Modelling the cooking process of a single cereal grain

Four models are developed to assist with the uniform and accurate cooking of whole grains for Uncle Tobys breakfast cereals. 1. Heat satisfies a linear conduction equation and is found to rapidly penetrate the grain. 2. Moisture satisfies a non-linear diffusion equation, and is found to penetrate the grain more slowly than heat. The more sophisticated moisture diffusion model is solved by numerical and analytic techniques for spherical and ellipsoidal grains. A vital role is played in the moisture diffusion model by the concept of the mean action time for wetting a grain. These first two models are used to determine sensitivity to key cooking parameters, and to calculate the degree of over-cook in the existing batch steam process. Recommendations are made for improving and speeding up the cooking process. The last two models are modifications of the nonlinear moisture penetration model 2. above. The results of these improved models have the potential to provide finer adjustments to estimates of wetting times. 3. A cereal grain swells significantly during wetting. A model that takes this into account is developed and solved approximately. 4. Another wetting model describes the effect of the gelatinisation reaction, slowing moisture penetration, and leading to a sharp front entering the grain. The effect of gelatinisation on the speed of moisture penetration is expected to be more important for the present high-temperature cooking process, than when soaking a grain at a lower temperature. This model is also developed and solved approximately

Mental and motor representation for music performance

This research proposes a theory of nonconscious motor representation which precedes mental representation of the outcome of motor actions in music performance. The music performer faces the problem of how to escape sedimented musical paradigms to produce novel configurations of dynamics, timing and tone colour. If the sound were mentally represented as an action goal prior to being produced, it would tend to be assimilated to a known action goal. The proposed theory is intended to account for creativity in music performance, but has implications in other areas for both creativity and motor actions. The investigation began with an ethnographic study of two 'posthardcore' rock bands in London and Bristol. Posthardcore musicians work with minimal explicit knowledge of music theory and cognitive involvement in performance is actively eschewed. Serendipitous musical felicities in performance are valued. Such felicities depend on adjustment and fine control of dynamics, timing and tone colour within the parameters of the given. A selective survey of music aesthetics shows that the defining qualities of music are the production of immanent rather than representational meaning; polysemy; and processuality. Taking an analytic philosophy and cognitive science approach, I argue that apprehensions of immanent meaning depend on relationships between proximal percepts within the specious present. A general argument for nonconceptual perceptual content as perception of relations between magnitudes within the specious present is extended to music and argued to account for both the polysemic richness of music and its processuality. Nonconceptual relational perception can account for novel apprehensions by music listeners, but not for the production of novel configurations by the performer. I argue that motor creativity in music performance is achieved through the nonconscious parameterization of inverse models without conscious representation of the goal of the action. Conscious representation for the performer occurs when they hear their own performance

Automatic Code-Generation Techniques for Micro-Threaded RISC Architectures

Submitted to the University of Hertfordshire in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science by research.There has been an ever-widening gap between processor and memory speeds, resulting in a 'memory wall' where the time for memory accesses dominates performance. To counter this, architectures that use many very small threads that allow multiple memory accesses to occur in parallel have been under investigation. Examples of these architectures are the CARE (Compiler Aided Reorder Engine) architecture, micro-threading architectures and cellular architectures, such as the IBM Cyclops family, implementing using processors-in-memory (PIM), which is the main architecture discussed in this thesis. PIM architectures achieve high performance by increasing the bandwidth of the processor to memory communication and reducing that latency, via the use of many processors physically close to the main memory. These massively parallel architectures may have sophisticated memory models, and I contend that there is an open question regarding what may be the ideal approach to implementing parallelism, via using many threads, from the programmer's perspective. Should the implementation be at language-level such as UPC, HPF or other language extensions, alternatively within the compiler using trace-scheduling? Or should it be at library-level, for example OpenMP or POSIX-threads? Or perhaps within the architecture, such as designs derived from data-flow architectures? In this thesis, DIMES (the Delaware Iterative Multiprocessor Emulation System), which is being developed by CAPSL at the University of Delaware, was used as a hardware evaluation tool for such cellular architectures. As the programing example, the author chose to use a threaded Mandelbrot-set generator with a work-stealing algorithm to evaluate the DIMES cthread programming model. This implementation was used to identify potential problems and issues that may occur when attempting to implement massive number of very short-lived threads

