Finger Exercises for Oscillators: István Anhalt on Electronic Music

In conversation with Matt Rogalsky, composer István Anhalt discusses his association with Hugh Le Caine and the National Research Council laboratories in the 1950s, the founding of the electronic music studio at McGill, and his early experiences learning tape music and analog and digital synthesis techniques. The composer describes his early electronic works, the use of electroacoustic elements in his later music, and the importance of electroacoustic music in music education.Le compositeur István Anhalt discute avec l’auteur de son association avec Hugh Le Caine et avec les laboratoires du Conseil national de recherches du Canada dans les années 1950, de la fondation du studio de musique électronique de McGill et de ses premières expériences d’apprentissage de la musique sur bande et de la synthèse analogique. Le compositeur décrit ses premières oeuvres électroniques, parle de l’utilisation d’éléments électroacoustiques dans ses oeuvres plus récentes et de l’importance de la musique électroacoustique dans le contexte de l’éducation musicale

Urban Transit and the Working Poor: The Geography of Welfare Reform

American cities have changed from older high-density urban neighborhoods to sprawling automobile-oriented suburbs. Many of the urban poor find themselves distant from jobs and services on this landscape. For poor single mothers, the problems are exacerbated by childrearing responsibilities. In addition, most of the jobs that are accessible to the working poor are low paying and have non-traditional hours, making the challenges of this new urban landscape even more formidable. Welfare reform initiatives have established time limits for assistance; the aim is to remove millions from welfare and make them self-sufficient. However, the immediate result was to push many into the ranks of the working poor. In cities, that means throwing them onto landscapes that are ill-suited to their needs. Consequently, a range of programs have been instituted to help them organize their lives, including many that improve access to public transportation. However, given the geography of the contemporary American city, it is not clear that such programs are effective in helping women make the transition to work. Thus, I examine whether public transportation in medium-sized American cities does, or can be made to, serve the needs of working poor women. Individual-level data, collected through ethnographies and travel diaries, is analyzed to create a picture of their movement paths, alternatives, and coping mechanisms. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to analyze concerns relating to changes in welfare programs. Data were acquired through travel diaries and were used to create routes to examine patterns of travel, and identify the constraints of using public transportation. I then used the data to recreate each woman’s travel as if she did not have the use of a car to identify costs and inconveniences if she had to rely solely on public transportation. This research is intended to better the lives of those struggling to move from welfare to work, as well as improve policy makers’ decisions in light of impending welfare reform renewal. Assuming that public transportation will not solve the problems of the working poor, a number of policy alternatives, including private automobile ownership, are discussed and evaluated

Sport Event Volunteer Role Perceptions at the 2012 Ontario Summer Games

The study tested a theoretical model of role perceptions of major sport event volunteers, and specifically correlates of role ambiguity. The sample consisted of 328 volunteers involved with the 2012 Ontario Summer Games. Participants completed an on-line questionnaire post-Games that included measures of role ambiguity, effort, performance, role satisfaction, role difficulty, training, supervision, overall satisfaction with the Games and future volunteer intentions. Findings provide support for a multidimensional model of role ambiguity, consisting of performance outcomes ambiguity and means-ends/scope ambiguity in this context. A final model indicated that supervision was critical to both dimensions of ambiguity, although they differentially predicted role performance and role satisfaction. Role satisfaction predicted overall satisfaction with the Games experience which significantly contributed to future intentions to volunteer. Implications for sport event volunteer management and suggestions for future research are discussed

(Mrs.) Joyce Rogalsky to Mr. Merideth (9 October 1962)

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/mercorr_pro/2080/thumbnail.jp

Broca's Area, Sentence Comprehension, and Working Memory: An fMRI Study

The role of Broca's area in sentence processing remains controversial. According to one view, Broca's area is involved in processing a subcomponent of syntactic processing. Another view holds that it contributes to sentence processing via verbal working memory. Sub-regions of Broca's area have been identified that are more active during the processing of complex (object-relative clause) sentences compared to simple (subject-relative clause) sentences. The present study aimed to determine if this complexity effect can be accounted for in terms of the articulatory rehearsal component of verbal working memory. In a behavioral experiment, subjects were asked to comprehend sentences during concurrent speech articulation which minimizes articulatory rehearsal as a resource for sentence comprehension. A finger-tapping task was used as a control concurrent task. Only the object-relative clause sentences were more difficult to comprehend during speech articulation than during the manual task, showing that articulatory rehearsal does contribute to sentence processing. A second experiment used fMRI to document the brain regions underlying this effect. Subjects judged the plausibility of sentences during speech articulation, a finger-tapping task, or without a concurrent task. In the absence of a secondary task, Broca's area (pars triangularis and pars opercularis) demonstrated an increase in activity as a function of syntactic complexity. However, during concurrent speech articulation (but not finger-tapping) this complexity effect was eliminated in the pars opercularis suggesting that this region supports sentence comprehension via its role in articulatory rehearsal. Activity in the pars triangularis was modulated by the finger-tapping task, but not the speech articulation task

