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With a population both increasing in number and age, comes a need for new diagnostic tools in the healthcare system, capable of diagnosing and monitoring multiple disorders in a cheap and effective way to provide personalised healthcare. Multiplex label-free biosensors have the potential to rejuvenate the current system. This thesis details the assessment of an ‘in house’ built labelfree array screening technology that has potential to be a point-of-care diagnostic for personalised medicine – the Array Reader. The performance of the Array Reader platform is considered in detail and optimised for both antibody and protein screening arrays. A Global Fit protocol is developed to extract kinetic constants for all protein-protein interactions, assuming a Langmuir adsorption binding model. Standard operating procedures are developed to provide optimised dynamic range, sensitivity, reproducibility and limit of detection of immuno-kinetic assay. A new antibody bio-stack signal amplification strategy is formed, improving the detection limit 60-fold. As a consequence, the bio-stack resulted in a novel method for determining the plasmon field penetration depth, defining the assay sensing volume at the nanoparticle surface. Antibody screening arrays were investigated with an IgG quantification assay to determine total IgG content from serum samples. It relied on the ability of protein A/G to bind antibodies via the Fc region. Specific antigens were used to measure the binding properties of the antibody Fab region. By characterising both regions, we have gained insight into the overall ability of an antibody to trigger an immune response. Protein screening assay were investigated targeting C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation. The assays performance characteristics compared favourably with clinically used CRP assays. Finally, an antibody screening array was developed to assess the efficacy of a vaccine against Yersinia pestis in a non-human primate model. The vaccine screening array is an excellent example of the versatility of the platform and just one of many possible applications for the future.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / Marjorie R. Hancock / With the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (PL 107-110), Kansas state reading standards, benchmarks and indicators have been aligned to meet the recommendation of the National Reading Panel (2000). The components that are aligned with the Kansas reading standards are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. High stakes testing and test scores disaggregated by race creates accountability in meeting instructional reading indicators for all students, specifically African American students. With increased pressures to meet and exceed the reading standards and close the achievement gap between Black and White students, schools are searching for instructional factors supportive of to meeting No Child Left Behind requirements. This mixed method study was conducted in three urban school districts in the state of Kansas. The quantitative study was conducted by analyzing African American fifth grade state reading assessment scores before and during implementation of No Child Left Behind to determine whether No Child Left Behind is positively impacting test scores. Data analysis revealed that African Americans increased in being at or above the standard, while decreasing the number below the standard. Out of the 180 schools in the three districts, six high performing schools were identified based on the percentage of African American students in the school, average mean scores before and during No Child Left Behind , and percentage of students at or above the standard from 2000-2007. Data were collected through detailed observational field notes and interviews with fifth grade teachers and principals in order to determine their perceptions of the instructional factors impacting reading scores. Data analysis revealed the following instructional factors impacting reading scores: analysis of data, quality professional development, teacher collaboration, high expectations, and parental involvement. Instructional reading indicators were coded throughout the observation of fifth grade classrooms. Observed indicators taught were phonics, vocabulary, comprehension of text types and text structures. This study provided perspectives of instructional strategies essential to increasing the reading strategies, skills and test scores of African American students while closing the literacy achievement gap between Black and White students in Kansas schools.

In this dissertation it is argued that literary theories have traditionally extended abundant attention on authors and texts, neglecting, with very few exceptions, the impor- tant role of the READER. To address this imbalance, par- ticular attention will be paid to the view of Wolfgang Iser, that a literary text can only elicit a response when it is read, and that it is virtually impossible to describe this response without also analysing the READING PROCESS. I share this view as it makes logical sense: a literary text remains meaningless, a mere 'paper and ink' production without the involvement of the reader. It is also the reader's own com- petence, his sense of aesthetic perception which enables him to make sense of the, in the literary text embedded message, hence the title: "The Nature of Aesthetic Perception in Literature. The Interaction between Text and Reader in the Process of Perceiving Literary Texts." / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

