Opticality and the Work of Morris Louis (1912-1962)

This thesis investigates the work of Morris Louis (1912-1962) in relation to ‘opticality’, a theory developed by the prominent American art critic Clement Greenberg. Between the late 1930s and 1950s, Greenberg developed a comprehensive argument concerning the opticality, or the optical illusion, of abstract painting. This theory influenced common approaches towards Abstract Expressionist painting during the 1940s and 1950s, culminating in Greenberg’s writing on ‘Colourfield’ painting in major texts of the 1960s such as ‘Louis and Noland’ (1960). Through research into the development of Morris Louis’ technique, including several of his major series as well as lesser known works, this thesis argues that our understanding of Louis’ work has been constricted by a narrow perception of the opticality of his 'stain' paintings, and explores Louis' technique in light of alternative interpretations of his work

The Bardic Style In The Poetry Of Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Butler Yeats, And Dylan Thomas

There have always been elements in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Butler Yeats, and Dylan Thomas that have been difficult to account for. Although each of these writers is generally engaged with modern poetics and sensitive to the issues of his time, certain characteristics of the work--such as Hopkins\u27 unusual diction, Yeats\u27s concern for traditional metres, or Thomas\u27s elaborate rhyme schemes--seem out of keeping with a position in the mainstream of modernism. This dissertation attempts to shed some light on these puzzling characteristics by revealing them to be features of a bardic style, the consequence of these writers\u27 involvement with the work of Welsh and Irish medieval poets. The distinctive traits of bardic poetry--its orality, formality, and purposiveness--are, in the opinion of this study, what gives rise to some of the more provocative aspects of the poetry of Hopkins, Yeats, and Thomas.;Each poet is discussed separately, but the shape of each discussion is the same. First, the poet\u27s early influences and original conceptions of the bardic tradition are dealt with. Second, a close analysis of several important poems indicates the extent to which each poet made use of the principles of bardic prosody and versification. Third, the poet\u27s reasons for re-animating a bardic stance in a modern world, and some of the interesting incongruities of that endeavour, are explored.;What the study discovers is that a better understanding of how the bardic style functions in the poetry of Hopkins, Yeats, and Thomas illuminates not only some of their more difficult works, but also brings a new perspective to some of their most familiar poems. And the study demonstrates that, far from being outmoded or regressive, the bardic style offers these three writers a source of linguistic refreshment and a formal challenge that enables them to take an entirely new approach to the very modern problems of poetic language, meaning, and efficacy

The Pattern Instance Notation: A Simple Hierarchical Visual Notation for the Dynamic Visualization and Comprehension of Software Patterns

Design patterns are a common tool for developers and architects to understand and reason about a software system. Visualization techniques for patterns have tended to be either highly theoretical in nature, or based on a structural view of a system’s implementation. The Pattern Instance Notation is a simple visualization technique for design patterns and other abstractions of software engineering suitable for the programmer or designer without a theoretical background. While based on a formal representation of design patterns, using PIN as a tool for comprehension or reasoning requires no formal training or study. PIN is hierarchical in nature, and compactly encapsulates abstractions that may be spread widely across a system in a concise graphical format, while allowing for repeated unveiling of deeper layers of complexity and interaction on demand. It is designed to be used in either a dynamic visualization tool, or as a static representation for documentation and as a teaching aid

On the structure of random unlabelled acyclic graphs

AbstractOne can use Poisson approximation techniques to get results about the asymptotics of graphical properties on random unlabelled acyclic graphs i.e., on random unlabelled free (rootless) trees. We will use some “colored” partitions to get some rough descriptions of the structure of “most” unlabelled acyclic graphs. In particular, we will prove that for any fixed rooted tree T, almost every sufficiently large acyclic graph has a “subtree” isomorphic to T. We can use this result to get a zero-one law for Monadic Second Order queries on random unlabelled acyclic graphs

The first order convergence law fails for random perfect graphs

We consider first order expressible properties of random perfect graphs. That is, we pick a graph $G_n$ uniformly at random from all (labelled) perfect graphs on $n$ vertices and consider the probability that it satisfies some graph property that can be expressed in the first order language of graphs. We show that there exists such a first order expressible property for which the probability that $G_n$ satisfies it does not converge as $n\to\infty$.Comment: 11 pages. Minor corrections since last versio

