VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A Study of Influence, Structure, and Performance in Messiaen's Préludes (1928-1929)
Keywords: Debussy
Messiaen
Piano Music
Préludes

The Préludes (1928-1929) of Olivier Messiaen are central works of his early career which have surprisingly received much less attention and recognition than his other piano compositions. They serve as a guide towards understanding Messiaen's early compositional style, and detailed musical analysis of them can provide performers with an arsenal to perform the Préludes with authenticity as well as individual flare. The introductory chapter provides some background information on Messiaen's early style and his treatise Technique de mon langage musical to give the reader a general orientation on which to draw during the detailed analytical chapters. Chapter 2 discusses Messiaen's analyses of a few of Debussy's respective Préludes, and this provides insight on how Messiaen analyzed music, and how he perceived and organized all of the various elements. Chapter 3 outlines common performance practices of Messiaen's music. Most of the material is drawn from interviews with Yvonne Loriod, Peter Hill, and a few other pupils who worked extensively with Messiaen. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 contain a thorough analysis of Préludes 2, 6, and 8. These discussions include a detailed formal analysis, as well as an exploration of prominent aspects unique to each Prélude (regarding thematic treatment, formal structure and modal use). After each analysis, there is an examination of performance practice drawing upon recordings by various artists and evaluating choices in such matters as dynamics, tempi, phrasing, and voicing. All of this information offers performers a guideline upon which they can draw inspiration, and a basis for making interpretative decisions grounded in analysis. The last chapter summarizes the topics discussed in the previous chapters, and it then provides a brief analysis of a short piece by Messiaen titled Prélude composed in 1964. Although this analysis is not extensive, it reveals some similarities to processes observed in his earlier set of Préludes, and yet again provides a framework whereby performers can base their own interpretations when approaching Messiaen's music.
Understanding How Ontario's Full-Day Early Learning Kindergarten Works for Families: Building A Program Theory Based On Parents' Voices
Keywords: Full-day Kindergarten
Parents' Voices
Theory of Change

Ontario’s Full-Day Early Learning Kindergarten (FDELK) represents a bold policy shift in North America, with its conceptualization and delivery of a universal, integrated early learning program. Informed by service integration goals, the FDELK combines early education and care into a seamless early learning program for 4- and 5-year olds. The current study explored parents’ perspectives and program participation experiences to develop a theory of change for FDELK. Relative to our understanding of program effects, causal mechanisms that help explain how and why programs work are not well understood. By asking parents to attribute observed outcomes to program participation experiences, the goal was to identify key pathways through which program participation influenced outcomes not only for children, but also for parents and families. Building on the research experience of local service integration initiatives, this study used an innovative method to build a theory of change for FDELK. Qualitative methods were used to explore parents’ perspectives about their: (1) use of the FDELK program and salient features that were most helpful to them (inputs), (2) benefits and challenges associated with participating in FDELK (outcomes), and (3) program participation experiences that were perceived to contribute to identified outcomes (processes). Using transcribed parent interview data collected from 21 FDELK families, texts pertaining to these three topics were thematically coded in NVivo. Using research and theory as a starting point and a guide throughout the analytic process, patterns of causal linkages between input>process>outcome themes were examined. Following analysis, a three-pathway FDELK theory of change model captured how program participation experiences contributed to a range of child-, parent-, and family-level outcomes. The findings point to the strengths and weaknesses of the design and implementation of FDELK during year 1. More broadly, the study contributes to our understanding of how and why integrated early childhood programs work for families, and furthers our understanding of how parents navigate early childhood services to meet the needs of their family. It also offers a novel methodology for generating theories of change and capturing parent engagement processes. Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed.
Examining Factors Associated with Child Care Utilization Patterns in a Canadian Urban Setting and Understanding the Association Between Child Care Ratios and Child Outcomes
Keywords: child care
child-staff ratios
early childhood education and care