Play in the school setting is a highly contested issue in today's restrictive academic environment. Although many early childhood educators advocate the use of play in their classrooms and emphasize the importance of play for children's learning and development, children beyond the preschool and kindergarten years are not often afforded opportunities to learn through play in their classrooms. This eight-month study, conducted in a first grade classroom in the outskirts of the Phoenix Metropolitan area of Arizona, analyzed young children's playful responses to literature as they read various books together in the classroom context. The purpose of this study was to develop deep understandings about the affordances of play in response to text within a first grade classroom and to investigate the ways that children utilize play to respond to literature and to construct meaning. This dissertation is informed by these guiding research questions: What are the affordances of play for responding to text in a first grade classroom? 1. What are the sociocultural resources that children use to respond to text? 2. In what ways do first graders incorporate and utilize play to make meaning with texts and each other in the classroom? In order to answer these research questions, I utilized several theoretical frameworks including: sociocultural theories of learning and literacy, the role of play and imagination in development, funds of knowledge, and reader response theories. This study was also informed by recent research findings in the areas of play and culture and play and literacy. I implemented a classroom Reading Center wherein I studied children's cooperative reading transactions and play as reader response. I collected data through classroom observations and field notes, videotaped and transcribed transactions, audiotaped and transcribed conversations and interviews, artifact collection, teacher observations of responsive play, family home visits and interviews, and the use of family story backpacks. This data, analyzed through thematic analysis, the constant comparative method, and grounded theory, revealed rich information about the ways that children utilize play to respond to literature in the classroom setting. The findings of this study provide evidence to suggest that through their play as reader response, their responsive play, children create a social space in the classroom which connects official school literacy practices and academic instruction with their social play practices. In this new space, children's play and talk take central roles in their explorations and uses of literacy. Findings further suggest that play can be seen as a generative source of academic learning, that the notion of response in research and practice be reconceived in the field to include play as a valid and valued form of reader response, and suggest that further research be conducted on children's responsive play.

以國內專業人才，包括醫師、律師、會計師及建築師為對象所做的一項讀報行為與動 機的實證研究。內容概要包括： 第一章緒論。包括社會階層與專業階層理論的探討；相關實證文獻回顧及研究問題的 提出。 第二章研究方法。包括研究架構及變項說明、問卷設計、抽樣步驟與資料收集、處理 等過程。 第三章及第四章研究結果分析。專業階層讀者社會情境變項與專業準則介入變項的綜 合與比較分析。 第五章結論與建議。包括研究發概述及有關報紙的討論和建議。

本研究旨在探討讀者回應法在高中英詩教學上的效益。在探討中著重在比較兩種教學模式──讀者回應模式與傳統教學模式──的成效，更各別以實驗組與控制組進行研究。其重點針對以下五項：(1)學生的英文學習動機(2)學生對英詩的興趣(3)學生的寫作能力(4)學生的語言能力(5)同儕的互動和師生間的互動。 依據Dias和Hayhoe（1988）的論點，自1930年代起，新文評（New Criticism）、結構主義（Structuralism）和後結構主義（Post-structuralism）即影響著英詩教學，然而這股文評思潮，隨著讀者反應理論的興起，逐漸式微。起而代之的是強調以讀者為中心，重視讀者與文本間的互動，並允許讀者對同一文學作品有不同詮釋的教學模式，此教學模式已成為文學教師樂於採用的教學法。 本研究採用Rosenblatt（1978）為首的理論與建議，輔以各種活動，導引高中生解讀英詩，以實證讀者回應教學模式的具體成效，暨測試傳統的教學模式。 此研究以台北市立大同高中兩班七十七位高一學生為研究對象。兩班學生分成實驗組和控制組，教授同樣英詩，在為期四個月的教學活動中，實驗組接受讀者回應的教學模式，並參與討論，回應研究者所設計的題目和活動。控制組則採用傳統的教學模式，教授文本內容、結構為主。兩組皆以學生的問卷調查、GEPT成績、學習單和研究者的訪談、觀察做為本研究分析的基礎。 經由資料分析，茲將本研究發現之摘要條列如下： 1.整體而言，讀者回應教學模式比傳統教學模式更具效果。 2.實驗組學生對英文學習動機高於控制組學生。 3.實驗組學生比控制組學生對英詩更具濃厚興趣。 4.實驗組學生的寫作能力優於控制組學生。 5.實驗組學生的整體語言能力高於控制組學生。 6.依據問卷與研究者觀察，實驗組同儕間的互動與師生間的互動皆較控制組更具活力。 本研究結論發現，讀者回應法對學生的英文學習動機、英詩的興趣、一般寫作、語言的能力和同儕、師生的互動皆有良好的成效。 / Though New Criticism, Structuralism and Post-structuralism have dominated literature teaching since 1930s, reader response approach with its emphasis on the interaction between the text and the reader, has come into prominence and made a great impact on teaching literature over the last two decades. This research aimed to investigate the effects of reader response approach on English poetry teaching at a senior high school in terms of the students’ motivation in English, interest in poetry, writing ability, language proficiency, interaction, and teaching modes. A total of seventy-seven 10th graders at Taipei Municipal Ta-tung Senior High participated in the study. They were divided into two groups: the experimental group (37 students) instructed in the reader response approach with diverse activities, and the control group (40 students) taught in the traditional way of teaching. The experiment was done once a week, within the four class periods in the whole semester from September 8, 2003 to January 9, 2004 with a total of sixteen weeks. Instruments such as the GEPT, a questionnaire, interviews, observations, students’ worksheets and students’ poems were employed to evaluate the effects based on the quantitative basis. The results of this study were summarized as follows: 1.Overall, the response-based teaching gained much more popularity than the tradition way, which might suggest that the response-based teaching is more effective than the traditional one. 2.The experimental group showed higher motivation in learning English than the control one. 3.The experimental students displayed a deeper interest in poetry than the control students. 4.Students’ writing ability of the experimental group was superior to that of the control group, as evidenced by the t-test. 5.The language proficiency of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group. 6.According to the questionnaires, interviews and observations, the interaction in the experimental group was more dynamic than that in the control group. In conclusion, this study proposes some pedagogical implications for senior high school teachers in teaching English poetry, suggesting that the reader response approach achieved better effects in this aspect.

