Generalized sampling using a compound-eye imaging system for multi-dimensional object acquisition.

In this paper, we propose generalized sampling approaches for measuring a multi-dimensional object using a compact compound-eye imaging system called thin observation module by bound optics (TOMBO). This paper shows the proposed system model, physical examples, and simulations to verify TOMBO imaging using generalized sampling. In the system, an object is modulated and multiplied by a weight distribution with physical coding, and the coded optical signal is integrated on to a detector array. A numerical estimation algorithm employing a sparsity constraint is used for object reconstruction.

ION, OPERA IN SEVEN SCENES, BASED ON EURIPIDES ORIGINAL PLAY

The opera ION serves as my Doctoral Dissertation at the University of Maryland School of Music. The librettist of the opera is Nick Olcott, Opera Assistant Director at the University. My interest in this little-known play of Euripides began with my work with Professor Lillian Doherty of the University's Classics Department. Since I am fluent in Greek, I was able to read the play in original, becoming aware of nuances of meaning absent in the standard English translations. Professor Leon Major, Artistic Director of the University's Opera Studio, was enthusiastic about the choice of this play as the basis for an opera, and has been very generous of his time in showing me what must be done to turn a play into an opera. ION is my first complete stage work for voices and constitutes an ambitious project. The opera is scored for a small chamber orchestra, consisting of Saxophone, Percussion (many types), Piano, a Small Chorus of six singers, as well as five Soloists. An orchestra of this size is adequate for the plot, and also provides support for various new vocal techniques, alternating between singing and speaking, as well as traditional arias. In ION, I incorporate Greek folk elements, which I know first-hand from my Balkan background, as well as contemporary techniques which I have absorbed during my graduate work at Boston University and the University of Maryland. Euripides' ION has fascinated me for two reasons in particular: its connection with founding myth of Athens, and the suggestiveness of its plot, which turns on the relationship of parents to children. In my interpretation, the leading character Ion is seen as emblematic for today's teenagers. Using the setting of the classic play, I hope to create a modern transformation of a myth, not to simply retell it. To this end, hopefully a new opera form will rise, as valid for our times as Verdi and Wagner were for theirs.

The Evolution of Rachmaninov's Pianistic Style from 1892 to 1941 as Seen in Selected Original Works and Transcriptions for Piano

Unlike some other major composer-pianists (Franz Liszt and Alexander Scriabin being the most notable examples), Sergei Rachmaninov did not experience any dramatic changes in his compositional style; one can, however, notice certain stylistic differences between piano works composed during different periods of his long creative life. This dissertation argues that a clear evolution of Rachmaninov's pianistic style through his three creative periods can be traced by examining a selection of his compositions, from his first significant cycle for piano, 5 Marceaux de fantaisie, Op. 3 (1892), all the way through to his last piano work, a transcription of P.I.Tchakovsky's Lullaby, Op. 16, No. 1 (1941). Rachmaninov's life as a composer can be divided into three periods. His early period was ended abruptly by the disastrous premiere ofhis First Symphony in 1897, which caused a deep psychological crisis in the life of the young composer. Piano works of this period are often characterized by relatively simple homophonic texture, when Rachmaninov was clearly influenced by some of his Russian predecessors, most notably Tchaikovsky. His second and most productive period, also known as the period of"Russian maturity," started in 1900, when he began working on the Second Suite for two pianos, Op. 17, and the Second Concerto, Op. 18; this phase ended with the Russian Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Works of this time exhibit a mature style of piano writing, with rich, virtuosic - often considered excessive by many critics - texture and ever-increasing use of chromatic harmonies. Rachmaninov's works of the third period are limited in number owing to the composer's preoccupation with a career as pianist. Original works for piano now give way to revisions of earlier compositions and transcriptions: Rachmaninov's piano writing becomes more efficient and economical without losing any of its virtuosic brilliance. This dissertation project examines in detail, over the course of three piano recitals, a variety of works composed during the "Russian maturity" period, from several Preludes from Op. 23 (1903), the first major cycle for solo piano of the period, to 9 Etudes-Tableaux, Op.39 (1917), the last one; the early period is represented by 3 of 5 Marceaux defantaisie, Op. 3 (1892), while the late period is shown through several piano transcriptions and revised versions of the remaining 2 pieces from Op. 3.

