Graduate Theses & Dissertations

Pages

Range-Based Component Models for Conditional Volatility and Dynamic Correlations
Volatility modelling is an important task in the financial markets. This paper first evaluates the range-based DCC-CARR model of Chou et al. (2009) in modelling larger systems of assets, vis-à-vis the traditional return-based DCC-GARCH. Extending Colacito, Engle and Ghysels (2011), range-based volatility specifications are then employed in the first-stage of DCC-MIDAS conditional covariance estimation, including the CARR model of Chou et al. (2005). A range-based analog to the GARCH-MIDAS model of Engle, Ghysels and Sohn (2013) is also proposed and tested - which decomposes volatility into short- and long-run components and corrects for microstructure biases inherent to high-frequency price-range data. Estimator forecasts are evaluated and compared in a minimum-variance portfolio allocation experiment following the methodology of Engle and Colacito (2006). Some consistent inferences are drawn from the results, supporting the models proposed here as empirically relevant alternatives. Range-based DCC-MIDAS estimates produce efficiency gains over DCC-CARR which increase with portfolio size. Author Keywords: asset allocation, DCC MIDAS, dynamic correlations, forecasting, portfolio risk management, volatility
Re-Living the Residential School Experience
The residential school legacy is one of the darkest chapters in Canadian history. From the mid-1850s to 1996, thousands of Aboriginal children were taken from their homelands and placed in residential schools. Taken against their will, many dreaded attending these schools. Some attended for as long as ten to fifteen years, only to be strangers in their own communities upon their return. In the past thirty years, survivors began disclosing the loneliness, confusion, fear, punishment and humiliation they suffered within these institutions, and also reported traumatic incidents of sexual, physical or emotional abuse. These childhood traumas still haunt them today. This dissertation examines the four compensation processes (Litigation, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Independent Assessment Process and the Common Experience Process) used by survivors to determine whether the compensation payments made to them assisted in reconciliation of their residential school experience. To complete an analysis of the processes, twenty-four residential school survivors from Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia were interviewed about their experiences with one or more of the compensation processes. The study begins with a historical overview of the residential school legacy and continues with the residential school healing movement that initiated and finalized a negotiated settlement agreement for all living survivors. This dissertation provides a unique perspective to the residential school legacy by using a cultural framework, Anishinabe teachings and concepts to share the voices of residential school survivors. The pivotal Anishinabe teaching within this study comes from The Seventh Fire Prophecy. This prophecy states that: “If the New People will remain strong in their quest, the Waterdrum of the Midewiwin Lodge will again sound its voice.” In this dissertation the residential school survivors are the New People. As the dissertation unfolds the author utilizes various Anishinabe concepts to illustrate how the compensation processes failed to assist the New People to reconcile with their residential school experience. This study presents a medicine wheel understanding of reconciliation and the Residential School Legacy. It concludes with an important message to the second and third generation survivors to continue the reconciliatory efforts that the New People introduced. It is crucial that the children and grandchildren of the New People begin the reconciliation process not only for themselves but for the next seven generations. Author Keywords: Anishinabe, compensation, Indian residential schools, reconciliation, survivors
Real-space renormalization group approach to the Anderson model
Many of the most interesting electronic behaviours currently being studied are associated with strong correlations. In addition, many of these materials are disordered either intrinsically or due to doping. Solving interacting systems exactly is extremely computationally expensive, and approximate techniques developed for strongly correlated systems are not easily adapted to include disorder. As a non-interacting disordered model, it makes sense to consider the Anderson model as a first step in developing an approximate method of solution to the interacting and disordered Anderson-Hubbard model. Our renormalization group (RG) approach is modeled on that proposed by Johri and Bhatt [23]. We found an error in their work which we have corrected in our procedure. After testing the execution of the RG, we benchmarked the density of states and inverse participation ratio results against exact diagonalization. Our approach is significantly faster than exact diagonalization and is most accurate in the limit of strong disorder. Author Keywords: disorder, localization, real-space renormalization, strong correlations
