Tracing the Colonial Dimensions of ‘Special Education’: History, Disability, and Settler Colonialism

This thesis proposes that there are intersections between settler colonialism, disability, and education, that can help to clarify how and why national recognition of violence against Indigenous communities is a central project of the nation-state. For this reason, the exacerbating impacts of ableism and (settler) colonialism are studied for their impact on schooling and education in Canada. Using Critical Discourse Analysis as a method of inquiry, the Ontario First Nations Special Education Review Report is analyzed for its relation to history, pedagogy, and colonialism. The report is useful to investigation of the connection between current and historical conceptualizations of disability and the history/present of settler colonialism within the Canadian nation-state. The thesis is framed through the understanding that ableism and colonialism, as they appear in "special education", are intertwined forces which are often founded upon white supremacy and framed through Eurocentric discourse. As such, this thesis engages the fields of Critical Disability Studies, Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Studies, and Education, to describe how special education is informed by colonial constructs of schooling. Conclusions drawn through applying these theories to a reading of the Ontario First Nations Special Education Review Report suggested that there is an apprehension to adopt disability discourse because of the history of colonialism and the ongoing presence of Debility. As well, there is an immediate need to address the systemic issues regarding funding, resource access, and self-determination because of the historical and continued injustices that occur within First Nations education

Deep-water observation of scalloped hammerhead Sphyrna lewini in the western Indian Ocean off Tanzania

A scalloped hammerhead Sphyrna lewini was observed opportunistically from a remotely operated vehicle 1 m off the seabed at 1042 m depth, during hydrocarbon exploration activities in the Ruvuma Basin off Tanzania. The observation, which occurred during night hours, is the deepest accurately recorded for this species and the first deep-water record for the Indian Ocean. The record adds support for the occurrence in deep water during night hours being a widespread and possibly common behaviour in this species, and further expands a small but growing literature that meso- and bathypelagic environments may be of greater importance to elasmobranchs previously considered to be primarily epipelagic

Applications for Machine Learning on Readily Available Data from Virtual Reality Training Experiences

The purpose of the research presented in this dissertation is to improve virtual reality (VR) training systems by enhancing their understanding of users. While the field of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) has seen value in this approach, much research into making use of biometrics to improve user understanding and subsequently training, relies on specialized hardware. Through the presented research, I show that with machine learning (ML), the VR system itself can serve as that specialized hardware for VR training systems. I begin by discussing my explorations into using an ecologically valid, specialized training simulation as a testbed to predict knowledge acquisition by users unfamiliar with the task being trained. Then I look at predicting the cognitive and psychomotor outcomes retained after a one week period. Next I describe our work towards using ML models to predict the transfer of skills from a non-specialized VR assembly training environment to the real-world, based on recorded tracking data. I continue by examining the identifiability of participants in the specialized training task, allowing us to better understand the associated privacy concerns and how the representation of the data can affect identifiability. By using the same tasks separated temporally by a week, we expand our understanding of the diminishing identifiability of user\u27s movements. Finally, I make use of the assembly training environment to explore the feasibility of across-task identifiability, by making use of two different tasks with the same context

Risks to biodiversity and coastal livelihoods from artisanal elasmobranch fisheries in a Least Developed Country: The Gambia (West Africa)

Developing nations in tropical regions harbour rich biological resources on which humans depend for food, income and employment, yet data to aid their management is often lacking. In West Africa, the diversity and fisheries of elasmobranchs are poorly documented, despite them being known to be economically important and vulnerable to overexploitation. Rapid qualitative surveys of fish processing and landing sites in The Gambia from 2010-2018 revealed valuable new data on species composition, biology, relative abundance, fisheries and utilisation by humans. Diversity and abundance was dominated by batoids, with a major component comprising a large guitarfish (Glaucostegus cemiculus) that was apparently targeted, and a small whipray (Fontitrygon margaritella). Nearly all taxa recorded are classified by the IUCN Red List as Critically Endangered (angel sharks Squatina spp.), Endangered, Data Deficient, or Not Evaluated; several were endemic, of exceptional evolutionary distinctness, cryptic, possibly undescribed, and rare (including stingray Hypanus rudis not apparently recorded since description in 1870). Significant threats to biodiversity, coastal livelihoods and possibly food security are identified based on the apparent importance of elasmobranch fisheries and processing; the known inability of key taxa to withstand intensive fisheries; ‘fishing down the food web’ by intensive utilisation of F. margaritella; and the absence or rarity of previously common elasmobranch species that may be severely depleted in the region. This study provides data that may act as a starting point to aid sustainability accreditation of local fin-fisheries, and demonstrates the value of inexpensive and low-resolution data collection in developing countries

APOE-ε4 synergizes with sleep disruption to accelerate Aβ deposition and Aβ-associated tau seeding and spreading

Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. The APOE-ε4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset AD. The APOE genotype modulates the effect of sleep disruption on AD risk, suggesting a possible link between apoE and sleep in AD pathogenesis, which is relatively unexplored. We hypothesized that apoE modifies Aβ deposition and Aβ plaque-associated tau seeding and spreading in the form of neuritic plaque-tau (NP-tau) pathology in response to chronic sleep deprivation (SD) in an apoE isoform-dependent fashion. To test this hypothesis, we used APPPS1 mice expressing human APOE-ε3 or -ε4 with or without AD-tau injection. We found that SD in APPPS1 mice significantly increased Aβ deposition and peri-plaque NP-tau pathology in the presence of APOE4 but not APOE3. SD in APPPS1 mice significantly decreased microglial clustering around plaques and aquaporin-4 (AQP4) polarization around blood vessels in the presence of APOE4 but not APOE3. We also found that sleep-deprived APPPS1:E4 mice injected with AD-tau had significantly altered sleep behaviors compared with APPPS1:E3 mice. These findings suggest that the APOE-ε4 genotype is a critical modifier in the development of AD pathology in response to SD

Using vertebrate environmental DNA from seawater in biomonitoring of marine habitats

Conservation and management of marine biodiversity depends on biomonitoring of marine habitats, but current approaches are resource‐intensive and require different approaches for different organisms. Environmental DNA (eDNA) extracted from water samples is an efficient and versatile approach to detecting aquatic animals. In the ocean, eDNA composition reflects local fauna at fine spatial scales, but little is known about the effectiveness of eDNA‐based monitoring of marine communities at larger scales. We investigated the potential of eDNA to characterize and distinguish marine communities at large spatial scales by comparing vertebrate species composition among marine habitats in Qatar, the Arabian Gulf (also known as the Persian Gulf), based on eDNA metabarcoding of seawater samples. We conducted species accumulation analyses to estimate how much of the vertebrate diversity we detected. We obtained eDNA sequences from a diverse assemblage of marine vertebrates, spanning 191 taxa in 73 families. These included rare and endangered species and covered 36% of the bony fish genera previously recorded in the Gulf. Sites of similar habitat type were also similar in eDNA composition. The species accumulation analyses showed that the number of sample replicates was insufficient for some sampling sites but suggested that a few hundred eDNA samples could potentially capture >90% of the marine vertebrate diversity in the study area. Our results confirm that seawater samples contain habitat‐characteristic molecular signatures and that eDNA monitoring can efficiently cover vertebrate diversity at scales relevant to national and regional conservation and management.Maersk Oil; Qatar National Research Fund. Grant Number: NPRP 7 ‐ 1129 ‐ 1 – 201; Naturvidenskab og Teknologi, Aarhus Universite