VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Reciprocal Partnership: An Intervention to Enhance Mathematics Self-efficacy and Achievement of First and Second Semester College Students
Keywords: Collaborative Learning
Mathematics Intervention Program
Mathematics Self-efficacy
Reciprocal Peer Tutoring
Secondary-tertiary Transition
Supplemental Instruction

Community colleges are calling to support students who are at risk of restricting their career options because they do not have the mathematical groundings to pursue math-related careers. In response, I conceptualize a mathematics intervention program namely, Reciprocal Partnership, which is defined as the collaboration of student dyads to engage in reciprocal learning and teaching under the influence of constructive and collaborative environments that are structured by the Three Learning Situations framework. Reciprocal Partnership is proposed to enrich college students in their mathematical learning and to support their social development during their secondary-tertiary transition for mathematics knowledge and skills are strongly correlated with studentsâ college success and career aspiration. Therefrom, the purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of Reciprocal Partnership on the mathematics self-efficacy and achievement of first- and second-semester college students through a mixed methods approach. It also examines the structure of Reciprocal Partnership to inform the design of effective intervention programs for mathematical learning. Data from final examination grade, and pre- and post-surveys were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics, and were used to cross-validate findings from semi-structured interviews. Quantitative results reveal significant effect of Reciprocal Partnership on the mathematics self-efficacy of only students in the first semester, and no significant effect on the mathematics achievement of both students in the first and second semester. However, qualitative results identify a number of benefits for both groups of students such as gains in mathematical knowledge and skill, confidence, motivation, social connection, and comfort. Results from this study suggest the emphasis of mathematics intervention programs on all three learning situations (exploratory, explanatory, and extensional) over only the explanatory situation to maximize learning outcomes.
An Aesthetic of Relationality: Exploring the Intersection of Embodiment, Imagination and Foolishness in Research-informed Theatre
Keywords: arts-based research
embodiment
imagination
qualitative research
research-informed theatre

Despite that qualitative health researchers cite the embodied nature of performance as a way to move beyond the constraints of the written word and draw multiple perspectives into their research practices, much research-informed theatre is informed by an â aesthetic of objectivityâ (Denzin, 2003, p. 73). Researchers taking up this perspective assume a linear trajectory between research findings and performed representation, overlooking the multiple embodied perspectives that are implicated in the development of research-informed theatre. To challenge this assumption I explore how artist-researchers draw on their own embodiment and imagination as ways to understand the research findings, how they conceptualize the intended audience, and how those understandings shape the creative process of the research-informed play. Using the case study of Cracked: new light on dementia (I am the playwright and director) I focus my analysis on three concepts: embodiment (the interrelationship between body and social/cultural/historical spaces), imagination (extending beyond oneâ s own experience to relate to and envision that of another person) and foolishness (engaging bravely and vulnerably with a willingness to fail). Throughout their work artist-researchers playfully extend from their own embodiment towards the experiences of other people using a multiplicity of actions, such as word choice/language, movement, spacing and timing. Central to this playful extending is a disruption of their own embodiment and surrounding social/cultural/historical spaces that itself requires a willingness to fail. Audience members are assumed to participate in the performance and the play is created to support their playful extending with the potential that they might also become foolishly disrupted. Artist-researchers draw on the artistic form of theatre to aesthetically explore ideas, concepts and experiences, inviting other people to explore with them. The aesthetic space created by the ways artist-researchers playfully extend and foolishly/inventively disrupt is called an aesthetic of relationality. An aesthetic of relationality provides multiple people with a unique space to aesthetically explore the interrelationship between their own bodily horizons and surrounding social/cultural/historical spaces as well as a planning and evaluative frame for research-informed theatre.
Femtosecond Laser Inscription of Optical Circuits in the Cladding of Optical Fibers
Keywords: Cladding photonics
Femtosecond laser
Glass waveguides
Laser materials processing
Optical Fiber
Ultrafast laser

