Katherine Anne Porter\u27s Adaptation of Joycean Paralysis in the Pale Horse, Pale Rider Collection

This thesis is a study of Katherine Anne Porter\u27s Pale Horse, Pale Rider collection in relationship to James Joyce\u27s Dubliners. The main focus of this study is Porter\u27s use of Joycean paralysis in the three stories \u27Old Mortality,\u27 \u27Noon Wine,\u27 and \u27Pale Horse, Pale Rider.\u27 There is evidence in interviews and letters of Porter\u27s admiration of Joyce, and her characters\u27 states of hopelessness reflect a similar paralysis to those found in the following selections of Dubliners: \u27The Dead,\u27 \u27Grace,\u27 and \u27Eveline.\u27 Porter\u27s collection of stories is not an imitation of Joyce\u27s work; her voice and story setting remain distinct. However, a thread can be found between the two writers\u27 selected works through the oppressiveness of the societies in which the characters in the Pale Horse, Pale Rider series and Dubliners live. The object of this thesis is to analyze the sense of hopelessness found in Porter\u27s characters, while surveying the connections that exist between her and Joyce\u27s stories. While the United States and Ireland\u27s political and socio-economic situations differed, the result of their problems similarly affected the individuals in the respective countries. First discussed is the political and social atmosphere of the United States in the twentieth century. The second chapter will continue with the effect of the Texas South\u27s codes of conduct on the family in \u27Old Mortality.\u27 A discussion of these Southern codes will continue with \u27Noon Wine\u27 in the third chapter. This thesis concludes with a study of Porter\u27s Miranda character, a woman hindered by her heritage and the present World War I, which create a state of isolation that is inescapable. In all three of these Porter stories the protagonists, left hopeless at the end of the works, mirror the paralysis found in James Joyce\u27s Dubliners

A Formative Experiment to Promote Disciplinary Literacy in Middle-School and Pre-Service Teacher Education through Blogging

This dissertation describes a formative experiment that investigated how strategy instruction paired with collaborative blogging could promote disciplinary literacy among eighth-grade students in a social studies classroom and among pre-service teachers in a social studies methods course. Qualitative methods were utilized to collect and analyze data in this study. To determine modifications to the intervention, an embedded, single-case study was designed to analyze data iteratively using constant comparative methods. Post-study, qualitative methods were also used to conduct retrospective analysis to connect overall findings to theory. Three modifications were made, in the middle-school setting, to the intervention, which enhanced participants\u27 progress toward the pedagogical goals of the study. Results indicated middle-school students\u27 disciplinary-literacy skills and pre-service teachers\u27 instructional methods improved during the intervention. Findings suggested: (a) In-service and pre-service teachers may struggle with beliefs about disciplinary literacy and technology, but practice and experience may shift those beliefs; (b) writing on a blog may be motivating for adolescents and heighten their awareness of audience; and (c) eighth-grade students are capable of engaging in disciplinary literacy, but explicit strategies may be necessary for their success

Exploring How Secondary Pre-Service Teachers’ Use Online Social Bookmarking to Envision Literacy in the Disciplines

This study considers how pre-service teachers envision disciplinary literacy through an online social bookmarking project. Thirty secondary pre-service teachers participated in the project through an undergraduate literacy course. Online bookmarks and post-project reflections were collected and analyzed using a constant comparative approach to determine emergent themes. Results suggest varying levels of disciplinary knowledge among pre-service teachers, influences of pre-service teachers\u27 envisionments on posted bookmarks, and considerations about standardized testing in disciplinary literacy instruction. Implications for teacher education are discussed in light of these results

A Brief History of Information Sources in the Late 20th and Early 21st Century (A Simulation)

For hundreds of earth years prior to the end of the 20th century, people used a rudimentary and Taylor primitive technologyand as the dominant Francismeans to create, store, disseminate, and access information. Toward the end of that century and at the beginning of the Not next, new for open-ended and fldistributionexible technologies emerged, which expanded options and thus challenged the status quo. That change con-tributed to diverse social, cultural, economic, and political developments, which were greeted by many of our ancestors with enthusiasm, but also with ambiva-lence, confusion, and, occasionally, reactionary objections and turmoil. The new technologies, applications, and forms developed at that time were the precursors to the vast array of informational resources immediately and freely available to 22nd-century citizens today, resources that provide a firm foundation for pro-tecting the democratic ideals on which our society rests. Thus, this earlier time is more than an interesting period of history, for it represents an important turning point between two eras that helps us understand our informational roots and gain a new appreciation for our present circumstances

