Thesis advisor: Katherine L. McNeill / Recent science education reform documents and standards, such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), call for school science to better reflect authentic scientific endeavors by highlighting the centrality of students engaging in science practices. This dissertation study focuses specifically on argumentation (through the modality of talk), one of the eight science practices emphasized in the NGSS. Although extensively studied, argumentation rarely occurs in classrooms. The absence of this science practice in classrooms is partly due to the student-driven exchanges required by argumentation differing greatly from the interactions that occur during traditional instruction, where students primarily speak to and through the teacher. To transform the type of talk that occurs in science classrooms it is necessary to examine discourse patterns, as well as the roles classroom members take on, in order to identify and develop strategies that can facilitate the shift in discourse norms. This dissertation employs a mixed-methods approach, using social network analysis (SNA), multiple case study methodology, and discourse analysis (DA), to deeply examine video recordings of three middle school classrooms engaged in argumentation through a science seminar (a type of whole class debate). Findings from the SNA highlight the importance of argumentation research integrating a focus on argument structure with dialogic interactions, and point to the benefits of using multiple types of representations to capture engagement in this science practice. Furthermore, examining the manner by which teachers articulated student expectations and goals for the argumentation activity suggest the need to continue supporting teachers in developing and using rich instructional strategies to help students with the dialogic component of argumentation. Additionally, this work sheds light on the importance of how teachers frame the goals for student engagement in this science practice, specifically as being either individual goals or communal goals. Lastly, findings from the DA stress the relationship between discourse patterns and interactional norms, and also suggest the need to expand our perspectives of who can prompt for critique during an argumentation activity.

II. ABSTRACTTextilen is a project designed to draw the human senses to the world of microand macro patterns in sound and color and to explore methods for correlating thetwo mediums. This goal is accomplished via a two-fold process. First of all, patternsin sound are explored through the use of textile materials by way of creating newinstrument interfaces, synthesizer sources, and tones in music harmony. Secondly,the patterns of the textiles themselves are explored and incorporated into costumesand characters so an association between the emanating sounds and the visualstimulus presented by the characters, highlights the underlying patterns used inboth mediums. The final presentation will be organized in the context ofperformance art in a controlled sound environment.A subsidiary aim of the project has been to develop myself as an artist and bringmy interests and inspirations into an artistic context. In order to execute this,a design method that incorporates practical and theoretical research alongsidetechnical invention, graphic design, sound experimentation, and characterdesign was chosen. / Program: Master in Textile Design

On-farm assessment of cattle health, behaviour and welfare is often a logistical challenge but necessary for ensuring high standards of welfare and production. Recently, technological advances in engineering have allowed the mass manufacture of biotelemetry systems for use in research and industry. A commercial dairy farm may now have many different systems recording information about each individual animal in the herd. One such biotelemetry system is the collection of activity data via activity monitors. These devices were initially used by farmers to detect oestrus bouts through the resulting rise in activity and over the years have been improved to collect highly accurate and specific data about lying, standing and steps recorded over long periods of time. Long term, unobtrusive recording of individual cattle activity patterns is now becoming a reality on several farms. This raises the possibility of utilising sensors to remotely quantify aspects of cattle behaviour and welfare across different farms relatively quickly, allowing for the improvement of management and breeding strategies. Before this can be achieved, there needs to be a solid understanding of how behaviour affects activity patterns and how such data should be handled. In this project, the IceTag (IceRobotics Ltd., South Queensferry, UK), was used as a biotelemetry system for recording the activity of cattle. The IceTag is a tri-axial accelerometer activity monitor with a sample rate of 16Hz which has been shown to be sensitive (i.e. few false negatives) and specific (i.e. few false positives) when recording lying and standing behaviour on adult cattle. Cattle’s individual variation in behaviour was used as a case study to investigate the usage of this type of biotelemetry system. There were two phases to the study. In the first phase, the capabilities and limitations of the IceTag sensor were investigated. This involved assessing the extent of behavioural reactions to the IceTag in cattle. The behaviour of 28 lactating dairy cattle at the SRUC Dairy Research Centre was assessed for an adverse behavioural effect of the tags. The results of this study recommended a period of 48 hours from attachment before cattle grew accustomed to wearing the tag. Following this, the capabilities of the tags were assessed. Activity traits calculated directly from the tag and derived from tag data were analysed with respect to performance in four short term tests of temperament in 67 beef steers at the SRUC Beef Unit. From this work, the good repeatability of activity traits including average bout length, daily MotionIndex and daily step count encouraged their further usage. Steers which responded fearfully in a temperament test had higher MotionIndex in the home pen (rs = 0.35, P = 0.004) and steers which were more capable of displacing other steers at feeding stations also had longer average standing bouts (rs = 0.26, P = 0.036) and were more variable in their total daily standing duration (rs = 0.27, P = 0.030). This suggested that fear and sociability related behaviours can be detected through analysis of activity patterns. This work was continued at Wageningen University’s Dairy Research Centre where activity was recorded in over 100 dairy cattle. Activity recorded over a forty day period could explain some of the variation in behaviours seen during a subsequent fear test, but not in a social motivation test. The trait ‘neophobia’ was associated with more lying bouts and a greater variation in lying bout duration in dairy cows (R2 adj = 0.15, F3,75 = 5.32, P = 0.002) and bold cows also showed less variation in their lying bout durations (R2 adj = 0.11, F2,75 = 5.63, P = 0.005). In conclusion, remote sensors are a useful addition to the ethologist’s toolbox, enabling researchers to gain some insight into how fearfully a cow may react without assessing this through on-farm behavioural testing. Moreover, this work has found that the effects of personality which can be observed in behavioural testing can also be observed in spontaneous behaviour in the home pen away from testing environments. Biotelemetry systems can be utilised as a welfare assessment tool as they record repeatable activity traits which relate to underlying behavioural dimensions linked to the cow’s behavioural response to stimuli.

