VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
In Search of Understanding Children's Engagement with Nature and their Learning Experiences in One Urban Kindergarten Classroom

Considering the context of large city schools, this study explores what variables in a kindergarten classroom may impact the process of children’s engagement with nature. In particular I examine the central role of children and teacher in co-constructing their own unique understanding, knowledge, and attitude towards the natural world. In this study, I examine nature-child’s connection considering the complexity of nature beyond a pre-packaged concept (Louv, 2007) and avoiding a linear identification of a cause and effect relationship between children’s learning experiences and nature, (Kellert, 2005). This qualitative case study is based on extensive classroom observations, in which 20 kindergarten children and their teacher participate. The children’s direct, indirect, and vicarious experiences with nature are documented using digital photography, video-audio recording, and collection of artifacts. I interview the classroom teacher two times and invite the parents to fill up a questionnaire about their children’s experiences with nature outside the school time. I use the techniques and procedure of the grounded theory to analyze the data. A comparative analysis of the five learning episodes demonstrates four major factors that when all woven together encourage and sustain the children’s engagement with nature. These factors are: investigating children’s meaningful and autotelic questions, encountering and experiencing nature in familiar contexts, developing emotional bonding, and having sufficient time. The findings show the crucial role of the classroom teacher in creating five main conditions to engage the children in the process of each inquiry. She offers the children many opportunities to use their prior skills and knowledge, take responsibility of their own learning, and experiment with learning as a process. She often responds positively to the children’s learning endeavours and communicates her high confidence and expectations for them. This study makes an important contribution to the field of early childhood education and environmental education by demonstrating the possibilities and challenges in actively and holistically engaging children with nature in school settings. The findings shed light on our understanding of children and teacher’s sense of ownership and motivation as two driving forces of learning.

Keywords: early childhood education
kindergarten
learning
curriculum
environmental education
nature
urban schools
classroom observation
grounded theory
case study
Reggio Emilia aaproach
inquiry-based learning
inquiry-based teaching
free choice learning model
contextual model of learning
Advisor: Cameron, Linda
Interrupted

INTERRUPTED is a composition for a small orchestra that explores the process of creating a larger work from smaller, individual “moments.” The duration and structure of the individual movements are a response to a neurological dysfunction which limited the composer’s working memory and concentration. The composer’s former methodology of through-composing and evolving large structural elements over extended time spans was no longer possible. A new creative process was developed where the current moment at hand was the only moment that mattered. This new approach was both practical and philosophical, and allows the freedom of writing an idea that may have little to do with what precedes it, and may or may not influence what follows. The common thread linking the movements was a loose system of pitch structure that was developed from the intersection of overlapping enneatonic and octatonic scales. The resulting mini-compositions serve as individual “moments” which were then arranged and edited with some repeating variations, to create a cohesive whole. INTERRUPTED showed the composer that the perceived limitation of one’s creative process can be re-tuned to become a strength and an outlet for new directions in creative output.

Keywords: Orchestra
Advisor: Hatzis, Christos
Middle Cypriot White Painted Ware: A Study of Pottery Production and Distribution in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus

White Painted Ware, the most identifiable of pottery types of the Middle Bronze Age on Cyprus, has been studied by scholars either with the view to creating chronological typologies or to tracing trade routes. Little attention has been paid to the technology and social organization of production of this pottery. This thesis is concerned with the potters as much as with the pottery. The production sequence is examined from clay selection through to decoration of the vessels. An attempt is made to isolate production centres with unique methods of vessel construction as well as preferences for certain shapes and decorative schemes. Using petrographic analysis, different fabrics are isolated within the ware, and these are in turn related to the groups of vessels created based on style. Similar fabrics are used in multiple sites and most sites were found to have used multiple fabrics to create pottery that is considered to be part of the White Painted ware group. Beneath the major differences in styles between sites are several minor variations in construction method and decoration that are more likely to represent choices made by individual potters or small groups of potters working together. Based on vessel shape and decoration, seven distinct production centres appear to have been manufacturing White Painted ware on Cyprus over the course of the Middle Bronze Age. These were not operating simultaneously, but appear to have been active at the time that their regions were most prosperous, linking the production and use of White Painted ware with political and economic power.

