VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Peer relations of mainstreamed hearing impaired students

This study compared the peer relations of hearing impaired and hearing adolescents, as well as examined the differences in the peer relations of the hearing impaired adolescents by level of hearing and educational placement. Spoken language of the hearing impaired adolescents was also considered. Forty-one grade 6 to grade 8 students with mild (n = 20) or moderate to profound hearing loss (n = 21), from fully integrated (n = 29) or partially integrated (n = 12) educational placements were recruited, as were 40 grade 6 to grade 8 hearing students. All participants were administered a friendship interview adapted from Berndt and Hawkins (1994), the Friendship Quality Questionnaire (Parker & Asher, 1993), and The Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction Questionnaire (Asher, Hymel & Renshaw, 1984). Friendship questionnaires were also given to all participants' teachers, parents and best school friend. The hearing impaired adolescents were also administered a measure of social interaction with hearing and hearing peers (Stinson, Chase, & Kluwin, 1991), as well as measures of English knowledge and functional spoken language. Hearing adolescents reported higher friendship quality on the subscale Intimate Disclosure and lower levels of loneliness than hearing impaired adolescents. There were, however, no differences on the other friendship quality subscales, or the number of nominated and corroborated friendships. For the hearing impaired adolescents, there were some differences in their levels of interaction separately with hearing and hearing impaired peers by level of hearing and educational placement. English knowledge and/or functional spoken language correlated positively with friendship quality and functional spoken language correlated negatively with loneliness. The findings from this study are consistent with previous literature, and suggest that hearing impaired adolescents, regardless of level of hearing, are at risk in their peer relations. Implications for educational practice and suggestions for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Keywords: Hearing impaired children, Psychological aspects
Mainstreaming in education, Social aspects
Social interaction
Intergroup relations
Development of an extended magnetohydrodynamic model for anisotropic plasmas

An extended magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model capable of modelling anisotropic and non-equilibrium plasma flows is proposed based on a ten-moment approximation to the solution of the Boltzmann equations, having a full second-order pressure tensor. The extended MHD model has been derived using many of the assumptions and methods used to derive the standard MHD equations. The model makes use of separate pressure and energy equations for the ions and electrons and a Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) collision operator is used to model ion and electron collisional processes. Eigenstructure analysis is used to explore the mathematical and physical characteristics as well as the hyperbolicity and realizability regimes of the model. A point-implicit finite-volume upwind scheme with second-order time stepping and a limited second-order spatial discretization procedure is used to examine the capabilities of the model and compare its predictions to those provided by the ideal MHD description for several one-dimensional plasma flow problems including a classic shock tube problem, the Brio-Wu MHD test case, and a modified Brio-Wu test case. The numerical results and limitations of the model are discussed along with future directions for this line of research.

Keywords: Plasma (Ionized gases)
Magnetohydrodynamics
Plasma dynamics
The nation and national identity in the folk music revival movement of Canada and the United States from 1945 to 1980

The thesis explores issues of nation and national identity in the folk music revival of the post-war period in America and Canada, with a particular focus on the apex of the movement in the 1960s. The thesis demonstrates that, during the 1960s, the folk revival promoted a vision of nation which was eclectic, regional and pluralist in character. Revivalists celebrated the diversity of the North American continent and were eager to explore its many cultures. One of the principal sources of this interest was the climate of political idealism of the early decade---civil rights and the New Left encouraged a vision of unity in diversity, a vision which was mirrored in the outlook of the folk revival. This eclectic vision would decline by the mid-1960s, however. Folk revival performers were beginning to drift beyond the bounds of the original movement and experiment with electric and rock music styles. Furthermore, external events were pulling Canada and America apart; as America faced a period of severe societal and political crisis, Canada was celebrating its centennial of confederation. Concerns of nationalism crept into Canadian popular music expression, pulling it away from the 'North American dream' of the early decade and the folk revival. American musicians, meanwhile, frequently retreated altogether from politics, and no longer optimistically celebrated the diversity of their country. The pluralistic vision was now on the wane, and those who did perform North American ethnic and regional music styles in the 1970s tended to do so in a spirit of nostalgia and reaction rather than with an optimistic focus on present and future.