The aim of this dissertation was to address the question of whether the cladding of single-mode fibers (SMFs) could be modified to enable optical fibers to serve as a more integrated, highly functional platform for optical circuit devices that can efficiently interconnect with the pre-existing fiber core waveguide. The approach adopted in this dissertation was to employ femtosecond laser direct writing (FLDW), an inherently 3D fabrication technique that harnesses non-linear laser-material interactions to modify the fused silica fiber cladding. A fiber mounting and alignment technique was developed along with oil-immersion focusing to address the strong aberrations caused by the cylindrical fiber shape. The development of real-time device monitoring during the FLDW was instrumental to overcome the acute coupling sensitivity to laser alignment errors of Âą1 Îźm positional uncertainty, and thereby opened a new practical direction for the precise fabrication of optical devices inside optical fibers. These powerful and flexible laser fabrication and characterization techniques were successfully employed to optimize optical waveguiding devices positioned within the core and cladding of optical fibers. X-, S-Bend, and directional couplers were developed to enable efficient coupling between the laser-formed cladding devices and the pre-existing core waveguide, enabling up to 62% power transfer over bandwidths up to 300 nm at telecommunication wavelengths. Precise alignment of femtosecond laser modification tracks were positioned inside or near the core waveguide of SMFs was further shown to enable a flexible reshaping of the optical properties to create multimode guiding sections arbitrarily along the fiber length. This core waveguide modification facilitated the precise formation of multimode interferometers along the core waveguide to precisely tailor the modal profiles, and control the spectral and polarization response. In-fiber multimode interference (MMI) splitters and couplers were fabricated with coupling ratios from 2% to 50% over a broad 350 nm bandwidth across the telecommunication band. Laser-induced birefringence was harnessed to generate polarization dependent MMI devices for strong polarization filtering (24 dB isolation), or polarization selective taps with up to 50% tapping efficiency over a 25 nm bandwidth. This dissertation is therefore the first demonstration of femtosecond laser direct writing as a flexible and monolithic means of embedding and integrating highly functional optical circuit devices within the cladding of optical fibers that can interconnect efficiently with the pre-existing fiber core waveguide. These developments represent a significant technological advancement for creating new 3D photonic integrated microsystems within the cladding of optical fibers and underpins a new technological platform of fiber cladding photonics.
Constitutions of Nature by Teacher Practice and Discourse in Ontario Grade 9 and 10 Academic Science
Keywords: critical disourse analysis
discourse
institutional ethnography
nature
school science
teacher practice

This thesis presents an ethnographic study, based broadly on principles and methods of institutional ethnography, on the constitution of nature by nine Ontario Grade 9 and 10 Academic Science teachers. The intent of this methodological approach is to examine how the daily practice of participants works toward constituting nature in specific ways that are coordinated by the institution (Ontario public school and/or school science). Critical Discourse Analysis and general inductive analysis were performed on interview transcripts, texts related to teaching science selected by participants, and policy documents (i.e. curriculum; assessment policy) that coordinate science teacher practice. Findings indicate specific, dominant, and relatively uniform ontological and epistemological constitutions of nature. Nature was frequently constituted as a remote object, distant from and different than students studying it. More complex representations included constituting nature as a model, machine, or mathematical algorithm. Epistemological constitutions of nature were enacted through practices that engaged students in manipulating nature; controlling nature, and dominating nature. Relatively few practices that allow students to construct different constitutions of nature than those prioritized by the institution were observed. Dominant constitutions generally assume nature is simply the material to study, from which scientific knowledge can be obtained, with little ethical or moral consideration about nature itself, or how these constitutions produce discourse and relationships that may be detrimental to nature. Dominant constitutions of nature represent a type of objective knowledge that is prioritized, and made accessible to students, through science activities that attain a position of privilege in local science teacher cultures. The activities that allow students to attain the requisite knowledge of nature are collected, collated, and shared among existing science teachers. Activities are adapted to meet the knowledge requirements of the curriculum, which is institutionally coordinated by a system of management, based on accountability and performance. Thus, teachers come to see teaching practice that â worksâ as contained in those science activities that engage students in learning nature as a specific representation (model/machine) or through science methods that control students learning so that they arrive at the correct knowledge. This allows teachers to assess and evaluate studentsâ acquisition of the institutionally valued knowledge of nature. This system of coordination is sustained through discourse that enables teaching practices that aligns with institutional priorities of measuring performance, while at the same time, limiting teachers from being able to conceive of other teaching practices that might enable different constitutions of nature.
Robotic Manipulation and Characterization of Cells for Drug Screen and Clinical IVF Applications
Keywords: Gap Junction
Microinjection
Micro Robotics
Robotic Cell Manipulation
Sperm Tracking
Vitrification