This dissertation is comprised of three separate manuscripts, each focusing on a unique aspect of child care. Together, they examine both family and child characteristics that are associated with parental decisions regarding child care and provide a better understanding of the impact of child care on children. The first two studies use a longitudinal sibling study consisting of 716 children within 358 families to investigate between- and within-family variables that are associated with child care use, stability, and type. A specific focus is on ‘going beyond’ typical demographic variables by including two aspects of the psychosocial family environment (i.e., maternal depression and marital conflict). Associations between stability of care and type of setting and children’s language and social-emotional behaviour are also explored. The third paper focuses exclusively on studying the effects of child-staff ratios on child development by conducting a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis of published research. This dissertation provides badly needed utilization data for Canada. It also highlights important differences in child care utilization patterns between the current Canadian sample and U.S. data and therefore calls into question the appropriateness of generalizing U.S. findings to the Canadian context. Inferential results indicate that child care use, stability, and type are associated with characteristics of the family and thus highlight inequalities that may exist between Canadian families in accessing child care. Controlling for these family characteristics, a higher frequency of marital conflict within the home was associated with greater odds of having attended child care. Finally, there was very little evidence of child care effects on children’s functioning across the three manuscripts. Discussion centers on the importance of identifying child care selection factors and the complexity of identifying child care effects given methodological and conceptual limitations inherent in the child care literature.
A Study of Protoplanetary Disk Dynamics using Accelerated Hydrodynamics Simulations on Graphics Processing Units
Keywords: astrophysics
dynamics
hydrodynamics
numerical simulation
planet
protoplanetary disk

This thesis focuses on the dynamical interaction between the gaseous component of a protoplanetary disk and the solid bodies within. We identify and characterize new dynamical behaviors of solid bodies ranging from micron-size dust grains to Jupiter-size planets, using hydrodynamics simulations accelerated by graphics processing units (GPUs). Chapter 1 outlines the relevant physics and explains our research motivation. Chapter 2 gives a detail description of our GPU hydrodynamics code PEnGUIn. Our benchmark shows that, running on a GTX-Titan graphics card, PEnGUIn can update 25 million grid cells per second in a three-dimensional (3D) calculation. Chapter 3 combines PEnGUIn simulations and semi-analytic calculations to demonstrate the existence of a new disk instability, called the irradiation instability. We find that when the star exerts a sufficiently strong radiation pressure, the interplay between dust grains, gas, and radiation is unstable to linear perturbations, and, in extreme cases, can result in ``clumping'', local surface density enhancements beyond 10 times the initial value. In Chapter 4 we consider disk gaps opened by giant planets. We determine how the average surface density inside the gap, Sigma_gap, depends on planet-to-star mass ratio q, Shakura-Sunyaev viscosity parameter alpha, and disk height-to-radius aspect ratio h/r. We derive an analytical scaling that predicts Sigma_gap~q^-2 alpha^1 (h/r)^5, and show that it compares well to results determined numerically with both PEnGUIn and ZEUS90, a modified version of the publicly available code ZEUS. In the end, we turn our attention to Earth-size planets which exchange mass and angular momentum with the disk without significantly modifying the local disk structure. Most work done on this topic has been under the assumption of an infinitely thin 2D disk, and so a precise description in 3D has been lacking. 3D simulations with PEnGUIn described in Chapter 5 reveal that vertical motion plays an important role in the 3D flow field around an embedded planet, and has a direct impact on both planet accretion and migration. In particular, the size of the planet's atmosphere is much smaller than anticipated, and the corotation torque on the planet deviates significantly from 2D predictions.
A Spatio-temporal Phylogenetic Approach to Community Ecology
Keywords: angiosperms
coexistence
community assembly
community phylogenetics
plant diversity
spatial scale

Ecologists seek to explain the causes and consequences of species diversity patterns through the interactions of species with each other and their shared environment. Species diversity is however inherently complex because various processes influence species at different spatial and temporal scales. To examine the contribution of both evolutionary and ecological processes, ecologists often measure the phylogenetic relationships between interacting species. However since various processes drive species assembly at different scales, phylogenetic relationships vary with spatial and phylogenetic scale. In my thesis, I address how phylogenetic relationships at different spatial and temporal scales can inform both the ecological and evolutionary processes which affect assembly patterns. For montane plant communities in Colorado, I show that different spatial and phylogenetic scales produce different phylogenetic patterns for the trait, "elevational range size". From my findings, I caution against the use of a single spatial or phylogenetic scale, as it may lead to different conclusions about the data. For angiosperms in a plant community in Toronto, I show that species trait and phylogenetic relationships are spatially-dependent within the community level. For my system, multiple processes likely co-occur within the community and influence species assembly patterns at different spatial scales. I find evidence of competitive interactions at small spatial scales, which then transitions to environmental filtering at broad spatial scales. Therefore studies which select communities at a fixed spatial size are biased toward observing certain patterns and may subsequently overlook spatially-dependent processes. Finally, for angiosperm plant communities in Colorado, I demonstrate how phylogenetic relationships within communities can provide insights on macroevolutionary events. I find patterns consistent with niche conservatism and adaptive radiation, where the environmental gradient associated more with turnover of recently diverged lineages than with ancestral lineages.
Pitch Processing Experience: Comparison of Musicians and Tone-language Speakers on Measures Auditory Processing and Executive Function
Keywords: auditory
EEG
music
perception
pitch
tone language