Keywords: History
Mercury methylation hot spots in peatlands

Mercury contamination is an environmental and human health issue of paramount importance everywhere in the world. The transformation of atmospherically deposited inorganic mercury to its extremely toxic form, methylmercury, is of particular concern as methylmercury is more than 100 times more toxic than inorganic mercury. Methylmercury is the dominant mercury form that accumulates in aquatic biota, such as fish, and through fish consumption, in humans. Over the past decade, wetlands, and peatlands in particular, have been recognized as efficient mercury methylating ecosystems. Very little work, however, has delved into the processes of mercury methylation within peatlands or their spatiotemporal dynamics. Given the recent interest in the notion of biogeochemical hot spots, this dissertation determines whether hot spots of mercury methylation exist within peatlands, provides a tangible definition to a methylmercury hot spot, investigates the geochemical controls on the occurrence of methylmercury hot spots, determines where hot spots occur, and investigates whether large hydrological events, such as spring snowmelt, are important for mercury dynamics in peatlands. Methylmercury hot spots in peatlands occurred almost exclusively at or near the interface with adjacent upland terrain because limiting reactants to the mercury methylation reaction, such as sulphate and a labile carbon substrate, are transported to the peatland margin via hydrological fluxes from the surrounding upland. This finding is supported further by mesocosm experiments showing rapid production of methylmercury only when both sulphate and labile organic carbon are added and by studies of hillslope hydrology and high resolution pore water sampling in the interface zone, which indicate that the occurrence of methylmercury hot spots is empirically related to the magnitude of hillslope hydrological fluxes. The snowmelt period is extremely important to annual fluxes of both total mercury and methylmercury. The most dominant source of methylmercury in peatland export during snowmelt is from peatland pore waters. Overall, this research demonstrates the important influence of hydrology on the spatial and temporal variability of methylmercury production in peatlands.
The production and analysis of LSP1-deficient mice

The goal of this project was to ascertain the function(s) of Leukocyte-specific protein 1 (LSP1) in the immune system, through the production and analysis of gene-targeted LSP1-deficient mice. I began this work by determining the genomic organization of the murine Lsp1 gene, which provided the information necessary for development of a gene-targeting strategy and subsequent production of mutant mice. Since LSP1 is expressed in both B and T lymphocytes, as well as in neutrophils and macrophages, LSP1-deficient mice were assessed for development and function of these various leukocyte populations. This analysis revealed no apparent effects of the LSP1 deficiency on either the development or function of lymphocyte populations. In addition, contrary to previous suggestions that downregulation of LSP1 expression might be a contributing factor in murine T-lymphomagenesis, LSP1-deficient animals are not predisposed to development of T-lymphoma. By contrast, certain myeloid populations are affected by the LSP1 deficiency, as evidenced by an expanded population of resident peritoneal macrophages and by altered inflammatory responses in LSP1-deficient mice. In these mice, thioglycollate-induced peritonitis is characterized by a greater initial accumulation of neutrophils, followed by accelerated macrophage accumulation and accelerated neutrophil clearance, relative to wildtype mice. Enhanced neutrophil chemotaxis, leading to increased recruitment from the bloodstream, is likely to account for the initial effect on neutrophil accumulation since LSP1-deficient neutrophils also exhibit enhanced chemotaxis in vitro. These findings identify LSP1 as a negative regulator of cell motility in murine neutrophils.
Production and efficiency analyses of joint forest management in Gujarat, India

An economic framework for the production analysis of joint forest management (JFM) is proposed. The framework has four main features: (i) a distinction between a social organization, responsible for the production process of JFM; and an industrial organization; (ii) inclusion of conventional factors (land, labour, and capital) as well as non-conventional factors (social, cultural, and organizational factors); (iii) inclusions of social, biological, and economic outputs; and (iv) conceptualization of a production model that includes transformation and transaction components. The framework is used for the production and efficiency analysis of JFM in the Gujarat state of India. Second, using a two-stage procedure which combines deterministic linear programming with a stochastic econometric modelling, stochastic output and input distance functions characterizing the structure of joint production technology are specified and estimated. The results of output distance function are used to analyse the production efficiency and shadow prices of non-marketed outputs, and the results of input distance function are used to analyse the shadow prices of non-marketed inputs for different JFM production units. There appears to be a scope of improving production efficiency by about 9%. The villages with lower production of outputs were utilizing their resources more efficiently than the villages with higher output production. The shadow prices of outputs and inputs were not constant but varied with the inputs provided by the villages. Even though generalizations of the results may not be possible due to widely varying socio-economic conditions, the techniques can be used to devise policy and management prescriptions for any geographical setting. First, the production functions and production possibility surfaces for social, biological, and economic outputs are estimated using the production data from fifty village-level production units of JFM. The results indicate that the inclusion of non conventional factors is critical for unbiased analysis. The social---social empowerment---and the biological outputs---forest canopy cover---are associate products, the social output and the economic output---supply of forest produce to meet local demand---are rival products, and the biological and the economic outputs are associate products, and the degree of association and rivalry between any two outputs varies.
Development of contrast sensitivity in infants with prenatal and neonatal thyroid hormone insufficiencies

