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A Stylistic and Performance Analysis of Concert Arabesques, Opus 12 by Henryk (Adolf Andrei) Schulz-Evler
Get PDFThis document provides a comprehensive compositional and performance analysis of Henryk (Adolf/ Andrei) Schulz-Evler’s (1852-1905) solo piano composition, Concert Arabesques, Op. 12. The piece is an arrangement, transcription, and paraphrase of Johann Strauss II’s An der schönen blauen Donau, Op. 314 (By The Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz). This study also highlights Schulz-Evler’s contributions as a composer and pianist and presents a brief overview of his selected solo piano compositions.
Chapter 1 outlines the purpose, need, organization, and limitations of the study, and presents a review of related literature. Chapter 2 provides a biographical sketch of Schulz-Evler, emphasizing his influence on the musical culture of Kharkiv, Ukraine. Chapter 3 overviews Schulz-Evler’s selected solo piano compositions, including Daily Exercises; Variations in G Major, Op. 4; Melodie in F-sharp Major, Op. 5; Octave Etude, Op. 17; and Concert Paraphrase of Echo de la Partita based on J. S. Bach’s Echo from the French Overture BWV 831. Chapter 4 explores the historical context of the Viennese waltz and Johann Strauss II’s An der schönen blauen Donau, Op. 314, offers a historical overview of paraphrases and transcriptions, and provides a compositional overview of Schulz-Evler’s Concert Arabesques, Op. 12. Chapters 5 through 7 offer detailed compositional and performance analyses of Concert Arabesques, Op. 12. The compositional analysis focuses on the structure, texture, tonality, and thematic treatment. The performance analysis discusses the potential technical challenges of the piece and includes suggestions for practice and performance. Chapter 8 briefly summarizes Schulz-Evler’s musical contributions and recommends further research.
Henryk Schulz-Evler was a Polish virtuosic pianist, teacher, and composer whose name appears in various forms, including “Schultz,” “Szulc,” “Ewler,” and first names such as “Andrey,” “Andrzej,” and “Artur,” with “Vasilyevich” often included in Russian context. As a founding member of the piano faculty at the Kharkiv Conservatory, he dedicated nearly two decades to shaping Kharkiv’s musical culture. Schulz-Evler’s contributions include pioneering Klavier-Abends featuring programs entirely devoted to the works of a single composer and advocating for rarely performed piano repertoire. Schulz-Evler distinguished himself as a composer through a diverse range of compositions across various genres and instrumentations. His Concert Arabesques, Op. 12, highlights his ability to blend technical brilliance with musical expressiveness, showcasing his versatility and artistic depth
We Will Stay Here: An Ethnographic Study of Resistance Against Cultural Erasure
No full textThe struggle for recognition and sovereignty for Palestinians has been marked by Israel’s systematic erasure of Palestinian identity and history. From the Nakba (Catastrophe in Arabic) in 1948 to present-day policies, Israel has pursued expansion while actively suppressing Palestinian existence and erasing heritage. This erasure is evident in various forms, including military occupation, settlement expansion, and cultural appropriation. Through the Hebraization of names and landscapes, Israel continues to assert its dominance and hegemony in efforts to erase the Palestinians.
This thesis explores how Palestinians assert their Right to Place and claims of citizenship amidst Israel's ongoing efforts of erasure and dispossession. I gathered insights from informal conversations across historic Palestine through a qualitative study. Palestinians employ strategies of resistance, such as weapons of the weak, like sumud (steadfastness), the names of children, street art, and social media activism, to reclaim their narrative and preserve their history. Despite facing restrictions on movement and citizenship classifications, Palestinians continue to resist through everyday acts of defiance.
This research examines the concept of the Right to Place and highlights the importance of space in the Palestinian struggle against cultural erasure. Employing Lefebvre's framework, it analyzes power dynamics and resistance strategies within the context of space and settler colonialism.