Reassessing Bioarchaeological Sex Determination and Research into Gender at the Early Anglo-Saxon Worthy Park Burial Ground Round in Hampshire, England
When bioarchaeologists investigate ancient gender identity, they typically place skeletal remains into one of six sex assessment categories: male, female, possible/probable male, possible/probable female, ambiguous, and indeterminate. However, the study samples are often reduced to male and female reproducing a male/female gender and sex binary prevalent in the "Western" cultural milieu and bioarchaeology when inferences are made about gender and sex in the past. In order to allow for the existence of non-binary cultural genders and biological sexes, this thesis: 1) demonstrates the multitude of ethnographic, ethnohistoric, historic, and medical evidence relating to non-binary sex and gender expression; 2) tests a method inspired by Whelan (1991) that looks at gender as an identity not fully inspired by biological sex; 3) keeps all sex assessment categories used by bioarchaeologists separate in analysis and interpretation; and 4) analyses patterns relating to all available material culture and biological attributes in a mortuary sample to investigate gender identity. This thesis used the Early Anglo-Saxon (470-600 AD) burial ground at Worthy Park in Hampshire to achieve these objectives. This thesis found that when examining all sex assessment categories among all mortuary variables, only the male sex was clearly defined by its mortuary assemblage. This suggests a one gender structure corresponding to linguistic evidence for one gender in Old English. Author Keywords: Anglo-Saxon, Bioarchaeology, Gender identity, Mortuary archaeology, Osteoarchaeology, Sex determination
Reconceptualising the Heteronormative Curriculum Through Autobiographical Methodology - A Study of Heteronormativity within Ontario Ministry of Education Curriculum Documents
This thesis is about the negative impacts on queer identities caused by the lack of diversity related to sexual orientation within Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum documents, both at the elementary and secondary level. Curriculum documents as well as policy documents are analysed and compared in order to address the lack of diverse sexual orientation representation within Ontario’s education system. The study is guided by the question: “who benefits from the current representations of sexual orientation in the curriculum?” This conceptual study advances autobiographical methodology and the concept of Currere in relation to queer theory that allows researchers to analyse their educational experiences throughout the course of their lives and then become agents of social change. The results of my personal curriculum analysis have shown that curriculum documents lack diverse sexual orientation representation and that this has negative impacts how LGBQQ people identify and on the course of their lives. Author Keywords: Curriculum, Homophobia, LGBQQ, Ontario Curriculum, Ontario Education, Sexual Orientation
Reconceptualizing Immigration in Canada
This thesis challenges the contemporary framework of immigration in Canada. Despite Canada’s effort to promote cultural diversity and multicultural citizenship, immigration policy in the last decade has moved towards a model of cultural assimilation. The recent Bill—Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act—devalues non-European cultures and hinders the successful integration for new immigrants. The problem of contemporary immigration in Canada lies in the narrow and exclusive understanding of immigration. That is, the current immigration framework is rooted in Eurocentrism, which draws exclusively from the economic and cultural values of the West. The Eurocentric understanding of migration not only hinders the successful integration for new immigrants, but it also hinders economic growth and weakens the social cohesion of Canada. For this reason, this thesis offers an alternative framework for understanding immigration. I focus on Chinese migration in Canada and take an interdisciplinary and a conceptual approach in order to present an inclusive understanding of Chinese migration. In particular, I apply the idea of "connected histories" to the context of immigration, and I demonstrate that immigration is a complex and interconnected phenomenon which cannot be reduced to the narratives of economics and ‘Canadian values.’ Instead, immigration should be understood as a process of transnational interactions because it not only allows us to understand benefits that transnational interactions would bring to immigrants, their country of origin and Canada, but it also recognizes different values and the agency of immigrants. Author Keywords: Bill C-24, Chinese Canadians, Eurocentrism, Immigration, Multicultrualism, Transnational
