Phase Locked Loop and Modulo Games, The Dogma Loops; and “Finding Ibrida”

This dissertation consists of two independent musical compositions and an article detailing the process of the design and assembly of an electric guitar with particular emphasis on the carefully curated suite of embedded effects.

The first piece, 'Phase Locked Loop and Modulo Games' is scored for electric guitar and a single echo of equal volume less than a beat away. One could think of the piece as a 15 minute canon at the unison at the dotted eighth note (or at times the quarter or triplet-quarter), however the compositional motivation is more about weaving a composite texture between the guitar and its echo that is, while in theory extremely contrapuntal, in actuality is simply a single [superhuman] melodic line.

The second piece, 'The Dogma Loops' picks up a few compositional threads left by ‘Phase Locked Loop’ and weaves them into an entirely new tapestry. 'Phase Locked Loop' is motivated by the creation of a complex musical composite that is for the most part electronically transparent. 'The Dogma Loops' questions that same notion of composite electronic complexity by essentially asking a question: "what are the inputs to an interactive electronic system that create the most complex outputs via the simplest musical means possible?"

'The Dogma Loops' is scored for Electric Guitar (doubling on Ukulele), Violin and Violoncello. All of the principal instruments require an electronic pickup (except the Uke). The work is in three sections played attacca; [Automation Games], [Point of Origin] and [Cloning Vectors].

The third and final component of the document is the article 'Finding Ibrida.' This article details the process of the design and assembly of an electric guitar with integrated effects, while also providing the deeper context (conceptual and technical) which motivated the efforts and informed the challenges to hybridize the various technologies (tubes, transistors, digital effects and a microcontroller subsystem). The project was motivated by a desire for rigorous technical and hands-on engagement with analog signal processing as applied to the electric guitar. ‘Finding Ibrida’ explores sound, some myths and lore of guitar tech and the history of electric guitar distortion and its culture of sonic exploration.

Behavior Genetics and Post Genomics

The science of genetics is undergoing a paradigm shift. Recent discoveries, including the activity of retrotransposons, the extent of copy number variations, somatic and chromosomal mosaicism, and the nature of the epigenome as a regulator of DNA expressivity, are challenging a series of dogmas concerning the nature of the genome and the relationship between genotype and phenotype. DNA, once held to be the unchanging template of heredity, now appears subject to a good deal of environmental change; considered to be identical in all cells and tissues of the body, there is growing evidence that somatic mosaicism is the normal human condition; and treated as the sole biological agent of heritability, we now know that the epigenome, which regulates gene expressivity, can be inherited via the germline. These developments are particularly significant for behavior genetics for at least three reasons: First, these phenomena appear to be particularly prevalent in the human brain, and likely are involved in much of human behavior; second, they have important implications for the validity of heritability and gene association studies, the methodologies that largely define the discipline of behavior genetics; and third, they appear to play a critical role in development during the perinatal period, and in enabling phenotypic plasticity in offspring in particular. I examine one of the central claims to emerge from the use of heritability studies in the behavioral sciences, the principle of “minimal shared maternal effects,” in light of the growing awareness that the maternal perinatal environment is a critical venue for the exercise of adaptive phenotypic plasticity. This consideration has important implications for both developmental and evolutionary biology

Impacts of land use change and climate variations on annual inflow into Miyun Reservoir,Beijing, China

The Miyun Reservoir, the only surface water source for Beijing city, has experienced water supply decline in recent decades. Previous studies suggest that both land use change and climate contribute to the changes of water supply in this critical watershed. However, the specific causes of the decline in the Miyun Reservoir are debatable under a non-stationary climate in the past 4 decades. The central objective of this study was to quantify the separate and collective contributions of land use change and climate variability to the decreasing inflow into the Miyun Reservoir during 1961–2008. Different from previous studies on this watershed, we used a comprehensive approach to quantify the timing of changes in hydrology and associated environmental variables using the long-term historical hydrometeorology and remote-sensing-based land use records. To effectively quantify the different impacts of the climate variation and land use change on streamflow during different sub-periods, an annual water balance model (AWB), the climate elasticity model (CEM), and a rainfall–runoff model (RRM) were employed to conduct attribution analysis synthetically. We found a significant (p  <  0.01) decrease in annual streamflow, a significant positive trend in annual potential evapotranspiration (p  <  0.01), and an insignificant (p  >  0.1) negative trend in annual precipitation during 1961–2008. We identified two streamflow breakpoints, 1983 and 1999, by the sequential Mann–Kendall test and double-mass curve. Climate variability alone did not explain the decrease in inflow to the Miyun Reservoir. Reduction of water yield was closely related to increase in actual evapotranspiration due to the expansion of forestland and reduction in cropland and grassland, and was likely exacerbated by increased water consumption for domestic and industrial uses in the basin. The contribution to the observed streamflow decline from land use change fell from 64–92 % during 1984–1999 to 36–58 % during 2000–2008, whereas the contribution from climate variation climbed from 8–36 % during the 1984–1999 to 42–64 % during 2000–2008. Model uncertainty analysis further demonstrated that climate warming played a dominant role in streamflow reduction in the most recent decade (i.e., 2000s). We conclude that future climate change and variability will further challenge the water supply capacity of the Miyun Reservoir to meet water demand. A comprehensive watershed management strategy needs to consider the climate variations besides vegetation management in the study basin.