VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A Comparative Study of ELL and EL1 Narrative Competence During the Kindergarten Years

Stories are complex linguistic constructions through which we share our interpretations of the social world. The ability to comprehend and produce stories is referred to as narrative competence. Narrative competence is rooted in social interactions in the preschool years that foster a sense of story structure and familiarity with story language. It has been shown to play a critical role in reading and writing achievement in the elementary school years since the language of literacy, like the language of storytelling, is predominantly decontextualized. The mastery of decontextualized language poses a significant challenge for children who enter kindergarten with little previous exposure to the majority language. The storytelling ability of these children was the focus of the present study. The study's primary aim was to examine second language narrative competence across the kindergarten years by comparing the fictional stories generated by a cross-section of EL1 and ELL junior and senior kindergarten children in response to a wordless picture book from the point of view of macrostructure (story structure), microstructure (story language), and the use of evaluative language. Grade and gender differences across and within language groups were also considered. A second aim of the study was to examine the relationship between narrative competence and receptive vocabulary and between narrative competence and print-based emergent reading skill. Overall, the results suggested that the ELL children's narratives were comparable to those of their EL1 counterparts with respect to most measures of microstructure, and with respect to macrostructure and evaluative language use. The one clear language-based difference favouring the EL1 children related to morpho-syntactic quality. Age-related differences were obtained on most measures and the results suggested parallel developmental trajectories across language groups. Gender was found to play a more prominent role in ELL than EL1 narrative performance. Few aspects of narrative were predicted by receptive vocabulary, suggesting dissociation between word- and discourse-level skills, particularly among the ELL children. On the other hand, emergent literacy scores predicted several aspects of microstructure, macrostructure and evaluative language use. The study provides evidence that various aspects of narrative competence might be differentially related to vocabulary and emergent literacy skills in ELL and EL1 kindergarten children.

Keywords: narrative competence
English Language Learners
emergent literacy
vocabulary
story generation
Advisor: Pelletier, Janette
The Sequence and Function Relationship of Elastin: How Repetitive Sequences can Influence the Physical Properties of Elastin

Elastin is an essential extracellular protein that is a key component of elastic fibres, providing elasticity to cardiac, dermal, and arterial tissues. During the development of the human cardiovascular system, elastin self-assembles before being integrated into fibres, undergoing no significant turnover during the human lifetime. Abnormalities in elastin can adversely affect its self-assembly, and may lead to malformed elastic fibres. Due to the longevity required of these fibres, even minor abnormalities may have a large cumulative effect over the course of a lifetime, leading to late-onset vascular diseases. This thesis project has identified important, over-represented repetitive elements in elastin which are believed to be important for the self-assembly and elastomeric properties of elastin. Initial studies of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from the HapMap project and dbSNP resulted in a set of genetic variation sites in the elastin gene. Based on these studies, glycine to serine and lysine to arginine substitutions were introduced in elastin-like polypeptides. The self-assembly properties of the resulting elastin-like polypeptides were observed under microscope and measured using absorbance at 440nm. Assembled polypeptides were also cross-linked to form thin membranes whose mechanical and physical properties were measured and compared. These mutations resulted in markedly different behavior than wild-type elastin-like proteins, suggesting that mutations in the repetitive elements of the elastin sequence can lead to adverse changes in the physical and functional properties of the resulting protein. Using next-generation sequencing, patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms are being genotyped to discover polymorphisms which may adversely affect the self-assembly properties of elastin, providing a link between genetic variation in elastin and cardiovascular disease.

Keywords: Elastin
Bioinformatics
Low complexity sequence
Biomaterial
Advisor: Parkinson, John
Reading, Writing and Pedagogy: The Impact of Ontario Education Faculties' P/J Programs on Graduates' Knowledge and Ability to Teach

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of Ontario’s Primary/Junior teacher preparation programs on graduates’ knowledge and ability to apply what they know about literacy education. The research examined the content of the programs, the extent to which this content reflected evidence-based components of literacy instruction, and the degree of variability across programs. A range of strategies including self-reporting by graduates, interviews, and reviews of course materials (e.g., course outlines, course topic schedules, reading lists) were used to examine the breadth and depth of what was covered in the required literacy courses. A proportional sample of 210 graduates representing all nine English-speaking faculties of education in Ontario completed surveys and submitted course materials. Twenty-nine of these also participated in in-depth interviews. Interviewees were asked to reflect upon their understanding and ability to apply what they had learned, as well as to offer their impressions of their programs and to discuss their personal feelings of preparedness to teach literacy. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to describe and summarize findings. Process/Outcome Matrices revealed various themes. In summary, faculty literacy programs varied greatly with respect to both length and content. Course materials and descriptions from graduates also suggested that variability across sections within programs was as great as that across programs. Although courses covered theories of child development they generally lacked a theoretical framework for literacy instruction. Moreover, many respondents reported learning little about how to teach reading and writing. Such responses were more prevalent in certain programs. Many graduates believed that explicit instruction is a necessary component of “good” literacy teaching, however, most graduates were not able to demonstrate an understanding of the complexities of language and literacy, and many could not describe how to implement effective literacy instruction, or to address the diverse needs of students. Recommendations include: lengthening the required faculty literacy courses in order to provide more breadth and depth of coverage; refining the manner in which instruction in literacy education is provided at faculties; increasing the vigilance with which governing bodies oversee faculty literacy course content; and improving practicum placement experiences.