Reconceptualizing a Post-Secondary Program for Students with Intellectual Disabilities
The number of post-secondary programs for students with intellectual disabilities has been on the rise since the early 1990’s (Plotner & Marshall, 2015). However, research focused on student experiences within these programs has been predominantly from faculty, mainstream students and parent’s perspectives without accounting for what the students themselves are experiencing. This thesis however utilizes critical narrative inquiry as a methodology to listen the stories of students with disabilities, in conjunction with the researcher’s personal and professional experiences to reconceptualize the CICE program at Fleming College in Peterborough Ontario in order to provide students with more responsive and inclusive educational experiences. Six themes emerged from interviews conducted in the research: friendship/social opportunities, career/goals, supports, barriers/challenges, independence/freedom and finally identity/inclusion. A critical exploration of these themes is provided to develop programmatic, college and community level changes that forward a reconceptualized view of post-secondary education for adults with disabilities. Author Keywords: Critical disability theory, Critical narrative inquiry, Post-secondary programs for students with disabilities, Student voice
Reconciliation as Relationship
In 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called upon Canadians to reconcile relationships between Settlers and Indigenous peoples in Canada. Education for reconciliation is one important element of this process. However, critical questions arise when education is undertaken by and for Settlers such as myself: Are our undertakings actually fostering reconciliation? According to whom? Drawing from reconciliation theory and decolonizing Indigenous methodologies, a reconciliation methodology is created to consider this question in the context of three reconciliation workshops for Settlers. Indigenous perspectives and pedagogies are prioritized. The emerging understandings of reconciliation as relationship and relationship as pedagogy reframe some prevailing Settler thinking about reconciliation, unmask latent assumptions linked to the colonial habits of mind and affirm the need for personal responsibility in the reconciliation relationship. The Indigenous norm of learning in-relation is found to be a powerful experience for Settlers participants offering valuable insights for reconciliation education in Canada. Author Keywords: decolonizing, education, Indigenous, relationship, Settler, Truth and Reconciliation
Reconnecting the Heart and Spirit
This research explores key themes emerging from the question of the meaning Anishinaabe individuals attach to utilizing traditional practices and ceremonies to address their own trauma. The contributors share their stories, which are deeply rooted in relationships. The methodology of this research is also rooted within an Indigenous paradigm; storytelling is a core feature of relationships and knowledge transmission through its ability to weave together and across generations. Indigenous cultures have had a long history of both verbal and visual storytelling, in the forms of pictographs and petroglyphs, wampum belts, bead and quill work, and so on. While stories are often entertaining, they are at their core, the most human of activities. Anishinaabe approaches to ceremony, spirit and the sacred are woven into the language, attitudes and practices that people still engage in, despite the depredations of colonization. The findings of this research explore how identity, found through love, caring, self-awareness, and the (re)claiming of wellness and wholeness, permeates the stories of healing and is rooted in ceremonies. This is relationship with self and self-in-relation to all things: niwiikaniginaa. Land-as-home, culture, family, and love ground people in their sense of self and wellness. Language and thought emerge from the land, the source of well-being or mino bimaadsiwin in the most profound ways. It is through home – land, family, culture, spiritual connection – that healing occurs in ways that cannot be found in clinical systems. Author Keywords: Colonization, First Nations, Healing, Identity, Storytelling, Trauma
Regional Assessment of Soil Calcium Weathering Rates and the Factors that Influence Lake Calcium in the Muskoka River Catchment, Central Ontario