Keywords: ceramics
potters
distribution
production
chaine operatoire
Advisor: Knappett, Carl
Towards a Definition of Visual Artists’ Archives: Vera Frenkel’s Archives as a Case Study

This dissertation is an exploratory case study of the archives of Canadian artist Vera Frenkel and their acquisition by Queen’s University Archives in Kingston, Ontario. The research seeks to understand, through empirical investigation, the many factors that shape the artist’s recordkeeping and archives in the personal sphere and contribute to the nature of the eventual archival fonds in the institution. The foundation for the research includes the literatures of archival studies, life narrative, and art. Vera Frenkel’s interdisciplinary art work reflects a deep engagement with questions of truth and fiction. As an aspect of this theme, records and archives play a role in several of her works, often being revealed as problematic sources of evidence. Fundamental to the artist’s approach to interdisciplinarity is a complex layering of elements that builds uncertainty in the viewer. Given these aspects of Frenkel’s work, research that elicits the artist’s testimony about her archives must be able to accommodate a degree of ambiguity in the construction of that testimony. In a series of in situ interviews with the artist in her studio, the author investigated Frenkel’s recordkeeping habits and their relationship to her creative practice. As a data source, these interviews were supplemented by the artist’s photographs and hand-drawn maps of the studio. The author also investigated the processes entailed by archival transfer, examining the extant Vera Frenkel fonds at Queen’s University Archives and interviewing Heather Home, the archivist responsible for the acquisition. Both the personal and institutional spheres were taken into consideration as essential contributors to the nature of Frenkel’s archives as a complex cultural artifact. The research argues for the central role of archives in the acquisition and preservation of contemporary art. It contributes a foundation for understanding the nature of visual artists’ archives.

Keywords: artists' archives
archival studies
Vera Frenkel
artists' studios
Advisor: Craig, Barbara
A Sociomusical Analysis of the Paran

A paran is a composed drum piece for the North Indian pakhavaj or tabla drums, and it is also choreographed for kathak dance. Paran refers specifically to a type of pakhavaj composition whose structure and compositional attributes are greatly varied. When applied to tabla or kathak, the term refers to a piece that is either directly borrowed from, or meant to imitate, the pakhavaj. Notwithstanding, it is notoriously difficult to define a paran precisely, especially those varieties found in tabla and kathak dance. Moreover, there are many, often contradictory opinions as to what these pieces are, largely because they display attributes that overlap with other types of composition. In this dissertation I discuss previous scholarly attempts to define the paran genre, various performers’ opinions on the subject, the technical execution of these pieces on the tabla, and the social trends that have contributed to the development of parans as they are performed on tabla or in kathak dance. I also analyse several compositions that I learned on the tabla in order to gain some sense of the structural, aesthetic, and compositional attributes of these pieces.

Keywords: tabla
pakhavaj
paran
Advisor: Kippen, James R.
Investigation of Two-phase Microchannel Flow and Phase Equilibria in Micro Cells for Applications to Enhanced Oil Recovery

The viscous oil-water hydrodynamics in a microchannel and phase equilibria of heavy oil and carbon dioxide gas have been investigated in connection with the enhanced recovery of heavy oil from petroleum reservoirs. The oil-water flow was studied in a circular microchannel made of fused silica with an I.D. of 250 µm. The viscosity of the silicone oil (863 mPa.sec) was close to that of the gas-saturated heavy oil in reservoirs. The channel was always initially filled with the oil. Two different sets of experiments were conducted: continuous oil-water flow and immiscible displacement of oil by water. For the case of continuous water and oil injection, different types of liquid-liquid flow patterns were identified and a flow pattern map was developed based on Reynolds, Capillary and Weber numbers. Also, a simple correlation for pressure drop of the two phase system was developed. In the immiscible displacement experiments, the water initially formed a core-annular flow pattern, i.e. a water core surrounded by a viscous oil film. The initially symmetric flow became asymmetric with time as the water core shifted off centre and also the waves at the oil-water interface became asymmetric. A linear stability analysis for core-annular flow was also performed. A characteristic equation which predicts the growth rate of perturbations as a function of the core radius, Reynolds number, and viscosity and density ratios of the two phases was developed. Also, two micro cells for gas solubility measurements in oils were designed and constructed. The blind cell had an internal volume of less than 2 ml and the micro glass cell had a volume less than 100 µl. By minimizing the cell volume, measurements could be made more quickly. The CO2 solubility was determined in bitumen and ashphaltene-free bitumen samples to show that ashphaltene has a negligible effect on CO2 solubility.

Keywords: Liquid-liquid two-phase flow
MIcrochannel
Solubility micro-cell
Advisor: Kawaji, Masahiro
Effects of Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors on the Maintenance of Midbrain Neurons and Glia

