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Parametric Modeling of Intrinsic Structure Covariance Functions for Non-Homogeneous and Non-Stationary Spatio-Temporal Random Processes on the Sphere
No full textThesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Department of Statistics, 2025Identifying appropriate models for random processes and their associated covariance functions is one of the primary goals in spatial and spatio-temporal statistics, as it enables researchers to analyze the dependence structure within the data. For this purpose, assumptions of spatial homogeneity and temporal stationarity are commonly used, and many models have been developed under these conditions. However, these assumptions are often overly strong and unrealistic in practical applications.
Moreover, when working on the sphere, standard approaches from Euclidean space may not be appropriate due to the unique geometric and topological properties of the spherical domain. Despite this, relatively fewer studies have addressed random process modeling and covariance function development specifically for the sphere.
In this research, we introduce a parametric modeling framework for intrinsic structure covariance functions (ISCFs), designed to address non-homogeneous and non-stationary spatio-temporal random processes and their covariance functions on the sphere. To alleviate the assumption of spatial homogeneity while accounting for the spherical domain, we apply the theory of intrinsic random functions (IRFs) on the sphere. Similarly, to address temporal non-stationarity, we use the concept of random processes with stationary increments, exploring their relationship with intrinsic random functions on the real line.
We also provide a methodology for estimating the parameters associated with the ISCF model. This is demonstrated through a simulation study and an application to a real-world dataset, highlighting the advantage of the model’s interpretable parameters
The Deliberate Warm-Up: A New Method For Pursuing Technical Mastery of the Oboe
No full textThesis (DM) – Indiana University, Music, 2025This dissertation lays the theoretical foundation for a method book that integrates
deliberate practice, a growth mindset, and self-regulation into oboe pedagogy. These principles underpin a systematic approach to mastering oboe fundamentals, culminating in the development of a deliberate warm-up method book. While the method codifies the pedagogy of the American Oboe School, as developed by Marcel Tabuteau and John Mack, it incorporates innovative strategies to address common challenges. By applying deliberate practice principles to the universal relevance of a warm-up book, the method aims to benefit oboists of all pedagogical backgrounds.
Chapter 1 examines the evolution of expertise theory, identifying four types of practice:
naïve, structured, purposeful, and deliberate, and contextualizes these within oboe pedagogy.
Chapter 2 explores cognitive science, distinguishing declarative from procedural learning, and
introducing concepts like desirable difficulties and automation, which are key to skill progression.
Chapter 3 addresses motivational beliefs and theories vital to sustained effort, including
the growth mindset, self-efficacy, and flow. Chapter 4 highlights the transition from naïve to
purposeful practice, emphasizing self-regulation through forethought, performance, and self reflection phases. Chapter 5 delves into the distinguishing aspects of deliberate practice, focusing on the roles of teacher-coaches, feedback, and students in building an effective learning partnership. Chapter 6 synthesizes these insights into the guiding philosophy behind the deliberate warm-up method, detailing their application to content, structure, and organization.
