VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
An investigation of teacher role definitions in educating Inuit students in Nunavik

Research in the field of Aboriginal education suggests that a strong base in the primary culture and language predisposes students to develop biculturalism, bilingualism, and eventual academic success (Annahatak, 1994; Eriks-Brophy & Crago, 1994; Crago, Annahatak, & Ningiuruvik, 1993). Recent studies propose that Aboriginal students do become bilingual and bicultural (Fuzessy, 1997; Barnhardt, 1994). Nevertheless, academic achievement among Inuit and Aboriginal students remains weak. These students remain prone to failure (Mackay & Miles, 1995; Rains, 1992). Biculturalism and bilingualism do not guarantee success in school based skills and knowledge. This study examines possible contributing factors to this divergence between expected and actual educational outcomes. Cummins (1996a) posits a model that outlines many of the social and educational conditions favourable to the creation of opportunities for student empowerment. It highlights the essential role of educational structures and the teacher in providing opportunities for the empowerment or the disabling of minority students. Battiste (1998), McLaren (1997), Sleeter (1993), and Willinsky (1990) provide specific suggestions and examples concerning the anti-racist and empowering classroom. This recent work in Aboriginal, critical, and anti-racism education along with the Cummins model build upon poststructural theory and constitute the conceptual framework of this research project. The guiding research question addressed in this study is the following: In what ways and to what extent do the teachers of the Kativik School Board create contexts of empowerment in their interactions with Inuit students? In addressing this question, qualitative data relating to the theoretical framework were gathered. Former Kativik School Board teachers completed individual interviews, short answer questionnaires, and Likert scale questionnaires. These were transcribed and coded for analysis. A public documents analysis determined cultural reference points for the study. The data suggest that teacher role definitions may have both positive and negative effects on Inuit students through their classroom and community interactions. Teachers may not be aware of the negative ways in which their role definitions affect student outcomes. The data also suggest that the broad and encompassing scope of the framework is both its greatest strength and weakness.

Keywords: Inuit, Education
Inuit, Québec (Province)
Eskimos, Canada
Indians of North America, Education
Indians of North America, Québec (Province)
Language and culture, Québec (Province)
Group identity, Canada
Educational equalization, Québec (Province)
Teacher, Training of
Teacher, Nunavik (Québec)
Efficient query processing over inconsistent databases

Although integrity constraints have long been used to maintain data consistency, there are situations in which they may not be enforced or satisfied. In this thesis, we present ConQuer, a system for efficient and scalable answering of SQL queries on databases that may violate a set of constraints. ConQuer permits users to postulate a set of key constraints together with their queries. The system rewrites the queries to retrieve all (and only) data that is consistent with respect to the constraints. The rewriting is into SQL, so the rewritten queries can be efficiently optimized and executed by commercial database systems. The problem of obtaining consistent answers for primary key constraints and Select-Project-Join (SPJ) queries is known to be intractable in general. However, we identify a large and practical class of SPJ queries for which the problem is tractable. For this class of queries, we provide a query rewriting algorithm that can be executed in linear time in the size of the query. We consider SPJ queries that may have either set or bag semantics. For the latter case, the queries may also have grouping and aggregation. We show the maximality of the class of queries, in the sense that minimal relaxations of its conditions may lead to intractability. Finally, we study the efficiency and scalability of the query rewritings on a commercial database system. The study shows that the overhead of the rewritings is reasonable, when we consider the original (non-rewritten) queries as a baseline. The experiments use representative queries from TPC-H (the standard benchmark for decision support systems) and databases of up to 20 GB.
Comparing methods for identifying suspect items and item bundles in a multidimensionality-based DIF analysis approach

Traditional approaches for identifying test items exhibiting differential item functioning (DIF) or groups of items exhibiting differential bundle functioning (DBF) use an exploratory approach based on statistical criteria. In 1996, Roussos and Stout proposed a multidimensionality-based approach in which suspect items and bundles of items are identified before being examined for possible DIF/DBE. Roussos and Stout suggested identifying suspect items or bundles of items based on the test's table of specifications, content analysis, cognitive level analysis, or statistical analysis; however, these approaches have not been compared. In this study, the effectiveness of two of these methods, the test's table of specifications and statistical analysis, are compared. A second research question concerns how one-item-at-a-time DIF analysis compares for bundles exhibiting and not exhibiting significant DBF. When applied to the 2001 School Achievement Indicators Program Mathematics Assessment, the two bundle-organizing methods lead to different kinds of bundles: the bundles derived from the test specifications were related to mathematics content, and the bundles from statistical analysis were related to item format and difficulty. The approaches identified different suspect items and suspect bundles of items as exhibiting gender and language DIF/DBF. Further analysis of the one-item-at-a-time DIF of the items within the identified bundles revealed different patterns for bundles with significant DBF and bundles having no significant DBF. These patterns were generally consistent in the direction of the differential bias and somewhat related to the detectible multidimensionality of the bundles. This study suggests that researchers should identify suspect items as well as suspect bundles and use more than one method to inform decision-making about the presence of bias.
Patterns of drug utilization amongst outpatients with HIV infection in Ontario, Canada

