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English language instructors’ perceptions of equity and its practical implementation
Get PDFThis study examines the perspectives of English language instructors regarding equitable instruction in relation to adult community college English language learners. Equity in education is an important goal to improve student outcomes and redress historical injustices. However, research on equity in English language learning in the United States has primarily been conducted in American kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) settings, and when addressed in higher education, is usually related to institutional outcomes as a whole.
This study considered equity related to the diversity of the needs and goals of adult English language learners. It sought to understand how English language teachers working in programs that serve students of various needs and goals define equity and how they implement equitable instruction. Participants were recruited from Washington State Community Colleges, specifically from programs which serve international and domestic/resident students, who may have very different needs and goals, in the same program. The study provides more insight into how instructors define equity and serve students of diverse needs and goals. The design was qualitative and interpretivist and employed semi-structured interviews and a focus group to collect data. Braun and Clarke’s (2022a) reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the results.
Six main themes were developed through the data analysis. The study concluded that equitable instruction is made possible through the intentional efforts of instructors to facilitate access to content, learning, and cultural capital (theme 1), knowing students through centring the individual (theme 2), and prioritizing community and belonging (theme 3). The other themes highlight the factors that influence participant understanding of equity and their pursuit of providing equitable instruction. They are the instructor’s attitude of service (theme 4), the impact of political and institutional factors (theme 5), and equity as a work in progress (theme 6). These findings can help instructors develop equity-mindedness and better serve all students to realize their needs and goals
An exploration of joint likelihood spatio-temporal point process models in the study of animal movement and habitat selection
No full textIndustrial development and increased resource demand as a result of human population growth are drastically altering the environment, disrupting the balance of ecosystems relied upon for key services and increasing instances of human-wildlife conflict, risks of zoonotic infection, and instability of food source populations. Models of animal movement, space-use, and habitat selection provide insight which can be used to safeguard against these risks, by informing the conservation and management of wild and domesticated species.
Historically, different approaches to habitat selection modelling have been developed independently in relation to different systems and data structures. Recently, demonstrations of the equivalence of point process methods to various approaches used in the analysis of species distribution and movement data has posited spatial and spatio-temporal point processes as a unifying framework for habitat selection modelling. The history of point process literature has been largely theoretical, due to a lack of available computationally efficient methods for fitting these models to large and complex datasets. However, this has changed with the recent development of the Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation (INLA) method for inference and its associated software packages R-INLA and R-inlabru. Data integration has also become a topic of current research interest in species distribution and movement ecology, promoting the emergence of joint likelihood models as a key framework for ongoing development in this area. Consequently, there is a demand in the ecological literature for demonstrations of the applications of joint likelihood spatio-temporal point process models to large and complex ecological datasets. This forms the underlying motivation for this thesis, which provides an exploration of the use of these methods in modelling animal movement, space use, and habitat selection, with applications in different
areas of ecology.
The work included in this thesis is presented in the form of three case studies, which each demonstrate a different methodological framework and ecological application for joint likelihood spatio-temporal point process modelling of habitat selection data. Chapter 2 demonstrates a marked point process approach to modelling the spread of a reintroduced population of Eurasian crane (Grus grus). Chapter 3 compares between habitat selection models at different organisational scales to analyse cattle (Bos taurus) tracking data, with applications in livestock management. Chapter 4 introduces the novel implementation of a joint likelihood framework for integrating survey and telemetry data in R-inlabru and demonstrates the advantages of this approach using simulated data. Finally, the approach developed in Chapter 4 is applied to real data in Chapter 5, in which it is used to understand habitat selection in a semi-domesticated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) population in an area of land-use conflict.
