This dissertation examined the participation of eight lower-achieving readers in two intermediate-level elementary classrooms (one fourth- and one fifth-grade) during group discussions about literary texts. The purpose of the investigation was to determine the extent to which lower-achieving readers (defined as students who had persistent struggles to attain minimum scores on state, district, and classroom assessments in reading) displayed discourse features that indicated the students' high-level thinking during heterogeneous and homogeneous (by reading level) discussions about literary texts. Several characteristics of discourse indicate high-level thinking, including but not limited to: generalizations, analyses, speculations, affective responses, inter-textual connections, and elaborated explanations. A secondary purpose was to describe what happened when lower-achieving readers, their peers, and teachers engaged in group discussions about text. / A multiple case study design was used in this investigation. Data were collected between October 2005 and May 2006. Data sources included: field notes collected from participant observation, transcripts and indices of student and teacher interviews, transcripts and indices of audiotaped and videotaped discussions and reading lessons, and students' writing assignments and other artifacts. Multiple strategies were used to analyze the data, including analytic induction and descriptive statistical techniques. A discourse analysis coding scheme was used to determine the extent to which lower-achieving readers likely used high-level thinking about literary texts during group discussions. / The findings revealed focal students used the discourse of discussion as a tool to comprehend text in two ways. The students used the discourse about texts as intellectual scaffolds for their own thinking and transformation in understanding of the texts. In addition, the discussions created authentic opportunities for students to explore reading comprehension strategies (e.g., meanings of new words, visualizing the story). This means students drew on their knowledge of comprehension strategies and incorporated them into their discussions to reason about the texts without explicit instruction from the teacher. Focal students both evoked and heard others refer to and talk about the comprehension strategies during discussions. Moreover, an important contextual foundation of the discussions that seemed to relate to the focal students' thoughtful responses, or those that suggested the students went beyond recalling the literal details of the stories, was the use of the discourse to problem-solve about the meaning of the texts. Finally, in respect to the students' writing assignments that often followed the discussions about the texts, lower-achieving readers made use of the ideas of the discussions in their writing. / Regarding high-level thinking during discussions, the lower-achieving readers' discourse suggested that they thought in high-level ways about texts during discussions, and that they thought in high-level ways to the same extent or nearly the same extent as their peers did in the same discussions about texts. The one major difference in their talk about texts related to the instances of elaborated explanations or instances when students stated a position and explained their thoughts about the position with more than one reason or with evidence from the text. Higher-achieving readers produced significantly more 'elaborated explanations' during discussions than the lower-achieving readers in this study. / From a theoretical perspective, this investigation extends our understanding of lower-achieving readers' use of discursive practices that influence thinking and reasoning about text. From pedagogical perspectives, the findings suggest teachers might need to understand ways to encourage a kind of discourse that elicits genuine problem-solving about the meanings of text. Likewise, teachers might need to understand the discourse features that indicate high-level thinking to model and discuss the features in their work with lower-achieving readers during discussions about literary texts.

Epithelial ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death by gynaecological malignancy. Elucidation of the driver genes of ovarian cancer will lead to treatment targets and tailored therapy for this disease. The Affymetrix Genome-Wide SNP Array 6.0 was used to study 100 serous ovarian samples and 10 normal ovarian samples to identify loci and driver genes. The ovarian cancer genome was found to have high overall genomic instability across all chromosomes and key known genes in this disease were identified in the dataset. Aberrant regions of copy number gain were located in “blocks” of constant copy number at 1p, 1q, 8q, 12p, 19q and 20q. The range in copy number for gains was 4.2 to 5.1. The “blocks” of genes were located at 8p and 5p for copy number losses. The range for copy number loss was 0.6 to 0.9.

Epithelial ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death by gynaecological malignancy. Elucidation of the driver genes of ovarian cancer will lead to treatment targets and tailored therapy for this disease. The Affymetrix Genome-Wide SNP Array 6.0 was used to study 100 serous ovarian samples and 10 normal ovarian samples to identify loci and driver genes. The ovarian cancer genome was found to have high overall genomic instability across all chromosomes and key known genes in this disease were identified in the dataset. Aberrant regions of copy number gain were located in “blocks” of constant copy number at 1p, 1q, 8q, 12p, 19q and 20q. The range in copy number for gains was 4.2 to 5.1. The “blocks” of genes were located at 8p and 5p for copy number losses. The range for copy number loss was 0.6 to 0.9.

Resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the minimum energy expenditure necessary for survival. RMR varies widely both among and within species and a central question in evolutionary physiology concerns the functional basis for this variation. Juvenile North American red squirrels were used to investigate fitness consequences of variation in RMR by considering how expenditure relates to differences in food availability and to overwinter survival. Additionally, this thesis examines whether red squirrels exhibit phenotypic plasticity in RMR in response to varying levels of food availability. Results indicate that heavier juveniles with relatively low RMRs were more likely to survive overwinter. Moreover, these juveniles were capable of allocating more energy towards mechanical work and possessed larger food stores. Food supplemented yearlings exhibited higher RMRs than unsupplemented controls at the onset of the breeding season, while no difference in RMR was detected following termination of supplementation. / Wildlife Ecology

A long term study of fish populations on the Bonaparte Plateau, B.C., has revealed the possibility of 2-year cyclic recruitment variation in the pygmy pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus oregonensis). This thesis reviews possible causes of the cycle, and evaluates an inexpensive and non-destructive visual survey method to estimate juvenile population numbers over short summer periods while pikeminnow juveniles are recruiting to the lakes and dying rapidly, for use in future studies of the cyclic pattern. To provide an index of the abundance of juvenile pikeminnow, strip-transect surveys were conducted from shore. Each strip transect area was a full circumference of each of three study lakes, and extended from shore to a distance of up to 3 meters offshore. The visual surveys were shown to be accurate and repeatable when estimating the number of fish and the lengths of the fish in a shoal. The strip transects provide an index of abundance for juvenile northern pikeminnow and this index of abundance can be used to calculate daily summer and interannual mortality rates, providing estimates close to those predicted from the Lorenzen model for size-dependent mortality rates of fish in general. Stationary point surveys were also conducted to investigate juvenile pikeminnow behaviour, and these point surveys reveal a link between sunlight intensity and pikeminnow activity, and provide evidence of direct agonistic interactions between age 0 and age 1 juveniles, which could result in higher mortality rates of age 0 fish when age 1 fish are abundant. Analysis of survey data collected to date over five years from three lakes supports the possibility of a recruitment cycle with lakes out of phase with each other, suggesting that ecological interactions drive the cycles. These interactions are worthy of further investigation.

This thesis reports on a design and modeling of a micro-machined gyroscope. The proposed sensor is a dual mass type, electro-statically driven to primary mode oscillation and senses, capacitively, the output signal. Full decoupling between drive and sense modes minimizes the mechanical crosstalk and based on this a novel gyroscope is designed and modeled which has separate sensing and driving masses. The dual mass gyroscope is designed such that driving and sensing resonant frequency is 23101 Hz with 0% mismatch (in simulation)with quality factor of 31.6227 and bandwidth of 730.51Hz. The gyroscope when actuated in simulation with 25V ac and 10V dc showed sensing capacitance variation of 126aF for 1 rad/s with base capacitance of 244.16fF. To the design of the gyroscope a new semi automatic tool was formulated for the noise analysis and noise based optimization of the resonant MEMS structures. Design of a sensitive gyroscope needs to take into account the noise shaping induced by damping phenomena at micro scale and is critical for optimization. The analysis was further extended to the design of the gyroscope and estimation shows that there is a trade of between the S/N ratio and the sensitivity and the design could be made much better in-terms of S/N by tuning its resonant frequency to 10⁶Hz.

Recently, it has been shown that genetic variation that perturbs the regulation of gene expression is widespread in eukaryotic genomes. Regulatory variation (RV) is expected to be an important driver of phenotypic differences, evolutionary change, and susceptibility to complex genetic diseases. Because trans-acting regulators of gene expression control mRNA levels of multiple genes simultaneously, we hypothesise that RV that affects these components will have a shared-influence upon the expression levels of multiple genes. Since genes are regulated in trans by combinations of basal and tissue specific factors, we further hypothesise that RV in these components may have different effects in each tissue. We used microarrays to identify 755 genes that were affected by RV in at least one of the brain, kidney and liver of two inbred mouse strains, C57BL/6J and DBA/2J. Just 2% were affected in all three tissues, suggesting that the influence of RV is predominantly tissue specific. To study shared-RV, we measured the expression levels of these 755 genes in the same 3 tissues from a panel of recombinant inbred mice, and identified groups of correlated genes that are putatively under the influence of shared trans-acting RV. Using methods that we developed for studying the effects of RV in multiple tissues, we identified 212 genes that are correlated in all three tissues, which include 10 groups of at least 3 genes. We developed a novel method called coherency analysis to show that RV consistently affected the expression levels of these groups of genes in different genetic backgrounds. Strikingly, the relative up- or down-regulation of genes in each group was markedly different in the three tissues of the same mouse, suggesting that the influence of RV itself is not tissue specific as previously expected, but that RV can influence genes with differing outcomes in each tissue. These observations are compatible with RV affecting combinations of basal and tissue specific regulatory factors. This is the first cross-tissue investigation into the influence of shared-RV in multiple tissues, which has important implications in humans, where access to the phenotypically relevant tissue may be necessarily limited.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Alnarp : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2006. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2006. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Thesis (D. Mus. Arts)--University of Washington, 1994. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [88]-92).