Thesis (MPH)--University of Limpopo, 2010. / Background Despite of all the media information and reports about women abuse and non- reporting, there seems to be a high rate of domestic violence, according to reports obtained at Masonwabisane women support centre in Butterworth, Eastern Cape. According to the managing director of the above centre twenty (20) victims report daily at the centre. Probably because of cultural and religious beliefs, violence is not always reported or talked about. It is against this background that the researcher intended to conduct this study. Aims Examination of the characteristics of abused women who visited Masonwabisane Women Support Centre (MWSC) in Butterworth, Eastern Cape. Methodology Data was collected at MWSC in Butterworth an NGO operating under Mnquma local municipality. A descriptive quantitative study was used on records of abused women obtained from Butterworth areas who visited the centre and were reviewed retrospectively using a template developed by the researcher with effect from the 1st of July to 31 December 2007. The records were divided according to the areas served by the organization and the sub-samples randomly selected from each area. The analysis was based on the information that was generated from the questionnaires that women who visited the centre provided. Results The study indicated that the majority of the participants (94 %) were below the age of 40 years. Among the abused women 49 % were single. Almost all the women were living in the rural, informal settlement or township areas. Only ten (4 %) of the cases had no formal education while close to 82 % had at most a secondary school education and the rest 14.3 % had tertiary education. About 24 % of the cases were unemployed and 26.9 % were students. This gives a total of close to 50 % of cases who are economically inactive. The rest of the respondents were either in full time (15.1 %) and in part time (33.9 %) employment. At the time of presentation at the centre, two third (75 %) were traumatized 24 % injured, 13 % confused while 8.6 % were reserved and 2.9 % not well groomed. Over half (55.5 %) of the abuse cases were emotional abused, followed by physical abuse at 31 % while sexual abuse were 7.3 % and economical abuse were 6.1 %. Over a quarter (33, 5%) of women used tobacco, 10, 2% used alcohol and 3,3 % used illicit drug while over half (53,1%) of women did not use any from of substances. At the time of presentation at the centre the following personality traits from abused women were observed, almost half (44 %) of the abused women were angry, 26 % were stubborn and 15% were submissive while 14 % were aggressive. Majority of women (80 %) reported abuse during the week. One tenth (12 %) of women were abused during their pregnancy and 25% during their menstrual period. Because of the abuse almost a quarter (24 %) were physically disabled. Two thirds (66 %) of the women had children between 1 and 4 were abused. Majority (80 %) of women were abused by their husband or partners. Results show that employment and obstetric status were significantly associated (Χ2 = 96.24, p < 0.001). Type of abuse was not dependent on any other variables in the study. Frequency of reporting was associated with type of substance uses (Χ2 = 18.94, p = 0.04) and relationship with perpetrator (Χ2 = 94.78, p < 0.001). Occupation of the perpetrator was related to obstetric status (Χ2 = 193.58, p < 0.001), disability (Χ2 = 34.51, p < 0.001) and no of children the women had (Χ2 = 116.23, p < 0.001). Conclusion The following characteristics were observed from women who visited MWSC women support centre Butterworth, most women between 20-29 years of age were single they were either having steady relationships co-habiting. Most of them were staying in partner’s house or flat. Most of them came from townships and were economically inactive. It was evident from data analysis that most of them had low level of education (82 % secondary education) and they struggle to get employment. Another characteristic was that 66 % of cases were still students and therefore depended on their partners for financial support, which in some cases were elderly men. Most of them presented traumatized at the centre and the common form of abuse experienced was emotional abuse. Most of the abused women were found angry. To some extent others were so abused that they got injuries that led to their physical disability e.g. fractures. Most of them reported abuse at the centre during the weekdays and working hours. This could have an impact on statistics of women abuse as some women are abused by their partners or husbands during the night or weekend, some of them may feel it is no longer necessary to report abuse the following day or following week. Key words: Domestic violence, Characteristics of abused women, patterns of reporting.

This study was undertaken to determine which factors, if any, are responsible for inter-county variation in the percent of farm operators residing off the farm in California, Iowa, Kansas, Texas, and Utah. These states were selected for this study because of their wide representation of the various types of agricultural and sectional differences. These states vary significantly in type of farm, tenure conditions, off-farm employment opportunities, cultural patterns, remoteness of farms from town, and other variables. Forward step-wise regression analysis was utilized in each of the states to correlate percent of farm operators residing off the farm with type of farm, farm sales, tenancy, non-commercial farms, off-farm employment, remoteness, college education, and average off-farm income. In addition to the above variables, percent of Mormon farm operators and percent of non-white farm operators were used only in the Utah and Texas analyses respectively. Using the results of the regression analyses, it was possible to determine those variables, which a priori, were considered to be important determinants of the trend toward greater off-farm residence of farm families.

