VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
French immersion students' language growth in French, perceptions, patterns and programming

This action research study aims to investigate how eighth grade French immersion students perceive and understand aspects of the French grammatical system and how programming decisions, particularly group work, might assist or hamper the development and application of this knowledge. A sociocultural framework, based on the Vygotsky and Leont'ev, is used to observe students and the second language learning process. Questionnaires were used to collect data about students' understanding of aspects of the French language, their learning preferences, and strengths and weaknesses in using French. The study uncovered a wide range in students' metalinguistic knowledge and misconceptions that some students had developed about grammatical functions and relationships between words at the sentence level. Based on these results, functional-analytic materials designed to teach students about the use of the passe compose and the imparfait were used in the program. A pre-test, an immediate post-test and a delayed post-test were administered to the class to measure growth. Students made and maintained gains in their use of passe compose and the imparfait, and, at the end of the year, scored higher, although not significantly so, on a comparison test with two classes from the same school. Data from a composition task show how students' understanding of these aspectual markers developed. Throughout the year, students were also audio-taped as they completed collaborative activities with a focus on form: a language production task, a metalinguistic task and a proof-reading task. The interactional data showed that communicative activities could be designed that provided students with the opportunity to study form and function links, as predicted in part by Swain's output hypothesis. Students could provide appropriate feedback to one another and appeared to deepen their understanding of how aspects of the language "worked". There was evidence that by working together students collaborated, co-constructed knowledge and were able to achieve greater accuracy than by working alone.
Structural characterization of the unfolded states of an SH3 domain and a partially folded fragment of staphylococcal nuclease by NMR, methods and applications

The isolated N-terminal SH3 domain of the Drosophila signaling protein drk exists in an equilibrium between folded and unfolded states under conditions close to physiological. This system provides an interesting model for comparison of preferential conformations of unfolded states in near physiological conditions with unfolded states under denaturing conditions and also for studying the effects of binding of peptides or proteins on the equilibrium between folded and unfolded states. This doctoral work involved structural and dynamic characterization of folded and unfolded states of this SH3 domain, under both folding and strong denaturing conditions by multi-nuclear, multi-dimensional NMR. The effect of binding a proline-rich peptide derived from the protein Sos, the biological target of the drkN SH3 domain, on the equilibrium between the folded and unfolded states of this domain has been investigated. The stabilization of the folded structure of the domain upon binding provides an example of coupling of binding to protein folding or stabilization. Our data for both unfolded states demonstrate that similar turn-like structures throughout the protein may function to bring parts of the polypeptide chain that are distant in primary sequence into close spatial proximity and initiate protein folding through multiple initiation sites. In spite of the overall structural similarity of both unfolded states, marked differences in detailed structural features between the two unfolded states argue that caution is needed in interpretation of results from structural characterization of protein conformational states generated using denaturing conditions. Structural determination of the folded state stabilized in 400 mM $\rm Na\sb2SO\sb4$ yields a structure very similar to previously published SH3 domain structures. New triple-resonance NOESY-based NMR experiments with improved resolution for application to structural characterization of unfolded or partially folded proteins have been developed in this thesis work. The experiments can also be applied to folded protein states. These novel methods greatly facilitate unambiguous assignment of NOEs in partially folded or unfolded protein systems which would be impossible to identify from conventional experiments due to severe resonance overlap. Results from application of these methods to a partially folded large fragment of staphylococcal nuclease ($\Delta$131$\Delta)$ and the drkN SH3 domain are used to obtain general NOE patterns for unfolded or partially folded proteins. Especially worth noting are our observations of NOEs which are not normally observed in folded, native proteins. These results suggest that unfolded or partially folded proteins may allow sampling of non-prolyl cis peptide bond configurations. These NMR methods developed in our laboratories should provide an experimental basis for more comprehensive analysis of other unfolded or partially folded proteins.
Using knowledge of job characteristics in multiprogrammed multiprocessor scheduling

