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An Investigation on the Influence of Parental Physical Activity on Physical Activity Behaviours of Children with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder
Get PDFAs children grow and develop there are many factors that play a role in influencing a child. Physical activity (PA) is important for children and youth development. Parents are widely acknowledged as significant influences in various aspects of their children’s lives, particularly serving as role models for PA. In the literature pertaining to this topic, multiple findings support the notion of a positive influence of parental PA on their child’s PA (Barkin et al., 2017; 2017; Song et al., 2017; Xu et al., 2018). The aim of this thesis was to investigate the relationship between parent and child PA over time through device-assessed measures. Additionally, this thesis will examine whether a distinction exists in the relationship between parent PA and PA of typically developing (TD) children and children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). The current study will utilize data from the Coordination and Activity Tracking in children study. This study will look at 330 child-parent dyads (TD=204; DCD=126) by utilizing the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) through path analysis. For this study the APIM looks at the relationship between parent and child PA. The actor effects represent the effect of the participants own PA on their future PA. The partner influences represent the impact of the participants PA on their partners PA. Three models were utilized, the first examining the full sample and then subsequently stratifying the children into TD and DCD groups. For the APIM it was found that there were significant actor effects for both parent and child meaning that their PA was predictive of their future PA, which was consistence across all three models. There were no significant partner influences in each of the APIM models indicating that parent and child PA were not predictive of each other at any timepoint. Overall, the results of this study reveal that there is no evident relationship between parent and child PA over time, regardless of whether they belong to the TD or DCD group. These findings emphasize the need for standardized accelerometer processes to enhance result consistency and reliability when investigating the relationship between parent and child PA
Niagara Historical Society and Museum Scrapbooks
Get PDFThe Niagara Historical Society was founded in 1895 and has collected many objects and manuscripts valuable to the study of Niagara and district history.
The miscellaneous historical material was collected in four scrapbooks. The scrapbooks were loaned to the Ontario Archives in 1969 for microfilming and then returned to the Society. The collection consists of four volumes of which the Brock University Archives holds the first volume only.2 positive microfilm reels created by the Archives of Ontario in 1969. An inventory of the documents can be found in Manuscripts section inventory of the Niagara Historical Society collection, prepared by R. Nickerson, p. 51-86.
The reels contain the bulk of records listed in Volume 1 – Scrapbooks – Miscellaneous Historical Material detailed in the finding aid prepared by R. Nickerson.Niagara Historical Society and Museu
Impacts of an Inclusive Education Program for Adults with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities Within a Postsecondary Environment
Get PDFOver the last two decades, postsecondary institutions in Canada and globally have created programs to include persons with intellectual/developmental disabilities (IDD) in higher education. These programs vary in their scope but generally aim to provide an inclusive opportunity for persons with IDD to attend postsecondary education alongside their same-aged peers. This research study focused on one program at a university in Southern Ontario that has been providing an inclusive campus experience for over 25 years. The study was guided by the research question, “What are the impacts realized by former program participants, their parents/caregivers, former student volunteers, and university partners from involvement with an inclusive education program within a postsecondary environment”? Interview data were derived from 17 semi-structured interviews across four stakeholder groups and were examined using thematic analyses. Findings indicated three major areas of impact: friendship, growth, and belonging. Implications describe steps for broader implementation and a call-to-action for postsecondary institutions to push for greater inclusivity of persons with IDD within higher education
The Unfinished Business of Anna Kingsford: Science, Enchantment, and Experiments on Animals
