Paradoxia epidemica in the art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder : an investigation into sixteenth-century parody

Pieter Bruegel the Eider's paintings De verkeerde wereld, Het gevecht tussen Karnava/ en Vasten, Luilekker/and, Dulle Grief and Landschap, met Icarus' val are interpreted as sixteenth-century parodies using the paradoxia epidemica as a tropic means for interpreting the artist's wit, irony, parody and picaresque stance towards his source material and his milieu. Where applicable, other works relating to a particular argument are also discussed. As a result of this investigation, an original contribution has been made in the literature on both Bruegel and parody as a form of visual communication.Art History, Visual Arts and MusicologyM.A. (History of Art

Population structure, biomass and distribution of Nyctiphanes capensis (Euphausiacea) in the vicinity of Algoa Bay, South Africa

Samples taken on three research cruises along the east coast of South Africa in 1989 contained large numbers of Nyctiphanes capensis (Hansen), a euphausiid species commonly found in the cold waters of the west coast. Size-frequency distributions were determined for euphausiid populations at each station, and density and biomass calculated. Densities were found to be low close inshore and offshore in the warm Agulhas current and highest on the shelf and shelf-edge. A dense aggregation of N. capensis was analysed in greater detail to ascertain the reasons for the accumulation of euphausiids in this shelf area. This sample was dominated by females (many with brood pouches containing nauplii) with Stage 2 ovarian development. Stomach analyses showed that the majority of specimens had stomachs full of phytoplankton-derived material. It is possible that aggregations of euphausiids form to feed on high primary production associated with upwelling on the shoreward edge of the Agulhas current

The battle of changing times : picaresque parodies from Bruegel to Grosz

This study focuses on Bruegel's parodic legacy in the picaresque tradition. It is based, on the one hand, on visual rhetoric, visual parody, and the poetics of epideictic rhetoric; and, on the other, on the interaction between epideictic rhetoric's salient features and the Bruegelian themes of camivalisation, the satirising of human folly, and the ontic order of the World Upside Down topos as organising principles. The relationships between the above themes are chronologically traced in various disguises in pictures by representative picaresque artists from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries: i.e., in Bruegel, Steen, Hogarth, Daumier, and Grosz. Each of these picaresque artists battled with their own times, parodying the paradigmatic targets of the high mode, in both social and genre hierarchy, and in doing so revealed the complexities of the above themes at work within an ever changing context-bound rhetoricity.Art History, Visual Arts and MusicologyThesis (D.Litt. et Phil.

An Anlaysis of Methods for Modeling Advective-Dominated Transport

Finite element modeling of sharp front advective-dispersive-reactive transport is not accurate for highly advective or reactive problems. Two techniques were studied with the goal of accurately modeling these problems: an h-adaptive method that adjusted element lengths, and Petrov-Galerkin upwinding which used weighting functions of higher polynomial order than that of the basis functions. Finite element models were constructed using linear and quadratic basis functions in one spatial dimension. The h-adaptive method was shown to give good results with linear and quadratic basis functions. Petrov-Galerkin upwinding also yielded excellent results. This method was implemented for both classes of basis functions, but was studied only for the linear case. The benefits of Petrov-Galerkin upwinding depend on user defined parameters that regulate the amount of upwinding applied to the solution. Taylor series and Fourier analyses of the finite element truncation error as well as numerical experimentation were performed to define optimal upwinding parameters. Published results by other investigators were reproduced, and an automated method of deriving optimal upwinding parameters was developed. Analysis and operation of the Petrov-Galerkin models indicated that optimal levels of upwinding are a function of the gradient across each element. This observation led to a new upwinding scheme that adjusts the upwinding condition at each element as a function of the local gradient. Significantly better results were obtained with the new method relative to existing Petrov-Galerkin formulations. The utility of this technique will be greatly enhanced when optimal upwinding conditions are described as a function of dimensionless model parameters such as Peclet, Courant, and Damkohler numbers, and the method is generalized to multiple spatial dimensions.Master of Science in Environmental Engineerin

Exploring the effects of personality traits on the perception of emotions from prosody

It has repeatedly been argued that individual differences in personality influence emotion processing, but findings from both the facial and vocal emotion recognition literature are contradictive, suggesting a lack of reliability across studies. To explore this relationship further in a more systematic manner using the Big Five Inventory, we designed two studies employing different research paradigms. Study 1 explored the relationship between personality traits and vocal emotion recognition accuracy while Study 2 examined how personality traits relate to vocal emotion recognition speed. The combined results did not indicate a pairwise linear relationship between self-reported individual differences in personality and vocal emotion processing, suggesting that the continuously proposed influence of personality characteristics on vocal emotion processing might have been overemphasized previously

Neurology

Contains reports on nineteen research projects.United States Public Health Service (B-3055-3, B-3090-3, 38101-22)United States Navy, Office of Naval Research (Contract Nonr-1841(70))Unites States Air Force (AF33(616)-7588, AFAOSR 155-63)United States Army Chemical Corps (DA-18-108-405-Cml-942)National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04734-03)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496

Developmental pathways to autism: a review of prospective studies of infants at risk

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication, and the presence of restrictive and repetitive behaviors. Symptoms of ASD likely emerge from a complex interaction between pre-existing neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities and the child's environment, modified by compensatory skills and protective factors. Prospective studies of infants at high familial risk for ASD (who have an older sibling with a diagnosis) are beginning to characterize these developmental pathways to the emergence of clinical symptoms. Here, we review the range of behavioral and neurocognitive markers for later ASD that have been identified in high-risk infants in the first years of life. We discuss theoretical implications of emerging patterns, and identify key directions for future work, including potential resolutions to several methodological challenges for the field. Mapping how ASD unfolds from birth is critical to our understanding of the developmental mechanisms underlying this disorder. A more nuanced understanding of developmental pathways to ASD will help us not only to identify children who need early intervention, but also to improve the range of interventions available to them

Brain oscillations and connectivity in autism spectrum disorders (ASD):new approaches to methodology, measurement and modelling

Although atypical social behaviour remains a key characterisation of ASD, the presence ofsensory and perceptual abnormalities has been given a more central role in recentclassification changes. An understanding of the origins of such aberrations could thus prove afruitful focus for ASD research. Early neurocognitive models of ASD suggested that thestudy of high frequency activity in the brain as a measure of cortical connectivity mightprovide the key to understanding the neural correlates of sensory and perceptual deviations inASD. As our review shows, the findings from subsequent research have been inconsistent,with a lack of agreement about the nature of any high frequency disturbances in ASD brains.Based on the application of new techniques using more sophisticated measures of brainsynchronisation, direction of information flow, and invoking the coupling between high andlow frequency bands, we propose a framework which could reconcile apparently conflictingfindings in this area and would be consistent both with emerging neurocognitive models ofautism and with the heterogeneity of the condition