abstract: This study examined the effects of an intensive remedial program, Wilson Reading System (WRS), on 43 struggling readers from second to twelfth grade. The students, who attended a large southwestern urban school district, were all at least two grade levels below their peers in reading. Participants received 20 hours of WRS instruction over the course of one month as part of a WRS teacher certification course. Using the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement, students were evaluated prior to and following their participation in the intensive summer program using five subtests (Letter-Word Identification, Reading Fluency, Spelling, Word Attack, and Spelling of Sounds) and two clusters (Basic Reading and Phoneme/Grapheme Knowledge) to assess gains in students' reading achievement. Since the intervention was delivered for such a brief period, this study was designed to provide a snapshot measure of initial reading skill gains. While a failure to perform significantly better was observed on the Letter-Word Identification, Reading Fluency, and Spelling subtests, students demonstrated significant improvement on Word Attack and Spelling of Sounds subtests following WRS instruction. Furthermore, students significantly improved on the Basic Reading and Phoneme/Grapheme Knowledge clusters. Study limitations and implications for future research and practice are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Educational Psychology 2013

In 1960-63 populations of the song sparrow (Melospiza melodia (Wilson)) were studied on some of the islands along the Pacific Coast of southern British Columbia. The general problem was to find the factors that might be responsible for the regulation of numbers of any small passerine species. A more specific problem was to explain the extremely high population density of the song sparrows on Mandarte Island compared with densities elsewhere. Most individuals on Mandarte Island were colour marked, and changes in population density and behaviour were observed throughout the breeding season and at intervals during the rest of the year. Environmental conditions on Mandarte Island were compared with those on other islands in the area. All islands were alike in having similar weather and few predators; they differed in the kind of vegetation. The high density of the Mandarte Island population seems to have been a result of the simplicity of the habitat, which favours song sparrows and not their potential competitors, and of the adaptability of song sparrows in utilizing common feeding grounds in undefended areas outside their usual habitat. The critical period in the regulation of numbers was the autumnal territorialism, when increased territorial activities resulted in heavy losses and emigration of the young to areas with lower densities. / Science, Faculty of / Zoology, Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines the music of contemporary British progressive rock artist Steven Wilson and explores the ways in which specific musical influences have informed and shaped his work. Wilson’s solo output is extremely eclectic and draws from a plethora of diverse genres including progressive rock, electronica, metal, drone, pop, jazz, and industrial. Although it would be impossible to trace all of the influences involved in Wilson’s unique musical idiolect, I study the influence of three seminal tracks upon his work: progressive rock band King Crimson’s “The Court of the Crimson King” (1969), electronica duo Boards of Canada’s “An Eagle in Your Mind” (1998), and progressive death metal group Opeth’s “Blackwater Park” (2001). I demonstrate how Wilson’s recordings share timbral and formal features with these earlier works and consider the analytic implications through the lens of genre theory. The findings are then synthesized through a focused analysis of Wilson’s “Ancestral” (2015) in order to explore genre fusion and demonstrate how these salient musical features are integrated within a single song. This project ultimately seeks to situate Wilson within the progressive rock tradition, consider the role of timbre and form in popular music genres, and investigate the complex relationship between genre and influence.