(MRC) in central Ontario was carried out to determine the range and spatial distribution of soil Ca weathering rates, and investigate the relationships between lake Ca and soil and catchment attributes. The MRC is acid-sensitive, and has a long history of impacts from industrial emission sources in Ontario and the United States. Small headwater catchments were sampled for soil and landscape attributes (e.g. elevation, slope, catchment area) at 84 sites. Soil Ca weathering rates, estimated with the PROFILE model, were low throughout the region (average: 188 eq/(ha·yr)) compared to global averages, and lower than Ca deposition (average: 292 eq/(ha·yr)). Multiple linear regression models of lake Ca (n= 306) were dominated by landscape variables such as elevation, which suggests that on a regional scale, landscape variables are better predictors of lake Ca than catchment soil variables. Author Keywords: Calcium, Lakes, Regional assessment, Regression, Soils, Weathering
Regional differences in the whistles of Australasian humpback dolphins (genus Sousa)
Most delphinids produce narrowband frequency-modulated whistles with a high level of plasticity to communicate with conspecifics. It is important to understand geographic variation in whistles as signal variation in other taxa has provided insight into the dispersal capabilities, genetic divergence and isolation among groups, and adaptation to ecological conditions. I investigated whistle variation of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis chinensis), Taiwanese humpback dolphins (S. c. taiwanensis) and Australian humpback dolphins (S. sahulensis) to test whether differences in whistles support the hypotheses of population structure, regional and species differences in the genus Sousa, which were based on morphological and genetic data. I also investigated important factors that may contribute to local distinctiveness in whistles including behavioural state, group size, and the influence of vessel noise. Multivariate analyses of seven acoustic variables supported the hypotheses of population structure, regional and species differences. Acoustic diversification between groups is likely influenced by behaviour and social contexts of whistles, and environmental noise. The use of sound to identify discrete groups of humpback dolphins may be important in future studies where genetic and morphological studies may not reveal recent differentiation or are difficult to conduct. Author Keywords: Bioacoustics, Cetacean, Geographic variation, Population biology, Sousa, Whistle characteristics
Regulation of Cytokinins During Kernel Development in High and Low Yielding Oat and Barley Lines
Cytokinins (CKs) are a family of plant phytohormones responsible for many areas of plant growth and development. There are four free base types of CKs found in higher plants, trans-zeatin (tZ), N6-(∆2-isopentenyl)adenine (iP), cis-Zeatin (cZ) and dihydrozeatin (DZ). CK biosynthesis is regulated by adenosine phosphate-isopentenyltransferase (IPT), which is encoded by a multi-gene family in many plant species. There are two types of IPT pathways responsible for CK production, the tRNA pathway and the AMP (ATP/ADP) pathway. The tRNA pathway putatively produces cZ and the latter predominantly produces iP type nucleotides. CKs have long been studied for their role in stress tolerance, signal transduction, and involvement in many areas of plant growth and development. This study focuses on the role of CKs and CK biosynthesis by IPT during kernel development and comparisons of its regulation in high and low yielding barley and oat lines. The sequence of a putative IPT encoding gene in barley and oat was identified by a blast search of other known IPT gene fragments in closely related species. Quantitative Real time PCR results based on primers designed for the putative barley and oat IPT gene revealed changes in expression of IPT during different stages of kernel development, but no significance difference was associated with yield. Correlation of IPT gene expression in barley with cZ CK profiles measured by HPLC-MS/MS, confirms a putative IPT gene is a tRNA- IPT. HPLC-MS/MS results reveal some CK types, such as benzyladenine, are more predominant in higher yielding lines. This suggests different types of CKs play a role in yield production. Future studies on more IPT genes in the barley and oat IPT gene family will outline a more clear representation of the role of IPT in barley kernel development. Author Keywords: Benzyladenine, Cereal grain, Cytokinin, Isopentenyl Transferase, Mass Spectrometry, Real Time PCR

Pages

Description

Graduate student theses produced at Trent University. You may also browse theses and dissertations by year, program, or author.

In collections

Search Our Digital Collections

Query

Enabled Filters

  • (-) ≠ Farell
  • (-) ≠ Bell
  • (-) ≠ Theory, Culture and Politics
  • (-) ≠ Southeast Asian studies

Filter Results

Date

1974 - 2024
(decades)
Specify date range: Show
Format: 2024/04/18

Collection

Author Name

Show more

Name (Any)

Show more

Degree

Degree Discipline

Show more

Subject (Topic)

Show more