Insect proteins as emulsifiers in oil-in-water emulsions

Insect protein was extracted using an alkaline extraction method with an ethanol defatting step from six species and two life stages of commercially available insect species. The protein extracts and whole insect powders were analysed for composition and protein structure, oil-in-water emulsions were produced from the protein extracts at 0.44 % protein with a sunflower oil dispersed phase. The first study compared protein extracts from Acheta domesticus (house cricket), Gryllodes sigillatus (banded crickets), Gryllodes bimaculatus (black crickets) and Gryllus assimilis (silent crickets) by composition, emulsion formation and the emulsion stability over a 40-day period. Little difference was found in the protein secondary structure in either the protein extracts or the whole insect powders. The amino acid composition of the four cricket protein extracts was found to be similar. House cricket protein extract produced emulsions with a marginal but significantly lower droplet diameter. Emulsions produced from all four cricket protein extracts were stable to coalescence over the 40-day period. These results suggest that protein from an insect species within the order Orthoptera can be used interchangeably to stabilise oil-in-water emulsions. The second study compared the composition from protein extracts form Tenebrio molitor (mealworm) larvae and adult beetles, Achroia grisella (waxworm) larvae and banded crickets and emulsions the proteins formed. No difference was found in between droplet diameter of emulsions at pH 7 when heat-treated emulsions or non-heat-treated, with or without non-ionic surfactants. Heat-treatment at pH 5 increased the droplet diameter of emulsions from all insect protein types, but not in the presence of a non-ionic surfactant. Banded cricket protein emulsions adjusted to pH 5 with a non-ionic surfactant showed an increase in droplet diameter, mealworm beetle protein emulsions did not, and the larval protein emulsion droplet diameter increased marginally. These results suggest that there are important differences between proteins extracted from different insect order when used in emulsions. The third study investigates the reasons behind the difference in the emulsions from the banded cricket and mealworm beetle protein extracts. Differences in interfacial protein concentration, droplet charge and interfacial activity were found. This research has shown that insect proteins emulsions are stable in a range of processing conditions and have potential to be used in food products

Integrated platform for the accelerated engineering of microorganisms: application to industrial bioprocessing

Due to climate change and uncertainties in global fuel prices, there is a need to adopt biomass derived feed stocks for sustainable manufacturing of fuels, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. As a result, many major industrial manufacturers are now seeking routes to their products that are sustainable, more efficient, and less waste or energy intensive. While bioprocesses to produce compounds ranging from therapeutic drugs to fuels have already been widely implemented, the current microbes being employed are often relatively inefficient and limited in the feedstocks they can utilise. Inherent to successful bioprocess development is the ability to rapidly and predictably engineer microbes for the efficient flux of simple biomass towards compounds of industrial significance. Current iterative and empirical processes for microbial strain improvement are limited and therefore improved enabling technologies to accelerate these processes are required. To address these issues, this thesis describes the development of a platform for the rapid and predictable engineering of microbes for industrial bioprocesses. This has been achieved through complementing an accelerated DNA assembly technique for biosynthetic pathway construction with quantitative proteomics to identify pathway bottlenecks and guide subsequent rounds of pathway optimisation. Only through the ability to rapidly construct biosynthetic pathways and then assess the failure or success of the introduced pathways can microbes be engineered in an intuitive and predictable manner. A central theme of this thesis is the optimisation and implementation of a DNA assembly technique for the construction of multicomponent pathways. Despite being a fundamental aspect of strain engineering, DNA assembly is often unreliable and time consuming. One limitation of this technique is the reduced efficiency observed in the assembly of multiple DNA fragments (as is often the case when constructing a heterologous pathway). To overcome this issue a ‘nested’ DNA assembly methodology has been developed for the predictable construction of combinatorial vector libraries and complex vectors resulting in the successful assembly of up to 10 fragments. Appropriate shake flask and microtiter plate assays were additionally developed to characterise these constructs. A parallel strand of this work has been the optimisation of the methodology to maximise throughput and efficiency whilst also ensuring the method is amenable to process automation. To exemplify the power of proteomics in guiding strain engineering the reverse glyoxylate shunt was selected as a simple benchmark heterologous pathway in the commonly used host, Escherichia coli. This pathway allows for the conversion of tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediates malate and succinate to oxaloacetate and two molecules of acetyl-CoA. Strains have been engineered to overexpress the pathway genes and tryptic digestions of cell lysates carried out. Liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry and data analysis methods have been developed for the identification of over 100 proteins from these lysates. Work was then focused on developing quantitative acquisitions which will allow for the identification of pathway bottlenecks. The coupling of techniques for pathway engineering and pathway analysis will create a step change in the speed and predictability with which microbes can be engineered for industrial application

Magnetic structure of free cobalt clusters studied with Stern-Gerlach deflection experiments

We have studied the magnetic properties of free cobalt clusters in two semi-independent Stern-Gerlach deflection experiments at temperatures between 60 and 307 K. We find that clusters consisting of 13 to 200 cobalt atoms exhibit behavior that is entirely consistent with superparamagnetism, though complicated by finite-system fluctuations in cluster temperature. By fitting the data to the Langevin function, we report magnetic moments per atom for each cobalt cluster size and compare the results of our two measurements and all those performed previously. In addition to a gradual decrease in moment per atom with increasing size, there are oscillations that appear to be caused by geometrical shell structure. We discuss our observations in light of the two competing models for Langevin-like magnetization behavior in free clusters, superparamagnetism and adiabatic magnetization, and conclude that the evidence strongly supports the superparamagnetic model