Charles Ruggiero\u27s Tenor Attitudes : An Analytical Approach to Jazz Styles and Influences

Charles Ruggiero has spent much of his career composing saxophone music that blends classical and jazz idioms. His most recent work for Tenor Saxophone and Piano, Tenor Attitudes, reflects his most overtly jazz influenced piece to date. This piece is meant to recreate the styles of seven of history\u27s most celebrated jazz tenor saxophonists: Stan Getz, Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker, John Coltrane, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon, and Sonny Rollins. This document discusses the lives and careers of each of these musicians. It analyzes their personal histories, preferred genres, and styles in an attempt to aid performers in accurately and sincerely performing this piece of music. It also suggests various recordings of the seven performers that would be the most beneficial for study in the preparation of this piece. Most importantly, it discusses the idiomatic qualities in these musician\u27s style, and how to incorporate them into a performance of Tenor Attitudes. In addition, an interview with composer Charles Ruggiero is included which offers additional insight into his thoughts on this piece of music, as well as on the saxophone in general

Synthesis, Characterization and Application of Mayenite

The mineral mayenite (12CaO•7Al2O3, C12A7), possesses a unique cage structure which allows the entrapment of anions due to the positive charge of the cage. The most abundant form of this mineral is C12A7:O2- which exhibits high oxygen conductivity. However, the oxygen can be removed from the cage by reduction and other anions such as OH-, H-, Cl-, and even e- can be substituted in the cage. When electrons act as the anion in the cage, the material is classified as an electride. Mayenite electride shows promising properties such as metallic-like conduction and is a room temperature stable inorganic electride. The cages don’t necessarily need to be occupied by just one anion. It is possible to have a mixture of anions of different species in the cages of mayenite. Through mixed anions present in the cages, mixed conductivity becomes possible. With H- ions and electrons inhabiting the cages of mayenite, it is theoretically possible to have hydrogen permeate through the cages. This allows the material mayenite to be used as a hydrogen permeable membrane. Other applications of mayenite include catalysts for ammonia formation, as well as an energy material for the cathode and electrolyte of a solid oxide fuel cell. To have a hydrogen permeable membrane, the membrane should be fully dense with as many charge carriers as possible to manifest high permeability without allowing molecules to diffuse or permeate through the membrane. This work focuses on the synthesis of mayenite with mixed conductivity to act as a hydrogen permeable membrane. Different dopants were tested such as doping a thin membrane with iron to allow the membrane to be fully dense. Silicon was also investigated as a dopant to replace aluminum sites as to create cages with higher positive charges with a goal of creating a doped mayenite with higher electron densities. Characterization was completed to show that the structure remained when doping, and that doping with silicon did indeed increase the electron density. Work was done to investigate the permeability of hydrogen through a thin membrane of mayenite

Adaptive kernel estimation for enhanced filtering and pattern classification of magnetic resonance imaging: novel techniques for evaluating the biomechanics and pathologic conditions of the lumbar spine

This dissertation investigates the contribution the lumbar spine musculature has on etiological and pathogenic characteristics of low back pain and lumbar spondylosis. This endeavor necessarily required a two-step process: 1) design of an accurate post-processing method for extracting relevant information via magnetic resonance images and 2) determine pathological trends by elucidating high-dimensional datasets through multivariate pattern classification. The lumbar musculature was initially evaluated by post-processing and segmentation of magnetic resonance (MR) images of the lumbar spine, which characteristically suffer from nonlinear corruption of the signal intensity. This so called intensity inhomogeneity degrades the efficacy of traditional intensity-based segmentation algorithms. Proposed in this dissertation is a solution for filtering individual MR images by extracting a map of the underlying intensity inhomogeneity to adaptively generate local estimates of the kernel’s optimal bandwidth. The adaptive kernel is implemented and tested within the structure of the non-local means filter, but also generalized and extended to the Gaussian and anisotropic diffusion filters. Testing of the proposed filters showed that the adaptive kernel significantly outperformed their non-adaptive counterparts. A variety of performance metrics were utilized to measure either fine feature preservation or accuracy of post-processed segmentation. Based on these metrics the adaptive filters proposed in this dissertation significantly outperformed the non-adaptive versions. Using the proposed filter, the MR data was semi-automatically segmented to delineate between adipose and lean muscle tissues. Two important findings were reached utilizing this data. First, a clear distinction between the musculature of males and females was established that provided 100% accuracy in being able to predict gender. Second, degenerative lumbar spines were accurately predicted at a rate of up to 92% accuracy. These results solidify prior assumptions made regarding sexual dimorphic anatomy and the pathogenic nature of degenerative spine disease

Optical trapping and surgery of living yeast cells using a single laser

We present optical trapping and surgery of living yeast cells using two operational modes of a single laser. We used a focused laser beam operating in continuous-wave mode for noninvasive optical trapping and manipulation of single yeast cell. We verified that such operational mode of the laser does not cause any destructive effect on yeast cell wall. By changing the operation of the laser to femtosecond-pulsed mode, we show that a tightly focused beam dissects the yeast cell walls via nonlinear absorption. Lastly, using the combined technique of optical microsurgery and trapping, we demonstrate intracellular organelle extraction and manipulation from a yeast cell. The technique established here will be useful as an efficient method for both surgery and manipulation of living cells using a single laser beam.The project has been funded by the Philippine Council for Advanced Science and Technology Research and Development PCASTRD. J. Ando acknowledges the support of the Japan Student Services Organization JASSO for the short-term student exchange promotion program