Overall, this thesis provides an exploration of different approaches and applications for joint-likelihood spatio-temporal point process modelling of animal movement, space-use, and habitat selection. This includes novel methodological contributions, such as extensions to the unique integration scheme used in the GF-iSSA movement model; and the implementation of the first individual-level continuous-time habitat selection model in R-inlabru. Key themes of accounting for availability; the impacts of spatial, temporal, and organisational scale on inference; and the balance between model complexity, interpretability, and computational efficiency are investigated throughout. Main results provide insights into the relationship between model complexity and performance; and the relevance of the spatial scales of heterogeneity in covariate structure, and of representations of availability, on habitat selection inference
“You don’t know their story”: examining Canada’s housing and homelessness challenges and evaluating its National Housing Strategy
Get PDFThis thesis examines housing and homelessness challenges in Canada and evaluates the country’s National Housing Strategy (NHS). It does so through a qualitative lens that foregrounds the lived experiences of individuals. With a commitment to social justice, this research was designed to provide an evidence base to inform policy.
Housing has relatively recently risen to the top of the political agenda in Canada, as a result of worsening affordability challenges and increasing rates of homelessness. There is considerable evidence and consensus amongst academics that these housing challenges have increased in conjunction with the federal government’s exodus from housing policy and subsequent devolution of housing responsibility to provinces and then municipalities from the late eighties to the mid-nineties (Gaetz, 2010). Within this context, in 2017, the Liberal government launched the NHS, a 10-year suite of programmes with the top-line objectives to reduce chronic homelessness, remove families from housing need, and increase affordable housing supply.
At its launch, the NHS was framed as a transformative re-entry of the federal government into housing policy, filling a decades-long gap. Despite the Strategy’s commitments and an influx of financial resource for housing, evaluations conducted to date have cast considerable doubt on the efficacy of the NHS and its ability to achieve its objectives.
The existing NHS evaluation literature has broadly adopted a macro-level, quantitative approach. Policy failure examinations often rely on the objectives asserted within policies themselves to determine success or failure. This approach is the basis for much of the existing NHS evaluation landscape, which broadly, though not exclusively, measures the Strategy’s progress against its targets. Crucially, existing evaluations do not necessarily challenge these targets’ suitability or appropriateness to tackle the nation’s housing and homelessness concerns.
This thesis was developed to address these gaps. It provides a qualitative evaluation of the NHS that centres the voices of lived experience experts, critically examines the ideological underpinnings that have shaped the Strategy and its aims, and explores the barriers and challenges within Canada’s housing and homelessness systems from lived experience perspectives. It adopts a two-part, qualitative methodology. First, it applies the “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) framework (Bacchi, 2012) to a discourse analysis of government-issued press releases to identify the problem framing of homelessness and housing precarity as constructed by the owners of the NHS, the federal government. Second, it draws on a series of 27 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with individuals experiencing housing need and homelessness and frontline sector staff in Hamilton, Ontario, outlining their experiences to clarify the barriers and challenges being faced.
Using these findings, this thesis compares and contrasts the federal government’s problem framing against the barriers and challenges as defined by lived experience experts. This framework has been influenced by the Multiple Streams Approach (Kingdon, 2014), which asserts that creating policy change centres on one’s ability to compel and direct problem definition in order to match one’s desired policy solutions.
Drawing on the discourse analysis of federal government press releases, the research finds that Canada’s housing and homelessness challenges are framed as two distinct, parallel rather than inter-linked issues. Federal discourse constructs housing as a national, solvable crisis rooted in structural deficits, while homelessness is positioned as an individualised and ambiguous phenomenon, for which the policy solutions are not yet known. These divergent framings, and the NHS design, are underpinned by ideological commitments to discrete interventions into a market-based housing system and a limited recognition of structural drivers for homelessness, shaping policy responses that are narrowly focused and insufficient.
In contrast, in-depth interviews with individuals who have lived experiences of housing precarity and homelessness in Hamilton, Ontario, reveal worsening conditions across both the housing sector and related service systems. Drawing from systems thinking (Gibb and Marsh, 2019) and conceptualising the city as a ‘system of systems’, this thesis outlines the experiences highlighted by participants, who cited interlocking challenges across housing, healthcare, social assistance, and tenant protection that contribute to and sustain homelessness.