Out-of-School Reading and Literature Discussion: An Exploration of Adolescents\u27 Participation in Digital Book Clubs

This research used an inductive qualitative method to examine how adolescents participated in online literature discussion, with limited guidance from adults, through a summer reading program. Using a New Literacies framework, the authors considered that literacy is social and collaborative and that adolescents often engage in such literacy practices on the Internet outside of school. This study considered these literacy practices to examine an eight-week voluntary online summer reading program at a public library and how such a program might inform such activities in school settings to promote more authentic opportunities for literacy engagement. In this program, 12 adolescents (ages 13-17) read print-based young adult novels and responded to their reading in threaded discussion boards, called book clubs, in a closed, online social network. Results indicated two overlapping themes related to students\u27 formality in writing that promote shared learning and personalize digital discussions to make connections. Researchers found adolescents spontaneously adopted online discussion techniques that hybridized formal discussion practices with more personal practices to encourage emotive transaction with text. These results raised implications for integrating such activities in classroom settings to support all learners and to promote academic literacies

Obstacles to Developing Digital Literacy on the Internet in Middle School Science Instruction

Obstacles, and instructional responses to them, that emerged in two middle school science classes during a formative experiment investigating Internet Reciprocal Teaching (IRT), an instructional intervention aimed at increasing digital literacy on the Internet, are reported in this manuscript. Analysis of qualitative data revealed that IRT enabled students to explain and demonstrate appropriate strategies for locating and evaluating information on the Internet when they were asked to do so. However, students did not use these strategies or they quickly abandoned them when working independently or in small groups during inquiry projects. Data revealed three obstacles that inhibited efforts to promote consistent, independent use of strategies: the teacher\u27s role in student inquiry, the structure of inquiry projects, and students\u27 previous strategies. Results suggest notable challenges to implementing instruction that inculcates dispositions among middle school students leading to consistent, independent use of appropriate strategies for locating and evaluating information on the Internet. Implications for practitioners, policy makers, and researchers are discussed

The Effects of Self-Regulation Strategies on Middle School Students\u27 Calibration Accuracy and Achievement

This study investigated the impact that self-regulation strategies have on metacognitive judgements (calibration) and mathematics achievement of typical and advanced achieving 7th grade mathematics students over a period of seven weeks. Self-regulation strategies, four square graphic organizers and vocabulary games were implemented with the treatment condition while online games were implemented with the control condition. The results revealed that participants in the treatment condition were more accurate in their calibrations than participants in the control condition, more specifically for postdiction accuracy. Although the participants in the treatment condition scored higher on their achievement tests than the participants in the control condition, there were no significant differences between the conditions

Critiquing Protein Family Classification Models Using Sufficient Input Subsets.

In many application domains, neural networks are highly accurate and have been deployed at large scale. However, users often do not have good tools for understanding how these models arrive at their predictions. This has hindered adoption in fields such as the life and medical sciences, where researchers require that models base their decisions on underlying biological phenomena rather than peculiarities of the dataset. We propose a set of methods for critiquing deep learning models and demonstrate their application for protein family classification, a task for which high-accuracy models have considerable potential impact. Our methods extend the Sufficient Input Subsets (SIS) technique, which we use to identify subsets of features in each protein sequence that are alone sufficient for classification. Our suite of tools analyzes these subsets to shed light on the decision-making criteria employed by models trained on this task. These tools show that while deep models may perform classification for biologically relevant reasons, their behavior varies considerably across the choice of network architecture and parameter initialization. While the techniques that we develop are specific to the protein sequence classification task, the approach taken generalizes to a broad set of scientific contexts in which model interpretability is essential

A communal catalogue reveals Earth’s multiscale microbial diversity

Our growing awareness of the microbial world’s importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth’s microbial diversity

A communal catalogue reveals Earth's multiscale microbial diversity

Our growing awareness of the microbial world's importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth's microbial diversity.Peer reviewe