The findings in this thesis underscore the ongoing discussions on Palestinian agency and the struggle for self-determination through a nuanced understanding of resistance methods. Using original fieldwork from Palestine from the Summer of 2023, I aim to shed light on the multifaceted nature of resistance against cultural erasure, indigenous erasure, and settler colonialism in Palestine
An exploration and evaluation of choice architecture interventions on perceptions of justice
Get PDFJustice has been argued to be a key ethical principle guiding interactions with other humans. The principle is embedded in the professional ethics code for the American Psychological Association and other professional organizations. In this thesis, I provide some evidence that prominent interventions aimed at helping people make better decisions are perceived as less just than others, and thereby do not fully respect the principle of justice. My studies are the first to suggest that a popular nudging strategy, framing, doesn’t reliably perform better than the control (i.e., not receiving a positive or negatively framed message). However, well-constructed educational interventions often increase perceptions of justice, thereby respecting the principle of justice more fully. Study 1 was devoted to developing a measure of perceptions of 4 key types of justice (i.e., distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal). These perceptions of justice were contextualized in the plastic recycling domain. In Studies 2 and 3, I use the perceptions of justice measure created in Study 1 to measure (potentially differential) perceptions of justice of a hypothetical recycling company between two choice architecture interventions: framing nudges and education interventions. Results suggest that there may be both practical (e.g., lower satisfaction) and ethical (e.g., lower perceptions of justice) costs associated with framing nudge interventions that are not present in education interventions. Findings such as these may begin to justify more thorough evaluations of choice architecture interventions, including both practical (e.g., satisfaction) and ethical (e.g., perceptions of justice, among other values) considerations. I close by outlining this evaluation through Ethical Interaction Theory and discuss the tangible costs associated with perceptions of injustice
QUALITY OF LIFE IN COMMUNITIES NEAR OIL AND GAS DEVELOPMENT: A CASE STUDY IN THE EAGLE FORD SHALE
Get PDFResearch on the public health impacts of oil and gas development has consistently found significant physical health disadvantages for communities exposed to activities associated with oil and gas development at all stages of production. However, the holistic health effects, including the combination of physical, mental, and community health outcomes, are severely understudied. I conducted a study on the potential quality of life impacts of living in the Eagle Ford Shale, one of the highest producing oil and gas regions in the U.S. To assess quality of life, I used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate these holistic health variables and assess the potential impact of oil and gas development on physical, mental, and community health. I performed statistical analysis using survey data from respondents located within the Eagle Ford Shale and those located in other parts of Texas. I also conducted interviews with local environmental advocates to help contextualize the survey data and better understand the social and political circumstances surrounding oil and gas development in the Eagle Ford Shale. Survey results were mixed, but largely indicated that physical, mental, and community health impacts are not significantly worse for residents of the Eagle Ford Shale compared to residents in other parts of Texas. However, spatial analysis revealed local-level health disparities that were more heavily concentrated in the Eagle Ford Shale than in the comparison group. Additionally, interview results revealed distributive and procedural injustices that have led to community frustrations over the presence of oil and gas throughout the Eagle Ford Shale region. These results raise awareness for the holistic health impacts of extractive industries such as oil and gas, which carries implications for public health policy and environmental justice in communities that depend on oil and gas to sustain their local economies
MULTI-CONTRAST OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY FOR VARIOUS BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS
No full textOptical coherence tomography (OCT) is a label-free optical imaging technique that provides noninvasive visualization of biological tissue microstructures with micrometer-scale resolution and millimeter-scale penetration depth. OCT has become a well-established commercial product in ophthalmology due to its capability for noncontact and real-time imaging of ocular structures. Current research in OCT primarily focuses on applications in various biological and medical fields, alongside advancements in OCT system design. In this dissertation, we developed and applied multi-contrast OCT systems for early cancer detection, anticancer therapy monitoring, human organ transplantation viability evaluation, and aging vascular characterization.