This approach highlights the complexity of these interlocking systems and their contribution to rates and experiences of homelessness and housing need. Based on these perspectives, this thesis introduces a two-part typology of homelessness experiences in Hamilton: one driven purely by economic hardship and the other compounded by non-financial challenges such as mental health, trauma, or systemic barriers. Crucially, the research notes that financially driven homelessness, if left unaddressed, can quickly become more complex due to the trauma and instability associated with housing loss.
These findings suggest a fundamental misalignment between federal policy narratives and NHS design and lived experience. This thesis challenges dominant narratives and problem framings within Canadian housing policy discourse, showing how such framings influence, and arguably hinder, the design and efficacy of policy interventions under the NHS. These findings suggest the need to reframe and reform Canada’s approach to housing and homelessness through integrated structural interventions, such as increased social assistance rates, expanded development of non-market, geared-to-income housing, and improved coordination between housing, healthcare, and social services.
This thesis makes three key contributions. First, it centres lived experience perspectives in evaluating the NHS, addressing a persistent gap in the Canadian policy literature. Second, it highlights the disconnect between political framing and the realities of housing insecurity and homelessness in Canada, offering evidence for more responsive, inclusive, and effective approaches to housing and homelessness. Third, it offers a conceptual framework for policy evaluation that incorporates ideological critique and interrogates how housing and homelessness are problematised, rather than simply measuring outcomes against stated goals.
This research finds that Canada’s housing and related systems create conditions in which housing precarity and homelessness will continue to be a reality for many. Ultimately, this thesis argues that meaningful policy reform will require not just increased investment, but also a fundamental rethinking of how Canada’s housing and homelessness challenges are defined and reshaping its solutions. Addressing the interconnected challenges that drive these experiences will require a coordinated ‘Team Canada’ approach that brings together multiple policy portfolios and government jurisdictions to deliver integrated system-wide change
Multiparty session types for distributed and failure-prone systems
No full textDistributed computer systems inherently introduce notions of concurrency, nondeterminism and possibly failure-prone communication into programs. This makes designing, and implementing, correct distributed systems difficult, and it is widely agreed that such systems require rigorous methods of verification.
Types and type systems are lightweight techniques to formal verification whereby code implementations are annotated with meta-information about the data they use. This provides certain guarantees of correctness about the usage of data within a program, and helps developers design and implement code that is correct by construction. Specific to message-passing systems, session types not only describe information about what data is, but also about how it should be communicated. Essentially, they embed communication protocols as types within a program, ensuring that well-typed code abides by the specified protocol and benefits from any properties determined on said protocol, e.g. being deadlock-free, terminating, live, etc. Multiparty session types (MPST) are a generalisation of session type theory that allows for the description of communication protocols involving two or more named participants with possibly cyclic or interleaved communication patterns.
This thesis adapts MPST to describe protocols for distributed and failure-prone systems. The contributions presented are in the form of three novel languages: MPST!, MAGπ, and MAGπ!, each using a new MPST theory targetting client-server, failure-prone and fault-tolerant systems respectively; where the unit of failure is message loss and fault tolerance is introduced through the client-server paradigm.
This work establishes foundations for designing MPST systems targetted towards building multiparty client-server and fault-tolerant programs. For the first time, MPSTs are explored within programs designed to run over failure-prone networks, where messages are susceptible to loss, unbounded delay and total reordering. The construct of replication is shown to be expressively significant for building multiparty client-server systems. Lastly, it is demonstrated how combining replication, nondeterministic timeouts and standard MPST constructs, results in an expressive type system capable of modelling—and verifying properties on—fault-tolerant multiparty programs
Bioengineering 3D leukaemic niches to develop stem cell therapies
No full textAbstract not currently available
Advancing non-destructive testing with CMUT-based ultrasound imaging system: from submerged materials to industrial applications
No full textCapacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (CMUTs) have emerged as a powerful alternative to conventional piezoelectric transducers for ultrasonic sensing and imaging, offering significant advantages in bandwidth, scalability, and CMOS process compatibility. However, their widespread deployment in non-destructive testing (NDT) and underwater sensing has been hindered by the reliance on bulky laboratory instrumentation, limited electronic integration, and inconsistent performance in submerged environments. This thesis presents the complete design, fabrication, and experimental validation of a miniaturised, low-power CMUT-based ultrasonic imaging and measurement system, developed to enable compact, field-deployable, and energy-efficient NDT applications.
