Harmonic Proportion and Palladio's "Quattro Libri"

1982 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Howard ◽  
Malcolm Longair

In 1949, Wittkower proposed that musical harmonic ratios were a principle underlying Palladio's designs illustrated in the ground plans of Book II of the Quattro libri. This theory, expounded in Part IV of Wittkower's Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, has been widely accepted, despite the fact that his research was based on detailed analysis of only 8 of the 44 plans in Book II. In the present study, a systematic, quantitative analysis of all the plans in Book II of the Quattro libri is carried out to discover to what extent musical harmonic ratios were an important principle behind Palladio's ground plans. Our results show that Palladio did indeed have a definite preference for numbers which can be related in ratios corresponding to the standard musical intervals. However, he does not make any consistent attempt to render his designs completely harmonic. Only about two-thirds of all the dimensions in the Book II plans are numbers which can be incorporated into musical ratios. Palladio often made no attempt to make his published measurements accord with musical harmonies where this could have been done by minor alterations, such as insignificant changes in wall thicknesses. The actual buildings, too, show a preference for dimensions which can be related by harmonic ratios, although not quite to the extent of the plans published in the Quattro libri. A few, most notably the Villa Barbaro at Maser, are significantly more "harmonic" in the published versions than in reality. In view of Daniele Barbaro's well-known interest in harmonic proportion, it is significant that all the completely harmonic designs postdate Palladio's collaboration with Barbaro on the Vitruvius edition and the Villa at Maser. Most of the patrons of those designs closely based upon musical harmonies appear to have shared an interest in musical or architectural theory. While Palladio almost certainly used musical theory in some later designs, his dependence on musical harmonic proportion was by no means as great as Wittkower implied. Elsewhere, his preference for harmonic dimensions probably resulted either from his use of certain favorite room shapes, or from the practical advantages of using simple, easily divisible numbers.

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Colin Bitter ◽  
Yuji Tosaka

The purpose of this paper is to report on a quantitative analysis of the LCGFT vocabulary within a large set of MARC bibliographic data retrieved from the OCLC WorldCat database. The study aimed to provide a detailed analysis of the outcomes of the LCGFT project, which was launched by the Library of Congress (LC) in 2007. Findings point to a moderate increase in LCGFT use over time; however, the vocabulary has not been applied to the fullest extent possible in WorldCat. Further, adoption has been inconsistent between the various LCGFT disciplines. These and other findings discussed here suggest that retrospective application of the vocabulary using automated means should be investigated by catalogers and other technical services librarians. Indeed, as the data used for the analysis show somewhat uneven application of LCGFT, and with nearly half a billion records in WorldCat, it remains a certainty that much of LCGFT’s full potentials for genre/form access and retrieval will remain untapped until innovative solutions are introduced to further increase overall vocabulary usage in bibliographic databases.


1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
REJANE B. RUBINO ◽  
JULIAN M. PINE

This study focuses on the acquisition of subject–verb agreement in Brazilian Portuguese. A quantitative analysis of the data produced by a Brazilian child between the ages of 3;02.07 and 3;04.08 is presented. The overall error rate is low. However, a further and more detailed analysis reveals important contrasts both in the frequency of production of different verb inflections (as regards the person/number variables within the verb morphological system) and in the rate of subject–verb agreement errors associated with them. Our findings not only suggest that subject–verb agreement may be acquired piecemeal, but also that the learning of particular verb inflections may itself be a gradual process. Alternatives to the idea of rule-governed production – such as the child's reproducing frozen subject–verb strings previously produced by adults and blending different frozen strings into novel combinations – are discussed as processes which can shed some light on the pattern of both erroneous and correct production shown by this child.


Author(s):  
James H. Fraser

1. An ecological survey of the fauna of Dingle Beach, Mersey Estuary, has been made.2. A detailed analysis of the constituents of the mud, sand and gravel is given.3. A quantitative analysis of the Molluscan fauna from a series of stations has been made.4. Type of ground and fauna at different tidal levels are correlated.Mya arenaria is only found in abundance where there are stones. Macoma balthica is abundant wherever there is thick mud.5. Dingle Beach is a type of Macoma community but differing markedly from the typical community described by Petersen as “d”.6. The importance of sewage in producing silt and the part played by sewage in the food chain are discussed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 843-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Chambers ◽  
Elroy Dimson ◽  
Justin Foo

AbstractThe consensus view of the influential economist John Maynard Keynes is that he was a stellar investor. We provide an extensive quantitative appraisal of his performance over a quarter century and present detailed analysis of his archived trading records. His top-down approach initially generated disappointing returns with no evidence of any market-timing ability. However, from the early 1930s his performance improved as he evolved into a bottom-up stock picker with substantial active risk and pronounced size and value tilts. Our reconstruction of Keynes’s stock trading provides a unique record of realized performance and sheds light on how equity investing developed historically.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Romain Amyot ◽  
Arin Marchesi ◽  
Clemens M Franz ◽  
Ignacio Casuso ◽  
Holger Flechsig

We provide the BioAFMviewer-Toolbox, an extension of our previously developed software platform for simulated AFM scanning of biomolecular structures and dy- namics. The focus was on developing a toolbox of methods which employ simulated AFM scanning combined with quantitative analysis to facilitate the interpretation of resolution-limited AFM images. The key advancement is the automatized fitting of biomolecular structures to experimental AFM images, which allows to reconstruct 3D atomistic structures from AFM surface scans. Moreover, several methods for detailed analysis and comparison of surface topographies in simulated and experimental AFM images are provided. We demonstrate the applicability of the developed tools in the interpretation of high-speed AFM observations of proteins. The toolbox is implemented into the versatile interactive interface of the BioAFMviewer, which is a free software package available at www.bioafmviewer.com.