In Chapter 1, I introduce the principle and development of the OCT system. I describe the systematic structure of multiple contract OCT systems including time-domain OCT (TD-OCT), spectral-domain OCT (SD-OCT), swept-source OCT (SS-OCT), doppler OCT (D-OCT), polarization-sensitive OCT (PS-OCT), and OCT angiography (OCTA) and their detecting principles in light-tissue interaction. Moreover, I outline the various biomedical applications based on these multi-contract OCT systems in this dissertation.
In Chapter 2, I discuss the application of SS-OCT on the classification of various in vitro MCTS, specifically focusing on drug screening and therapy monitoring. Multicellular tumor spheroid (MCTS) is a vital tool for in vitro study of anticancer drug screening and therapeutic effect monitoring. I proposed an anticancer therapy monitoring and drug screening platform using OCT imaging to reveal the longitudinal change of MCTS in morphological volume, internal microstructure, and internal microenvironment under the cell culture at different cell number, cell type, and drug treatment. With the applying of intrinsic attenuation contrast, uniformity degree, superficial-spatial-feature, and machine learning, OCT revealed that OCT intensity images can effectively distinguish OVCAR-8 MCTS with 5,000 and 50,000 cell culturing, Pan02-H7 MCTS with fibroblast cell culturing at 2:1, 1:1, and 1:2 ratios, and OVCAR-4 MCTS treated by 2-ME, AZD, and R-ke with a concentration of 1, 10, and 25 M.
In Chapter 3, I describe the application of PS-OCT on the detection and surgical guidance of early-stage renal tumor resection. Malignant tumors can significantly alter internal microstructural architecture and tissue properties. PS-OCT can distinguish between cancerous and normal renal tissues, as well as identifying specific types of renal tumors by detecting fibrosis and microstructural distributions. This PS-OCT-based early kidney tumor detection platform accurately delineates the boundary between cancerous and normal renal tissues, providing real-time surgical guidance for surgeons during tumor resection.
In Chapter 4, I describe the application of PS-OCT on pre-transplantation viability assessment of deceased human donor organs. Human organ transplant represents the final resort for patients suffering from advanced-stage diseases affecting vital organs such as the kidney, liver, and lung. However, a global shortage of donor organ sources has resulted in many patients dying while awaiting transplantation due to prolonged waiting times. We developed a human organ viability evaluation system based on PS-OCT to provide pre-transplantation assessment of deceased donor organs to increase the donor pool. By grading the histological performance of tissues from various regions within whole human organs, I have demonstrated that the biopsy performance of kidney, liver, and lung tissues is associated with specific areas, and that histological distribution is heterogeneous. I discovered that PS-OCT can detect volumetric tubule microstructures and quantify their distribution across the kidney through deep learning segmentation. Additionally, PS-OCT exhibits a strong correlation with histological scores, enabling the provision of fibrosis distribution and quantification. Moreover, I utilized PS-OCT to monitor volumetric steatosis microstructures throughout the entire liver, employing Sauvola segmentation for distribution quantification. PS-OCT has also proven effective in detecting and quantifying the distribution of hepatic fibrosis through linear fitting with biopsy results. Furthermore, PS-OCT can accurately detect alveolar size, density, and wall thickness, facilitating the quantification of their distribution across the entire lung. Our results underscore the capability of PS-OCT to identify crucial microstructures and tissue properties within human organs, offering a more comprehensive assessment of organ viability compared to conventional biopsy techniques.
In Chapter 5, I discuss the application of OCT angiography (OCTA) on the characterization and quantification of microvasculature of aging. Aging is a key factor in neural degeneration and plays a critical role in several diseases. I developed an aging microvascular imaging system by OCTA and two-photon microscopy (TPM) to monitor the change of mice cerebral microvasculature in various dimensions at different age stages. I discovered that OCTA and TPM can effectively compensate for the limitation of resolution and field-of-view (FOV) from single imaging modality, and quantify the difference of cerebral microvasculature in diverse dimensions at various ages. OCTA and TPM can achieve a more comprehensive analysis of mice cerebral blood vessels.