At the core of this work is a custom-designed front-end electronic platform that integrates signal generation, amplification, acquisition, and digital processing within a single compact architecture. The printed circuit board (PCB) developed in this study provides tunable DC biasing, programmable pulse generation, and wideband amplification through dedicated analogue signal paths. The system incorporates a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for deterministic timing control, high-speed sampling, and real-time signal processing using 14-bit, 125 MSPS analogue-to-digital converters. This integration eliminates the dependence on conventional laboratory hardware such as oscilloscopes, Bias-T, and waveform generators, achieving full system autonomy with dramatically reduced size, cost, and power consumption. Extensive experimental investigations were conducted to optimise CMUT excitation parameters, including the effects of pulse width (10–80 ns), frequency (2.5–5 MHz), polarity, and DC–AC signal interplay. The results reveal that the CMUT achieves optimal performance near 3 MHz with pulse widths above 30 ns, providing strong signal amplitude and reduced harmonic distortion. The removal of the Bias-T network further enhanced transmission efficiency and improved the signal-to-noise ratio. The system was validated through a series of underwater and NDT experiments employing both pulse–echo and pitch–catch configurations, demonstrating high measurement repeatability with standard deviations below 0.12 mm and coefficients of variation under 0.01%. The developed platform was subsequently extended into a fully functional ultrasonic imaging system, featuring FPGA-based A-, B-, and C-scan processing integrated with a motorised 3D scanning stage repurposed from an Ultimaker printer. Imaging experiments on submerged stainless-steel and aluminium specimens successfully identified geometric features, surface defects, and embedded structures with submillimeter accuracy, confirming the capability of the proposed system for underwater material inspection and defect detection.
In summary, this thesis delivers four primary contributions: the development of a compact, miniaturised PCB for CMUT biasing and signal control; an FPGA-based digital architecture for deterministic ultrasonic timing and acquisition; systematic CMUT characterisation and performance optimisation under submerged conditions; and the successful implementation of a portable CMUT-based NDT and imaging system. Collectively, these innovations advance the state of the art in ultrasonic engineering by demonstrating that CMUT-based systems can achieve high precision, reliability, and autonomy in real-world inspection and underwater applications
The threat of Trump: the religious rhetoric of the Trump administration and the threat it poses to LGBTQ+ people and their existence
Get PDFThis dissertation researches the role of religious rhetoric of the Trump administration and the implications of this on the LGBTQ+ community in the United States. This discussion unveils the motives of the Republican party and how the political division in the U.S. has been driven deeper. As a result of this religious rhetoric, the LGBTQ+ community faces discrimination and the stripping of their legal protections.
The document’s argument surrounds the current political and cultural paradigm shift happening in the United States. Donald Trump is using religion to gain popularity with Christian conservatives while giving a platform for extreme leftist political beliefs. Trump is shifting the political window to an unprecedent moment in American history that allows for discrimination of vulnerable people. Anthony Kwame Appiah’s work on moral revolutions is considered in his book The Honor Code. Appiah argues that moral revolutions and cultural shifts come from the honor that is placed on individuals. In these circumstances, the moral shift is going back in time and changing American people’s acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community negatively. Pope Francis’s writing and statements on LGBTQ+ people are examples of how religion can be a more positive intervention. Religion does not have to be a threat to LGBTQ+ people’s lives rather an inclusive community.
The dissertation includes government documents outlining laws surrounding LGBTQ+ legal protections and definitions of LGBTQ+ identities. Donald Trump’s Executive Orders are used as data surrounding the discrimination of LGBTQ+ people. Data was collected from the Pew Research Center about U.S. electoral polls, U.S. religious affiliations, and opinions surrounding the LGBTQ+ community. Along with this, data was collected from studies that research the impact of Trump’s legal actions on the LGBTQ+ community. The various sources are incorporated to discuss the religious rhetoric of conservative Christians and how they have strengthened their political base. I argue that this has been accomplished through using religion as a uniting force for conservative Christians for politicians to gain re-election and push their agendas.
