A Heat pulse study of superconducting lead/indium alloys

Mcmaster, Richard Henry U.M.I. 1981 국내박사

The development of self-efficacy in the teaching of reading

McMaster, Peggy B The College of William and Mary 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

Licensed primary teachers (N = 93) in nine schools completed surveys of their self-efficacy beliefs, level of implementation, and the value they placed on the strategies before and after participating in four levels of inservice training in the Tucker Signing Strategies for Reading. The independent variable was the structure of the training teachers received, and the dependent variables were teacher sense of efficacy in general, teacher sense of efficacy for reading, implementation of the reading strategies, and the value of the reading strategies taught. Components of the training for the use of Tucker Signing Strategies for Reading were structured into four treatment groups aligned with three of the four sources of self-efficacy development identified by Bandura (1997). Findings indicated that implementation of the Tucker Signing Strategies for Reading increased as inservice training increased in intensity. The most powerful training format was mastery experience, which was distinguished from the other training formats by the addition of follow-up coaching. Inservice training format made a significant contribution to the change in teacher sense of efficacy for reading. Initial teacher sense of efficacy in general and initial teacher sense of efficacy for reading were not factors in predicting the level of implementation of the reading strategies. Final teacher sense of efficacy for reading made a significant contribution to explaining variance in implementation. The strength of the effect of the follow-up coaching workshop model on implementation overpowered the other tested variables. Statistical significance of the change in sense of efficacy for reading was lost when compared with the impact of the follow-up coaching model. Value covaried almost perfectly with implementation for this sample. Unexpected decreases occurred in the change in efficacy scores across treatment groups; a surprising number of participants rated their sense of efficacy lower on the final survey than on the first. Dips in self-efficacy beliefs with exposure to a potentially powerful new teaching strategy underscore the importance of the final treatment component, follow-up coaching, to bolstering teachers' motivation to overcome the anxiety of trying something new.

Identification and treatment of nonresponders to generally effective reading instruction: An experimental field trial

McMaster, Kristen Lee Nyman Vanderbilt University 2002 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation describes a study in which first graders who did not respond to a generally effective classwide reading program (Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies; PALS) were identified and provided with additional intervention. A dual-discrepancy approach, in which nonresponders were identified based on performance levels and growth rates substantially below those of their average-achieving peers, was explored. Then, the effects of three increasingly individualized treatment levels—PALS, Modified PALS, and one-to-one tutoring provided by an adult—were evaluated by comparing the groups' performance on several phonological awareness and reading-related measures. No statistically significant differences were found across treatment groups; however, effect sizes and proportions of students who remained unresponsive at the end of the study suggest that one-to-one tutoring provided by an adult holds the most promise of the three treatments for improving the achievement of struggling readers. Findings indicate that many struggling readers need more intensive, individualized instruction than modifications to the regular reading curriculum.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF ART IN BRITAIN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF ART

MORTENSEN, PREBEN Mcmaster University 1992 국내박사

A context-sensitive coverage criterion for test suite reduction

McMaster, Scott David University of Maryland, College Park 2008 해외박사(DDOD)

Modern software is increasingly developed using multi-language implementations, large supporting libraries and frameworks, callbacks, virtual function calls, reflection, multithreading, and object- and aspect-oriented programming. The predominant example of such software is the graphical user interface (GUI), which is used as a front-end to most of today's software applications. The characteristics of GUIs and other modern software present new challenges to software testing. Because recently developed techniques for automated test case generation can generate more tests than are practical to regularly execute, one important challenge is test suite reduction . Test suite reduction seeks to decrease the size of a test suite without overly compromising its original fault detection ability. This research advances the state-of-the-art in test suite reduction by empirically studying a coverage criterion which considers the context in which program concepts are covered. Conventional approaches to test suite reduction were developed and evaluated on batch-style applications and, due to the aforementioned considerations, are not always easily applicable to modern software. Furthermore, many existing techniques fail to consider the context in which code executes inside an event-driven paradigm, where programs wait for and interactively respond to user- and system-generated events. Consequently, they yield reduced test suites with severely impaired fault detection ability. The novel feature of this research is a test suite reduction technique based on the call stack coverage criterion which addresses many of the challenges associated with coverage-based test suite reduction in modern applications. Results show that reducing test suites while maintaining call stack coverage yields good tradeoffs between size reduction and fault detection effectiveness compared to traditional techniques. The output of this research includes models, metrics, algorithms, and techniques based upon this approach.

