Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect On Response Complexity On Task-Switching Behaviour, Christina Shepherd

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Research on task-switching has shown that when participants are asked to switch between two different tasks, they are slower than when they repeat the same task. These costs have also been shown to increase when the previous response is repeated; however, very little has been done to investigate the role of response complexity in this relationship. We manipulated response complexity by increasing both the number of stimulus-response pairs and the number of individual response components. We hypothesized that increased response complexity would increase both the switch costs and the response repetition effect. Results indicated that increasing the number of S-R …

The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status And Physical Activity Among Adolescents, Meredith Laurel Stockie

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Background: Many Canadian youth are inactive (Active Healthy Kids Canada, 2009). Socioeconomic status (SES) is one factor that influences youth physical activity (PA) levels; however, the factors involved in this relationship are not well understood. Given that numerous quantitative studies suggest there is a positive relationship between SES and PA among adolescents, but offer little insight into why the given relationship exists, the purpose of the current thesis is to study the factors that influence the relationship between SES and PA among youth aged 12–14 years through a qualitative lens.

Methods: Low (n = 2) and high SES (n = …

An Examination Of Intercollegiate Athletic Injury Tracking Systems Within Canadian Universities, Andrew D. Ross

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Information regarding the practice of athletic injury tracking within Canadian intercollegiate institutions has been relatively deficient. The study aimed to assess the current status of athletic injury tracking systems (AITS) in Canadian universities within the Canadian Interuniversity Sport Association (CIS). A secondary purpose was to obtain data from therapists within Canadian Universities, to identify and analyze issues, benefits, barriers and obtain information regarding how athletic injury tracking methods are conducted. This was achieved by obtaining data regarding the current state of AITS in CIS institutions, clinical demographics, athletic therapists and/or physiotherapists’ opinions regarding the pro’s and con’s of athletic injury …

Metabolic And Molecular Approaches To The Study Of Bacterial Communities In Wetlands Of The Alberta Athabasca Oil Sands Region, Jessica Dawn Morrison

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Bacterial communities in wetlands from the Athabasca region (Alberta, Canada) were surveyed and their utility as bio-indicators for wetland reclamation was assessed. Sediment samples were collected from wetlands categorized as: (1) natural (off mining leases), (2) reference (on mining sites but not directly impacted by oil sands processed material (OSPM)), and (3) OSPM (directly affected by OSPM). Wetlands of the latter two groups ranged in age from 11 to 24 years. Analysis involved community level physiological profiling (CLPP) with BIOLOG™ EcoPlates, and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). Multivariate analysis applied to data from both techniques revealed differences in the bacterial …

Mathematical Modeling Of Quantum Dots With Generalized Envelope Functions Approximations And Coupled Partial Differential Equations, Dmytro Sytnyk

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

No abstract provided.

Satisfaction With Sexual Health Education Among Recent Graduates Of Ontario High Schools, Glenn J. Meaney

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Satisfaction with sexual health education can be seen as student evaluation of how effectively the sexual health education curriculum meets its goals. First-year university students completed one questionnaire containing measures concerning satisfaction with high school sexual health education, sexuality-related individual difference variables, and intentions to pursue further sexual health education at the university level. Question 1 was whether students were satisfied with their high school sexual health education. Results were examined for differences by gender and type of school attended (i.e., public or Catholic). Participants rated sexual health topics as very important; believed that most sexual health education should occur …

Characterization Of The Interaction Between Arabidopsis Toc159 And Toc33 Gtpase Domains, Wesley A. Farquharson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Protein-protein interactions are critical for many biochemical processes and for cellular function. Understanding interactions between proteins and ligands, as well as other proteins are necessary for the modelling of biological systems. Protein import into chloroplasts is one such system where the understanding of interactions between members of the translocation complex is limited. The translocon at the outer envelope membrane of chloroplasts (Toe complex) consists of three core components: Toc75, Tocl59, and Toc34. Members of the Tocl59 and Toc34 gene families in Arabidopsis thaliana have been shown to assemble differentially into structurally and functionally distinct complexes. More specifically, there is evidence …