Psychophysiological evidence supports an association between music and speech such that experience in one domain is related to processing in the other. Musicianship has been associated with benefits to auditory processing and executive function. It is unclear, however, whether pitch processing experience in nonmusical contexts, namely speaking a tone language, has comparable associations with auditory processing and executive function. The present investigation aimed to clarify this association, with the overarching goal of better understanding how two different types of pitch processing are linked to perceptual and cognitive processing. If pitch-processing experience gained via musicianship or tone-language use shapes perceptual and cognitive processes in similar ways, then musicians and tone-language speakers (nonmusicians) should outperform controls without music training or tone-language experience. This hypothesis was tested in a series of experiments that measured behavioural and neural responses of tone-language speakers and musicians on tasks of perception (pitch discrimination, pitch encoding, i.e., representation of pitch-relevant information) and cognition (pitch memory, visual working memory). Collectively, the findings reveal that benefits to auditory processing are more closely associated with music training than with tone-language use. When musicians and tone-language speakers performed comparably on behavioural tasks, this occurred at the perceptual level (i.e., sound discrimination). Differential responsiveness of tone-language speakers or musicians was evident at the neural level (i.e., event-related potentials, brain-signal variability). Neither musicianship nor speaking a tone language was associated with a benefit to visual working memory. These results are discussed in relation to the respective contributions of nature and nurture to auditory processing and visual working memory in musicians and tone-language speakers.
Investigation of the Ribosome Independent mRNA Localization to the Endoplasmic Reticulum
Keywords: Endoplasmic Reticulum
mRNA Localization
Tail Anchored Proteins

Localization of mRNA to various subcellular compartments is a widespread phenomenon in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. One group of mRNAs that exhibit this organelle specific localization are mRNAs encoding secreted, organellar and membrane-bound proteins. These mRNAs are localized on the surface of the plasma membrane in prokaryotes and on the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in eukaryotes. Previously, these mRNAs were thought to target and later be maintained on the surface of the ER through information that is present in the encoded polypeptide. However, here I provide direct visual evidence that a subset of these mRNAs can be targeted and also later maintained on the ER independently of translation. I also identified an mRNA receptor on the ER, p180, which anchors mRNAs on the ER via a highly positively charged lysine-rich region. Subsequently I identified a region in the placental alkaline phosphatase (ALPP) mRNA, the region that encodes the transmembrane domain (TMD), that is required and sufficient to anchor mRNAs to the ER in a p180-dependent manner. Finally, I demonstrate that certain mRNAs encoding tailed anchored (TA) proteins are also anchored to the ER in a translation-independent manner. Overall my work provides the first mechanistic insight into RNA-mediated targeting of mRNAs to the ER, suggesting a more complex role for the ER in the post-transcriptional control of genes encoding secretory proteins.
Targeting and Specificity of RNA-binding Proteins
Keywords: Computational biology
RNA-binding proteins
RNA secondary structure
Stem-loop binding protein

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are critical parts of the gene regulatory framework, but the vast majority have unknown specificity for RNA. In this thesis I undertook three projects aimed at identifying the determinants of RNA specificity. First, I describe the creation of a database of experimental RNA-binding data that catalogues metazoan RBPs and published measurements of RNA binding. This catalogue allowed me to identify that the RNA-binding specificity of only a small fraction of RBPs was known. In collaboration with other members of the Hughes and Morris labs, I employed RNAcompete, an in vitro microarray-based method for determining the sequence specificity of RBPs, to over 200 eukaryotic RBPs. In order to determine the optimal modelling framework, I performed a systematic comparison of motif-finding methods on the RNAcompete data. The resulting motifs capture a wide range of RNA-binding specificities and allow for the inference of motifs for 20% of metazoan RBPs. In the last data chapter I describe a methodology, termed RNAcompete-S, that I developed for experimentally testing and computationally identifying the sequence and secondary structure preferences of RNA-binding proteins. Applying this method to a panel of RBPs with diverse RNA-binding domains and strategies allowed me to identify the known sequence and structural specificities of these proteins. Specifically, I was able to identify de novo an 18-nt motif matching the conserved SLBP binding site. I also developed an extension of the position weight matrix (PWM) motif model called sequence-structure motifs (SSMs), which allow both visualization of sequence and structural preferences in a way similar to standard sequence logos, and allow scanning of genomic and mRNA sequences. The work described here represents a small step toward understanding of protein specificity for RNA sequences and structures. Further refinements of the methods and models I present are described in the concluding chapter. The RNA-binding specificities discovered, and the experimental and computational methods developed, should help identify binding sites in targets of RBPs to understand their function in living cells.
Ritual, Materiality and Memory in an Iroquoian VIllage
Keywords: experimental archaeology
Huron-Wendat
Iroquoian
materiality
petrography
shamanism