In Chapter 6, I describe the application of SS-OCT on the application of axial ocular structure detection for chick myopia monitoring. Chicks are an excellent model for studying myopia and its auto-recovery progress. I investigated the axial length (AL) and the thickness of different ocular structures in chicks’ eye undergoing visually induced changes using a SS-OCT system in vivo. I found that SS-OCT can serve as a promising tool to provide measurements of the entire ocular structures, for evaluating the change of thickness and depth of different ocular structures in chicks in vivo. The change of AL in the myopic and recovered chick eyes can be attributed to the thickness alterations of different ocular structures.
In summary, I utilized multi-contrast OCT systems, including SS-OCT, PS-OCT, and OCTA along with advanced imaging processing methods, to establish platforms for early cancer detection, monitoring anticancer therapy, assessing human organ transplantation viability, imaging microvascular changes associated with aging, and detecting the global ocular alterations in the chick myopia. Our applications demonstrated the efficacy of these OCT-based platforms in guiding surgical resection of renal tumors, evaluating therapeutic effects on MCTS, assessing pre-transplantation viabilities of deceased donor kidneys, livers, lungs, and quantifying vascular changes in the aging brain, and measuring the global alteration of chick eyes in myopia. These versatile multi-contrast OCT-based platforms hold significant potential for further development, promising broader applications in the realms of cancer research, therapeutic interventions, organ transplantation, aging, and ophthalmology studies
THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS OF THE BEHAVIOR OF BOWED STRINGS UTILIZING A MAGNETIC PICKUP SYSTEM
No full textPickup systems for musical instruments generally serve the purpose of improving the perceived quality of instrument sound through appropriate amplification of electrical signals. While different pickups like a microphone or piezoelectric pickup are common to many string instruments, magnetic pickups are mostly used for plucked string instruments like the electric guitar or electric bass guitar. For a bowed instrument like a violin, microphones and piezoelectric pickups are commonly used, but magnetic pickups (which convert mechanical oscillations of a magnetized string to oscillatory changes in magnetic flux, manifesting in changes in voltage) are rarely used. The primary objective of this work was to establish foundational insights for new designs of magnetic pickups for bowed instruments like the violin. A secondary objective of this work was to motivate a modified damping factor term or modified external force term associated with dampening of vertical bowed string motion based on experimental evidence. To achieve these objectives, a new experimental setup was considered for exploration of the behavior of a bowed string-magnetic pickup system, specifically examining maximum and average voltage outputs across different frequency distributions, magnetic flux densities and their evolution over time for different rotational positions of the magnetic pickup about a magnetized, monochord string. Validation studies showed that the findings were consistent with expected results from tonal theory and literature, based on analysis of frequency spectra, voltage output (both obtained from magnetic pickup and optical switches) and magnetic flux densities. Based on the new experimental setup, an optimal position of the magnetic pickup was determined according to selected performance criteria. This work showed ample experimental evidence demonstrating the prevalence of significant damping of the vertical string oscillations by the combination of the presence of bow hairs at the point of bow-string interface and the downward bow force applied. Based on the insights and findings of this work, new and advanced designs of magnetic pickups for bowed string instruments could be achieved
Signal Processing Techniques for Radar Operation in Congested Spectrum
No full textThe electromagnetic spectrum is a finite resource that has become increasingly congested as the use of wireless communications and RF applications have expanded. With increased congestion, dynamic spectrum sensing and spectrum sharing techniques have been of increasing interest. However, dynamically accessing the spectrum on a pulse-by-pulse basis breaks traditional pulse assumptions that are used to inform range-Doppler processing. Additionally, even with a dynamic hopping scheme, more spectrum than is available may be needed to successfully carry out critical radar tasks, creating two unique challenges.