Multiprocessors are being used increasingly to support workloads in which some or all of the jobs are parallel. For these systems, new scheduling algorithms are required to allocate resources in such a way as to offer good response times while being capable of sustaining high system loads. Until recently, research in this area has focussed on processors as the critical resource, but for many parallel workloads, memory will likely also become a concern. In this thesis, we investigate the design of parallel-job scheduling disciplines, considering simultaneously processors and memory as critical resources. First, we demonstrate that preemption is a necessary feature of parallel-job schedulers in order to obtain good response times given the types of workloads found in practice. Next, we develop analytic bounds on the achievable system throughput with respect to both processing and memory for the case where no knowledge exists about the speedup characteristics of individual jobs. Through the derivation of these bounds, we show that an equi-allocation scheduling discipline, one which allocates processors evenly among jobs selected to run, is the best approach. The key factor to obtaining good performance for such disciplines is to make effective use of memory. If the scheduler possesses speedup knowledge of jobs, however, then the equi-allocation strategy is no longer recommended for workloads in which there exists a correlation between the memory requirements of jobs and their speedup characteristics. In this case, it is theoretically possible to achieve an arbitrary increase in the sustainable throughput over equi-allocation by using this speedup information in allocating processors. Finally, we present the implementation of a family of scheduling disciplines, based on Platform Computing's Load Sharing Facility. Each of these disciplines makes different assumptions about the characteristics of the system, such as the type of preemption that is available or the flexibility that the system possesses in allocating processors. Through this work, we demonstrate, in a practical setting, that sophisticated parallel-jobs scheduling disciplines can be successfully implemented and can deliver improved performance relative to disciplines typically being used today.
The attentional demands of encoding and retrieval in younger and older adults

Four experiments tested reduced-resource explanations of cognitive aging that predict greater detrimental effects of divided attention (DA) among older than younger adults. Younger and older adults engaged in a memory task and a continuous reaction time (RT) task. The memory tasks were free recall (Experiment 1), cued recall (Experiments 2 and 3), and recognition (Experiment 4). On DA trials, the RT task was performed either during encoding or retrieval, and participants emphasized the memory task, the RT task, or the two tasks equally. In each experiment, DA disrupted encoding to an equal extent for the two age groups, but older adults demonstrated less attentional control of encoding. RTs were slowed by encoding more for older than for younger adults. For both age groups, DA at retrieval reduced free recall slightly, but had no effects on cued recall or recognition. Memory performance was not sensitive to task emphasis manipulations at retrieval. The age-related increase in RT costs during retrieval was greatest in free recall, smaller in cued recall, and even smaller in recognition. It was concluded that encoding but not retrieval processes are under attentional control, that aging is associated with a decrease in the attentional control of encoding, and that encoding and retrieval are more attention-demanding among older than younger adults. A test of a time-sharing model of DA revealed that memory performance in DA conditions was accurately predicted from the amount of slowing on the RT task plus the time devoted to the motor demands of the RT task. Although this amount of time was greater among older adults, it translated into equal DA memory costs for the two age groups because older adults required more encoding and retrieval time in order to achieve a particular level of memory performance. In a final set of analyses, it was revealed that older adults' greater RT costs were mediated by a greater number of disproportionately long RTs. It was concluded that aging is associated with a decrease in the efficiency of encoding and retrieval operations, that can be compensated for by the provision of retrieval cues.
Children's social power in their relationships with adults, implications for child sexual abuse primary prevention programs

There is public sanction to equip elementary school children with personal protection know-how through school-based sexual abuse primary prevention programs. A central premise of this initiative is that children's own resistance to sexual abuse can be fortified through education and skills training. Critics of the movement argue that increased knowledge does not make children any more powerful to act, and that programs have failed to address the huge power imbalance existing between children and their adult abusers. In the following qualitative research study the social power differential between children and adults is empirically explored as a means of considering the congruency between children's real life social power experiences and prevention program lessons. Fifteen, nine and ten year-old children spoke, during in-depth interviews, about their lived experiences of power and powerlessness in their daily relationships with adults. The researcher's personal journaling throughout the research process provided additional insight into adult-child relations of power. Incongruencies between children's daily social power experiences and child sexual abuse prevention program lessons are demonstrated through data which describes children's difficulty in interpreting adult intentions, refusing powerful adults, and relying on adult protection. Possible strategies for more successfully achieving the goal of empowering children through this primary prevention initiative are raised on the basis of these findings.
Transformations, the culture of tourism and novelistic literature in the eighteenth century

