The astounding capacity for learning ranks among the nervous system’s most impressive features. This thesis comprises studies employing varied approaches to improve understanding, at the level of neural circuits, of the brain’s capacity for learning. The first part of the thesis contains investigations of hippocampal circuitry – both theoretical work and experimental work in the mouse Mus musculus – as a model system for declarative memory. To begin, Chapter 2 presents a theory of hippocampal memory storage and retrieval that reflects nonlinear dendritic processing within hippocampal pyramidal neurons. As a prelude to the experimental work that comprises the remainder of this part, Chapter 3 describes an open source software platform that we have developed for analysis of data acquired with in vivo Ca2+ imaging, the main experimental technique used throughout the remainder of this part of the thesis. As a first application of this technique, Chapter 4 characterizes the content of signaling at synapses between GABAergic neurons of the medial septum and interneurons in stratum oriens of hippocampal area CA1. Chapter 5 then combines these techniques with optogenetic, pharmacogenetic, and pharmacological manipulations to uncover inhibitory circuit mechanisms underlying fear learning. The second part of this thesis focuses on the cerebellum-like electrosensory lobe in the weakly electric mormyrid fish Gnathonemus petersii, as a model system for non-declarative memory. In Chapter 6, we study how short-duration EOD motor commands are recoded into a complex temporal basis in the granule cell layer, which can be used to cancel Purkinje-like cell firing to the longer duration and temporally varying EOD-driven sensory responses. In Chapter 7, we consider not only the temporal aspects of the granule cell code, but also the encoding of body position provided from proprioceptive and efference copy sources. Together these studies clarify how the cerebellum-like circuitry of the electrosensory lobe combines information of different forms and then uses this combined information to predict the complex dependence of sensory responses on body position and timing relative to electric organ discharge.

Previous studies of form-focused instruction (FFI) have examined the effect of various aspects of inputs, corrective feedbacks, and instructions on L2 learners' accuracy development. Although much research has suggested that L2 learners achieve high accuracy and communicative competence when they receive input enhancement, explicit instruction, and corrective feedback, limited work has been done on the effect of FFI in Chinese language. The thesis utilized qualitative and quantitative methods and tested the effect of two FFI models on two groups of learners' acquisition in Chinese adverbial phrases. Even though the quantitative results show that the group that received explicit treatment had significantly improved accuracy in the immediate and delayed post-tests, the interview results revealed that students have different learning styles. This further suggests that no one right instruction is the best, and teachers should implement various teaching approaches based on students' needs.

The specification and verification of communicating systems has captured increasing interest in the last decades. CCS, a Calculus of Communicating Systems [Milner 89a], was especially designed to help this enterprise; it is widely used in both industry and academia. Most efforts to automate the use of CCS for verification have centered around the explicit construction of a bisimulation [Park 81]. This approach, however, presents severe limitations to deal with systems that contain infinite states (e.g. systems with evolving structure [Milner 89a] or that comprise a finite but arbitrary number of components (e.g. systems with inductive structure [Milner 89a]). There is an alternative approach to verification, based on equational reasoning, which does not exhibit such limitations. This formulation, however, introduces significant proof search control issues, and, hence, has remained far less explored. This thesis investigates the use of explicit proof plans [Bundy 88] for problems of automatic verification in the context of CCS. We have conducted the verification task using equational reasoning, and centred on infinite state systems, and parameterised systems. A parameterised system, e.g. a system with inductive structure, circumscribes a family of CCS systems, which have fixed struture and finitely many states. To reason about theses systems, we have adopted Robin Milner's approach [Milner 89a], which advocates the use of induction to exploit the structure and/or the behavior of a system during its verification. To automate this reasoning, wehave used proof plans for induction [Bundy 88]- built within CLAM [Bundy et al 90b], and extended it with special CCS proof plans. We have implemented a verification planner by adding these special proof plans to CLAM. The system handles the search control problems prompted by CCS verification satisfactorily, though it is not complete. Moreover, the system is capable of dealing with the verification of finite state systems, infinite state systems, and parameterised systems, hence, providing a uniform method to analyse CCS systems, regardless of their state space. Our results are encouraging: the verification planner has been successfully tested on a number of examples drawn from the litereature. We have planned proofs of conjectures that are outside the domain of existing verification methods. Furthernore; the verification planning is fully automated. Because of this, even though the verification plan has still got plenty of room for improvement, we can state that proof planning can handle the equational verication of CCS systems, and, therefore, advocate its use within this interesting field.

The findings of this study predict that students who utilize five specific sentence constructions on timed single-draft writing compositions will have higher holistic scores than students who do not utilize the specific constructions. Students in the treatment group who were taught to use the five constructions through thorough and consistent instruction in a semester length first year writing course showed statistically significant gains, 4.698 points on a 0-18 scale, based on comparison of pre-test and post-test writing samples. The findings suggest that specific style instruction at the sentence level should be part of the first year writing course curriculum, and possibly in the writing curriculum of secondary education as well.

