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Delay discounting (the devaluation of rewards delayed in time) has been studied extensively using animal models with psychophysical adjustment procedures. Similar procedures were soon developed to assess delay discounting in humans. Although across species the same mathematical function relates discounted value to imposed delay, several methodological concerns have been implicated in human delay discounting procedures. A procedure recently developed to address these concerns is the Experiential Discounting Task (EDT). This task arranges experienced delays and rewards that humans make decisions regarding—experiencing the outcomes of their choices within session before making additional choices. The popularity of this procedure has been fueled by reports of its sensitivity to acute experimental manipulation, and that it has been predictive of treatment success. Similar sensitivity results have not been found when a traditional delay discounting task (DDT) has been used. Though the EDT appears useful for a variety of reasons, it has not been subjected to the same rigorous internal validity and reliability tests that traditional DDTs have. In two experiments we examined the test-retest reliability of the EDT (Experiment 1) and the way in which choice trials are regulated (Experiment 2). Results demonstrate that the EDT is reliable across time and choice is insensitive to trial regulation differences. We conclude with a critique of the EDT as a procedure for assessing delay discounting and hypothesize other processes it may be measuring.

<p> In a modem society, many important products such as fuels, fertilizers and plastics are produced by chemical industries through the application of science and technology. The study of chemistry serves as a cornerstone for many disciplines such as medicine, biology, and pharmacy. However, in spite of this relevance to technology and the environment, many students see chemistry as abstract and unrelated to real life and, in fact, report that chemistry was one of the most difficult subjects they had to study in high school. This perception could explain the results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, released in November 1996, which indicate that Ontario students lag behind the national average and that Canadian secondary school science and mathematics students as a whole perform behind students from such countries as Japan and Belgium. </p> <p> As a result of these science test results and other social and political factors, the Ontario government decided to implement a process of secondary reform, announced in 1997, that would integrate five years into four and modify the science curriculum one year at a time starting in September, 1999. Along with other legislative changes, secondary school teachers have found that they do not have adequate preparation time or professional development training and direction, nor the resources to prepare the new curriculum changes. However, in spite of these concerns about rapid change, the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training released the Ontario Science Curriculum guidelines for Grades 9 and 10 in the late spring of 1999 with implementation to start with Grade 9 students in September, 1999. </p> <p> The purpose of this project was to design a chemistry unit and curriculum format, using the new Ontario Science Curriculum guidelines for Grade 9 and 10 (1999), to help both teachers and students relate chemistry to real life, thereby improving the standard of teaching and learning science in high school. To do this, the author developed a Grade 9 "applied" chemistry unit on " Exploring Matter." </p> <p> Based on the Kemp, Morrison and Ross (1994/1998) model, which uses an instructional development process involving nine components (e.g., identifying learner characteristics, establishing learning objectives and making decisions about instructional strategies and resources), the unit format uses a practical chart organizer. The approach, which other teachers may use as an example to develop other units, can make learning more effective by integrating the learning expectations stipulated in the new Ontario science curriculum guidelines, while relating content and activities to real life. By having the potential of improving teaching and learning, the instructional design approach used in this project also has the long-term potential of improving the national and international science test results for Ontario students. </p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

We formalize the digital library (DL) integration problem and propose an overall approach based on the 5S (Streams, Structures, Spaces, Scenarios, and Societies) framework. We then apply that framework to integrate domain-specific (archaeological) DLs, illustrating our solutions for key problems in DL integration. An integrated Archaeological DL, ETANA-DL, is used as a case study to justify and evaluate our DL integration approach. We develop a minimum metamodel for archaeological DLs within the 5S theory. We implement the 5SSuite toolkit set to cover the process of union DL generation, including requirements gathering, conceptual modeling, rapid prototyping, and code generation. 5SSuite consists of 5SGraph, 5SGen, and SchemaMapper, which plays an important role during integration. SchemaMapper, a visual mapping tool, maps the schema of diverse DLs into a global schema for a union DL and generates a wrapper for each individual DL. Each wrapper transforms the metadata catalog of its DL to one conforming to the global schema. The converted catalogs are stored in the union catalog, so that the union DL has a global metadata format and union catalog. We also propose a formal approach to DL exploring services for integrated DLs based on 5S, which provides a systematic and functional method to design and implement DL exploring services. Finally, we propose a DL success model to assess integrated DLs from the perspective of DL end users by integrating 5S theory with diverse research on information systems success and adoption models, and information-seeking behavior models. / Ph. D.

Chemotherapy resistance in human epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is a significant reason for the high rate of death among patients. We hypothesized that chemotherapy- resistant EOC cells will be killed by novel drug treatments in non-adherent culture conditions. The objective of this study was to test the efficacy of novel drugs to affect platinum resistant EOC cell viability. To achieve this, the cell killing efficacy of several drugs were tested on drug-resistant EOCs growing in non-adherent cultures. Both EOC cell lines and primary EOC cells isolated from patient ascites were used for these studies. Two different classes of drugs were tested including multikinase inhibitors (dorsomorphin and LDN-193189), and an understudied class of novel chemotherapeutic agents called glycosylated antitumor ether lipids (GAELs). EOC cells were treated with the drugs at different doses alone or in combination with cisplatin. Because GAELs exhibited promising results in resistant EOC cells, the mechanism of GAEL-induced cell-death was evaluated. / October 2016