Animal and human research suggests that thyroid hormone is essential for normal development of the primary visual pathway. A thyroid hormone insufficiency during the fetal or neonatal period may disrupt visual development and subsequent functioning. Visual development and functioning was assessed in infants with prenatal and/or neonatal thyroid hormone insufficiencies by measuring contrast sensitivity at 3, 4.5 and 6 months of age. Results from these infants were compared to those of infants with normal thyroid hormone exposure. Three thyroid hormone insufficient groups were tested: infants of hypothyroid mothers, infants with congenital hypothyroidism, and low-risk premature infants. Sensitivity thresholds were measured using sweep visual evoked potentials. A contrast sensitivity function was fit to thresholds using an exponential model to estimate peak sensitivity and frequency falloff. A coefficient of determination for each function and grating acuity were also measured. Results showed a significant difference in log peak sensitivity between control and maternal hypothyroid groups at all ages tested. Infants whose mothers' hypothyroidism was less severe had peak sensitivity deficits at 3 months of age that later recovered. Conversely, infants whose mothers' hypothyroidism was more severe had normal peak sensitivity at 3 months, but worsened upon subsequent testing. There was also a significant reduction in the coefficient of determination at three months of age for congenital and maternal hypothyroid groups, which indicated reduced contrast sensitivity at 0.25 cycles per degree. Additionally, differences between thyroid insufficient subgroups suggest that severity of congenital hypothyroidism may result in better high spatial frequency sensitivity and acuity. No visual deficits were found in premature infants.
A protocol-independent authentication service interface

With the advent of distributed computing, software engineers are being presented with the demand for an ever-widening variety of network services. These can include print service, file service, time service, or any other services that can be provided efficiently to multiple clients. One of the challenges in creating network services is the need to provide a uniform programming interface to them, which is independent of the underlying implementation of the service. Such protocol-independent interface would allow applications to use the service without having to be aware of the mechanism used to implement the service. This work presents the Encapsulated Security Services Interface, a protocol-independent interface for the authentication service, which has previously been implemented with a secret-key authentication mechanism. In this work we implement a prototype of ESSI with a public-key authentication protocol. The public-key implementation serves to identify modifications and extensions necessary to make ESSI work for both types of protocols.
Inapproximation lower bounds for the maximum independent set problem in the pBT model, and other observations

Borodin, Nielsen and Rackoff introduced the class of priority algorithms to model greedy-like algorithms. Later Aleknovitch et al introduced the priority backtracking model (pBT) as an extension to the priority model, which captures features of simple dynamic programming and backtracking. In this thesis we continue the study of these models. We introduce a more restricted form of priority criteria called degree-based priority, which is similar to the models introduced by Angelopoulos. We give lower bounds of [special characters omitted], (δ can be as close to 1 as desired) and [special characters omitted] for the maximum independent set problem in the degree-based fixed priority backtracking models without and with revocable acceptance respectively. Furthermore, we give a 2-approximation lower bound for the makespan problem in the adaptive priority model.
Speedup for the quadratic programming problem and other issues in model predictive control

Model predictive control (MPC) is based on optimal cost minimization over a finite-horizon window. When considering discrete LTI systems, with a quadratic performance cost, over a finite horizon, with linear constraints, the resulting MPC cost minimization can be converted into a quadratic programming (QP) problem. Solving this constrained QP problem forms the basis for MPC control. This computation is computationally intensive, and for systems with fast dynamics, it is often not possible to compute an optimal constrained solution in real-time. Three contributions which focus on the QP problem are made; a new active set method is proposed, the concept of premature termination is introduced and a supervisory algorithm is proposed. Two contributions to the formulation of the MPC controller are also made: a framework which allows for natural step disturbance rejection is presented, and a modified performance index, which allows for optimal transient shaping of the closed-loop response, is proposed. The proposed active set method uses a vastly different approach from existing methods in that the intermediate solutions of the algorithm do not enforce all constraints, leading to a "non-feasible active set method". Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can converge faster than existing algorithms by as much as 26 times. Often, the proposed algorithm is still too slow to be run in real-time. The concept of "premature termination", where an algorithm is stopped after a maximum fixed number of iterations, is therefore studied. In this case, no guarantee can be made about the quality of the resulting solution. In particular, a supervisory algorithm which provides guaranteed bounds on the MPC horizon cost while maintaining real-time computation is introduced. In solving the above MPC problem, it is shown that the plant's equations can be formulated to provide a framework for step tracking and disturbance rejection where no knowledge of the structure or magnitude of disturbances is needed. The output feedback problem is similarly addressed. Finally, a modified performance index is applied to the MPC problem; simulation results show that in conjunction with MPC, the new performance index achieves excellent transient response characteristics compared to the "standard" performance index.
Generating coherent extracts of single documents using latent semantic analysis