An Action Research Study Of The Supporting The University-Ready Through Environment (Sure) Program, Natalie Brown

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The current research documented the processes and outcomes of an educational access program for women living in poverty at the individual and organizational level of analysis. The purpose of this study was to understand barriers, strategies to reduce barriers and outcomes achieved by a grassroots program: Supporting the University-Ready through Empowerment (SURE). The 12 participants consisted of three women learners of the SURE program, three SURE co-directors (including myself), three university partners and three community partners. Life narrative interviews were conducted with the learners with structured interviews conducted with all other informants. Additionally, focus groups were run with the SURE …

Knowing Body, Moving Mind: Ritualizing And Learning In Two Buddhist Centres In Toronto, Patricia Q. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This book explores learning through ritualizing in introductory meditation courses offered at two Tibetan-based, western Buddhist centres in Toronto. Through interviews with several of the centres’ newcomers, experienced members and teachers, it explores students’ reasons for enrolling in meditation classes as well as their attitudes towards religion and ritual. The study's primary focus is on respondents’ experiences of learning through formal practices such as meditation postures and techniques. Ritualizing is interpreted in part through performance theory, an approach which highlights the performative elements of ritual and the physical enactment of ritualized postures and gestures. Learning through ritualized activities creates a …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of A Short-Duration Reading Intervention On Grade One Phonological Awareness And Word Reading, Carrie Seward

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this project was to evaluate the influence of a summer intervention for children showing early signs of reading delay. The project evaluated two intervention components: a two week camp for children and two training workshops for parents. Data were collected for five groups of participants. Three groups participated in one or more intervention components: parent workshops only group, child camp only group, and both parent workshops and child camp group. All children who participated in the interventions were identified by teachers as having difficulty in phonological awareness and word reading skills at the end of senior kindergarten. …

The Rules Of Engagement: German Women And British Occupiers, 1945–1949, Barbara Smith

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation is a document based administrative study of the British occupation of Germany, 1945–49, and its impact on specific areas of the lives of German women who were living in the British zone. The study examines the effect of British occupation policy on the regulation of marriage, prostitution and venereal disease, and German women’s organizations. British occupation strategies were unique; although the British worked with the Americans on many levels they maintained separate policy approaches. The British brought their own social perspectives and systems to Germany and attempted to impose them on German social and civil procedures. German women …

Acknowledging The Skeletons In Our Closet: Collective Guilt And Ingroup-Affirmation, Gregory Roy Gunn

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Just as people defend against threats to personal identity, they also defend against threats to social identity. In the context of intergroup transgression, the defensiveness against social identity threat has the effect of undermining collective guilt and its prosocial consequences. However, there may be ways for perpetrator groups to alleviate threat without undermining guilt. Five studies examined whether perpetrator groups are more willing to acknowledge collective guilt once social identity threat has been buffered by ingroup-affirmation. As predicted, Study 1 revealed that men accepted greater collective guilt for the mistreatment of women after affirming their ingroup. Replicating this effect, Study …

Commanding The Green Centre Line In Normandy: A Case Study Of Division Command In The Second World War, Angelo N. Caravaggio

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis examines the experiences of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division as it prepared for and carried out its role in the battle of Normandy and the libeation of France in 1944. The factors that limmited opportunities to practice the formation in large-scale exercises are noted as are the methods used by the General Officer Commanding, Major-General George Kitching, to compensate for the limitations. This thesis argues that through the development of an effective commander-staff dynamic Kitching, his staff and his subordinates commanders, were able to meet the challenges and chaos of combat in the final stages of the Normandy …

Illusion Of Coexistence: The Waldorf Schools In The Third Reich, 1933–1941, Karen Priestman