Almost two thirds of the Earth's surface is covered in ocean, and yet, only about 5% of it is mapped. There are an unknown amount of sunken ships, planes, and other artifacts hidden below the sea. Extensive search via boat and a sonar tow fish following a standard lawnmower pattern is used to identify sites of interest. Then, if a site has been determined to potentially be historically significant, the most common next step is a survey by either a human dive team or remotely operated vehicle. These are time consuming, error prone, and potentially dangerous options, but autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are a possible solution. This thesis introduces a system for automatically generating paths for AUVs to survey and map shipwrecks. Most AUVs include software to set a lawnmower path for a given region of ocean, and individualized paths can be set via specifying GPS encoded nodes for the AUV to pass through. This thesis presents an algorithm for generating an individualized path that permits the AUV, equipped with a camera to "see" all sides of a region of interest (i.e. a shipwreck). This allows the region of interest to be completely documented. Photogrammetry can then be used to reconstruct a three-dimensional model, but a path is needed to do so. Paths are generated by a probabilistic roadmap algorithm that uses a rapidly-exploring random tree to quickly cover the volume of exploration space and generate small maps with good coverage. The roadmap is constructed out of nodes, each having its own weight. The weight of a given node is calculated using an objective function which measures an approximate view coverage by casting rays from the virtual view and intersecting them with the region of interest. In addition, the weight of a node is increased if this node allows the AUV to see a new side of the region of interest. In each iteration of the algorithm, a node to expand off of is selected based off its location in space or its high weight, a new node with a given amount of freedom is generated, and then added to the roadmap. The algorithm has degrees of freedom in position, pitch, and yaw as well as the objective function to encourage the path to see all sides of the region of interest. Once all sides of the region of interest have been viewed, a path is determined to be complete. The algorithm was tested in a virtual world where the virtual camera acted as the AUV. All of the images collected from our automatically generated path were used to create 3D models and point clouds using photogrammetry. To measure the effectiveness of our paths versus the pre-packaged lawnmower paths, the 3D models and point clouds created from our algorithm were compared to those generated from running a standard lawnmower pattern. The paths generated by our algorithm captured images that could be used in a 3D reconstruction which were more detailed and showed better coverage of the region of interest than those from the lawnmower pattern.

No Abstract. / Dissertation (Magister Educationis)--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

Today mobiles are a standard, multiple sensors that gathers data about the user is embedded within those mobiles. But the use of this data is not as common as one would think in the mobile game market. To observe and analyse how an implementation of this data would affect a mobile game from a common genre such as time-passing games a prototype were built. This prototype could be seen as a reversed gamification using training data, in this case footsteps, in order to enhance the game and make it more interesting for the user. Findings of how the data could be integrated within the game in a way that would interest users more have been gathered through a survey and are discussed and presented.

Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) is a non-linear optimization problem aimed to estimating subsurface parameters by minimizing the misfit between modeled and recorded seismic data using gradient descent methods, which are the only practical choice because of the size of the problem. Due to the high non-linearity of the problem, gradient methods will converge to a local minimum if the starting model is not close to the true one. The accuracy of the long-wavelength components of the initial model controls the level of non-linearity of the inversion. In order for FWI to converge to the global minimum, we have to obtain the long wavelength components of the model before inverting for the short wavelengths. Ultra-low temporal frequencies are sensitive to the smooth (long wavelength) part of the model, and can be utilized by waveform inversion to resolve that part. Unfortunately, frequencies in this range are normally missing in field data due to data acquisition limitations. The lack of low frequencies can be compensated for by utilizing wide-aperture data, as they include arrivals that are especially sensitive to the long wavelength components of the model. The higher the scattering angle of a 5 recorded event, the higher the model wavelength it can resolve. Based on this property, a scattering-angle filtering algorithm is proposed to start the inversion process with events corresponding to the highest scattering angle available in the data, and then include lower scattering angles progressively. The large scattering angles will resolve the smooth part of the model and reduce the non-linearity of the problem, then the lower ones will enhance the resolution of the model. Recorded data is first migrated using Pre-stack Exploding Reflector Migration (PERM), then the resulting pre-stack image is transformed into angle gathers to which an angle filtering process is applied to remove events below a certain cut-off angle. The filtered pre-stack image cube is then demigrated (forward modeled) to produce filtered surface data that can be used in waveform inversion. Numerical tests confirm the feasibility of the proposed filtering algorithm. However, the accuracy of the filtered section is limited by PERM’s singularity for horizontally-traveling waves, which in turn is dependent on the velocity model used for migration and demigration

Microaggressions are a form of interpersonal discrimination towards marginalized groups that are often ambiguous in nature and delivered unintentionally. The subtleness of these attacks on identity can make them difficult to recognize and address. Emerging research reveals that the targets of microaggressions are experiencing negative effects on their wellbeing; however, the bulk of existing literature on this topic only addresses microaggressions perpetrated towards racial minority or LGBT individuals. Little is known about pervasiveness and potential impact of microaggressions directed towards people with disabilities- particularly in academic contexts. This study pilots a measurement tool, the Microaggressions Towards Students with a Disability Questionnaire (MTSDQ), to assist in assessing the frequency with which university students with disabilities are encountering microaggressions in their classroom settings. The negative impact of these events on students’ sense of belonging and willingness to participate in their classrooms is also addressed.