David Binkley

African children develop aesthetic sensibilities at an early age, roughly from four to fourteen years. By the time they become full-fledged adolescents they may have had up to ten years experience with various art forms--masking, music, costuming, dancing, and performance. Aesthetic learning is vital to their maturation. The contributors to this volume argue that the idea that learning the aesthetics of a culture only occurs after maturity is false, as is the idea that children wearing masks is only play, and is not to be taken seriously. Playful Performers is a study of children's masquerades in Africa. The contributors describe specific cases of young children's masking in the areas of west, central, and southern Africa, which also happen to be the major areas of adult masquerading. The volume reveals the considerable creativity and ingenuity that children exhibit in preparing costumes, masks and musical instruments, and in playing music, dancing, singing, and acting. The book includes over 50 pages of black and white photographs, which illustrate and elaborate upon the authors' main points. The editors describe general categories of children's masquerades. In each of the three masking categories children's relationships to their parents and other adults differ, from a close relationship to some independence to almost complete independence. No other major work has covered this aspect of African children at this age level. The book offers a challenging perspective on young children, seeing them as active agents in their own culture rather than passive recipients of culture as taught by parents and other elders. It will be interesting reading for anthropologists, art historians, educators, and African studies specialists alike.

Analog CMOS integrated circuits are in widespread use for communications, entertainment, multimedia, biomedical, and many other applications that interface with the physical world. Although analog CMOS design is greatly complicated by the design choices of drain current, channel width, and channel length present for every MOS device in a circuit, these design choices afford significant opportunities for optimizing circuit performance. This book addresses tradeoffs and optimization of device and circuit performance for selections of the drain current, inversion coefficient, and channel length, where channel width is implicitly considered. The inversion coefficient is used as a technology independent measure of MOS inversion that permits design freely in weak, moderate, and strong inversion. This book details the significant performance tradeoffs available in analog CMOS design and guides the designer towards optimum design by describing: An interpretation of MOS modeling for the analog designer, motivated by the EKV MOS model, using tabulated hand expressions and figures that give performance and tradeoffs for the design choices of drain current, inversion coefficient, and channel length; performance includes effective gate-source bias and drain-source saturation voltages, transconductance efficiency, transconductance distortion, normalized drain-source conductance, capacitances, gain and bandwidth measures, thermal and flicker noise, mismatch, and gate and drain leakage currentMeasured data that validates the inclusion of important small-geometry effects like velocity saturation, vertical-field mobility reduction, drain-induced barrier lowering, and inversion-level increases in gate-referred, flicker noise voltageIn-depth treatment of moderate inversion, which offers low bias compliance voltages, high transconductance efficiency, and good immunity to velocity saturation effects for circuits designed in modern, low-voltage processesFabricated design examples that include operational transconductance amplifiers optimized for various tradeoffs in DC and AC performance, and micropower, low-noise preamplifiers optimized for minimum thermal and flicker noiseA design spreadsheet, available at the book web site, that facilitates rapid, optimum design of MOS devices and circuits Tradeoffs and Optimization in Analog CMOS Design is the first book dedicated to this important topic. It will help practicing analog circuit designers and advanced students of electrical engineering build design intuition, rapidly optimize circuit performance during initial design, and minimize trial-and-error circuit simulations.

African children develop aesthetic sensibilities at an early age, roughly from four to fourteen years. By the time they become full-fledged adolescents they may have had up to ten years experience with various art forms--masking, music, costuming, dancing, and performance. Aesthetic learning is vital to their maturation. The contributors to this volume argue that the idea that learning the aesthetics of a culture only occurs after maturity is false, as is the idea that children wearing masks is only play, and is not to be taken seriously. Playful Performers is a study of children's masquerades in Africa. The contributors describe specific cases of young children's masking in the areas of west, central, and southern Africa, which also happen to be the major areas of adult masquerading. The volume reveals the considerable creativity and ingenuity that children exhibit in preparing costumes, masks and musical instruments, and in playing music, dancing, singing, and acting. The book includes over 50 pages of black and white photographs, which illustrate and elaborate upon the authors' main points. The editors describe general categories of children's masquerades. In each of the three masking categories children's relationships to their parents and other adults differ, from a close relationship to some independence to almost complete independence. No other major work has covered this aspect of African children at this age level. The book offers a challenging perspective on young children, seeing them as active agents in their own culture rather than passive recipients of culture as taught by parents and other elders. It will be interesting reading for anthropologists, art historians, educators, and African studies specialists alike.