Tourism is a form of performance that defines individual and collective identity through a complex process of differentiation and affiliation. Touring became a customary formative experience for increasingly large numbers of influential men and women after 1660. Because of this trend, the power of tourism's ritualized experimentation and border-crossing to reinforce or transform identity and culture fascinated and often alarmed contemporary novelists. I have concentrated on novels in which tourism and women of the host region are linked to explore alternative sexual and gender relations, utopian social organization, morality, and political choice. I pay close attention to the reciprocity between non-literary practices and the literary form of the novel, and to how gender difference is used to reflect other types of difference, or to posit alternatives to contemporary normative power relationships. After an overview of tourist culture and the theoretical issues involved, I address the Maria episodes in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey, trace their influence on subsequent tourist culture, and finish by discussing the Maid of Buttermere and William Wordsworth's use of her in Book VII of The Prelude. In the first section of Chapter 3, I examine Thomas Amory's John Buncle narratives and Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall for the way the male tourist acts as a protected witness of all-female communities, and to address the reasons both writers produced sequels giving the life stories of the tourists themselves. In the second section of this chapter, I discuss a little known anti-woman satire, The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu. This work is narrated by a woman who cross-dresses as a man to tour Europe and engage amorously with the women of each country. It is particularly interesting for its ambivalent treatment of both sexuality and gender. In the final chapter, I address Samuel Richardson's fascination with the influence and importance of tourism in the lives of the governing elite, especially in Sir Charles Grandison.
Reciting America, repetition and the cultural self-sufficiency of the United States in the fiction of Russell Banks, Ralph Ellison, Maxine Hong Kingston, and T. Coraghessan Boyle

This dissertation argues that several post-Second World War American works of fiction dramatize the way in which American identity is assumed by its citizens, largely through the repetition, recitation, and performance of the different kinds of American discourses by which the United States talks about itself to itself, and to others. These discourses, which provide the narrative patterns, vocabularies, mythologies, and explanations whereby American individuals conceptualize both their relation to the social real of the United States and to each other, are found, to use Mikhail Bakhtin's suggestive image, already existing in "other people's mouths" (Dialogic 294). This dissertation begins by theorizing the relation between language and consciousness, and the role of irony and the cliche in the processes of citing, performing, and repeating, with or without apparent difference, the social discourse which the individual finds in others' mouths. Chapter One examines the inscription in Russell Banks's 1985 novel Continental Drift of the discourse of the American dream. Chapter Two looks at the way the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man attempts to understand his identity as an African American through, successively, three available vocabularies: that of the discourse of Booker T. Washington, that of the Communist Party of the United States, and that of Marcus Garvey's Romantic Nationalism. Chapter Three considers the narrator of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, who must also decide what is worth saying again, from grade school recitation to the retelling and "translat (ing) " (209) of two traditional Chinese tales, the anonymous "Ballad of Fa Mu Lan," and Ts'ai Yen's "Eighteen Laments." The Conclusion looks at T. Coraghessan Boyle's East is East, and suggests that the racial, racist cliche is a type of "preoccupied" signification, a form of repeated discourse which short-circuits its flexibility in representing the real. This dissertation concludes by examining, alongside President William Clinton's 1995 Loyalty Day Proclamation, two Inaugural poems (by Robert Frost and Maya Angelou), both with reference to Sacvan Bercovitch's assertion regarding the United States' "cultural self-sufficiency" (Rites of Assent 22).
Pre-TCR and TCR-Ãß signaling during T cell development

During thymic development, the TCR$\beta$-containing pre-TCR complex mediates signaling at the DN to DP transition, whereas TCR$\alpha\beta$-mediated MHC recognition triggers maturation at the DP to SP transition. Various studies have examined the role of the Src PTKs Fyn and Lck in pre-TCR/TCR$\alpha\beta$ signaling. Although thymic development is normal in $fyn\sp{-/-}$ mice, the generation of DP cells as well as the development of TCR$\alpha\beta$ and TCR$\gamma\delta$ cells is partially compromised in $lck\sp{-/-}$ mice. Since Fyn and Lck expression levels are comparable during T cell development, Fyn may play a role in pre-TCR or TCR signaling in $lck\sp{-/-}$ mice. This study assessed thymic development in $lck\sp{-/-}fyn\sp{-/-}$ mice and demonstrated that it is completely impaired with virtually all thymocytes arrested at the immature CD25$\sp+$ DN stage, and no detectable peripheral TCR$\alpha\beta\sp+$ and TCR$\gamma\delta\sp+$ cells. Additionally, expression of the activated fyn (TFF) transgene completely restores the production of DP thymocytes and peripheral TCR$\gamma\delta$ cells in $lck\sp{-/-}$ mice. The TFF transgene also partially improves development of transitional/SP thymocytes but fails to increase the number of peripheral TCR$\alpha\beta$ cells in $lck\sp{-/-}$ mice. Collectively, these results suggest that Fyn mediates development of DP thymocytes in $lck\sp{-/-}$ mice, and transgenic expression of constitutively activated fyn can almost completely replace Lck during the DP to SP transition. Another aspect of this thesis examined the TCR$\alpha\beta$ signaling requirements in the maturation of DP thymocytes. Using an in vitro model to assess the response of purified TCR$\rm\sp{lo}$ DP cells to immobilized TCR specific antibodies, the results demonstrated that DP cells undergo multiple changes associated with positive selection in vivo. Following TCR stimulation, DP thymocytes undergo increased expression of CD5 and Bcl-2, a reduction in RAG1 and pre-T$\alpha$ gene expression, and a switch in lck promoter usage. Signals provided by CD4 and CD28 synergize with TCR signals to mediate various aspects of positive selection. However, TCR-mediated signals fail to trigger all hallmarks of DP cell maturation because clonal deletion, CD4/CD8 lineage commitment, and other aspects associated with positive selection are not observed.
In search of a land flowing with milk and honey: The adaptation experiences of uprooted Chinese and Black immigrant students in a multicultural society