Keywords: elementary
literacy
education
preservice
faculty
reading
writing
teaching
pedagogy
content
Advisor: Willows, Dale
Disruption of Giant Molecular Clouds by Massive Star Clusters

The lifetime of a Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC) and the total mass of stars that form within it are crucial to the understanding of star formation rates across a whole galaxy. In particular, the stars within a GMC may dictate its disruption and the quenching of further star formation. Indeed, observations show that the Milky Way contains GMCs with extensive expanding bubbles while the most massive stars are still alive. Simulating entire GMCs is challenging, due to the large variety of physics that needs to be included, and the computational power required to accurately simulate a GMC over tens of millions of years. Using the radiative-magneto-hydrodynamic code Enzo, I have run many simulations of GMCs. I obtain robust results for the fraction of gas converted into stars and the lifetimes of the GMCs: (A) In simulations with no stellar outputs (or ``feedback''), clusters form at a rate of 30% of GMC mass per free fall time; the GMCs were not disrupted but contained forming stars. (B) Including ionization gas pressure or radiation pressure into the simulations, both separately and together, the star formation was quenched at between 5% and 21% of the original GMC mass. The clouds were fully disrupted within two dynamical times after the first cluster formed. The radiation pressure contributed the most to the disruption of the GMC and fully quenched star formation even without ionization. (C) Simulations that included supernovae showed that they are not dynamically important to GMC disruption and have only minor effects on subsequent star formation. (D) The inclusion of a few micro Gauss magnetic field across the cloud slightly reduced the star formation rate but accelerated GMC disruption by reducing bubble shell disruption and leaking. These simulations show that new born stars quench further star formation and completely disrupt the parent GMC. The low star formation rate and the short lifetimes of GMCs shown here can explain the low star formation rate across the whole galaxy.

Keywords: Star formation
Interstellar Medium
Advisor: Murray, Norman
Development and Testing of a Nurse Practitioner Secondary Prevention Intervention for Patients after Acute Myocardial Infarction

Patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) are at high risk for reinfarction and death, with the highest rate of death and reinfarction occurring within 30 days of AMI. Therapies that have been shown to reduce these risks (secondary prevention) continue to be underutilized. Nurse practitioners are well positioned to provide secondary prevention during and following hospitalization. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effects of an NP delivered secondary prevention intervention. The specific objectives were: 1) to describe NP activities when delivering the secondary prevention intervention; 2) to evaluate the effect of the NP intervention on the rate of implementation of evidence-based secondary prevention treatment strategies and the patients’ achievement of secondary prevention target goals; and, 3) to examine the relationship between the NP activities delivering the intervention and secondary prevention goal achievement by patients. A prospective cohort design was used, in which patients’ achievement of target goals were compared between patients who received secondary prevention care from an NP and those who received usual care. The sample of convenience consisted of 65 patients with AMI. Data on practice activities and implementation of secondary prevention by the NP were collected before discharge from hospital and one week, two weeks, six weeks and 3 months after discharge. Data on patients’ achievement of goals were obtained before discharge from hospital and 3 months after discharge from both groups. This study’s results provide preliminary evidence that an NP delivered secondary prevention intervention, beginning prior to discharge and continuing for three months post myocardial infarction, significantly improves the implementation and uptake of guideline based secondary prevention treatments and risk factor reduction strategies. NP-led interventions such as this warrant replication. The unique contribution of the NP with this patient population is the training and skills needed to deliver all aspects of secondary prevention, including pharmacological and nonpharmacological therapies, without the immediate availability of a physician.