The Cinematic Boogeyman: The Folkloric Roots of the Slasher Villain

This doctoral thesis complements earlier scholarship by Marina Warner concerning the Boogeyman as a figure representative of monstrosity and otherness by assessing these topics through an interdisciplinary lens. Employing a methodological approach that incorporates research from the fields of psychology, philosophy, and film studies, I analyse the Boogeyman within the context of the traditional fairytale and the modern horror film, and thereby reveal the key facets of this figure in the Western cultural imaginary. Specifically, I demonstrate that the villains of the contemporary slasher film (a subgenre of the horror film) are cinematic manifestations of the folkloric Boogeyman through a comparison of their physical and psychological attributes. Examining the archetypal properties of these characters, I argue that the traits that characterize the Boogeyman are the result of the fact that he is a composite of three archetypal forms: the collective Shadow, the Terrible Father, and the Death-Demon. I address three key questions: (1) what particular physical and psychological qualities are associated with the Boogeyman; (2) how the persona of the Boogeyman is constituted in the public consciousness; and (3) what moral, philosophical, and psychological role does he serve in Western culture. Over the course of this thesis, I demonstrate the fact that the Boogeyman represents the amalgamation of three archetypal components. Firstly, he embodies the role of the collective Shadow and functions to personify violent and anarchic characteristics that are repressed by the community and projected onto monstrous figures in the popular consciousness. Secondly, he is a manifestation of the negative attributes associated with the archetypal Father (referred to in literature as the “Terrible Father”) who punishes individuals that defy hegemonic values. Finally, he is a cultural embodiment of the Death-Demon, a conceptual figure that personifies anxieties related to death, and the degeneration of the body. This thesis provides a comparative analysis of a series of case studies that clearly illustrate the characteristics synonymous with the Boogeyman in the Western cultural imaginary. I begin with an examination of Bluebeard, a homicidal villain featured in Charles Perrault’s 1697 collection of fairytales titled Histoires ou contes du temps passé. In her seminal text No Go the Bogeyman, Warner posits Bluebeard as a clear example of the folkloric Boogeyman due to the fact that he is physically grotesque and morally repugnant. In Perrault’s story, Bluebeard is a villain who marries and then murders a series of women for disobeying him, and subsequently stores their bodies in his private chamber. Extrapolating the salient characteristics of Bluebeard as the folkloric Boogeyman, I assess these traits under an archetypal lens and demonstrate that Bluebeard/the folkloric Boogeyman is a manifestation of the collective Shadow, the Terrible Father, and the Death-Demon. After determining the archetypal properties of the folkloric Boogeyman, I highlight the presence of these same qualities in popular villains from the contemporary American slasher films of the 1970s and ’80s. Specifically, these characters include Michael Myers from Halloween (1978), Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th (1980), and Freddy Krueger featured in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Through my analysis of these terrifying figures, I situate them within a larger archetypal context of monstrosity and simultaneously establish their role as cinematic manifestations of the folkloric Boogeyman. This examination reveals the placement of the Boogeyman within the cultural imaginary as a violent disciplinarian who reinforces moral boundaries through sadistic acts of violence and paradoxically brings both chaos and harmony to the collective by preserving social borders. By extension, I demonstrate the link between the slasher film and the fairytale, both of which serve a didactic function, imparting hegemonic values to the public concerning sexual politics, social propriety, and moderation

What Men Say of the Mode

Once upon a time there was an anarchist who spent his spare moments distributing bombs here and there, in spots where he thought they would do the most damage. But on one fateful day he chose to put a bomb in a powder factory. With his usual care he planted the explosive where it would spread the conflagration. When all was in readiness he touched the fuse and bolted for his life, hoping to view the impending holocaust from a safe distance. But he found the doors locked, and his avenues of escape cut off. Subsequently he went the way of all true villains, perishing in the destruction he himself had wrought

Men Expect From Women

If a man doesn\u27t like a girl after such an occasion he never asks her for another date and he proceeds to tell all his friends to keep away from her. He dismisses her from his mind with the broad phrase she acts like a little girl

Why Men Go Out to Eat...

Men do go out to eat! Whether with or without feminine company they have been seeking sustenance for themselves since Adam stole away after eating the biblical apple to have a fig by himself

This Sport Called Polo...

Polo is the simplest game in the world-to the person who has never played. A man can be a good rider, but still look like a dub on the polo field. For in addition to his equestrian skill he must have a good eye, a strong arm, more than average amount of courage, and a brain that is working every minute of the game