A major problem with automatically-produced summaries in general, and extracts in particular, is that the output text often lacks textual coherence. Our goal is to improve the textual coherence of automatically produced extracts. We developed and implemented an algorithm which builds an initial extract composed solely of topic sentences, and then recursively fills in the lacunae by providing linking material from the original text between semantically dissimilar sentences. Our summarizer differs in architecture from most others in that it measures semantic similarity with latent semantic analysis (LSA), a factor analysis technique based on the vector-space model of information retrieval. We believed that the deep semantic relations discovered by LSA would assist in the identification and correction of abrupt topic shifts in the summaries. However, our experiments did not show a statistically significant difference in the coherence of summaries produced by our system as compared with a non-LSA version.
System and circuit issues in high-speed, highly integrated wireless receivers

The increasing demand in the industry for affordable and portable wireless communication systems has motivated substantial research in the realization of monolithic transceivers. The use of low-cost CMOS technology is of particular interest since it provides the possibility of integrating analog and digital circuitry on the same chip. The trend toward shifting more complexity from the analog to the digital domain in favour of robust and flexible performance suggests that more functionality should be implemented in the digital domain. Of particular interest is channel selection filtering, an essential function of any receiver. Moreover, the recent surge in high-data-rate wireless applications points to the use of spectrally efficient modulation methods including quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and mulicarrier modulation schemes such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). In this work, some techniques regarding low-cost, high-speed, highly integrated wireless communication receivers are presented at both the system and the circuit level. These techniques are also applicable to wire-line counterpart systems.
The role of Shh-dependent Gli activator and repressor functions in epidermal development and disease

Tightly regulated Sonic hedgehog (Shh) signaling in the skin is required for epidermal growth during hair follicle development, but unregulated responses result in common human skin tumors. How Hh signals are mediated in target cells is determined by the combined activities of members of the Gli family of zinc finger transcription factors. The role of Gli transcription factors during skin development and disease was previously unknown. Using a genetic approach complementing loss-of-function and gain-of-function mouse mutants, we have been able to dissect temporal and spatial requirements for Shh signaling in the skin. During hair follicle morphogenesis, Shh signaling is primarily required by the epidermis to promote the proliferation of epidermal progenitors. Two important functions of Shh signaling are required for mitogenic responses to occur; (1) promoting the generation of Gli activators, especially Gli2ACT and (2) inhibiting the generation of Gli repressors, primarily Gli3REP. The summation of these Gli activities determines the transcriptional activity of target genes and ultimately, the decision to enter the cell cycle and proliferate. These studies have revealed novel Gli-dependent regulation of a transcriptional hierarchy of key cell cycle regulators, including the D-type cyclins, N-myc and E2Fs. Furthermore, it has unveiled functional differences in how these target genes are regulated by Gli functions. In Shh;Gli3 double mutants, the expression of early cell cycle markers was derepressed, but induction of later regulators, namely activator E2Fs, could not be induced without GliACT, and no robust proliferative responses were observed. These results suggest that Shh signaling controls multiple levels of the cell cycle to ensure that proliferative responses are restricted in time and space to regions of high Hh signal. The Hh-dependent balance of Gli activator and repressor functions also plays a key role in limiting proliferative responses to adult hair follicles at the telogen-anagen transition. Disturbing this balance, either by increasing the magnitude of Hh responses transiently at anagen in K5Cre;Z/APGli2 mice or extending Hh responses independently of the hair cycle in K5Cre;Z/APDeltaNGli2 mice, is sufficient to overwhelm endogenous regulation. These changes disrupt epidermal homeostasis, triggering hyperproliferative responses and tumors in transgenic skin.