https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5osMYze5138

In January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of the novel SARS-CoV-2, otherwise referred to as COVID-19, to be an international pandemic. Ensuing health regulations around the world forced the cease of international traveling, reduced domestic travel, implemented mandatory stay-at-home orders and asked many to wear face masks in public areas. Students, workers, and many in the public sphere switched from in-person interactions to online platforms, operating remotely from their respective homes. The shift to virtual platforms has since greatly impacted arts programs and professions. Whereas the nature of music and art production rely upon the collaboration between people, often in the same room, the forced shift to virtual platforms created an upheaval for artists to re-imagine their work.

Though the transition from in-person to virtual collaboration seemed abrupt and unwanted, it opened up opportunities to create new projects that otherwise may not have happened. “Cross-Disciplinary Arts Collaboration on a Virtual Platform” took advantage of the ubiquitous shift to virtual collaboration of art disciplines. This project combined poetry, music, dance and visual art to create a unique piece that might not have been possible through strictly in-person collaboration. The goal of this project was to amplify the meaning and impact of music through the addition of words (poetry), movement (dance), and visuals (artwork).

In the early summer of 2018, I found myself driving back to Arizona from a friend’s graduation ceremony in southern Colorado. It was the middle of the day as I wound through the mountains. The drive was peaceful and smooth, with a warm sun and a pleasantly empty road keeping me company. The thick trees and rural farmland I drove past seemed like something from a movie, trying to further convince me that life here moved at a pace somewhat slower than what I was accustomed to. I approached a sign that read “Wolf’s Creek Pass,” and recalled my mother telling me to fully appreciate the beauty of it as I drove through; this was one of her favorite places to hike and explore with her dad when she was young, and she wanted me to experience the same beauty that she had often marveled at. I had driven through here a few days earlier and enjoyed the views as much as I could. On the way back, I decided that I would add to the experience by listening to an album I had recently discovered, Béla Fleck’s Ten from Little Worlds, a smaller sampling of his full 3-disc Little Worlds.
It was this moment that served as the inspiration for my creative thesis project. I was fascinated by the interplay between the music and the scenery around me; on top of appreciating the related moods that both facets evoked, it seemed at times as if certain transitions between sections and tracks in the album were mirrored by small changes or disruptions in the general scenery. While it was interesting enough to observe the natural similarities that seemed to exist simply by chance, I was eager to explore the idea of taking a specific stretch of scenery and composing a piece of music that complemented and interacted with it.

In this thesis, I will be discussing the similarities between Stoicism (as both an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, as well as how it is interpreted in the modern age) and modern therapeutic methods; However, I will not be developing any type of novel theory as to how Stoicism can be used as one of those therapeutic methods by itself. That would require a degree of psychological and medical knowledge that I, as an undergraduate student, do not yet possess and do not have the authority to expand upon in a safe manner. What the goal of this thesis is, instead, is to draw and explore parallels between the ideals and principles of stoicism (such as eudaimonia, ethics, and relative asceticism) as compared to modern therapeutic techniques, like cognitive-behavioral and dialectical-behavioral therapies. I will draw direct parallels between Stoic philosophy and the therapeutic treatments commonly used to address the symptoms of two psychiatric issues (Bipolar Mood Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). I will also be addressing a third psychiatric case study, as relating to Stoic philosophy - suicide, and how our view of it has changed and progressed,both through a Stoic lens as well as from a contemporary psychological viewpoint.
As a result of drawing these parallels, this thesis will also explore some of the more modern uses of Stoicism - for example, those discussed in A Guide To The Good Life by William B Irvine, and Stoic Warriors by Nancy Sherman. Irvine focuses primarily on the use of Stoicism to avoid the factors of“chronic dissatisfaction” that afflict much of our modern-day lives - an absence of control, unhappiness, and erroneous personal values, to name a few. Sherman takes a more targeted approach - the application of Stoic philosophy to the workings of the military mentality and instinct. Sherman explores how being “Stoic” is taught as a part of military bearing, specifically when serving in the American forces. Stoic values are used to create a culture of discipline and self-control in the military - as Sherman puts it, “The idea that one’s happiness could depend solely on one’s own virtue, and that one’s agency and control might be bulletproof, appealed to [them]” (Sherman, 11). These authors’ perspectives are just two examples of how Stoicism can be applied in the modern age, as will be shown in further detail in subsequent sections.

This paper describes the development of a mobile application aimed at facilitating the communication and collaboration of roommates with regards to grocery shopping, food-sharing, and cost-splitting. The approach involves several methods of user-informed design. First, I conducted an analysis of user needs, interviewing potential end-users to gauge shopping habits and behaviors. Second, using iterative wireframing and a design tool called Figma, I constructed a working prototype of the design. Third, the prototype was used in a usability study, focused on uncovering pain points and other insights regarding the performance of the app. The usability tests were designed to simulate tasks that users might reasonably encounter when using the app. Finally, a second analysis of user needs was conducted, this time on a much larger scale. These methods were used to develop several informed design decisions that could improve the overall usability in future iterations of the design.