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

From 1933 to 1941, the eight existing Waldorf schools in Germany were forced to close. As an alternative system of education, they were considered a threat to National Socialism. Yet, they were not systematically nor uniformly brought into line with the Nazi state through the process of Gleichschaltung. Very few studies address the history of the Waldorf schools under National Socialism, and those that do are invariably written by members of the Waldorf school community. By examining correspondence between the Waldorf school administrators and Nazi officials, this study helps to fill the void. This investigation reveals that the personalities …

Toward A More Holistic Approach To The Conservation Management Of Southern Ontario’S Small Protected Areas, Wilfred Gregory Tschirhart

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Within Southern Ontario’s highly fragmented greater natural ecosystem, there remain numerous relatively small scattered areas which bear at least some resemblance to their former pre-European/Canadian settlement natural ecosystem. In their present state they serve as reservoirs of their particular ecoregion’s indigenous plant and animal species. In proportion to their limited spatial areas, degree of isolation, existing ecological integrity, and long-term ecological carrying capacity they are stores of natural capital, which is beneficial to both nature and society. They co-exist with Southern Ontario’s well developed socioeconomic/cultural system, on whose stewardship their long-term integrity is becoming increasingly dependent, which creates increased environmental …

Influence Of Vitamin K-Rich Plant Foods On Anticoagulant Baiting Efficacy In Wild House Mice, Wild Norway Rats, And Wild Black Rats, G. W. Witmer, P. W. Burke

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Rodents introduced to islands have caused the extinction of many species of animals. Anticoagulant rodenticides are relied on to eradicate rodents from these islands, but if the rodents are eating plant materials that contain high amounts of vitamin K (the antidote to anticoagulants) anticoagulant rodenticides may not be effective. In a laboratory trial, individually caged Noway Rats Rattus norvegicus, Black Rats R. raffus and House Mice Mus musculus were fed fresh plant material high in vitamin K (Collards [0.62 mg vitamin K per 100 g] and Brussels Sprouts [0.19 mg vitamin K per 100 g]) for a period of …

West Nile Virus Detection In Nonvascular Feathers From Avian Carcasses, Nicole M. Nemeth, Ginger R. Young, Kristen L. Burkhalter, Aaron C. Brault, William K. Reisen, Nicholas Komar

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

West Nile virus (WNV) is a public health threat and has caused the death of thousands of North American birds. As such, surveillance for WNV has been ongoing, utilizing numerous biological specimens and testing methods. Nonvascular (i.e., fully grown) feathers would provide a simple method of collection from either dead or live birds of all ages and molt cycles, with presumably less biosafety risk compared with other specimen types, including feather pulp. The current study evaluates WNV detection in nonvascular feathers removed from naturally infected avian carcasses of several species groups. Feathers of corvid passeriforms had the highest sensitivity of …

Pathogenesis And Epidemiology Of Brucellosis In Yellowstone Bison: Serologic And Culture Results From Adult Females And Their Progeny, Jack C. Rhyan, Keith Aune, Thomas Roffe, Darla Ewalt, Steve Hennager, Tom Gidlewski, Steve Olsen, Ryan Clarke

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Our objective in this prospective study was to determine the natural course of Brucella abortus infection in cohorts of seropositive and seronegative, female bison (Bison bison) and their offspring in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) for 5 yr. We collected specimens from 53 adult females and 25 calves at least once and from 45 adults and 22 calves more than once. Annual seroconversion rates (negative to positive) were relatively high (23% for calves and juvenile bison, 6% in the total sample of adult female bison in our study, and 11% in the adult females that began the study as …

Vegf Regulation Of Normal Developmental Apoptosis, Geoffrey Schaubhut

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Practice On Instrumental Learning And Hippocampal Nt-3 Expression In Long-Living Ames Dwarf And Wild-Type Mice, Grant Thomas Corbett

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Perceptions Of Stalking : Level Of Threat And Victim Response Type, John-Gabriel Licht

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of The Pilot Program Forward Impact, Caleb Skipper

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Body : The Human Figure In Contemporary Art, Amanda Unruh

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

An Exploratory Study Of High School Students. Conceptions Of Atomic And Cellular Structure And Relationships Between Atoms And Cells, Elizabeth Anne Edwards Roland

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Constructivist learning theory is based upon the tenets that students come to learning experiences with prior knowledge and experiences that the learner will choose from to make sense of the present situation. This leads to a mixture of understandings among students. This study proposed to reveal students‟ understanding of atomic structure and cell structure as well as the relationships between atoms and cells.

