<p> <i>RuPaul's Drag Race</i> is one of the few reality television shows focusing on QLGBT (queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) identified individuals that has made it into mainstream consciousness. <i>RuPaul's Drag Race</i> debuted in 2009 and appears on the channels, Logo and VH1. This thesis analyzes the four seasons from 2009 through 2012. <i>RuPaul's Drag Race</i> provides a unique perspective on the ways that gender identity, sexuality, size, class, race, and ethnicity intersect and interact in people's lives. The television show augments many of these intersections and the challenges related to these identities while still reflecting the daily struggles that people experience. In many respects, the show works to promote messages of self-love and acceptance and makes an effort to praise each contestant. However, it also promotes many problematic and damaging stereotypes. This thesis conducts a feminist analysis in order to answer the question: How does <i>RuPaul's Drag Race</i> relate to hegemonic and oppressive stereotypes and roles associated with gender identity, sexual orientation, size, class, race and ethnicity? Does it challenge or reinforce such hegemonies? This thesis utilizes a number of secondary questions in its analysis. How does <i>RuPaul's Drag Race</i> portray fat and thin contestants? How do contestants' socioeconomic backgrounds fit into their portrayals on the show? How does <i> RuPaul's Drag Race</i> portray queer cultures, and are these portrayals stereotypical? How is race represented on the show; do racial stereotypes come into play? In order to answer these questions, this thesis examines visual imagery, narrative, and dialogue in the show as well as some supporting materials. It utilizes theories from cultural studies, women's studies, English, and communications within its analysis. This thesis concludes that although <i> RuPaul's Drag Race</i> does engage in some subversive behavior, it ultimately reinforces harmful hegemonic stereotypes.</p>

<p> Technology has, without a doubt, altered the social fabric of society. Mediated forms of communication have paved the way for more efficient production, and the vast amount of information available online has given people the opportunity to be more informed than ever. However, the rise of mediated communication has also presented a number of new threats. The current study focused on one of these threats, cyberbullying, and was interested in looking at how parents talk about and understand their child's cyberbullying behavior.</p><p> This study had the goal of uncovering if parents talk to their child about cyberbullying, and how they approach these conversations. The intent of this study was grounded in the idea that parent-child communication is a valuable tool for developing belief systems, as well as making sustainable, positive and effective changes to behavior and perceptions.</p><p> Ultimately, parents do not avoid conversations about cyberbullying with their children. Parents structure these conversations with the intention of positively changing their child's behavior and beliefs. Specifically, parents talk about cyberbullying with their children as an effort to decrease the perceived risk their child faces if he or she participates in cyberbullying. However, these conversations are limited because they are grounded in misrepresented media coverage of cyberbullying which intensifies cyberbullying behaviors. As such, media producers must work toward presenting more all encompassing and wide spread coverage of cyberbullying as an effort to educate parents about the variety of behaviors which relate to cyberbullying.</p>

This study examined mathematics anxiety among elementary teacher candidates, and to what extent it interacted with the modality principle under various degrees of learner-control. The experiment involved a sample of 186 elementary teacher candidates learning from eight versions of a computer program on division with fractions. The eight versions varied in modality of presentation (diagrams with narration, or diagrams with written text), control of pacing (pacing was controlled by either the learner or the system), and control of sequence (sequence was controlled by either the learner or the system). A pre-test, post-test, demographic questionnaire, subjective measure of mental effort, and the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Survey were also administered. This study revealed that mathematics anxiety was significantly positively correlated with mental effort, and significantly negatively correlated with engagement, pre-test and post-test scores. Additionally, a modality x pacing interaction was observed for both high prior knowledge and low mathematics-anxious students. Under system-pacing, the modality effect was observed, and these students achieved higher far transfer scores when learning from the diagrams and narration modality condition. However, under learner-pacing, the modality effect reversed, and high prior knowledge and low mathematics-anxious students performed better on far transfer scores when learning from the diagrams and written text modality condition. Low prior knowledge, and highly mathematics-anxious students performed poorly in all treatment conditions. Additional interactions involving sequence-control, and a four-way interaction involving prior knowledge, modality, sequence-control, and pacing were also uncovered. The results from this study demonstrate that prior knowledge and mathematics anxiety have a complex relationship with the effectiveness of the format of instruction, and the design of instructional materials needs to take into account these individual differences. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-25 19:38:33.9

