creek and Lost Creek has effectively destroyed distinct pool-riffle biocies and reduced the number of acceptable spawning areas. Lost Creek, also, receives effluent from residential dwellings, a secondary treatment sewage plant, and a meat rendering plant. Mud Creek, in the absence of channeling and deleterious effects of effluents, provided a relatively greater diversity of habitat than did Big Creek or Lost Creek

Irrigation and phytolith formation:an experimental study

It has been proposed that phytoliths from archaeological sites can be indicators of water availability and hence inform about past agricultural practices (Rosen and Weiner, 1994; Madella et al., 2009). Rosen and Weiner (1994) found that the number of conjoined phytoliths fromcereal husks increased with irrigationwhile Madella et al. (2009) demonstrated that the ratio of long-celled phytoliths to short-celled phytoliths increased with irrigation. In order to further explore these hypotheses, wheat and barley were experimentally grown from 2005 to 2008 in three different crop growing stations in Jordan. Four different irrigation regimes were initially employed: 0% (rainfall only), 80%, 100%and 120% of the optimum crop water requirements, with a 40% plot being added in the second and third growing seasons. Each plot measured 5 m � 5 m and a drip irrigation system was used. Environmental variables were measured on a daily basis, and soil and water samples were taken and analysed at the University of Reading. Phytoliths from the husks of these experimentally grown plants were extracted using the dry ashing method. Results demonstrate that although the number of conjoined cells increases with irrigation, there were considerable intersite and inter-year differences suggesting that environmental variables other than water availability affect phytolith uptake and deposition. Furthermore, analytical experiments demonstrated that conjoined phytoliths are subject to change or breakage by external factors, making this methodology problematic to apply to archaeological phytolith assemblages that have an unknown taphonomic history. The ratio of long cells to short cells also responded to increased irrigation, and these forms are not subject to break up as are conjoined forms. Our results from the modern samples of durum wheat and six-row barley show that if an assemblage of single-celled phytoliths consists of over 60% dendritic long cells then this strongly suggests that the crop received optimum levels of water. Further research is needed to determine if this finding is consistent in phytolith samples from the leaves and stems, as suggested byMadella et al. (2009), and in other species of cereals. If this is the case then phytoliths are a valuble tool for assessing the level of past water availability and, potentially, past irrigation

Mice, scats and burials: unusual concentrations of microfauna found in human burials at the Neolithic site of Catalhoyuk, Central Anatolia

Three human burials were found at Çatalhöyük that contained large microfaunal assemblages. Taphonomic analysis demonstrated that many of these elements had passed through the digestive tract of a small carnivore, indicating that the microfauna entered the burials in carnivore scats rather than as carcasses. One of the burials in particular (F. 513) contained an enormous quantity of microfauna which was concentrated over the torso of the body. It is concluded that the scats were deliberately placed in the burials by the human inhabitants of the site as part of ritualistic practice. Furthermore, it is suggested that small carnivores were encouraged to enter Çatalhöyük in order to control house mice, and other small mammal, numbers

M.S.L.A.P. Modular Spectral Line Analysis Program documentation

MSLAP is a software for analyzing spectra, providing the basic structure to identify spectral features, to make quantitative measurements of this features, and to store the measurements for convenient access. MSLAP can be used to measure not only the zeroth moment (equivalent width) of a profile, but also the first and second moments. Optical depths and the corresponding column densities across the profile can be measured as well for sufficiently high resolution data. The software was developed for an interactive, graphical analysis where the computer carries most of the computational and data organizational burden and the investigator is responsible only for all judgement decisions. It employs sophisticated statistical techniques for determining the best polynomial fit to the continuum and for calculating the uncertainties

Bosonic Operator Methods for the Quark Model

Quark model matrix elements can be computed using bosonic operators and the holomorphic representation for the harmonic oscillator. The technique is illustrated for normal and exotic baryons for an arbitrary number of colors. The computations are much simpler than those using conventional quark model wavefunctions

Improved thermally conducting electron transfer polymers

Development of polymers with improved heat transfer coefficients for use in encapsulating electronic modules is discussed. Chemical reactions for synthesizing the polymers are described and thermodynamic and physical properties are analyzed