Get PDFThe project takes seriously Dr Anna Kingsford’s (1846-1888) claim that vivisection is a type of sorcery and science, a type of occult or spiritual undertaking believing that the assertion, which gained currency during the 19th–century antivivisection movement and is now overlooked, is yet unfinished and therefore a potentially powerful figuration for current antivivisectionists. To that end, the dissertation provides a critical and intersectional reading of the 19th-century British and European antivivisection movement, the fin de siècle occult revival, and Kingsford’s role in each, often working to bring these worlds together. This historical analysis includes an examination of Victorian attitudes to the period’s changing understanding of gender, species, race, and science. Building on this historical foundation, the dissertation will provide a theoretical discussion of Kingsford’s contemporary resonances with emerging disciplines in the environmental and posthumanities, including critical animal studies, material feminism, feminist posthumanism, and science and technology studies. Many theorists in these fields are interested in reappraising the roles of affect, enchantment, mysticism, and wonder in ethical thinking and human-animal-environmental relations. This project builds on these historical and theoretical insights by providing an “enchanted” analysis of the contemporary laboratory space, experiments on animals, and a reading of three case studies of ongoing animal experimentation paradigms (i.e., maternal deprivation, learned helplessness, and the organizational-activational hypothesis of homosexuality) which I argue lend themselves to a Kingsford-inspired analysis. Furthermore, this project articulates a novel “enchanted animal ethic” involving a feminist and neo-Spinozist articulation of human-animal and environmental ethics that makes space for mystical, non-secular modes of meaning-making, care-centered multispecies community building, and social and political movements. Finally, the project and an
enchanted understanding of animal ethics will be useful to interdisciplinary scholars and advocates seeking a paradigm change in the sciences away from experiments on animals and towards a more humane and efficacious science as well as more egalitarian and meaningful relationships with animals and the more-than-human world
Protein-Ligand Binding Affinity Directed Multi-Objective Drug Design Based on Fragment Representation Methods
Get PDFDrug discovery is a challenging process with a vast molecular space to be explored and numerous pharmacological properties to be appropriately considered. Among various drug design protocols, fragment-based drug design is an effective way of constraining the search space and better utilizing biologically active compounds. Motivated by fragment-based drug search for a given protein target and the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) approaches in this field, this work advances the field of in silico drug design by (1) integrating a graph fragmentation-based deep generative model with a deep evolutionary learning process for large-scale multi-objective molecular optimization, and (2) applying protein-ligand binding affinity scores together with other desired physicochemical properties as objectives. Our experiments show that the proposed method can generate novel molecules with improved property values and binding affinities
Permutation Polynomials over Finite Fields and their application to Cryptography
Get PDFThe aim of the paper is the study of Permutation Polynomials over finite fields and their application to cryptography. In this paper, I will begin by a brief review of finite fields, define permutation polynomials over finite fields and their properties. I will present old results such as Hermite-Dickson’s Theorem as well as some most recent ones. After introducing cryptog- raphy, I will give a historical overview, by explaining some cryptosystems such as RSA and ElGamal. Finally, I will present some cryptographical protocols based on Permutation Polynomials over Finite Fields
Understanding Employee Attrition Factors in the Information Technology Sector: A Text Analytics Perspective
Get PDFRecently online reviews on websites have provided a precious source of data for businesses. Some of these websites collect customers’ opinions about products and services provided by these businesses, some others such as Glassdoor and Indeed are the websites on which the employees write their opinions about their company. Although this data source is usually used by job seekers to find proper job opportunities, it has been used recently by researchers and business owners for discovering the employees’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction factors. In this study we collected 825129 comments people left on Glassdoor and Indeed about their current or previous companies in IT section. First, we have applied the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling technique to find out the most cited attrition factors in the comments. We recognized that “Personal Development”, “Financial and Professional Development” and “Cultural Development” are the most frequent factors mentioned by employees in IT companies. Then, by applying a novel topic-based sentiment analysis technique we have tried to figure out the polarity of comments about each of three found factors. The trend of these factors in terms of their frequency and polarity were tracked through the time and also among different IT sections. The assessment of current and former employees’ comments showed that these two groups have some behavioral differences which can help IT companies to unravel the reasons of their recent high attrition rate. Some behavioural differences were also detected among different IT sections. Further analysis showed that there is a statistically significant correlation between the polarity of these factors and quantitative rating review of companies and also their market capitalization