This research bridges theory and application, offering a model for integrating deliberate
practice into daily routines. Beyond oboists, the method book serves as a template for students and teachers of other instruments, demonstrating how deliberate practice principles can be adapted to varied disciplines
Demographic Factors Influencing Financial Stress and Financial Literacy
No full textWinner of the "Outstanding Poster Presentation Award"This study aimed to examine various demographic factors affecting both financial stress and financial literacy in students and non-students. Sixty-nine participants were recruited using convenient sampling. Financial stress was assessed using a modified Financial Distress Scale and a modified Financial Literacy Survey. Participants filled out a 26-item questionnaire. One of two hypotheses was supported, with women having higher financial stress than men. However, higher educational status was not found to correlate with greater levels of financial literacy
The Relationship of Stress, Depression, and Anxiety on Quality of Sleep
No full text2025 winner of the "Outstanding Oral Presentation Award"Quality of sleep can be seen in almost every aspect of life. There are also many contributing factors to the quality of sleep, such as stress, anxiety, depression, etc. This current study will examine the relationship between these variables and determine if one variable has a stronger effect on sleep than the others. Data will be collected through a self-report online survey distributed through Qualtrics. Results showed that stress, anxiety, and depression all positively correlated with sleep problems. However, upon further analysis, depression had the highest correlation with sleep problems when compared to anxiety and stress. These findings demonstrate the adverse effects of stress, anxiety, and depression on sleep. However, this study sheds light on how severe sleep can be affected by depression. Not obtaining intervention for either sleep or depressive symptoms may have long-lasting effects on the other. Implications for this research and future research possibilities are also discussed
VOWEL HARMONY AND RELATED ASSIMILATORY PROCESSES IN UYGHUR: PHONOLOGICAL VARIATIONS BETWEEN THE STANDARD LANGUAGE AND DIALECTAL FORMS
No full textThesis (M.A.) - Indiana University, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, 2025Modern Uyghur exhibits a complex system of vowel harmony characterized by interactions of backness, height, and rounding. While backness harmony underlies the canonical vowel harmony rules, non-canonical patterns emerge involving the high unrounded vowel /i/—a neutral phoneme that orthographically lacks a [+back] counterpart and consonant triggers. This thesis investigates these processes through a dialect-sensitive approach integrating phonetic and phonological analysis of Uyghur data. The study first examines the historical formation of Modern Standard Uyghur (SU) as an orthographic compilation of multiple subdialects. Although dialectal differences in Uyghur do not cause mutual intelligibility breakdowns, they produce notable phonetic and phonological variation. SU alone fails to capture these divergences, underscoring the importance of dialectology in Uyghur phonological research.
Previous analyses have treated non-canonical vowel harmony as lexically conditioned exceptions. In contrast, this thesis adopts a feature-geometric framework (drawing on Halle et al.’s (2000) Revised Articulator Theory) wherein adjacent consonants bear secondary articulations that influence vowel allophony. This approach accounts for harmony processes affecting both vowel phonemes and their allophones. The analysis also addresses coda clusters: it proposes that the phoneme /i/ is specified as [+RTR] in default where the feature [RTR] spreads when [back] does not. This suggests an underlying [RTR] (tongue-root) harmony system operating subordinately when the higher-ranked [back] harmony fails to predict vowel alternations, which could be explained by a revised contrastive feature hierarchy for Uyghur: [low] ≈ [labial] > [back] > [RTR].
The thesis includes a preliminary acoustic analysis of a Yarkand Subdialect speaker’s vowel space, revealing discrepancies between perceptual judgments and instrumental measurements. Fieldwork constraints highlight the influence of orthography on dialectal phonology. These findings reinforce the need for an integrated approach combining phonology, phonetics, and sociolinguistics in future linguistic inquiries of Modern Uyghur. Ultimately, the study challenges the notion of Modern Uyghur as a uniform phonological entity. It demonstrates that Uyghur vowel harmony is an evolving system shaped by dialectal contrasts reflecting both diachronic change and synchronic variation. Bridging theoretical phonology with experimental data, this work contributes to an all-rounded understanding of Uyghur phonology by emphasizing dialectal sensitivity in linguistic analysi
A Psalm of Spark and Seed
No full textThesis (DM) – Indiana University, Music, 2025Program Notes
Solarpunk is a philosophy that approaches the future with optimism, envisioning a sustainable way of humanity’s survival through responsible use of technology. It stresses the importance of community and togetherness in spite of our differences, and sees the often intractable problems of climate change, poverty, food insecurity, and war as solvable.
I knew that I wanted my dissertation to address the issue of climate change, but my initial sketches were understandably grim. More and more, I felt that optimism was a far more radical – and important – approach to the problem, and that if I had anything to say artistically about such a huge danger to humanity, it would be to channel my anger and fear into a message of hope.
From that hope comes A Psalm for Spark and Seed. The title is in part inspired by a book in the solarpunk genre, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers, whose work is uplifting and beautiful. A psalm is a sacred song of praise, and in my piece, that praise is directed towards the literal and metaphorical “spark” and “seed”. Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed and Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia also inspired and informed the piece, but neither of them hit the center of how I felt (and how I hoped to feel) as purely as Chambers' work.
Both the spark and the seed are robust metaphors in English. They are symbols of ideas and potential, as well as a catalyst for change (e.g. “the spark of revolution” or “seeds of discontent”). The spark is also a symbol for humanity’s sentience, and the seed often represents the origins of life itself.
