Politicizing Early Childhood Education and Care in Ontario: Race, Identity and Belonging

The Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) landscape, much like the K-12 education system in Ontario, is largely encompassed by bias-free, neutral and colourblind narratives of identity and social location (Author 1, 2018). These discursive practices portray young children and early learning settings as raceless and equal spaces that engage children in interactions and discussions of race and identity are inappropriate. Education in Ontario and Canada as an entity is marked by myth of the Canadian nation-state (Thobani, 2007) through celebratory, themed, recognition-based initiatives that mark differences, while leaving the status quo of whiteness unchallenged and intact (DiAngelo, 2018). The objective of the paper is to challenge discursive norms that perpetuate the dominant norm that young children do not see or notice race and are insulated from processes of racial socialization, through a reconceptualist framework. The paper does this by centering the socialization of race and identity in Ontario, Canada’s most diverse province and one of the most ethno-racially diverse regions in the world. This paper not only disputes the common misconception that ECEC sites are neutral spaces, but also re-centers these spaces as political as well as potential sites of resistance

Finding places and spaces for recognition: applied art therapy training and practice in the mitigation against unthinking acts of violence

This paper explores the potentialities of Community Art Counselling techniques and processes in South Africa and how not only do these offer therapeutic spaces for traumatised communities, but can also serve as interfaces between psychoanalytically-informed practice, active citizenship and participatory action research opportunities. Case examples are drawn on in order to elucidate the multifariousness of Community Art Counselling at both a national as well as an individual level. Methods include photography, video, advocacy programmes, social dreaming and image-making. These examples, in particular an intervention in response to xenophobic attacks in the country, address intergenerational and intercultural transmission of trauma; the necessary adaptation of the traditional psychoanalytic frame of time, setting and disclosure; and the mitigation of ‘otherness’. Importantly, the author suggests that whilst reaction to continuous trauma, may include denial and shutting down, action can often be a first response. She suggests that art therapy as a modality offers an opportunity for a thinking action, which is more likely to be curative and sustainable – as opposed to unthinking action, which is the opposite. Keywords: Visual research, trauma, Social dreaming, Xenophobia.

Physical Constraints and Functional Characteristics of Transcription Factor-DNA Interaction

We study theoretical ``design principles'' for transcription factor-DNA interaction in bacteria, focusing particularly on the statistical interaction of the transcription factors (TF's) with the genomic background (i.e., the genome without the target sites). We introduce and motivate the concept of `programmability', i.e. the ability to set the threshold concentration for TF binding over a wide range merely by mutating the binding sequence of a target site. This functional demand, together with physical constraints arising from the thermodynamics and kinetics of TF-DNA interaction, leads us to a narrow range of ``optimal'' interaction parameters. We find that this parameter set agrees well with experimental data for the interaction parameters of a few exemplary prokaryotic TF's. This indicates that TF-DNA interaction is indeed programmable. We suggest further experiments to test whether this is a general feature for a large class of TF's.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; revised version as published in PNA

Determining the preferred representation of temporal constraints in conceptual models

The need for expressing temporal constraints in conceptual models is well-known, but it is unclear which representation is preferred and what would be easier to understand by modellers. We assessed five different modes of representing temporal constraints, being the formal semantics, Description logics notation, a coding-style notation, temporal EER diagrams, and (pseudo-)natural language sentences. The same information was presented to 15 participants in an experimental evaluation. Principally, it showed that 1) there was a clear preference for diagrams and natural language versus a dislike for other representations; 2) diagrams were preferred for simple constraints, but the natural language rendering was preferred for more complex temporal constraints; and 3) a multi-modal modelling tool will be needed for the data analysis stage to be effective

Finite size melting of spherical solid-liquid aluminium interfaces

We have investigated the melting of nano-sized cone shaped aluminium needles coated with amorphous carbon using transmission electron microscopy. The interface between solid and liquid aluminium was found to have spherical topology. For needles with fixed apex angle, the depressed melting temperature of this spherical interface, with radius $R$, was found to scale linearly with the inverse radius $1/R$. However, by varying the apex angle of the needles we show that the proportionality constant between the depressed melting temperature and the inverse radius changes significantly. This lead us to the conclusion that the depressed melting temperature is not controlled solely by the inverse radius $1/R$. Instead we found a direct relation between the depressed melting temperature and the ratio between the solid-liquid interface area and the molten volume.Comment: to appear in Philosophical Magazine (2009