2015 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Regina Kliukienė

Currently more and more research is devoted to the analysis of the linguistic situation of Lithuanian towns and villages (cf. Ramonienė et al. 2010). The issues of the choice of linguistic varieties and analysis of the trends of using dialects in private and public life as well as relationship between dialectal speech and standard language deserve special attention (Ramonienė et al. 2010; Ramonienė 2006; Aliūkaitė 2007; 2011; Kalėdienė 2009). This paper makes use of the material and the quantitative data from the project The sociolinguistic map of Lithuania: towns and villages implemented by Vilnius University, the Lithuanian Language Institute and Vytautas Magnus University in 2010-2012 as well as of the maps drawn by Viktorija Baranauskienė on the basis of the same data (2013).A more detailed analysis of dialects used by children in communication with their parents in the towns of Žemaitija region (cf. the map The use of dialects in communication with parents among the respondents and regional distribution of dialects) is given and the features of a dialect used in Klaipėda, the largest town of Žemaitija, and smaller towns as well as the opinions of the residents of Žemaitija about the most usual, most valuable and most intelligible dialect and promotion of the use of dialects among young people are discussed separately. The quantitative data is presented in graphs and maps.According to the quantitative data, the use of heterogeneous, or ‘mixed’, and homogenous, or ‘pure’, dialects of the towns of Žemaitija region in communication with parents is as follows: the Žemaitian dialect prevails in many ‘pure’ towns of Žemaitija such as Plungė, Rietavas, Telšiai, Gargždai, Šilalė, Skuodas. The residents of these towns are also more favourably disposed towards the Žemaitian dialect—the majority would encourage young people to learn and speak the dialect; however, a smaller percentage think that the Žemaitian dialect is the most beautiful. In the ‘mixed’ towns of Žemaitija region (where both the Aukštaitian dialect and the Žemaitian dialect are used) Šiauliai, Kuršėnai and Šilutė only 1–5 per cent use the Žemaitian dialect in communication with parents, but there the Žemaitian dialect is considered the most usual and the most beautiful.


Author(s):  
J.P. Fallon ◽  
P.J. Gregory ◽  
C.J. Taylor

Quantitative image analysis systems have been used for several years in research and quality control applications in various fields including metallurgy and medicine. The technique has been applied as an extension of subjective microscopy to problems requiring quantitative results and which are amenable to automatic methods of interpretation.Feature extraction. In the most general sense, a feature can be defined as a portion of the image which differs in some consistent way from the background. A feature may be characterized by the density difference between itself and the background, by an edge gradient, or by the spatial frequency content (texture) within its boundaries. The task of feature extraction includes recognition of features and encoding of the associated information for quantitative analysis.Quantitative Analysis. Quantitative analysis is the determination of one or more physical measurements of each feature. These measurements may be straightforward ones such as area, length, or perimeter, or more complex stereological measurements such as convex perimeter or Feret's diameter.


Author(s):  
V. V. Damiano ◽  
R. P. Daniele ◽  
H. T. Tucker ◽  
J. H. Dauber

An important example of intracellular particles is encountered in silicosis where alveolar macrophages ingest inspired silica particles. The quantitation of the silica uptake by these cells may be a potentially useful method for monitoring silica exposure. Accurate quantitative analysis of ingested silica by phagocytic cells is difficult because the particles are frequently small, irregularly shaped and cannot be visualized within the cells. Semiquantitative methods which make use of particles of known size, shape and composition as calibration standards may be the most direct and simplest approach to undertake. The present paper describes an empirical method in which glass microspheres were used as a model to show how the ratio of the silicon Kα peak X-ray intensity from the microspheres to that of a bulk sample of the same composition correlated to the mass of the microsphere contained within the cell. Irregular shaped silica particles were also analyzed and a calibration curve was generated from these data.


Author(s):  
H.J. Dudek

The chemical inhomogenities in modern materials such as fibers, phases and inclusions, often have diameters in the region of one micrometer. Using electron microbeam analysis for the determination of the element concentrations one has to know the smallest possible diameter of such regions for a given accuracy of the quantitative analysis.In th is paper the correction procedure for the quantitative electron microbeam analysis is extended to a spacial problem to determine the smallest possible measurements of a cylindrical particle P of high D (depth resolution) and diameter L (lateral resolution) embeded in a matrix M and which has to be analysed quantitative with the accuracy q. The mathematical accounts lead to the following form of the characteristic x-ray intens ity of the element i of a particle P embeded in the matrix M in relation to the intensity of a standard S


Author(s):  
John A. Hunt

Spectrum-imaging is a useful technique for comparing different processing methods on very large data sets which are identical for each method. This paper is concerned with comparing methods of electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) quantitative analysis on the Al-Li system. The spectrum-image analyzed here was obtained from an Al-10at%Li foil aged to produce δ' precipitates that can span the foil thickness. Two 1024 channel EELS spectra offset in energy by 1 eV were recorded and stored at each pixel in the 80x80 spectrum-image (25 Mbytes). An energy range of 39-89eV (20 channels/eV) are represented. During processing the spectra are either subtracted to create an artifact corrected difference spectrum, or the energy offset is numerically removed and the spectra are added to create a normal spectrum. The spectrum-images are processed into 2D floating-point images using methods and software described in [1].


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