Heterogeneity is the hallmark of cell biology. Robotic system and automated methods are required for characterization and manipulation of a large number of single cells for many important applications, such as characterizing cell-cell communication for screening drug effects, processing oocytes or embryos for cryopreservation, and analyzing sperm locomotion behavior for selection of a high-quality sperm for in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, current robotic characterization and manipulation systems have two major limitations in search-and-locating end-effector tips and determination of relative Z position between end-effector tips and single cells. This research has addressed these two limitations by developing an auto-locating end-effector tip method and two vision-based contact detection algorithms. By integrating the two new solutions, I have built two robotic system prototypes for microinjection of a large number of adherent cells and automatically processing oocytes or embryos for vitrification. The robotic microinjection system enabled automated gap junction measurement for repurposing antiarrhythmic drugs to identify optimal treatments for cardiac arrhythmias by assessing each drugâ s efficacy on rescuing/enhancing gap junctions. Robotic vitrification relieves human operators from tedious and difficult manual steps, eliminating operator errors and inconsistencies. It also offers unparalleled timing control based on real-time embryo volume monitoring. Automation enables the system to process multiple oocytes/embryos with high efficiency. In addition, automated methods were developed to quantitatively analyze sperm locomotion behaviors by tracking both sperm head and tail. Experimental results on automated sperm analysis revealed a significant correlation between sperm head velocity and tail beating amplitude. By combining automated sperm motility analysis with DNA assessment technique, this research offers a new solution for identifying single sperms of high quality for IVF applications. In the end, this research also reviewed future research directions in microsystems and nanoengineering for intracellular measurement and manipulations and discussed the promising research for the intracellular study.
Alexander Type Invariants of Tangles, Skew Howe Duality for Crystals and The Cactus Group
Keywords: Knot theory
Representation theory

This thesis consists of two parts, the first part is in the setting of algebraic knot theory while the second studies ideas in representation theory. In the first part of this work, we study generalizations of a classical link invariant--the multivariable Alexander polynomial--to tangles. The starting point is Archibald's tMVA invariant for virtual tangles which lives in the setting of circuit algebras. Using the Hodge star map and restricting to tangles without closed components, we define a reduction of the tMVA to an invariant (rMVA) which is valued in matrices with entries equal to certain Laurent polynomials. We show the rMVA has the structure of a metamonoid morphism and is further equivalent to a tangle invariant defined by Bar-Natan. This invariant also reduces to the Gassner representation on braids and has a partially defined trace operation for closing open strands of a tangle. In the second part, we look at crystals and the cactus group. The crystals for a finite-dimensional complex reductive Lie algebra g encode the structure of its representations, yet can also reveal surprising new structure of their own. In this work, we construct a group J g, the "cactus group'', using the Dynkin diagram of g and show that it acts combinatorially on any g-crystal via the Schützenberger involutions. Henriques and Kamnitzer studied Jn = Jg ln, and constructed an action of it on n-tensor products of g-crystals, for any g as above. We discuss the crystal corresponding to the gln × glm-representation Λ N(Cn ⊗ Cm), derive skew Howe duality on the crystal level and show that the two cactus group actions agree in this setting. An application of this result is discussed in studying a family of maximal commutative subalgebras of the universal enveloping algebra, the shift of argument and Gaudin algebras, where an algebraically constructed monodromy action is expected to match that of the cactus group.
Interactive Techniques for High-level Spacetime Editing of Human Locomotion
Keywords: animated characters
computer animation
interaction
motion editing
motion path
performance interface

In recent years, computer animated characters have become commonplace, often appearing extremely lifelike in movies, television, and video games. Unfortunately, animating digital characters remains difficult and time-consuming, pursued mostly by dedicated professionals, because conventional animation methods require careful control and coordination of many different low-level parameters which affect the believability of a character's pose and timing. In this thesis, we present techniques to allow high-level control of motions for animated human characters, by interactively editing existing locomotive motions. These techniques prioritize interactivity by allowing the user to manipulate more general or high-level aspects of the motion, such as a motion path. These techniques also have low data and computation requirements, as they operate on a single input motion without expensive optimization or simulation, allowing for instant feedback. The foundation of this work is a novel path-based editing algorithm based on simple and well-established biomechanical and physical principles of motion. After user manipulation of a motion path, the poses of the character along the path are automatically adjusted to match the new path, and an automatic timewarping procedure adjusts the timing of the new motion depending on its context, in order to remain consistent with the original even after large changes. Our two performance techniques utilize familiar input methods to control the path-based editing algorithm in different ways. First, based on a study exploring how users can express motion using their hands, our "finger walking" technique allows control of motion editing by mimicking full-body motion on a touch-sensitive tabletop. A further study was conducted to test automatic identification of the motion type of the performance, and to evaluate user satisfaction with the generated motions. The second technique uses handheld manipulation of a mobile device, such as a tablet or smartphone, to mimic a motion through space. Using only the simple and standard motion sensors in these devices, we developed two gestural methods for editing motion, with both discrete, one-off gestures and continuous "steering wheel" style control of an ongoing motion. Overall, the techniques presented in this thesis demonstrate that fast and interactive editing of human locomotion is possible using meaningful high-level controls, without requiring large amounts of additional motion data or computation.
Morphological Evolution of the Feeding Mechanism in Stingrays
Keywords: Dietary Diversification
Feeding
Functional Morphology
Habitat Transition
Potamotrygonidae
Stingrays