This research points to the importance of separation of state and church in the U.S. government. As well as the need for diverse education, legislation and cultural norms that encourage inclusion. The research also points to the dangerous political divide in the United States that includes conservative Christians and their ideas surrounding a traditional America. Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ campaign paired with religious undertones is a political strategy to strengthen his political base to be re-elected in 2024. The result is detrimental to America’s democracy and vulnerable people’s legal protections
Habitat use and abundance of mesocarnivores and deer along Eastern Loch Lomond
Get PDFHabitats play a crucial role in the lives of every animal, providing the necessary resources for a species to live and reproduce. For mesocarnivores, a diverse group of predatory species with wide variation in diet and social behaviours, habitat requirements for feeding and reproduction may vary. In Scotland, woodlands are often favoured by mesocarnivores, in contrast, Scotland’s native deer are more flexible in their habitat use, occurring in woodland and open moorland, which are suitable for grazing. The aim of this study was to investigate habitat use and abundance of mesocarnivores and deer along the Eastern side of Loch Lomond with the goal of identifying favoured habitats and to estimate population density. This was undertaken by the deployment of camera traps in three different locations from April-June 2024. Results showed that mesocarnivores (badger, pine marten, red fox) did not favour any specific habitats, but roe deer were more frequently recorded in broadleaf woodlands and red deer in moorland compared to other habitats. Using random encounter models (REMs), estimated population densities for all species were within the range of previous estimated abundance across other regions of Scotland. In conclusion, this study demonstrates effective methods of examining the habitat use and abundance of mammals within a localized area of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. These field and analytical methods could be applied in future to a wide geographical area to provide useful information for the conservation and management of these species
Decoupled electrolysis using silicotungstic acid as a redox mediator for zero-carbon hydrogen production
Get PDFWater electrolysis for hydrogen production has substantial potential to address the current energy crisis while mitigating environmental pollution. However, achieving truly green hydrogen production requires using materials better suited to intermittent power generation, as existing systems pose serious concerns over gas mixing and cell component degradation. This thesis examines the concept of decoupled water electrolysis, utilising silicotungstic acid (H4SiW12O40) as a redox mediator in a flow-cell system to generate hydrogen. Decoupled electrolysis offers exceptional flexibility by enabling the separate production of hydrogen and oxygen at different times and rates, reducing gas crossover issues to a minimum.
Chapter 1 explores the green hydrogen production route in a net-zero world and the various methods employed in green hydrogen production. Furthermore, we introduce the concept of decoupled water electrolysis, an emerging approach for green hydrogen production via electrochemical processes, and discuss how it can potentially address some of the challenges associated with renewable-driven hydrogen production.
Chapter 2 provides background information on the theory underlying the experimental techniques used throughout this study. Various electrochemical and analytical methods were employed to monitor changes in potential, current, charge passed, and the electrode surface during the reduction of the redox mediator.
Chapter 3 highlights the application of decoupled water electrolysis in a flow system using silicotungstic acid as the redox mediator by assembling two electrochemical cells for hydrogen production (mediator re-oxidation) and oxygen production (mediator reduction) while applying a range of commercially relevant current densities (0.05–1.35 A/cm2 ) to monitor the liquid mediator behaviour as it was circulated continuously between the two cells as hydrogen was produced.
In Chapter 4, regenerated cellulose dialysis membranes were employed in the oxygengenerating cell, in order to compare the resulting electrochemical system with the one from Chapter 3 (which used only perfluorinated membranes). A comparative analysis of the membrane (before vs after electrolysis), current density, and the decoupling efficiency (%) obtained in this section was conducted.
Chapter 5 contains overall conclusions and discusses future work. It provides a summary of the work and suggestions for future research
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