This study sought to quantify and describe the utilization of prescription, over-the-counter (OTC), complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and social/recreational drugs in a cohort of HIV-infected outpatients in Ontario, Canada. In total, 104 adults (49 women/55 men) were recruited through nine hospital-based HIV clinics from participants in the HIV Ontario Observational Database cohort. Overall drug utilization, demographics and disease characteristics were collected using in-person interviews and retrospective medical chart reviews. Results were compared between collection methods and between men and women. Longitudinal patterns of antiretroviral use were assessed and compliance to treatment guidelines was evaluated. Impact of operational CAM definitions was also considered. Drug utilization was extremely high. All patients self-reported the use of at least one drug, with the majority reporting major polypharmacy ( ge;5 drugs), averaging 15.7 +/- 7.7 drugs overall. By medical chart review, 96% of patients reported using drugs, most using>5 drugs. The mean was significantly lower (8.4 +/- 5.0 drugs per person, P
Non-randomized studies: An evaluation of search strategies, taxonomy and comparative effectiveness with randomized trials in the field of low-back pain

Randomized controlled trials (RCT) are considered the most reliable method of determining the effects of treatments. However, RCTs may sometimes be impossible, unethical, imprecise, invalid or irrelevant and the practitioner must rely on evidence from non-randomized studies (NRS). To test the influence of methodological quality and clinical homogeneity in the agreement between NRSs and RCTs, we compared 48 pairs of matched interventions. We identified a trend showing that pairs of lower-quality studies disagreed more than pairs in which at least one study was of higher quality. However, the most significant finding was that highly homogeneous pairs showed higher agreement than less homogeneous pairs. A search of MEDLINE and EMBASE yielded 225 articles. In the absence of specific search strategies for NRSs, we developed and tested one based on a dynamic method. It showed a sensitivity of 90% to 100% compared with 95% to 100% using a fixed set of search terms, proving that it is possible to limit search strategies to NRSs. We compared the results of NRSs and RCTs of three surgical interventions for low-back pain. NRSs either agreed with or underestimated the effects of RCTs. Other clinical factors (presence of spondylolisthesis, previous surgery and involvement of workers' compensation) were frequently more powerful explanatory variables than randomization. The objectives of this thesis were to (1) search for NRSs that compared two or more interventions for low-back pain, (2) identify a taxonomy to classify study designs, and (3) compare the results from NRSs and RCTs of the same interventions, exploring the influence of different variables. We found a widely-used taxonomy of study design that classified studies as "experimental", "observational" and "descriptive" and tested its inter-rater reliability on 30 randomly selected studies from our database. There was good agreement in 56% of the studies and poor agreement in 44%. Therefore, even with instructions and definitions the assignment of labels was not reliable. Despite the difficulties in searching for NRSs and the challenges of classifying their study designs, we recommend that review authors include evidence from both RCTs and NRSs when assessing the effects of health-care interventions.
Intrinsic image decomposition via deformable reflectance models

When looking at even a single image, humans are usually able to infer multiple characteristics of a scene, such as its lighting, reflectance, shape, and depth. However, this remains a difficult problem in computer vision due to its fundamental ambiguity. This thesis describes a generative probabilistic model aimed at describing intrinsic characteristics of a scene. Given a small repeating image pattern, called a texton, our model uses displacements to map the texton to a prototype reflectance image. The reflectance model then accounts for colour variation. We model the lighting of the scene using an image-dependent prior. A neural network trained on estimated ground-truth lighting data computes this prior. We show results of lighting and reflectance decompositions, and also show a technique of realistically replacing or inserting reflectance content into an image after learning its displacement and lighting effects.
Design of a high speed folding and interpolation analog to digital converter implemented in 0.18 micrometer silicon germanide BiCMOS process

This thesis describes the design and implementation of an 8 bit, 2 GSamples/s analog to digital converter for a 0.18 mum SiGe BiCMOS process with a unity gain cut off frequency of 60 GHz. This folding and interpolation ADC consists of a highly linear track-and-hold amplifier (THA) with 10 bit resolution, a differential resistor ladder, four folding amplifiers, an interpolation stage, a comparator array, a digital encoder with bubble error correction scheme and a coarse quantizer. The microchip area is 3.0 x 3.4 mm2 including pads and buffer circuits. Simulation results show that this ADC has a maximum signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) of 48.9 dB corresponding to a 7.5 effective number of bits (ENOB) and an effective resolution bandwidth (ERBW) of 700MHz. The circuit demonstrates a maximum differential nonlinearity (DNL) and integral nonlinearity (INL) of 0.4 and 0.8 LSB, respectively while consuming 3.1W from a single 3.5 V supply.
The pyrabactins: small molecule agonists of the abscisic acid signaling pathway