First, this work addresses pulse-by-pulse agility in two parts. This work presents a mismatched filter technique to reduce range-sidelobe modulation when processing a CPI of bandwidth agile pulses. Additionally, a modified backprojection technique enables Doppler processing of frequency agile CPIs. These two techniques work together effectively on CPIs of fully agile pulses, and real-world experimental data verifies their performance.
Second, this work develops a demodulation/remodulation estimation and extraction processing chain that actively cancels interference from orthogonal frequency division multiplexing sources and provides a 19 dB improvement in radar detection performance. When combining active interference cancellation and pulse agile processing, this work provides the tools to ensure radar systems can operate continually in an environment with a congested electromagnetic spectrum
CORPORALIDADES AMAZÓNICAS: VIOLENCIA COLONIAL, SEXUALIDADES DISIDENTES Y REPRESENTACIÓN DE LOS CUERPOS AMAZÓNICOS EN LA LITERATURA PERUANA CONTEMPORÁNEA
Get PDFPeruvian Amazonian literature has been suppressed throughout its history and, consequently, marginalized (with a few notable exceptions) from literary studies. For instance, it is not considered within what Antonio Cornejo Polar identified as the "tradición de la literatura peruana”. This thesis aims, firstly, to investigate the position of Amazonian literature within Peruvian literature by tracing its evolution in the 20th and 21st centuries. Secondly, it delves into contemporary Amazonian literature, both indigenous and non-indigenous, through an examination of the divergent corporealities and dissidents sexualities within the Amazonian territory, as well as an analysis of the colonial process imposed on this territory in the late 19th century for the exploitation of natural resources. Thus, this work also endeavors to provide a comprehensive overview of the evolution and current status of Peruvian Amazonian literature, as well as its historical context
SHAPING THE FUTURE: THE EVOLVING ROLE OF NARRATIVES IN ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL INNOVATION.
No full textThis dissertation study examines and produces empirical evidence on how organizational members, who are food pantry employees, share stories and narratives created by the organizational group. This exploration provides insight into how to appropriately categorize these stories, leading to the identification of distinctive themes and narratives. The study's findings contribute to understanding the shared values, goals, and objectives of the organizational group. Utilizing symbolic convergence theory and fantasy theme analysis, this study answers the research question regarding the existence of fantasy themes, types, and rhetorical visions among organizational members. The organization under study is a mid to large-sized nonprofit food pantry organization located on the campus of a large academic institution. Semi-structured interviews are employed to gain a deeper understanding of organizational members' experiences. Furthermore, the researcher has developed and established an extension of this theory, known as the ‘construct and confront framework,’ which is heavily influenced by symbolic convergence theory.
Keywords: nonprofit organizational communication, food pantry, narrative building, symbolic convergence theor
Black Undergraduate Nursing Students' Experiences with Racism and Racialized Incidents at a Predominantly White Institution
No full textAbstract This qualitative, single case study examined Black undergraduate nursing students’ experiences with racism and racialized incidents while attending a predominantly white institution. Guided by Critical Race Theory (Bell, 1992, Ladson-Billings, 1998) the research questions were: (1) What are Black undergraduate nursing students' experiences with racism at a predominantly white institution? (2) How have Black undergraduate nursing students' experiences with racism been exacerbated by racialized incidents at a predominantly white institution? and (3) What strategies have Black undergraduate nursing students used to combat racism and racialized incidents at a predominantly white institution? Data analyzed included documents from the national, local, and university level, a demographic survey, and two 60–90-minute individual interviews with eight Black undergraduate nursing students from a large predominantly white institution (Robinson University) in the Midwest. The documents revealed Robinson University’s history with addressing or ignoring racism and racialized incidents The findings were displayed through personal narrative summaries regarding participants’ experiences with racism. The findings revealed what strategies Black undergraduate nursing students use to handle racism and racialized incidents. These strategies include isolation, feelings of fear and worry, and determination. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research are offered