This study has sought to demonstrate that analyses of Iroquoian ceramics that focus on technological practices can provide new insights into Iroquoian materiality and ritual. Implicit in this approach is the notion that many objects contain within them a record of human decisions that articulate with social practices. I have examined four types of ceramic objects typically recovered from Ontario Iroquoian villages: smoking pipes, pots, juvenile pots, and fired clay lumps. Through the application of novel methods of ceramic petrography to the objects recovered from Holly, an early 14th century AD Iroquoian village, I documented the technological choices made during Iroquoian engagement with ceramic objects throughout their biographies, and related them to social practices using contextual and spatial data. When viewed as a whole, the evidence presented suggests that the ceramic objects at Holly were made in several overlapping but distinct communities of practice. In particular, pottery vessels were made by a smaller group of experienced craftspeople, using a restricted palette of materials and techniques. Smoking pipes, however, were made by larger numbers of people of differing skill levels, using a wider range of materials. The patterned use of dark-coloured rock temper in smoking pipes and pottery embodied the intentionality of their creators or users and served as a symbolic referent to Iroquoian cosmological beliefs. The deliberate fragmentation and preferential deposition of dark-tempered smoking pipes in the structured deposits of de-commissioned sweat lodges served as symbolic referents to two types of memories: both at the object level, where dark-tempered pipes were deliberately broken, exposing their black temper that had been hidden since manufacture, thereby revealing (or perhaps confirming) their symbolically informed production history; and in the built environment of a longhouse, where deposition in a socially sanctioned space might have served to create appropriate memories of the transactions taking place that were associated with darkness, smoking, and the spirit-world. In this way, material qualities precipitated remembrance. For its occupants, the space inside an Iroquoian longhouse was filled with invisible deposits associated with objects, materials, and memories that reflected and reified Iroquoian cosmologies, and influenced quotidian social practices.
Associative Learning as a Source of Visual Bias
Keywords: Attention
Bias
Cueing
Memory

The visual system does not encounter isolated visual features, but sets of features that bind together and constitute complex perceptual events. Visual features are also typically accompanied by the observer's own movements, and it is believed that these movements are also included in the representation of events. In the present thesis, argue that the units of attentional selection are such multi-featured events. This means that learning the regularities in the relation among features can guide visual attention toward multiple features that belong to the selected event. Through a series of experiments, I demonstrate how visual bias for colour is influenced by the selection associated features, such as a shape or a manual movement. In all instances, I argue, selecting or inhibiting one feature impacts the treatment of the associated colour feature. In short, feature association can extend the impact of feature-based attention across multiple dimensions, which supports the idea that events, not features, are units of attentional selection.
ESL Education for Social Transformation
Keywords: Activism
Education
ESL
Social Change
Social Transformation

If one considers the colonial history of TESL, its ties to imperialism, and capitalism’s need for a cheap labour force which instigates movement of both people and corporations, one will see that TESL is a very social and political activity. Furthermore, since our current social organization and economic model are guided by capitalist social relations, it is crucial to place teaching ESL within these relations in order to shed light on its role in capitalism’s reproduction. In this study, I focus on the learner as a social being and investigate the potential of English language learning as a social and political act for the purpose of social change. My main research question is: What is English language learning from the perspective of the learner who is motivated by pursuing social transformation? What would an ESL class aimed at social change look like from the perspective of the learners and teachers of this study and a dialectical theoretical framework? To what degree are ESL teachers and institutions aware or accommodating to these learners’ needs? To pursue these questions, I have conducted a qualitative research study to explore the barriers and successes that ESL teachers attempting to do critical work have had. I have also interviewed ESL learners who are motivated by their desire to be politically and socially active in order to gain insight about their English language learning and their ESL classes. My theoretical conceptualization has allowed me to see how our actions as ESL teachers and theorists at times reproduce capitalist social relations and at other times challenges and disrupts them. It is my hope that this study will generate theory in the field of language education that helps other language learners and educators to politicize, decolonize, and radicalize the field of ESL.