The aggregation of cytochrome C may be linked to its flexibility during refolding

Large-scale expression of biopharmaceutical proteins in cellular hosts results in production of large insoluble mass aggregates. In order to generate functional product, these aggregates require further processing through refolding with denaturant, a process in itself that can result in aggregation. Using a model folding protein, cytochrome C, we show how an increase in final denaturant concentration decreases the propensity of the protein to aggregate during refolding. Using polarised fluorescence anisotropy, we show how reduced levels of aggregation can be achieved by increasing the period of time the protein remains flexible during refolding, mediated through dilution ratios. This highlights the relationship between the flexibility of a protein and its propensity to aggregate. We attribute this behaviour to the preferential urea-residue interaction, over self-association between molecules

Socio-cultural, geographical and financial factors that influence a tourist’s overall experience of Township Tours in the Western Cape, South Africa.

Consumers are becoming more focused on the experience attached to a service or product, which can be created through the use of the experience economy. An experience is created through various indicators and becomes a main driver of overall satisfaction. This study focusses on the tourism industry in South Africa, specifically, township tourism in the Western Cape. The purpose of this article is to investigate the relation between authenticity, memorabilia, entertaining experience, safety, tour conditions, monetary value, flow of income, and the tourists’ overall satisfaction of township tours in the Western Cape. These variables or indicators of experience in the tourism industry are grouped into three categories; socio-cultural; geographical, and; financial factors. Furthermore, the disconfirmation theory as well as the expectancy value theory are utilised to explain the relation between the variables of the study. This study makes use of a quantitative research paradigm and the data was collected by means of a questionnaire. The findings of this article state tourist’ overall experience of township tours relate strongly on the interaction with the locals, availability of memorabilia, and arts and crafts. Tour guides provide tourists with adequate information and knowledge to provide a feeling of safety. From the findings, recommendations to the stakeholders of township tours are made, The managerial implication is that the tour operators of township tours need to be aware of the impact that the township tours has on the local economy and that tourists are willing to pay more for an authentic experience.The study is significant as it is one of very few studies conducted on township tours in South Africa, and the first in the Western Cape

Visual Fixations Duration as an Indicator of Skill Level in eSports

Using highly interactive systems like computer games requires a lot of visual activity and eye movements. Eye movements are best characterized by visual fixation - periods of time when the eyes stay relatively still over an object. We analyzed the distributions of fixation duration of professional athletes, amateur and newbie players. We show that the analysis of fixation durations can be used to deduce the skill level in computer game players. Highly skilled gaming performance is characterized by more variability in fixation durations and by bimodal fixation duration distributions suggesting the presence of two fixation types in high skill gamers. These fixation types were identified as ambient (automatic spatial processing) and focal (conscious visual processing). The analysis of computer gamers' skill level via the analysis of fixation durations may be used in developing adaptive interfaces and in interface design.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

The Incremental Cooperative Design of Preventive Healthcare Networks

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Soheil Davari, 'The incremental cooperative design of preventive healthcare networks', Annals of Operations Research, first published online 27 June 2017. Under embargo. Embargo end date: 27 June 2018. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10479-017-2569-1.In the Preventive Healthcare Network Design Problem (PHNDP), one seeks to locate facilities in a way that the uptake of services is maximised given certain constraints such as congestion considerations. We introduce the incremental and cooperative version of the problem, IC-PHNDP for short, in which facilities are added incrementally to the network (one at a time), contributing to the service levels. We first develop a general non-linear model of this problem and then present a method to make it linear. As the problem is of a combinatorial nature, an efficient Variable Neighbourhood Search (VNS) algorithm is proposed to solve it. In order to gain insight into the problem, the computational studies were performed with randomly generated instances of different settings. Results clearly show that VNS performs well in solving IC-PHNDP with errors not more than 1.54%.Peer reviewe