Evolutionary transitions between ecosystems are rare, and yet in lineages that have made these transitions we observe drastic changes in their diversity and richness as they adapt to novel habitats and novel resources. The main goal of my dissertation is to examine how transitions among diets and habitats have molded the evolution of predator traits. To test hypotheses regarding how prey materials have shaped the evolution of predators, I examined predator feeding biomechanics using experimental methods and deep-time approaches. Using 3D printing, computational milling, and computed tomography scanning, I compared the biomechanical performance of jaw shape for durophagous stingrays which prey on mollusks with shells of drastically different material and structural properties. I found that all of these jaw morphologies were equally well-suited to crushing the entire breadth of prey mollusk diversity, establishing equifinality of anatomical form stemming from convergent feeding mechanics. Insectivory has evolved only once within modern sharks and rays, found within the enigmatic freshwater stingrays of South America. Using high-speed videography and computed tomography scanning I found that these freshwater stingrays use chewing motions of the jaws when feeding on prey, facilitated by a highly kinetic cranial skeleton, and that these motions are exaggerated for tougher prey like insects. Loose jaw joints, transverse jaw kinesis, passive tooth reorientation, and a hydrodynamic tongue allow freshwater potamotrygonid rays to chew in a manner similar to many mammals. I investigated how the evolution of novel feeding modes such as insectivory and molluscivory in these freshwater rays has altered the tempo of their evolution by generating a molecular phylogeny for the family and analyzing feeding trait adaptation across 40 million years of evolution. The evolution of molluscivores and insectivores in this stingray clade are relatively modern innovations, coincident with the changing nature of the Amazon basin and repeated colonization of new riverine habitats. These dietary strategies, in addition to piscivory, are representative of truly novel adaptive peaks and have contributed to shifts in the rate of both lineage and morphological evolution in these remarkable freshwater stingrays.
Management of Squeezing Ground Conditions in Hard Rock Mines
Keywords: Buckling
Rock reinforcement
Squeezing ground
Underground mining

Squeezing ground conditions can result in large scale deformation and instability of underground excavations in rock. In hard rock mines, squeezing ground conditions are often associated with the presence of dominant foliation and high stress with resulting deformation often exceeding the capacity of installed ground support. This can result in failure of ground support making the excavations non-operational. This thesis is a contribution to improved understanding of structurally defined squeezing mechanisms observed in underground hard rock mines. A comprehensive field campaign was undertaken in two mines where squeezing was a major ground control issue. This has allowed the development of a database comprised of 147 squeezing case studies. Reported information included drift configuration and orientation, deformation monitoring, rock mass characterization and the performance of ground support. The data were reviewed to identify the failure mechanisms and to quantify the influence of ground conditions, excavation orientation, and the performance of different support strategies. The distinct element method (DEM) was used to successfully reproduce the buckling mechanism resulting in squeezing and large deformations observed in mining drifts in the database. The developed methodology was implemented in 3D models and explicitly considered the role of foliation. Subsequently, a comprehensive strategy for explicitly modeling rock reinforcement using the DEM was developed and implemented in a series of 3D numerical models. The models were calibrated based on field testing of reinforcement and observations at the LaRonde Mine. They were used to investigate the impact of different reinforcement strategies and the time of installation of the support. The numerical results were in agreement with the field observations and demonstrated the practical implications of using yielding reinforcement elements. This was supported by field data where the use of yielding bolts reduced the drift convergence and rehabilitation. An analysis and interpretation of the field data and the numerical modelling investigations were used to provide tools for the assessment and mitigation of the anticipated deformation in squeezing ground. The developed strategies can be used to select optimal reinforcement options. The developed tools and procedures can be successfully used to manage large structurally controlled deformations in underground hard rock mines.