On homogeneous closed gradient Laplacian solitons and the modified conformal Hessian

Laplacian solitons are self-similar solutions to a geometric flow of $G_2$-structures $\varphi \in \Omega^3(M)$ on smooth $7$-manifolds $M$ called the Laplacian flow. Recently, Laplacian solitons on homogeneous spaces have received increased interest and many new examples have been found by Fernandez-Raffero, Lauret-Nicolini, and others (see, e.g., \cites{FR20, Lau17a, Lau17b, LN20, Nic18}, and \cite{Nic22}). Though there has been recent work on gradient Laplacian solitons in the nonhomogeneous setting due to Haskins and his collaborators (see, e.g., \cites{HN21, HKP22}), very little is known about gradient solitons of a closed Laplacian flow on homogeneous spaces. In this thesis, we investigate homogeneous closed gradient Laplacian solitons. We prove a Structure Theorem for homogeneous closed gradient Laplacian solitons. We then use the Structure Theorem to ``eliminate\u27\u27 closed gradient Laplacian solitons. That is, we use the Structure Theorem to show that some closed Laplacian solitons or closed $G_2$-structures cannot be made gradient. We also use the Structure Theorem to obtain the structure of almost abelian solvmanifolds admitting closed gradient Laplacian solitons. We then study weighted sectional curvature of Riemannian manifolds with density. In particular, we study how weighted sectional curvature bounds give us control over the modified conformal hessian. We use this to prove an inequality resembling the law of cosines, which we call a ``warped law of cosines\u27\u27

iResilience of science pre-service teachers through digital storytelling

© 2015. We live in a multimodal world where communication enabled by digital media supports the expression of ideas, opinions, instructions and experiences in a variety of formats that empower the individual to convey thoughts and emotions persuasively. In education, digital storytelling as a pedagogical strategy can be embedded in student-generated videos of narratives of personal learning experiences or in teacher-constructed stories that inform or instruct. The aim of this qualitative research was to investigate how a group of science pre-service teachers created digital stories to elicit resiliency (risk and protective factors) during their teaching practicum and how their peers responded to the digital stories, uploaded and shared on VoiceThread. The results showed that the digital stories were able to convey thinking and emotions successfully at a deeper level. A range of issues (risk factors) and strategies (protective factors) to overcome them could be identified in the digital stories. As reducing the risk of attrition in teachers' early professional careers is important for maintaining teacher numbers and quality in teaching, this research is significant in understanding how pre-service teachers view resiliency in their education. Digital stories are able to provide teacher educators and researchers with richer data for this purpose. Australasian Journal of Educational Technolog

Safe and scalable parallel programming with session types

Parallel programming is a technique that can coordinate and utilise multiple hardware resources simultaneously, to improve the overall computation performance. However, reasoning about the communication interactions between the resources is difficult. Moreover, scaling an application often leads to increased number and complexity of interactions, hence we need a systematic way to ensure the correctness of the communication aspects of parallel programs. In this thesis, we take an interaction-centric view of parallel programming, and investigate applying and adapting the theory of Session Types, a formal typing discipline for structured interaction-based communication, to guarantee the lack of communication mismatches and deadlocks in concurrent systems. We focus on scalable, distributed parallel systems that use message-passing for communication. We explore programming language primitives, tools and frameworks to simplify parallel programming. First, we present the design and implementation of Session C, a program ming toolchain for message-passing parallel programming. Session C can ensure deadlock freedom, communication safety and global progress through static type checking, and supports optimisations by refinements through session subtyping. Then we introduce Pabble, a protocol description language for designing parametric interaction protocols. The language can capture scalable interaction patterns found in parallel applications, and guarantees communication-safety and deadlock-freedom despite the undecidability of the underlying parameterised session type theory. Next, we demonstrate an application of Pabble in a workflow that combines Pabble protocols and computation kernel code describing the sequential computation behaviours, to generate a Message-Passing Interface (MPI) parallel application. The framework guarantees, by construction, that generated code are free from communication errors and deadlocks. Finally, we formalise an extension of binary session types and new language primitives for safe and efficient implementations of multiparty parallel applications in a binary server-client programming environment. Our exploration with session-based parallel programming shows that it is a feasible and practical approach to guaranteeing communication aspects of complex, interaction-based scalable parallel programming.Open Acces

Spinning Curriculum Designs at a Crossroads: Big Ideas, Conversations, and Reconciliation

Rejoine

Introduction

It is an exciting time, and also a difficult time, to live and work as educational researchers. Canada remains a vast territory constituted by provincial, territorial, and Indigenous sovereign borders. Come this July, some of us will celebrate the constitutional establishment of our settler nation-state. We will reflect on the contributions our research has (or has not) made to the lives of various educational stakeholders. Whereas, other First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities are still calling for constitutional recognition of their sovereignty both inside and outside of our settler academies. Such tensions of present absence have, and continue to exist, within this special capsule celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Canadian Journal of Education

Understanding an indigenous curriculum in Louisiana through listening to Houma oral histories

Indigenous communities have inhabited Louisiana since time immemorial. However, the national project of teaching the rise of the West as a heroic story remains the curricular centerpiece in elementary and high school history classes in North America. As a curriculum theorist, and former science and history teacher, I am concerned with the ways in which my teachings of colonialism’s cultural, historical, and national narratives suppress and silence the stories of the colonized. Therefore, the purpose of this paper (based on a four-year qualitative study) is to share oral histories of the United Houma Nation in order to illustrate their daily lives inside and outside the colonizers’ institutional systems. Louisiana’s political, judicial and educational institutions recently settled the longest desegregation lawsuit in American history. My dissertation research illustrates historically how Louisiana’s State apparatus dictated educational exclusion through the infamous Jim Crow policies of racial segregation. Like many African-American communities in the south, the United Houma Nation did not have any access to “White” systems of public education until the mid-1960s. An Indian identity denied the United Houma Nation from having access to African American schools as well. Community members were excluded—racially—from Louisiana’s educational institutions. Very little research has been done the United Houma Nation and their historical relationships with Louisiana’s educational systems. The potential social significance for revisiting history via qualitative research methods that stress situating and contextualizing local voices is that it becomes a way for transforming both the content and the purpose of history

Can Multimedia Learning Tools Enhance Creative Thinking?