This thesis explores virtuosity as it applies to the following five clarinet works: Grand Duo Concertant by Carl Maria von Weber, Solo de Concours by André Messager, Caprice by Anders Koppel, Live Wire by Theresa Martin, and The Bangui Anomaly by Eric Mandat. By detailing the clarinet’s development, including its creation in the early 18th century and key innovations over the next several hundred years, the histories of several key clarinet manufacturers are described to further analyze the innovation of music at the time. This background is necessary to understand the foundation of the clarinet and how virtuosity is tied closely to its mechanical development. Based on this fundamental information, virtuosity is comprised of three pillars: technical proficiency, musicianship, and recognition. In order for a piece or performer to be considered virtuosic, they must exemplify all three pillars. Technical proficiency applies to physically manipulating the instrument, including finger agility, articulation, voicing, dynamic and intonation control, among others. Musicianship further describes personal interpretation within stylistic boundaries, and the ability to implement interpretive judgement. Finally, recognition serves as esteemed acknowledgement from a panel of field critics. Accompanying this paper is a creative performance recording of the five aforementioned clarinet pieces, demonstrating virtuosity through a wide range of musical genres and eras.

The first women who performed in orchestral settings were harpists who were substitute or extra players specifically hired for works requiring harp, such as Gustav Mahler’s symphonies or Maurice Ravel’s La Valse (c. 1919). It was not until flutist Doriot Anthony Dwyer won the principal flute position in the BSO in 1952 that a woman was hired as a principal player of a major US orchestra. Following Dwyer’s lead, more women slowly earned their acceptance in professional orchestras. Focusing on the time period 1920-1950, three of the first pioneers who gained acceptance into American orchestras and were the first female orchestral players were flutists Doriot Anthony Dwyer, Lois Schaefer, and Frances Blaisdell. These women lived extraordinary lives and have inspired many generations of female flutists to continue in their footsteps pursuing their own orchestral and professional solo careers. One significant factor for the eventual increase of female musicians in the modern orchestra was the establishment of blind auditions. A blind audition is where a player performs behind a screen for an audition committee to preserve anonymity. Screens can be made of heavy cloth or a room divider that separates the player from the panel of orchestra members critiquing potential hires. This can often include the music director and other musicians. The screen conceals each player’s identity and allows the panel to focus their listening on how a candidate actually sounds versus how they may look and act while playing. Limiting stimuli to aural perception would help to mitigate bias or prejudice against race, gender, or age through the audition process.

This thesis project is focused on studying the number field sieve. The number field sieve is a factoring algorithm which uses algebraic number theory and is one of the fastest known factoring algorithms today. Factoring large integers into prime factors is an extremely difficult problem, yet also extremely important in cryptography. The security of the cryptosystem RSA is entirely based on the difficulty of factoring certain large integers into a product of two distinct large primes. While the number field sieve is one of the fastest factoring algorithms known, it is still not efficient enough to factor cryptographic sized integers.

In this thesis we will examine the algorithm of the number field sieve and discuss some important advancements. In particular, we will focus on the advancements that have been done in the polynomial selection step, the first main step of the number field sieve. The polynomial selected determines the number field by which computations are carried out in the remainder of the algorithm. Selection of a good polynomial allows for better time efficiency and a higher probability that the algorithm will be successful in factoring.

This document is a proposal for a research project, submitted as an Honors Thesis to Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University. The proposal summarizes previous findings and literature about women survivors of domestic violence who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as well as outlining the design and measures of the study. At this time, the study has not been completed. However, it may be completed at a future time.

The saxophone is privileged to have a wide variety of repertoire from contemporary composers. Due to its invention in the later half of the nineteenth century, it has no repertoire written by baroque composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach. There are several published arrangements of Bach’s three solo violin partitas including that of Ronald Caravan and Raaf Hekkema. These collections either do not present every movement of each of these three partitas, or they do not present them in their original keys. An advantage to arranging these works in their original keys is that saxophonists have the opportunity to learn more about the works by playing along with recordings of great violinists such as Itzhak Perlman and Hilary Hahn, something that would be very difficult to do if they were not in the original keys. In Ronald Caravan’s Bach for Solo Saxophone, Caravan includes a collection of many unaccompanied works by Bach for saxophone but does not include all of the movements from the three partitas and they are not in the original keys that Bach wrote for. In Raaf Hekkema’s Bach for Saxophone, Hekkema arranges the entirety of the three partitas, however they are not set in the original keys that Bach wrote for. In addition to these points, those collections do not provide information of the life of J.S. Bach, baroque performance practice, mechanics of the baroque violin, baroque dances, and advice on going about the mechanics of these pieces from a saxophonist’s perspective. This information is very useful to a young saxophonist who is trying to fully understand and perform Bach’s three solo violin partitas.

Tissue engineering scaffold fabrication methods often have tradeoffs associated with them that prevent one method from fulfilling all design requirements of a desired scaffold. This undergraduate thesis seeks to combine 3D printing and electrospinning tissue engineering fabrication methods into a hybrid fabrication method that can potentially fulfill more design requirements than each method alone. The hybrid scaffolds were made by inserting electrospun scaffolds between layers of 3D printed scaffolds of increasing print temperature and effects on adhesion and mechanical properties were characterized. The fabrication method proved to be feasible and print temperature affected both adhesion and mechanical properties of the scaffolds. A positive, non-linear relationship was seen between print temperature and adhesion and resulting force. Insertion of electrospun mats led to increased damping of scaffolds. Evidence from characterization indicated factors other than print temperature were likely contributing to adhesion and mechanical properties. If studied further, this fabrication method could potentially be used to improve overall structure and regenerative potential of tissue engineering scaffolds.