High school students from one private school participated in a paper-and-pencil test to uncover conceptual understanding and content knowledge of atoms and cells. The 120 participants were from grades: 9 (13m, 15f), 10 (9m, 20f), 11 (21m, …

Satisfaction Assessment Of Textual Software Engineering Artifacts, Elizabeth Ashlee Holbrook

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

A large number of software projects exist and will continue to be developed that have textual requirements and textual design elements where the design elements should fully satisfy the requirements. Current techniques to assess the satisfaction of requirements by corresponding design elements are largely manual processes that lack formal criteria and standard practices. Software projects that require satisfaction assessment are often very large systems containing several hundred requirements and design elements. Often these projects are within a high assurance project domain, where human lives and millions of dollars of funding are at stake. Manual satisfaction assessment is expensive in terms …

The Kosovo Crisis: A Dostoievskian Dialogue On International Law, Statecraft, And Soulcraft, Antonio F. Perez, Robert J. Delahunty

Scholarly Articles

The secession of Kosovo from Serbia in February 2008 represents a stage in the unfolding of a revolution of "constitutional" dimensions in International Law that began with NATO's 1999 intervention in Kosovo against Serbia. NATO's intervention called into question the authority and viability of U.N. Charter system for maintaining international peace. Likewise, the West's decision in 2008 to support Kosovo's secession from Serbia dealt a further blow to the central post-War legal rules and institutions for controlling and mitigating Great power rivalry. Russia's later support for South Ossetia's secession from Georgia demonstrated the potential that the Kosovo precedent has for …

Culpability In Creating The Choice Of Evils, Marc O. Degirolami

Scholarly Articles

Can an actor justify criminal conduct when he was criminally culpable in creating the conditions making it necessary? Virtually every American jurisdiction answers that he cannot and bars the necessity defense under those circumstances. Whereas many scholars have condemned that response, this Article takes the very different view that the exclusion of the defense for purposeful, knowing, and reckless criminal conduct that directly causes the conditions leading to the allegedly justified act represents a sound retributivist check on what is an otherwise cruder evaluation of whether conduct is socially valuable, worthy of praise, or, in a word, justified. Criminal "created …

Advocating For Sri Lankan Migrant Workers: Obstacles And Challenges, Michele Ruth Gamburd

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nearly a million Sri Lankan women labor as migrant workers, the vast majority in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in West Asia. They are poorly paid and vulnerable to a wide variety of exploitative labor practices at home and abroad. Despite the importance of worker remittances to the national economy, and in spite of Sri Lanka’s history of organized labor and active political participation, migrants have received only anemic support from the state, labor unions, feminist organizations, and migrant-oriented nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The article contextualizes Sri Lankan migration within larger-scale economic dynamics (such as global capitalist policies and processes) …

Finding And Dating Cathlapotle, Kenneth M. Ames, Elizabeth A. Sobel

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The people of the Cathlapotle town played a significant role in the fur trade era history of the Lower Columbia River, including Lewis and Clark’s visit on March 29th, 1806. Archaeologists and others have sought the town’s location for years. Long-term research has established that archaeological site 45CL1 on the US Fish and Wildlife Refuge near Ridgefield, Washington is Cathlapotle. This determination is based on the close match between site details with various ethnohistoric accounts of Cathlapotle. The site was occupied by ca. AD 1450 and probably moved there from another nearby location. It was abandoned sometime in the 1830s …

Offering Proper Feedback To Control For Out-Of-Plane Lumbar Moments Influences The Activity Of Trunk Muscles During Unidirectional Isometric Trunk Exertions, Christian Larivière, Denis Gagnon, Karine Genest

Études primaires

No abstract provided.