No description available.

This descriptive study was done 1) to explore and describe the proportional distribution of breast, cervical and colorectal cancers by stage (a proxy measure of availability, access, and utilization of secondary prevention strategies) in northern Saskatchewan First Nations and non-First Nations in comparison to southern Saskatchewan First Nations and non-First Nations; 2) to assess the impact of stage and age on the survival patterns for these cancers in northerners and First Nations whose survival patterns have been shown by previous research to be equal or poorer in comparison to southerners. Univariate and multivariate survival analyses were carried out to ascertain the impact of the different proportions of stage for each study group on survival. Stage at time of diagnosis is a proxy assessment of secondary prevention services, which include formal screening programs.<p> Data for this study was obtained from the Saskatchewan Cancer Registry, which has been maintaining cancer data since 1932. Cancer stage at time of diagnosis information is complete in the registry for different years for each cancer site. Hence data for breast cancer was for the years 1970 to 1995; cervical cancer data for the years 1980 to 1995; colorectal cancer data for the years 1990 to 1995. <p> The proportion of cancer cases for each site by TNM stage and age were compared among the four study groups. First Nation and northern populations were found to have a larger proportion of diagnoses at a later stage in comparison to the southern non-First Nation group. <p> Using Cox's proportional hazards model, both stage and age at time of diagnosis were found to be significant predictors of survival for all study groups. Age and stage adjusted relative risks were calculated and found to be significant in comparison to the southern non-First Nation group for cancer of the breast (RR =1.81 P=0.013). For cervical cancer the relative risk of dying of cervical cancer for southern First Nations in comparison to southern non­-First Nations was found to be 1.38 but this was not statistically significant (p = 0.097). For colorectal cancer, the relative risk of dying of colorectal cancer was found to be better for northern First Nations in comparison to southern non-First Nations (RR = 0.59), however this was not statistically significant (p = 0.45).<p> This study showed that despite adjusting for stage and age at time of diagnosis, there were still some unexplained differences in the survival pattern of northern First Nations, northern non-First Nations and southern First Nations in comparison to southern non-First Nations. Hypotheses as to what these unexplained differences are have been offered. These include differences in socio-economic status as well as availability, accessibility, attitudes towards and knowledge of secondary prevention strategies. Further study into these unexplained differences should be carried out.

Analysis of gene expression microarray data has traditionally been conducted using hierarchical clustering. However, such analysis has many known disadvantages and pattern discovery (PD) has been proposed as an alternative technique. In this work, three similar but different PD algorithms Teiresias, Splash and Genes@Work were benchmarked for time and memory efficiency on a small yeast cell-cycle data set. Teiresias was found to be the fastest, and best over-all program. However, Splash was more memory efficient. This work also investigated the performance of four methods of discretizing microarray data: sign-of-the-derivative, K-means, pre-set value, and Genes@Work stratification. The first three methods were evaluated on their predisposition to group together biologically related genes. On a yeast cell-cycle data set, sign-of-the-derivative method yielded the most biologically significant patterns, followed by the pre-set value and K-means methods. K-means, preset-value, and Genes@Work were also compared on their ability to classify tissue samples from diffuse large b-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) into two subtypes determined by standard techniques. The Genes@Work stratification method produced the best patterns for discriminating between the two subtypes of lymphoma. However, the results from the second-best method, K-means, call into question the accuracy of the classification by the standard technique. Finally, a number of recommendations for improvement of pattern discovery algorithms and discretization techniques are made.

Abstract <br /><br /> Coordination models and languages are relatively new methods in modeling component-based software systems. These models and languages separate the communication aspect of systems from their computation aspect, and hence enable the modeling of concurrent, distributed, and heterogeneous systems. In this thesis, our goal is to show that Reo, a channel-based exogenous coordination language, is powerful enough to be used in the area of workflow management. In order to achieve this goal, we consider a set of workflow control patterns. We implement each of these patterns in terms of a Reo circuit and show that these Reo circuits capture the behavior of the corresponding workflow control patterns. We believe that the patterns we choose in this thesis are enough to show the strength of Reo as a workflow language. <br /><br /> We explain our approach in four steps. In the first step, we specify the general definition of workflow control patterns in terms of some Point Interval Temporal Logic formulas. In the second step, we convert each PITL formula to a constraint automaton. In the third step, we implement each workflow control pattern by a Reo circuit; each Reo circuit consists of a set of <em>components</em> and a set of <em>connectors</em> that connect and coordinate those components and provide its behavior as a relation on <em>timed data streams</em>; a timed data stream is a twin pair of a data stream and a time stream. In the forth step, we compositionally derive the constraint automata of that Reo circuit and finally, in the fifth step, we show the equivalence of the two constraint automata.

No description available.