This dissertation examined the adaptation experiences of Hong Kong and Caribbean immigrant students attending public high schools in Metro Toronto during 1993 and 1994 using a multivariate approach. The present sample comprised of 368 Chinese immigrant students from Hong Kong attending 26 different public high schools under the jurisdiction of six school boards. The three selection criteria included (i) last permanent country of residence being Hong Kong; (ii) legal status in Canada being landed immigrant or citizen; and (iii) length of residence in Canada being 5 years or less. The same criteria applied to the comparison group, except the last permanent place of residence being the Caribbean, rather than Hong Kong. The comparison group included 63 Black students from 10 schools under the jurisdiction of three school boards. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted on the various scales measuring the adaptation experiences of these immigrant students. It has been found that Hong Kong immigrant students adapted better academically than the Caribbean counterparts. On the other hand, Caribbean students were found to be adapting better culturally, socially, and linguistically. Racial discrimination was a problem encountered by these immigrant students. More specifically, about 25% of the Hong Kong group and 17% of the Caribbean group reported discrimination experience. To assess their overall adaptation experiences, students were asked to indicate whether they would prefer to stay in Canada or to return to homeland if they were given a choice. More than one-third of the Hong Kong students (34.1%) expressed that they would return to Hong Kong. Slightly less than one-third (31.3%) indicated that they would stay, and 30.8 percent said they had no particular preference. With respect to the Caribbean students, about half of them (51.6%) would choose to stay in Canada. Multiple regression and logistic regression analyses revealed various socio-demographic and background variables as strong determinants of adaptation. Additional qualitative data obtained from personal interviews conducted with 30 Hong Kong and 10 Caribbean students provided greater depth of understanding of these minority students' adaptation experiences.
Role of the TEC family tyrosine kinase EMT in T cell activation

Functional T cell activation requires concurrent stimulation of the T cell receptor (TCR) and an accessory molecule, most often CD28. Neither the TCR complex nor CD28 have an intrinsic tyrosine kinase domain. However upon ligation of these receptors, there is an increase in tyrosine phosphorylation of intracellular proteins indicating that these receptors activate intracellular protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs). A novel intracellular TEC family PTK, EMT, which is expressed primarily in T cells, was identified and cloned. Crosslinking of the TCR complex or CD28 increased EMT tyrosine phosphorylation and kinase activity. Since crosslinking of CD28 causes tyrosine phosphorylation of CD28, the role that specific tyrosines in CD28 play in EMT activation was examined. Mutation of the distal three tyrosines in the cytoplasmic tail of murine CD28 (mCD28) to phenylalanine and subsequent expression in Jurkat cells (F3) resulted in decreased mCD28-induced EMT kinase activity. This corresponded with a reduction in CD28-mediated augmentation of IL2 production. In somatic cell mutants (JCaM1.6), which lack LCK, induced EMT tyrosine phosphorylation and kinase activity were significantly reduced following crosslinking of TCR complex or CD28. Responsiveness was reconstituted in JCaM1 transfected with wild type LCK, suggesting functional LCK was required for optimal activation of EMT. In addition to EMT activation following crosslinking of CD28, EMT was shown to constitutively associate with CD28 in Jurkat cells. Following crosslinking of CD28, this association was increased. EMT association with CD28 was not significantly increased following crosslinking of mCD28 mutated in the membrane proximal tyrosine of the cytoplasmic tail (tyrosine 173 in humans) to phenylalanine. This, however, did not affect the mCD28-induced increases in EMT kinase activity and CD28-mediated increases in IL2 production. In JCaM1.6 which lacks LCK, CD28-induced increases in association between EMT and CD28 were greatly reduced. Thus optimal induced association of EMT with CD28 involves tyrosine 173 in CD28 and requires LCK. This association, however, is not essential for CD28-induced increases in EMT kinase activity. Overall, EMT activation and recruitment to CD28 may play an important role in functional T cell activation.