Wilson Harris is the author of fourteen novels and two books of shorter fiction. His work, cryptic and yet urgent, checks the widespread belief that experimental writing today is condemned to parody and self-referential performance. Located at the crossroads of numerous cultural traditions, African, Amerindian, and European, his novels evolve a complex language well suited to the articulation of marginal needs in an increasingly polarized world. The novels are difficult, and to examine the grounds of their difficulty, I rehearse at the outset a general theory of experiment in fiction, before reviewing .Harris's own remarks on the subject, gleaned from his critical essays. Harris's distortions appear first at the level of the line; the oddity of his style, and' its attendant vexations, are the subject of my next chapter, "Experiment and Language." Here I consider the techniques and uses of stylistic fracture and surreal montage, showing how Harris undoes the traditional concept of rhetoric by working an amalgam of the extraordinary and the commonplace. The rhetoric of unrhetoric has its structural equivalent in an unmaking of narrative sequence and causation. "Experiment and Narrative" examines the devices by which these securities are foiled, time by space, presence by absence. "Experiment and the Individual" considers the fate of character in fictions set at the ragged edges of the modern world. Harris refuses the holographic illusion of conventional identity, depicting instead those individuals whose resources are so slender as to have become invisible. Finally, "Experiment and Tradition" attempts to show how the dispossessed begin to find a voice in the experimental language of a writer whose very obscurity allows him to perplex the ideology of civil discourse. Harris has developed a style which is representative but not mimetic; his marginal discourse adds a new dimension to the "blank slate" of the avantgarde. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Magnetische Suszeptibilität beschreibt das magnetische Verhalten von Materie innerhalb eines magnetischen Feldes. Dieses Verhalten ist innerhalb anatomi- scher Strukturen sehr unterschiedlich und bildet die Grundlage für die suszeptibilitätsgewichtete Bildgebung (SWI) in der Magnetresonanztomographie. Mit ihrer Hilfe ist es möglich, Ablagerungen von Metallionen hoch sensitiv darzu- stellen, da diese wiederum einen lokalen Unterschied der Suszeptibilität erzeugen. So ist SWI seit einigen Jahren, durch die bis jetzt singuläre Kombination von T2*- und Phasekontrastbildgebung, ein wichtiges Werkzeug, vor allem in der neuroradiologischen Magnetresonanzbildgebung, geworden. Zahlreiche Publikationen betonen die hohe Nachweissensitivität der SWI vor allem für paramagnetische Ionen, allen voran Eisenionen. Im Gegensatz dazu sind Suszeptibilitätseffekte durch Kupfer, dessen Homöostase im Rahmen der Wilson’schen Krankheit empfindlich gestört und dadurch zur unkontrollierten Akkumulation von Kupfer auf zellulärer Ebene führt, in der SWI Bildgebung nur wenig untersucht. Als Folge sind, neben dem akuten- oder chronisch verlaufenden Leberschaden, neuropsychiatrische Störungen ein wesentliches Kennzeichen dieser Erkrankung. Ziel dieser Arbeit war es herauszuarbeiten, ob mittels SWI Unterschiede in den Signalintensitäten der pathophysiologisch relevanten Kerngebieten als Surrogatmarker des gestörten Zellstoffwechsels festzustellen sind. Zu diesem Zweck wurden von einem Kollektiv aus 21 Patienten mit Morbus Wilson und einer altersgepaarten Kontrollgruppe SWI-Aufnahmen des Schädels angefertigt. Es konnten, mit Hilfe einer semiquantitativen und Region of interest-basierten Untersuchung, signifikant niedrigere Signalintensitäten in den Kerngebieten Substantia nigra, Globus pallidus, Putamen und Nucleus caudatus bei den erkrankten Probanden gemessen werden. Die niedrigen Signalintensitäten korrelieren mit hohen Suszeptibilitätsunterschieden, die mutmaßlich durch die Akkumulation von Kupferionen verursacht wurden. Es konnte dadurch gezeigt werden, dass SWI in der Lage ist, diese Signalveränderungen in den Kerngebieten der grauen Substanz bei Patienten mit Morbus Wilson sensitiv darzustellen. Die dargestellten Ergebnisse suggerieren, in Anlehnung an Daten aus methodisch nahe stehenden Publikationen mit SWI sowie konventioneller Magnetresonanzbildgebung, die pathophysiologische Bedeutung dieser Regionen für die Neuropathologie dieser Erkrankung, die bis heute nicht vollständig verstanden ist. Mit SWI waren zudem mehr Signalintensitätsunterschiede darstellbar als in einer herkömmlichen T2*- gewichteten GRE-Sequenz. Daher wären weitere Untersuchungen, um die klini- sche Bedeutung der gemessenen Signalintensitäten, ihre pathophysiologische Genese und die damit verbundenen diagnostischen Möglichkeiten z.B. zur Prognoseabschätzung besser bewerten zu können, wünschenswert.

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In 2004, August Wilson completed Gem of the Ocean, the first play in his Pittsburgh Cycle. Seven years later, the University of Central Florida’s production of Gem of the Ocean went against what most consider traditional staging. With a Russian born director and a mostly white production team, playing to a predominately white audience, what are the challenges of accurately transforming the text to the stage, while still providing a truthful telling of a story? The following is a case study based on the idea of “active dramaturgy” or, more specifically, cultivating an atmosphere within the production that relies on critical thinking and original analytical thought to create an environment where creativity drives the work of the production. This approach is discussed by dramaturg Lenora Inez Brown in her book The Art of Active Dramaturgy. As the first play within the Pittsburgh Cycle, Gem of the Ocean represents the life of African Americans during the first decade of the twentieth century; nine more plays, respectively, represent each of the following decades. Wilson’s work closely followed the prescription adapted by African American W.E.B. Du Bois who called for theatre “by us, for us, near us, and about us” (Herrington 132). The fact that I am a white American troubles the state of the accepted norms for a Wilson theatre production. My ability to perform as a dramaturg is based on my capacity to inform and educate through whatever means necessary, not the color of my skin. Brown posits that an active dramaturg is one that “seeks ways to articulate heady ideas into active language--that is, language that a performer can easily use to shape an acting choice or a designer, a design choice” iii (xii). None of this is based on skin color, race, or religion; therefore, it was my objective as the dramaturg to stress the importance of the shared story within the play that could relate to anyone of any background. Throughout the course of this production, my major challenge as a dramaturg was to maintain the accuracy of African American representation, while working with the nontraditional, multiracial production team, on the race specific work of August Wilson. In this thesis, I explore the application of active dramaturgy on the production process

In the fall of 2007, I was cast in the University of Central Florida's production of The Piano Lesson. My thesis will examine my performance in the role of Grace, as well as understudying the role of Berniece under the direction of Professor Belinda Boyd. In addition to the performance components, my thesis materials will include historical and cultural character research and a reflective journal documenting my rehearsal and production process. My character research and journal will address questions about the characters "choices" and the relationship of their environment to views of personal responsibility and obligations in the play. I will examine the characters' relationships and situations in the play, investigating some of the decisions that these characters make in response to their cultural and social landscapes. The second part of my thesis will include research on three additional female characters from August Wilson's dramatic canon: Aunt Ester Tyler from Gem of the Ocean, Ma Rainey from Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and Rose from Fences, which will inform my character explorations of Grace and Berniece, and the choices that I make during the rehearsal process in developing their journeys. By reading other plays by Wilson, I endeavor to deepen my understanding of the struggles of African-American women in the twentieth century, and explore how the social and economic status of black women was affected by America's changing political and social climate over several decades. In addition, I will document how my visceral experience of performing the roles of Grace and Berniece relates to my intellectual process of exploring the journeys of Aunt Ester Tyler, Ma Rainey, and Rose.

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