Rateless codes, also known as fountain codes, are a class of erasure error-control codes that are particularly well suited for broadcast/multicast systems. Raptor codes, as a particularly successful implementation of digital fountain codes, have been used as the application layer forward error correction (FEC) codes in the third generation partnership program (3GPP) Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS) standard. However, the application of rateless codes to wireless multimedia broadcast/multicast communications has yet to overcome two major challenges: first, wireless multimedia communications usually has stringent delay requirements. In addition, multimedia multicast has to overcome heterogeneity. To meet these challenges, we propose a rateless code design that takes the layered nature of source traffic as well as the varying quality of transmission channels into account. A convex optimization framework for the application of unequal error protection (UEP) rateless codes to synchronous and asynchronous multimedia multicast to heterogeneous users is proposed. A second thread of the thesis addresses the noisy, bursty and time- varying nature of wireless communication channels that challenge the assumption of erasure channels often used for the wired internet. In order to meet this challenge, the optimal combination of application-layer rateless code and physical layer FEC code rates in time-varying fading channels is investigated. The performance of rateless codes in hybrid error-erasure channels with memory is then studied, and a cross-layer decoding method is proposed to improve decoding performance and complexity. / Thesis (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2011-06-12 16:26:36.136

This thesis attempts to gauge the strengths and limitations of the Java programming language in terms of its use in the production of multimedia compositions: in particular, the ways in which Java supports the creation of interactive, non-deterministic musical works. An original solution to the problem of multimedia design is presented: a hierarchically defined, basic, yet flexible scripting language that is interpreted using Java. This scripting language allows the user to incorporate his/her own media into a coherent and interactive form using a small set of simple keywords and basic operators. It also allows new functionality to be added by advanced users with a basic knowledge of Java. By investigating how such a scripting language may be implemented, the extent to which Java may be applied towards multimedia applications in general is revealed.

Providing guarantees in the Quality of Service (QoS) has become essential to the transmission of multimedia traffic over wireless links with fading channels. However this poses significant challenges due to the variable nature of such channels and the diverse QoS requirements of different applications including voice, video and data. The benefits of dynamic adaptation to system and channel conditions have been accepted, but the true potential of optimized adaptation is lost if the layers operate independently, ignoring possible interdependencies between them. Cross-layer design mechanisms exploit such interdependencies to provide QoS guarantees for the transmission of multimedia traffic over fading channels. Channel adaptive M-QAM schemes are examples of some of the earliest works in the area of cross-layer design. However, many of the original schemes use the assumption that thresholds designed for AWGN channels can be directly applied to slow-fading channels. The thresholds are calculated with a commonly used approximation bit error rate (BER) expression and the first objective of the thesis was to study the accuracy of this commonly used expression in fading channels. It is shown that that the inaccuracy of the expression makes it unsuitable for use in the calculation of the threshold points for an adaptive M-QAM system over fading channels. An alternative BER expression is then derived which is shown to be far more accurate than the previous one. The improved accuracy is verified through simulations of the system over Nakagami-m fading channels. Many of the cross-layer adaptation mechanisms that address the QoS provisioning problem only use the lower layers (physical and data link) and few explore the possibility of using higher layers. As a result, restrictions are placed on the system which introduces functional limitations such as the inability to insert more than one class of traffic in a physical layer frame. The second objective in this thesis was to design a physical and application layer cross-layer adaptation mechanism which overcomes this limitation. The performance results of the scheme in both AWGN and fading channels show that the cross-layer mechanism can be efficiently utilized for the purposes of providing error rate QoS guarantees for multimedia traffic transmissions over wireless links. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

The title of this thesis is "iPad and Computer devices in Preschool: A tool for literacy development among teachers and children in preschool." The study was an exploration of how teachers and their pupils put iPad and other computer devices into use in early childhood education. This study was a qualitative research study, based on the observation of the pupils and the interviews of the teachers. In this study, observation of the children and interviewing of the teachers over a period of five weeks produced significant results. The children participants in the observation were approximately 60 and they were between the ages of 3 to 6,5 years. Four preschool teachers and one preschool teaching assistant were interviewed in an attempt to substantiate the use of ICT in early childhood education. The overall result of the study was that the teachers’ positive attitude towards iPad helped to enhance and facilitate the development of literacy skills in the children. This study provided evidence of how children created their own learning environment by actively practising their reading, writing, and comprehension skills. It also showed how ICT enhanced social interaction and developed intra-action activities among the children, to a situation that eventually led to the development in their learning.

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