The purpose of the current study was to look at waiting behavior and how it is acquired among children with disabilities. Within this study a multi-experimental design was used to compare the effectiveness of two interventions, a signaled intervention using a visual timer and an unsignaled intervention. Both interventions were implemented across one changing criterion design that allowed for a progressive time delay to increase behavior. This experiment was also conducted across 4 participants to assess the intervention effects across multiple participants. The results showed that the signaled intervention was more effective in increasing the waiting behavior across all four participants. Three participants did see an increase in waiting behavior across the unsignaled intervention phases, although data indicates those results were not as clinically significant or consistent as the signaled intervention.

The present study will examine the effects of hypocrisy induction on selection decisions for two populations: Aversive Racists and truly non-prejudiced individuals. Aversive Racists are operationally defined as individuals who are low in explicit prejudice and high in implicit prejudice, whereas truly non-prejudiced individuals are defined as being low in both explicit and implicit prejudice. These two groups of people will differ on their ratings of job applicants, so that Aversive Racists will rate Black applicants lower than White applicants (with comparable job credentials) while truly non-prejudiced individuals will rate them similarly. The induction of hypocrisy will serve as a manipulation that reverses Aversive Racists ratings of job applicants; Black applicants will now be rated higher than White applicants with similar job credentials. External motivation to respond without prejudice will moderate these effects in the expected direction.

Exploring the relationship between prejudice and ethical decision-making within individuals that wish to pursue a career in the field of criminal justice has the potential to yield valuable insights on the ways that moral decisions may be impacted by extraneous factors. The objective of this thesis was to explore this relationship by means of quasi-experimental design and through examining 30 potential criminal justice candidates. Results suggested that significant associations between explicit racial attitudes and ethical decision-making are largely context-specific. Conversely, there was no significant relationship found between implicit racial attitudes and decision-making. In conducting this study, a better understanding of the role that explicit factors contribute within the decision-making process was revealed and a gap within the literature was identified. Also worthy of note, this study was the first known research inquiry into the relationship between both implicit and explicit attitudes and ethical decision-making within a Canadian criminological setting.

Exploring the relationship between prejudice and ethical decision-making within individuals that wish to pursue a career in the field of criminal justice has the potential to yield valuable insights on the ways that moral decisions may be impacted by extraneous factors. The objective of this thesis was to explore this relationship by means of quasi-experimental design and through examining 30 potential criminal justice candidates. Results suggested that significant associations between explicit racial attitudes and ethical decision-making are largely context-specific. Conversely, there was no significant relationship found between implicit racial attitudes and decision-making. In conducting this study, a better understanding of the role that explicit factors contribute within the decision-making process was revealed and a gap within the literature was identified. Also worthy of note, this study was the first known research inquiry into the relationship between both implicit and explicit attitudes and ethical decision-making within a Canadian criminological setting.

In this master thesis, a real-time control system that stabilizes the rotational rates of a tri-copter, has been studied. The tricopter is a rotorcraft with three rotors. The tricopter has been modelled and identified, using system identification algorithms. The model has been used in a Kalman filter to estimate the state of the system and for design ofa model based controller. The control approach used in this thesis is a model predictive controller, which is a multi-variable controller that uses a quadratic optimization problem to compute the optimal con-trol signal. The problem is solved subject to a linear model of the system and the physicallimitations of the system. Two different types of algorithms that solves the MPC problem have been studied. These are explicit MPC and the fast gradient method. Explicit MPC is a pre-computed solution to the problem, while the fast gradient method is an online solution. The algorithms have been simulated with the Kalman filter and were implemented on themicrocontroller of the tricopter.

This essay is about the European union freetrade treaty negations with Mercosur. I have in this essay used a qualitative content analysis, to study from the EU perspective the reasons to why, the EU and Mercosur suspended the free trade treaty negations 2004, and after several years resumed the negotiations again in 2010. The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding from the EU perspective of why free trade negotiations were suspended and then resumed. In order to achieve a deeper understanding of this event, I have applied neorealism and neoliberalism on the explicit statements and the implied actions, as these theories may provide different explanatory power of implied causes of negotiations. I have come to the conclusion that the theoretical perspectives can indeed explain explicit statements and implicit actions for suspended and resumed negotiations with Mercosur. The implicit reasons for suspended negotiations are among others that the EU has an egoist thinking concerning a free trade treaty. The EU wish to gain more benefits then Mecosur with a free trade treaty, which lead to Mercosur wanted to suspend the negotiations. Another implicit reason is that the EU was thinking entirely on how much that were going to gain in relation mercosur, because of this kind of thinking, the EU probably realized that they were going to loose on a treaty. The implicit reasons for resumed negotiations are among others are that the EU genuinely wants to collaborate with Mercosur as much as they can with the purpose to gain together as much as possible. Other implicit reason is mutual dependence, which means that the EU needs Mercosur and vice versa to strengthen the global economy, and to give job opportunities and growth on both sides. Another implicit reason to resume the negotiations again is that the EU has grown stronger as an economic block, because of this, the EU has greater advantage of their demands with Mercosur. Further more, this essay surely point out that the EU has a lot of difficulties to come up with an agreement with Mercosur. But hopefully the EU can in the nearest future reach a free trade treaty with Mercosur.