A chemical genetic screen in etiolated Arabidopsis seedlings resulted in the identification of the Pyrabactins (for pyridyl aba activation). Structure-activity analysis revealed the nitrogen in the pyridyl moiety to be important for inhibitory effects of the Pyrabactins on germination and hypocotyl cell expansion. Since many known germination inhibitors affect the GA or ABA pathways, we tested the hypothesis that the Pyrabactins may act through these pathways using mutants. Results suggest that Pyrabactin A activates the ABA signaling. Microarray experiments show that Pyrabactin A is an agonist of the seed-specific ABA pathway. A genetic approach was undertaken to identify mutants resistant to Pyrabactin A. Map-based cloning has been initiated for one of the Pyrabactin A resistant mutants, pyr1. Genetic analysis of pyr1 suggests that resistance is a dominant Mendelian trait. Results from this thesis provide the basis for developing the Pyrabactins as a tool to further delineate the ABA signaling pathway.
Study of alexithymia in Chinese Canadians

Alexithymia is characterized by: difficulty with identifying, distinguishing, and describing affect; restricted imaginal capacity; externally oriented thinking tendency. This study examines its validity among Chinese Canadians and possible acculturation influences. Two hundred Chinese Canadian primary care patients completed English or Chinese version of: Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, Psychological Mindedness Scale, Emotional Expressivity Scale, NEO-FFI, somatic symptom scale, Chinese Depression Inventory, and BDI. Using confirmatory factor analysis to examine the factor structure of TAS-20, fit indices indicated a near adequate fit to previously identified three-factor model. All except three items loaded significantly on to their respective factors. TAS-20 correlated positively with Neuroticism, CDI, BDI, and somatic symptoms, and negatively with PMS, EES, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Education and identification with Chinese culture were associated with decreased alexithymia. The results support the cross-cultural validity of alexithymia and TAS-20 among the Chinese. An association between Chinese cultural identification and increased alexithymia was not supported.
Parallel general purpose computing across multiple computer graphics devices

This thesis proposes that multiple, commodity computer graphics cards in a single system can be used to perform general purpose computation and computer vision many times faster than the CPU alone. Presented is a parallel architecture created by placing multiple graphics cards on a single motherboard. This creates a low cost, commodity, architecture for hardware accelerated general purpose computation. Parallelism, both between the GPU and CPU and between multiple GPUs, however, is new to graphics and current graphics techniques are designed for a single GPU and focus on display, rather than fast communication and synchronization with the CPU. Presented are methods of distributing tasks across multiple graphics cards, synchronizing their execution, and exploiting their fast on-board memories. Additionally, for graphics hardware to provide speedups, methods of mapping software algorithms onto graphics architecture must also be developed. In this thesis, computer vision algorithms are mapped onto the graphics hardware. Novel mappings of the chirplet transform, projective image stitching and parameter estimation, and other common computer vision algorithms are developed in this work. These mappings show how all parts of the graphics pipeline can be used to achieve a wide variety of tasks through novel algorithm mappings. A programming library called "OpenVIDIA" abstracts many of the mapping details allowing programmers to realize graphics hardware acceleration.
Cre-conditional expression of TEL-AML1: haematopoiesis and leukaemia

TEL-AML1 is a fusion protein created by the t(12;21) chromosomal translocation observed in 25% of childhood B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemias. To study the potential role of TEL-AML1 in the development of leukaemia, we generated TEL-AML1 transgenic mice in which the expression of TEL-AML1 and a co-expressed EGFP reporter is dependent on Cre recombinase activity. Global expression of TEL-AML1 using pCX-NLSCre induced embryonic lethality at E7.5. In mice with haematopoietic and endothelial expression of TEL-AML1 using Tie2-Cre, the contribution of TEL-AML1 expressing cells to the foetal liver became limited by embryonic day (E) 14.5 due to increased apoptosis. At 1 month of age, TEL-AML1/Tie2-Cre mice had normal haematopoietic systems with limited contribution of TEL-AML1 expressing cells. Between 5 months and 2 years of age, TEL-AML1/Tie2-Cre mice developed spontaneous haematopoietic disorders including T- and B-cell lymphomas and high-grade anaemia.
The role of transforming growth factor-beta in mammalian learning and memory