In their more literal sense, they are often seen as antithetical to one another. I am a native Californian, and the wildfires that regularly ravage my home state are a perfect example of the danger the “spark” poses to the “seed.” However, while studying the life cycle of the California sequoia trees, I discovered something miraculous: they need fire to survive. The natural fire cycles caused by lightning strikes – and later, by Native American ecological stewardship – cleared overgrown underbrush, providing fertile soil for the trees to grow. These trees adapted to those conditions so much that their cones wait until they feel the heat of a wildfire to open up and spread their seeds onto the newly revitalized forest floor.
A Psalm of Spark and Seed imagines that deeply opposed, yet symbiotic relationship through music. It is set in two movements, nearly equal in length. At its core, it uses unequal parts to create a balanced whole: asymmetrical rhythms, chords and scales made up of uneven steps, as well as sharply juxtaposed textures. More broadly, the entire movements themselves are diametrically opposed in many ways.
The first movement is a fiery, high energy dynamo, occasionally jubilant, often brutal. Its music is inspired by punk rock, both in its driving rhythm and its massive, noisy “power chords.” An asymmetrical groove is established and resisted by regular pulses, giving the whole movement a tense backdrop for the slowly moving harmony underneath. It culminates in a “chorus” where these two rhythmic ideas fight to coexist.
The second movement is delicate, intimate, introspective, and serene – though it has its moments of joy and grandeur, as well. Its melodic material is a re-imagining of the horn call from Brahms’ Symphony No. 1, which itself is derived from an alphorn call. The alphorn and the overtone series it uses to make music are old symbols of the natural world in western music. This familiar melody is stretched and elaborated into new shapes, some broad and powerful, some tender and playful. At its heart, however, this movement celebrates the beauty of the natural world.
These two movements come together to form a complete whole, just as their constituent unequal parts do to form each melodic phrase, harmonic progression, and formal section. They are the musical embodiment of industry and nature, and though they contain both the anger and pain I feel when confronting the existential threat of climate change, A Psalm of Spark and Seed is a song of hope for a brighter future, and a call to make it a reality
PADEREWSKI’S HUMORESQUES DE CONCERT, OP. 14: COMPOSITIONAL BACKGROUND, MUSICAL ANALYSIS, AND HIS RECORDINGS
No full textThesis (DM) – Indiana University, Music, 202
Cooperation Under Changing Conditions: Tests of Mutualism Theory in Legume-Rhizobium Systems
No full textThesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Department of Biology, 2025Cooperation between leguminous plants and nitrogen-fixing rhizobium bacteria is a critical component of global nitrogen cycling. However, evolutionary and mutualism theory predict that increased soil nitrogen will disrupt this mutualism. I explored the effects of soil nitrogen on legume-rhizobium mutualism with a combination of greenhouse and field studies. First, I grew field-collected plants and soil microbes from across a natural soil nitrogen gradient with three levels of nitrogen fertilizer to study how soil nitrogen contributes to local adaptation. Although plants from high-nitrogen sites were more plastic in their allocation of resources to rhizobia than plants from low-nitrogen sites, I only found local adaptation of rhizobia to high-nitrogen sites; there was no evidence for plant local adaptation to N. Second, I used a field experiment to study the effects of the 2021 emergence of Brood X cicadas, which should result in a natural nitrogen pulse, on wild legumes through changes in maternal effects and soil microbial communities. I found that decaying cicadas affected multiple generations of plants: seeds from plants amended with cicadas were more likely to germinate, and soil microbial communities from cicada-addition plots accelerated early seedling growth. Finally, I experimentally evolved soil microbial communities in the greenhouse to investigate the direct and indirect (light and host availability) pathways by which nitrogen fertilization of plant communities can lead to a decline in microbial mutualism, and whether the mutualism decline observed in the field can be reversed by ceasing fertilization. I found that no single factor caused strong mutualism decline, but that any combination of two or three factors caused soil microbes to be less beneficial to plant growth. However, soil microbes from nitrogen-addition field plots did not become more beneficial to plants after evolving in low-nitrogen greenhouse conditions. Together, these results demonstrate how the complexities of real-world conditions complicate the predictions of simple theoretical frameworks and highlight the importance of considering the broader biotic community context in studies of evolutionary ecolog