The Lived Sport Experiences of Muslim Females Athletes Leading Advocacy and Activist Initiatives in Sport
Get PDFUsing Zine’s (2004) Critical Faith-Centered Framework, this research focused on Muslim female athletes who engaged in advocacy and activist initiatives in sport. To be exact, the research purpose was to explore the lived sport experiences of Muslim female athletes' advocacy and activist initiatives, specifically as they create sport opportunities for Muslim girls and women. The intended three research questions included 1), what are the sport experiences of Muslim female athletes who are actively advocating for Muslim girls and women?, 2), how are Muslim female athletes facilitating sport opportunities for Muslim girls and women?, and 3), in what ways are Muslim female athletes engaging in advocacy and activist initiatives? Two virtual interviews took place with eight Muslim female athletes whose work revolved around creating sport opportunities for Muslim girls and women in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Using Braun and Clark's (2006) thematic content analysis, three themes were identified. The first theme identified was Muslim women’s catalyst for current work, related to the ways participants experienced sport and how that served as a catalysts with their current work creating sport opportunities for the next generations of Muslim girls and women. The second theme identified was, Muslim women navigating their identity(ies) with their work, related to participants various identities and the ways they navigated such identities with their work, and the third theme identified was, factors shaping and evolving Muslim female athletes work, which related to the support that shaped and evolved their work. The finding indicated that participants' youth sport experience played a significant role in the ways they facilitated sport opportunities for Muslim girls and women, and participants both engaged in advocacy and activist initiatives with their work
Analysis of Parkinson's Disease Gait using Computational Intelligence
Get PDFMillions of individuals throughout the world are living with Parkinson’s disease (PD), a neurodegenerative condition whose symptoms are difficult to differentiate from those of other disorders. Freezing of gait (FOG) is one of the signs of Parkinson’s disease that have been utilized as the main diagnostic factor. Bradykinesia, tremors, depression, hallucinations, cognitive impairment, and falls are all common symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD). This research uses a dataset that captures data on individuals with PD who suffer from freezing of gait. This dataset includes data for medication in both the “On” and “Off” stages (denoting whether patients have taken their medicines or not). The dataset is comprised of four separate experiments, which are referred to as Voluntary Stop, Timed Up and Go (TUG), Simple Motor Task, and Dual Motor and Cognitive Task. Each of these tests has been carried out over a total of three separate attempts (trials) to verify that they are both reliable and accurate. The dataset was used for four significant challenges. The first challenge is to differentiate between people with Parkinson’s disease and healthy volunteers, and the second task is to evaluate effectiveness of medicines on the patients. The third task is to detect episodes of FOG in each individual, and the last task is to predict the FOG episode at the time of occurrence. For the last task, the author proposed. a new framework to make real-time predictions for detecting FOG, in which the results demonstrated the effectiveness of the approach. It is worth mentioning that techniques from many classifiers have been combined in order to reduce the likelihood of being biased toward a single approach. Multilayer Perceptron, K-Nearest Neighbors, random Forest, and Decision Tree Classifier all produced the best results when applied to the first three tasks with an accuracy of more than 90% amongst the classifiers that were investigated
The Political Influence and Changing Roles of the Vestal Virgins from the End of the Roman Republic through the Julio-Claudian Dynasty
Get PDFThis study examines the influences and roles of the Vestal Virgins during the tumultuous periods of the late Republic (82-28 BCE) and early Empire (27 BCE-14CE). During the late Republic, the Vestal Virgins continuously used their prestigious position in society to influence events. Individual Vestals such as Fonteia and Licinia actively worked to aid their relatives in being acquitted from criminal charges and gaining the consulship. Together, the Vestals also helped in saving Julius Caesar’s life from Sulla’s proscriptions. Through the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Vestals assumed new ritual roles due to the efforts of Augustus and became increasingly important to the domus Augusta rather than their own families. The Julio-Claudians continued this connection that Augustus began between the cult of Vesta. Monuments such as the Ara Pacis Augustae, the Palermo Relief, and the Sorrento Base are examined as instruments in projecting the new imperial religious and political program together with the Vestal Virgins as the protectors of Rome