Keywords: secondary prevention
acute myocardial infarction
nurse practitioner
cardiac prevention
cardiac rehabilitation
adherence
quality improvement
Advisor: Sidani, Souraya
Why Teachers Trust School Leaders

Research indicates trust in schools significantly relates to student achievement and trust in school leaders significantly relates to trust in schools. This study expands on the existing research by identifying behaviours principals display and teachers identify that correspond to antecedent conditions of trust, as identified in the research literature. Principalunderstandings are compared to teacher articulated thoughts in order to identify if shared understandings and interpretations of events are a component of trust in schools. Seventeen survey questions about trust were asked in 138 schools. Three high trust and three low trust schools were identified via deviation from the grand mean. Interview data related to a broad spectrum of school structures and daily events was gathered at the six identified schools from a randomly selected group of teachers and each school’s principal. The interview data was coded using antecedent conditions of trust as the organizational units for analysis. Supporting previous research, this thesis finds teacher data identified the antecedent conditions that are described most frequently by teachers as being Competence, Consistency and Reliability,Openness and Respect. Principal data identified the antecedent conditions of trust as being similar, not identical. There are relevant differences described in elements within the antecedents between teachers and school leaders. Overall, the results confirm the findings of Bryk and Schneider and Tschannen-Moran, while adding detail to the understanding of what matters in trust when in-school educators reflect on issues of organizational life.

Keywords: trust
leadership
teachers
leaders
Advisor: Leithwood, Kenneth
Effects of Silicon Variation on Nano-scale Solid-state Memories

This thesis explores means of mitigating the effects of silicon variation on SRAM by means of circuit techniques. This thesis also explores novel read and write techniques for MRAM that support a non-destructive read operation and power-saving write operations in the face of device and silicon variation. First, this thesis proposes the use of a cross-coupled bit line BL biasing scheme that retains an SRAM's fast access speed while reducing the read-access failures in the presence of Vt variation, without excessively increasing the SRAM cell size. It is shown, by extensive Monte-Carlo simulations using 22-nm predictive CMOS models, that the proposed scheme reduces the cell area by 6.5% compared to the conventional BL biasing schemes also analyzed. Second, this thesis proposes a 10T SRAM cell that supports lower voltage operation, achieves lower static power dissipation, and is similar in area to the 6T SRAM cell when the 3-sigma variation of Vt exceeds 40% of nominal Vt. The 10T cell achieves improved write functionality, in comparison to the 6T cell, by preemptively turning off the cell's power supply to the side of the cell that is being pulled low, while not disturbing any unselected cells. Write access time is not affected, as the positive-feedback required to quickly regenerate CMOS voltage levels remains intact. Finally, this thesis proposes a negative-resistance read scheme and write scheme for spin-torque-transfer (STT) MRAM. A negative resistance shunting an STT-MRAM cell guarantees a non-destructive read operation, and saves power during write operations compared with a conventional scheme. Measurements confirm an 7ns non-destructive read access time without the use of a typical sense amplifier and an average write power savings of 10.5% for a 16Kb STT-MRAM fabricated in 0.13um CMOS using a CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB MTJ.

Keywords: SRAM
MRAM
STT-MRAM
Silicon Variation
Advisor: Sheikholeslami, Ali
Essays on Banking, Institutions, and Macroeconomic Activity

This thesis investigates the role of institutions in shaping macroeconomic phenomena. The first two chapters focus on financial institutions, formalizing interactions between information and competition in frictional credit markets and providing novel predictions for output and efficiency. The third chapter then presents a new approach for empirically assessing the relationship between political institutions and growth. In Chapter 1, I construct a credit-based model of production to analyze how learning through lending relationships affects the monetary transmission mechanism. I examine how monetary policy changes the incentives of borrowers and lenders to engage in relationship lending and how these changes then shape the response of aggregate output. A central finding is that relationship lending induces a smoother steady state output profile and a less volatile response to certain monetary shocks. This result provides a theoretical basis for cross-country transmission differences via a relationship lending channel. In Chapter 2, I investigate financial sector inefficiency when banks divide resources between attracting clients and learning about them via screening. I show that banks do not fully internalize the effects that their allocation decisions have on the beliefs and outside options of other lenders. These externalities result in an inefficiently high amount of low-quality credit and thus motivate a tax on activities designed to attract rather than screen borrowers. Steady state results suggest that production exhibits a hump-shaped response to increases in this tax and the model's dynamics indicate that a mild tax can also attenuate business cycle fluctuations. Chapter 3 then turns to the interaction between political institutions and economic outcomes. In collaboration with Gordon Anderson, I use a notion of distributional dominance to evaluate intertemporal dependence between polity and growth without hindrance from the mix of discrete and continuous variables in our data set. We also use this notion to measure the joint contribution of polity and growth to wellbeing. The results support the view that institutions promote growth more than growth promotes institutions. They also suggest that polity has dominated growth in determining the evolution of wellbeing over the past few decades.