Perturbations of the complex intrinsic and extrinsic factors that contribute to cellular differentiation can have many consequences ranging from dedifferentiation to cell death. The overall objective of my research is to investigate the factors that contribute to the maintenance of mature midbrain neurons and glia. In order to address this objective, I first carried out a detailed immunocytochemical analysis to demonstrate that histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACI) treatment of differentiated midbrain neurons in culture results in an overall destabilization of neuronal phenotype, which leads to caspase-independent cell death. GFAP positive astrocytes are refractory to the effects of HDACI treatment, suggesting that inhibition of HDACs has differential effects on neurons and glia. HDACI treatment alone was not sufficient to induce neuronal dedifferentiation as evidenced by RT-PCR analysis of stem/progenitor markers, and recovery experiments. Finally, I demonstrate that cortical neurons do not undergo cell death in response to HDACI treatment, suggesting that there may be microenvironmental factors that promote the susceptibility of midbrain neurons to the neurotoxic effects of HDACI. In the second part of this thesis I determined the molecular mechanism that was at least partly responsible for the effects of HDACI treatment on midbrain neurons. Gene expression profiling of HDACI treated midbrain cultures revealed a strong down-regulation of immune related factors. This observation is supported by the loss of microglia in HDACI treated midbrain cultures. I also provide evidence that Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling, likely through the activation of Interleukin-6 (IL-6) expression, mediates HDAC-dependent neuronal survival. These data provide new evidence that the neuroimmune system is an extrinsic regulator for the homeostasis and survival of neurons.

Keywords: Histone deacetylase inhibitors
mammalian midbrain
Advisor: Tropepe, Vincent
When on High Yahweh Reigned: Translating Yahweh's Kingship in Ancient Israel

This dissertation identifies two distinct stages of YHWH’s kingship in ancient Israel: an earlier warrior king with a limited sphere of geographic influence, and a later, Judahite creator king with universal power and absolute rule. After identifying these stages, this dissertation proposes the historical context in which the change to YHWH’s kingship occurred. Articulating this change is informed by the anthropological method of cultural translation and studied via a suitable historical analogue: the change in Marduk’s kingship and the external pressures that lead to the expression of his universal kingship in the Enuma Elish. The Babylonian changes to Marduk’s kingship form a suitable analogy to articulate the changes to YHWH’s kingship in the Levant. Therefore Judahite scribes suppressed the early warrior vision of YHWH’s kingship and promoted a more sustainable vision of a creator and universal king in order to combat the increasing threat of Neo-Assyrian imperialism begun under the reign of Tiglath-pileser III.

Advisor: Taylor, J. Glen
Combined Numerical and Thermodynamic Analysis of Drop Imbibition Into an Axisymmetric Open Capillary

This thesis presents an axisymmetric numerical model to simulate interfacial flows near a sharp corner, where contact line pinning occurs. The method has been used to analyze drop imbibition into a capillary. To evaluate the performance of the numerical method, for a liquid drop initially placed partially within a capillary, a thermodynamic model has also been developed, to predict equilibrium states. The first part of this thesis presents an axisymmetric VoF algorithm to simulate interfacial flows near a sharp corner. (1) A new method to exactly calculate the normals and curvatures of any circle with a radius as small as the grid size is presented. This method is a hybrid least squares height function technique which fits a discretized osculating circle to a curve, from which interface normals and curvature can be evaluated. (2) A novel technique for applying the contact angle boundary condition has been devised, based on the definition of an osculating circle near a solid phase. (3) A new flux volume construction technique is presented, which can be applied to any split advection scheme. Unlike the traditional approach where the flux volumes are assumed rectangular, the new flux volumes can be either trapezoidal or triangular. The new technique improves the accuracy and consistency of the advection scheme. (4) Explicit PLIC reconstruction expressions for axisymmetric coordinates have been derived. (5) Finally, a numerical treatment of VoF for contact line motion near a sharp corner is presented, base on the idea of contact line pinning and an edge contact angle. The second part of the thesis is on the imbibition of a drop into an open capillary. A thermodynamic analysis based on minimization of an interfacial surface energy function is presented to predict equilibrium configurations of drops. Based on the drop size compared to the hole size, the equilibrium contact angle, and the geometry of the capillary, the drop can be totally imbibed by the capillary, or may not wet the capillary at all. The thesis concludes with application of the numerical scheme to the same problem, to examine the dynamics of wetting or dewetting of a capillary. All of the simulations yield results that correspond to the equilibrium states predicted by the thermodynamic analysis, but offer additional insight on contact line motion and interface deformation near the capillary edge.