<p>The Affective PDF Reader is a PDF Reader combined with affect recognition systems. The aim of the project is to research a way to provide the reader of a PDF with real - time visual feedback while reading the text to influence the reading experience in a positive way. The visual feedback is given in accordance to analyzed emotional states of the person reading the text - this is done by capturing and interpreting affective information with a facial expression recognition system. Further enhancements would also include analysis of voice in the computation as well as gaze tracking software to be able to use the point of gaze when rendering the visualizations.The idea of the Affective PDF Reader mainly arose in admitting that the way we read text on computers, mostly with frozen and dozed off faces, is somehow an unsatisfactory state or moreover a lonesome process and a poor communication. This work is also inspired by the significant progress and efforts in recognizing emotional states from video and audio signals and the new possibilities that arise from.The prototype system was providing visualizations of footprints in different shapes and colours which were controlled by captured facial expressions to enrich the textual content with affective information. The experience showed that visual feedback controlled by utterances of facial expressions can bring another dimension to the reading experience if the visual feedback is done in a frugal and non intrusive way and it showed that the evolvement of the users can be enhanced.</p>

Inkjet-printed memory cards have been developed previously by re-searchers at Mid Sweden University but, these did possess some limita-tions, as each resistive memory cell required one physical contact and the resistances were designed to be electrically programmed.This work overcomes the above limitations by developing chemically programmed printed memory cards and a PC connected memory card reader. Printed memory cards are inexpensive and are developed by inkjet printing the nano-silver ink onto the photo paper substrate. A matrix readout method is used to increase the num-ber of memory cells and, by using a chemical solvent, the resistances were programmed to the desired resistance values and, for which, each resistance value represents data on the cards, called, write once read many (WORM) memories. The memory card reader was developed to access the data (resistance value) of the memory card and also to trans-mit the data to a LabVIEW graphical user interface for displaying the resistance values. By using multiple resistance steps, in which each step represents a different state, it is possible to create a number of possible selectable combinations which can be programmed at a later stage for developing applications.

The present thesis deals with two present-day English translations of the Bible - New American Standard Bible, which represents a conservative biblical translation, and Good News Bible, a more liberal translation, written in a way to be readable and accessible to the modern reader. The aim of the thesis is to analyze the two translations in terms of style, focusing on the syntactic and lexical levels. The research is based on a sample of 100 corresponding biblical verses drawn from each of the translations (altogether 200 verses), representing five different narrative parts of the Bible. The analysis of the lexical level is a qualitative one, comparing the nature of the vocabulary used in the two translations; the syntactic level is examined both qualitatively and quantitatively. The thesis attempts not only to describe the findings but also account for them, where possible, in terms of reader reception.