Members of TGF-beta super-family regulate a broad range of cellular processes including cell proliferation, differentiation, homeostasis, apoptosis, and wound repair. Previous studies in Aplysia suggested a role for TGF-beta signaling in synaptic plasticity. Here we examined whether TGF-beta signaling plays a similar effect in mammalian learning and memory. To address this, we examined learning and memory in two lines of transgenic mice that over-express TGF-beta1 in astrocytes. We found that the first line (T64), which has elevated TGF-beta1 protein levels in hippocampus and cortex, exhibited facilitated learning in novel object recognition and trace fear conditioning. The second line (T115), which has elevated TGF-beta1 protein level in cortex, exhibited facilitated learning in Morris water maze and contextual fear conditioning. These results suggest that over-expression of TGF-beta1 facilitates learning and memory in mice, consistent with previous experiments in invertebrates. Therefore, TGF-beta signaling may play a conserved role in learning and memory.
The detection of spatial and temporal edges in the visual periphery and its application to video compression

One of the functions of the visual periphery is that it filters out irrelevant information and enhances important information, such as edges. The eye is capable of detecting changes in light illuminance in both space, and time. In space, these changes are termed spatial edges, and in time, they might be termed off-on steps of stimulus. Many models of the visual periphery either focus on spatial edges or temporal edges. I propose a biologically-inspired neural network model, the Edgetron, that detects both the spatial and temporal components of visual edges. The Edgetron offers a level of abstraction over physiological details; it examines pertinent features of the visual periphery that are common across all species. This model will be quantitatively verified according to existing experimental results and observations. It will be shown how the Edgetron can applied to address the compression/video quality tradeoff involved with the design of a MPEG-based encoder.
Security and performance analyses of quantum-key-distribution systems

Quantum cryptography, or, more precisely, quantum key distribution (QKD) allows two distant parties, Alice and Bob, to expand a previously shared secret key by sending quantum states through a quantum channel. The goal here is for Alice and Bob to communicate securely in the presence of an eavesdropper, Eve. The most well-known QKD protocol is the Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol, which has been proved unconditionally secure against any attacks allowed by quantum mechanics. The main advantage of QKD over conventional cryptography is its absolute security. Thus, it is imperative to evaluate the security and performance of QKD protocols and realistic QKD systems. In this thesis, we study the security and performance aspects of QKD in four parts. In the first part, we study the Scarani-Acin-Ribordy-Gisin 2004 (SARG04) protocol. This protocol differs from the BB84 protocol only in the classical post-processing step and uses the same four quantum states as the BB84 protocol. We compared these two protocols and showed that in typical situations, the classical post-processing software for BB84 should be used in order to have a higher performance. In the second part, we prove the security of a three-state protocol. This protocol is similar to the BB84 protocol in that they share the same three qubit states. In the third part, we consider a practical Trojan horse attack on practical QKD systems implementing the BB84 protocol. The attack works by taking advantage of the finite response time of practical phase modulators to remap the states sent out by the legitimate user, Alice. We showed that if Alice and Bob are unaware of our attack, the final key shared between them can be compromised in some situations. In the fourth part, we consider another type of Trojan horse attack, which is based on mismatch between detection efficiencies of detectors. Practical detectors in QKD systems usually do not have identical efficiencies and an eavesdropper Eve may be able to exploit this efficiency mismatch to steal information about the final secret key. We analyze the security of the attack and show that it is possible for Eve to acquire some information on the final secret key if Alice and Bob are unaware of this attack.
Precoding for the multi-antenna multi-user downlink

This thesis develops an efficient Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) system for down-link channels satisfying bit error rate (BER) requirements. We consider downlink channels with multiple antennas on the transmitter and one antenna on each receiver. We propose a two-step design process for achieving the specified BER requirements. The first step is to convert the BER requirements to virtual rate requirements which are easier to handle. These virtual rates take into account the capacity gap of our THP system. The second step is to determine the transmit covariance matrices (which, when known, specify the entire THP system) so that the transmit power is minimized. We provide three novel methods for determining the transmit covariance matrices with a fixed encoding order, a suboptimal encoding order, and the optimal encoding order(s). Simulations show that our THP system outperforms an existing THP system.
Stress engineering in impurity free vacancy disordering for III-V compound semiconductors: Theory and application

A theory explaining the role of stress in impurity-free vacancy disordering was developed and used to explain the intermixing observed beneath arrays of silica stripes with stripe widths ranging from 1 micron to 12 microns. Silica gratings were fabricated on top of a GaAs wafer with a double quantum well epilayer structure, rapid thermal annealing was conducted at a temperature of 950°C, and the results were characterized using micro-PL characterization. The measurements showed that a correlation exists between the shape of the expected stress fields and the amount of intermixing achieved across a grating. The PL measurements could be explained using numbers attained from the simulations generated from first principles. This opens the door to new possibilities in the study of EFVD, as previous efforts have failed to connect intermixing and stress fields in a rigorous mathematical sense.