The Influence of Processing Conditions on the Thermo-physical Properties and Morphology of Polycarbonate / Poly (butylene terephthalate) Blends

The objective of this work is to determine the effect of four process variables on the properties of blends composed of bisphenol-A polycarbonate (PC) and poly (butylene terephthalate) (PBT) polymers which are compounded using a large scale commercial extruder. The four variables studied are blend composition, specific energy consumption, residence time and shear rate. The last three factors were varied using the extruder screw speed and feed rate. The PC/PBT blends, commercially known as XENOY, were compounded using a WP ZSK 58 mm co-rotating twin screw extruder at the facility of SABIC Innovative Plastics in Cobourg Ontario. The extruder was instrumented to measure online the die pressure, specific energy consumption and blend temperature. The blends were characterized using differential scanning calorimetry, (DSC), scanning electron microscopy, (SEM), gel permeation chromatography, (GPC), and melt volume flow rate, (MVR). After processing, the blend properties determined were melting temperature, glass transition temperature, crystallinity, amorphous phase weight fraction, amorphous phase composition, phase morphology, PBT-rich-phase size, blend molecular weight distribution, and MVR. Using principles available in the literature, a linear regression model was developed to relate the process variables with the online measured properties and output blend properties. Fitting this model allowed the relative importance of each process variable to be estimated for each property. An attempt was also made to identify the general type of PC/PBT blend studied and how it compares with published PC/PBT blend data. It was found that the blends studied were well stabilized since there was no evidence of significant co-polymer formation during processing. Small decreases in molecular weight were attributed to mechanical degradation. Blending increased the crystallization and melting temperatures, as well as blend crystallinity. No practically significant difference in melting temperatures was observed between the different processing conditions. Analysis of glass transitions indicated that the blend components were partially miscible. The amorphous phase compositions were unaffected by blend composition or processing; however, the weight fraction PC-rich-phase present in the blend was strongly influenced by the screw speed. The phase structure of as-extruded blends could not be resolved using the SEM. Therefore, the blends were annealed to coarsen the phases. After annealing, a continuous PC-rich-phase and a discrete PBT-rich-phase were observed. The PBT phase size increased with increasing PBT content. No other statistically significant effects on phase size were observed but this is not conclusive due to the large scatter in the measurements. MVR was primarily influenced by blend composition and specific energy consumption, with the effects of composition being dominant. Further study using higher imaging resolution is required if the phase structures of as received blend pellets are to be characterized. Contrary to current practice, it is recommended that the Utracki-Jukes equation be used rather than the Fox equation for determining amorphous phase composition from glass transition data in PC/PBT blends

Development of an Injectable Hybrid-Hydrogel Using Oxidized-Alginate and N-Succinyl-Chitosan