Development and characterization of targeted poly(NIPAm) nanoparticles for delivery of anti-inflammatory peptides in peripheral artery disease and osteoarthritis

McMasters, James F Purdue University 2016 해외박사(DDOD)

Inflammation is the underlying cause of several severe diseases including cardiovascular disease and osteoarthritis. Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is characterized by atherosclerotic occlusions within the peripheral vasculature. Current treatment for severe PAD involves mechanical widening of the artery via percutaneous transluminal angioplasty. Unfortunately, deployment of the balloon damages the endothelial layer, exposing the underlying collagenous matrix. Circulating platelets can bind to this collagen and become activated, releasing proinflammatory cytokines that promote proliferation of local smooth muscle cells. These proliferating cells eventually reocclude the vessel, resulting in restenosis and necessitating the need for a second procedure to reopen the vessel. Current treatments for moderate osteoarthritis include local injection of anti-inflammatory compounds such as glucocorticoids. Unfortunately, prolonged treatment carries with it significant side effects including osteoporosis, and cardiovascular complications. Our lab has developed an anti-inflammatory cell-penetrating peptide that inhibits mitogen-activated protein kinase activated protein kinase 2 (MK2). MK2 is implicated in the inflammatory cascade of atherosclerosis and osteoarthritis, making it a potentially effective strategy for reducing inflammation in both disease states. Unfortunately, these peptides are untargeted and quickly degraded in the presence of serum proteases, making the development of an effective delivery system of paramount importance. The overall goal of the research presented here is to detail the development of a poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) nanoparticle that is able to effectively load and release anti-inflammatory peptides for the treatment of these inflammatory diseases. In this dissertation, I will discuss the development of a collagen-binding nanoparticle that is able to inhibit platelet binding following angioplasty, thereby halting the initial inflammatory cascade. Additionally, these particles demonstrate the ability to reduce inflammation by through the loading and release of MK2-inhibiting cell-penetrating peptides. Additionally, I will cover the development of a hollow nanoparticle system that is designed to load increased quantities of these anti-inflammatory peptides for the treatment of osteoarthritis. This particle demonstrated increased macrophage uptake and prolonged drug release, resulting in a progressive inhibition of osteoarthritic inflammation over 8 days. The results presented here advance our understanding of these nanoparticle platforms, and suggest that they may serve at effective platforms for the treatment of restenosis following angioplasty, as well as osteoarthritis.

THE MYTH OF LAURA SECORD IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ARTISTIC (RE)PRESENTATIONS TO TWENTIETH-CENTURY POPULAR CULTURE (NINETEENTH CENTURY, TWENTIETH CENTURY, ONTARIO)

BOYKO-HEAD, CHRISTINE ANN Mcmaster University 1995 국내박사

Explaining Racial Disparity in Bipolar Disorder Treatment: How Do Providers Contribute?

McMaster, Kaja Johnson University of California, Berkeley ProQuest Disser 2017 해외박사(DDOD)

Bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness that goes untreated more often among blacks than whites in the U.S. In the current study, I identified and tested a proposed mechanism underlying differential treatment in bipolar disorder, namely how treatment providers' racial biases contribute to the inadequate care of black patients with bipolar disorder. Findings from research in general and mental healthcare show that providers' clinical decisions may be related to racial biases based on stereotypes that providers hold. Moreover, general healthcare research has demonstrated the presence of implicit racial biases (defined as unconscious preferences for one race over another) among providers that are linked to the differential treatment of blacks and whites. Unfortunately, much less work has been done to show the presence and effects of implicit racial biases among mental healthcare providers. The hypothesized model in the current study proposes that implicit racial biases held by mental healthcare providers bias diagnostic and prognostic assessments as well as treatment recommendations in bipolar disorder and result in the observed treatment disparities between black and white patients. The Implicit Association Test was used to measure general racial biases in a sample of 82 mental healthcare providers. Clinical decision-making was simulated using clinical vignettes about theoretical black and white patients with psychotic and non-psychotic bipolar disorder. Three-way ANOVAs were used to test for racial disparities in decision-making, and structural equation modeling was used to determine whether providers' implicit racial biases were associated with decision-making outcomes. Results showed that providers held moderate pro-white/anti-black racial biases and neutral explicit attitudes, also known as an "aversive racism" profile. Racial disparity was observed, but confounded by a mismatch in the severity of symptoms of the hypothetical patients. Composite scores for the vignettes were used to overcome this issue in the SEM analyses. These results revealed that there was no link between racial bias and decision-making. Suggestions for future research are given to improve modeling of the relationship between racial bias and patient care. Despite limitations, findings provide some of the first evidence establishing the presence or implicit racial biases in mental healthcare.

Telecommunications in a new era of competition : fiber optics, regulatory barriers, and competition

Mcmaster, Susan Elaine University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1995 해외박사

STUDIES IN THE REPRESENTATION OF DWARFS IN HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ART (GREECE, EGYPT)

GARMAISE, MICHAEL MCMASTER UNIVERSITY 1996 국내박사