Spectrotemporal CT data acquisition and reconstruction at low dose.

PURPOSE: X-ray computed tomography (CT) is widely used, both clinically and preclinically, for fast, high-resolution anatomic imaging; however, compelling opportunities exist to expand its use in functional imaging applications. For instance, spectral information combined with nanoparticle contrast agents enables quantification of tissue perfusion levels, while temporal information details cardiac and respiratory dynamics. The authors propose and demonstrate a projection acquisition and reconstruction strategy for 5D CT (3D+dual energy+time) which recovers spectral and temporal information without substantially increasing radiation dose or sampling time relative to anatomic imaging protocols. METHODS: The authors approach the 5D reconstruction problem within the framework of low-rank and sparse matrix decomposition. Unlike previous work on rank-sparsity constrained CT reconstruction, the authors establish an explicit rank-sparse signal model to describe the spectral and temporal dimensions. The spectral dimension is represented as a well-sampled time and energy averaged image plus regularly undersampled principal components describing the spectral contrast. The temporal dimension is represented as the same time and energy averaged reconstruction plus contiguous, spatially sparse, and irregularly sampled temporal contrast images. Using a nonlinear, image domain filtration approach, the authors refer to as rank-sparse kernel regression, the authors transfer image structure from the well-sampled time and energy averaged reconstruction to the spectral and temporal contrast images. This regularization strategy strictly constrains the reconstruction problem while approximately separating the temporal and spectral dimensions. Separability results in a highly compressed representation for the 5D data in which projections are shared between the temporal and spectral reconstruction subproblems, enabling substantial undersampling. The authors solved the 5D reconstruction problem using the split Bregman method and GPU-based implementations of backprojection, reprojection, and kernel regression. Using a preclinical mouse model, the authors apply the proposed algorithm to study myocardial injury following radiation treatment of breast cancer. RESULTS: Quantitative 5D simulations are performed using the MOBY mouse phantom. Twenty data sets (ten cardiac phases, two energies) are reconstructed with 88 μm, isotropic voxels from 450 total projections acquired over a single 360° rotation. In vivo 5D myocardial injury data sets acquired in two mice injected with gold and iodine nanoparticles are also reconstructed with 20 data sets per mouse using the same acquisition parameters (dose: ∼60 mGy). For both the simulations and the in vivo data, the reconstruction quality is sufficient to perform material decomposition into gold and iodine maps to localize the extent of myocardial injury (gold accumulation) and to measure cardiac functional metrics (vascular iodine). Their 5D CT imaging protocol represents a 95% reduction in radiation dose per cardiac phase and energy and a 40-fold decrease in projection sampling time relative to their standard imaging protocol. CONCLUSIONS: Their 5D CT data acquisition and reconstruction protocol efficiently exploits the rank-sparse nature of spectral and temporal CT data to provide high-fidelity reconstruction results without increased radiation dose or sampling time.

Key terms in second language acquisition

Key Terms in Second Language Acquisition includes definitions of key terms within second language acquisition, and also provides accessible summaries of the key issues within this complex area of study. The final section presents a list of key readings in second language acquisition that signposts the reader towards classic articles and also provides a springboard to further study.

[Book Review] The role of formal features in second language acquisition - edited by J. Liceras, H. Zobl, and H. Goodluck

Book review of: J. Liceras, H. Zobl, and H. Goodluck (eds.), 2008, The Role of Formal Features in Second Language Acquisition. London/New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 577 pages, ISBN: 0-8058-5354-5.

Grammar acquisition and processing instruction: Secondary and cumulative effects

Research on Processing Instruction has so far investigated the primary effects of Processing Instruction. In this book, the results of a series of experimental studies investigating possible secondary and cumulative effects of Processing Instruction on the acquisition of French, Italian and English as a second language will be presented. The results of the three experiments have demonstrated that Processing Instruction not only provides learners the direct or primary benefit of learning to process and produce the morphological form on which they received instruction, but also a secondary benefit in that they transferred that training to processing and producing another morphological form on which they had received no instruction.