A new oxidised-alginate / N-succinyl-chitosan hydrogel system with potential biomedical applications has been explored for precursor solution viscosities within the injectable range (<~0.2 Pa·s). When fully developed, its advantages may include: 1) good mechanical properties due to covalent crosslinking; 2) increased degrees-of-freedom to tailor properties and unique stress strain response due to the hybrid structure; 3) suitability for cell encapsulation / use as an injectable gel due to biocompatibility / mild formation conditions; and 4) excellent adoptability due to readily available and low cost raw ingredients. The current work is focused on two initial studies of the system: 1) development of hybrid hydrogel compositions to meet target viscosity and stiffness ranges that are appropriate for common hydrogel applications, and 2) development and validation of models to predict hydrogel swelling and stiffness behaviour. As gel systems become more complex, predictive tools are crucial for more focused development work so that end users can tailor gel systems to their precise requirements. In this work, we have undertaken the development and/or advancement of three predictive models: 1) advancing current swelling models to apply to hybrid systems containing polyampholytes; 2) refining membrane osmometry models to handle polyampholytes and to incorporate modern corrections for non-ideal solutions; and 3) proposing a new stiffness model for hybrid gel systems. These models were verified using a comprehensive experimental program for which new experimental equipment was custom-designed and built. To form the new gels, limit-oxidized alginate (~45% repeat units modified) and six N-succinyl-chitosans (22 to 52% primary amine substitution) were synthesized from commercially available polymer. Solutions were prepared using phosphate buffered saline. A viscosity guideline of (<~0.2 Pa·s) was obtained from the injectability literature. This was easily met by oxidized-alginate solutions. N-succinyl-chitosan was limited to five substitutions (22 to 48%), with respective concentrations between 4.8 and 2.0 w/w%. Gels were formed by blending alginate and chitosan solutions at five different ratios (2:1 to 1:9). Gel stiffness was characterized in the 'as cast' state by compression testing. Swelling was characterized in phosphate buffered saline. Our results showed that the stiffness model provided a good fit (largest p-value <0.03). From the model it was found that limit-oxidized-alginate is 16 times less stiff than N-succinyl-chitosan. This combined with the restricted injectable concentration range resulted in a maximum stiffness of 7 kPA, which is below the target window for muscle tissue (i.e. between 10 to 30 kPa). To simultaneously achieve both targets further investigation is recommended using higher concentrations of lower molecular weight chitosan or stiffer oxidized polysaccharides. For N-succinyl-chitosan, the membrane osmometry model gave an excellent fit (largest p-value ~10⁻⁷). A key finding was that the Manning-Oosawa model for ion condensation does not accurately predict behaviour. The relatively fast rate of oxidized-alginate degradation prevented osmometry from being used to collect empirical ion condensation data. Without this data, classical swelling theory could not adequately predict experimental response. In future work, conductivity experiments are recommended to characterize ion condensation. Recent models by Trizac and O'Shaughnessy are recommended as improvements to the swelling theory. The primary scientific contributions from this work are: 1) the first systematic characterization of the stiffness and swelling of injectable oxidised-alginate / N-succinyl-chitosan hydrogels; 2) the first analysis of polyampholyte ion condensation by membrane osmometry since the advent of modern ion activity models in the early 1990's; 3) the aforementioned advancement of osmometry and swelling theory; and 4) the proposal and successful experimental verification of a new model for hybrid gel stiffness. In addition, a number of other contributions were also made, mainly: 1) a membrane osmometer was designed and built to characterize small samples of polyelectrolytes at elevated temperature and in concentrated chloride solutions, 2) N-succinylation was found to fit a log-linear empirical correlation with respect to input reagent concentrations; 3) a small increase in chitosan moisture affinity and thermal stability was observed with increasing N-succinyl substitution; 4) anomalous phase separation and rheological behaviour was observed in N-succinyl-chitosan solutions near the solubility limit; and 5) polyampholyte solution rheology was found to scale differently than that of polyelectrolytes. Although the stiffness is below what was anticipated, the oxidised-alginate / N-succinyl-chitosan hydrogel system shows good potential. Provided the stiffness limitation can be overcome, the existence of high strain 'secondary stiffness' behaviour provides the potential for a much closer match to the non-linear elastic response of muscle tissue than is currently possible with single component systems. In addition, interesting phase behaviour near the N-succinyl-chitosan solubility limit may allow independent control of pore size and stiffness via a heterogeneous structure

Chaos Theory and Metaphysical (In) Determinism

This paper will begin by introducing the issues that arise from chaos theory for the Christian mathematician and scientist: What is at stake in this debate? It will then briefly review chaos theory, by means of two examples. It will then introduce the metaphysical interpretations given to chaos theory by three different scientist-theologians. The paper will conclude with a brief introduction to open theists, and analyze their use of chaos theory to supper their theological claims

Blaise Pascal - Mathematician, Mystic, Disciple

This is the story of a multi-faceted Christian mathematician. Instrumental in the development of calculus, probability theory, and computing machines, Pascal (1623-1662) was a man equally enamoured with mind and spirit. His conversion experience was marked by both rational decision and mystical vision. He is perhaps best known for Pascal\u27s wager, which simplistic fire insurance version of Christianity, demanding little from the convert. However, a more careful reading of his work and his life reveals that Pascal knew much about discipleship and its cost