Keywords: Banking
Institutions
Macroeconomics
Advisor: Shi, Shouyong
Identification and Characterization of Polysaccharide Loci Governing Survival Phenotypes in Vibrio vulnificus

Vibrio vulnificus is an opportunistic human and animal pathogen that is predominantly found in estuarine waters. In aquatic ecosystems, it colonizes filter-feeders, such as oysters, and has been found to form biofilms on the surface of various marine organisms, including plankton, algae, fish, eels, and crustaceans. The bacterium can spontaneously develop a rugose phenotype, which is associated with the production of polysaccharide(s) that impart a raised, wrinkled appearance to cells, copious biofilm formation, and increased stress resistance. Biofilm and rugose colony development, along with pellicle and aggregate formation, are believed to be crucial for the environmental survival and persistence of V. vulnificus. As the biosynthesis of polysaccharide(s) is a key feature linking these physiological processes, the main objectives of this study were to identify polysaccharide loci contributing to survival phenotypes in V. vulnificus and to gain insight into the regulation of these loci. Two polysaccharide loci (brp and rbd) were found to contribute to biofilm formation. The brp locus is regulated by the second messenger c-di-GMP and by at least two transcriptional regulators BrpR and BrpT. Lesions in glycosyltransferases in the locus or in either of the regulators abated the inducing effects of c-di-GMP on biofilm formation. The rbd locus is regulated not by c-di-GMP, but instead by a response regulator (RbdG) belonging to the TCRS family, which is encoded within the locus. The biofilms associated with the expression of the brp and rbd polysaccharides were structurally unique and simultaneous expression of both loci dramatically enhanced pellicle formation. Each locus also provides unique survival characteristics; the development of rugosity and stress resistance could be attributed to brp expression whereas rbd expression augmented aggregate formation. The ability of V. vulnificus to differentially regulate expression of the brp and rbd polysaccharides may allow the bacterium to “fine tune” its biofilm lifestyle to maximally benefit from the characteristics associated with each locus.

Keywords: biofilms
Vibrio
polysaccharides
bacterial genetics
Advisor: Rowe-Magnus, Dean
Measurement of the Top Quark Pair Production Cross Section and an in-situ B-tagging efficiency Calibration with ATLAS in pp Collisions at √s = 7 TeV in Dilepton Final States

We present a measurement of the top anti-top quark (ttbar)production cross section in the dilepton final states from proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy at 7 TeV at the LHC. A b-tagging algorithm based on tracks displaced from the event interaction vertex is applied to identify bottom quark jets from top quark decay and reject background events. Given the relatively pure sample of bottom quark jets in ttbar dilepton final states, a new technique to measure in-situ the b-tagging efficiency is introduced that uses the distribution of the number of observed b-tagged jets. We present results with data collected at the ATLAS detector in 2010 with an integrated luminosity of 35 pb-1. The measured ttbar cross section is 176 +22/-21 (stat.) ± 20 (syst.) ± 6 (lum.) pb in the dilepton channel. We will also discuss the future prospects of this measurement.

Keywords: top quark
b-tagging
LHC
ATLAS
Advisor: Sinervo, Pekka
New insight into Acyclovir Renal Handling and Nephrotoxicity

Drug – induced nephrotoxicity is a serious adverse reaction that can have deleterious effects on a patient’s health and well-being. Acyclovir is an example of such an agent that causes the aforesaid effects. The drug induces severe nephrotoxicity in patients. The etiology of acyclovir – induced nephrotoxicity has not been fully elucidated. The overall objective of this thesis is to gain new insight into the pathogenesis of acyclovir – induced nephrotoxicity. Cytotoxicity studies showed that acyclovir induced human renal proximal tubular (HK-2) cell death, in vitro, and that the degree of this toxicity was significantly reduced by co-exposure to 4-methylpyrazole. The results suggest that acyclovir induces direct insult to human renal proximal tubular cells and the toxicity may be caused by the parent drug’s noxious acyclovir aldehyde metabolite. Transepithelial transport studies illustrated that acyclovir does not inhibit the transport of creatinine across porcine renal proximal tubular (LLC-PK1) or HK-2 cell monolayers. The results suggest that acyclovir does not inhibit the tubular secretion of creatinine in vitro, and possibly, in vivo, as well. Therefore, the abrupt, pronounced and transient elevations in the levels of plasma creatinine observed in patients may be solely and genuinely due to reduced GFR as a result of acyclovir – induced nephrotoxicity, and not to a tubular interaction between creatinine and acyclovir. Employing human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293) containing the full-length human ABCG2 gene encoding the wildtype ABCG2 amino acid sequence; cell accumulation studies showed that in the presence of the human breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP) inhibitor, fumitremorgin C (FTC), there was significant intracellular accumulation of acyclovir. The results suggest that acyclovir is a substrate for the efflux transporter and bears several potential implications with respect to the renal transport mechanisms and pathogenesis of the direct tubular damage induced by the drug. Synthesizing all the data, the results contribute to a better understanding of the pathogenesis of acyclovir – induced nephrotoxicity. Moreover, the research highlights the need for future studies that will aid in further elucidation of the underlying cell and molecular mechanism(s) of this toxicity and potential therapies for prevention of the direct renal tubular injury induced by the drug.

Keywords: Acyclovir
Nephrotoxicity
Advisor: Koren, Gideon