Keywords: Multiphase
CFD
Surface tension
Numerical model
VoF
normals and curvature
drop imbibition
Advection
interfacial flows
Advisor: Bussmann, Markus
Software Evolution: A Requirements Engineering Perspective

This thesis examines the issue of software evolution from a Requirements Engineering perspective. This perspective is founded on the premise that software evolution is best managed with reference to the requirements of a given software system. In particular, I follow the Requirements Problem approach to software development: the problem of developing software can be characterized as finding a specification that satisfies user requirements, subject to domain constraints. To enable this, I propose a shift from treating requirements as artifacts to treating requirements as design knowledge, embedded in knowledge bases. Most requirements today, when they exist in tangible form at all, are static objects. Such artifacts are quickly out of date and difficult to update. Instead, I propose that requirements be maintained in a knowledge base which supports knowledge-level operations for asserting new knowledge and updating existing knowledge. Consistency checks and entailment of new specifications is done automatically by answering simple queries. Maintaining a requirements knowledge base in parallel with running code means that changes precipitated by evolution are always addressed relative to the ultimate purpose of the system. This thesis begins with empirical studies which establish the nature of the requirements evolution problem. I use an extended case study of payment cards to motivate the following discussion. I begin at an abstract level, by introducing a requirements engineering knowledge base (REKB) using a functional specification. Since it is functional, the specifics of the implementation are left open. I then describe one implementation, using a reason-maintenance system, and show how this implementation can a) solve static requirements problems; b) help stakeholders bring requirements and implementation following a change in the requirements problem; c) propose paraconsistent reasoning to support inconsistency tolerance in the REKB. The end result of my work on the REKB is a tool and approach which can guide software developers and software maintainers in design and decision-making in the context of software evolution.

Keywords: Requirements
Software
Evolution
Advisor: Mylopoulos, John
Borgida, Alexander
A Radio Frequency Quadrupole Instrument for use with Accelerator Mass Spectrometry: Application to Low Kinetic Energy Reactive Isobar Suppression and Gas–phase Anion Reaction Studies

A radio frequency (rf) quadrupole instrument, currently known as an Isobar Separator for Anions (ISA), has been integrated into an Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) system to facilitate anion–gas reactions before the tandem accelerator. An AMS Cs+ sputter source provided > 15 keV ions that were decelerated in the prototype ISA to < 20 eV for reaction in a single collision cell and re-accelerated for AMS analysis. Reaction based isobar suppression capabilities were assessed for smaller AMS systems and a new technique for gas–phase reaction studies was developed. Isobar suppression of 36S– and 12C3– for 36Cl analysis, and YF3– and ZrF3– for 90Sr analysis were studied in NO2 with deceleration to < 12 eV. Observed attenuation cross sections, σ [x 10^–15 cm^2], were σ(S– + NO2) = 6.6, σ(C3– + NO2) = 4.2, σ(YF3– + NO2) = 7.6, σ(ZrF3– + NO2) = 19. With 8 mTorr NO2, relative attenuations of S–/Cl– ~ 10^–6, C3–/Cl– ~ 10^–7, YF3–/SrF3– ~ 5 x 10^–5 and ZrF3–/SrF3– ~ 4 x 10^–6 were observed with Cl– ~ 30% and SrF3– > 90% transmission. Current isobar attenuation limits with < 1.75 MV accelerator terminal voltage and ppm impurity levels were calculated to be 36S–/Cl– ~ 4 x 10^–16, 12C3–/Cl– ~ 1.2 x 10^–16, 90YF3–/SrF3– ~ 10^–15 and 90ZrF3–/SrF3– ~ 10^–16. Using 1.75 MV, four 36Cl reference standards in the range 4 x 10^–13 < 36Cl/Cl < 4 x 10^–11 were analyzed with 8 mTorr NO2. The measured 36Cl/Cl ratios plotted very well against the accepted values. A sample impurity content S/Cl < 6 x 10^–5 was measured and a background level of 36S–/Cl < 9 x 10^–15 was determined. Useful currents of a wide variety of anions are produced in AMS sputter sources and molecules can be identified relatively unambiguously by stripping fragments from tandem accelerators. Reactions involving YF3–, ZrF3–, S– and SO– + NO2 in the ISA analyzed by AMS are described, and some interesting reactants are identified.

Keywords: radio frequency quadrupole
rf quadrupole
accelerator mass spectrometry
AMS
gas-phase reactions
isobar suppression
anion
negative ion
chlorine
Cl
36Cl
carbon trimer
C3
sulphur
sulfur
sulphur oxide
sulfur oxide
SO
methane
CH4
nitrogen dioxide
NO2
nitrous oxide
N2O
oxygen
O2
argon
Ar
strontium
Sr
90Sr
SrF3
yttrium
Y
zirconium
Zr
ZrF3
trace isotope analysis
superhalogen anion
secondary ion mass spectrometry
SIMS
Cs sputter ion source
rf quadrupole ion trajectory simulation
anion gas reactions
negative ion gas reactions
gas-phase anion reactions
S- + NO2
SO- + NO2
S- + N2O
S- + O2
S- + Ar
Cl- + NO2
Cl- + Ar
Cl- + CH4
SrF3- + NO2
YF3- + NO2
ZrF3- + NO2
C3- + NO2
Advisor: Davis, Donald W.
Litherland, A. E. (Ted)