The increasing demand for creativity in all domains of study has made this unique construct a surviving means for individuals (Amabile, 1998) and organizations (Dhillon, 2006) which prompts the effort to prioritize creativity development and research particularly in the educational context. Moreover, technological advancement has blessed educational practitioners with the emergence of new teaching and learning tools and approaches. Transforming static learning materials into multimedia forms is an advantage of the technology which has been proven to be effective in enhancing learners' knowledge construction and understanding (Mayer, 2009). The question is whether multimedia learning tools (MLT) could further help learners in their cognitive process and think creatively. Hence, two studies were conducted to test the impact of MLT on mechanical engineering students' creative thinking. MLT on a specific subject were designed and developed, and used by the students at an engineering-based university in Malaysia. The first experiment was a one-group pretest-posttest non-randomized design involving 27 students, and the second experiment was a quasi-experimental two-group pretest posttest non-randomized design involving 64 students. The exposure to the MLT was the treatment condition. Participants' creative thinking was measured using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), Verbal forms. Paired-samples t-test results of the first experiment showed significant differences in all elements of students' creative thinking. The results of the TTCT for the second experiment were analyzed using ANCOVA and simple linear regression. The ANCOVA results did not yield significant results. However, the regression analysis was able to predict that the variation in the creative thinking tests was higher when participants were exposed to the MLT. Most responses from the students' interviews also indicated that the MLT have positively influenced their creative thinking. Therefore, this study has shown that there is positive impact on mechanical engineering students' creative thinking when they are exposed to the use of MLT

Motor Nucleus of the Trigeminal Nerve

This report contains a summary of expression patterns for genes that are enriched in the motor nucleus of the trigeminal nerve (V) of the pons. All data is derived from the Allen Brain Atlas (ABA) in situ hybridization mouse project. The structure's location and morphological characteristics in the mouse brain are described using the Nissl data found in the Allen Reference Atlas. Using an established algorithm, the expression values of the motor nucleus of the trigeminal nerve were compared to the values of its larger parent structure, in this case the pons, for the purpose of extracting regionally selective gene expression data. The highest ranking genes were manually curated and verified. 50 genes were then selected and compiled for expression analysis. The experimental data for each gene may be accessed via the links provided; additional data in the sagittal plane may also be accessed using the ABA. Correlations between gene expression in the motor nucleus of the trigeminal nerve and the rest of the brain, across all genes in the coronal dataset (~4300 genes), were derived computationally. A gene ontology table (derived from DAVID Bioinformatics Resources 2007) is also included, highlighting possible functions of the 50 genes selected for this report. 
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A Case of Senator Lynn Beyak and Anti-Indigenous Systemic Racism in Canada

On March 7, 2017, Canadian Senator Lynn Beyak stood up in the Red Chamber and delivered a lengthy speech urging Canadians to recognise the positive aspects of the Indian Residential Schooling system that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had failed to acknowledge. In their positions as settler teacher educators, the authors examine how Senator Beyak’s statements expose the depth of systemic settler colonialism, anti-Indigenous racisms, and unsettling beneficiary narratives here in Canada. The authors call on teacher educators to examine these systemic anti-Indigenous racisms in relation to how they can confront and disrupt settler Canadian colonialism and historical settler consciousness within teacher education and school curricula. Drawing on recent research done by educational researchers at Faculties of Education across Canada, the authors maintain that settler colonial benevolence and colonial systemic anti-Indigenous racisms can be unlearned and learned through ethical relationality, truth, and a critical praxis of reconciliation.Le 7 mars 2017, la sénatrice canadienne Lynn Beyak s’est levée dans la Chambre rouge et a prononcé un long discours dans lequel elle incitait les Canadiens à reconnaître les aspects positifs du système des pensionnats indiens que la Commission de vérité et réconciliation n’avait pas reconnus. Comme enseignants et enseignantes descendants des colons, les auteurs de cette communication examinent comment les déclarations de la sénatrice Beyak mettent en évidence la profondeur du colonialisme de peuplement systémique, des racismes anti-autochtones et des récits troublants des conquérants du Canada. Les auteurs demandent aux enseignants et aux éducateurs d’examiner ces racismes systémiques anti-autochtones en relation avec la façon dont ils peuvent confronter et déconstruire le colonialisme de peuplement et la conscience historique des colons dans les programmes scolaires et de formation des enseignants. En s’appuyant sur des recherches récentes effectuées par des chercheurs des Facultés d’éducation du Canada, les auteurs soutiennent que la bienveillance des colons et les racismes coloniaux systémiques anti-autochtones peuvent non seulement être déconstruits, mais aussi que les antiracismes peuvent aussi être reconstruits par l’entremise des relations éthiques, de la vérité et d’une pratique critique visant la réconciliation