Optionality in L2 grammars: the acquisition of SV/VS contrast in Spanish

This study examines the L2 acquisition of word order variation in Spanish by three groups of L1 English learners in an instructed setting. The three groups represent learners at three different L2 proficiencies: beginners, intermediate and advanced. The aim of the study is to analyse the acquisition of word order variation in a situation where the target input is highly ambiguous, since two apparent optional forms exist in the target grammar, in order to examine how the optionality is disambiguated by learners from the earlier stages of learning to the more advanced. Our results support the hypothesis that an account based on a discourse-pragmatics deficit cannot satisfactorily explain learners’ non-targetlike representations in the contexts analysed in our study.

Co-acquisition of hyperpolarised 13C and 15N NMR spectra

Recent developments in dynamic nuclear polarisation now allow significant enhancements to be generated in the cryo solid state and transferred to the liquid state for detection at high resolution. We demonstrate that the Ardenkjaer-Larsen method can be extended by taking advantage of the properties of the trityl radicals used. It is possible to hyperpolarise 13C and 15N simultaneously in the solid state, and to maintain these hyperpolarisations through rapid dissolution into the liquid state. We demonstrate the almost simultaneous measurement of hyperpolarised 13C and hyperpolarised 15N NMR spectra. The prospects for further improvement of the method using contemporary technology are also discussed.

Acquisition of continuous plankton recorder data

The Continuous Plankton Recorder has been deployed on a seasonal basis in the north Pacific since 2000, accumulating a database of abundance measurements for over 290 planktonic taxa in over 3,500 processed samples. There is an additional archive of over 10,000 samples available for further analyses. Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council financial support has contributed to about half of this tally, through four projects funded since 2002. Time series of zooplankton variables for sub-regions of the survey area are presented together with abstracts of eight papers published using data from these projects. The time series covers a period when the dominant climate signal in the north Pacific, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), switched with unusual frequency between warm/positive states (pre-1999 and 2003-2006) and cool/negative states (1999-2002 and 2007). The CPR data suggest that cool negative years show higher biomass on the shelf and lower biomass in the open ocean, while the reverse is true in warm (PDO positive) years with lower shelf biomass (except 2005) and higher oceanic biomass. In addition, there was a delay in plankton increase on the Alaskan shelf in the colder spring of 2007, compared to the warmer springs of the preceding years. In warm years, smaller species of copepods which lack lipid reserves are also more common. Availability of the zooplankton prey to higher trophic levels (including those that society values highly) is therefore dependent on the timing of increase and peak abundance, ease of capture and nutritional value. Previously published studies using these data highlight the wide-ranging applicability of CPR data and include collaborative studies on; phenology in the key copepod species Neocalanus plumchrus, descriptions of distributions of decapod larvae and euphausiid species, the effects of hydrographic features such as mesoscale eddies and the North Pacific Current on plankton populations and a molecularbased investigation of macro-scale population structure in N. cristatus. The future funding situation is uncertain but the value of the data and studies so far accumulated is considerable and sets a strong foundation for further studies on plankton dynamics and interactions with higher trophic levels in the northern Gulf of Alaska.

Evolution of alternative biosynthetic pathways for vitamin C following plastid acquisition in photosynthetic eukaryotes.

Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is an enzyme co-factor in eukaryotes that also plays a critical role in protecting photosynthetic eukaryotes against damaging reactive oxygen species derived from the chloroplast. Many animal lineages, including primates, have become ascorbate auxotrophs due to the loss of the terminal enzyme in their biosynthetic pathway, L-gulonolactone oxidase (GULO). The alternative pathways found in land plants and Euglena use a different terminal enzyme, L-galactonolactone dehydrogenase (GLDH). The evolutionary processes leading to these differing pathways and their contribution to the cellular roles of ascorbate remain unclear. Here we present molecular and biochemical evidence demonstrating that GULO was functionally replaced with GLDH in photosynthetic eukaryote lineages following plastid acquisition. GULO has therefore been lost repeatedly throughout eukaryote evolution. The formation of the alternative biosynthetic pathways in photosynthetic eukaryotes uncoupled ascorbate synthesis from hydrogen peroxide production and likely contributed to the rise of ascorbate as a major photoprotective antioxidant.